Experts Panel: Positioning Your Value As A Product Manager In 2024

[00:00:00] Hannah Clark: Hey, it’s the top of the hour. So I’d like to welcome everyone to our latest panel and our community webinar series. So we’re seeing these, uh, currently grow and become a valuable way for our members to engage with the experts who contribute to the product manager.

So, uh, thank you so much, everybody who’s provided feedback for us. Uh, so far, uh, you’ve been really valuable. So for those who don’t know, my name is Hannah Clark. I am the lead editor of the product manager and I’ll be your host for today. Um, so today’s session will focus on positioning your value as a product manager in 2024.

And we have an incredible set of speakers who have come to share their expertise with us. Um, so I’ll just, uh, go around and introduce all of them to you. Our first panelist is the founder of the Product Manager Accelerator, Dr. Nancy Lee. Thank you so much, Dr. Nancy Lee, for joining us. Uh, Dr. Nancy is an award winning director of product, a YouTuber, and the host of Product Insider Podcast.

She’s been featured in Forbes and is a LinkedIn top voice. And she moved to the U. S. as an immigrant with only 800 in her pocket, and then has become a director of product within four years. so much, Nancy. She held leadership roles at multiple Fortune 500 companies and her AI Smart [00:01:00] Cities product received the Mayor’s Best Practice Award.

So she has over 1 million YouTube views and created a community of over 100, 000 product managers and she’s here today to share so many of her valuable best practices with all of you. So thank you, Dr. Nancy, for joining us.

[00:01:14] Dr. Nancy Li: Thank you for having me, Hannah.

[00:01:15] Hannah Clark: Yeah. Uh, next up is a founder and CEO of Savant Recruitment, as well as a freshly minted podcast host, which is Jessica, uh, Jessica Smith.

Uh, so Jessica brings over a decade of experience in technology recruitment, navigating both agency and corporate sides. Uh, she’s recently been awarded the Peaks Emerges Emerging Leader of 2024 by People and Cultures Leader Circle, uh, top staffing leaders to watch 2024 by candidate. ly, top female founder, 2024 of founders beta.

Just to name a few. Uh, so Jessica, thank you so much for joining us. I’m really excited to hear what you have to share today. No problem. Thanks for having me, Hannah. And last up is a renowned salary negotiation coach for high earners, Josh Duty. So Josh is also the founder of Fearless Salary Negotiation, a step by step guide to getting [00:02:00] paid what you’re worth, which I’m sure is a topic that’s Very intriguing to all of us joining today.

So he helps his clients optimize their compensation package before starting a new role so they can score top dollar for their expertise before they start work. Josh, thank you so much for joining us as well.

[00:02:14] Josh Doody: Thanks for having me on. It’s good to be here.

[00:02:16] Hannah Clark: Yeah. So we’ll get started in just a moment. Uh, but just to get everybody warmed up in the chat, I’d love to hear where everyone is tuning in from.

We already kind of started talking about that a little bit before this call started. Um, so if you want to take a second to say hi in the chat and let us know where you’re tuning in from, that’d be awesome. And while everyone is, uh, making those remarks, I’ll just go through a little bit of housekeeping on how this is all going to work.

So, um, first and foremost, the session is being recorded. We are going to be using some clips from it on our website as well as on our social media channels. Uh, the recording will be made available for members of our community after the session. Um, and also you can keep your camera on if you so choose, or you can turn it off, it’s totally up to you.

Um, but we ask that you please keep your microphones off during the entirety of the call. Um, for those who are not members of the [00:03:00] product manager community yet, uh, welcome. We, uh, we, uh, typically post these events for members only, but this is such a valuable topic, we wanted to open it up. For everybody to be able to benefit from the awesome expertise we have with our panel today.

Uh, but this is just one in a series of monthly sessions that we hold for members. Um, so if you haven’t really engaged with our membership yet, um, it’s the place for experienced PMs that to connect and work alongside others who are facing some of the similar kind of challenges around, um, scaling up a SAS product that’s in that rapid growth space, uh, phase.

Uh, we also just like to have fun. Uh, for example, we recently hosted a pajama party and thon, which was a lot of fun, uh, to participate in. Um, so if you’re interested in joining us in some other events and getting involved in that stuff, you can learn more about membership at theproductmanager. com slash membership.

So that covers the housekeeping and, uh, some of the important need to know. So we’ll just jump into it since we only have an hour to cover everything. And, Um, and so just to recap, today’s focus is on positioning your, uh, [00:04:00] excuse me, positioning your value as a PM. And I thought the best place to start would be to zoom out and focus on what skills are in demand.

So, uh, starting with Jessica, uh, how can product managers tailor their resumes and LinkedIn profiles to stand out in a saturated job market?

[00:04:16] Jessica Smith: Uh, first things first, you need to optimize your profile in a way and your resume in a way, uh, to talk about how you’re quantifying your success. So anywhere that you’ve been successful, right?

You’re gonna, you know, say I 5X this, I 10X this, I increase this by 30 percent or 40%, whatever the metric is. Make sure that you have these metrics on your resume. If you don’t have them on your resume. Like we’re, we’re just going to scan past you. Second, the biggest fallback that I am seeing through candidates time and time again, your portfolios are not ready and you guys need to get them like spruced up and ready to go before you even send that off to a recruiter, [00:05:00] a hiring, a hiring manager.

If you’ve got a website, make sure that website’s ready to go. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone on to anyone’s website and the links are broken. So before you even get started, like make sure that you’re actually prepared before you start applying. And that’s, that’s my biggest advice because these are the major issues I’m seeing and I’m constantly having these conversations with candidates to make sure.

Or like you’re good and ready to go because you got to go in and you have to sell yourself. And if you, if you have a product that’s not ready, or if you don’t have your stuff together, you’re gonna be looked at as like, not serious, right? This is someone that’s not taking their career seriously. So that’s my advice.

[00:05:43] Hannah Clark: That’s really, really good advice. Um, and, uh, Nancy, if you wouldn’t mind weighing in, I’d like to know a little bit about the value of personal branding in that kind of like getting your resume and stuff together.

[00:05:53] Dr. Nancy Li: Yeah, great question. And personal branding actually started my career and grew my career as well.

I believe everybody needs to [00:06:00] grow their branding earlier in their life. And regarding personal branding, first thing everyone needs to do is polish their LinkedIn. And now there’s specific strategies, tips and tricks. Let me show you guys how to do it. Number one for LinkedIn, your bio, you need to have very strong bio.

And second, your, Description of each of the experience should be a reflection of your resume. Because when I teach people several, very similar to what Jessica said, for resume, we have important two session. One is achievement and the other is roles responsibilities. I had different kind of resume template.

I show out to people how to do it. But the point is, once you do it, you copy paste that LinkedIn. And then third part is your LinkedIn should be very keyword driven because For any recruiters, when you look up what people’s profile, they will search you, right? They’re going to put product management or AI or product manager, product strategy.

