I'm a PM with a background spanning 8 years, (5 years as pm)at both a top investment bank and a Tier 3 SaaS company (think Yelp, Walmart, Yahoo). After experiencing a layoff in March, I found myself ok with decent severance. I made the decision to take around 4 months off to travel, considering the challenging job market at the time (I applied to 200 jobs back in march and it amounted to nothing). Despite my initial optimism that the job market would improve, I've since realized that I was dead wrong. Over the past 2.5 months, here are the statistics from my job search: - Submitted applications to 816 job openings. - Secured 37 initial interviews (approximately 4.5% response rate) - Progressed to 12 mid-round interviews. - Reached the final stages in 3 interview processes ZERO OFFERS! Unfortunately, despite reaching the final stages in multiple interviews, I haven't received any job offers. In two cases, I lost out to candidates with significantly more years of experience (15 and 20 years, respectively). I was able to gather this information through LinkedIn research and communication with recruiters. During this time, I have meticulously reviewed my resume, both professionally and with the assistance of Chat GPT. I believe my resume is not the issue; rather, I suspect the problem may lie in my interview performance. I've been receiving interviews from a mix of top-tier companies, mid-sized enterprises, and startups, indicating that my qualifications are competitive. Additionally, I have invested approximately 75 hours on my interview skills through Exponent, focusing on product case questions and behavioral preparation. However, I acknowledge that I need to practice mock interviews more rigorously to refine these skills. I have also dedicated substantial time to self-education in various technical areas, some of which haven't even been directly addressed in interviews: - Completed the CS50 course. - Mastered API fundamentals, developer documentation, and worked with tools like Postman. - Explored machine learning modeling and emphasized the importance of data and function as a Product Manager (although I understand this might not be directly applicable in my current job search). - Focused on cloud Now, I'd like to address a few specific questions and concerns: 1. My primary challenge lies in interviews and presenting myself as a polished candidate. I'm unsure whether this is a matter of personality, communication style, or my ability to articulate my thoughts cohesively. While I've made significant improvements, it appears to be my major roadblock. Additionally, I might just have a resting b**** face, as one interviewer mentioned that the hiring manager believed I looked I was bored. What suggestions do you have for improvement in this area? 2. Beyond interview preparation, are there any additional strategies or resources you recommend that have proven helpful in your job search? Should I consider learning more technical concepts, hiring a coach or mentor, or intensifying my mock interview practice? #pm #layoffs #productmanager 3. I still want to be a PM but may consider taking a role outside of PM to pay the bills and not complete exhaust my savings, is there any roles you recommend applying too? I honestly heard tech sales was just as bad after checking out /techsales reddit. Maybe solutions architect or product owner (also limited roles I've seen)? I'm afraid if I take this though I'll be back in the same boat of trying to get back into PM in the first place where I was 5 years back. I just want to fucking work and feel like my life is falling apart only have 4 more months before I'm out of savings. TC pre layoff $172k Senior PM LCOL UPDATE DEC 5 2023: Hi All - Some people were asking here for further update so here it is 1.5 months later (keep in mind I have had a few drinks tonight): I am emotionally and soon to be financially drained at this point. I have about 4 months left in savings before I decide to take a hardship loan out of my 401k. I would have loved to come back to this thread and announce that I received an offer and give hope to many of you, but that is not the case unfortunately. I just received another final round rejection after 5 rounds of interviewing. I am still receiving a fair amount of first round interviews and getting further in the process at places but still have no offers. Here are my stats I have kept track of to date (4 months of hardcore looking all together): UPDATED STATS: - Submitted applications to 1265 job openings (originally 816 in mid/late October) - Secured 58 initial interviews (approximately 4.6% response rate) - Progressed to 21 mid-round interviews (originally 12 in October) - Reached the final stages in 6 interview processes (originally 3 in October) STILL ZERO OFFERS! I am now just considering leaving the field all together the issue is I have started applying other places that have not been successful either: Technical Program Managers, IT Project Manager, and Strategy roles. I am considering applying to be a Firemen or Police Officer as I have always wanted to do that and giving up on my career. I'm not even kidding lol, yes maybe a little drunk right now writing this. I'm thinking about this role 5 years from now, if its this bad now how shitty will it be in 5 years when we have AI for everything. I feel the PM career path similar to recruiter and technical writers are the first to signal where we are headed towards in society in 5-10 years. How the fuck did I and some of you end up in this mess? I am extremely hardworking and ambitious, what I thought would have been a viable path 6 years ago turned into a complete nightmare. People are so optimistic about Q1 2024 being a great turn around but I seriously doubt it. We may see minimal growth at best. Anyways for those still struggling out there this is for you to let you know you are not alone.
