Vijay Balachandran

Even 'ex-Google' tags don't seem to cut it in the product management job market. Let's unravel the surprising reason why. 👇 I was reviewing a product leader's resume the other day. He had managed teams of up to five people and had a significant impact at various places. All seemed to be good. But he had been applying at many places and not getting much response at all. He was puzzled and said something that many clients have told me recently. "Shobhit, I thought it would be easier." Easier to get interviews, to get noticed, to get to the final rounds, to get offers. But it just isn't today. Even when you come with a pedigree as "ex-Google" or "Experienced product manager" its not easy. Hiring managers just don't want another "accomplished product leader." They want to know that you are EXACTLY the right fit for the job. That you bring accomplishments and skills that are unique to the job. This is precisely why so many product managers struggle 👉 They build generic resumes and pitches 👉 They apply to tons of places without a clear strategy 👉 They struggle to articulate why they are a good fit for the role 👉 They do endless smocks with people who have no idea how to give them the right feedback 👉 They have some success.....and then do not get past the next round 👉 They repeat the process What if what it took for you to start getting MORE offers, and even the ideal offer, was a SIMPLE tweak in the words you're using in your narrative and stories that positioned you the right way? What if you needed to upgrade the words you use in your answers so that they speak to your being the ideal candidate for the job right now? What if the real difference would be in positioning yourself by articulating clearly why you are an exact fit for that role and unique from most other candidates? What if it did get easier when you made those tweaks (as it did for Justin, who recently landed a role with a 40%+ increase by only applying to five places where he could articulate being a great fit)? 'Cause let's face it: YOU are an action taker and are applying for roles that challenge you and stretch you while others are just happy to have any job - am I right? If that's the case, here's how we can help: We invite you to a personalized strategy session. We'll delve into your career journey, assessing the highs and lows and discussing your aspirations. Together, we'll map out a strategy for your success. If our services align with your goals, we can discuss how we can help. If not, that's absolutely fine! So, let's get going and take action soon. I invite you to book a call with us. Please comment "Book" on this post to set up a session with us.

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Mistakes that I make as #ProductManagement mentor/leader Mistake 13 (probably a deal breaker) Letting the mentees be the only accountable people when a highly debatable decision or mistake is made And not taking responsibility and supporting them with equal accountability in big forums. As a mentee myself, the feeling that my mentor has my back inspires immense confidence in me to take big decisions and gives me the psychological safety that there’s someone to help lift me up when I fall.

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To land Director to CPO jobs, Product Leaders must leverage Executive Search firms. They hold the keys to the hidden job market. Here is a lay of the land. Aakash Gupta and I wrote in depth about this in the Product Leadership Job Search and I followed up recently with the Tech Exec's Job Search Playbook. I recommend both reads. Comment if you want contacts or my thoughts on working with them as a candidate or hiring manager

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I have stopped asking PMs to add a "priority" column in their roadmaps and this is why: 1. Priority is often an outcome of business pressure, CEO asks, impact on business, importance in product improvement, etc. And it results multiple features having equal priorities, usually P0. 2. Engineers can only pick work one after another and seldom multiple items at once, unless you have a large engineering team. If you can release only 2 P0s out of 5 P0s, then the remaining P0s that did not make the cut were actually not P0s. 🤷‍♂️ 3. For stakeholders, "priority" is considered as a signal of importance. But as a PM, you also have a dimension of "urgent" in addition to "important". Wrong signalling may impart incorrect message. 🎇 Solution Get a stakeholder meeting and just stack rank all the features in the list based on their expected outcome. Your stakeholders will develop more empathy and communication will be easier. 🚀 Remember "Sequencing is better than prioritization." #productmanagement #roadmap

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Product Management is Dead? Far from it. Product Management in Digital Products was the valley's answer to address the disruptive nature and ambiguity around tech products. Disruption and Ambiguity. You needed folks with the "CEO" mindset (aka the founder's mode) to address these challenges- who could go cross functional, dive deep into singular problem ares as well as look at strategy and execution at the same time. "Chad PMs". Of course, with the skills, came the money and with the money; the role became more attractive. Circa 2015, in order to understand the job better, there was an overload of frameworks flooding the job seeker's market to help them crack PM roles. It worked; only as a tool to secure the job. But, in the process, we tried to standardise a job role that was meant to deal with ambiguity. Hence, failures led to alignment led to the PM function of today being totally out of sync with what the PMs were meant to do. To top it, narratives like "PM is not the CEO of the product" are being popularized to dissipate the very nature of the role- someone who can stand up, make decisions for the product (of course, informed) and then follow through with those decisions even if it means your stakeholders aren't happy (so long as they are ready to partner with you, they can see a therapist for their happiness). So, Product Management of today is not Dead. It never was Product Management in the first place. Chad PMs will stay. Framework monkeys- well they will also likely stay but with lower influence and diminishing returns. #productmanagement #PM #designthinking

