Hiring Trends: Industry Experience
TL;DR - growing digital plants and industry experience is all the rage for future PM roles.
Find me on TikTok, IG, & LinkedIn
🗒️ From the Desk of Alex
Obsession rn: Flora - I’m trying to use my phone less. Growing digital plants helps! 🌵
Improving workflows - I posted a TikTok about trying to get my product’s feature request timeline from three months to one month. I think it’s working!
📖 An Anecdote
Two weeks ago, I had a coffee chat with someone who broke into product management with zero experience and no college degree.
During this coffee chat, (and maybe you’re thinking this too!), I asked myself - ‘What is the secret? What does she have that the rest of us don’t'?’
The answer was simple - industry experience.
Here’s the (anonymized) TL;DR of her story - She began working in the oil industry right out of high school. For 15+ years, she learned the ins and outs of the industry.
She was tapped by a product manager to participate in a user study about her work experience. The PM was working for a start up that was building a website for workers in the oil industry.
This user interview her first interaction with product management. The PM who originally contacted her valued her past work experience and point of view — asking her more and more questions, learning more about the user the PM was building for.
At the time, the start up had no one who had actually worked in oil — only a plethora of market research and an idea.
This was her opportunity — a start up building something in her niche and a plethora of industry experience. She leveraged her industry knowledge to advocate for a seat at the table — bringing the perspective of the people she had worked with for the past 15 years.
💡 Hiring Trend: Leverage Industry Experience
The biggest hiring trend I see right now: Industry expertise is crucial.
We’re living through a big tech bust, with company layoffs in the news almost every single day. So, FAANG (or is it MAANG now?) might be off the table for the moment.
When hiring for product, companies are looking for people who believe in their mission (or can at least pretend to). Product managers drive the vision and need to have buy in from their teams. Companies want someone who believes in their mission so much that it is infectious to the other teams.
What you, dear reader, need to asses is whether they also have an industry advocate.
Most companies are building products but don’t have their end user in mind or in the room. (Semi related - Indeed has an orange chair in every conference room to represent the job seeker).
In our anecdote, the start up PM was building a website for oil workers having only spoken to a few! Yes, user research is important, but an advocate in the room is priceless.
🎯 Pitching Yourself
Ok, so where does this leave us? You, dear reader, need to understand what your industry experience is (finance, biology, running an ice cream shop?) and use it as leverage to get that first PM role.
Focus on finding PM roles in or adjacent to your current job. Start ups and smaller companies are an excellent place to start because they are still figuring out their vision and are more willing to take a chance on a new PM.
⚔️ Double Edged Sword
This post cannot be written with out the acknowledgment that bringing industry perspective may lead to biases. Address this potential blindspot in your interviews to showcase that you’ll still be able to bring a holistic view to the position.
Catch ya next time!
Alex the PM
