How To Rise To The Top In Today’s Product Management Job Market

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Hannah Clark: I’m gonna make a bold prediction; this will be our most listened-to episode of the year. At least, if I was looking to get a new job in product—or just a better one—I would feel like I had discovered a goldmine.

This is actually part one of a two-part conversation with our guest, Jessica Smith, the founder and CEO of Savant Recruiting. Jessica has spent 11 years working closely with employers and candidates in tech, so this two-part series is all about coming out on top in today’s crazy post-pandemic software industry job market.

I can’t emphasize it enough, though. If you’re a job seeker or ladder climber in product right now, you absolutely need to hear this. Jessica breaks down exactly what to do to get in front of the right people, how to get your career back on track after a layoff, and how to start getting paid what you’re really worth. So, let’s jump in.

Welcome back to The CPO Club podcast. I’m here today with Jessica Smith. She’s a founder and CEO of Savant Recruitment.

Jessica, I am so excited to talk to you today. How are you?

Jessica Smith: I am so good today. I’m so excited to be here.

Hannah Clark: Can you tell me a little bit about your background and how you ended up founding Savant?

Jessica Smith: I have been a technical recruiter for the last 11 years or so. I randomly got my start in the recruitment world when I was like 20 or 21 years old. And I basically bounced from agency to agency within my first five years, and then I decided that I wanted to try the corporate thing. And so I went out to corporate for the next five years and I got really well adjusted to working with stakeholders. And then I decided, Hey, I’m pretty decent at recruitment.

I decided that I wanted to go out and kind of start my own thing. And so two years ago, I started Savant Recruitment with a mission in mind, which was to be the next generation of recruitment agencies.

Hannah Clark: Cool. So as a recruiter in the tech industry, I imagine you’ve got a very different view of the job market than most people do. And right now the tech job market is a big hot topic. How would you describe the current job market for product managers and aspiring product managers if you were just to summarize?

Jessica Smith: It’s the wild west out here, I’m not going to lie, like the last two years has been absolutely insane. We’re at layoffs galore, no one really knows what’s coming down the pipe next, we’re looking at a bunch of data every single month in regards to where the job economy is sitting, whether that’s in the United States or within Canada, where the job openings are happening, where they’re not.

And so, yeah, the best way to put it is it’s literally the wild west. So in order for candidates, especially in the product space to stand out, they’re going to have to bring a certain something extra.

Hannah Clark: Well, I think we’ll dive into that shortly. Today’s episode is, it’s actually going to be one of two parts. So thank you for joining us for two episodes, not just one. And next time we’ll be chatting about what employers need to know. But today we’re going to be focusing all about breaking in and leveling up your product management career.

Let’s start first with aspiring product managers. I know that there’s quite a few who listen. What tips do you have for folks who are looking to land their very first associate product manager role given the current climate?

Jessica Smith: Given the current climate, a lot of candidates, no matter who you are, whether you’re a product manager or you hold another title, anyone that is looking for a new position needs to really learn how to market themselves and become a real subject matter expert in the space that they play in.

Understanding data, following data, that is some of the most important information you’re going to have throughout your whole entire career. When it comes to selling yourself as a candidate, what managers and what business owners really want to know is that not only that you can come in and understand the role, but you can actually come in and fit in with their business and understand their business.

And I think that’s what’s missing right now in the market when it comes to candidates who are kind of feeling at selling themselves. And so I prep candidates all over the place with different techniques that they can use to really get their foot in the door, that comes with understanding the role that you’re applying for acquiring the relevant skills.

So what does that mean? Developing skills in product management, data analysis, communication, internships, or side projects, or online courses, or joining relevant clubs or organizations, building out a strong resume. You could follow this podcast, for instance, and get a lot of information in what you’re trying to do throughout your career, building a strong resume and portfolio and networking.

Networking is the biggest one I can recommend right now, just because I have this example of, you know, when I was 15 years old and I was looking for a job, you’d usually go and walk in and go talk to the manager, right? When you’re just getting your start. And I think that the job market has shifted so much that people have straight away from actually putting themselves out there.

And this is the biggest time right now that you need to be focused on building a brand and building relationships in the market. So that is the best advice that I can give.

Hannah Clark: Yeah, absolutely. And we’ll talk a little bit about networking and relationship building shortly.

