How To Start a Career in Product Management With Digital Experience
I want to help you get started as successfully as possible
I have 5 years’ experience in digital and am now looking for a career change into product management.
I’d like to work in product management as a recent graduate.
Can anyone help me?
In my 25-year career, I’ve changed jobs 19 times.
I’ve been a Product Owner for over five years.
Before that, I was a project manager, a partner manager, a service delivery manager, a sales representative, a medical representative and a care assistant.
Do 19 jobs sound like a lot? It is for people looking for stability and security.
Less so for neurodivergent people like me, who get bored easily.
What I’m trying to say is that I’ve retrained several times and I’ve done a lot of recruitment interviews.
I think I’m pretty well placed to give advice on career changes and new starts in business.
When I started out as a Product Owner, I didn’t have any certifications or training. I had a background in project management and a good appetite for IT.
Today, I give courses in schools to students and I create content for Product Owners (neurodivergents in particular).
And I’m a freelance Product Owner myself, working on high value-added projects.
If you’re looking for advice on how to get started, you’ve come to the right place!
If you have transferable skills (because you’ve already worked in digital).
You may be a developer, community manager, tester, digital marketer or creative designer.
You’ve got one thing going for you: you already work in digital.
In fact, this means that you know just how central the user is to every project.
And how important it is to put them first.
Having this understanding is something you really need to emphasize to recruiters. Because the user is right. He’s the one who consumes, evaluates and buys.
If you work in the digital sector, you’re probably familiar with data analysis.
Product Owners drive many things with data:
- user needs
- user satisfaction
- team velocity
- product usage
- …
I’d advise you to find out more about data collection and analysis methods.
These skills are in demand in every organization (from the smallest to the largest).
Finally, as you already work in digital, you’re familiar with the environment. So you probably don’t have all the tools, processes and best practices in mind. But your experience will be a real asset to the development team.
Rest assured, you’re not starting from scratch.
Here’s how I managed to become a Product Owner from scratch.
The most significant thing for me was to observe and exchange with developers and designers.
In fact, when you start out, you discover the jargon, the tools, the processes, the issues.
And only the people who live and breathe it, can help you.
For me, talking to the developers is the first step, because the Product Owner works directly with them.
You have to understand what they’re going through, what they need, what’s bothering them.
When I started in this business, I relied on two developers (iOS and Android).
As I became interested in their work and got to know them, we became friends (one of them is even my partner today).
Both of them have helped me a lot in my day-to-day work:
- they showed me how they worked on other projects and with other Product Owners
- they explained concepts to me (like TDD, BDD, DDD)
- they took the time to introduce me to the tools (Gitlab, Github, Jenkins, etc.)
- they had the patience to correct me when I made mistakes (if my user stories weren’t correctly specified, for example, or if I didn’t properly test developments).
In fact, they actively participated in my training.
The same is true of designers, scrums, QA, etc.
Once I was on track, I trained myself.
In other words, I took the time to consume content (and I’ve been doing it every day for all these years):
- I take part in workshops (the latest being a workshop with Nathan Curtis on design systems)
- I take part in events (next on the Agile Tour in Bordeaux)
- I take part in communities of practice (on Linkedin, for example)
- I read books, blogs and articles.
In fact, whatever I can consume, I take it!
Now that I’ve told you all that, you’ll need to present your profile.
So if you have no experience, you’ll have to do a case study from start to finish.
I’m naturally thinking of creating a backlog from scratch, as I’m creating a training course on the subject.
You can read this article, which will already give you some material:
I’ve also written an article (which I find extremely valuable):
These are the two most significant actions as a Product Owner. In other words, if you focus on these, you’ll really create value for yourself and your team.
I’ve just given you a few pointers for working on your transition.
Ideally, if you manage to practice on a personal project, it will be a real asset for you.
You’ll have something to present to recruiters.
I’m working on a training course for Product Owners like you, who are starting from scratch.
If you’d like to get started, but don’t have a project idea, let me know.
I might be able to help you, and that would add even more value to my training.
Good luck and I look forward to hearing from you!
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Do you know someone who needs help starting a career in product management?
I’m building a program to help future product owners and product managers jump-start their careers.
Neurodivergents are welcome here, as the program is designed for everyone.
