You have made the decision to become a Product Manager, or maybe you already are a PdM, but are unhappy with your current company.

You have applied and applied but no responses. 

Nawal Behih understands.

Nawal is the Product Manager of Attuned and was previously working as a PdM with another company, but decided to leave when she found the culture and product were not a match for her passion. She has faced many of the struggles that you are facing right now, which is why when she approached me to create a guide to help people who want to work as a Product Manager, I was thrilled. 

In part 1 we will give you the 5 steps you need to follow to get PM interviews, in part 2 we will guide you to interview success, and in part 3 we will talk about the skills you will build working as a Product Manager.

We have a lot to cover, so let’s get started.

Step 1: Assess your situation

Before you apply, before you build your resume, before you even look at a product, you need to assess your current situation and define what is most important for you.

Here are a series of questions you should ask yourself to assess your current situation:

Am I employed and/or Financially stable?

This should be the first question you ask yourself. 

You need to have a grip on how urgent your situation is. If you do not have income and are unemployed, you will want to be more open with your job search and consider things that you would not otherwise be open to. The rest of the questions will still be important to ask yourself, but they will hold less weight in your final decision.

What is important to me in a product?

There are nearly infinite “products” so understanding the things that make the most difference for you is crucial. This includes the solution it provides, the features it offers, and the industry it services.

What is important to me in a company?

Just as there are nearly infinite products, there are almost as many companies.

Here you should consider the size of the company (startup or enterprise), the industry you will be working in, and the internal culture of the company.

What motivates me at work?

Before you start your job search you should have an understanding of what motivates you at work so you can find a workplace that will nurture those motivations. What parts of your job do you find most exciting? What causes you to enter a state of flow? 

If you can isolate these you can look for the same elements in your new role.

Your motivators will play a key role in your job hunt, to get more insight into your personal motivator profile, check out Attuned! (Shameless plug for our motivation product)

What demotivates me?

The mirror of the previous question will also need to be addressed.

If there are elements of your current job or projects you have worked on that were particularly demotivating, it will be good to note those as well. 

Of course, no job will be perfect, but you should try to find a culture that will tip the scales in a motivating direction. 

Why do I want to look for a new JOB?

This could be multifactoral or there could have been an inciting incident, either way, it is good to understand so that you can look for red flags that would indicate you may be applying for a company with the same issues. 

This could be tied into the parts of your job that are demotivating.

What am I passionate about?

The goal of any job search is to find a role that you will be excited about for years and years. Knowing what you love can help you find companies that align with those values or work that you will be able to do for the next X amount of years.

What is my desired salary?

This should be a range from your minimum that you would leave for to the amount that you would sign with any company for.

Things to keep in mind

There is no perfect company. That is to say that no company will perfectly fit each of your desirables. However, having this list of questions answered will help give you markers by which you can compare the companies you are interested in applying for.

Ok, now that you know yourself, you are ready to know the products you are looking to work for.

Step 2: Assess the product

As I said in step 1, there are an immeasurable number of products on the market today, so when you are looking to be a product manager it is important to assess the product you are potentially going to work for. 

Here are some aspects you should consider when looking over the product:

Who is the end user?

Who will be using this product? Is it someone you can relate to?

As a Product Manager your whole job is to ensure that the product is serving the end user in the best way possible. You will need to understand your users at the deepest level and therefore you need to consider who they are for the particular product you are going to be applying for. 

What is the product’s mission?

What is this doing to help people? What drives this product?

A mission doesn’t need to be completely altruistic but it does need to serve its customers, which means that if you are managing this product, you will be the person in charge of instilling this mission into each new feature. That is why you should consider the mission of the product carefully before applying to be the Product Manager.

Is this a product I believe in?

Do you think this product will succeed?

You can love the mission of a product, but if you don’t think the product will be viable then there is little you can do to save it. Unless you know exactly how to fix it and that is the challenge you want to undertake. Either way, it is important to evaluate the future success of the product you are applying for.

Is it boring?

Or is it cool?

This may seem like a boring question to ask, but you will be working on this product day in and day out, and you will need to eat, sleep, and dream this product. Do you want boring food, naps, and dreams? It is much better to work on something that you find thrilling.

Things to keep in mind

A lot of these questions can seem to be covering the same ground, and in a way they are. The reason for this is that you want to be sure that this will be something you can work on for the next 5-10 years of your career. As the product manager, this product will be your baby.

You will be making essential decisions that will affect every user, so you need to know that you are able to understand them enough to have their best interest at heart.

If it still looks good, let’s move on to step 3.

