- Work somewhere that has a Product department
- Become a SME
- Demonstrate using data to inform decisions
- Take matters into your own hands
- Educate yo’ self
Work somewhere that has a Product department
This is probably pretty obvious to most. But for me, I didn’t even know Product existed before serendipitously ending up at a technology company in 2017. Growing up, Product Management wasn’t a career path anyone I knew was talking about, let alone kids dreaming about. Heck, I’m pretty sure my Mom was actually a Product Manager while I was growing up, and from what I could tell, while she was clearly good at what she did, it was one of the last occupations I could see myself filling.
Things seem to be changing, and I have now, on more than one occasion, encountered young, up-and-coming Product Managers who have been dreaming of becoming a PM and working toward it throughout their education and early careers. It is many of these individuals who have inspired this article. However, I feel obliged to acknowledge this was not the case for me. And if you’re a millennial who grew up without a clue about technology, let alone Product Management, there’s hope for you yet! So for those of you keeping me company in the latter group, this item on the list may have been less obvious to you.
It wasn’t Product that inspired me to make a career pivot from the Yoga Industry to technology. Instead, it was a quarter-life crisis that resulted in a passion for ethics in business, curiosity in the way humans communicate – another story for another day – and ultimately, it was the product Benevity was building.
Benevity is a technology company literally built to increase the amount of Goodness in the world, and the moment I heard of them, I knew I needed to work there. So, when I scanned their careers page for the first time, I looked for something, anything, where I could check some of the boxes on the requirements list. At the time, I had been in business with myself for about six years as a Yoga teacher with three years of management experience in the Yoga industry. While I had quite a bit of experience under my belt, translating that experience wasn’t entirely straightforward. This is why I decided getting my foot in the door outweighed trying to wait for a different position where my existing skills could be directly applied. And so, I was delighted to accept an entry-level role as a Cause Relations Specialist, read Customer Service Representative.
As a Cause Relations Specialist, I was on the ground, in the call centre (granted, this was a small tech company, so as far as call centres go, it was pretty bougie, but let’s call it like it is) responding to questions, complaints, requests, and the like over email and phone. While, in many ways, I could have told myself I was overqualified for this role, this was the first major step I took in becoming a Product Manager. I got myself in the tech industry, working with a company with a strong Product department and on a team that played an integral role in informing the Product team about our users’ experience.
Become a Subject Matter Expert (SME)
There were days when being a customer service rep was a grind. People can be mean! But being in the call centre meant I had a front-row seat to our users’ problems, and day by day, I became a stronger SME. Understanding your users and knowing where they’re coming from is crucial to developing the right product; there is no better way to build that user understanding than being on the frontline and meeting them where they’re at.
Benevity was my first opportunity to discover what Product is and see a Product team live in action. By building an understanding of and relationship with users, I created my first opportunity to collaborate directly with the Product Team. In intimately knowing the customers’ problems, I became a wealth of knowledge and insights for the Product team. I loved being a go-to source of insights for Product, so whenever the team came seeking information, I eagerly gave them everything I knew; if I didn’t have what they needed, I found a way to get it. It was thrilling to see the Product team distill the information into actionable items to solve our users’ problems. That excitement began to fuel my fire to become a part of the Product team. So in the meantime, I was going to make myself their go-to SME if it was the last thing I did.
While on my mission to become the #1 SME, about six months into my time at Benevity, an opportunity to join a small specialized group popped up. It was my first chance to work directly with Product on a specific project on a reoccurring basis. By the time the project wrapped up, I was certain I wanted to be in Product, but the prospect of getting there seemed out of reach. So, instead of aiming for something intangible, while I continued to strive to hone my skills as a go-to resource, I took a look at what else I could do in my day to day to create reasons to work with Product.
Demonstrate using data to inform decisions
These are some of the things I came up with:
- Focus on digging deep to find the root of the problems our product was trying to solve
- Every day, with every task, I asked myself “How could we do this better?”