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Mistakes that I make as a #ProductManagement mentor/leader Mistake #10 Asking my mentees to pick up a problem/ project with urgency And not giving them the necessary context on the reason for urgency and helping them with re-prioritisation of the items currently in progress.

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There is a common, fatal mistake that most product managers make without realizing it. The other day, I spoke with an accomplished product group product manager who was looking to advance to the director level. He possessed all the relevant skills and experience. He had the opportunity to participate in numerous interviews, a testament to his marketability and the demand for his skills. But he failed to convert them into offers. He had been through five of his "top tier" target companies and not landed a role. Why was this case? He had joined our program, and after some mock interviews, we dug into the feedback he had received from our coaches [who are often product managers and leaders at these target companies], and I helped him see this pattern. He was interviewing for the job that he had rather than the job he wanted. Interviewing for roles you have held vs. the ones you want is a fundamental mistake that I see many product managers make repeatedly. They are telling the story of their experience, but the framing is entirely wrong. See, the hiring managers and other interviewers really have no interest in your past. They only care about it if it's retold from the perspective of "Why are you a clear fit for the role that you are applying to?" There is no silver bullet to fix this, but there are many lead bullets. Your words matter, as does how you shape the interview and move from one question to another. How you tackle product design, execution, metrics, and leadership interviews also matters. Our coaches understand the difference between the different levels of interviews and can help you reshape them. This approach enabled us to help a Senior Product Manager land a Director role recently (more on that in the next few days). But for now, remember - interview for the job you want, not the job you've had.

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So, you want the product team to accelerate key initiatives and deliver outcomes earlier for customers and the business. Stop giving orders. Give intent. Intent builds trust and motivation, inspires creativity, and encourages critical-thinking and informed decision-making. It brings out the greatness lurking in all of us. Constantly giving orders does the opposite. People get demoralized into following commands. Caveat: Obviously, some orders do need to be faithfully followed and executed. If you make the why and the what crystal clear and help people with the technical skills that they need to be successful, you will see better speed of execution based on better decisions and better outcomes, earlier. Inspired by David Marquet. #productleaders #productmanagement

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Cont.. Product Strategy Resources Beyond Books.. 🔗 Good Strategy / Bad Strategy by Shreyas Doshi at https://lnkd.in/gknzfXtj 🔗 Shreyas Doshi's Product Sense course where he goes deep on product strategy https://lnkd.in/gjqtfp6u 🔗 Follow Sachin Rekhi's recent LinkedIn series on Product Strategy or his recent articles at https://lnkd.in/gGmzPax5 🔗 Lenny Rachitsky's podcast where he had Ravi Mehta Melissa Perri Maggie Crowley and others 🔗 Reforge's course on product strategy 🔗 Gibson Biddle's series on Product Strategy at https://lnkd.in/gKBK4UkS There are so many resources to formulate your product strategy approach. The best way to learn is to read and apply it to your work or tear down other products to observe how they apply these principles. #productleadership #productstrategy #continouslearning

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The difference between sales-led and product-led companies often comes down to when the customer first experiences the product. Some thoughts on how this impacts your work as a PM. Note: These are just a couple of points, there's definitely more than that. #productmanagement #salesled #productled

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Your true growth as a Product Manager is least reflected in your increasing paycheck. The real win is elsewhere. For meaningful PM career growth, here is what you need to internalise : Your PM compensation growth is the lagging indicator of : The 𝗶𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗰𝘁 you are having in your current role and impact you previously had. You might think that scope and levelling are also key inputs to compensation, but that's not the case. Here is why: Your performance will be largely judged by the impact you are having in your current role. Above-expectations impact will automatically increase your scope and comp faster than your peers and with time your levelling will also grow via promotions. Hence impact is most important input. Given the importance, here is how to think about impact as a PM : 1. Drive extreme clarity about where do problems exist and where do most impactful opportunities lie so that people understand and believe in the investment. 2. Drive clarity on what the team should focus on with right prioritization and sequencing. 3. Deliver and validate the impact via strong execution - Making progress quickly on the short/mid/long term goals repeatedly, builds your reputation as a PM. As you grow senior your focus shifts from questions like "is it right problem to solve" to questions like "are we investing in the right place, is this area, is this team, is this org the right investment?" etc. #pmcareer #productmanagement

