How I became a product manager with NO experience in 4 months

to be honest if you ask me easy to transition to PM without any experience I would say it's extremely hard but is it doable today I would like to share how I actually transition to product management without experience to learn the PM offers it actually took me around six months studying on the piano tutorial practicing PM behavioral interview questions design thinking interview questions during that six months I interview 50 rounds of interviews 25 companies include big tag like indeed or DocuSign or also startups and then landed like a couple offers honestly it's a very daunting process but is it doable many of my friends who I met during my Camp boot camp classes a lot of them are actually able to successfully land up PM offer their previous experience were people working for a consultant from Finance background they were data analysts or they were like sales account manager like myself in the later part of the video I will also be sharing my career journey in Tech and also how each role help me path the way to land a PM in big Tech so first sections my career Journey my own direct I study in advertising and marketing so that's like very irrelevant to PM or Tech when I was in undergrad I thought that when I graduated I want to work in advertising agency but after the intern I found advertising agencies just not my thing my dream was becoming actress so I moved back to Taiwan and pursued my acting career but you know like with the Asian parents they are just not happy about it my parents really want me to come to Canada get my Master's Degree I get my Master's Degree in one year mastering in business management after that one year graduated that's my real Tech career started as a customer service at Uber that's my first job that's like the most entry-level job ever in that role I was working for the ubereats Department specifically five years ago ubereats was a new thing it's not as new and established as right now my primary role is on board all the restaurants Partners to let them know how to use the Uber Eats tablet and educate them how to how they can receive orders and that's literally my first role it's not fun however in that role it's when I started to gain interest in product management because for all the questions I get asked from the clients started to think how come so many people are asking me the same questions also a lot of people are asking for this specific features in the app can we just do this to the users to make the product even better being a customer service agent this true entry level giving Uber it's such a big company where there's a lot of hierarchy and layers and I just cannot find the right person to share the customer pinpoints and ideas I was in the role for eight months and after eight months the more clear and direct career progression path is for me to move into account management and sales role and so that was the next role that I took on I was a customer success manager for Uber Eats for another two and a half years in that role I learned the skill sets to sell ideas to pay pitch product features understand how to tell a good story even though my day-to-day jobs is just you know reaching out to customers and then upselling cross-selling I'm more able to get a hold of the right Department to share my product ideas for example in this role I was able to partner with our ubereats researcher and then we worked together on a project to interview our users on how they feel about ubreads ads in that project I gained the knowledge and experience on asking the right questions to our users because there were a lot of time being a product manager if you're asking the wrong question to the users the answer might be misleading and it might allow you to make the wrong decisions so even though I was not a PM at that time but I was able to start gaining relevant PM experience leading a research project and asking the right questions and then synthesize the results and then share it with the broader stakeholder after that experience I felt that PM it's the path I want to go towards if I would like to become a PM in the expected timeline I said for myself it's almost impossible at Uber because Uber is a big ore there's no US Direct path if you want to change your roles within the org it's not us in startup we're a startup you can take on a lot more responsibility Zara only has like maybe two to five hundred people you can connect to other parts of the org easily and take out extra projects but in bigger company that's not the case right so after three years working for Uber I decided to leave Uber and join a startup however that doesn't work out either so during the time I was working for the startup after work I would just dedicate all my time take on full-time PM courses boot camp to gain PM skill sets understand the PM knowledge more comprehensively overall the timeline for me to transition to PM from starting the classes it's around like six months I use all the knowledge I gained from the PM boot camp and all the other different online courses and materials and apply to my interviews and eventually I was able to land PM roles once one of my mentors told me that career progressions it's not vertical sometimes it could be lateral you jump from one position to an other positions but during the jumps even though you're not seeing the direct career progression but you're always learning different things that really applied to my case [Music] so to sum up four key takeaways that I would like to share with everyone first thing is understand your strength for me I don't have technical skill set I graduated with the marketing advertising degree a lot of PM out there they have computer science degree they know how to code they know how to communicate with Engineers however I do have a strong suit probably a lot of people don't don't have because I'm coming from customer background I know how to talk to the customers I know how to ask them the right questions and because I also took on sales and account manager role so I know how to tell a story that's another strength of me because being a product manager you have to learn how to tell a story you have to learn how to pitch your idea to your stakeholders so really dig into yourself if you have no experience ask