the job market is crazy rn

293 tech companies including Microsoft, Google, TikTok & Amazon have laid off about 84,060 employees according to layoffs (dot) fyi

and it’s not half year yet…

if you're job hunting atm, you need to: 👇🏻 1. create a job search plan

Daily and weekly goals- how many applications do you plan to send out each day/week? Which companies? Industry?

“I’m just looking for a job” is a terrible statement that doesn’t portray you as a serious candidate

Apply for Jobs You DON'T Qualify for

How many times have you looked at job vacancies only to feel discouraged that you did not meet all the requirements?

This used to be me too until I developed two mindsets:

1. Asking myself “What’s the worst that can happen”? They’d say “No” & nothing changes

2. Viewing job requirements as a set of guiding principles instead of commandments that I must obey Whether you’re seeking an entry-level role or you’re looking to change jobs, I have 1 message for you:

you don’t need to meet all the requirements before you can apply.

5 Things You Are Doing Wrong In An Interview That Is Costing You The Job:

1. Talking about the things you do without quantifying the impact.

E.g. "I work as a lending product manager for XYZ company where we give out unsecured loan to users"

This is a terrible answer. A better answer would show what you do AND it's impact.

For example...

"In the last year since I joined company XYZ as a lending product manager, we've grown our loan book by 350% while keeping non performing loan under 5% through....”

This shows impact.

How to manage stakeholders using the RACI framework

* Responsible

* Accountable

* Consulted

* Informed The beauty of RACI framework is the simplicity.

It allows you define who needs to actually complete a task and who just needs an update on the progress of things.

So, you can manage people accordingly.

Communication Styles of Different Cultures

I read about this in the book 📖 "The Communication Book: 44 Ideas for better conversations everyday" by Mikael Krogerus & Roman Tschäppeler

If you work in a cross-functional team of different cultures, this will be useful to you This was inspired by Hofstede's cultural dimensions theory and the works of Richard Lewis.

It breaks communication styles into 3 based on cultural differences.

It's important to note that this is a guide and not hardcoded 😁

See if you can spot your style in there...

Product Managers,

Here are 4 Reasons Why You Miss Your Launch Timelines & What to do About it.

Sorry, you will STILL miss your timelines after this thread. You will only lower your miss rate. Okay, let me go straight to the point: Your product or project will miss its timeline. Period.

You are more likely to miss your timeline than meet it. This is a painful truth many experienced product managers know.

Why?

Humans are terrible at predicting the future.

How to Kill Imposter Syndrome Before it Kills You!

5 Actionable Tips. “I have written 11 books, but each time I think, ‘Uh oh, they’re going to find out now. I’ve run a game on everybody, and they’re going to find me out'”

~ Maya Angelou, 3-time Grammy award winner for Best Spoken Word Album

If Maya could feel like an imposter, you are not alone

5 Skills that will Skyrocket your Product Management Career in 2023

After nearly a decade as a product manager, this is a personal reflection on the skills that could have had more impact than doing user research and writing user stories and PRDs. Whatever your goals are for the new year, I hope they include “learning goals”

In this post, I share the skills you could master to skyrocket your product management career; whether it’s your first, fifth, or fiftieth year as a product manager.

When it comes to products, we all know people like @shreyas or @lennysan who seem to "get it"

What is that "get it"?

The phenomenon where some people seem to intuitively make better product decisions is known as PRODUCT SENSE

So, how do you develop Product Sense? 👇🏼 Product Sense, also known as "Product Judgement" is "almost intuitively" knowing what makes a product great relative to the problem(s) it's solving for its users.

Little wonder product sense is also, sometimes, referred to as "Product Intuition"

For ENTRY Level Product Management, the labourers are plenty but the harvest is few!

If I were starting out today, these are the things I'd do to increase my chances of getting a PM job: 1. Take a course or two; NOTHING more!

You don't need ANY certification to be a product manager.

A good course or two on product management is all you need.

Basically, recruiters need a way to tell if you have a foundational knowledge of product management or not

If you are looking to get into Product Management...

Here is a thread of some good FREE Product Management Courses to check out.

The list is based on my personal opinion of the course content & the instructors.

If you find it useful, do retweet for others to see * The list is presented in no particular order

* Feel free to read the independent reviews & ratings of the courses.

Let's go!

5 Top Product Management Questions & Answers 1. Q: "Tell me about yourself"

All interviews start with this simple but tricky question.

Here you are expected to mention your name, what you currently do, AND the impact you have been able to make in your current role.

Simply describing what you do is NOT good enough

What Makes a Good Product Manager? Just so we're clear... As a Product Manager, I'm still in beta

The more I know, the more I realize I know nothing

So, my response to the question above is an adaptation of the "Good Product Manager, Bad Product Manager" article by Ben Horowitz and David Weiden

+ my experience

If you are joining a new company as a Product Manager, here is a framework for what you should focus on in your first:

- 30 days

- 60 days

- 90 days

on the job. When you join a new company, you may be scared to death about what to do and where to focus.

So, I'm sharing this framework to help you settle in quicker and easier.

Not everything might suit your role, level, or company. So, feel free to tweak things

Here is a thread of the Best Product Management courses you can take to level up...

This list is based on my personal opinion after reviewing the:
- syllabuses

- instructors

- testimonials, etc

of different product management courses. Quick one, the list is presented in no particular order and is based, solely, on my opinion.

Feel free to suggest some of your best at the end of the thread.

Let's go!

Product Management is simple but NOT easy.

Let me explain the PM Role using:
- What?
- Why?
- How? The role of a product manager is simple.

Step 1.
You ask the users WHAT problems they are facing & would like solved

- Don't try to solve problems you don't understand.

You can't understand a problem better than those experiencing it

On this year's edition of #WorldProductDay, I want to share my #ProductStory of how I took a 40% pay cut in order to learn more & grow my impact in the product management space. Some years ago, I took a job as a Lead Product Manager about 3 years into my product management career.

The pay was good.

The people were nice.

The office has a good culture.

But I left after just 3 months.

What should a

- Junior PM

- Mid-level PM

- Senior PM

Focus on? For context,

Junior PM--- less than 2 years of experience

Mid-level PM--- 3 to 5 years of experience

Senior PM--- over 5 years of experience

Where you are in your product management career will largely determine what you focus on

We all struggle to price our products & services adequately.

The first thing to note about prices is that it is a vague concept.

"It is irrelevant how much something costs to make; what matters is how much customers value it" ~ Nichola Lovell Like beauty, the value of a product & service (and what a customer is willing to pay) is in the eye of the beholder (the buyer in this case)

So try to help your buyer "see" the value they are paying for.

What is a Minimum Viable Product?

The term MVP was first coined and defined by Frank Robinson in 2001.

Eric Ries & Steve Blank helped popularize it. MVP is a version of a product with just enough features & functionalities to be usable for early users who then provide feedback for future versions.

It is NOT an incomplete product.

It is NOT a product with only functionalities.

It is NOT a product with only aesthetics.

Product Management is NOT Project Management.

Similar but not the same!

Here are some of the differences 👇🏾 This thread 🧵 discusses what product management is and what product managers do

https://twitter.com/SimplyAzodo/status/1505937722371887112?t=OETKlZxaNwiEp0Snr8flGA&s=19