Earlywork #6: How to Break into Product Management
Featuring roles from ParentalEQ, FoodByUs, :Different & more + interviews with Clement Kao (Founder @ Product Manager HQ), Andrew Vo (Product @ Atlassian), & Penny Talalak (Founder @ Pocketi)
Hey gang!
It’s ya boi Dan and you're tuning into Episode 6 of Earlywork, a newsletter focused on shortlisting the best roles for students & recent graduates across tech & startups in Sydney (+ remote roles).
If you’re not already part of the crew, subscribe now to keep a pulse on our latest stories and conversations:
Have recently chucked a few cheeky extra resources on the Earlywork website for ya, including:
Some new job board additions on the Jobs Platform List (Startup Galaxy, Blackbird Jobs Board, Stone & Chalk Job Board).
A Recommended Newsletters section to stay on top of the most important news, insights, and trends in tech & startups.
A Tech & Startup Courses section where I’ve curated a list of free and paid online course providers that teach job-relevant skills for tech & startups.
I’m super keen to help build out a nexus of tech & startup career knowledge for young people in Australia, so if there’s anything else that you’d like to see, shoot me a message!
We’ve got a double-interview doozy coming up with our…
💡 Weekly Cheeky Tip:
How to Break into Product Management
Ah, product management. One-third of the holy trinity of fetishised buzzword job titles alongside ‘strategy’ and ‘growth’.
It’s this weird, nebulous role that sits at the intersection of engineering, design, and business, and in that sense, it’s a pretty cool opportunity to work across several domains and solve problems holistically.
Whilst it’s quite a popular path in tech powerhouses like the US, Australia’s product management pathways are still quite nascent and limited despite our growing tech landscape, and visibility around what the role actually entails and requires is quite low.
I encountered a lot of uncertainty and ambiguity in landing my upcoming role in product management, so I decided to pick the brains of two product managers with quite different backgrounds (both technical and non-technical) to give y’all a sharper understanding of the most important skills and experiences you need to break into your first product management role as a young person:
Clement Kao
Founder @ Product Manager HQ & Product Manager @ Blend
If you develop the following three core skills as a product manager, you’ll thrive even while tackling the monumental workload that comes with the role:
Empathy and communication: Necessary because your job is fundamentally focused on filling the white space. You won’t know what space is most critical to fill unless you fully understand the customer, the business, and the development team. On top of that, you need to serve as the mediator between all three groups, which is why communication is so critical.
Grit and speed of learning: Necessary because product management is inherently an infinite space. You need to have grit because you’re going to face difficult decisions every day, and you’ll face conflict from all three groups all of the time.
You need to be convicted in your mission and your passion, and you need to be the spiritual cheerleader and representative for all three groups even when times are tough. You need to learn quickly because customers, businesses, and development teams are changing all of the time. New industry trends, new competitors, new technologies, and even new hires might completely change the way in which you work.Ruthless prioritization: Necessary because product management is infinite. You have thousands of decisions to make every day. Should you send that message? If so, to who, and when, and how, and with what tone and content? Should you take this customer call? If so, what’s the objective? If not, how will you turn them down tactfully? If you can’t quickly identify the key factors that will make or break your company, you’ll drown from analysis paralysis, or you’ll be too overwhelmed with inbound work. You have to know when to decline work and when to delegate work - you can’t do it all yourself.
Additional Resources:
Clement wrote a book on breaking into product management, called, you guessed it, Breaking into Product Management, which you can check out on Amazon.
Andrew Vo
Associate Product Manager @ Atlassian
From what I have seen, tech companies pattern-match on five key experiences:
Leadership experience: Making a tangible impact as a leader.
Technical or problem-solving experience: Could be anything that demonstrates experience solving complex problems, i.e. software engineering work experience, consulting, etc.
Startup experience: Being in or running a startup.
Personal projects: Blogs or apps released to users.
Diverse experience across the product cycle: Business, design, VC, engineering, etc.
These experiences map to underlying traits/abilities that they are looking for: communication, leadership, product sense/passion, analytical/problem-solving ability, entrepreneurship mindset, passion for the user, design sense.
You don't have to have all of the above experiences, however, it's expected that you've experienced most at a reasonable level or some at depth. It isn't a good sign to a recruiter (or to be honest, if you're fit for being a product manager) if you haven't gone out of your way to pursue things. Being a PM is a demanding role which is amplified when you're an intern or a graduate, because of your lack of experience. You will compensate with tenacity, passion, and curiosity.
Additional Resources:
Andrew was featured on the UNSW CSESoc ‘What is Product Management’ podcast episode last year to explain a bit more about the field. He’s also written a full article on A Roadmap to PM for Students.
…
Two different perspectives, but both super useful to consider. Feel free to shoot me a message if you have any specific questions about the field 😁
Some recommended reads and tools to help you learn more about the field and prep for PM interviews:
📚 Best PM Books:
The Lean Product Playbook by Dan Olsen
Inspired by Marty Cagan
Cracking The PM Interview by Gayle Laakmann McDowell & Jackie Bavaro
✉️ Other Great PM Content:
💼 Interview Prep Tools:
RocketBlocks - Drills, concept reviews and guided coaching on PM interviews.