yourself what are you good at and if you don't know where to start I found it it's really beneficial just go on LinkedIn and then look at any PM jobs look at the job descriptions highlight the keywords some of the skills that you need to have as a PM might be having customer empathy do you have that maybe it's working with engineer you have a computer science background all these ask yourself do you have those can you showcase that in your interview after you know your strength and you're able to speak about it in the interview I promise you you will be able to find a company that's going to value your skill sets and then really want to bring you to their team the takeaway number two take PM courses or online bootcamp trust me I feel you the boot camps are expensive some bootcamps ranges from like 3K to 10K it's like one person it's like two three four months of salary so when I decided to sign up for online boot camp I actually did all the research I could possibly do I signed up to all the free sessions where I can take a peek of what this bootcamp actually feel like I talked to all the PM bootcamp instructors to know the course curriculum and the future career progressions and the results were the boot camp in The Bootcamp I learned many things that's why it's worth it I learned how to polish my PM resume before I sign up for The Bootcamp all the resume that I send out I have no response no a truck reach out to me and contact me to schedule for the interview but after I re-edited my resume the response rate for all the resumes that I send out around 32 40 is insane also learn how to talk like a PM if all the interviews I went on how can I tell the story of my past experience in a PM way how can I rephrase all my experience with the PM keywords so then I can actually showcase my relevant experience as a product manager in the bootcampment I also learned how to interview in big tech for all the design thinking questions for example Google Map user drop for 10 what do you do Uber is actually thinking about launching into this specific Market should we do it so all this design thinking interview questions how do we use the right approach to answer them I learned in the book cap without The Bootcamp I feel like probably I wouldn't be able to learn the role within six months it will probably take me a year or two who knows if you're also interested on what RPM bootcamps that you could check it out when I was doing my research I look at product School general assembly run station product Gem and also product management accelerator programs so all those resources are really helpful I will put the link in below and you can check it out key takeaway number three after learning all the the Knowledge and Skills that's in PM I also took on-site project so with the knowledge I gained I started to look at in my full-time role are there any projects I can take on and then getting hands-on experience in my full-time job I also launched a business on the site where I can apply all the knowledge and PM and apply my business I started with doing market research which products should I fix and I collaborated with designer and engineer to build the product and also design all the go to market strategies to start gaining sales lastly reiterating the product I spoke to the customers again I gathered their feedback and then we work with engineer and designer again to make the product better after you gain all the hands-on experience that you learn put them into your portfolio and you'll be able to Showcase it with your HR or the future hiring manager be like hey you know even I don't have a full-time PM title from the past but this is what I did I actually have some transferable skills that key takeaway number four which is also the last one mindset just because I didn't have a PM title I thought that I have no experience I still remember when I signed up of the PM from Camp I spoke to the instructor I was doubting myself so hard because I look at my colleagues I look at my classmates all their experience are fancy they are like Consultants from before they are software Engineers they are data analysts they have technical skill set and I look at myself I'm like who am I I'm just like a cow manager who has no technical degree I was telling my instructor that I don't think I'm gonna make it I don't think I'm ever gonna get a PM job but she was telling me that when you start have this limited belief that's gonna translate in the interview I still remember where I went on this interview that I did and the hiring manager asked me have you worked with Engineers have you led up in a meeting I was like no even though I never let lately stand up meeting but I did have like a recurring meetings with engineer and designer that's transferable so in my men back I'm like yeah my instructor was right so I started to look into my strength I started to do a lot of blog interviews and I started to become more confident and when I started to become more confident I see I'm able to pass the first round of recruiter calls first round interview stick around reviews the mindset pivot it's also very important you just need to be confident and oh things were sold out I think that this kind of mindset doesn't only apply in finding a job it applied to everything you want to do in your life when you start believing start being confident then things were just control so here are my four key takeaways and I hope that my career journey is helpful to you if you have any other questions and would love to connect feel free to leave a comment below and I will read them and get back to you but for right now thank you for watching and see you guys later bye thank you

Channel: Tina Louise Chen

Views: 17,422

Keywords: product manager, product management, how i became a product manager, how to become a product manager, how i became a product manager with no experience, product manager resume, product manager day in the life, product management course, how to be a product manager, product manager interview, product manager interview tips, pm interview, how to get a tech job, pm job interview, product manager salary, get into product management, product, tina louise chen, Chloe Shih, harshibar

Id: eddzyiblzFg

Length: 10min 51sec (651 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 11 2023