Weekly Small Talk - How to Land a PM Job in 2024 (Part 1)
with some relevant product management experience
Hi, this is Wayne. Every Saturday, I’ll share a real-world conversation about tech, product growth, and career development. Your support means a lot to me, and if there’s a topic you’d like to explore together, don’t hesitate to reach out 🤝
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Lately, I’ve been getting a lot of requests from people trying to break into product management; I know how overwhelming it can feel, especially in today’s job market, so I decided to create a three-part Small Talk series to dive deep into the process of how myself and other folks in the similar shoes would approach landing a PM job in 2024.
This will be a three-part series discussing landing a job with varying degrees of experience:
• With some relevant PM experience (my journey into PM)
• Fresh in the PM field (featuring Ivan, New APM at Instacart)
• Straight out of school (featuring Tyler, RPM to PM at Zynga)
My journey into product management
Job searching has not always been easy for me. Like many of you, during my past searches, I’ve religiously studied that famous PM bible, The Product Manager Interview (3rd AND 4th edition), practiced countless product senses on my whiteboard, and done so many mock interviews that I couldn’t keep track of them. I seem to be doing everything right, so why haven’t I landed a job yet? Before diving into my takeaways, let me walk you through my background.
2011: Business Analyst
This was my first job out of college. I’ve heard of Product Management and it sounded like something I’d like to do, but still I went with the analyst role because that seemed like the obvious choice, given what I’d learned in school.
2014-2016: Risk management analyst → Enterprise PM
At the time, I was working in finance as an analyst, but it was clear that I wanted to be a PM. I know I have the skills needed to succeed, but I lack traditional PM experience. One of the companies I applied to was building a new product that played to my strengths and domain, giving me the edge I needed to make the leap. Fortunately, they saw the potential in me and gave me the opportunity to prove myself.
2016-2020: Enterprise PM → B2B PM
This was one of the most challenging transitions. I wanted to shift into a more consumer-facing product role, but I didn’t realize how difficult it would be. Over the first year, I applied to over 100 companies and got only two phone calls. I felt defeated. It wasn’t until I reached out to more experienced PMs and learned that my enterprise PM experience wasn’t directly applicable to many of the roles I was targeting. I made some adjustments based on the feedback — applied to an additional 50+ companies, received five callbacks, and landed one offer.
2020-Now: B2B PM → Consumer PM
Now, knowing the tactics, my next transition was much smoother. I focused on companies where my experience, particularly with the products I was building, was highly relevant. The relevance made a huge difference in terms of getting noticed in the pool of applicants and doors opened much faster.
Key Takeaway
The biggest lesson I learned? Relevance is everything. Just because you have a PM title doesn’t mean that’s all the hiring manager is looking for. You need to target jobs to leverage your relevance to the full advantage, whether it’s product domain, industry, or user knowledge.
Why landing a PM job is so hard now
Here’s the reality: PM jobs have always been competitive, but it’s harder than ever now. The response and conversion rates have dropped significantly in the past two years. Why? It comes down to simple supply and demand.
Demand: While PMs are still crucial, the growth for PM jobs has plateaued compared to the hyper-growth of the last decade. The typical PM ratio is about 1:10 at most companies, so there are naturally fewer PM roles than other functions.
Supply: Roughly 440,000 tech professionals were laid off in 2022-2023, and 2024 has already seen another 60,000 layoffs. This has flooded the market with experienced candidates. Many people affected by these layoffs also explore new roles, adding even more competition to PM applications.
Another factor making things difficult is the risk appetite of tech companies. Companies are running lean (one huge factor for the layoffs) and aiming for profitable growth, so they are looking for people who can add value fast and contribute to the overall goal of efficiency.
Visualize this as a funnel: More people are entering the funnel while the number of available roles has stayed the same (or even decreased), lowering the conversion rate.
So what they really want to know when they ask if you have relevant experience:
Can you hit the ground running ASAP without wasting much ramp-up time?
Can you do the job without needing additional training?
Key Takeaways
We’re in an employer’s market. PM jobs have always been competitive, but now it’s at an all-time high. More supply, less demand, and tougher competition mean applicants must be extremely intentional about where they apply and how they use their energy. They need to optimize every part of the funnel and improve their conversion rate at every step.
My step-by-step guide for getting a PM job in 2024
For those of you who already have PM experience but are looking to move into a new role or company, here’s how I’d approach the search if I were in the job market today: let’s say my goal is to have a 20%+ conversion rate for interviews and 5%+ offer rate through more proactive and intentional job search.
