Transitioning to Product Management

Transitioning to Product Management Series Summary

After transitioning from consulting to Product Management (PM) myself and coaching and mentoring 100+ career pivoters to find their first PM or Product-adjacent roles in Tech, I started a 100-day LinkedIn series focusing on helping early- and mid-career professionals to pivot into Product Management from a different field.?

In the series, I shared my first-hand experience managing the many challenges related to first-time PM career transitions, alongside stories of other successful PM pivoters. My goals were to help more career pivotors to make similar transitions with more confidence, create one-to-many opportunities to mentor at scale, and facilitate learning from and with the LinkedIn community.?

In this summary article, I will summarize the key insights from the series, and you can reference a full list of posts here.

“Thank you for generously sharing your experience with others and empowering them with your stories, knowledge, and transparency.”?

— LinkedIn follower

If you are crunched for time, here are some resources for common questions:

??? My Story transitioning into PM + Working at LinkedIn (YouTube Interview)

??? My ‘Unofficial guide to applying for APM at LinkedIn’ and product culture

??? How to plan your path to PM (mentorship series w/ Marily)

??? A thoughtfully curated? “reading list” for aspiring PMs?

??? Top 10 Product Leaders to follow on LinkedIn

??? Top 15 "Rising Stars" Product influencers to follow on LinkedIn

Detailed Summary

If you have some time, I encourage you to read through the following posts. I promise that they will be worth it :)?

"You have no idea how big of an impact you have made on my career progression. You made things really easy for me. It was a cakewalk to navigate through the materials. Every time I had a doubt, I got the response there in your posts!”?

— LinkedIn follower

To start, let’s understand what is Product Management and the various takes on what PM does (make sure to read some of the thoughtful comments from top product leaders in the thread). Next, we take a look at the day-to-day work of a PM, and skills needed to become an early PM. How do you know if PM is the right fit for you? Check out some of the common myths on PM, and make sure you bust them.?

Many of us will inevitably experience imposter syndrome during this transition: we may not think we are qualified enough to make this transition, “I don’t have that CS/ Engineering degree”. Or we may think the transition is so hard that we will never make it. The key to not getting frustrated in PM search is to start small, learn to spot, stop, and swap when your inner critic / imposter is screaming at you, and focus on channeling your energy to the most productive state.?

Always remember that PM transition is not a sprint, focus on sustaining the momentum to keep pushing forward. Be realistic, patient, and willing to work incredibly hard. ??

What would your boldest, strongest self do if you weren’t afraid?

To know if PM is indeed the right fit for you, you need to understand the various types of PM out there (yes, not all PMs are the same and there are many different types of PMs!). Reflect on your why and conduct a personal SWOT analysis to understand your personal trade-offs and gain conviction for why you want to become a PM. There are many paths to PM so make sure you choose one strategically to increase your chance of landing a PM job. This may include leaning on your strengths and minimizing your degree of freedom, transferring internally by shadowing and helping fellow PMs at your current companies, starting a side project to gain product experiences, or joining a startup (check out this post that summarizes the differences of PMing at different stages of a tech company).?

If you are transitioning from Consulting, here’s a summary post on the key pointers. My fellow PM influencer Bart Jaworski, Ph.D., Senior Product Manager at Microsoft (Skype), has also break down the path to PM by most common job roles - Data Analyst, Software Engineers, QA/Test Engineering, UX/Design, Scrum Master, Project Manager, Client Support/CSM, Sales, Business Owner, and Marketing. Check out these role-specific paths to PM.

Here are five "secrets" to smart networking to get your *first* PM jobs, and how you can prepare for these informational interviews & coffee chats to maximize your learning about the company, the team, the role, and build deep relationships with the hiring team / manager.?

Many career pivoters are looking for mentors who can help guide them through the transition, but asking for mentorship is not an effective strategy, and here’s what you could do instead.

To showcase your PM experience, you must learn how to write a killer PM resume - there are creative ways to make your resume more interesting and stand out in the PM job search. However, most people stopped here and got frustrated that no one picked up their resume and gave them a chance to actually interview.?

Here’s where informational interviews and coffee chats come in to supplement a piece of paper. See the ‘networking’ section above for smart networking strategies.?

When you do have a chance to speak to the hiring managers, make sure you make a strong first impression with a great self intro and make them see your potential.?

It’s time to prepare for your Product Interviews! Most interviews fall into the following buckets:

[1] Behavioral interviews to verify fit & competence: check out the common PM behavioral question types, and prepare your stories using the CHAPEL and PEARL frameworks. Make sure to make your stories interesting to help the hiring team remember you.?

[2] Product Design interviews to test for strong Product Sense, i.e., knowing the right problem to solve for the right set of users. Starting from the classic “What’s your favorite product?”, to design questions like “How to design Uber for kids”. Check out these 5 tools to understand your users and these resources to strengthen your Product Sense.?

[3] Product Strategy interviews to see if you could think strategically and make thoughtful arguments about whether to invest in a product direction, acquire a company, or diversify a portfolio. Learn more about how to approach product strategy questions, resources to build a reading habit to become more tech strategy savvy, and sharpen your product strategy skills.

[4] Product Metrics interviews to validate your metrics understanding - if you know how to measure success based on the unique circumstances of a product. Check out these top resources to understand product metrics.?

[5] Product Launch interviews to see if you understand what it takes to get a product to market; this type of interview is less common now depending on the PM roles / companies you are interviewing for (mostly reserved for Product Marketing vs. Product Management candidates). That being said, it’s still valuable to learn the various activities involved in launching a product.

Congrats on getting your first PM job! On average, it takes rookie PMs 6 to 8 months to reach full productivity. Here are some top resources for deciding what job offers to take, getting the most out of the first 30/60/90 days, and how you may accelerate your onboarding process,?

“Thank you for all the wonderful content on PM & Career! They are far better than what I paid thousands of dollars for. You are my superhero!”?

— LinkedIn follower

Need more inspiration??

Check out these featured stories from successful PM pivoters, special kudos to @Ellen Xu for helping me with curation and editing ????

Consulting to PM:

Shyvee | Pritika | Sritama | Divya | Tingting

Software Engineering to PM:

Kay | Avni | Amy | Ganga

Program Management to PM:

Madhu | Kristina | Robert

Finance + Business Development to PM:

Soojung

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Good luck with your PM transition!?

Look forward to hearing success stories from you soon! ??