Product Management 101: How One Becomes a Product Manager

If you read my first article, you now know what a product manager is and does. If you’re reading this one, you’re probably curious how you can get into this sweet gig. First, I’ll tell how I got into product management.

Not knowing what I wanted to do in life, I graduated with a degree in business management, which is about as general and vague as you can get (in hindsight, I wish I had done computer science or industrial design. More on that regret another time).

Look at all the business we’re doing!

After graduation, I ended up working for a solar company as an analyst. I spent a year and a half staring at spreadsheets for 8 hours a day before reaching the brink of my sanity. Not able to stomach another VLOOKUP, I started exploring other opportunities. I still wasn’t sure what job or career I wanted, but, what I had discovered over the last year, was that I definitely did not want to be an analyst anymore. That got in me in the mind set, though, of thinking about what what I did want. I opened up a Google Doc and started jotting down ideas. I narrowed it down to a few key concepts:

1. I wanted to work in software. I realized this when I realized that all the news I was reading, the pieces that got me really interested, were about software companies. Software was the industry I wanted to be in. Utilities wasn’t my jam.
2. I wanted to be in a career that would help me be an entrepreneur later in life. It’s my goal to own my own thing someday, so I wanted to be in a role I felt would give me skills to get there.
3. I wanted to learn to work with software engineers. This is very related to point 2.
4. I wanted to work on a team. A year and a half of being an analyst taught me that I hated working on projects by myself. I longed for the opportunity to work in a team, to share and exchange ideas with other people. Crunching numbers in Excel by myself all day was crushing my soul.
5. I loved design work, and I wanted to be in a place where I felt I had an opportunity to contribute to the design. You can only make spreadsheets and graphs look so good.
6. I did not want to be doing the same thing everyday.
7. I wanted to be at a company that really cared about me and my growth.

“I know you asked for a simple pie chart, but if you use your imagination I think this conveys our market share a lot better.”

Having actually sat down and written out these points, I felt like I had a good North Star for where I should be looking. I started doing some Google-fu and came across this job role called product management. (If it wasn’t obvious where this story was leading, I don’t know what to tell you.)

After reading the description, I felt like the role hit every point I was looking for. I decided then that I would be a product manager. I dusted off my resume, polished it up as best I could, and let it fly. I had a few interviews and opportunities, but I can attribute my role as a product manager at Lucid Software to having a good network.

While browsing LinkedIn one day, I came across an update that a friend from school had started a role at Lucid. I was curious how he liked it, so I reached out to him, and ended up telling him I was in the process of a career change. He asked what I was looking for and I told him product management. He said “Hey, we’re looking for one of those right now! Send me your resume”.

A whirlwind of interviews later and I had an offer. Total time from starting to search to sitting at a new desk in a new company surrounded by new coworkers: about 3 weeks.

So what is the secret? The disappointing answer is: there isn’t one, and a healthy amount of luck is involved (cue the audience groans). However, I think I inadvertently took a few replicable steps:

1. I knew why I wanted to do product management (see the above points). I can’t stress this enough. Having since interviewed a number of candidates for product management roles, I can say that knowing what a product manger does and why you want to do it makes the difference between an okay candidate and a great candidate.
2. I had, through my own hobbies, rough experience with what I consider the 3 main pillars of being a PM: understand technology, understand design, and understand analytics. I wasn’t a programmer, but I was enough of a hobbyist with building websites that I knew what I was talking about. I wasn’t a designer either, but I had mocked up ideas before. And I wasn’t an analyst… oh, wait. I actually was an analyst at the time, but you get the idea. More on the 3 pillars of product management later.
3. I had a solid resume and background showcasing that I was capable of learning.
4. I sent out a LOT of resumes and applications, despite going with the position that came through networking.
5. I was in the right place at the right time and knew the right people. I know this may feel like pure luck, but it isn’t. It means being open to new opportunities and pursuing them from all avenues. Put yourself in the right place, be there at the right time, and get to know the right people.

So what skills make a good product manager? What was the interview process like? Find out in the next product management 101 piece!

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(Image credit to Unsplash)