How do you become a product manager? What does it take to get hired for a job, you technically have never done before? This is a common question that I hear from many people who are interested in becoming a part of the product manager world. It’s somewhat hard to sum up briefly but my advice would be this; Learn the entire business as a whole. Learn all the intricacies around how money is made and how are your products being manufactured. What are the downstream impacts of changes that happen at various levels of the organization? You must know a bit about every functional area of the organization to be successful as a product manager. Next I would say is form relationships, have great communication skills and present yourself well. Leadership without authority is a trait to every great product manager and that starts and ends with relationships and being a master communicator.
A product manager is someone who manages a product as if they had their own mini business to run. They are responsible for everything from understanding the market needs through closing the product when it is in market decline. A product manager MUST manage all financial and non-financial variables in order to optimize the success and life of the product within the market.
There’s no Masters of Product Management degree or any other degree in product management excellence, so how will people know that you have been trained on PM? How do you get a leg up on the competition going forward to be sure you get the next opening within your company, or somewhere else? One recommendation is to get certified! Your product management professional certification through Sequent Learning Network is something you add to your resume, put on linkedIn or even hang the certificate within your office. Simply sign up for a 2 or 3 day Product Management Essentials class either through our public program or an in-house corporate class and you’ll be eligible to take the certification exam.