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Why should PMs care about the VIEW framework? There are many frameworks out there to help guide prioritization, metrics, and more in the hard skills of product management. But when it comes to soft skills and navigating people – which is a huge part of being an effective PM – I’ve found that career growth and performance evaluation can often be subjective and “you know it when it’s NOT there”. Whereas ideally, these important skills are impartial and tangible to grow in. The VIEW framework is an approach from The Art of Accomplishment crew to help people build connection and deepen their relationships. For anyone who cares about improving their interpersonal relationships – either for themselves or for people that they support or manage, it’s a way to improve their overall effectiveness. VIEW is an acronym for the four pillars that help foster meaningful growth in improving interpersonal interactions – Vulnerability, Impartiality, Empathy, and Wonder: - Vulnerability: living and speaking your truth, even when it’s scary - Impartiality: being unbiased and non-judgmental when evaluating oneself, others, and ideas. This is usually the hardest for people to get right. - Empathy: being with someone in their emotional state, but not losing your own emotional state. - Wonder: cultivating a sense of curiosity, awe, and openness to new experiences and perspectives Each of these elements work together to create a magical springboard for collaboration and creativity. They create a space that feels safe for people to brainstorm and ideate without judgment; a space for people to banter and disagree without fear or rejection; and a way to identify personal biases and work to keep those at bay. All of this helps to dramatically increase collaboration, reduce conflict, and encourage open-minded and objective decision-making. This is incredibly important for a PM, who’s constantly navigating inputs and driving decisions for a multitude of people and personalities – their design and engineering counterparts, other cross-functional peers and stakeholders, and senior leadership. Cultivating Vulnerability, Impartiality, Empathy, and Wonder dramatically improve (1) the efficacy of external activities like market discovery and user research, (2) an abundance of product design ideas and iterations, (3) sound, outcome-driven decision-making, and (4) dependable execution on the product development and GTM fronts. All of which lead to a lovable product, but also a high-performing and fulfilled team behind it. I hope to post more thoughts later in *how* to improve in all of these areas. Until then, go check out the Art of Accomplishment folks if you’re interested – the "Introduction to VIEW" podcast is a great place to start, or consider their Connection Course to go deeper. p.s. if you're not a PM, I still encourage you to explore this! Whether you’re an AE, a marketing leader, a mom, or a friend… these will likely all benefit you and your relationships ♥️

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Your ONE QUESTION for Product Manager Interviews -------------------------- Ed Biden had an interesting post today (link in comments) sharing the ONE QUESTION he asks Product Management candidates in interviews. It got me thinking about the ONE QUESTION I ask (not always, but often) in PM interviews. Toward the end of the interview, after we've covered the necessary skills and other questions, and when the candidate has loosened up a bit, I often ask: 𝗪𝗵𝘆 𝗱𝗼 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗹𝗶𝗸𝗲 𝗯𝗲𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁 𝗠𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗿? It often catches candidates off guard, but it's incredible to watch them formulate a response. I'll be honest, I sort of set them up, because I'll often ask it RIGHT AFTER we talk about some of the challenges or frustrations of the work. It's likely the first time they've been asked that question, and some of them think about it and give an answer (often something rote like “I like the variety of the work.”) which I dig into with several WHYs and other follow up questions. But some candidates really stumble on it. It really gives insight into their views and thinking of Product Management and has lead to some good (and bad) discussions. In one case, a PM candidate said he liked being a PM because he got access to information before others or that others wouldn't have access to. Ummm...OK. I know I asked why that was important to him, but I don't remember his response. We didn't hire him. As much as we can interview and try to ascertain skills, abilities, knowledge etc., all of which are important to identify in interviews, it's often intangible things like mindset, motivations, curiosity, tenacity etc. that are indicators of PM success. Questions like this one help bring some of those traits out. Try it in upcoming interviews and see what responses your get. I'd love to hear from you if you do and get some notable or surprising responses. What are your thoughts on this question? Do you have a favourite question to ask?

