Breaking Into Product Management (Solve Catch22 Problem!)

After mentoring, speaking to and interacting with countless individuals who aspire to join product management, the question always boils down to: how to get into the product without any prior experience as a product manager? The people I have spoken to have come from varied backgrounds, including software developers, marketing managers, program managers, project managers, vendor managers, customer success managers, master’s degree graduates as well as MBA graduates.

There are numerous books written already on skills that are required to be a product manager, how to crack the interview of various types. However, particularly, for recent graduates and professionals who already have some work experience in other domains it is extremely hard to break into the field and demonstrate that they are fit for product management or even get an interview call without any previous experience.

Landing into product management as an aspirant is like a catch-22 problem. To get into product management you need a product management experience. But to get the product management experience you need to get into product management. In this session I demystify this conundrum from my experience, provide reflections from the long journey as a product leader in the industry. I finally attempt to provide various paths through which new aspirants can break into product management.