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By: Angie Vo
So, What is Product Management?
Product management is a relatively new career path lying at the intersection between business and technology. Although it may be less traditional than finance or marketing, it is a vast career and continues to grow tremendously as the tech industry evolves. At a high level, product management is the process of planning, developing, and releasing a product or service. A product manager strives to solve problems for its customers to make products that are engaging and profitable. Take Instagram for example – a Product Manager at Meta could work on a team that focuses on Instagram’s Story feature. Although the Story feature may be well-developed already, the product team – which consists of the product manager, software engineers, and product designers – are continually collaborating to evolve the product. Looking at user feedback and reviews can inspire Product Managers and identify which aspects of the feature to enhance. An important thing to note is that product management looks vastly different across companies. My favorite part about the career is that you can hone in on products or services that inspire you; you can even work on products that you use in your daily life, like Spotify or Snapchat.
How Can I Start?
Considering how much the role varies, product management does not require a succinct list of skills across candidates. Many industry professionals have often pivoted from a different career path – like sales, software engineering, or marketing – into product management. Yet, there are some common qualities that help a candidate stand out when applying for these roles. The first characteristic, which should be familiar to all students, is the willingness to learn. With the role’s fast pace and wide scope, a product manager should be comfortable learning new skills and tools. A company’s needs are constantly changing, and they can play a huge role in the trajectory of the product you are working on. The second quality is storytelling. A product manager is the number one advocate of the product they are working on, meaning they must be able to articulate how crucial the product is to the company, their users, and other stakeholders. The last skill, and arguably the most important, is having empathy. A product manager is a people-facing job, as they must work with internal employees from different teams and a diverse customer base. Having empathy for the people you work with as well as the users you create products for is crucial to make products that are representative of user needs.
Interested? Here are a few things that you can do to broaden your understanding of product management and practice your PM thinking, whether you decide to pursue it now or later in your career.
Consider the products you use in your day-to-day
As I became more familiar with product management, I started to look at the products I use daily with a different perspective. For instance, when a new feature on Spotify is launched, I think more about why Spotify decided to implement it and what problem that the solution is intending to solve. Don’t be afraid to challenge the product and even identify any critiques you may have. If you want to take it a step further, think about how you would redesign that product or feature, leveraging user research to guide your decisions. This would be a great starting point for a project to showcase on your resume or portfolio.
Speak with more people in the industry
Whether it’s your peer or a full-time Product Manager, you can learn so much more by asking current or aspiring PMs about their experience and responsibilities. You will often get vastly different answers from PM to PM, but it helps enhance your perspective and narrow down which qualities you like. I recommend using LinkedIn to find Product Managers at companies that excite you. When I connect with a new person on LinkedIn, I often add a note to the connection request, something along the lines of:
“Hi [name], hope you are doing well! If you have the time, I would love to chat more about your start in product management. I enjoyed reading how you love working with people and teams to reach particular goals and was curious to learn more about how you implement this in your current role at [company name].”
Leverage online resources
In most cases, there are not any college classes that teach product management because the career is so new. I turned to many online resources to get a better understanding of what product management is and develop the skills needed to excel in the role. To learn more of the hard skills needed in the job, I recommend looking at internship or full-time PM job descriptions and identifying common skills across the listings. For example, I saw SQL across many job descriptions and enrolled myself in an online free course. Here are some other valuable resources that can help you prepare for a career in product management:
Final Thoughts
Starting a career in product management can be very overwhelming when first starting as it is such a vast and new career path, However, I hope this provides some good insight on how you can begin your journey in product management.
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