How to Become a Product Manager
Why do so many people wonder: “How to Become a Product Manager?” It’s because the product manager job is a “dream job.” You get to use your right brain and your left brain. You get to interact with people on a daily basis. You get to lead teams and build products that people love.
The product manager job is also a high-growth job. You get paid a lot. The national average salary for a product manager is $120,000 USD per year. Product managers grow to become CEOs, founders, and other executives.
The product manager job is an important job. Every software team has a product manager. Designers and developers depend on product managers for direction. Unlike visual design and software development, Product management is not taught in colleges nor universities. You can get a degree in Graphic Design and become a designer or a Computer Science degree to become a developer, but you can’t get a degree to become a product Manager.
How to get into product management?
There are 3 steps:
- Acquire the 3 skills needed to become an irreplaceable product manager (hint: programming is not one of them)
- Get product experience and work on 3+ products (you can do this in 30 days)
- Create a digital brand by creating an online product portfolio and updating your resume + LinkedIn
So how do you acquire product management skills? Here are 3 common ways:
- Specialized product management training
- MBA program
- Learn on the job
Path 1: How to Become a Product Manager with Specialized Training
The 1st path is to take specialized training. This is the fastest path.
Specialized Product Management Training is the Fastest Path to Becoming a Product Manager
You can take online product management courses, like my Complete Product Management Course, or if you’re in certain cities in the US, attend a high tech trade school like General Assembly or Product School. This can be a great option because it is a fraction of the cost of an MBA program and everything you learn is directly applicable to the product management job. You learn the tools. You grow with other product managers. You leave the course with a product portfolio that you can show off at interviews.
Path 2: How to Become a Product Manager through an MBA Program
The 2nd path is to go through an MBA program. People typically gather 3-5 years of professional experience, go through an MBA program, and land a junior product management role. MBA programs are great at building your product vision and leadership skills.
MBA program are great at building product vision and leadership skills
MBA programs are not so great at building your product management execution skills. You don’t learn the tools nor processes (Agile, Scrum).
My friend, who graduated from Harvard Business School, never learned how to create beautiful wireframes nor write concise user stories. He didn’t feel prepared for the job even though he went to one of the best business schools in the world. In addition, the MBA program is expensive. They can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Path 3: How to Become a Product Manager by Learning on the Job
The 3rd path is where you somehow land a junior product management role and build the skills and experience learning on the job. This is the slowest path. This is how I got started in Product Management. I went down this path because there was no specialized training when I first started doing product work. I had the opportunity to be the product manager of the NASA iPhone app because I came up with the vision and was able to sell the vision to NASA’s Executive Team.
I jumped into the deep end of the pool and just figured things out.
You can learn Product Management skills by jumping straight into a project
The opportunity to get into a product role with no prior experience is extremely rare. These opportunities come up when you work for an early stage startup company, start your own company, or work for a company that has an Associate Product Management program.
How to Select the Best Path
The best way to select a path that’s right for you is to learn what are the top skills you need to succeed as a product manager.
To teach you what those 3 skills are, I’ve created a free online training called the:
Top 3 Skills Needed to Become an Irreplaceable Product Manager
In this training, you’ll learn
- What are the top skills needed to be effective?
- How do you get into product management without having a lot of product experience?
- What are the best product management tools?
- What are the best practices / methods / systems?
- How do you stand out from the crowd when getting interviewed?
You can sign up for the free, 60 minute training here
Grow on!