Advice to College folks on PM career

Saw some misguided student post about PM internships. This is for anyone considering a PM internship. DONT. A fresher should not be going into Product Management. Focus on building hard skills first. You need an edge/alpha in your career strategy while reducing risk. Atleast work for 1 year in the industry in a hard skill role. Then, think about transitioning. This does two things. 1. You have a core differentiator compared to other candidates: Engg/ Design/ Sales/ Data Science/ Analytics. Having a PM internship is not a good enough differentiator. No company would hire a Product Management intern over someone with hard skills in another domain. Product is different. In SDE, it makes sense to have multiple internships as it gives confidence to the recruiter that you’ll be able to do your job. In PM, no recruiter worth their salt will consider a PM internship contributing to you being a successful PM. Your internship doesn’t contribute anything meaningful to its ability to communicate your skill. 2. You realise if you’re getting into a field because it’s a fad or you’re genuinely interested in it. I’ve seen many such freshers switch into product and get into suboptimal orgs. Don’t. Do your career a favour and work on your hard skills. That alone will contribute a lot more to your Product Skills than some poor internship. As a GPM at Gojek, I will never hire anyone who has done a PM internship unless they have a solid track record in a hard skill based role. You can only be a good “enabler“ if you can empathise with a “builder”. Can you be a PM out of college, YES? Should you? NO. You’ll realise this later in your career. First gain experiences building/enabling real products, you’ll thank yourself for that when it helps you build better Products. Also, stop listening to these charlatans who masquerade as Product Gurus. They are out to make a quick buck. Don’t do these Product Courses. It’s all a farce. First, get some experience and then you’ll know

What do you think How much difficult is it to enter Product Management as a fresher?

What do you think about the product management courses in the market? Every PM certification I see, it's creating robots, making learners adapt to similar way of speaking, same jargons, same processes. Has the hype done more good than bad?

I am a 3rd year student from tier -3 private college, pursuing btech is it possible to get PM roles just after under graduation, have seen people from tier -1/2 pursuing vague branches like coal mineral sort of engineering and still be able to crack roles as a PM at tech companies . Also one should aim for a role like this after undergrad or just it demands more exp? Also any roadmap you would recommend

How is this program? Do we actual get to learn something? I’m planning to enroll.

I am a Tier 1 MBA with 3.5 years of tech work-ex in service based company. Will be graduating in mar’23. The on-campus hiring for Product roles is pretty bad right now. How do I land an off campus product role at a decent company with decent pay

Hi guys, I am about to graduate in a month(Btech,NIT-Civil). I am adept(skilled) in data analysis, Product roadmapping, Feature prioritisation, UI/UX etc. I also have a PM internship experience. The problem is I am unable to land any product analyst/ APM full-time roles. Any suggestions, guidance will be of great help. Thanks guys,

Anybody here who has done or has any views on the 12 week course by ISB for product management, is it good or just another gimmick course? Also planning my next move so looking at the next courses to upskill!

Bhaiya/ Didi, please stfu. Keep your courses to you. If you really care about bringing revolution to edtech, then sell your courses for free. What you are doing is fooling the dumb gullible indian college kids. I don't want to see your randomass selfie explaining why your course is 10xbetter than the same other thousand courses. This breed is successfully ruining lakhs of students with the clickbaity crore rupee salary.

I'm working as a technical product manager who has transitioned from analytics/data science role with over 5+ yoe and 2yoe as PM. I am earning in the range of 35-55LPA right now. While I am happy with the salary, I am not content with the role I have performed as PM so far. When I go for textbookish PM tasks and roles, I feel I don't do so much in my daily routine. Because of the nature of companies I worked in I didn't get a lot of hands on exposure into UX and the growth side of the job. I don't have a lot of confidence with many areas of product management and feel like at this stage for me to grow needs a significant skill and confidence boost. To do the same I'm looking for courses/degrees. I'm hoping to get more better opportunities if I have certification in my portfolio. What are your thoughts on the topic? Also, if you could suggest whether Hero vired certification in product management partnered with INSEAD will be a good choice? I will really appreciate objective feedback / frameworks that will help me with making the decision.