Here’s a story for anybody who’s focused on a number of pointers for their very own product supervisor job-hunting journey.
By sharing my story, I’d like to provide an in depth narrative will enable you to understand that every one elements play into the method: endurance, rigorously thought-out tasks, and networking — all of them matter.
And simply to be clear, luck and timing additionally play small but essential roles within the means of leaping into the hell-fire function that’s product administration. I’m not an exception; there are various levels of luck that performed into my very own story, however they weren’t “make or break” influences. Don’t fear — more often than not, they shouldn’t be “make or break” elements for you both.
Wanting again, it’s straightforward to conclude that the “heavy lifting” a part of my journey was way more salient, and thus extra rewarding. The boring steps of working step-by-step; making small wins; using the robust studying curve; all of them performed a lot bigger roles.
I’m going to derive all I can from my very own expertise to provide again to the group of aspiring PMs in order that anybody who reads this will achieve one thing out of it for their very own story. This doesn’t matter if you happen to’re nonetheless a scholar or 10 years into your present working life.
Here’s a high-level breakdown of my journey, from 1st yr undergrad till now, which is a number of months into my graduated working life. Keep in mind — the weather of worth from my story can nonetheless apply to anybody, whether or not if you happen to’re a scholar or not.
2017
This was a loopy turbulent time. I wasn’t positive but what I needed to do after I graduated, however one factor was for sure: I knew I needed to discover with hands-on expertise. My area of focus wouldn’t matter as a lot throughout this time, as a result of with none working expertise in any respect, what was there to leverage or lean again on as soon as I did work out what I needed to do?
Thus, I took a small sacrifice and landed a full-time volunteer place at a biotech startup in Waterloo, Canada. This function allowed me to discover your entire spectrum of potential work I might discover myself immersed in later in life. I might work within the lab on sooner or later so as to add biotech expertise, or I might assist carry out investor outreach and different enterprise growth-related actions.
However what finally mattered was that this expertise gave me my first actual internship at Blackberry in early 2018 — triggering the snowball impact to hop from one internship to a different till product administration was inside attain.
2018
This yr was by far essentially the most pivotal out of all years I’ve spent throughout my product management-hunting journey.
At Blackberry, I used to be a basic enterprise admin intern — nothing too extravagant, albeit nonetheless basically rewarding. This was the place I actually found what PM was by watching the product group from afar: a strong and extremely coveted function inside tech that labored with a number of stakeholders to resolve product issues. By definition alone, this already sounded attention-grabbing to yours actually, so after my internship ended, I sought to community tougher with full-time PMs or different aspiring PMs to sooner or later attain my very own sense of belonging inside this profession path.
After Blackberry, I did some pro-bono consulting with a college membership, after which accomplished an internship in consulting within the fall of 2018. Throughout this time, nevertheless, I started diving head-first into hackathons regardless of barely figuring out how you can code. Conquering this worry of missing data for the sake of expertise made all of the distinction — the tasks, folks, and alternatives hackathons had opened up for me was loopy. I made positive to reap the benefits of these alternatives by networking with each hackathon sponsor and supporting my group in constructing our venture in any means I might. Lastly, I performed the function of a “sponge” — soaking in each piece of information or ability round me as a lot as I might. Our group even gained a prize at Hack Harvard 2018!
2019
I lastly obtained my first ever product internship at SAP in the summertime of 2019. Throughout this time, I additionally dived into podcasts to diversify my hobbies a bit, and took part in my college’s product administration membership by internet hosting varied achieved product people on our membership’s podcast to talk about their expertise for all to listen to.
Within the fall, I continued my job seek for different product alternatives with out letting go of that drive for hackathons.
On the facet, whereas I utilized to numerous product job openings, I made positive to be relentless when it got here to the functions and their homework and canopy letter necessities. This particularly stayed true for jobs I actually, actually, actually needed. Product openings at Reddit, Fb, Mozilla, Microsoft, RocketBook, ClickTime, PagerDuty, Apple, Splunk — I bear in mind sitting for five–6 hours each week grinding out product assignments or detailed over letters for all of them. Even merely enhancing my very own product/design portfolio was nicely well worth the time. Even when an organization rejected me, I might take that homework task and use it in my very own portfolio. With that mindset because the spine for my motivation, I sat down and did each single one meticulously regardless of my tight college and extra-curricular schedule. I even wrote out some tailor-made cowl letters alongside these homework assignments; the rationale was: “I’ve already accomplished this a lot, including a canopy letter isn’t that rather more…could as nicely go all in.”
2020
A COVID-infested yr didn’t cease my digital presence; I labored for 3 completely different corporations as a digital PM intern throughout my school coursework. I by no means stopped making use of — I bear in mind writing out a number of extra homework assignments, sprucing up my portfolio much more, and even making an attempt to start out a few facet tasks on my own. One factor to notice is that even for jobs you don’t really feel enthusiastic about, apply for that interview expertise. You’ll be able to even virtually deal with them as mock interviews.
For others who noticed COVID as a time to cover away and excuse themselves away from productive work, I noticed it as a chance to do no matter I needed: brainstorm facet venture concepts, enhance my coding, Figma designing, and even on-line volunteering for a startup.
It’s necessary to name out right here (and for all earlier years) that I positively had my downtimes and dips in each productiveness and psychological well being. In any case, my journey wasn’t quick — this climb to changing into a full-time tech product supervisor took me over 4 years.
2021
This was the yr I used to be graduating, which meant a full-time job searching season. Occasions had been actually nerve-racking — particularly that interval spanning from November till March. I’m a stressed and impatient particular person in terms of jobs, however I used to be in a position to calm myself sometimes throughout this time by sprucing up on my design portfolio and searching for mentorship (you need to do that too! I joined WealthSimple’s product & design mentorship program). Mentorship was an absolute game-changer that not solely lightened my temper throughout instances of stress and pessimism, but additionally allowed me to achieve useful product recommendation from an business veteran. I’d prefer to name out my mentor, Saksham, Director of Product at WealthSimple, for the straightforward but extremely useful assist that he offered each month throughout this system.
As one can see, my journey was lengthy and tedious, to not point out the numerous, and I imply numerous (we’re speaking maybe within the 1000s right here — I’m not exaggerating, I wrote possibly 100+ cowl letters that haven’t even gotten a response, however interview) rejections, each earlier than and after interview phases. Maintain your head down, maintain your product/venture portfolio and resume up-to-date, write out some tailor-made cowl letters for jobs you really need, polish up your expertise (SQL, system design, UI/UX, something {that a} product job would need) if you really feel they might be refreshed, and don’t cease. Be relentless, but additionally be affected person; stopping to select up some volunteer work to spice up that resume by no means hurts.
Better of luck on the market! Comply with me on Medium and join with me on LinkedIn if you happen to’d like some extra offline recommendation!
