Starting a career in product management can be a bit of a catch-22. How do you demonstrate that you have the necessary skills and experience to be a PM without having been one?
Breaking into other roles can be a bit more straightforward. To become a software engineer, you can demonstrate your ability by passing a technical assessment. For careers like marketing, there are many well-established college courses. Not so simple with product management. There is no ‘test’ to assess for PM ability and very few college courses cover PM in depth. So, what should you do?
One common piece of advice is to build a side-project yourself. This is great advice; building something yourself sets you apart from the crowd and demonstrates key product skills. But it can also be a bit daunting. What should I build? For who? Do I need to market it? Should I learn to code?
In my opinion, a better, more straightforward version of this advice is: Build a side project that allows you to become a user/customer of the company you most want to work for.
Building to become a user
What exactly do I mean by ‘build a side project to become a user at the company you want to work for’? This advice is best illustrated by some examples:
Supposing the company you most want to join is Shopify, what side project could you start? A great idea would be to build an app on top of Shopify’s platform and sell it on their app store.
The same advice applies for a career at Intercom, build an app for their app store/marketplace.
Ditto for Zendesk.
Looking to join Stripe? Build a side project that uses Stripe to process payments.
For Slack, build a slackbot.
The above examples assume that you either know how to code or are willing to learn how to code. But you don’t have to. Here are some no-code examples:
Applying to Shopify? Why not start a Shopify store?
For Intercom, you could build a website and use Intercom to talk to customers. (Weblfow is a great tool for building websites with zero code)
For Stripe, use Stripe Atlas to launch your side project.
For Slack, start an online product management community and use Slack for members to communicate.
While this advice may not be applicable to every single company, by focusing on something related to the company you most want to join, starting a side project doesn’t seem so daunting. And you don’t need to be a developer to start one. But why would you follow this advice?
Standing out from the crowd
Product management is a competitive career path. Lots of people want to break into it. You need to do what you can to stand out from the crowd. Building a side project helps you to stand out in 2 main ways:
The effort and dedication involved in building a side project speaks for itself. Very few candidates will go to this much effort so you will immediately stand out.
Building a side project demonstrates that you have many of the most important product skills; understanding user needs, prioritisation, communication etc.
But building to become a user offers one unique benefit that a normal side project doesn’t. Since you will have used their product, you will gain a deep understanding of your target company’s customer/user needs. Imagine the advantage you will have during your interview. You will be able to talk about:
features you liked and why
workflows which could be improved
problems which could be solved better
features which were confusing or difficult to use
customer problems to be solved in the future
Very, very few other candidates will be able to talk about the company’s user needs like you will be able to. And definitely not from a place of real-world experience. By demonstrating this knowledge through your side-project, you will massively stand out from the crowd and be well on your way to landing your dream PM job.
If this advice helps and you do build a side project, then please share it with me. I’d be happy to give feedback :)
**NOTE: Reading this essay, you may be thinking: “What if I don’t get a job at my first choice company? Won’t all of this effort be wasted?” The answer is no. Your side project will still demonstrate strong product aptitude to other potential employers. This is still a big plus. It just won’t demonstrate an understanding of the specific customer/user needs at that company.