How to become a product manager

Learn how to become a marketing product manager in high tech.

Instructions

Difficulty: Challenging

Things You’ll Need:

• Conviction
• Dedication
• Ability to read
• Good with people

1. Decide if product management is for you. Product management is about being in the middle of the action. You have a lot of responsibility but not a lot of power. You have to get things done through your powers of persuasion.
2. Get high tech experience. Learn to code, provide tech support, administer some technology, test stuff or somehow work with technology. You will need this experience to help you later in your career so that you know what technology people need from product managers.
3. Get business experience. Work in business development, sales, marketing, advertising, or public relations at a high tech firm. You will need to learn about the marketing and sales cycles and understand what marketing people need from product managers.
4. Get an MBA. The ideal situation is to get a top-tier MBA, but not everyone has this as an option. If you need to keep working, you can also go into an executive or otherwise nights/weekend MBA program.
5. Get recruited into a product manager role at a large company like Microsoft, Amazon, Google, or some other software or Internet company. Once you have a few years at a big firm like these, you will be able to do the fun stuff like startups or move up the ranks into higher-level management.

Tips & Warnings

• Constantly read books about technology, innovation, marketing and finance
• Get a mentor
• Do informational interviews of existing product managers
• You don't always need an MBA to be a product manager, but it is nice to have because it gives you great analysis tools and a broad overview of the business world.