My journey into Product Management
🤔 The Age-Old Question
What do I want to do? Six simple words that can define what we want to do in the next hour all the way up to the rest of our lives. I’m going to be focusing on the career-version of this question because it’s one that has both caused me a lot of stress as well as leading me to the fulfilling job where I am today.
“What do I want to do?” when it comes to your career is no small question either, considering we spend a good part of our lives at work. The truth is, one in four Australians are unhappy at work, and 70% of people are looking for a different path. It makes sense that we want to avoid the dissatisfaction as much as possible.
Admittedly, I didn’t think too deeply about this for a long time because I assumed that I would “figure it out” once I started university. I just chose a course that maxed out my ATAR (university entry rank) and thought I’d go with the flow. Needless to say, it wasn’t as easy as I first thought — university is the place where you’re bombarded by choice, yet at the same time, also stuck in a small bubble.
🥚 The problem with putting all your eggs in one basket
Looking back, it served me well to have a fuzzy career path, and I encourage everyone to keep an open mind.
- There’s a pretty slim chance that you’ll land your “dream job” right away. In fact, I would argue that you wouldn’t want your first job to be the one anyway. I believe it’s essential to have a few interstitial experiences where you can learn and, well, make mistakes without compromising on your dream.
- Today’s job market is becoming more competitive, making a one-step leap really difficult.
☕️ I suggest using the start of your career to figure out where you want to go and building up your hard and soft skills, so you’re ready once you’ve figured things out.
💎 Diverging & Converging
Finding the “right” career path is similar to the diverge-and-converge cycles you learn about in product management or UX school. In its original context, Diverging is about getting individuals to contribute ideas and create choices, Converging is about working as a team to reach a collective goal.
In our case, diverging is about expanding our experiences and skillset (creating choices). Converging is about narrowing down our choices based on what we’ve learned from the diverge phase.
🌈 Diverge phase: creating choices
The first thing I want to point out here is that the Diverge phase still requires focus. Yes, we want to go wide, but at the same time, we still need to be intentional. At this stage, I suggest starting down paths where you already have a medium to high conviction.
Simply asking yourself “What am I good at and do I enjoy it?” can help you choose where to start. Even group assignments (yes, they can be useful!) can help you identify individual traits such as your leadership style.
How I did it
In my first year of university, I was fascinated with startups and the creativity that the marketing field could bring. And so, I jumped at the “Marketing Superstar” role at getFoodi, an early-stage startup. Although I did some marketing, the nature of a startup meant that I also had to do a bit of everything else — which was a huge blessing!
I realised that I was a generalist — I could pick up most work relatively quickly, and I enjoyed being able to go deep to learn on the job. This led me to think about T-shaped jobs, such as consulting and product management. The work itself is broad, and there are opportunities to explore various industries.
It’s not always a perfect fit though
I also had an interest in management consulting; actually, I was quite convinced it was the path I wanted to go down. However, internships at the top firms or second-tier firms weren’t that accessible. As an alternative, I immersed myself in the pro-bono consulting societies at university, including BusinessOne and 180 Degrees Consulting. I was also lucky enough to land a summer vacationer at EY’s Advisory division.
These experiences weren’t an exact match to what I thought was the end goal, but they took me many steps closer to it. If there isn’t an internship to apply for, what’s the next best alternative? It could be an online course or even reaching out to people on LinkedIn (this one’s scary, but it’s free!).
☕️ The diverge phase is all about discovering where you want to go and what you’re suitable for. Create opportunities for yourself that will help make these choices.
💡Converge phase: making choices
I reached a point where I had a lot of experiences on my resume, but at the same time, no real experience in anything at all. This is the one down-side of Diverging. The problem is that once you want to think about a more permanent role, you are left with a diverse range of experiences. Since these experiences are relatively shallow it would be harder to compete for roles that require you to specialise. For example, I worked in finance-related roles. Still, it would have taken a lot to interview for an investment banking role.
So, how do you know?
So what do we actually do with this laundry list of experiences?
There were internships/experiences that I knew I wouldn’t want to go back to simply because the culture and the way things were done didn’t quite suit me. I immediately scratched those off the list. I also thought deeply about specific tasks or responsibilities that I enjoyed across all of the experiences.
For example, I really enjoyed the initial client meeting of a pro-bono consulting project because we delved deep into their business problems and pain points. I also distinctly remember chatting to the front-end developer at getFoodi about UI/UX concepts and designs for their webpage.
The catch
The asterisk to the Converge phase is that your single experience might not represent the entire job. For example, at one of my summer vacationer placements, I had very menial responsibilities. It was hard to stay motivated by repetitive tasks. I jealously looked on as some other vacationers had a much better experience working on meaningful client projects.
At the end of the day, I couldn’t tick any boxes, so to speak, but I had a much higher conviction on what sort of things I would want to do in an ideal job. The best part of it all was actually being able to confidently cross things off the list. I know I’ve tried and given it a shot, so there’s no chance for regret and thinking “what if” a few years down the track.
☕️ Sometimes it’s not about choosing the golden path, but rather, scratching out what you don’t want to do.
⭐ Finding my place
It’s funny how I’ve subconsciously applied a product framework to help the discovery and decision-making process in my own life, but hey it worked!
I’m a firm believer that having more options works out better when it comes to career and self-development than having less. Personally, it’s the culmination of all my experiences that has helped me decide on where to go. As of right now, I can confidently say that this is indeed what I enjoy doing and I’m exactly where I want to be.
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