Thursday, March 13 - "How Can I Enter Product Management?"

Happy Thursday!

Here’s what’s on the job description for today:

1. New roles from one of the biggest players in financial media.

2. Today’s Question: “I’m fascinated by product management and would like to explore it as a career field. How do I best transition into that area?”

IN HIRING

Bloomberg

• What was once a news company has become far more than that, working in a vast array of financial ecosystems.

• There are ~300 roles available on their website currently with most in North America, UK, and Singapore.

• Here are a few of the most interesting roles available

  • Media Manager - Click here for full details

  • Enterprise Sales - Click here for full details

  • Product Manager - Click here for full details

Click here for the company’s career page

TODAY’S QUESTION

Today’s Question: “I’m fascinated by product management and would like to explore it as a career field. How do I best transition into that area?”

Recommendation: product is a wildly interesting space so I get why you’d be interested. You’d be able to see visually your work and have a more immediate impact than in other roles. Here’s what I’ve seen work:

• First, know that if you have no product experience, you’re going to struggle. This is by no means a wall you cannot get through but it is difficult even for people with the relevant experience.

  • If you fall into the category of “interested but no experience”, I would recommend using an LLM to get a list of the key things you’ll need to understand and focusing some time on getting used to those topics.

  • You will then need to find companies where you do have subject matter expertise and network like a person with a dream and limited options.

• Second, if you have some experience but it’s not perfectly relevant to what is expected in the market, I recommend finding a transitionary step.

  • The best I’ve seen is small companies that are willing to bring you in on either a contract basis or full time. In the startup world, grit and passion can sometimes be valued higher than relevant experience.

• Finally, whichever background you come from, it’s worth knowing what is trending in the product space you’re interested in.

  • The candidates I’ve helped find roles in product knew AI and ML well. They had some experience and found ways to insert this limited experience in conversations as much as was appropriate.

  • Those candidates that are in high demand right now are able to talk about experience with generative artificial intelligence. This is THE THING every product interviewer is interested in at the moment. Here is a link to McKinsey explaining what it is.

Conclusion:

Product is awesome and I completely understand the interest. Now it’s time to do some research and become valuable!