And those keywords need to show up multiple times through a skill session and also description of your past experience. And now once you have LinkedIn profile ready, you must go out to [00:07:00] directly share on social media. Sometimes even sharing any kind of news or even sharing today’s like podcast event can show your startup process and, Hey, I’m attending this pop.

Product manager talk today. Here’s my top three takeaway and that’s it. Even better. You tag somebody else that have higher authority than you. For example, today, once you finish, feel free to tag me, Jessica and Josh and Hannah as well. And then when you, yeah. Everyone in this

[00:07:28] Jessica Smith: chat right now tag us that you’ve been at this event.

[00:07:31] Dr. Nancy Li: Yeah. And then once you tag people with higher authorities, your authority score also increase on LinkedIn as well. So there’s many different ways to improve your personal branding. So LinkedIn is number one. The second part, of course, product portfolio, which we talk about this all the time. And later on, we can talk more regarding product portfolio, which is something you can share on your LinkedIn and other channels as well.

And if. Um, you have opportunity to do public speaking is also number one, the most important way for you to highlight your personal [00:08:00] achievement and through sharing on panel, even small talks, and then you share those video clips, you talk in other places, that’s how you build your personal brand.

[00:08:11] Hannah Clark: Thank you for that.

That’s fantastic information and very actionable. Um, so I’d like to throw it to Josh for a little bit, uh, and we’ll talk a little bit about money. We’re going to be kind of popcorning around with some money stuff, resume kind of going all over the map. Um, so Josh, what tips do you have for product managers to negotiate effectively when budget cuts and lower salary offers are very common right now?

[00:08:32] Josh Doody: Yeah, it can be really challenging, especially in the market like it is right now. Um, just a few things that kind of come to mind when I think about that one is, uh, once you get to the offer stage, then you’ve differentiated yourself from sort of everyone else. Uh, one of the challenges with the market right now is just that there really are fewer jobs available, but there’s still a lot of people trying to get those jobs, but once you’ve gotten a job offer, uh, you have now changed the situation that you’re in from one of many people who’s looking for a job [00:09:00] to the person that.

A company or many multiple companies, um, have identified as the right candidate for that job. And so that puts you in a situation where you sort of had natural leverage leverage is a word that a lot of people that I talked to use. And so you have leverage of being the person that they’ve selected for the job that on its own is valuable.

Um, in addition, um, I think it’s important to remember that even if, um, the market is tighter, most job offers have some room to negate, negotiate built in. There are lots of reasons to negotiate, but one of them is, Basically just to arbitrage the fact that most job offers are made with some buffer. And that could just be literal free money that you leave on the table by not negotiating.

Um, and in my experience, um, I haven’t looked at my stats recently, but it’s something like 92 percent of the time, if you just ask for more money, you get more money. Um, and so that means there’s a, a 92 percent chance, according to my stats, that if you ask for more comp than they offered, you’ll get more comp.

Um, and so there’s some, you know, Tactical reasons you’re well aligned, you have leverage, you’re the selected candidate, but also just [00:10:00] there’s usually room to negotiate and job offers. And by not negotiating, you could just be leaving free money on the table. Um, so that is always true, regardless of how tight the market is.

The difference is I think mainly that just fewer job offers are going out right now. But once you get to the offer stage, you’re in a different phase of that process and now it’s time to look to negotiation to make sure that you don’t leave anything on the table.

[00:10:21] Hannah Clark: Great. And, uh, Nancy, just to kind of comment a little bit further, um, can you talk a little bit about, uh, kind of diving a little bit further onto the tightness of budgets and that being a factor, uh, how can you position yourself as an indispensable asset to the company when the budget is tight?

[00:10:36] Dr. Nancy Li: Perfect question. So which I also want to add something to Josh story. And first of all, let’s use some real life example to support what Josh said. And then we will show you example how to make you in December, expensible for the company. First of all, when Josh talked about what’s the limited job offers is very true.

But once you get a right offer, you’re the right person company waiting to pay you more and wait for you. For example, so The [00:11:00] toughest time to land a job, to be frank, is last year, last February, that January, February Q1 last year, all big tech companies start laying off employees. Um, however, at the time, my, one of my students, she’s from Canada, say, Hey, to Canada, we’ll have lots of people from Canada and someone should from Canada, um, then a job in the U S and in TikTok specifically.

Um, But as you know, when the immigrant, of course, me, uh, specialized immigration as well. Well, any immigrant who moved from country to another country, you need to get a visa. Usually those visa takes a while to get. TikTok waited for her for four months. She landed the offer in February and wait for her in June to join the company.

They didn’t rescind the offer, keep on waiting for her. And I also negotiate salary for her. Um, her original salary was already, the first offer was already over 300k total income. But we negotiated another 40 grand above. Original Serenity case area is like, it’s [00:12:00] additional, like significant more. And we all know that, uh, Q1 last year, so many big tech layoffs, so many Google PM, uh, like Meta PM in the job market right now, we can still negotiate more.

The main reason is how you show your value to the company. So now let me show you guys how to really make yourself, uh, not replaceable, but by any other candidate, um, number one, during the interview, the people really value you. It’s not about negotiation, starting the first time we go into the interview, first round interview.

Um, so when you go for interviews, it’s very critical. You must perform extremely well and be very precise regarding how you can add value to the company. Could be, for example, you have the right skills they’re looking for, of course. And second could also be, you already have certain type of Connections in the future of the product they want to work on.

For example, you have like experience as a creators and you are a product manager of creators. Perfect. So all those examples can help you to make your interview [00:13:00] performance significantly better than other people. So same as what Josh said in negotiation, um, you put the anchor high. So in this case, you’ll be putting your anchor high in things first run interview, showing that you better it.

Then other people, um, the second part, um, you can make yourself irrespective, irreplaceable with a company is actually demonstrating through part of portfolio. The way you do it is that you, we always train our students to create part of portfolio before you join the company, show them what if. I was hired by you guys.

What does the future look, um, roadmap look like? What’s the strategies would look like? Here is the customer segmentation, which one I would prioritize for ABCD reason. By the way, I also talk to 10 customers and through those customer interviews. That’s why I am someone Who can directly add value to you starting from day one, so you already have been making very clear to them through your part of portfolio saying that this is what its future look like to hire me, you got the portfolio and strategy implement starting from day one.

So that’s [00:14:00] something you can make yourself significant stand out the, the student I mentioned, joined TikTok last year. She only had one offer that was TikTok. She never had other offers that I don’t. You give me an offer, I jump. No, she mainly show that her value to the company is significantly higher than other people.

So that’s why the pay her really high salary. Her salary actually is three times higher than how much she was getting paid in Canada. Once we move her to us currency differences and also. Uh, she interviewed so well, she was put in the separate bank as a senior PM level, even if she only had two years prior managing experience in a like, um, accounting software companies, a company, very, very different task for her.

Um, so therefore I recommend everybody think about your unique value proposition to company, sell yourself well. In the interview.

[00:14:49] Hannah Clark: Wow. That is significant progress from just that, even that base experience level. It’s amazing. Um, all right. So I’m going to throw it back to Jessica. Can you describe a [00:15:00] common mistake that product managers make during the job search process and how they can avoid it?

