Breaking Into Product Management

Are you the one who is an aspiring product manager or considering a shift from your regular roles to product management? Well if yes, then you completely belong here. In this blog, we are going to discuss all how you can break into the Product Management role. Before starting with it, let’s quickly get a brief about this role.

A product manager is the most fascinating and engaging role in the present tech world scenario. Slowly and gradually companies are understanding the need for a Product Manager in their companies. The role seems to be fancy but it comes with great responsibility with it. As we all know, a product manager sits in the center of all the fields. It’s a critical role which looks into developing a product keeping everyone’s needs in mind. By everyone, we mean the customers, the investors, the teammates and whoever else fits in the loop. The story doesn’t just end there, the product manager bridges up the gap between the various verticals of the product development team. In crux, a product manager sits at the support of the business’ objectives, the clients’ needs, and the groups constructing the arrangements that address those issues and objectives. It is a job that is both outer and inside, oversees here and there, and ranges specialized, business, and operational areas.

We also wrote about Key skills no one talks about Product Manager , do read this blog to know all about skills a product manager should have.

This was a brief about the Product Manager role. Now let’s talk about how you can get into it. Well to start with a very simple thing. No matter if you are a fresher or someone with experience who wants to switch to Product management, you have to have follow a few basic things suggested in this blog.

1. Product Management Education

Educate yourself about Product management. No matter which school/college you have been passed from, whether you are from a technical or non-technical background, whether you have an MBA degree or not. There is always a way to stand out amongst fellow aspirants in front of recruiters, HRs, or company employees. There are many courses available on product management on various resources. For a few to mention there is Coursera, Udemy, EdX, Upgrad, etc. You can refer to any of these and educate yourself about product management. Make good use of the internet, there is a certain number of blogs, videos, and podcasts available on the internet on product management. Refer them and learn more about them.

2. Internal transition

Disclaimer: This will work for those who already work in a company.

Many companies offer employees to switch technologies and areas of work within the company. Seek such opportunities. Talk to your manager, you can always have a chance to grow better in other work fields. This is the quickest of all ways to get into Product Management. This also increases your chances to get selected because companies always look for internal options available than hiring from an outside source.

3. Find an assistant PM role in a company

Since you are new to Product management, no company will hire you directly for the role of product manager. The role comes with great responsibility as discussed in the first half of the blog. Get started with the assistant PM role. Many companies offer internships and assistant PM programs for aspirants who are new to this side of the tech world. Employees are trained for this role, in terms of developing a problem-solving attitude, developing product sense, developing a skill to bridge between teams, and so on. You get a mentor who would teach you all this from his/her experience. This is the best way of learning. Learning through someone’s experience will make you more perfect as they are tried and tested ways in the product world. Seek mentors from any source who could guide you along the product management process. This makes your 50 percent task easy.

4. Build something

The best way of learning is to imply all you have learned from the above sources on some practical projects. Find a problem around you and try building a solution to it or just build some product from your area of interest. Put all your knowledge in it and learn from your mistakes. Trust us, mistakes are our best teachers. Investing in your product is a way better option than investing in your highly paid extra degrees. Now you must be wondering you are not into coding and how can you build a product. Well, there are certain solutions to that too. Today coding is not difficult for anyone. You can get pre-designed websites. You can put up things as you want. All you need is to invest in the domain and the rest is your creativity. Get your hands dirty in product development. Learn, unlearn, and relearn from it. This anyway can be a great point to put up in your CV too.

5. Join a Start-up

Joining a Start-up is the best way to learn about any domain. They give you the chance to come up with your creativity. You grow as you learn and experiment with various things. You get to work with like-minded people which drives your hunger to learn more about certain subjects. In big giant companies, you may have to follow the hierarchy but in start-ups, you get a free hand to have a conversation and build relationships across teams. Have a chance to converse with them and see through their process. Understand their work, come up with your ideas, exchange your ideas, and see yourself growing in the process. You will not just know your domain, you will get to see through other team’s pain points and knowledge points. Collaborating is the best way of learning. So seek the opportunity to work in a Start-up.

Conclusion

These were the few points if followed then can help you in giving a kick start to your career in Product Management. The journey to becoming a Product Manager can be unpredictable. And learning could be never-ending. But one needs to be determined enough to go through the process from scratch. To know more about this topic, here is the link to the video on How to get into product management without MBA and tech experience by Pragmatic Leaders hosting Prashant Mahajan.

Hope this video will help you in driving more clarity on this subject. We wish our readers a happy learning experience. Know more about zeda.io by following us on our social media handles.

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