How to Kickstart Your New Product Management Job

The foundations you must build to start adding value

Photo by Aziz Acharki on Unsplash

 👋 This post appeared in my weekly newsletter on Product Management.
Follow me on Twitter where I share my experiences in building products, successes, failures, and insights.

When I landed my first Product Management job, I was happy, ecstatic, and proud. But I was also nervous — because I had never really done the job before.

In my previous company, I was a software developer and we never had a Product Manager on the team. (This was before Product Management became cool) .

After my Software developer gig and now fresh off the MBA press, I wanted to get into Product Management. The hiring manager took a chance on me & my experience building products — and gave me my first break into Product Management. Thats how I landed my first PM job.

For the next few months, I read up a lot of material online about “How to become a great Product Manager”. And while there is a lot of content about what a PM generally does, I didn’t find any material on how to start your very first PM job.

What to learn, what questions to ask? How to hit the ground running? How to add value immediately?