Transitioning into product is easy
What is the one thing that you think a candidate should do in order to out-stand if he is applying for a Product role coming from a non-product background?
eagerness to learn and grind. I see lot of wannabe PMs who know a lot of frameworks, but sorry to break the bubble for them. PMing is hardly 5% framework and rest it mostly you pushing till you solve the problem against the odds.
Amen! So many candidates talked about applying frameworks when just probing them further showed they had no idea what they were talking about.
I transitioned from customer success to PM purely based on developing a depth of knowledge in the product we are building and ability to keep things ticking in the face of chaos.
PM in a series A/seed startup is very different from Series B-C and extremely different from large companies.
Thats a basic difference that candidates don’t appreciate or even grasp.
UNO REVERSEEE!! Haha cool. Obviously if a person is coming from a non product background, he would not be screen shortlisted by HRs quite easily because already there are N number of product folks in the system. As far as I have observed people have high rate of conversion when they approach founders/product heads by cold emailing/networking and try pitching themself on how good they are, maybe showcase PRDs, portfolio that they have worked on, product observations about the company, any suggestion in improvement of the product, how to be one step ahead with their competitors, etc., would be an intriguing part for the founders to have a call with them and take it forward. Referrals might work, but not at a larger extent if the HR decided to reject post resume screening.
