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.
thanks Victor, love the feedback and questions. Some of these are great suggestions for a follow-up post. Let me start off by answering some of them.
1. Regarding relevancy, the goal is for the interviewer to have confidence that you can do the job and want to speak with you to learn more. As you pointed out, relevancy can be very granular, so I’d focus on the more obvious aspects:
1. Customer base: Enterprise vs. B2B vs. consumer
2. Domain: Payments vs. platform vs. growth
3. Product culture: bottom-up vs. top-down, experiment-based vs. intuition/experience-based.
Anything beyond that becomes difficult to match exactly. Again, the goal is to be relevant enough to secure the interview.
2. I agree with Marty’s statement in principle, but we are in a very different time. This is where “relative” comes into play. If the people you’re competing against have more relevant skills/experience, you simply won’t make the cut. You still have companies like Meta or Google, where interviews happen before team matching, so specific skills may play a smaller role in the decision-making process.
3. There are no magic tricks—it’s a multi-step process to become more relevant. In my experience, I went from being an enterprise PM building financial software → to a B2B/enterprise PM in fintech focusing on payments and disputes → to an enterprise payments PM at Instacart → and then transitioned to loyalty and membership as a consumer PM.
On getting LinkedIn responses - focus on 1. genuine 2. engaging 3. provide value. I actually think you did pretty value with me 😆
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.
thanks Victor, love the feedback and questions. Some of these are great suggestions for a follow-up post. Let me start off by answering some of them.
1. Regarding relevancy, the goal is for the interviewer to have confidence that you can do the job and want to speak with you to learn more. As you pointed out, relevancy can be very granular, so I’d focus on the more obvious aspects:
1. Customer base: Enterprise vs. B2B vs. consumer
2. Domain: Payments vs. platform vs. growth
3. Product culture: bottom-up vs. top-down, experiment-based vs. intuition/experience-based.
Anything beyond that becomes difficult to match exactly. Again, the goal is to be relevant enough to secure the interview.
2. I agree with Marty’s statement in principle, but we are in a very different time. This is where “relative” comes into play. If the people you’re competing against have more relevant skills/experience, you simply won’t make the cut. You still have companies like Meta or Google, where interviews happen before team matching, so specific skills may play a smaller role in the decision-making process.
3. There are no magic tricks—it’s a multi-step process to become more relevant. In my experience, I went from being an enterprise PM building financial software → to a B2B/enterprise PM in fintech focusing on payments and disputes → to an enterprise payments PM at Instacart → and then transitioned to loyalty and membership as a consumer PM.
On getting LinkedIn responses - focus on 1. genuine 2. engaging 3. provide value. I actually think you did pretty value with me 😆