[00:15:07] Jessica Smith: Right now I want to go back to I think stats. Um, so first thing with with all candidates in the market, what I’m noticing is that we have candidates that are literally sitting at their desk for hours a day. And you don’t need to do that. You don’t need to do that at all. Like if you’re laid off or you’re actively looking for a job right now, you can set up Google alerts, um, to get yourself updated for a new position, but also to in regards to applying for positions, don’t just reach out to the recruiter through the ATS.

Um, For each position that you’re applying to as well, you’re going to want to customize your resume per position. Um, and the reason why I say that is because, like Nancy had said before, recruiters are looking for those keywords. And when I [00:16:00] go look at a job description, I have the job description keyword.

Literally sitting in front of me and I will compare resumes to the job description to see if those key words are in there. So really being strategic about how you customize your resume to each job description, setting up Google alerts so that you’re not sitting at the desk for hours a day. I understand some people will say, Looking for a job is a full time job.

Yes and no. It just doesn’t require you to sit for hours a day at your desk. And then another thing too, um, like you’re only with, with a lot of candidates right now in the market, they only stop at one touch point. And when you’re going and applying, like you want to go apply to the actual hiring manager.

So you want to be looking that person up on LinkedIn. And like I said, remember on one of the podcasts that I was on was that a lot of people on LinkedIn, a lot of managers and a lot of like [00:17:00] COOs, they have open profiles. Just people don’t know about this function that LinkedIn offers. And so what will happen is you’ll go on the person’s profile.

It’ll say, you know, connect or follow. You don’t even have to connect. or follow them, there is a drop down menu. Um, and what you’re going to want to do is send literally like an 11 second message on why you’re interested in the role that you saw it and that, you know, Hey, let’s, let’s open up the lines of communication and let’s talk shop.

Like that’s, that’s what you’re here to do. Here’s what I can come in and do for you. But Listen, the thing is, is that these executives, they literally have like a 7 to an 11 second attention span. So you have to be very strategic in your messaging. Keep it very, very short. Like put your number in there, put your email in there and say, Hey, like want to talk shop?

Let’s set up a, let’s set up a Google meet.

[00:17:53] Hannah Clark: Um, that’s really also really actionable advice. Uh, Josh, I’d like to call on you as far as just on the topic of [00:18:00] communication. Um, what are some of the errors that folks make, uh, in, in terms of communication and negotiation that can kind of throw a good job offer into the balance?

[00:18:11] Josh Doody: That’s a good question. I think, you know, without this doesn’t necessarily put the job offer in the balance per se, but one of the errors in communication, I think, is talking about salary too early. I think Dr. Nancy kind of talked about this earlier, but, you know, early in the process, um, the less you can talk about numbers, the better for you.

Uh, and so, um, especially salary expectations, which will be frequently asked early on. And so answering that question doesn’t put the job offer that leverage that I mentioned earlier, that’s one of the factors of leverage that you have is, um, that they, they don’t know what it will cost to persuade you to join their team.

And so I think it’s important to avoid talking numbers early. So instead, um, and I think, uh, Jessica and Dr. Nancy had both mentioned this. You want to just continue to describe your value proposition [00:19:00] to the company as often and as loudly as you can. whether that’s resume alignment, or whether it’s. Um, or if it’s any industry specific background that you have, and the reason that you’re doing that is when they start talking to you, they have a pay range in mind.

And they, uh, are expecting to make an offer somewhere around some number, but as you talk to them, that number could change. Uh, I think this is something that people underestimate is that the longer you are able to interview with them and demonstrate the value proposition that you bring to the table, then the more likely they are to open up their budget a little bit, or we’ll go to the higher end of their budget, or even make exceptions to you later on.

And so if you have already talked numbers and given them a number, then they stopped thinking about numbers. They already know their number target. Um, and either they’ll, they’ll discontinue the conversation, which could. Result in the offer going away, as you kind of implied in your question. Um, but more likely will just cost you money on the back end because you can basically no longer Move that number up without significant effort.

Um, so that’s that’s the first thing I also think um, just other things that you should avoid saying are I don’t [00:20:00] like to use ultimatums For my negotiating clients, um, and I also say, uh, my my rule of thumb is that I never bluff and so You know, I think there are things that you could do that may not directly impact the negotiation, but that could cause the company to sort of sour on talking to you.

Uh, you don’t know how many candidates they might be talking to it in one time. If they made you an offer, then you’re the winning candidate from that pool. Um, but if they realized that maybe you lied about having competing offers and you don’t have any competing offers and things like that, uh, then they’ll think, well, if this person is deceiving us during this part of the process, Maybe we don’t want to move forward with them when we have another candidate that looks pretty similar on paper that might not be trying to deceive us.

So I’d say the two things are just avoid talking about comp early. Um, that probably won’t, uh, cause the offer to go away. Although it might if you suggest a number that’s just way, way above their range. Um, and then also just avoid being deceptive whenever possible. I like to try and keep things as honest and above board as possible.

No bluffing. Um, and, uh, just continue to describe your value proposition to them so that you can get to the offer stage, which is ultimately [00:21:00] that’s your goal in the interview process is to get to the offer stage. And then once you get that offer, then the tide turns a little bit, you gain a lot more leverage and now you can start negotiating more heavily.

[00:21:11] Hannah Clark: Um, I’d like to go back to Nancy and talk a little bit about job searching. Um, so how should product managers adjust their job search strategy in a recession to leverage their experience more effectively?

[00:21:22] Dr. Nancy Li: Great question. Three steps. Um, number one, first of all, we do need to admit that right now. Um, it’s not like three years ago during the tech era.

Um, even if there are fewer job opportunities, but the still every single week, there are people receiving job offers. At least inside a PMX editor, where we have offers celebration each time when people saw my student on this call today and say, hi, you’ll be in the chat. So it’s basically when we have offer celebrations and every single, we have seen, Hey, cool.

And offer was interview final interview. It’s a full page. It looks really full page on the screen every single week. First of [00:22:00] all, let’s understand that even if the fewer than before, but top candidate can always land many, many job offers, regardless how tough. This, uh, job environment is, um, so in this situation, the right strategy to do it is number one, you must identify your unique strengths, use your strengths.

In the job search process, for example, and actually yesterday I filmed a video about how you find out the right job openings for you. Right now, let’s say you go to any LinkedIn, you can search product management jobs. You can find tens of thousands of jobs out there easily, but the ones you should apply for is something that matches the keywords.

I’m very heavy on keywords. Um, for example, if we have AI background, it can search product manager AI. That’s all the list of AI jobs or product manager e commerce. Or if a business background, maybe you can search product manager, like go to market. Because GTM gold market strategy is something, uh, very [00:23:00] valuable for PM.

That’s more business driven or front end, those kinds of plan management. Right? So, which means if you have expertise in certain domain knowledge in the past, you have worked on before, even if you’re marketers or engineers and use those keywords to find the right job opportunities apply for, it’s going to increase your chance of success significantly higher than other people, or even in general, the keyword.