- When I suspected I unearthed a problem/opportunity, I wrote it down and sought data to support why it was worth solving
It was rewarding to get deep into our users’ problems and feel confident in having a solid grasp of what they were seeking. It was extremely satisfying when Product would make quick decisions based on the information I had provided them. And then it got a little frustrating. With the long-term project wrapped up, it was time for Product to turn their focus to a different area of the application; Product didn’t have the resources to focus on our little teams’ problems anymore. So while I continued to clearly outline how our team could be better, what opportunities there were to generate revenue, and how we could reduce risks associated with our work, I was stuck playing a game of patience.
Take matters into your own hands.
I am many things, but patient is not one of them. So instead of waiting for resources, I went on a mission to make resources.
- Pi Time: A program at Benevity where you could spend an allocated amount of time working on a passion project — a common offering to employees of tech companies
- Capstone: a project University students work on to wrap up their program
By putting together a clear story about the problem I believed to be most pressing for my team and showing how it could be solved with the help of some logic, automation, and potentially a touch of machine learning, I managed to entice a team of about five developers to start a Pi Time project with me. Once assembled, with limited time to focus on the project, we were also able to attract the talents of a wonderful Masters in Data Science student to help us out through their Capstone project.
This was my first real taste of Product Management. I had looked at a swath of problems, compared them in terms of user experience, revenue generation, and risk to the company and our users, and determined which problem required solving first. Then I outlined the problem to people much smarter than me (the engineers) to determine the best way to solve it, and gradually, Product Management began to seem less and less farfetched.
Educate yo’ self
By now, I had been building relationships with Product team members, and they quickly paid dividends in my quest to become a PM. As a new Group Product Manager came on board, she was sent my direction to learn about our users and informed of my enthusiasm for Product. While settling into her role, we had plenty of opportunities to connect to help her get up to speed, and suddenly, I found her taking me under her wing. As we continued to meet, she kindly began mentoring me with my Pi Time project and maintained open conversations on how to level up to move into Product.
Then one day, she DM’d me on slack asking if I wanted to partake in Product Calgary’s APM program — to which I could only say “Yes!” and before I knew it, I was surrounded by a group of APMs (Associate Product Managers) with almost as many Senior PMs to guide us through 6 months of learning and attempts at application.
While participating in this course, I began to pick up book recommendations to learn the theory behind Product Management.
Learning the theory while participating in the APM course, applying the learnings through the Pi Time project, and discovering problems our users face through my day-to-day role turned into my perfect little recipe. Because the next thing I knew, I was receiving a phone call from Athennian giving me the opportunity of my dreams — my first shot as a Product Manager.
A final note
After a few months into my first year as a Product Manager, I participated in the Product Manager program at Product School. One of the first things they teach you is to get a PM job. You’re typically an expert in 1of 3 things, better if it’s 2, and lucky you if you’ve got all 3:
- The Industry: you’re a SME in the industry and bring unrivalled domain knowledge with you
- Technical: you have a background in development or engineering and the know-how to build what needs to be built
- Product Management: you understand how product management works and have experience doing the things
This makes a lot of sense to me. And yet, I was an expert in none. If you can be an expert in any of these areas, I would highly recommend going that route. I love being a Product Manager, but I also think I took a slightly more challenging route than necessary. Just read my article on my first year in Product Management… on the same token, if you think there may be a sliver of a chance for you in a place where you’re a fledgling in all, I would encourage you to go for it! My first year in Product Management was easily the most challenging year of my career, but it was just as easily the most rewarding.
In conclusion, I don’t think there is a perfect recipe for becoming a Product Manager. Of all the PMs I know, they probably have the most diverse backgrounds of a group of peers I have ever encountered, from a carpenter to an engineer, to a musical theatre actor. But they, we, all have two things in common:
- We spent time in a role where we were on the ground, directly interacting with users
- We said yes to every opportunity that took us a step closer to Product Management, and if an option wasn’t presented, we made it ourselves.
Like what you read and curious about the Product Team or Athennian in general? Check out our careers page. Maybe we’re the next destination on your career path… or exactly what your quarter-life crisis had you seeking!