Pick 10 target companies: Identify 10 companies you’d love to work for and rank them based on how relevant your experience is to their job descriptions.
Start with the most relevant roles: For example, if I were leaving Instacart, I know focusing on companies like Uber or DoorDash, where my marketplace experience would give me an edge.
Get referrals and sponsorship: Reach out to people at those companies to understand what they’re looking for and ask for referrals. I would be hyper-proactive and disciplined in this area. I will set a goal of DMing or trying to network with x people per week.
Track everything: Keep notes on every step of the process—how interviews went, feedback received, and your thoughts after each round. This helps you improve over time.
Leverage technology: Use tools like ChatGPT to analyze job descriptions and tailor your applications. You can even create prompts to help assess how well your experience matches a job.
Here is the job description for “COPY/PASTE”, help me analyze my resume against the job description. Give a rating on how well my resume and experiences match the requirements. Provide suggestions on how I can be more relevant.
Repeat: If the first 10 companies don’t work out, pick another 20 and repeat the process. The key is to iterate based on feedback.
I’ve definitely had my share of mistakes and detours along the way. Out of all the ones that I cannot keep track of anymore, here are the top ones to avoid:
Don’t apply directly: Avoid applying directly unless your experience is highly relevant, and focus on getting referrals instead. IT IS a numbers game, but make sure you give 100% for every role. Don’t waste time applying for roles that you know you don’t qualify or are too junior for (don’t apply for a Group PM if you only have 1-2 years of experience).
Don’t waste time on mismatched roles: If you’re an enterprise PM without experience in experiments, don’t apply for growth PM roles—even if it’s at your dream company. I once wasted a month networking to get an interview at SoFi, only to be crushed in the interview because they were only interested in how I’d run experiments to improve their conversion rates.
Don’t get too attached to a particular company: I spent over six months trying to get an interview at Stripe, but it didn’t happen. Once I gained relevant payment experience, the opportunity came naturally. It gets much easier once you have more relevant experiences.
Key Takeaways
Know your ‘why’. Before sending out any applications, ask yourself why you’re making the switch. Is it for career growth? Financial gain? Be clear about your motivation because the process will be tough, and without a strong reason, it’s easy to burn out.
Define a time limit. Give yourself a specific time frame—let’s say three months. If no major progress happens by then, take a break for 6-9 months to avoid getting consumed by the search. This also gives you time to regroup, understand what’s not working, and how you should improve and approach the next round.
The 80/20 Rule. Spend 80% of your time focusing on companies where your experience is most relevant and where you have the best chance of success. The remaining 20% can go to long-shot opportunities.
Referrals and Sponsorships are key. Spend more time securing strong referrals or building relationships with sponsors than applying blindly. Referrals and sponsorships can weigh more than a cold application and give you an inside track on the hiring process. Use LinkedIn, friends, or communities like Blind to find people who can refer you.
Next Week’s Preview
Next week, I’ll be sitting down with Ivan, an APM at Instacart with a software engineering background, to talk about how you can break into product management without any prior PM experience. Ivan’s story is incredible—he transitioned from a completely different field and has some actionable advice that you won’t want to miss. We’ll be diving into real strategies to help you stand out, even if you’re starting from scratch.
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Thank you,
Wayne: I really found this article to be valuable and honestly love how you got down to data and incorporated product thinking in writing this article. For those reading this article, I would say beyond the topic at hand, they should also see how you describe your story (story telling) and how you focused on prioritization / data based decisions somewhat.
It would help though if you could please get into more details about "applying to your strength" / "relevancy". I say this since I have noticed that in this market it's not just about Enterprise PM vs. Consumer PM but it gets down to not just domains such as Payments, Trust and Safety, etc. but also well Mobile vs. Web, driving this OKR vs. that, etc. What level of relevancy do we need to focus on? Considering you are a Principal, what do you say to Marty's statement about "companies shouldn't be this specific in recruiting since those domains skills can be learnt overtime and many times within 2-3 months." Also, can you please highlight more on "what were the magic tricks you learnt that helped you re-polish resume to get into a Consumer PM role other than focus on experimentation?". Maybe an entire article on this topic, going in depth, would be really helpful.
Also, what are the communication tips and tricks, to help receive answers from cold emails on LinkedIn? People are innundated with these cold messages; I can't imagine myself having to respond to more than 3 a week on top of busy work and personal life.