Technical product manager is going to narrow down the search. If you’re an engineer, of course, search technical product manager, or API are the keywords. And those kind of jobs is going to put you on top of the pile already. So be strategic regarding using your time. And second, when you reach out and apply for jobs, the most effective way is actually networking.

And I believe Jessica mentioned that before. You can pitch to exactly anybody in the company. Now, specifically, uh, This is a script I teach in people for people inside PM, et cetera. Now I’m happy to share with you guys the three steps framework. When you pitch yourself [00:24:00] to hiring manager or anybody who is above the level you apply for.

Let’s say apply for product manager. You can pitch to a director, a group product manager, or even VP. Actually, it depends on the size of the company, but three step framework is fine. When you pitch to other people, let’s say they’re hiring manager. You can say, Hey, da, da, da, be straightforward saying, Hey, I saw your LinkedIn post about your hiring for ABCD position straightforward, so you know why they reach out.

Now second message is one or two sentences describing your background that matching the job and how impressive you are. For example, my pitch, when I land, uh, uh, three director jobs. In the, at the beginning of the pandemic, when all companies announced free hiring, my pitch in the middle part of the pitch, second part is following, I said, I am a group product manager at Verizon.

I launched the first 5g edge computing product in the world in collaboration with Amazon and Microsoft, [00:25:00] and. I also leading to like another award winning AI product was 200 million in revenue through our PPP deals. So summary of your impact and with. The related experience, because at the time apply for direct level, um, the position apply for is mainly in the AI space or in the cloud space.

That’s why I mentioned AWS, edge computing, uh, and also AI. And the now call to action is. Very short one sentence. I love to, I believe I am a top 1 percent candidate. I love to connect and discuss my candidacy. So using this, you’re going to have very short pitch to anybody above you. The three step framework, I call the ABC framework.

It’s like, uh, uh, a phrase is described is actually ABC framework so that you can reach out people with much higher success rate and feel free to use my template. And actually on my YouTube channel, I have a video regarding how to craft your [00:26:00] perfect 30 seconds, elevated pitch. You can, you guys can just Google and search me darkness city director product and find all the trainings on my YouTube channel.

And also the free download where you can get my 30 seconds out of it, a pitch and rewrite yours as well. Now, set number three to increase your success rate is link. Your product portfolio in your introduction, which is very similar to Jessica said regarding the website. Yes. Put your product portfolio on the website and then link it as part of the introduction.

For example, the original pitch I had, and I will also link saying, Hey, uh, here is my product portfolio. Uh, I’d love to have you review it as part of your initial LinkedIn outreach. So do not use LinkedIn email to say, Hey, Feature got email, I N mail, email, do not use a feature because that’s more perceived as like sales pitch.

And you only have 15 emails per month, too little anyway. So use those organic, when you use organic outreach, it’s more authentic. [00:27:00] As long as your pitch is good. So using those three strategies, you definitely going to land so many more. job interviews and opportunities. Of course, once my job interviews about how to interview better, we can talk more in next question.

But this one is more positioning yourself more strategically in this today’s economy.

[00:27:17] Hannah Clark: Yeah, I really appreciate that. And I could not agree more about the in mail. I feel like those are very easily screened and it’s just not a good tactic. Uh, so thank you for calling that out. Uh, Jessica, um, just to kind of drill in a little bit more about, uh, when we’re kind of looking at the job search process and thinking about kind of what kinds of skills we want to offer, what are some of the most in demand skills for product managers during this current economic climate?

[00:27:42] Jessica Smith: Uh, I would say getting up to date with literal AI like I know everyone’s talking about AI right now and that’s like it’s it’s taking over. You guys got to get up to date with that. Like it’s it’s basically defining everything that we’re doing. It’s defining jobs. It’s defining [00:28:00] like it’s it’s in the next year it will.

it will take over. It’s not if, it is when. So, I definitely think that that would be a top skill. Obviously, you know, being a designer and all that good stuff, but really knowing how to utilize, uh, the tools to basically make your job easier and, and, and yeah. So, that’s what I would say.

[00:28:27] Dr. Nancy Li: Totally agree. Yeah. Um, I always, uh, I always tell my students that, or people following me on my channels, moving forward, all product managers will become AI product manager.

[00:28:39] Jessica Smith: Yeah.

[00:28:39] Dr. Nancy Li: Because you’re going to put AI somewhat on your roadmap and surprisingly strong some numbers and 80 percent of the hiring managers who hires AI product manager today, they haven’t had hands on experience as AI product managers themselves.

Because he imagined this AI is only very hot in the past two years. [00:29:00] And majority of people like myself, uh, we work on AI product years ago. I started that my first award winning AI product was 2016. At the time, nobody was thinking AI was hot, which is accidental. Not accidental. We, we, we pick a tool happened to use machine vision to help see these reduced car crashes.

So 20 percent of us, of course, we automatically become AI product manager. But think about this, why 80 percent of hybrid managers themselves don’t even have AI experience was because they believe that the long term strategic roadmap for their company has something to do with AI. So therefore, even if themselves don’t have AI experience, they want to hire people on their team to work on AI product.

Could be big self driving cars, have a big project, could also be small. Doing some kind of chat GPT integration to make your customer experience better so that your product will still be top of the game in the coming few years. So it could be formal, could also be like, this is something is going to change the entire industry.

But regardless where it’s going, it’s going this way, [00:30:00] it’s not going there.

[00:30:00] Jessica Smith: Nope. Definitely not. Stats are showing it. So I definitely agree.

[00:30:04] Hannah Clark: Yeah, that’s a really good call out to is that a lot of companies that aren’t necessarily a companies now are still looking for that skill set. So I appreciate that input.

I’ll throw it back to Josh. So you mentioned before that we kind of want to stay away from talking about numbers early on in the negotiation process, but it has to come up in some point. So how should product managers approach the topic of compensation and in particular, when switching industries or roles?

[00:30:29] Josh Doody: Yeah, I’m gonna, I think I can answer this kind of maybe from from two angles. So, yes, I’m glad that you tied back to what I said earlier. Um, and to put a finer point on that, I don’t think that you should talk about numbers early in the interview process, but you should certainly know numbers, um, and do research.

And so, you know, the flip side of, you know, they ask you for your salary expectations for a role is that you say, I’m not going to share that information more tactfully than that. Obviously, the idea is you don’t share it, but in your own mind, you should have. Uh, an expectation or a number, or I call it a minimum acceptable salary.

[00:31:00] It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s your walkaway number or your line in the sand. I’m not going to take this job unless they’re paying X, whatever X is. Um, and so the, the kind of first way that I would approach this is, um, is sort of incumbent upon the candidate to do your own research, to figure out for the industry that I’m in or looking at.

What are product managers making? What’s what’s the pay look like? And you’ll find that different industries have very different pay scales for different roles. This is true across the board. It’s not just product management. Um, but for example, um, for the past few years, as we’ve been talking about a lot here, uh, AI is something that if you are already proficient at AI, You will make a lot more money than people who are not proficient in AI yet.

