- People can give you the inside scoop on what it’s like to work at their company.
- People can open doors for possible job opportunities that are listed now or will be listed down the road.
Notice that I talk about opportunities “down the road” because your focus now shouldn’t be on applying for a job. Make sure you get into a Product Manager mindset: it’s not about you closing a sale, making money, or pushing your product. It’s all about solving your customers’ problems.
In job search terms, that means it’s not about getting the job at this point. It’s all about connecting with people and doing customer research for your product. Your goal is to understand what your customers’ pains are, to make sure that your product (i.e. you) will be a good fit to solving their needs.
But who are your customers?
Before you start connecting with everybody on LinkedIn, or start going to every single networking event, you need to define who you are interested in talking to. Your time is your most valuable resource. Think of it as your investors’ money. You need to make the most of it, so be careful to not waste time talking to just anybody. You need to target your search.
Start by defining the “personas” of the people you will target. A persona is just a generic representation of a user or buyer. It is a very common tool used by Designers, Marketers and Product Managers to identify the characteristics of your target audience. Your personas must be aligned with your positioning statement, including your desired industry, location, and company size. If you are new to personas, you may want to check out the additional resources at the bottom of this lesson.
- Primary personas: People who benefit the most from your product and use it day in and day out.
- Secondary personas: People who benefit from your product, but are not power users. They can be a great source of feedback, and they usually have influence in the decision making process.
- Buyer personas: People that actually authorize purchase of your product. Keep in mind that the person that uses your product is not always the person that pays for it. You might have the best product in the world, but if you are not able to get through the buyer, then you won’t be able to close the deal.
Primary persona
Think about it. Opening a requisition (req) and posting it on the company’s website doesn’t happen overnight. It usually happens because a specific team is growing or because somebody resigned. These days it is very rare to see companies planning ahead and posting positions before they are needed.
- The trigger: My team is growing fast. Engineering just hired 10 more Developers, and we need to provide Product Management support.
- Getting approval: I need to get approval for a new PM req, which means defining what I need, writing/updating a job description, getting approval, and pushing it through HR to be posted and sourced.
- Recruiting: Then, the hiring will begin. It’s exciting, but it’ll consume a lot of my time. I’ll need to interview dozens of candidates, and it’ll take several weeks (if I’m lucky) to find the right person.
- Negotiations: Once I find the right person, I can make an offer and go into salary negotiations. If lucky, I can close this candidate in a week or two.
- Waiting: Now the candidate needs to give two weeks notice at her current job, and she might want to take one or two weeks off before starting.
- Onboarding: Finally, after a couple of months, I’ll have a new team member, but it’ll take her two to three additional months to ramp up and become productive.
The process might be different depending on the size of the company, but believe me, I’ve hired in small and big companies, and it’s always somewhat similar. The point is that if you are able to connect with hiring managers before they have a need, then you’ll be top of mind for whenever the need arises. There’s nothing more reassuring for a hiring manager than to have a good relationship with a few qualified candidates for when the time comes.
This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t reach out to managers that already have an open position. But keep in mind that if you do, you are probably already late to the party. There are likely some candidates already way ahead of you. Recruiters will tell you that many jobs are never listed because they are filled by existing connections. It’s faster, cheaper, and more reliable. If you are able to get in the loop early, you’ll have a tremendous advantage.
So, who is the hiring manager? Great question! The reality is that you can’t know. That’s why you’ll need to network with secondary and buyer personas to find that out. As a rule of thumb for Product Management, the hiring manager is usually the person with the title above the one you are aiming to get.
It’s not rare for Senior PMs to be the hiring manager, especially for Junior positions or Product Owners. If you are a Senior PM, then look for the Director. If you want a Director role, then it will depend on the company’s size. In big companies, look for Senior Directors or VPs of Product. For smaller companies, you are probably looking for a C-level person.
A word of caution. If the hiring manager is not part of the Product organization, that should be a red flag as to how that company operates. For example, if you’ll be reporting to Engineering, Marketing, or Sales, then you’ll need to pause and make sure you understand a lot more about the Product culture within that company. There’s usually a reason why there’s no Product branch. It could be a great opportunity or a big disaster. Make sure you figure out which one it is. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!
Secondary personas
Secondary personas are those that will benefit from your work. Here, you are looking for peer roles that usually interact with Product Management throughout the product development lifecycle, for example, Engineering, Marketing, UX, and Sales.
These people can give you a great perspective on what Product Management looks like from the “outside” and can guide you on what it takes to be successful at that company. Also, these are the people that can recommend you to the hiring manager, and they are very likely to be part of the interview process when the time comes.
I recommend connecting with people in your peer group. They can give you the most insight, plus they are more likely to recommend you and advocate for you. For example, if you are looking for a Senior PM position, then talk to the Engineering Manager, Architects, Lead Designer, and Senior Product Marketing Manager. Sales folks are always great to know as well, because they usually know everybody and they can connect you at all levels of the organization.
Another advantage of networking with secondary personas is that you can expand your LinkedIn network. That will increase the likelihood that you can find and connect with additional primary (and secondary) persons through your second degree connections. But more about networking and LinkedIn in later lessons.
Buyer personas
Regardless of how good your product is, the buyer persona can make or break the sale. In your case, buyer personas are people in HR. They are the gate keeper, and with the right approach, they can become your best ally.
Titles vary depending on company size, but here you are looking for titles that include the words “Recruiter”, “Talent”, “Scout”, “Sourcer”, etc. Head Hunter is an older term, and you don’t see it that often anymore. It’s usually reserved for very high-level roles like VP or C-level hires.
In very small companies, you’ll find that the hiring manager herself might be the recruiter. That’s even more reason to connect with her early. Doing the recruiting themselves becomes a full-time job, so these people really want to wrap it up quickly go back to managing the product.
Okay, let’s do a sanity check. Pause for a moment and look at your LinkedIn connections. Do a search to see how many recruiters you have as 1st level connections. How many? How many of those are in your target industry? How many are in your target companies? Probably not that many, right?
Many people think of recruiters as a one-off relationship to help them get what they want. That’s a big mistake. All relationships are very important, especially hiring managers and recruiters! Not only are they the gate keepers, but they eventually move to different companies, and they take their relationships with them. If you keep your relationship going, then you’ll be top of mind for future opportunities.
Now, put your PM hat back on. What is the problem the buyer is trying to solve? What is his motivation? How is he measured? Normally, you’d perform that analysis for your product’s buyer, right? So why not do the same with the recruiter persona? In a nutshell, recruiters are always under pressure to bring in top talent, yesterday. By the time they are asked to fill a position, it’s probably been a strong need for a while. Plus, Product Managers are only one of the many positions they need to fill. So for all these reasons, they can use some help, and you need to be there to provide it to them.
Okay, that’s it for personas. Take a moment to complete these next steps before moving on to the next lesson:
- Define the specific characteristics of the personas you want to target.
- Using LinkedIn, create a list of actual people that match each of your various personas, preferably in your list of target companies.
- Update your roadmap with some goals for contacting these people. Planning ahead will help you stay organized and will keep you accountable to make constant progress.
Before you start contacting your target personas, you need to have your collateral ready. Yes, it’s time to update your resume and your LinkedIn profile. That will be the topic of the next lesson. See you there!
Additional resources: A Closer Look At Personas: What They Are and How They Work