How to become a Product Manager? — Part 1
If you are reading this I am assuming that you have already done a lot of research and have gone through a lot of stuff on the internet about how to become a “successful” product manager.
Most of these articles talk about how product managers are the rockstars of the company, or what soft skills and/or qualities and/or attitude you need to possess if you want to be successful in the product management field.
When I was doing my research I was equally irritated, as you are right now, by such “knowledgeful” articles which talk about almost everything but won’t answer the main question — “How to start a career in Product Management?”
Whether you should read this article further?
In this article, I am not going to help you decide whether or not you should choose Product Management as a career option. If you are in that stage and what to know about “what is product Management” then you should read my other article, link at the bottom of this article, where I have given a detailed, on-point description of what Product Management, as a career, means.
Let’s get to the point!
If you have decided to read further, that means you have already made up your mind to choose Product Management as your career.
Although almost every industry offers product management as a career, this article, in particular, focuses only on IT product management, which includes areas like — e-commerce, app development, SAAS products and similar other streams where the users interact with either a computer or a tablet or a smartphone.
Based on your working experience, you might fall into one of the following 2 categories of professional:
a) you have some working experience but it is not in Product Management
b) you are a fresher and want to start your career directly into Product Management
I am going to take both these cases one by one and list down a few ways which might help you in getting a job in the product management field.
Before that, I would suggest you go through the article where I have mentioned the tools/skills that are mandatory to be in the product management field. Link to the same is at the bottom of this article.
Case 1: You have some working experience but not in Product Management
When you are working in an IT-based company, no matter whichever department you are into, you are dealing with one or the other software products. And trust me, in every such company the product team is always over-worked and under-staffed as they look into all the types of products, be it user-facing or related to backend operations or related to internal/intermediate processes, related to process automation or almost anything and everything.
If the product team of your team is on the lookout of a new person, there cannot be a better opportunity for you.
I have done a lot of hiring and hence have listed below the pointers which I think why it is such a nightmare:
- Go through an ocean of applications and shortlist a bunch of appropriate applicants
- If the number of shortlisted candidate is still high, then torn it down further by interviewing the applicants over a telephone call
- Schedule an f-2-f interview session with each of the candidates whom you find good in the telephonic round. These interviews have to be squeezed into your own daily routine, which hence interrupts your work
The above 3 steps have to be carried out in loop until you find that 1 perfect person.
The nightmare doesn’t end here. Once the chosen one joins your team there are below things which might take another 1–2 months of time:
- The new-joinee getting a hang of things about the company, the teams etc
- he/she would take time to understand the product on which he/she would be working or if he/she would be working on a new product then he/she would take time to understand why a need for that product arose in the first place.
Pheww…in short, I hope I am successfully able to make you understand that it is a nightmare for anybody to hire a new person in their teams.
Now imagine how wonderful it would be if there is a person in the same company who:
- understands the product since he has used it or who has been there to understand why there is a need for developing a new product
- who knows the teams as he has worked with them in one way or the other
- he is not new in the firm and hence no time required for the transition
It is like a dream to the person who is on the lookout for the ideal professional for his team.
Let’s take an example, let’s say you look into operations in an e-commerce firm and your responsibilities include taking care of the inventory. A standard e-commerce firm has at the least the most basic version of Inventory Management System for the purpose of maintaining the inventory, which is either a bought system from an external vendor or is built by the internal technical team.
Now, the Product Head of your company wants someone to work on the correction, improvement and enhancement of the Inventory Management System but their current team members are all occupied with other projects and there is no one who can take this up, conclusion, hiring. And, as I have mentioned before it is a nightmare!
Imagine further, one fine day you, who have been using the Inventory Management System for long and knows it inside out, casually walk up to him with a list of amendments in the system which you think will improvise it.
And….
He would just listen to you and walk away!
Yes. That was a hard reality check, but that is exactly what is going to happen if you walk up to a guy who is having one nightmare and you walk up to him with a list of items which make him realise how scary that nightmare really is.
What is the solution?
I am going to share the solution as a list of steps which if carried out in the exact manner as they have been mentioned, I promise the probability of you getting to manage the project shoots up significantly. I am also going to give you the reason against each step which makes it impactful.
STEP 1: In a spreadsheet, make an exhaustive list of all the changes that are required in the system.
STEP 2: Categorize these into:
- Fixes in the existing features/functionalities
- improvements in the exiting features/functionalities
- New features/functionalities
STEP 3: Against every entry mention impact that item would have. It could be around improvement of efficiency or reducing the workload of users of the system etc.
STEP 4: Assign a priority to each item on the basis of the impact. In this case, the fixes in existing features should be given the highest priority as they are the lowest hanging fruits.
STEP 5: Draft a mail addressed to the product head with a link of this spreadsheet and a cover letter expressing your desire to work on the project and requesting a time to discuss the same.
STEP 6: Hit that Send button!
There are a few more things that you can include in your spreadsheet which will enhance your chances. If you are in good terms either with any of the product managers or with anyone in the technical team, then with their help you can assign feasibility factor and effort required to complete against each item. Actually, in my suggestion, doing this would really ascertain that you are the right person to take up the job.
To assure you further, the above was not just a hypothetical example but a real story that happened in my firm. I realise that not every one of you reading this article might be in a different scenario but I am still pretty sure you can take inspiration from this and work your way around to achieve what you desire.
All the best!
In my next article: How to become a Product Manager?-Part 2, I have tried to carve out a practical approach for the freshers who want to start their careers into Product Management.