Um, and so, um, it’s up to you to kind of do market research, which includes industry research and figure out what our product manager is making in these different industries. And therefore, what should I expect to make? Um, in terms of negotiating, obviously you’re going to have to negotiate within sort of what the bounds of that industry are, um, [00:32:00] if a typical product manager is making 300 K.

Uh, and you’re in that industry at a standard company, the industry, and you expect to make a million, probably not going to happen. That being said, there may be industries where you could make a million as a product manager with the right background and that kind of thing, um, if you found the right opportunity at the right time.

And so the other side of this, I would say is if you’re negotiating, you should know what the market values are. You should know what the market rates look like. You should know what to expect, what your minimum acceptable salary is, all those good things. And then you negotiate kind of within that. Bound that’s set by, um, the, the, the limitations that are on the company’s budget, the industry range and all that good stuff.

On the other hand, um, you should also be looking at different industries to figure out where you want to end up. That doesn’t necessarily mean that you should just be chasing money. Um, that’s not at all what I advocate. It’s not what I work with my clients on, but it is, I think, wise to look at different industries and say, well, I’m in this industry now.

And my pay range is sort of in this ballpark and there’s another industry where I think I would be a good fit based on my background or based on my personal interests or based on things I think I could [00:33:00] learn where the pay is significantly higher. So now it’s time for me to start making a plan to move into that industry over time.

And that might be over a one or two job. Um, but that’s, that’s something that you are kind of in control of and can be planning. You’re not necessarily stuck in the industry that you’re in. It may feel that way, but there’s probably a series of moves that you can make to get out of that industry into another industry and try to get to a place where pay is moving up into the right and maybe not plateauing or even moving down for product managers who might be in industries that are becoming stale or the neglecting the impact of AI or other technologies that they might have.

[00:33:34] Jessica Smith: I just want to jump in. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. No. Okay. I wanted to jump in because we haven’t clarified this and I can’t tell you guys how many times I have candidates come on the phone with me and tell me I’m not going to tell you my salary. When you are speaking with a recruiter, you absolutely, absolutely have to be transparent about what you’re currently earning right now, what you’re looking for, because if we’re dealing with a [00:34:00] client, I just want to make this clear.

You can play hardball with the employer, don’t do it with your recruiter, because if you start doing that with your recruiter, your recruiter is going to write you off. So I just wanted to let everyone know that, if you are on the phone with a recruiter, they absolutely need to know, because they need to get you the best possible offer.

They know what the salary range is, and so, and they know what’s going on in the market, and they know, They’re the ones with the relationship with the hiring manager as well. So I just wanted to clarify that. Um, if you are working with a recruiter, make sure that you guys are always transparent about, uh, about the earnings.

[00:34:37] Hannah Clark: The color. Did you have something? Yeah.

[00:34:39] Dr. Nancy Li: I want to ask Josh a question actually. And Josh is somebody in the room who had negotiated salaries all the way from entry level all the way to exactly levels. Um, I’m just wondering Josh, from what you’ve seen in the market, um, how much people are getting paid?

What the range, you know, I know the entry level as a director. So what the range people are looking at so that [00:35:00] they don’t feel like I’m getting paid too low or too high. So can you throw in some numbers?

[00:35:05] Josh Doody: It, the range is really big. Um, in the last week I’ve talked to people who are looking at offers that are in the low 200, 000 range up to the 900, 000 range, and those are both product roles, so it’s, it’s very wide right now, but yeah, there are, there are lower numbers around 200 K and there are higher numbers around 900 K plus.

Um, and it just depends on a lot of things, but yeah, it’s, that’s the range, but it’s, I don’t know how helpful that is for people, but that’s what it looks perhaps a couple of weeks. Yeah.

[00:35:34] Dr. Nancy Li: Yeah, it’s just what I’ve seen as well. It’s also verified what I’ve seen as well. So it’s like GreenMind thinks that I could say the data I’ve seen as well for people, for example, people join like Meta, like 800k.

And of course, it’s not even AI role. A. I. P. M. get paid usually a I. P. M. get paid about 10 percent at least 10 percent higher even for the same row exact everything same but you have a on top of those you are at least 10 percent higher [00:36:00] so that is not even a I. R. O. so therefore with a I. Like as you the ones you mentioned I bet the night and the highest one could be the A.

I. P. M. working for Netflix which also they make a very Like transparent, the AIPM working for Netflix and they can go as high as 900k as well. It’s crazy. Nowadays, um, the, the salary range and the type of offers among the offers really blew to, like, blow people’s mind. Um, even if people are saying, Oh, we’re, we’re like a layoff, whatever.

People can pay 900k right now. Not just me. I see some numbers. Josh saw even more people’s numbers. It is wild. So I recommend everybody really be strategic regarding job hunting instead of complaining about the environment and this and that. No, no, no. There is like, people paying big bucks nowadays. If you know how to position yourself, negotiate well, of course, everything combined.

[00:36:49] Hannah Clark: Yeah, which actually leads me to my next question for Josh. Um, so in terms of securing better job offers, um, and I think, you know, the economic climate we kind of acknowledged [00:37:00] is a factor, but it’s not the defining factor of what kind of offers you can get. Do you have any strategies for securing a better job offer, uh, perhaps maybe even leveraging a job offer from one company into a competing offer?

[00:37:12] Josh Doody: Yeah, I’ll take that as a two parter. Um, I’m going to go backwards actually. So it does help to have competing offers in some cases. Um, I’ve thought about this a lot and I literally make a living, um, helping people negotiate. And so I’m, I’m aware, like, very conscious and aware of like, what factors help people negotiate.

People to negotiate more because my business model is also built on the more that I help people get the more that I get. So everybody wins. Um, yes, it can be helpful to have competing job offers. Um, however, uh, just having sort of like the threat of a competing job offer is almost always just as potent.

And what I mean is, um, in order, for example, to get, uh, Facebook to or meta, um, to improve their offer. Um, if you’re going to use a competing offer, it needs to be, um, a lot of stars have to align so that you have, for example, a competing [00:38:00] offer from a competitor in their space, in their industry that they respect and that they’re threatened by, and that they’re going to directly compete with to get talent.

And so that means, I mean, everybody can kind of imagine who that is, but let’s say Google, right? And so if you can go to meta and say, Hey, thanks for the offer, but I have this offer from Google and they’re offering me a hundred K more a year. Meta will frequently just match it. Or, or beat it slightly. On the other hand, if you tell them, well, I have a competing offer from this FinTech company out on the East coast, um, they’ll sometimes just kind of shrug or a startup or, you know, a series C startup or a VC backstart, but whatever it is, they, they are not as interested in matching because they’re not competing with that FinTech company on the East coast, for example.

So, but being able to say. I’m having conversations with multiple companies right now. Uh, you don’t necessarily have to tell them who the companies are, but letting them know, I’m talking to you meta in this example, also, I’m talking to other companies. Uh, if you make me an offer, I’m going to seriously consider it.