Step 3: Assess the Job Description

This may seem like a no-brainer, (of course you are going to look at the JD) but in this portion of your job search, there are specific things you need to be aware of.

Here are things to look for in each JD you consider applying for:

What type of Product Manager are they looking for?

The “PdM” jobs themselves can vary under the same title. There are companies that are looking for a person to oversee all products or aid in the technical development of the product. There are others that will assign you to the commercial aspects of a specific product and have you work alongside a Technical Product Manager. Be sure you can understand the type of PM they are trying to hire and that it matches with the type of PdM you are/want to be.

How technical is this position?

In larger companies, there is a separate role specifically called the TPM, Technical Product Manager, if you cannot code or do not want to be involved in the technical side of a product, these positions are not for you. Please see our TPM article to learn more about the differences between a PdM and a TPM.

How much do I actually know how to do?

There is a lot to be said about hiring for potential, but not every company will do so. A general rule of thumb is that if you have 50-60% of the required skills, you are eligible to apply. This does not mean that you should not apply, but be honest about what you can do. A big portion of the Product Manager relies on admitting that you don’t know and seeking the answers that would best suit the users or your product.

How much of this do I want to do?

This is a wholly separate issue from not meeting the requirements. The other side of this is important to consider as well. What do you not want to do? Be very clear on what you don't like. Just because you know how to code does not mean you need to be a hands-on developer. You will likely not be able to exclusively focus on the things you like, but it is worth being aware of the parts that you find the most exciting before you apply for a role.

Things to keep in mind

Broken record time: there is no perfect anything. This means you are going to need to identify the core things that you can do and want to do and be willing to be flexible with some of the other factors. Overall, these first three steps are to help you to get into the analytical frame of mind when you are looking to change jobs and much of this can work for any role. 

Now time to take action, step 4 may be the most crucial in getting interviews.

Step 4: Frame your resume

These last two steps are arguably the most important. These will get you interviews. Taking in the feedback from rejections and getting feedback from people already working as Product Managers is how Nawal took her interview rate from 12% to 83%.

Here are a few ways to highlight vital PdM skills on your resume:

Experience bringing a product to life

Almost every company will be requesting someone with experience “bringing a product to life”. If you are currently working as a PM, this should be easy. If not, then you need to look for the elements of your work that overlap with the concepts needed to bring a product to life.

Let’s try an example. Say you are a marketer working on content campaigns, your “product” could be the content you are producing. You could highlight the strategy driving the content you produce and how the “users”, in this case the audience, have influenced the content.

You need to be able to look over what you have done and frame it in the way that best highlights the skills that the company is looking for.

Experience working with cross-functional teams (including dev teams)

Communication is an important skill for almost every role that works with literally anyone else. As a Product Manager communication becomes imperative as you will be working with teams in all areas of the business from development to the C-suite and everything in between. If you are currently working as a PdM, you will know how challenging this can be, and how crucial effectively framing this part of your resume will be.

If not, let’s again imagine again you are a content marketer.

In your day-to-day, you communicate with various stakeholders throughout your organization, whether that is getting approvals on messaging from your CEO, building internal materials to be used by your talent team, or creating presentations for your sales team. All of these teams have different goals driving their requests and you can frame your resume to spotlight the different modes of language you use when interacting with each of these audiences.

Beyond that, understanding what works on different platforms also displays your ability to communicate effectively with different audiences. 

Experience using Jira

This is straightforward. If you are using Jira, great! Talk about your experience using the tool and how it aided in specific situations.

If you are not in a role that requires you to use project management tools, download the demo and get familiar. Then describe your use of the tool and how it helped you achieve your goals.

Experience working with customers directly

This is the most important skill to demonstrate and potentially the hardest to frame if you are not currently in a product or customer-focused role. 

If we go back to the content marketing example, you are getting direct feedback from your audience and can test and adjust with each new campaign. 

If you are in sales, you are directly interacting with customers on a daily basis and can log their feedback to relay to the product team. Both of these are pretty straightforward.

If you are not customer facing at all, you need to think about who your “customers” are. Use the term customers to mean the people you are directly servicing. If you are in a back office position or sales support, this would be your sales team.

If you are in a talent focused position, this would be your employees. If you are a developer, this could be your Product Manager or Technical Product Manager. 

Whoever that may be, think of them as the end user and frame your responsibilities around how you found ways to better service them.

Experience multitasking effectively

Long gone are the days of the assembly line worker; almost all professions in tech require a multifaceted skillset. Meaning you will be multitasking in almost every job you have. 