Let’s talk next about recovering from a layoff. Obviously layoffs are a huge deal right now. It’s no secret that mass layoffs have left a lot of people jobless in the last little while. So what advice would you give for folks who are in the product space and looking to bounce back after getting laid off?

Jessica Smith: First of all, getting laid off is not your fault. I know that a lot of people that experience layoffs, they go through this internal turmoil, unfortunately. I’ve experienced a layoff as well. And it’s one of the things that mentally you have to prepare yourself to know, Hey, this isn’t my fault. Just getting around that and preparing yourself mentally.

And then as far as kind of getting back into the swing of things, what I would suggest, and this is what I suggest to a lot of the candidates that I work with is that, you’re not going to be spending hours on end every single day looking for product roles. That’s just not, I get that people in the market are like, well, looking for a job is a full time. Job at points, yes, it is. But if you set yourself up correctly, putting notifications in, getting yourself set up, whether it’s Google alerts to get those roles in every single day, you would probably only have to spend a max of maybe an hour a day looking for new positions.

There’s no reason why you should be spending six or seven hours looking for positions because you have to remember all the postings that are going up right now. There’s always changes that are going on at these organizations. So what’s posted today may not be posted tomorrow, right? And so when you have these things in the back of your mind that things are consistently changing in the economy, we’re kind of going through the ebbs and flows right now in the market.

And so with that, anybody that I coach and talk to about getting themselves set up in the market, I tell them to set up a spreadsheet. And so in this spreadsheet what you’re gonna do is instead of applying straight to the applicant tracking system, which is the online resource, I tell my candidates to go out and apply to whoever the product manager is.

Let’s say it’s in a product role or the CEO or the COO, if there’s a role that sticks out to them. There’s a lot of different techniques that I teach them as well. A lot of people on LinkedIn may actually, a lot of executives have open profiles, so you may not have to be connected to these executives on LinkedIn.

What you can actually do is just go on their page, and there’s a little click down button, and you can just shoot them a message. Now, you have to be very strategic with your messaging before you go and approach any sort of manager. But just know this, the attention span of your audience is about seven seconds to ten seconds long.

So they want to know that you’re going to be able to get your point across effectively and efficiently. So creating these huge blurbs that are three minutes to four minutes to read through, no one’s interested in doing that. And so how I would position it is if you’re going in to go apply for a specific position at a company, what you’ll do is you’ll go to their LinkedIn profile, whoever the executive is.

And you’ll shoot them a message and you’ll say, Hey, understand that you’re currently looking for this role. I bring X amount of years of experience in the space. I have X, Y, Z experience, quantify it, make sure that you have quantifiable metrics that you can talk to. And then the ending, this is the best part.

You say, I’d love to talk shop with you about what’s going on in your business or what’s going on at company name and what your biggest problems are right now. You are selling to an audience, right? So you need to know how to sell to them because they’re looking for this role for a reason. This is not about you.

Yes, you’re looking for a job. This is about them though. You need to be able to talk about the biggest things that are keeping them up at night and you need to be able to go in and tell them, look, I can solve this problem for you. So that’s how I prep the candidates to go in.

Hannah Clark: Yeah, that’s really good specific targeted advice, so I really appreciate it. I love when people give advice that we could just snatch right out of the episode.

Let’s talk a little bit about leveling up. That could look like getting promoted internally or if that’s a non starter, which sometimes happens, especially if a company is not very well resourced. Or maybe if you’re seeking a more senior position elsewhere as a last resort, how do you recommend that people navigate that journey in the product space?

Jessica Smith: Based on experience, I always go back to where I grabbed from experience. So some employers, they’re not going to have the ability to actually create a role for you so that you can move up with the environment.

And that’s just the reality of the situation. It’s just whether they’re a flat organization or whatever the case is. You may have a boss that’s not championing you. You may not have enough on your plate. You may have not done enough initiatives within the organization for them to specifically create a role for you.

So when it comes to looking for a new position or potentially getting promoted, let’s talk about the promotions first. When you’re having conversations with management and what it takes, what you’re going to look for is if they’re going to be able to put you on a potential stretch assignment. If you can come into that stretch assignment and potentially look at problems in the organization that you’re not currently working on in the organization right now, but potentially on the side, go in and deliver that to your boss.

