Getting Into Product Management as a Fresh Grad
I still remember being in my senior year of undergrad, wondering everyday what line of work I would end up doing as a full time job. Then this job opening caught my attention, ‘the product management’: a millennial-kind-of job title that is emerging along with the boom of internet in Indonesia. I honestly asked myself, what is this…what do people do in this role? Will it equip me with steep learning curve? Is it a fresh-grad-friendly job? Is it the right field for me? And many other questions that ran through the final year student’s mind.
I can imagine this situation happening to a lot of fresh grads in Indonesia. I want to share some insights for getting into product management as a fresh grad based on my first-hand experience.
A little bit about me, I’m an electrical engineer graduate working my first full time job in product management at Tokopedia.
What is product management?
First up, let’s dive into the most common question, what is product management? Truth is, product management is one the hardest jobs to define in simple term, even I can’t explain my job to my family easily! Here’s the most famous chart that describes product management:
But in reality, this chart only defines a small portion of the job. Product management role requires you to define product vision, strategize, prioritize, build product roadmap, problem solve, be communicative with stakeholders, be data driven, execute with detail, understand customers, and the list goes on. I know this only explains briefly and I might haven’t answered your curiosity yet, so for deeper understanding about product management, you can read;
here: PM described by Josh Elman, VP product at Robinhood
here: PM described Brent Tworetzky, SVP product at Invision
Why is now the perfect time for fresh grad to work in product management?
Now that you know a bit about product management, let’s address the second question: Should I get into this role now? I will explain this in 2 reasons:
Tech industry on the rise
It’s no secret, you can see people’ change in habit because of internet, it affects every segment of our life: from commuting using ride-hailing app, shopping through e-commerce, renting a room online, enjoying music and movies through streaming services, or even borrowing money online. Everything is accessible through internet, where physical boundary is no longer an issue. Companies like Google, Facebook, Airbnb, Netflix, Spotify, and of course Tokopedia are now part of our life. Basically, all industries are being transformed by digital. To put it into perspective, let’s see this chart:
See the shift? Surprisingly, all of this just started to happen in SEA and Indonesia is the biggest market so far:
Important to note is, if you start earlier (straight out of college), then you will be reaching further for career progression in shorter time. I think this is very good in this hyper-growth internet economy era (just like industrial revolution in 1900s)
Steep learning curve
With many challenges faced in product management, you will definitely learn a lot. Product management is like jack of all trades, we are dealing with stakeholders from business, design, tech, finance, legal, ops, and others that allow us to continuously strive for more knowledge. Combine that with feedbacks from users outside, we go through brainstorming ideas, tackling scalability issue, measuring important metrics, and many more. Not to mention the agile way of working in tech industry where everything moves at fast pace, problems are constantly being solved. You will definitely learn new things from every projects, all tasks have their own set of solutions and challenges that do not go with the normal template.
Further reading on insights:
here: Google-Temasek report on South East Asia’s internet economy: $240B by 2025!
What are the skills needed as a fresh graduate?
If you are still reading this, you are interested in the role. Here is the third part of the questions: What are the skills needed as a fresh grad? This question is like chicken and egg problem
Looking at the role and what it does, I used to think “How can I have the skills to work on product management if I’ve never worked on the role before?” Basically I’m asking how can I, an engineering student, have these skills in business, tech and design all combined for this job. Not to worry, those skills can actually be gained as a student through internship, club and competition. I like to divide the skills into two categories:
Hard Skill
There are 3 important hard skills in product management: Business, Tech, and Design. Now, unless you’re an entrepreneur with a degree of computer science and a hobby of graphic design, you most likely only possesses one of the skills. And that’s fine. You can start with one and later develop the other two along the way. I myself am an electrical engineering student which means: blind to business, bad at drawing, and at least okay at coding. But I learned design using Adobe Illustrator for presentation assignment and I learned business strategy through business case competition. My point is you can learn everything outside despite limitation of your major. You can also learn business through organization, for example when your organization is making an event.
Soft Skill
Soft skill is crucial for product management role since we will be communicating with a lot of people around us. This skill can easily be gained by actively participating in college clubs and communities. I think there are four important soft skills that are easily relatable with student’s experience: Negotiation, Communication, Know how to say no, and Curiosity. But the one skill that I want to highlight is curiosity. Curiosity is the starting point of many great ideas. Just imagine, what if Isaac Newton wasn’t curious about apple falling out of tree, we might never know the concept of gravity!
How to prepare for the role as a student?
Lastly, how can you prepare as a student then? Specifically on things that students can do easily.
Here are a couple of tips based on my personal experience:
Read, read, read
Read. That’s it. Here are my recommendations:
Books:
1. The Lean Startup by Eric Ries
2. Lean Analytics by Alistair Croll & Benjamin Yoskovitz
3. Hooked by Nir Eyal
4. Sprint by Jake Knapp
5. Zero to One by Peter Thiel
6. Decode and Conquer by Lewis C. Lin
7. Cracking the PM Interview by Gayle McDowell
Online articles:
1. My “Product Management” Reading List by Sebastien Phlix
2. Open Product Management
3. How I Prepared for a Product Manager Interview by Andreea Nastase
4. Preparing for PM interviews by Fernando Delgado
Do side project
Side projects are gold, it could be in many forms such as mobile app or website design. Do consider writing articles in blog, medium, or even make it your hobby in critiquing and redesigning products for fun. It will add personality to your application and your will be learning stuff along the way.
Meet online communities
Online community is everywhere, easy to find, free, and consists of nice people. Product School is one of the communities where people share insights, thought, and ideas about product management. UXID is an open community in Indonesia about user experience. The great thing about communities is you will meet various people, consider it as part of networking.
Take online courses
Last but not least is consider take online courses. There are tons of courses in Udemy or Coursera about product management. “But they are so expensive, and we students have no money”. Okay okay, I also have no money. Well in that case watch tons of Youtube video. Product School and Mind the Product are great starting point. Behind Great Product by Tokopedia is also a great series.
If you’re still reading up to this point, that means you are ready to start your journey getting into product management. It is time for me to hand you over the challenge to start your own journey. Doesn’t matter what your background is, product management is not about college degree. Let’s close this with a quote from Deep Nishar:
A great product manager has the brain of an engineer, the heart of a designer, and the speech of a diplomat.
So that’s it guys, thanks for reading my journey :)
