10-minute read
Learn everything you need to know to become a product manager. This article explains how to develop your skills, create a product portfolio, and apply for jobs. We also outline different product management career paths and characteristics of different industries.
Companies rely on product managers to drive new products, improve existing offerings, and keep customers satisfied. Product managers are an asset for any business, and demand for qualified product managers continues to grow. If you’re considering a career in product management, this comprehensive article has you covered. This guide provides everything you need to know to develop your skills, perfect your job search, and start your product manager career.
Read on to learn how to become a product manager, or use the links below to jump to a section that interests you:
What is product management?
In an organization, product management is the job function that ensures the success of a product by guiding it through the product life cycle.
Product management is more than just meeting deadlines and coordinating teams. It guides the product’s vision and strategy while fulfilling the business goals of generating revenue and satisfying customers.
Product management starts with the discovery of market needs, the conceptualization of the product, planning, and product management to guide the product to market. After launch, product management guides the product through maturity and to the end of the product life cycle.
What is a product manager?
A product manager is the person within the organization who leads product management for a specific product. Product managers have the varied skillsets needed to scope a product, coordinate teams to create it on time and within expectations, and continually improve the product through its life cycle.
What do product managers do?
To accomplish this, product managers use data analysis and market research skills to identify gaps in the market. Then, they develop use cases to create a product to fill those gaps. They define the product vision and strategy and secure stakeholder buy-in. Then, they create product roadmaps and work to keep all teams aligned and moving in the same direction.
Product managers shepherd that product from concept to completion by coordinating with multidisciplinary teams to build, test, and launch the product. They aim to deliver products on time, within budget, and aligned with the project scope.
Ultimately, doing so will introduce a product that satisfies existing customers or gains new customers and generates revenue for the business.
How to Become a Product Manager
If you’re looking to start a career in product management, you may have asked yourself, “What skills do you need to become a product manager?”
Take time to understand what product managers do, the skills they need, and how they support their companies’ business goals.
Good product managers have skill sets specific to product management and transferable from other fields. Product managers can come from almost any background, and the skills you’ve learned in different roles can support your career as a product manager. Let’s explore how you can become a product manager.
Step 1: Learn the Basics of Product Management
Product managers’ core responsibilities are to identify gaps in the market and deliver profitable products that fulfill those gaps. To do this, aspiring PMs should understand four core product management responsibilities:
- Market Research: Product managers identify customer needs and leverage competitive intelligence to pinpoint gaps in the market that current products can’t satisfy.
- Create Product Roadmaps: Product Roadmaps are the guides that help product managers execute their strategy. They are detailed plans that communicate the direction of your product and illustrate the vision and key phases of deliverables. They should show the “why” behind a product.
- Develop and Guide Product Strategy: A product strategy is a high-level plan that outlines how a product or feature supports a business’s goals. Product managers use this strategic vision to guide a product’s development, launch, and ideation.
- Manage the Product Life Cycle: Product Managers guide their products through all product life cycle stages: development, introduction, growth, maturity, decline, and removal from the market during the product’s end of life.
Understanding core product management tasks can help product managers make data-driven decisions, apply best practices to their products, and deliver value for the customer while driving revenue for their company.
How to learn product management basics
For those immersed in the field of product, these skills may seem second nature. However, developing relevant skills can be difficult if you’re not familiar with product. To learn these product management basics on the job, ask to shadow product managers in your company. Product management training and certifications can also educate you with best practices for these critical skills for product managers. Reading books about product management and following blogs and prominent thought leaders can help you learn the fundamentals and highlight trending topics in product management.
Step 2: Develop Your Skills
Product management requires business acumen, data skills, project management, customer and user experience insight, and soft skills to deliver a product successfully.
Successful product managers need a variety of solid skill sets. These skills help them better understand customers, align with business goals, and bring products to completion. Essential skills for product managers include product skills, technical knowledge, and soft skills.
Step 3: Build Your Portfolio
To land a job, you will need to demonstrate your new product management skills to prospective employers. A portfolio contains case studies of recent products and projects. It should showcase who you are, highlight your professional background and experience, and demonstrate what makes you a great product manager.
Product management portfolios allow you to create one place to showcase your work. Often, portfolios are hosted on professional websites like Squarespace, WordPress, or Adobe Portfolio. Online portfolios showcase projects or products where you have taken on product management roles or responsibilities. Even if you didn’t have a “product manager” title, this is an opportunity to demonstrate relevant skills and show off your product manager mindset. You can link a product portfolio in your resume and job cover letter, on your LinkedIn, and/or provide it personally via email correspondence during the application and interview process.