And then the conversation, you have another piece of leverage, which is not only are you negotiating your worth to the company, um, but [00:39:00] you’re also negotiating. in a way that they can persuade you to discontinue the other conversations that you’re having and just join their company. Um, which there’s a, I could go into a whole bunch of math about why that matters, but basically they’re, they’re paying you for, um, uh, reducing your optionality in your career.

Um, those other offers could turn out to be better for you monetarily or experience wise. And you’re saying to them, I will give up those other opportunities and here’s the costs to doing that. And that can be a compelling, um, negotiating position, not quite as compelling as I have a direct competitors offer in hand that’s better, but still very compelling.

You kind of don’t want to be in the middle ground. If you tell them that I have a competing offer and then they say, well, what are the details? And you don’t want to tell them the details because they’re worse than the meta offer that really doesn’t do anything for you because they’re just going to kind of say.

Come work for us if you want or not. Um, the second, um, part of that question that you asked is sort of how to stand out in a really competitive market where there are fewer job offers going out. Um, which this directly kind of dovetails with the subject of our panel today, which is your value proposition, um, positioning.[00:40:00]

Um, and so, um, the way that I think about this is, you know, I just kind of imagine that for every job and you can, especially if it’s like on LinkedIn and other places, you can frequently see how many people have applied for the job. And so you’re literally one resume and a stack of resumes. And your job is to be taken out of that stack of resumes and set aside as a, a more, a better aligned candidate for that role.

And you do that through positioning. So very, very quickly, the way that you do this is from the moment you start talking to the company, you’re laser focused on two things. And I think we’ve, we’ve actually, the other panelists have already kind of alluded to these things, but you’re, you’re laser focused on what their goals are.

Uh, as a company, as an organization, as a team, as a manager that you’re talking to, uh, and what the challenges are that they’re facing that are preventing them from reaching their goals. That’s pretty much it. Um, when you’re talking to a hiring manager in an interview, uh, we like to think it’s a big deal for us to be interviewed.

And so we’ve been preparing for weeks. Sometimes we’re getting everything in order. We’re learning everything we can. That hiring manager was probably just doing something critical for the [00:41:00] business in a meeting, making decisions. And They got a calendar reminder that said 10 minutes until your interview with Josh.

And they said, shoot, I forgot about this. Where’s his resume? I don’t know. They sat down, they picked up the phone, they dialed in kind of frazzled and said, Hey, Josh, how’s it going? Uh, so, so great to talk to you today about this. And then they looked down at like the position name on the sheet that they’re interviewing for.

Um, it’s not that it’s not a big deal or importance to them, but they have other things that they were focused on before they talked to you. You kind of interrupted that to be interviewed. And then when they’re done interviewing you, they’re going to hang up the phone and they’re going to go back to scrambling to put out that fire or deal with whatever they’re dealing with.

So your job is to put yourself in kind of their shoes and to think before they talk to me and after they talk to me, they’re trying to accomplish certain goals and overcome challenges. They’re trying to put out those fires or deal with whatever it is that they’re trying to deal with. And so your job isn’t as a candidate is to take your resume off of that big pile of resumes and move it aside by saying.

Let me explain to you how with my background, my experience, my interests, I can help you accomplish the goals that you have as a company, as a team, as a hiring manager, and I can help you solve the problems that you’re facing right now as a company, as a team, as a hiring manager. And this is more [00:42:00] potent, obviously, if you’re talking to the hiring manager directly, and you can say, I know that you’re struggling with this thing right now, because I, last time I had an interview with one of the peers on the team that I’ll be working with, they described it to me.

Let me tell you how I can help you address that problem if you bring me onto the team. And so that’s how you stand out. And now you’re no longer just a resume, um, which is a useful tool, but you’re not just a resume that checks the boxes and has the right language that aligns with the job description.

That’s how you get in the door. But once you’re in the door, you need to distinguish yourself. And then you do that through using positioning and helping them to understand how if you join the team, their life will get better because you help them accomplish their goals, which they’re accountable for and fix the problems that they’re having.

[00:42:37] Hannah Clark: I’m just loving all of the actionable advice in this panel. This is great. I’m going to throw it back to to Nancy and we’ll talk a little bit about networking. I’ll have Jessica chime in as well on this, and then we’ll start to answer some of the amazing questions that we were starting to see in the chat.

So guys, just keep adding those and we’ll get to as many as we can. Um, so to kick it off with another question on networking, what role does networking play in product manager’s [00:43:00] career advancement during uncertain economic times? This one’s for Nancy.

[00:43:04] Dr. Nancy Li: The most important role. No, I was wrong. The second most important role because it goes hand to hand with product portfolio.

I think product portfolio is number one thing and networking is number two. But in order to increase the success rate of networking, you need to link your product portfolio to a networking script. So combo is turbocharge. Okay. So, um, and it’s quite similar to what Josh, uh, and Jessica said earlier, there are thousands be applying for the same jobs when you go to LinkedIn immediately.

Especially the job opening was like two hours ago, opened. Oh, over 1000 applicants. Oh, 1000 oh one right now. Oh my goodness. You have a heart attack. Okay. So that’s where the networking comes in. When I actually, I personally went through two economical downturn. I learned it through a hard way and actually very effective.

Um, my first job was doing 2008, 2008 recession. Then my second job getting my director job was April, 2020. All company announced [00:44:00] freeze hiring. They don’t even know what does COVID means. I would just say, really want to become director. I went out for interview for both times. I never applied for any jobs when I do not have a referral.

Because I don’t want to play a numbers game. You want to be one on a 1000. I think hurt my personal confidence. Uh, at least for me, maybe other people feel okay. Okay. I get rejected 1000 times. You could pull it by one interview. You can do that. Uh, well, but I want to protect my personal confidence. So therefore I go out for networking.

I pitch myself. I try to identify who potentially is a hiring manager or who potentially is my alumni who potentially have something in common with me. That person is nice enough to be able to help me. Put my resume in front of the hybrid manager. So I network first using the networking script that I told you guys earlier.

By the way, I forgot to explain to you what is ABC framework. ABC stands for Appraise, Because, and C called Call to Action. So match back to what I said earlier. Um, so that’s going to increase success rate significantly and [00:45:00] turbocharge. at the end of networking script. Ask them to review. Now. Try bring me 99.

99 percent of people out there. They don’t have part of portfolio among people have purple foil, 99 percent of people, the purple foil looks really bad. So have a perfect one and link it, you’re the one who landing 900k jobs that what Josh is helping people to negotiate.

[00:45:22] Jessica Smith: I’m going to add on to your, your comment here, Nancy, because, uh, when I was sitting in an internal, uh, talent acquisition, the amount of times that I’d have colleagues come up to me and say, Hey, I met this, I met this guy.

Over at this networking event, he passed over his resume, he’s really interested in the company, interview him, automatic top, top of the pile. This is the way to do it, guys. So, yeah.

[00:45:47] Hannah Clark: Fantastic. And I was, I was just gonna ask you as well. Um, so for you, because I know that Jessica, you’re a huge, Proponent of networking if you want to add some other advice you have as far as networking and how that’s going to get you to the top of the pile.

