Product Manager (PM) roles need PM experience, but to get PM experience, you need a PM job. Sounds like a catch-22, right? Because of this, people often struggle with landing their first PM role. You don’t need to have PM in your job title to have PM experience. Let’s figure out how to solve this conundrum.
Firstly, understanding the essence of product management is crucial. At its core, product management is delivering a great experience for people. PMs need to wear many hats to do their job well. The role blends strategic vision with tactical execution, requiring different skills.
Consider the following strategies to help you get PM experience:
1. Start an internal side project: There are plenty of opportunities to develop PM skills available in your company. Typically, the smaller the company, the easier it is to get that experience. “20% project” is what Googlers call side projects. They’ve been so successful at Google that huge products like Gmail started out as 20% projects. How do you land internal PM side projects though? Find teams in your company that do interesting work and offer your skills to them. The majority of PMs have too much work to do, so they’ll be happy to get extra support. They need to trust you to do a decent job, so you want to be clear with what you bring to the table. PMs are more likely to trust you to work on supporting PM tasks to begin with, such as market analysis, helping with the roadmap, routing issues or setting processes in place. Once you have more credibility, it’s easier to make a case to do higher stakes work, like making key decisions, launching features from conception and presenting on behalf of the team to others.
Building internal side projects is a very common path to get PM experience. In fact, most PMs I know landed their first PM role by transitioning internally from another role.
2. Start an external side project: Building your own product and selling it is the ultimate PM experience. You will learn so much in the process. Although startups are tough, the opportunities are endless. Let’s say you’re working full-time and not planning to leave your own company. As long as your startup isn’t a conflict of interest and there aren’t policies against this, then you have freedom on what to do. External side projects develop your PM skills because you need to figure out a vision and execute on it. I’ve learnt so much from the side projects I’ve done. They’ve pushed me out of my comfort zone while getting great experiences. It doesn’t have to be a big project — start with something small to make it easier. However, one downside is that your work-life balance becomes very challenging.
3. Contribute to Open Source Projects: Working with open source communities gives you a unique way to develop PM skills in a decentralised environment. Find projects that interest you on platforms like GitHub, then reach out to project owners to offer PM support. Don’t just offer random ideas — that’s not PM work. Instead, craft a product roadmap with rationale, conduct a market analysis, go deep into user segmentation, sync with other contributors and provide reasonable recommendations on next steps.
4. Network and get a mentor: Chatting with PMs is great for giving you insights into the role and the skills needed to succeed. If you don’t know anyone personally, then you can go to PM events, ask for introductions from people or reach out to people on LinkedIn. Hopefully, networking can lead you to find a mentor to point you in the right direction. Mentors are incredibly helpful for your growth as an aspiring PM.
5. Associate PM (APM) roles: Many companies offer associate PM roles, which don’t require much PM experience from people. In fact, they target people who recently graduated from universities. You can look for APM roles in career sites for companies like Google and Meta. The good news is that more and more companies are offering them. Although these roles can be very competitive, they’re great for getting solid PM training and experience.
Another path you can take is through PM courses, which can give you a good foundation in theory and frameworks to use. I purposely didn’t add it as an official way to help you transition because it’s not sufficient by itself to help you get real PM experience. Practical PM experience is the best training you’ll get.
In essence, the path to gaining PM experience without holding the title is about initiative, creativity, and a willingness to step outside of your comfort zone. It’s about demonstrating core PM skills through whatever means available — e.g. projects, roles, or self-directed learning. In the end, the unconventional path might just be the most effective way to demonstrate your readiness for a PM role.