Here are some examples of Product Management Portfolios:
- Dan Shetty: Shetty’s portfolio site highlights his background and past roles, seamlessly creating a narrative that explains where he’s been and where he hopes to go. As a note for anyone changing careers, Shetty highlights that his first degree was in psychology and highlights this as an asset to his PM Career
- Reza Rezaeipour: Rezaeipour’s product manager portfolio is on a single-page website. This layout highlights his career path in chronological order, and the visual prominence of the portfolio section highlights his most important projects.
Step 4: Get a Product Management Certification
If you’re new to product management or want a leg up in the interview process, consider pursuing a Product Management Certification. Certifications are courses taught by product management experts to equip students with the skills they need to be effective product managers.
Here are some benefits of product management certifications:
- Taught by experts
- Focus on industry best practices to help you develop hands-on skills
- Comprehensive coverage of topics with a structured learning path
- Hands-on learning with independent projects, group discussions, and tangible examples to put course material into action
- Accessible resources (such as product roadmapping templates) you can leverage in your product manager role
- Expert advice on building portfolios and applying for jobs
- Connection to networks of product management professionals.
- A certification from a credible, recognized product management entity
Completing a product management certification shows that you are committed to your career and have gained the skills needed to excel in your role from a trusted educator.
How to choose a product management certification
Product management certifications are not created equal. Some may cover all of the points recommended above, while others focus only on specific aspects. To find the best product management certification for you, consider your needs and what you’re looking for from a certification. Then, select a program that meets or exceeds those needs within your schedule and budget. If you’re interested in completing a product management certification, you can learn more here.
Step 5: Network
Although networking can be intimidating, it is a crucial step to meeting product professionals and landing your first job as a product manager. It creates strong connections with peers in the field, opens the door to new career opportunities, and provides a wellspring of insight and mentorship. If you’re new to networking, here are some simple ways to get started.
- Network in your company. If you are in an unrelated profession, such as marketing or UX design, look to product professionals in your own company! You already have something in common. Explain that you want to learn more about their role within the organization and product in general.
- Tap your professional network. Use tools like LinkedIn or college alum communities to find contacts (or friends of contacts) in product. You’ll be surprised at how many product professionals are just 1 or 2 degrees of separation away from you.
- Pragmatic’s Alumni Community: Anyone who has taken a Product course with Pragmatic Institute has access to Pragmatic’s Alumni Community, an online community of thousands of product professionals who have completed courses and certifications from Pragmatic. You can connect with product pros eager to offer advice and best practices to industry veterans and new professionals.
Above all, you should network in a way that feels comfortable. Professional events, conferences, and casual mixers are great options for connecting with multiple people. Or, if you want to have a deeper conversation with one person, one-on-one conversations over coffee might be preferable. You can also join professional forums (on Slack, Discord, or Reddit) to chat and connect with other product pros virtually.
Start small and build your network slowly. Having a few quality connections is far better than having many surface-level connections.
Step 6: Apply For Your First Product Management Job
Once you’ve learned the essential skills to become a product manager, created your portfolio, and built your professional network, it’s time to apply for your first product management job!
Like any other job, you should tailor your resume and cover letter to highlight your relevant experiences and skills for the job you’re applying for. Highlight relevant or transferable skills that will support your work in this role or industry. If you are new to product management, your resume and cover letter should demonstrate the work you’ve done to educate yourself on the role and the field.
You can find product manager job openings on job boards like:
- Indeed.com
- Zip Recruiter
- Product Manager HQ
- Mind the Product
- Product Hired
If you want to pursue a role as a product manager within your current company, check with your manager and product team members to discuss potential opportunities and openings. If so, this is an excellent opportunity to break into product because you are already familiar with the organization and industry and have already shown your value to the company.
To break into product management, consider Product Manager roles at small companies or pre-seed startups.
You can also explore Associate Product Manager internship programs with companies like Google, Atlassian, or LinkedIn. Another route is to apply for product-adjacent roles like marketing or software development at larger companies. Establish yourself within the company, develop a strong working relationship with the product team, and work with your supervisor to create a career plan to transition into product.
