There are almost 230k open product manager roles in the USA.
However, getting a job as a product manager is very challenging especially when you trying to enter into this space from a different role.
Here is how I did it.
** Read on **
1) Documented my current understanding of the role
-Why do I want to enter into this role
-My definition of the role
-Fear I had in my head why I won’t get the job ( technical/functional/soft skills/ lack of relevant experience)
-Skills I needed to learn
2) Learned about the role
- Started with a basic course at Udemy before registering for pricey cohorts and other classes
- Talked to my friends who are already in this role and asked about
- Most challenging aspects of the role
- Skills needed for this role
- Types of PM roles
3) Built Basic Product skills
- Learn from the top product experts @shreyas @lennysan
- Read 1 book every week recommended by the experts
- How to build customer journeys, roadmaps, MVPs and OKRs
- How to develop decision-making process
- Ask the right questions
4) Built missing Technical skills
-Worked on enhancing 1 technical skill each week by taking courses on Udemy
- Learned firing SQL queries
- Learned cloud computing
- Learned DevOps fundamentals
- Learned System Design
- Learned basic computer architecture
- A/B testing
5) Crafted a Killer Resume
- Did 20 + iterations of my resume to show a cohesive story in 1 page
- Added only top 3 projects from my past experience
- 4 bullet points per project
- Each bullet point talked about the particular prod manager skill
- Resume reviewed by experts
6) Built a Side Project
- Identified a problem that I was facing
- Used my learning from the Udemy course and came up with my MVP
- Launched an MVP using no-code https://www.pm4dummies.com/returnli
- Tracked the metrics
7 ) Prepare for Interviews
- Attended AMAs session on product school slack and paid attention to the answers provided by the experts
- Attended Product Ninja interview session by Arie
- Practiced Mock Interviews via product school slack channel
- Listened to youtube videos
8) Shortlist Companies for interviews
- Identified tier 2 companies to get some interview practice
- Realized that applying takes a lot of time so I hired someone on Fiverr to apply on my behalf
- Success ratio was 5% but it gave me the necessary practice
9) Actual interviews
- Recorded my sessions to notice my body language and my answers
- Worked on my weaknesses one at a time
- Asked regular feedback while working on actual assignments
- Created Amazon-style PR-FAQ as my assignment deliverable instead of just a deck
10) Summary
- Above practices helped me to land my dream job
- Now I am honing my craft and will write a separate thread on that
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