Is a Product Manager With A Varied Career Background A Better Fit?
As an aspiring Product Manager with a varied career background will I be taken seriously?
Enter the question How do I become a product manager? into Google, and up will be presented with 1.2 billion search results in 0.69 seconds.
The follow-up question, How do I get into product management? returns 3.5 billion search results in 0.60 seconds. The second question will be the focus of this article
Are there any formal qualifications required?
Upon the completion of my university studies in 2005, the term ‘Product Manager’ did not exist. However, there was this little thing called the internet that was increasingly becoming a part of our everyday lives. Companies such as PayPal, eBay, and Yahoo were on the rise at that time.
There are currently no formal qualifications needed to become a product manager. However, there are a growing number of courses and certifications available.
Will transferable skills make me a better product manager?
My background is in Marketing and Advertising, and my main aim was to find a position within an advertising agency. However, I made the decision to spend a year working in North America. Since that part of the world was the dominant force when it came to advertising and consumer psychology.
My first position was at a company that managed language courses for various corporates. The aim was to enable their employees to further their language skills as a requirement of their jobs. My role was to oversee the migration of language records from MS Access to Jira. Unknowingly I had stepped into the world of product management since I had to ensure I fully understood three key things about the project:
- The overall project goal?
- Future opportunities this project could provide for both new and existing clients?
- What value was to be delivered to each of the key stakeholders (i.e employees, management, etc)?
Now how did holding a Marketing & Advertising degree qualify me to manage the aforementioned tech-heavy project? The answer is I focused on fully understanding the existing pain points and started to work backward from that point.
Do I need to be a subject matter expert?
From my experience being a subject matter expert is not always necessarily a requirement. Nor is it a guarantee of how successful you will be in the role. More emphasis should be placed on the ability to quickly gain subject matter expertise. In the ideal world, it is advantageous to be both a strong generalist and a subject matter expert. As someone who has worked with and hired a number of PMs over the years. I have leaned towards experienced PMs without industry experience over industry experts.
Do I need to be a good strategist?
Having worked at companies of various sizes, in a variety of sectors. My thoughts are that great PMs can quickly get up to speed on a new market segment or product. On the other hand, subject matter experts without PM experience appear to be few and far between. From personal experience ‘industry experience’ has proved more of a hindrance than an advantage. PMs that are familiar with ‘how things have always been done may want to remain conservative. At the expense of innovation through critical thinking and open-mindedness.
Conclusion
I do not believe that industry experience is irrelevant. It tends to be easier for a great PM to learn a new industry than for an industry expert. A product manager is a generalist by nature since they sit between design, tech, marketing teams. Managing these stakeholder relationships to ensure the health and success of the product and the happiness of customers.
In my experience, a product manager with cross-functional skills enables a better understanding of the complexities. When recruiting, I look for PMs who have solved similar problems and whose background suggests empathy for users.
Let’s be friends! Follow me on Medium for more articles on product management.