Product management is growing to be the most rewarding career in 2022.
Product Managers are endowed with the responsibility of developing products through functional strategies for increasing marketing and sales. The job comes with a lot of responsibility and yet it is amongst the most popular jobs globally.
There are currently 41,370 people employed in the US as product managers. The data suggests that there is high competition for product managers in the job market. To land a product manager job, you need to have specific knowledge, skillset, and experience.
Here you will get an in-depth understanding of product management and how to become a product manager by finding answers to the following questions:
- What is a product manager?
- Why product manager is important for a company?
- How to become a product manager?
- What are product manager roles and responsibilities?
- What is the average salary of a product manager?
- How do I start a career in product management?
- What skills do you need to become a product manager?
- What is the eligibility to become a product manager?
What Is a Product Manager?
Product managers are the people who play a vital role in the success of a product. For example, if iPhones have become immensely popular, the credit can be given not only to Steve Jobs but to the whole team, which comprises product managers as well.
Product Management involves planning, developing, managing, and growing a product. From the conception of an idea of the product to its market success, everything falls under product management. As a product manager, you will look at the whole lifecycle of a product.
Product managers collaborate with individuals and teams to guarantee timely delivery of the product with appropriate features. They make informed decisions based on research and data analytics.
Why Product Manager Is Important for a Company?
Product managers have an intricate understanding of the needs of the customers and the overall goals of the company. It is this knowledge that makes them unique assets to the organizations.
Launching a new product can be easy but ensuring it is a success can be extremely difficult. A company makes a profit when its product is in demand. There are a lot of challenges involved due to the tough competition in the business world.
Product managers research and know their target customer needs, build a product vision and try to deliver the maximum from the company’s ROI. They have to come up with plans to bring life to a product and make it flourish in the market.
It is the responsibility of looking at a product from its inception to disposal single-handedly on the product management team is what makes them so important to the organization.
How to Become a Product Manager?
To be a product manager would require you to follow a complete process just the way you would be managing the whole process from life to the disposal of a product in the market. You can follow 7 simple steps to become a product manager.
Define a Career Path
To start with, you need to first set a career path that you will follow to become a product manager. This is done by acquiring a degree or specializing through a training program. MBA is the most common degree for a product management role.
Specialized training sessions offered by the Association of International Product Marketing & Management can give insights and required knowledge for product management. Their certifications are at par with international standards preparing you for the best industry-related experience.
Learn the Fundamentals of Product Management
To become a product manager, you need to have an understanding of how product managers work at uniting technology, business, and user experience. From ideation to launch followed by marketing and sales, an aspiring product manager needs to understand the fundamentals of all the concepts involved in the process.
An easy way could be enrolling in certification for structured learning. You will learn the basics and hone the technical skills required to be an effective product manager.
Reach Out to People in the Same Field
Once you have gained all the necessary skills and knowledge, it is time to gather some real-time knowledge from people working in the same career field. Ask questions related to product management that you might not find anywhere else.
Drawing an inside knowledge would help you prepare mentally for an upward career graph as a product manager. You can make use of networking to accomplish this step.
Research and Study Your Field
Researching is essential if you want to learn how to develop a product to fill the market niche. Read about case studies and the strategies that were followed. Learn about the essential skills for product management and imbibe them within yourself.
Use this phase to enhance yourself with knowledge, skills, and temperament. A product manager has to look out for areas related to business, technology, and customer experience. Therefore, having ample knowledge through research becomes extremely important.
Create a Portfolio of Projects
Make your practice projects so that you can learn hands-on experience in product development and management. You can break the product development process into different steps, like building prototypes, user testing, and analysis, estimating the cost, and so forth.
Building a product is a collaborative effort. There is an involvement of the whole team and even if you are unable to build a complete life cycle of a product in your portfolio, the individual steps will help you brainstorm and make strategies.
Having a portfolio would also make you stand out from the crowd when you will be approached by the recruiters, as it will demonstrate your skills and expertise in product development.
Prepare Your Resume and Elevator Pitch
Preparing your product management resume is as important as learning the skills and knowledge. A splendid resume should contain all the necessary information in the right order with the required keywords.
You need to sit down and think of an impressive objective that aligns with your goals and conveys that it is only you who is the best fit for a product management job.
If you are in a gathering of entrepreneurs, keep your product management elevator pitch ready so that you do not miss out on the opportunity to gain their attention.
Also Read: How to write elevator pitch to create astounding first impression?
Apply and Appear for the Interview
Once everything on the resume looks perfect, start applying for product management jobs. Ensure to study the company you are applying to and come up with wonderful ideas to slay in the interview.
Mostly in product management interviews, your ability to think strategically, technical knowledge, detail orientation, and research skills will be tested.
Also Read: How to write a stellar product manager resume in 2022?
What Are Product Manager Roles and Responsibilities?
The roles and responsibilities of a product manager are very crucial to the success of the product and the organization. Since they have to come to terms with lots of stakeholders who might even have conflicting opinions, product managers need to suggest to them the right approach in the right manner.
