Category: career development
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4 reasons why titles matter in startups
So you have just been offered a product management job in a startup, but the job offer does not mention any specific title. Should you bring up the title in your offer negotiations? I say Absolutely. In startups everyone is expected to wear multiple hats, but titles still matter for the…
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Started new gig at Care.com
I started my new job at Care.com this week as Director of Product Management for the International initiative. Had a good 2 year stint at Gazelle before this great opportunity came by. Care.com enables consumers to find babysitters, nannies, senior care providers, pet sitters, tutors, housekeepers and a lot more. The…
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Senior Product Manager position – New York City
One of the ways this blog helps me is when readers reach out to me asking for advice and also for help. Recently, Jonathan Hoefler, CEO of Hoefler & Frere-Jones (www.typography.com) reached out asking for help in recruiting his company’s first software product manager. Jonathan and I went through needs analysis to…
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Managing your product management career – Part 3 – Job hunting tips
This is the third and final post of the series on managing your product management career. The first post was about assessing your product management skills and the second post was about how to market yourself as a software product manager. Now that you have assessed your skill set, build digital…
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Managing your product management career – Part 2 – Marketing “you”
This is the second of three posts I intend to make related to my talk on “Managing your Product Management Career” at ProductCamp Boston. The first post was about assessing your product management skills. Now that you have accurately assessed your product management skills, it is time to think about…
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Managing your product management career – Part 1 – Assessing your skills
This is the first of three posts I intend to make related to my talk on “Managing your Product Management Career” at ProductCamp Boston. We as software product managers, spend a lot of time managing products at work. We assess the competitive position of our products, we identify gaps in…
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Messenger of problems?
It is very easy to identify problems. What is difficult is figuring out how to solve them? Ones who do the latter are valued and get ahead. Sounds like cliche? Absolutely. But it still surprises me when I run into “messengers” of problems. Many want to bring a slew of…
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5 ways software product managers can develop their personal brand
We as software product managers spend a lot of time figuring out positioning statements for our products to ensure that the product brand will stick. But how about our own personal brand? Have you ever thought about your own state? After all are you not a product? – what about…
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Eight traits of good hiring managers
Good managers mostly hire good people and sometimes hire the wrong people whereas bad managers always hire the wrong people. This is the conclusion I have come to in my 15 year career. What do I define as a bad hiring manager? – one who does not have good managerial…
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Working with recruiters – set the ground RULE !!
Once I finished my previous two posts on job hunting tips, I was asked by a friend who is now looking for a job on how to work effectively with recruiters during a job hunt. I have recently spoke to some HR Directors/Managers where this issue has come up as…
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Job hunting cheat sheet
In my previous post, I referred to a 1-2 page cheat sheet that I used to create for each company (say Company X) to which I had applied. Here are the key things that I used to have in the cheat sheet. 1) Market space – what industry is Company…
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Ten job hunting tips for a product manager
I had mentioned in my last post that I would post tips from my experience looking for a job as a product manager – in fact I had to do this twice in the last 7 months. So here is what worked for me … Remember one thing – job…
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State of You?
As a product manager, you are quite busy doing product roadmaps, gathering requirements, working with cross functional teams, getting the messaging right,writing positioning statements etc. You are busy trying to do all the work with less time and resources available at your disposal. In the midst of this chaotic professional…
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The Nine Biggest Myths of the Workplace by Penelope Trunk
Guy Kawasaki interviewed Penelope Trunk, author of Brazen Careerist: The New Rules for Success on the nine biggest myths of the workplace. Here they are: You’ll be happier if you have a job you like. Job-hopping will hurt you. The glass ceiling still exists. Office politics is about backstabbing. Do…
Software Product Manager by Gopal Shenoy 