Step 7: Ace the Interview
Remember that professional interviewing guidelines still apply during the interview process regardless of how you land your first interview. Be courteous and positive, and show the work you’ve done to start your career as a product manager.
Before your interview, brush up on common product manager interview questions and answer strategies. When you’re done, remember to thank your interviewers for their time via email or a written note. Send it within 24 hours.
Whether you land the job or not, asking for feedback once you’ve received the final decision will help you strengthen your interviewing skills for future positions.
Product Manager Career Paths
If you’re beginning your product career, you might ask, “What is the standard product manager career path?” There is no set way to become a product manager, but we will explore typical milestones.
Education
Most product managers have at least a bachelor’s degree. You will find that almost all product jobs require a bachelor’s degree or college education. However, developing the skills to become a product manager without a degree is possible.
Product manager roles don’t typically require MBAs or other graduate-level business degrees. However, skills you learn in an MBA, such as financial analysis, strategic thinking and business principles, may lend themselves to product management. When applying for product management roles, be sure to highlight relevant skills (and don’t worry if your educational background doesn’t directly match the job description).
Work experience
About half of product professionals begin in other fields. Since product managers draw on skills from multiple disciplines, including business, finance, marketing, user experience, and software (to name just a few), it’s common for product managers to start in those fields or related roles.
Within product, product marketers, UI/UX experts, designers, engineers, and developers may branch into product management.
Can you become a product manager with no experience?
There is no specified set of qualifications for prospective product managers. Becoming a product manager without a degree or relevant product experience is possible, but breaking into your first role may take time.
As a rule, candidates with relevant experience or past roles in product will have the upper hand when interviewing for a PM role. Additionally, a joint report from the Burning Glass Institute, The Business-Higher Education Forum, and Wiley found that at all experience levels, workers with product management skills have higher earning potential than workers without product management skills.
Steve Gaylor, a Pragmatic Institute instructor with over 25 years of experience in product management and product marketing, says that if you want to become a product manager with no experience, “The trick is to gain product management experience without actually having the title. Ask a product manager in your company what you can do to help with some of their daily product management responsibilities. That will allow you to gain experience with key product management concepts and see if Product Management is right for you.”
Product Manager Job Titles
Your career doesn’t stop at becoming a product manager. Let’s explore different job titles in product management career paths. Remember that job descriptions and requirements vary from company to company.
Associate Product Manager
0-2 Years of Experience
Brand-new product professionals may begin as associate product managers. This entry-level role uses transferable and soft skills to support more experienced product pros. This role can take on similar titles, such as Junior Product Manager. Once Associate Product Managers develop product skills, they can take on more independent work and require less hands-on supervision. According to Payscale’s 2024 data, the average salary for an Associate Product Manager in the United States is $77,770 per year.
Product Manager
3-5 Years of Experience
Product Managers are equipped to lead all stages of product development from development to launch, and maintain products through the end of the product life cycle. During this process, they collaborate with developers, marketers, designers, and stakeholders to show how it connects to business goals. According to Payscale in 2024, the average salary for a Product Manager in the United States is $94,709 per year.
Senior Product Manager
5-7 Years of Experience
The Senior Product Manager role typically encompasses the responsibilities of a product manager (including end-to-end product support) while managing junior team members. According to Payscale, the average salary for a Senior Product Manager in the United States is $131,858 per year.
Director of Product
7-10 Years of Experience
The Director of Product focuses on leading teams, optimizing processes, establishing alignment and buy-in, and ensuring that products are delivered on time and to expectations. According to Payscale, in the United States the average salary for a Director of Product is $139,314 per year.
VP of Product
10+ Years of Experience
The VP of Product sets the tone for the company. While titles may differ, VPs of Product often report to the CEO and manage overall productivity, staffing, and budgets for product teams. According to Payscale, in the United States, average salary for a VP of Product Management is $173,800 per year.
Chief Product Officer
10+ Years of Experience
Chief Product Officers manage the strategic direction of a portfolio of products and are typically responsible for the highest strategic level of product vision and ensuring that current and future products align with business goals. According to Payscale, the average salary for a Chief Product Officer is $199,697 per year.
Fields of Product Management
Product Manager is not a one-size-fits-all role. Different skill sets and backgrounds can play into the various responsibilities of different types of product managers. Here, we outline different product management roles and how their responsibilities differ.
Technical Product Management
Technical product managers work closely with development and engineering teams to develop product roadmaps that align with company goals. They are responsible for translating complex concepts between development experts and other teams, so they must be able to do that accurately and completely.
