So You Want to Break Into Product: Here's my (Unfinished) Roadmap 🗺
For my first edition of Tyler Talks Product, I wanted to give an introduction to the person writing this newsletter! My journey into product won't be the same as yours, but I hope you learn something!
Dr.Jones, How Do I Get Into Product?
Firstly, I am not the Indiana Jones of product. I really enjoyed the gif (pronounce it however you wish), and thought it was an accurate representation of how I viewed the industry of product management when I had first discovered it. Although I may not be a product manager whose seen it all, I can say that I have seen enough to hopefully give some advice for those just starting out. I’ve gotten a lot of questions from students or experienced professionals from non-technical backgrounds, who want to know how they can break into product. So here’s my journey and what I did. It’s not perfect nor will it be the same as your journey, but I hope it provides guidance, insight, and the feeling that you belong in product, if you wish to travel down this adventurous road.
TLDR: I went to a school where product management was a career that no one went into. After I recruited for consulting, I realized that it was not for me and opted to find a career that combined strategy + design + tech into one. And thus the world of product was revealed to me.
I think it’s important to start by talking about undergrad and how different environments can foster completely different career paths. Especially for students, cultural differences ranging from majors to alumni can easily influence their career aspirations. Coming from a business school, the predominant career paths were marketing, consulting, accounting, and investment banking. I decided to try consulting - I was told once by a professor that it was one of the only careers where I could be fixing the oil industry one minute and the tech scene the next (in hindsight, I should have probably evaluated my excitement for oil a bit more).
I spent my third-year of university recruiting for consulting and had moderate success. It turned out that the only consulting questions that I did well on (and enjoyed) revolved around designing products for users by leveraging technology. I remember saying to myself during my fall semester of that year, “I wish there was a career that let me do this all the time.” I had voiced my displeasures to my friends and one of them had said that I should look into product management. And just like that, a shiny light bulb appeared above my head. Maybe I’ll try product out.
Major Takeaway 🧠: Be open, be honest, and ask what you want from your career.
TLDR: Drowning out the noise when learning about product management was hard. Take a hands-on approach and learn from product managers who are similar to you for a more tailored learning plan.
Any career has a learning curve and product management is no different. The first thing I did when exploring product was a general google search - “What is product management?” To say I received an information overload would be an understatement. Reddit threads, articles, communities, coaching services, and much more appeared to me. Where do I begin? I listed some of my favourite starter videos and articles below to cut out some of the noise and give you a head start:
I’ve sifted through a lot of information and for every truth I felt I discovered, I was greeted with another article combating what I had just read. So what do I believe? My tip is to gain advice from people with a similar background to you. If you’re a business major, talk to PMs who broke in from a non-technical background. To action this, first try to find product managers from your school via LinkedIn. If you’re like me and product is not a common career path for your university, then you’ll have to get more creative with your conversation starters (ie. Major, Clubs, Previous Companies, and Hobbies). In another newsletter, I’ll break this down more, but for now this should be enough to get you started on finding out more about product management.
Major Takeaway 🧠: Articles will act as a general guide, but meeting people you can relate to will make it easier to understand product for yourself.
TLDR: Although I became more confident learning about product and getting to know those in the product community, I still had a hard time finding my first role. I overcame this by creating side projects in the format of PRDs (Product Requirement Documents) and re-evaluated my experiences to cater them towards key product management skills.
At this point, I had met people in product management that had become mentors to me and who had spent time learning its concepts. In doing so, I thought I was ready to go out into the product world and get my first internship in product. However, I was getting rejected by every PM job I applied to. The common feedback I got was that I didn't have any previous PM experience. I was once again confused. I was supposed to get more product management experience by having previous product experience. It sounds like the logic behind the classic riddle, what came first, the chicken or the egg?
To answer this riddle, there are two things I did that helped me land my first product role. The first thing is I created side projects. When people think of side projects, they think of coding projects but I think that framing should be redefined. Side projects do not only have to be coding-based but instead, just have to exemplify a product manager’s skillset. Below is a link to a slide deck I made for a social feature I believed should have been on Spotify. The project presents my thoughts from ideation all the way to MVP (Minimum Valuable Product). I also explain the more granular strategies such as consumer research. I’ve had multiple interviews where I have talked about this side project and it was just as powerful as talking about professional experience. What’s important in a side project is that you’re passionate about the problem being solved and you have an organized way of solving the problem. Bonus Tip: Post the side project on LinkedIn and tag some product managers that work for the product you are trying to solve. It’s a great way to get real-life feedback.
The second thing I did was find product manager skills in the current experiences that I held. You never really know how much PM-like work you have until you truly reflect on what you’ve done previously. An exercise I did to help make this connection more apparent was writing down a list of skills that a product manager had and then writing down a work story that related to those skills. I made an analytics dashboard for P&G in my sophomore year and had conducted user interviews internally to gauge what metrics were the most important to display. User interviews, metric prioritization, and reducing blockers for teammates are all integral skills for PMs. Here are some product manager skills in case you want to complete this exercise yourself (this is me reducing blockers for you, see how it easy it can be to relate things):
Product Manager Skills
Conducting Consumer Interviews
Running Meetings (Bonus points if using Agile methodologies)
Market Research
Launching Projects
Stakeholder Management
Defining and Tracking Metrics
Getting Buy-In
Major Takeaway 🧠: The answer to the riddle above is that product experience does not only come from internships. Just create and you’ll have your chicken or egg soon enough.
“X” Marks the Spot!
With all these steps taken, I finally landed my first product management internship. The reason I wanted to make this my first article is because it provides a great example of how ambiguous, grey, and daunting getting into product can be, when it should not be! To those trying to break in, I know it feels like finding a treasure with half a map. It’s not easy, but I believe you can do it. Before this ending becomes too inspirational, I’ll leave you with this. The fictional character in the gif above, Indiana Jones, says this about becoming a good archaeologist ; “If You Want To Be A Good Archeologist, You Gotta Get Out Of The Library!” In product management terms, becoming a product manager happens through doing. It’s time to start.