Braggart
It's actually the opposite of bragging I'm just giving realistic portrayal of how hard it is to show how broken this job market is and I still can't get a job. The only reason I mentioned the break I took is too give context I have been out of work for so long and am exhausting my savings. I prepped like crazy for these interviews and haven't gotten anything.
We need less PMs and more engineers focused on perf and quality rather than silly big bets all the time. This is a good sign.
I get what you are saying and actually agree. I wish I would have become an engineer and am learning to code for fun on the side. But what do you tell the people that got into this several years back and have been successful building products moving up? Do you just tell them to F off and go be a taxi driver? Yes there is an over abundance of PM's and a market correction was needed but its still unfortunate for those who decided on this path several years back. Like if I knew something like this could happen I might have gone into sales or actually learned to code.
Engineering roles would be easily outsourced( too many engineers outside US who can do the same job for less) , not the same for PM. OP if you have been good in your role , you should not loose hope
Hey OP, please DM me if you want to practice mock interviews
Markets shit and if you pivot to something like sales like Microsoft said u might have a hard time getting back into product imo
Hi, the market is tough- I am struggling as well. Can you share how you ‘ Mastered API fundamentals, developer documentation, and worked with tools like Postman.’ ?
Sure so I have built API's for the past several years in various positions but wanted to make sure I could speak through it fluently on an interview. This is how I prepped: 1) Watch youtube videos on API's for PM's and technical API's and how they work to wrap your head around how and why they are built. Here are a couple good videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1-hInXPCZw&t=2958s - from pm standpoint https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXsD0ZgxjRw - way more technical I think you should try to map end to end why you building the API product, what is the data being used for the necessity of an API, tradeoffs and the whole flow in process of how it actually works (request/response, authentication, endpoints, rate limiting, error handling, versioning, security, ect....) you don't need to be able to code this as a PM but I think you need to to understand all of these concepts to be able to speak fluently when on interviews. I think also just a really good understanding of the internet and how it works will help you wrap your head around this if you don't have this foundation. 2) Understanding the developer documentation of an API - Chat GPT is god mode here I literally spent hours on chat gpt just going through how to properly document an API and this will suit you well on in interviews. CGPT is so awesome to just go deep into every nuance of proper documentation of all the things I mentioned in point #1. This is probably most important when being a non-technical PM to have this foundations of what engineers require when integrating with an API your team creates. Stripe has really good API documentation examples as well. 3. Postman - This is a tool used to test your endpoints and actually test to see if your API is working and test sample request/responses. If your PM that can actually use Post-Man and help your team test these endpoints and configs you are a level above a non-tech pm who has no idea what this is. Keep in mind I am not developer but this is just my opinion here on things I used to be able to speak about the subject and not sound like a "deer in headlights". I am sure there is a lot more information out there.
Saving this for later- great response OP.
DM for referrel for Microsoft, can give you some leads on who’s hiring
PM sent. Thank you friend!