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Having examined the careers of 1,000+ product managers, I find five "hidden" roadblocks that surprised these talented folks: 1. Being Stuck in Non-Product Land: Many find themselves in environments prioritizing outputs over outcomes, stifling essential skills development like customer insight and strategic vision. 2. Getting Known Only for Execution: Excelling in execution can, unfortunately, pigeonhole you into more of the same, preventing you from taking on more strategic roles that drive significant impact. 3. The Comparison Trap: Comparing your career to others can be detrimental. Each journey is unique, and focusing on your own path and progress is vital. 4. The Upper Limit Problem: This psychological barrier where you subconsciously limit your success can significantly hinder you. Recognizing and pushing beyond your internal limits is key to achieving greater career heights. 5. Extreme Manager Dependence: Relying too much on your manager for career progression can leave you passive in your own career development. Taking ownership and advocating for yourself is essential. Remember, your career is your story to write. Inspire your teams and stakeholders by transforming your environment and narrative. If you're stuck in a less product-led role, find ways to steer towards a more outcome-focused approach. Share your vision, and slowly shift the culture around you. If you would like to see an entire video that discusses these findings in depth, please comment "video," and I will send you the link.

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"A product roadmap is like a treasure map for pirates... except the X usually marks the spot where your initial launch date went to die." - Author Unknown #productmanagement #productmanager #productdiscovery #userresearch #customerneeds #problemsolving #innovation #humor #marketing #development #productlaunch #entrepreneur #customercentric #MVP #agile #ux #designthinking #learnontiktok #startups

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What's one superpower of Product Marketing? Done right - it can help open up user acquisition 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵𝗼𝘂𝘁 changing the product. As a PM, I was often caught in "additive" thinking. When tasked to move product or business metrics, the go-to move of many product teams is to ship a new feature or enhance an existing one. However, Product Marketers can run a different script: 1- Find a sizable and 𝗮𝗱𝗷𝗮𝗰𝗲𝗻𝘁 ideal customer profile of the product. 2- Prepare messaging, positioning, and well-crafted go-to-market. Execute. 3- With minimal changes to the product, gain traction with a new audience segment. Here's a quick example: In 2017, vFairs’ virtual event platform mainly targeted event planners looking to host large conferences and summits. That year, we were approached by a few leads from the higher education industry. We noticed that marketing departments at universities wanted cost-effective avenues to promote their international student programs and boost enrollments. We positioned the same virtual event product as a medium to run “virtual open days”. We repurposed all our existing features to meet their needs: - webinars → keynotes and faculty sessions - chatrooms → networker for prospective students and alumni - virtual exhibits → floor for university departments & societies to advertise We created a landing page describing our value props and ran inbound campaigns. Leads started flowing in. The segment kept expanding and is now one of the top 5 industries we serve. Yes, we customized the pricing and tiers a bit to match the audience needs. But aside from a few additional design templates and product microcopy changes, no product update was required. Having said that, you also don't need to always open up to a new audience to fuel acquisition. Sometimes, creating clarity in your value proposition attracts a larger interest from your original audience. Messaging optimization remains a massively unexplored opportunity for many products.

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Customers usually fall into one of four "churn intent" categories: 1. Zero Intent 🎲: Accidental churn, like when a credit card bounces. 2. Low Intent 💸: Customers who think about leaving because things got too pricey or they're missing features they want. 3. Medium Intent 🌧️: Those who need to cancel because of stuff out of their control, like a business dip or seasonal trends. 4. High Intent 🔥: Folks upset with the service, feeling the value's dropped, or they've been wronged and are eyeing a competitor. Each level up means tougher retention, and you gotta switch up how you talk to them: 1. Zero Intent 🎲: Dunning strategies to fix those payment fails. A good chunk of churn comes from outdated cards! 2. Low Intent 💸: Hook 'em back with temporary discounts to show them the full value they first loved. 3. Medium Intent 🌧️: Offer to pause their subscription instead of a full stop—saves you both a headache. 4. High Intent 🔥: Lean into empathy. Acknowledge the letdown and make their exit as positive as possible, so they might just give you another shot later. Different strokes for different folks to keep 'em around or part on good terms! #CustomerRetention #activechurn #churnintent #offboarding

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A critical mistake many product managers make is getting too wrapped up in the tactical aspects of Agile and feature prioritization. While these are important, neglecting strategic skills like user research and vision development can limit your impact and career growth. Focus on what truly matters to elevate your product and your career.

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