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Preparing for the Transition

You should start preparing for the transition at least a few months before applying for PM jobs. Here are five steps that you can follow:

1. Be honest with yourself
2. Practice the principles
3. Start shipping
4. Do your research
5. Build a network

Be Honest with Yourself

Interviewers want to hire product managers who can clearly articulate why they want the role and what their strengths and weaknesses are.

Start by reflecting on why you want to be a PM. Do you genuinely care about customers and want to make their lives easier? Do you get satisfaction from growing metrics? Do you enjoy aligning people around a shared goal? These are all excellent reasons. On the other hand, if you want to be in charge (product managers work through influence) or enjoy being left alone (influencing others requires meetings), then the role probably isn’t the best fit for you.

Once you know why you want to be a PM, write down the strengths and weaknesses that are relevant for job. In part one of this book, we discussed how you could discover your strengths and weaknesses by reflecting after successes and setbacks. Here’s a quick recap:

• Your strengths are activities that you’re both good at and enjoy doing. For example, some people are great at execution and can balance multiple projects efficiently. Others are better at resolving team conflicts or have in-depth knowledge in a particular field. Whatever your strengths are, you need to highlight them in interviews. For example, my strength was domain expertise in live streaming from working at Facebook. As a result, Twitter was willing to take a bet on me to manage a similar video product.
• Your weaknesses can be uncovered by finding a common thread through your past setbacks. Hiring managers want to know how you handle adversity, so a common interview question is, "Tell me about a time when you failed or had a conflict." Prepare for this question by writing down stories about your past failures and learnings. Often, I’ve found that strengths taken too far can become weaknesses. For example, I received negative feedback in a performance review because I had a strong sense of urgency (a strength) that too often came off as impatience with others (a weakness).

Once you’ve had a chance to reflect on your strengths and weaknesses, try to validate them by talking to people that you trust. This step is critical because your self-assessment might be very different from how other people perceive you. Your goal should be to get the most accurate picture of yourself so that you can confidently describe what you excel in and what you’re working on to interviewers .

Practice the Principles

Interviewers want to hire PMs who have clear examples of when they took ownership, resolved conflicts, and empowered people. Start gathering these examples now by practicing the PM principles that we covered in part one of this book:

1. Take ownership of your work and relationships. Stay humble and be the first to admit mistakes and address problems.
2. Prioritize and execute on solving the most important problems first, whether that's building a relationship with a coworker or getting an important project done.
3. Start with why when communicating with others. Have empathy for their problems and try to align on a shared goal early.
4. Find the truth by vetting important decisions with other knowledgeable people.
5. Be radically transparent and build caring relationships with the people around you.
6. Be honest with yourself by setting clear goals, reflecting after successes and setbacks, and seeking feedback from others.

Practicing the principles above will not only give you great stories to tell in your product management interviews but will also improve your everyday life.

Start Shipping

Interviewers want to hire PMs who have a track record of shipping successful products. This creates a chicken-and-egg problem as people trying to transition to product often don’t have this track record. There are three ways to start shipping even if you’re not a PM:

• If you work with product managers in an adjacent role (e.g., designer, engineer, analyst, or marketer), then get more involved with the product side. We’ll cover this in detail in the next chapter.
• If you don’t work with product managers at all, then consider doing a side project. Side projects include participating in hackathons, making a personal website, or writing a blog. When you’re working on your side project, follow the product development process that we covered in part two of this book. For example, if you’re writing a blog, seek to understand your readers first, and then write about topics that matter to them. This way, when you’re discussing your side project in a PM interview, you can frame it using the product development process (e.g., understanding the customer problem and the goal before identifying a solution).
• Finally, you can start shipping by signing up for a professional product course (e.g. General Assembly , Product School ). If you’re starting from scratch, picking up core product management skills and shipping a few projects at a product course can’t hurt. Just keep in mind that these courses are often expensive and not required for making a successful transition.

Do Your Research

Interviewers want to hire PMs who have taken the time to research the company and the role. I can't tell you how often I've interviewed candidates who don't have a clear answer for "Why do you want to work here?" A little research goes a long way.

Here's how you can research the companies that you're interested in:

• Use the company's products and talk to the company’s customers. Write down your thoughts about how the product is meeting customer needs and where the gaps are.
• Follow the company and its executives on Twitter. Thoughtfully replying to their tweets is another way to build your network.
• Find public reports and recent news about the company. As you read these reports, write down the company's mission, strategy, and metrics.

Capture your research in a document and write down the problems that you’ll tackle first if you were to join the company. If you can write a crisp document, bring it to your interview. Most candidates rarely do any research about the company, so a well-written document will impress your interviewers and help you stand out.

Build a Network

Interviewers want to hire PMs recommended by people they trust. If you don’t have great product experience, a recommendations from a seasoned PM at a company will help you get your foot in the door.

That’s why building a network is critical if you’re trying to transition to product. To build a network, use LinkedIn or Twitter to find people who work at companies that interest you. Whenever possible, ask a mutual friend to connect you to these people. If you don’t have a mutual friend, don’t be afraid to reach out to people directly. The trick is to make sure your inquiry provides some value to the person you’re contacting. Here’s how you can do that:

1. Find a company that you're interested in.
2. Research the company and, if possible, use the product.
3. Write a short, personal e-mail to someone in the company. People's emails are usually (first name)@(company name) or (first name).(last name)@(company name). In your e-mail, suggest some product ideas before asking about job opportunities.

Here’s an example e-mail:

Dear Ivan,

I love using Notion to manage my daily to-do list and take notes during meetings. I want to be able to select multiple items in my to-do list and delete more than one item at a time (I usually clear my to-do list at the end of each day).

I wrote a blog post about my love for Notion, and here’s my LinkedIn . If you’re hiring, do you know of any opportunities where I can be a good fit?

I am looking forward to hearing from you and thanks for making a great product.

You can see how the above e-mail might be more effective than “Dear Ivan, how do I get a job at your company?” If you still feel hesitant about cold e-mailing people, here's a quick story:

When Steve Jobs was a teenager, he cold-called Hewlett-Packard’s co-founder Bill Hewlett for some electronic parts. Bill was so impressed by Steve’s audacity that he offered him a job soon after. When asked about this years later, Steve said: "Most people don't get these experiences because they never ask." 1

The point is, you should aggressively reach out to people at companies that interest you in a way that provides value to them.

A Closing Note

You may be wondering why none of the steps above include preparing for product manager interviews. We’ll cover interview preparation later, but you should get ready to make the transition well before you have your first product interview.