Benji
Latest posts by Benji (see all)
- The Art of Product Journaling – Investing in your Product Management Career. - March 27, 2022
- How to break into Product and work for Google 🙌 - March 24, 2022
“How do I get into Product?”
“How do I become a better product manager?”
“How can I do Product at Google?”
Those are just a few key questions aspiring product managers ask over the years. Within this article, I’m going to quickly cover my 12 year adventure where a dream became a goal, and a goal became a lifestyle journey to becoming a product manager at one of the most highly respected technology organizations in the world – Google. I’ll also provide actionable steps you can take to progress towards your product management goals, regardless of the stage in your journey.
About 12 years ago, I was watching a documentary on the most interesting places to work, and it just so happened to focus on this strange technology company’s office located in Silicon Valley. Employees would ride quirky bikes, eat free food all day, nap in pods, get massages, and wear these colorful helicopter hats which I thought were silly. This office was the Google Headquarters, and I remember telling my mother that I wanted to work there one day.
About 7 years ago, I graduated from my university with a degree in business management and found myself working in a technology project management role at Walmart Labs. The crazy part of it all? I had very little technology experience. In fact, I spent most of the first year insecure about my ability to succeed in a technology space and almost pivoted my career entirely. Until a shift in my direct manager had placed me directly under a product management leader.
Being naturally entrepreneurial in mindset, I found this role to be extraordinarily exciting. The Product Manager was the CEO of the product, visionair of the space, knower of all, and seeker of customer truths!
I committed myself to learning more about the world of product. I went so far as to buy a black moleskin journal which I called my Product Journal. Every learning about the science of product, I recorded in this book. It helped me synthesize the information better and it allowed me to reflect back to the techniques I learned. I read books, searched online for best practices from companies like Google, Apple, and consultant white papers with cross-industry vantage points. I began to seek out mentors who had 15 years of experience as a product manager, and I picked their brains on conceptual methodologies. From my leadership studies at the university, I knew that I was a kinesthetic-interactive learner. At the time, I was still a project manager and If I were going to become a product manager, I needed product experience. I began to work overtime and pick up additional tasks on my team by asking various product managers if they needed any help. Luckily for me, they were swamped with work and more than happy to receive my support.
Throughout that year, I was in a hybrid role where my title was still project manager but my responsibilities became mostly product related. It didn’t matter to me. In my eyes, I wanted knowledge and experience. I never thought I would say this but I began to genuinely enjoy my day job which led to a passion for this career path. My mind was made up: I will become a great product manager and work at a great product organization.
I used Linkedin to reach out to 15 Google employees and one responded with a recommendation to apply on the job posting site. Within 3 months, I found myself in my first interview for Google. Unfortunately, I was rejected because I wasn’t ready. So I asked myself, what was I missing?
I took all my learnings and developed a skill matrix artifact which represented the skills every great product manager should have.
The skill matrix included key areas from product discovery, development, analysis, strategy, leadership, technicals, marketing and more. I gave myself a score for each skill using a one through five scale. One being “I don’t know the skill”, and five establishing me as a coach to others. After adding a few color codes, I was able to zoom out and identify my strengths and weaknesses. From this moment forward, I dedicated the next 4 years of my career to filling in the gaps. Each role, each promotion, each project which I embarked on – I strategically chose the approach which helped me learn what I don’t know. In some cases, I missed out on opportunities which could have taken my previous experience and allowed me to reapply them in a new setting because I decided to choose the opportunity which was foreign. It helped me grow fast. I even started two technology products outside of work, one which was a native mobile app on the iOS and Android store and the other was an ecommerce website which required zero coding experience.
After two more attempts applying at Google, I was finally able to break in. Four months ago I was hired as a product manager at Google, a dream of twelve years and a goal of five. How did I do it? Well, let’s highlight the most important actions and tools you can apply to your own career which can one day get you landed at a company like Google.
- First, you need to understand what a product manager is.
- Start a product journal and record your learnings.
- Do research on key concepts and best practices. Read white papers and product books – my favorite was INSPIRED by Mart Cagan.
- Attend product conferences and meet other product managers.
- Find mentors who exhibit years of product expertise and pick their brain.
- Second, you need to pick up product experience and fall in love with it.
- Apply for entry level product roles internally or externally. If that’s too difficult, apply for roles near a product manager just to get closer such as engineers, analysts, business stakeholders, end users, marketers.
- Let product managers know you’re interested in learning and ask if they need help.
- Build a product outside of work using your free time – you don’t need to know how to code. Setting up an ecommerce website using shopify, or starting a blog, or contributing on a topic on Reddit are easy ways to sharpen your product management skills.
- Third, if you realize you love it, make a commitment to become great at it.
- Create a skills matrix or use my proposed framework to define what an end state vision looks like. You need to create a mental model on what your long term target is.
- Identify the gaps in your knowledge and everyday you come into work, make sure your professional development plan focuses on filling them in with experience.
- Write articles about your learnings and begin coaching others who need it. By speaking about what you know, you will better synthesize your learnings and engrave fundamental methodologies on your mind long term.
- Fourth, most importantly, don’t give up.
- Cultivate a growth mindset which always grows and continues to learn forever.
- Embrace rejection. Your ideas, techniques, artifacts, and methodologies will sometimes get rejected by peers. Eventually you’ll get better and start seeing more acceptance of them.
- Keep applying for that dream company and view the interview rejection process as a learning opportunity. Reflect on it. Adjust. And keep trying.
Ultimately, the journey is yours, and yours only. What you put in is what you get out. I can only wish you the best on your adventure. If you’re looking for a bit more guidance, I welcome you to reach out to me on my linkedin. I’ll be more than willing to lend a hand and give advice to aspiring PMs.
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📅 If you ever have any questions, feel free to book time with me for a quick PM consultation session.