To highlight this skill you should explain the scope of your responsibilities in a way that spotlights the deadlines for each of your tasks and how you were able to manage each of those effectively.

Returning to the content marketing example, you could discuss the posting schedule and how you worked to get approvals beforehand to lower the risk of not meeting those deadlines.

This is an overview of how to frame your experience around these skills, we will take an in depth look at how to build these skills in a future article with Nawal.

Here are some tips for framing your resume:

Tell compelling stories

Framing your resume is all about telling the stories that illustrate your aptitude for the things that the company is looking for in its Product Manager. STAR (Situation, Task, Action, Result) is a great method for handling interviews and it works for resumes as well.

Start by setting up the situation you were facing “no one read our blog” then move into the task you had “I needed to get people to read our blog” move into what action you took “I studied SEO tactics to isolate what worked and wrote content according to those principles” and end with the results that were achieved “now we rank number 1 on google for several competitive keywords in our industry”

This is a pretty quick overview, but the core concepts remain the same. Be sure to include details as needed to display how you made each decision.

Start with what they are looking for and work backward from there

In step 3 you thoroughly read through the JD, you know what they are looking for, so now it is all about framing your resume to fit the job. 

Be sure to illustrate that you know how to do what they are asking you to, and if you do not, be sure to illustrate how you plan to learn to do what they are asking you to do.

Sound like you were a core asset to the team

This doesn’t have to be as dubious as the subtitle makes it sound. Be honest about your contributions, but don’t be afraid to claim credit for the elements that you truly helped implement and execute. Again, the STAR method helps you talk about the specific tasks you handled, but even in team situations, you can be open about your contributions.

The opposite of this would be talking about how you missed every meeting day and played Minecraft instead of working. 

be aligned with them

You need to showcase the skills that you know are important to the company you are applying for. For example, the formatting of your resume can be weighted a surprising amount when applying for design-heavy product manager roles. Thus visual resumes can be important for product positions, even if you have to pay for a resume-making service, it will stand out and it will be worth it.

Your first resume is your worst resume

Just like the product, you will eventually be managing, your resume will need iterations. Each rejection is an opportunity to ask for ways to improve. A non-response means back to the drawing board.

Step 5: Create a Case Study

This step is not required and I originally considered it part of step 4, but the more I thought about it the more essential it seemed.

A case study does not need to be client work, but can instead be a well-documented timeline of a project that you oversaw visually broken down stage by stage to illustrate the extent of your product management skills. Think of it like a deck going through each step of your product management process.

Things to include in the case study:

Slide 1: Ideation to wireframes

The first slide after the title slide should give the scope of the project. Again, this is a great place to use the STAR format to go through the project from start to finish. 

Slide 2: User profiles

In this slide you outline the profiles of the users of your product. Be sure to go into detail on the personas that will be using the product, showing how each of these users uses the product and what they get out of the usage of the product.

Slide 3: Problem you are trying to solve

Here it is important to lay out the problem from the user’s perspective. Give the viewer the sense that you really understand how to see the product through the eyes of the user and show them why this was a pain point that needed to be solved.

Slide 4: Discovery process

Here you show the research you did on the users, their problems, and how you came up with the solution.

Slide 5: Desired outcome

What you want to achieve and the objectives for the product. Here it is important to be specific about the outcomes you are trying to drive. Is it retention? A lower uninstall rate? A higher number of Daily Active users?

Whatever the outcome is, be sure to connect it to the problem you are trying to solve and how your solution was aiming to drive these outcomes.

Slide 6: Final product

Use images to showcase the final product. If it was an existing product and you updated it, you can show a comparison between what it looked like previously versus your final deliverable.

Slide 7: Results

For results be sure to mention the metrics you measured in the outcomes slide and how they were affected. Explain why your solution worked and how you measured the results.

If your solution did not work, explain why it did not and how you planned to remedy this in your next attempt and what you learned about the users from this experience.

Things to keep in mind

The case study is meant to display your process of product management and can be customized for each company you are applying to. This should be form-fitted to the skills that the company is looking for in the JD assessment step.

This does not need to be a design masterpiece unless of course design is the skill that the company is most interested in.

More than anything it needs to clearly visualize your contributions to the product and the results of those contributions.

Conclusion

Now you are ready to apply!

If you are unsure about a company, APPLY because you can learn about the company through the interview process. 

If you see something you do not like, just back off. As I have said throughout this article, you will be doing this every day which means you need to be willing to do the work.

I hope this helps you get that Product Manager job you have been pining for.

If you are interested in working in Japan, please message us here!

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