Being a product manager requires taking responsibility. You are the ambassador of the product. You’re responsible for it from its first fuzzy idea, to concrete concept, through production, launch, and all the way to maturity stage. In order to successfully get there, you need to have a good understanding of the market as well as the competition that awaits. There are many paths to gaining these skills and earning the responsibility that come with being a product manager.
Stepping into the Product Manager Role
Typically, a bachelor’s degree in business or computer science is preferred or mandatory. Other areas of study include management, marketing, public relations, statistics, and advertising. In case your next employer deals with larger product lines, you may be requested to have specialized degrees. A PM’s background may be based in another branch of education also, such as fashion in case the products are heavily focused on those types of industries.
Product Manager Career Paths
1. Junior/Associate PM
This is an entry-level product role and your first step on the PM career path. What is expected here is the fundamental understanding of product management as well as being a thirsty learner. You start demonstrating your empathy for the user, discovering your passion to identify opportunities and bringing multiple people together to work on the same goal. It’s your chance to prove how well you take all parties into account, blend and evaluate the different perspectives to eventually arrive at a clear decision.
2. Mid-level PM
To reach this point in your career path, you’ll likely need to come in with some professional experience. Direct product management experience is not necessarily needed, but it is expected you can clearly demonstrate your communication, collaboration, and prioritization skills.
You are responsible for the entire lifecycle of a product, the go-to person for the team and the glue between developers and other team members.
Understanding the value proposition of your product as well as knowledge of customer problems and needs is critical.
3. Senior PM
At this stage, you need direct product management experience and working years.
This is because you need to cultivate the ability to think independently, lead by example, effectively analyze complex, interdependent factors, and develop a sense of accountability on serious decisions. Deep product and market knowledge are required as well as the ability to step in and overcome stressful situations.
Senior PMs are in a position to coach or directly lead other junior PMs and work closely with product leaders in the organization to execute on product strategy. While other PMs are operating more on execution level, senior PMs begin to look more at the broader product process and gradually become the voice for the product team to senior management.
4. Director of PM
A director-level role requires profound leadership experience and the ability to build and trust a team to deliver the necessary work without getting in their way. There is more focus on building better processes and optimizing existing ones, strengthening overall team performance and building consensus across the entire organization in addition to overlooking the recruitment efforts to ensure a high performing team is built.
An important part of a director’s job is to leverage the strengths of their product teams for the benefit of the company while coaching individual PMs to excel. They are advocates and ambassadors of the entire product strategy. They are responsible for bringing the necessary transparency to the team on decisions taking place at the higher levels of the business.
5. VP of PM
You are significantly less involved with the hands-on activities related to the product development process. While the product team is tactical, you are mainly strategic.
Responsibilities include budgeting for the product organization, ensuring strategic product decisions align with business objectives and protecting the product team from internal politics.
6. Chief Product Officer
The Chief Product Officer (CPO) can also be known as Chief Innovation Officer. It is an executive who is responsible for all product-related activities in a corporation. You’re dealing with product portfolios, staffing resources, and budget, as well as overseeing research being invested in areas that will provide desired outcomes. Typically, the position reports to the Chief Executive Officer (CEO). The CPO role can be an extension of the VP role or oversee multiple VPs.
Minju Kang is a 4thyear student at the University of Waterloo and an incoming Associate Product Manager (APM) at Loblaw Digital. She was formerly an Associate Product Marketing Manager (APMM) at Microsoft within Azure. She also has experience in scaling product user cases at TD Bank and Overbond (fintech).
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