I mean, it looks pretty good, but also you need to be able to show that you’re completely invested in your career, you’re completely invested in a path. But listen, like politics or politics sometimes, and sometimes it’s just not going to happen and sometimes that’s not your fault. And so if potentially it doesn’t work out, you’ve been at the company for two years, you may need to accept the fact that it’s time to start looking elsewhere. When it comes to looking for a potential level up, same rules apply like, Hey, I’ve done X, Y, Z at my current company right now.

Unfortunately, there’s no path for growth for me here, but I am looking to step into a role that’s going to allow me to grow. And so you have to remember at every organization, there’s different titles and different job responsibilities for various roles. What might be a CTO at one company would be a director of engineering or even a senior software engineer at another company, right?

So you have to keep these things in mind and you really have to take a look at what is it you’re truly looking for. Are you looking for a step up in title? Are you looking for a step up in compensation? Are you looking for just different scope of responsibility? So it really depends on what you’re looking for in your role and how that basically fits within your life.

Hannah Clark: That’s a really good point. I think something we sometimes don’t think about is that there’s a lot of different ways and leveling work so differently from company to company that it’s really good to be clear about what you actually want rather than just focusing on a title. So that’s really great advice.

I’m going to ask a spicy question now.

Jessica Smith: Go ahead.

Hannah Clark: Salary negotiation. I feel like this is one of the things that a lot of folks struggle with. I’m going to say it, especially women. What in your opinion are the do’s and don’ts of asking for more money?

Jessica Smith: Well, I’ll tell you exactly how I prep my candidates.

When we’re working with clients specifically, you know, the clients will end up giving us a range. Right now there’s laws right across North America about having to be transparent with the ranges that you’re giving. But some companies right now are being completely ridiculous with their ranges. For instance, we’re seeing companies right now that are posting roles that are like 60k all the way up to 300k.

We know that the company is looking for someone and a salary that is specific, but they’re not doing any favors to the market by offering that. So based on the level of experience that you have, it helps to benchmark yourself. And so what I would do is I would tell the candidate to go to Glassdoor. See what the size of companies are that they are applying to and benchmark their salary towards that.

So if you’re applying to a startup, or if you’re coming from a large organization, and then you decide, I’m going to go apply to a startup. The salary bandwidth may not be the same, right? So you have to keep that in mind, depending on the companies that you’re going towards or going for. Not everyone can pay the same.

So, you know, you’re going to a company from 1 to 100 employees. You’re applying to another company from 1 to 100 employees. You’re going to be looking at the similar benchmarks towards that. Same thing goes, if you’re coming from a company of 1000 people, they’re going to have a little bit more leeway or a little bit more spend to be able to pay more in salary sometimes, not all the time.

And so you got to look at things too, like, has this company received funding? How is the revenue being generated? Do they have occurring customers? Do they have a monthly recurring revenue? What is their runway like? And so looking at these questions and how to position yourself in the market, when you’re looking at the whole financial aspect, that’s going to give you a better idea on how you should be positioning yourself.

Now, let’s say I’m talking to a candidate and they say, okay, Jess, well, I make 80 grand and I have equity involved, and that can bring me up to 120 or 130. What should I be asking for? What we advise in the market is you’re going to be looking for at least 10k to 20k more. Again, it depends on where you’re applying.

If you’re a Canadian applying to an American company, you could potentially ask for more. It really all depends. This is the biggest one. When you are applying for a role and when you are having the compensation conversation, do not give a range. This is the biggest advice I can give. If you are looking for something, I always ask, what is your bottom line to these candidates?

What is the least that you’ll take? What is the most? And that’s fair for me to ask, but when it comes to getting in front of the person that’s actually hiring you, if you give a range, it will tie your hands in negotiating for yourself. So you always want to give just a flat number. So they ask you, what are you looking for?

You say 160. Point blank period, nothing more, nothing less. They may come back to you and say, okay, well, we tested you or we did X, Y, Z. We think that based on the role, we’re going to come back with like 150k plus whatever in equity. That’s totally fair. And then you can make your decision, but always up front flat rate.

That’s it. Whatever it is that you’re looking for, just a flat number. That’s how you negotiate. And then you let them come back.

Hannah Clark: That is such good advice. I think that’s cleared up a question that most people spend a lot of time Googling every time they apply for a new job.