StellarPeers - Frameworks, peer-to-peer mock interviews, learning videos and coaching for PM interviews.
⛅ Intern & Part-Time Roles
🛠️ Technical
Software Engineer Intern, Medius Health
Comprehensive AI medical knowledge graph that helps providers & payors gain a thorough understanding of customer’s health.Software Engineer (Part-Time), Digibi
Trade cryptocurrencies in several exchanges at the same time via a unified interface.Software Engineer Intern (Node.js), Upstreet
Shopping app that helps consumers build their investment portfolio every time they shop by rewarding shoppers with shares.
💪 Non-Technical
Blog Writer (Contract) & Junior Designer, :Different
Full-service technology-enabled property management platform.Startup Intern, Qwilr
Document design and automation software for B2B sales teams.Operations Intern, Liven
An incentive-based mobile payment gateway and ecosystem purpose-built for the lifestyle and dining industries.Marketing Intern, Pathzero
Emissions management platform that makes meaningful climate action easy for small and medium-sized businesses.Marketing Intern, Anility
Risk identification tool for builders and developers to monitor the financial health and ongoing performance of their contractors.Marketing Intern, Project Wren
Web app that makes it easy for anyone to calculate and offset their carbon footprint through a monthly subscription.
🌞 Graduate & Full-Time Roles
🛠️ Technical
Systems Engineer (DevOps), Deputy
Rostering and time clock software.Frontend Engineer (Marketing), Dovetail
Platform to analyse customer data, collaborate on insights, and build a customer research repository.Customer Success Engineer, UpGuard
Cyber resilience platform that proactively assesses the risk of company outages and breaches.Junior Insights Analyst, Oneflare
B2C home services marketplace.Frontend Developer, Valiant Finance
Platform connecting Australian business owners with flexible financing.Go Software Engineer, mx51
Specialist white-label bank-focused payment technology provider.Security Engineer, Lendi
Technology-enabled home loan platform.Software Engineer/Support Analyst, PayReq
Billing delivery infrastructure that enables billers to send digital invoices to any of their customers’ preferred payer platforms.
💪 Non-Technical
Growth Hacker (Contract) & Content Creator (Contract), ParentalEQ
Changing parenting by simplifying psychology. Email Family@Parentaleq.com to apply.Inside Sales Representative, FoodByUs
Australia's #1 online platform for restaurants to order all of their food from.Graduate Product Analyst, Whispir
Communications platform with automated workflows.Customer Success Coordinator, Basiq
Aggregation platform for financial institutions to acquire financial data.Marketing Specialist, Immutable
Blockchain for in-game transactions.Account Manager, Airbnb
Global marketplace for vacation property rental & travel experiences.Customer Success Manager, Canonical
Support and services creator for Ubuntu, a leading global open-source operating system.Growth Marketer - App, Finder
Australia's most visited comparison site.Growth Marketer & Sales Development Representative, DiviPay
Virtual corporate cards and expense management platform for Australian businessesSales Development Representative, Templafy
Platform to improve and automate the document creation workflow.Marketing Generalist, Project Wren
Web app that makes it easy for anyone to calculate and offset their carbon footprint through a monthly subscription.
1️⃣ 🕐 💪 One Minute Hustle
We are back once again with One Minute Hustle, a bite-sized interview with emerging young Aussie founders and operators working on early-stage ventures.
Each week, I ask a young startup founder or operator 3 simple questions:
What are you working on❓
How’d you get started❓
Why do you do what you do❓
Today, let’s get inside the noggin of…
Penny Talalak, Founder @ Pocketi and UX Designer @ Servian
What are you working on? Pocketi aims to collect happy moments into enduring moments with our Pocket T-Shirt. I am working on bringing the next limited edition of collectable Pocket T-Shirts for National Taco/Nacho Day and preparing my campaign for that!
How'd you get started? Like other entrepreneurs, we all have a problem to solve. I got started because I was frustrated there wasn’t a donut t-shirt specific to my likings. The shirt I was looking for needed to have a donut in a pocket and a drip at the front to symbolise overflowing of happiness. After researching, I realised that there wasn’t a lot of food-themed pocket t-shirts at all. I found a niche in this and now, my goal is for Pocketi to become the leading collectable pocket t-shirt.
Why do you do what you do? I am combining my passion for FOOD (big foodie fan here), my core skills in design, and my love of building relationships with people. Not many jobs out there are aligned with your passion, and Pocketi has brought out my hidden strength into a practical, real-world application.
…aaaand that’s time!
What topics would you like to see me cover? Know a young founder or startup employee that I should be showcasing? What sort of roles would you like to see more of?
If you’re a zesty student careers fanatic, come join the Earlywork Gang on Slack to:
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Discuss key pain points in jobseeking, applications, interviews, and all that jazz, for early-career roles in tech & startups.
Ciao for now,
Dan