[00:45:59] Jessica Smith: Oh, yeah, [00:46:00] no, um, definitely just make sure that you’re joining accelerator groups and like, just join as many communities as you possibly can get yourself out there. Um, and like, start this off. As early as possible in your career, networking literally never stops. Like I started in tech like 10 years ago, but, um, I’ve just built relationships over the course of my career.

And now people are like, Oh, I know, you know, I know who you are. They’ve known me from like five years ago. Right. But you never know. throughout the course of your career, like just always maintain good relationships, but you never know in the course of your career where you’re going to end up. But also too, I want to add to Josh’s point, no career is linear, right?

And so when he’s saying, okay, well, you know, you may be jumping around from a different job or a different industry, like make sure that you’re building relationships, not just in the tech industry, right? Like make sure you’re going out to other industry events and building relationships there as well.

And just go out to things and build. Build, build those [00:47:00] relationships and keep in touch with people and just, you know, just make sure that when you’re keeping in touch, you’re asking them about them. Like, you know, and, and again, like it’s about selling yourself and what you can do. And you know, if they don’t have a role or position for you right now, you know, someone might leave a company and say, Oh, I landed up.

You know, at this, at this other company, it’s a manufacturing company and we’re looking for a product manager role for whatever, um, you know, it, it may be a different industry, but that’s your foot in the door, right? And so people remember the people that are memorable. So be memorable.

[00:47:37] Hannah Clark: That’s great advice.

Um, so we’ll, we’ll start, uh, picking off some of the questions from the chat. I will try to get as many of them as we can. All of them are so great. We’ll try and follow up with those. We can’t answer later. Um, but I’ll start with the first one we received, which is, uh, I find myself oftentimes in the internal battle between being a more generalized PM versus a more specialized PM.

So which of these is the best, [00:48:00] uh, well, I guess the question really is, um, maybe hints at what, how do we discern what’s the best route, whether we should be a more of like a general core PM or more of a specialized PM. I’m going to throw this one to Nancy.

[00:48:13] Dr. Nancy Li: Great question. I think depends on your long term goal, your salary expectations, and also how senior are you in your career journey.

If you’re at the beginning of the career, I recommend people become general PM for now, just for the sake of let me try out. I don’t know which Directions and the pivot. Once you are leaders, middle, middle, a middle stage of your career, let’s say you are already eight years or 10 years into a career, um, or even five, maybe it could be five years.

You should start to specialize in term domain, because if you’re always general PM, there’s always young guys who can also be general PM and doing something quite similar to you. So therefore, once you reach certain like [00:49:00] middle age. Those kind of range, I will pick a domain so that you can specialize in.

So now let me also, um, describe what do I mean by specialization? Um, specialization doesn’t mean that has stick within the same industry, FinTech, whatever. No, you can specialize in one tech or one trend, uh, trend. For example, uh, myself specialize in AI and cloud, those two. Um, I’ve been. Accidentally pick this.

I was generalist, but I accidentally launched a world winning product for both very famous product and like literally that all people in my industry know it. So let me just pick those two as my specialization. Um, so you can gradually pick on your own, or maybe gradually just as you create develop, you’re going to pick one.

So once you pick your specialization, you will become authorities. In the space you are, uh, and then you can jump different industry. For example, any AI companies I can join today, I launched a world winning [00:50:00] product, like a AI product. They eight years ago before AI was hot and I up to date regarding all the AI technology and also teaching my own AI product management course.

And so people, Oh, this is something I can grow as a long term career, but you’re not stuck in one thing, but you can jump different industry, work on different kind of AI product as a product manager, so it’s quite fun as well. Um, now, of course, I also mentioned regarding your goal and pay different things, if you are a journal PM, I think in general, it’s kind of fun because you can work on many, many different stuff.

And one day you work on Snapchat. Uh, creating filters. And the other day you work on like security product, something very. Personally, it’s kind of boring so you can you can go from different directions and leave it to you guys. Um, yeah. Okay. By the way, I forgot to mention and for the people mentioned the AI course and I’m launching my own AI PM course in June, the brand new one.

If you’re interested, you guys can go to my website and learn more. I can also send you guys a waitlist if people are [00:51:00] interested.

[00:51:03] Hannah Clark: We have a couple of questions related to job hunting on LinkedIn. I kind of want Jessica to kind of pick all of these off as sort of like a A question that’s kind of three or three answers.

Uh, so from Hima, uh, LinkedIn jobs are reposted many times. Your thoughts on this, are they genuinely looking for candidates? That’s one part, uh, but then there’s also a question from Catherine about, uh, challenges of finding the hiring manager for positions, uh, theoretically on LinkedIn or on websites, et cetera.

Uh, so any tips for finding the hiring manager? Um, and also breaking through the noise because even with LinkedIn premium, she’s having a hard time hearing back. So just to recap, um, uh, LinkedIn jobs that have been reposted, are they really looking for candidates? How do we find the hiring manager? And is there any tips for breaking through the noise on LinkedIn?

[00:51:45] Jessica Smith: Um, okay, to start, so, uh, I don’t know if anyone knows this, but Ontario is passing a law right now regarding, and I’m hoping that this is going to blow up because, [00:52:00] uh, I’m not gonna lie, like a lot of the jobs that you are seeing out there, they, they could be BS, like, I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna spoof you guys or anything like that, they could be BS.

And a lot of the times what happened when I was in talent acquisition, uh, working internally, is that we’d have hiring managers come to us and say, I need five. Candidates that are this and I’d be like, okay, well, you need to go. You need to go talk to a resource manager. Get this approved by the CFO and the COO to make sure that we actually need five roles.

Now, depending on where you’re applying to, sometimes. You know, if it’s a, if it’s a startup, they may actually believe that they need like five different candidates for it. And then as they go through the process, realize that they only need three, but they’ve put five postings up. Right. So you have to understand that companies, yeah, they think that they know what they’re looking for most of [00:53:00] the time, but you know, they’re also learning how to go through a hiring process as well.

And I see companies mess this up Literally all the time and there’s always something going on. So are all the jobs real? I mean, I would say no. Um, so that’s just based on what we’re seeing in Ontario. We’re passing this law right now where employers are going to have to be transparent on whether or not this is an evergreen rule.

Which means they’re continuously collecting resumes for future positions that are open maybe five months or six months later down the line, or if this is a role that they’re actively hiring for now, because the conditions in the market have gotten so bad with COVID 19. So, um, Everything that’s going on because this is what hiring managers do, right?

They open these roles, they, they open these positions and they say, okay, we need this at this point. And in a month, they’re like, we actually don’t need this person anymore. And we always have these battles. I’m like, you can’t ask candidates. You guys don’t know that this goes [00:54:00] on on the back end, but.

Talent acquisition is consistently fighting with hiring managers and their directors and all this stuff. We’re fighting with leadership teams to make sure that these roles are legitimate. And the reason being is because we don’t want to waste our time screening candidates that are not even going to be able to fill a position.

So that’s the first thing I wanted to kind of bring to the market. The second question, sorry, what was the second question, Hannah?