Let’s touch again on relationship building and networking because you touched on that earlier. And I think this is a topic that a lot of people also struggle with. Because it can be awkward to make connections in the first place. And then, you know, what do you do with those people next? So what have you found to be the best tactics for making valuable connections?

Jessica Smith: Just know, I was in that space once too. I totally felt so awkward going into spaces and networking. Eventually after, you know, your first networking event, you usually end up coming back with a high, like, oh my God, it wasn’t really as bad as I made it out to be in my head. So you just got to pull off the bandage once and just get your first networking event done and over with.

What you’re going to find is you’re going to go into these environments, they’re everyone’s there for the same purpose. We’re all there to network. So if you’re looking to network, get your resume out, really make some introductions, job fairs are awesome. They’re a great way to do it. But also too, you should always be networking throughout the course of your career. I don’t even care that you stayed at a company for four years and you completely stopped networking.

Like, this needs to be a constant thing throughout your career. So whenever that there’s an event happening in your space, if you’re interested in product management, you want to make sure that you’re attending these events. You’re getting in front of people. You’re introducing yourself and you’re asking good questions.

Because what happens in it’s a whole relationship game, your whole entire career is going to be a relationship game. So someone that you meet maybe five years ago at a networking event is going to ring you up one day and they’re going to say we’re looking for a serious product manager to come on. We know you, we know your face, we know that you’re here, we know that you’re serious about what you do, and we see you at these events, we want you to come interview for us, or we want you to come work for us.

And that’s usually how it works.

Hannah Clark: On the same topic, because I agree that I think a lot of career is a relationship game. But then there’s also the matter of nurturing those relationships and making sure that you stay top of mind. Because, you know, how many times have you been to a networking event, you meet someone who’s got an exciting career, you’re interested in working with them, and then you never see them again.

What are your tips for nurturing professional relationships, and particularly if it’s someone you’ve met just in that brief context, and you want to work with them in the future?

Jessica Smith: In a brief context, you know, if you can get a business card, you can pass over a business card. If it’s someone that you think that you’re going to keep your eye on their career.

This is another thing too. I specifically like to, through the course of my career, I’ve really paid attention to where people have started making moves. And so every single time someone makes a move and they move into a new position or, you know, I go in and I pop and I say, hey, congratulations on the new role.

You know, I’ll be here to add value in case you need anything. We should definitely catch up if you want to catch up and have a coffee chat. Talk about them. You’re always talking about them. But if there’s someone that you think would be valuable in your network, it always helps to just put like a reminder on your calendar, like maybe every six months or once a year. Just follow up with them and just say, Hey, how are things going on your end?

Would love to chat what’s been going on. And again, it’s about them, right? And so that’s how you continuously nurture those relationships and keep showing up to the events because whoever you nurture with, they’re going to keep you top of mind, and they’re going to say, Oh, you should meet this person, or you should meet this person.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve met people that I thought would have been one and dones. That I’ve followed up with that have said, Hey, I need you to meet this person and I need you to meet this person. You guys may have some synergy here. Definitely have the conversation and it just snowballs. So definitely put either a reminder or just once a year.

It just depends on what’s going on in their lives and what’s going on in your life and how valuable you think that the connection is to you and if it’s someone that you could see yourself working with in the future.

Hannah Clark: This episode has been chock full of just such a good, actionable advice. I love that.

This has been so fantastic, Jessica, and I’m really excited to dive into part two with you with some tough love for leadership, employers, people who are making a lot of, I dare say, mistakes in this space.

Yeah, we’ll dig into that next time. But in the meantime, where can people follow you online?

Jessica Smith: So my website is savantrecruitment.ca. If they want to follow me on LinkedIn as well, I’m always pumping out a lot of content that helps either employers or candidates on my company page. So they just have to go follow me on LinkedIn and then you just go follow my company page and all the good stuff will be there.

Hannah Clark: Fantastic. Well, I am so happy to have you on and I’m excited to talk to you again very soon.

Jessica Smith: Me too. Thanks so much, Hannah, for having me.

Hannah Clark: Thanks for listening in. For more great insights, how-to guides and tool reviews, subscribe to our newsletter at theproductmanager.com/subscribe. You can hear more conversations like this by subscribing to The CPO Club, wherever you get your podcasts.