4 ways to become a Product Manager

A few years ago I decided I wanted to become a Product Manager (PM) because I enjoy solving big customer problems, making an impact, and rallying a team to achieve a vision.

I also realised PM was the closest role I could find to being a “Founder” where I would effectively be running a startup or product line inside a larger company. A geat alignment with my bigger life goal: to build a product-led company that solves a huge global problem.

But it was difficult to find the right practical advice to get the job. Now that I’ve been in the role for some time, I receive a lot of questions from people wanting to get into PM themselves.

So I thought I’d share a few paths I found useful to get the PM job.

1. Build a product outside of your day job which you can use as “relevant PM experience”

PM is difficult to learn from a textbook. You just need to get out there and do it.

Building a product outside of your current day job can help you build the experience and skills necessary to get the job, without the added pressure of not having a job or income to fall back on. This product will also be a great conversation point in your PM interviews.

I’d recommend the following steps:

1. Choose an industry problem you’re passionate about (e.g. consumer finance)
2. Create a hypothesis and identify assumptions that you want to validate with customers (e.g. Millenials generally don’t want to borrow money from banks)
3. Conduct market research to validate your hypothesis (e.g. research trends on Millenial borrowing and spending, interview 10 Millenials you know to understand why these trends are moving the way they are)
4. Use findings to create a prototype using a tool like Figma
5. Share this prototype with potential customers. Understand what they like and don’t like about it so you can improve it
6. [Bonus] If you’re game, you can find an engineer and/or designer to build a MVP using an online platform (e.g. Upwork)

You’ll be able to get up to step 5 without spending any time or money, and the product doesn’t need to be successful.

Aim: document your thinking and the process you took. This will enable a great conversation with your interviewer about learnings and what you’d do differently next time.

2. Find a company you want to work for and recommend product improvements that they hire you to execute on

Developing a passion for the customer problem you’re solving and domain expertise is one of the best traits you can have as a PM. Passion also really comes across in an interview.

So how can you recommend product improvements to a prospective employer?

1. Choose a company you want to work for (e.g. SafetyCulture)
2. Research market trends and competitors (e.g. market trends include digitisation of frontline industry processes and growing mobile-first approach, competitors include GoCanvas and Enablon)
3. Research customer insights (e.g. interview 10 SafetyCulture customers, or look at iAuditor App Store reviews and draw patterns in why customers are complaining)
4. Play with the companies product yourself and ask yourself: What do you like? What could be improved? What are customers complaining about that’s missing from this product? What do competitors have that’s missing from this product?
5. Create a one-page recommendation that you can pitch to the company you want to work for during the interview. Include market trends, competitors, customer insights, what you like, and what could be improved

Aim: impress the interviewer with the level of research you’ve done. Hopefully so much that they then hire you to execute on it. I’ve done this myself and see many others do the same.

3. Find a company you want to work for and land a job in another role (initially)

Land a job in another role (e.g. support, marketing, sales) and start building a relationship with the PMs. Ask them to mentor you into the PM role over time.

This path will naturally take longer for you to become a PM, but I’ve seen it work.

Ways to build relationships with the PMs:

• Ask to sit in on PM meetings each week and provide insight through the eyes of your current role (e.g. if you’re in sales you could tell them what features are missing to sell more of a certain product)
• Spend a few hours per week shadowing the PMs in customer interviews
• Take initiative to solve a problem in the PM team (there will be plenty)
• Do a PM project for a few hours per week outside of your current role

Aim: impress and build trust with the PMs so that you’re the first person that comes to mind when the PM team is hiring another PM.

4. Do more PM responsibilities in your existing role

Here you want to be looking for opportunities that will provide you with experience that is relevant for the PM role.

You can attempt to find roles where you:

1. Work closely with engineers in a business analyst, project manager, or testing role. When you’re working with engineers you’ll naturally pick up terminology and processes of being part of a development team
2. Own a project from start to finish. This will help you share the experience of a project you led, tested, and implemented in a PM interview
3. Find problems in your team’s current workflow and create a solution that solves a specific problem. This shows you have the initiative in your own team, but also doubles as a showcase of communicating with stakeholders and testing new solutions

Aim: every company will have a magnitude of teams that can provide you with PM-like experiences. It’s worthwhile speaking to different managers in your company to find potential opportunities that you’re willing to dedicate even a few hours per week to, which you can then use as examples in your PM interview.

Fast-track becoming a PM

James Gabb and I are on a journey to help more people become Product Managers based on our learnings from Amazon, Atlassian, SafetyCulture, Eucalyptus, and our own startups.

Why? We wish we had this advice 3 years ago when coming from our jobs in Banking, Analytics, Marketing, and Sales because it would’ve saved us a lot of time and money.

Our aim is to help more people to become Product Managers, which means a larger PM community and more people solving global problems making the world a better place.

The first 100 people will join a private WhatsApp group with James and I where you can ask us questions at any time.

Check it out: PM Playbook

Feel free to connect or ask me any questions directly on LinkedIn.

All the best,

Matt