[00:54:28] Hannah Clark: Oh, uh, about, um, finding the hiring manager. It’s difficult to find the hiring manager of a company and then breaking through the noise on LinkedIn was the third.

[00:54:35] Jessica Smith: Breaking through the noise.

Okay. So finding the hiring manager, usually if you’re looking at a good job description, they will list the title of. hiring manager. So what you’re going to do is you’re hopefully looking through the job descriptions like you actually have to look through it. Don’t skim it for 11 seconds, look through it.

It’s either at the bottom or it’s at the top of that job description. Not all job descriptions have have it. So as a backup, what I would [00:55:00] do is I would go to the chief operations officer of that company and then I would Do the whole pitch thing regarding LinkedIn and how to break through the noise.

Take Dr. Nancy Lee’s tips. Make sure your messaging is short. Okay. Cause these guys only have seven seconds. So they don’t want to be wasting their time on a bunch of candidates. Like you have seven seconds to make an impression. So you need to make that count in regards to standing out. And then also the networking thing, right?

Like we’re all hard. We’re all harping on this networking thing. You want to go and Stand out, build your network because you’re going to be able to get those referrals from inside the company once you go apply because someone knows you and then that’s going to help push you to the top of the pile.

Third question, sorry.

[00:55:48] Hannah Clark: Oh, uh, it was just about like tips for breaking through the noise because, uh, even with LinkedIn premium, like folks are having a hard time getting a response.

[00:55:55] Jessica Smith: Yeah. No, definitely. Um, networking guys, because the way, and I gotta, [00:56:00] I gotta tell you this with, with the agency that I work in, right?

Like the agency that I run, the way I do sales has to be completely different now. Right. And so a lot of the strategy that I’m also using as a salesperson, like just take it from me. Like you have to, you know, the, the biggest. Um, career learning lessons you’ll, you’ll learn, I think, is following some of the top salespeople and pivoting on the, and learning on how they do their sales and what they’re doing differently.

Right. And so I also follow this information so that I can learn, okay, how can I go and, you know, make myself better or pivot better. We’re in this. Huge, huge change in the market right now where there’s a bunch of cold emailing, there’s a bunch of LinkedIn messaging, like that’s the answer for everyone, but no one really wants to get out of their comfort zone and go out and network.

And I know that Dr. Nancy was like, get your product portfolio ready. Yeah, that’s, that’s true. That’s definitely the first thing. Make sure you are up to snuff, but get your butts out [00:57:00] and network, because I cannot tell you, like, I can’t tell you how many relationships that I’ve built with people. Like, get yourself, it’s like, I will, I mentioned this on one of the podcast episodes.

When I was 15, my mom was like, you need to go apply for this job, right? It was at McDonald’s. So she drove me there, and I literally had to walk in and go talk to the manager. Like, I don’t know, we, we’ve just strayed so far away from it, and I think that because we’re in such a downturn, like, you need to think of better ways to start getting in front of people.

And that’s exactly how you do it.

[00:57:36] Hannah Clark: Awesome. We’re very limited on time right now, so I’m going to do this, a similar kind of packaging of several questions into one so that Nancy can, uh, can take us home here. Um, and just, uh, for those who won’t have their questions answered today, uh, what we’ll try to do is, uh, answer those on our social media pages.

So, uh, make sure to follow us on LinkedIn and on Twitter, uh, at the product manager, uh, we can post the credentials, uh, in the chat here. Um, but we’ll be trying [00:58:00] to pick off as many questions as we didn’t get to today on social media. Um, okay. So we’ll, we’ll just, uh, head back to the questions here. So I had a few from Keith and Michael, uh, that kind of, uh, correspond with each other.

Uh, one of them was from Keith. Um, whether it’s pointless to apply for a p. m. role if they’ve done, uh, p. m. activities but have not operated in the p. m. role officially, they’ve been a director. Um, and then from Michael, uh, Michael had mentioned that there’s a couple of, uh, he, he had, uh, started a company that didn’t work out, that fizzled out during the pandemic and is wondering if it’s still worth it to add that skill set to the resume.

Um, even if the product, it wasn’t ultimately successful on then also whether it’s a good idea to pitch a product feature for the company that they’re interested in applying for. So it’s kind of all to do with, um, you know, what is worth including in a resume, uh, even if that, that skillset wasn’t necessarily directly applicable to product management or whether it wasn’t necessarily with the outcome that they wanted.

[00:58:58] Dr. Nancy Li: Uh, the question to me, right? Just [00:59:00] confirm. Yes. This question has five questions in it. Number one, um, for the skills related to PM, you should include, but you must define what’s related to PM there on my, on my YouTube channel. There is a PM, this YouTube video about the must have product management resume keywords.

Those are skills related to PM, like cross functional team, like agile methodology. Uh, all of those are keywords you must include. But there’s also other keywords you might be guessing saying, Oh, for example, like, um, coaching other people. Well, it’s coaching as we were directly rated to PM, not really. But if you’re applying for a director position, you should talk about you coach and recruited team of junior product managers that do different things.

So depends on the level you apply for, the keywords will change. And the key is hit all the PM keywords is going to help you quickly, um, get Uh, land a job. And your second question, uh, Hannah, can you remind me of the same question, the keywords, uh, what to include on the [01:00:00] resume? And,

[01:00:01] Hannah Clark: uh, it was mostly about whether it’s still worth it to, um, uh, add, uh, like if you should include product experience from something that wasn’t successful.

[01:00:12] Dr. Nancy Li: Ah, yes, you should. Because that adds the credibility showing they have done related work, even if it’s not successful, the 2 things you can do. Number 1, you can change how you compare and define how success basically, for example, if you had to start up eventually failed, but the beginning when you launch the product.

The product and you had like 100 or 200 users was in one month, right? This considered success at the beginning of product launch phase of the success. Um, so you should redefine it. Um, now second part regarding success of the product, um, and do not compete your, compare yourself to Google, which has, or Meta has 1, 000, 1 million, whatever, [01:01:00] 10, users.

So you should compare the growth. Of your product, or maybe compared with your niche, maybe you are the fastest growing startup in your specific niche. So redefine it, but I still want to want you guys to include those in your resume. Uh, I, I, now I remember sort of question regarding, should you propose a features for the new company you want to join?

Um, uh, the answer is yes, but only for your dream company, because creating a part of portfolio product roadmap. Takes time, takes lots of thinking and lots of passion, putting time, uh, to work on it. So therefore only do it for your dream company that you know you really want to go after.

[01:01:39] Hannah Clark: Great. Well, uh, I think that’s all the time we have today.

Thank you so much for all of your questions and for all of your attention today. Um, so, uh, like I said before, this recording will be available to all members of the product manager. Uh, Michael has added in the chat, uh, some, the link for information about, uh, membership if you’re interested in that, uh, and also make sure to follow us on social media as we’ll be answering the questions [01:02:00] that we didn’t get to today on there.

Uh, so thanks everybody for joining and have a great rest of your week. Thank you guys. Good night.