While researching product management roles, you may see the acronym FAANG – this stands for Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google. FAANG Product Managers are responsible for products offered by these juggernaut tech companies (and sometimes their peers, such as Microsoft or Meta). These roles are highly competitive and require deep technical knowledge to quickly deliver products that meet user needs and drive company goals.
How to become a technical product manager: If you want to become a technical product manager, starting with or gaining experience in computer science, engineering, or IT is beneficial. Having a baseline understanding of the technical challenges and workflows for technical projects is immensely helpful. Stay up to date on technology trends by following industry newsletters and attending workshops and conferences when possible.
Software Product Management
Software product managers specifically focus on developing, launching, and maintaining software products. They interface with software developers to crystallize the product vision, create a roadmap, and ensure that products and features are delivered. Software PMs may have technical backgrounds such as computer science or software development; experience in the field is often desired in job listings.
How to become: Like technical product managers, knowing computer science or IT fundamentals can help you on your path to becoming a software product manager. Familiarity with programming languages, databases, and software architecture can help too.
Digital Product Management
Digital product managers are responsible for products that are developed and delivered electronically, such as apps and online services. Their responsibilities may overlap with those of a software product manager. Digital product managers should be able to translate technical information between cross-functional collaborators.
How to become a digital product manager: More important than educational background is a demonstrated understanding of digital products and platforms, including e-commerce platforms, web and mobile applications, and other digital services. Familiarity with UI/UX best practices can help aspiring digital product managers demonstrate relevant knowledge.
Data Product Management
A Data product manager is responsible for data product management within an organization, which includes data collection, architecture, storage, and access. Data product managers leverage data through the product lifecycle (beyond the development phase) so that the final feature or product has been informed by data.
How to become a data product manager: For data product managers, demonstrated competency in statistics, data science, analytics, or related fields is helpful. Advanced degrees in Data Science or Business Analytics can be advantageous but are not required to become a data product manager. Proficiency in programming languages like R and Python, databases like SQL, and data visualization tools like Power BI and Tableau can help you fulfill the requirements of the role. You should also understand regulations and compliance guidelines that affect data collection, analysis, and distribution.
Healthcare Product Management
Healthcare product managers are responsible for understanding the needs of end users of healthcare products – these users might be patients, caregivers, healthcare providers, or other professionals in the healthcare industry.
How to become a healthcare product manager: Aspiring healthcare PMs can benefit from having an educational background or work experience in healthcare administration, public health, biology, or related fields. Furthermore, advanced decrees like healthcare management-focused MBAs or Master’s in Public Health (MPF) can be beneficial. Regardless, familiarity with the healthcare system, terminology, patient care, and legal and ethical constraints (such as HIPAA regulations) is important for anyone in a healthcare PM role.
Finance Product Management
Finance product managers oversee the development, launch, and maintenance of financial services products such as loans, checking and savings accounts, and investment funds. While they may have input on products like apps or online account management portals, they focus on the actual financial service offering.
How to become a finance product manager: Advanced finance degrees, such as an MBA with a finance concentration, can set finance product managers up for success. Regardless, understanding financial products and services, and the legal and regulatory constraints on financial systems, can be advantageous. Learning technical skills such as coding languages and data science techniques can help as well.
Key Takeaways + Next Steps
Anyone can be a Product Manager. There is no single path to becoming a product manager, and professionals from all backgrounds can start a product management career. Whether you start with formal education, gain relevant work experience in other roles, or develop skills through product management certifications and independent learning, there are multiple entry points into this field.
Develop Product-Specific and Transferable Skills. Aspiring product managers should focus on building robust skill sets that include product skills, technical knowledge, and soft skills like communication and project management.
Focus Your Job Search. Earning certifications, developing a portfolio of product management work, networking, and honing interview skills can help aspiring candidates find roles.
Bridge the Gap. Product managers sit at the intersection of business, technology, and user experience. They are responsible for ensuring that products meet customers’ needs and thrive in the market.
Next Steps
Are you ready to become a product manager? Fantastic!
- Stay on top of the latest trends and topics in product management with our live and on-demand webinars.
- Earn a Product Management Certification with our expert-led courses. We’ll equip you with the tools, tactics, and templates you need to make an impact on your first day in your new product management career.
- Check out our free library of Resources for Product Managers.