Hi friend, I respect the work you're putting in. You're doing the exact right things. Too many shitty PM's out there who can't even spell API. I have tremendous respect for the work you're putting in. Remember that you're selling your labor into a market and that it's an exchange of value. So you need to make yourself valuable. So do that from a first principles approach. You're not just a PM, but you're a tech worker... a knowledge worker in a knowledge economy. Keep that in mind and try to see how you can help companies maximize shareholder value. That's really it. So now on a more tactical level: Finish all of these books: 1. Decode and Conquer 2. The Lean Startup 3. Lean Product Playbook 4. Lean Analytics 5. The Design of Everyday Things 6. Product Strategy for High Technology companies 7. Venture Deals 8. Swipe to Unlock 9. Product Management Sacred Seven 10. Turning Data into Product The content in these books should be second nature to you as a tech worker in general. I'd say learn these things: - System Design (Gaurav Sen's videos are dope, and Grokking is good). Especially focus on ML system design and now Generative AI. - Take a basic data engineering course (way too many candidates don't know how to get data, clean it etc) - Take an ML course. (Andrew Ng's is really good) - Spend 2 hours everyday on Python and SQL. - Watch all of Y-combinator's videos on startup school. Now once you've done all this... why don't you just start your own thing and ship it? The best PM's tend to be founders who know what it takes to scale a product to actual users... If you do this you'll build a network of other founders who can hire you. If RBF or communication is an issue... take a lexapro and join toastmasters. You're putting in the work... in the right way. You just need to expand your network and keep at it. You'll kill it. -
If you do the company... you will meet other founders. Just send it. If you're smart and you show up on time everytime, and you look good, you pay attention, you work hard and you make sure you're getting feedback from those who have what you want and continue to adapt based on good feedback. You literally cannot lose... it's against the laws of physics, the universe.. whatever
Lol. Apixio. You kidding right? are you a PM? And if yes, do you need all these in your daily work? That list is more suited for a founder/CPO. Not a senior PM. That’s overkill 10X No Pm needs all of it, as you get grow you get into a niche PM field. You’re either a data pm, api pm, mobile app etc.. no one hires a senior+ Pm that needs all of the above. I’m a senior data PM, I need system design basics, understand the terminology & the flow. Grokking is for devs And Ng course for DS, data scientists neeed that not PMs. Literally every book & tech you’ve heard of eh?
OP I'm curious what resources you used and found helpful for cloud and ML?
Cloud - Honestly I suck with still and need to get better with and more understanding. I was never cloud PM just understood how data from AWS flowed through data highway. At the end of the day though its how your systems architecture interacts and integrated with AWS/G Cloud ect... I think the best thing here again would to be watch tutorials on Youtube but also to actually have experience and go into AWS (free version) and learn how it works. This is on my to do list still. I have basic understanding here and you can probably google a better answer. For ML - Mostly videos and Chat GPT. This was the most helpful video by far to gain understanding on the subject matter to me in how it relates to being a PM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5z1Hz-rV4zY To maybe practice models in depth you need to learn statistics course and some basic python. Again google is your friend here.
How related are companies youre applying to and your background? And are you doing some basic customization based on type of role? I say keep trying because youre atleast getting some responses and converting some to final rounds. You only need 1 to hit. If you look for other roles and want to eventually more back to product I feel like customer success, certain program manager or product operations roles on very customer focused companies can keep the door slightly more open than sales. I was out for 10 months after lay offs, tried for first 2 months, took 4 to relax, 4 to find a job. Applied to ~150 roles that second round of apps, 15% first round -> 1 offer. I went through a few weeks of nothing but tailored my resume a little bit constantly to match a little more with the roles, and I generally only got responses from similar roles - fintech, health tech. It was definitely the hardest search ive had but I only have 7 yrs of exp, 5 in product
I'll be honest I haven't been customizing much at all nor have I been reaching out to recruiters as I tried this at first but did not work for crap. I have reached out to a few connections on LinkedIn but it has not been successful either. I feel I'm having a steady in flow of new interviews of 3-4 per week as long as I do 70-90 or so apps which actually only takes 4-5 hours per week (2.5 hours 2 days a week). It's pretty easy to apply to roles fast nowadays and kind of just get in the zone and kills time. Idk it works for me, theres probably smarter way to do this. I might try reaching out to some folks though as there was a lot of DM response for referrals for me and people sent me other hiring mangers they worked with here on Blind after posting this thread. Example the past week I have had interviews at Spotify, TikTok, and Audible (Amazon).
TPM, Biz Dev, Solution Architect, Sales engineer etc are all possible and good options
Gracias