Here are some crucial roles and responsibilities of a product manager:
- A product manager coordinates with the marketing, sales, and product development team for the smooth development and success of the product.
- Through experience and skills, a product manager keeps the risks of a product failure at bay.
- By aligning the goals of the company and the market needs, a product manager has to ensure the product is developed accordingly.
- Product managers are responsible for carrying out market research to understand the competition and make strategies to be at the number one position.
- Running tests to check the product’s beta version and suggesting ways to improve them is also among the most common roles that a product manager performs.
- Product managers also lead the internal team and explain the needs of the market to fetch maximum output from them.
What Is the Average Salary of a Product Manager?
The average salary of a product manager in the US is $89,628. On top, product managers also get a cash bonus of $8,000 per year. The highest paying cities for product managers in the US is Seattle with an average of $100,567 and Austin with an average of $92,682 per year.
Here are some top companies that hire product managers aggressively:
- Meta
- Boeing
- Oracle
- Block
- Workday
- Walmart
- Accenture
- Amazon
- Intel Corporation
- Samsung Electronic
Also Read: What is the detailed salary breakdown of product managers?
How Do I Start a Career in Product Management?
If you want to start a career in product management, you need to have a copious amount of information related to technology. As a product manager, you will have to interact with businesspeople and explain to them the technological concepts in layman’s terms if needed.
Other skills include communication skills, collaborative skills, and research abilities. Once you have acquired all the required skills, you can look for companies that offer associate product management programs. They hire fresh graduates in computer science or related field.
Another way to start a career in product management is through switching job roles or internal transfer. As per reports, about 86 percent of people who are in product management started their careers in different fields.
Some skills and responsibilities often overlap in fields like engineering, customer service, and technical documentation. Overtime when professionals working in such fields start accepting different projects and suggest ways to enhance product reach, they are offered the role of product managers.
Pursuing an MBA can be another career approach as it will open doors to go into specific product management fields, such as technical product management, product marketing manager, and group product managers.
An MBA would also allow you to explore product management-related fields. You can get into these and build a career or, after acquiring knowledge, shift to a product manager profile.
Here are some common job profiles available for a product manager.
- Sales Manager
- Marketing Manager
- Brand Manager
- Business Development Manager
Also Read: What are the different product manager jobs available in 2022?
What Skills Do You Need to Become a Product Manager?
As a product manager, you need to possess certain skills that can be categorized into hard and soft skills. The soft skills will include managing the team and collaborating with them while the hard skills will include prototyping and analytics.
Here are some essential skills that a product manager should have:
| Hard Skills | Soft Skills |
|---|---|
| Prototyping | Collaboration |
| Analytics | Communication Skills |
| UX/UI Knowledge | Empathy |
| SEO | Leadership Skills |
| Coding | Time Management |
| A/B Testing | Emotional Intelligence |
| Software Development | Decision-making Skills |
| Agile Methodology Knowledge | Creativity |
| Database Management | Administration Skills |
Also Read: What are some common interview questions for a product manager?
What Is the Eligibility to Become a Product Manager?
To become a product manager, it is necessary to complete your bachelor’s degree in computer science or business administration. You can also choose to pursue a bachelor's in other related fields like economics, advertising, marketing and communications, and statistics.
Having an MBA would give you the advantage of standing ahead of the competition, as you will gain extensive knowledge related to the field you have chosen. A product management degree at a master’s level will allow you to land a great opportunity with big IT firms.
Besides education, you should focus on upgrading your skills. Without the skills, you will not be able to thrive in the product management world. Hence, ensure you get the right skills through certifications.
Here are some certifications that can help you become more effective at core responsibilities, thereby enhancing your skills for a product management role:
*Certified Product Marketing Manager by AIPMM
*Agile Certified Product Manager and Product Owner course by AIPMM
*Software Product Management course by University of Alberta
*MicroMasters Program in Digital Product Management by edX
*Professional Scrum Foundations Training by Scrum[dot]org
*Brand and Product Management by Coursera
Key Takeaways
A product manager is a product wizard who gives life to a product and also shapes its future through marketing and sales. They showcase their talent by becoming market experts, taking up challenges related to a product, and solving them.
If you are planning to become a product manager, keep these points in mind to build an exemplary career in the product management field.
- A product manager is an essential part of the success of an organization as it is them who is responsible for the life cycle of a product.
- To become a successful product manager, get a product manager degree in a related field and hone your skills.
- Your role would require you to interact with stakeholders. You should be able to cater to them while reaching the overall goals of your organization.
- The average salary of a product manager is $89,628. With experience, the salary growth is immense in the product management field.
- Technical skills will play an essential role in working as a product manager. Upgrade it by obtaining various certifications available online.
- If you have a master’s degree, you can stand a better chance to work with big firms like Meta, Accenture, and Amazon.
Being an active job seeker, you might also be looking for resume-building assistance because of tough competition for product managers across the globe.
Hiration's Online Resume Builder is the best pick for such cases, as it comes with AI-powered features to help you build a job-winning product manager resume. It also has 24/7 chat aid and professional assistance with all your job & career-related queries.
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