Last Updated: June 27th, 2022 by
Today’s companies produce a wide range of digital or physical products. To ensure those products meet their customers’ needs, they hire product managers to be responsible for each at every stage of its life cycle.
Learning how to become a product manager isn’t as complicated as it might sound at first. This guide will walk you through the process to get there and show you what you can earn in a product manager role.
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Job Description
As a product manager, your job is to take responsibility for developing and marketing a digital or physical product. You could begin with an existing product or be given requirements to build one that doesn’t exist yet.
Your job will focus a lot on project planning. First, you’ll recruit people with the right skills and other resources. Then, you’ll plan how long each stage of the development will take.
Throughout the development process, you’ll lead your team to build and test the product until it matches your expectations.
Once it’s ready, you’ll then market the product to get it in the hands of your clients or customers.
Read our related article on How to Become a Project Manager. Manage company projects to ensure they’re going the right direction.
What Does an Average Day for a Product Manager Look Like?
You’ll discover a lot about learning how to become a product manager by seeing what one does daily.
Here’s what an average day will look like for you as a product manager.
Read More: How to Become a Music Manager. Looking for a more creative industry? Here’s how you can get started as a Music Manager.
Gather Requirements From Stakeholders
As a product manager, your responsibility is to create a product that customers need and want. That’s why your day begins by gathering requirements from all stakeholders.
Aside from clients or customers, you’ll also get requirements from people within your company who tell you what the product should be like.
Plan Resources and Timelines
Once you know what features the product should have, that’s when you can begin the planning stage.
You’ll plan the necessary resources and timelines to get your product ready to sell for this part of your day.
Those resources could include the necessary raw materials and the people with essential skills, such as engineers, marketers, and more.
Create and Test Prototypes
Whether you’re creating a physical product or a digital one, there comes a point where your team will create a prototype.
The prototype will have two purposes. Firstly, it allows you and your team to see if the product works as it should. Secondly, it will enable you to demonstrate it to stakeholders later to gather their feedback.
Read More: How to Become an Inventor. Create and sell inventions that benefit a specific industry or people as an inventor!
Update Management On Progress
Throughout the process, you’ll provide your manager with progress updates. That way, they’ll know if your product’s development is on track and if any challenges are holding you back.
These updates can happen daily or less frequently, depending on the management’s expectations.
Doing so also allows you to gather their feedback and notes on any changes you need to make before the product is ready for clients or customers.
Make Necessary Changes
Depending on your product’s life cycle stage, you’ll also spend a lot of time making changes. These changes or ‘reiterations’ can happen many times until the product fits the requirements you gathered initially.
Process for Becoming a Product Manager
Firstly, you must understand that there is no fixed path toward becoming a product manager. Most product managers start their careers by pursuing an entry-level role in their industry of choice.
Then, they learn how to become a product manager and eventually seek out project management opportunities within their industry.
Here’s what your process for becoming a product manager might look like. Again, not all of these steps are fixed, and some people might do them following different sequences.
1. Get a Degree
Most employers will expect you to have a bachelor’s degree to work with them. Thankfully, you have several options to choose from at this part of the process.
Firstly, you can choose to pursue a product management degree. As product management became a more mainstream role, colleges and universities have started developing courses in the same area.
Alternatively, you can also become a product manager with a traditional degree in the field of your choice.
For example, if you foresee yourself as a product manager in a tech company. In that case, you could pursue a degree in computer science.
A traditional degree will equip you with technical knowledge of your field, which will be helpful to you later as a product manager.
2. Gain Hands-On Work Experience
Gaining real-world experience in your chosen industry is critical for your success as a product manager. You can start developing that experience in college, like through an internship.
You can also do the same by applying for training programs, internships, and entry-level jobs after you’ve graduated.
As a product manager, you must understand the different roles and skills. So, gaining short-term exposure to different roles will help you see the bigger picture when you’re a product manager.
Let’s suppose you’re more of a technical person, working as an engineer. Then, taking an internship or training opportunity in a non-technical position, like a marketing role, will give you a broader understanding of the product you’re developing.
3. Develop Relevant Technical Knowledge
No matter the industry you’re in, you must also have at least a basic level of technical knowledge. In other words, you must understand the ‘nuts and bolts’ of the products that you work with.
For example, let’s say your background is in marketing, but your product is a mobile app.
By spending time working alongside app developers, you’ll understand the technical aspects of how they work.
That way, you’ll be able to plan more effectively later as a project manager.
4. Pursue a Product Management Certification
A project management certification is not compulsory. However, it’s an excellent way to demonstrate to your current and future employers, as well as the rest of your team, that you have the necessary skills and knowledge.
There are plenty of reputable institutions awarding those certificates, such as the Product School, Product Manager HQ, and more.
5. Seek Product Management Roles
Lastly, you can pursue product management roles. These roles exist both formally and informally.
For example, you can apply for full-time product manager roles in your current company or another employer.
However, you can also look for product management opportunities within your company on a project-to-project basis.
Are You Suited for a Product Manager Career? Skills, Credentials, Tools and Technology
The product manager role requires you to be a multitasker. So, learning how to become a product manager will require broad skills and proficiencies in several different areas.
Here are some of the personality traits, skills, and proficiencies that you must have, or be willing to develop, to go far as a product manager.
Personality and Skills
According to McKinsey & Company, you’ll need soft skills, technical skills, and business skills to succeed as a product manager.
Firstly, being a product manager requires you to interact with colleagues across various departments. You can only do that effectively if you have the necessary soft skills, such as listening, speaking, and influencing.
Whether or not you come from a technical background, you’ll still need at least basic technical skills that apply to your industry. That will help you understand the more technical team members, like the engineers or those engaged in coding.
Lastly, you should also be able to keep your product in line with the company’s overall strategies. So, again, your business skills will help you understand the big picture and allow you to communicate them to your team members clearly.
Credentials and Proficiencies
Besides the skills detailed above, you must also be proficient in a few areas to be an effective product manager.
The Berklee College of Music lists proficiencies in project management, personnel management, and leadership as being crucial for your work.
As a product manager, you’ll oversee your product’s development and ensure it’s done on time and within a set budget. A strong understanding of project management principles will allow you to do that effectively through proper planning and strong execution.
Understanding personnel management will also ensure that you can hire and train the best people for your team. That includes finding and hiring those with the correct skillset to help develop and sell the product you’re responsible for.
Lastly, it’s crucial that you have an understanding of leadership so you can bring out the best in your team members.
How Does a Product Manager Find Work?
Just as there are several paths you can take to learn how to become a product manager, there are also multiple industries that you can work for.
The product manager role is quite common in industries that sell digital products. So, you can apply to become a product manager in tech companies, or those that develop apps, games, and other software.
However, employers in other industries are also creating product manager roles in their companies.
So, you can also apply to work with equipment manufacturers, healthcare and pharmaceutical companies, and much more.
Here are some effective steps you can take to find work as a product manager:
- Search your local area for companies that you’d like to work for.
- Check their company websites and career pages for any product manager job openings.
- Alternatively, you can contact them directly to ask if there are such openings available.
- Whenever possible, submit your CV or resume to these companies and express your interest in working for them as a product manager. Even if they don’t have any current job openings, they could refer to your details for future openings instead.
What is the Average Salary of a Product Manager?
Before committing to learning how to become a product manager, it’s important to understand how much you could potentially earn once you land your first job.
Unfortunately, there is very limited data on the average salary of product managers today. That’s likely because the role exists across so many industries, with salaries that differ greatly.
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) does not have specific data on product manager salaries. However, an excellent benchmark you can refer to is their data on management occupations in general.
According to that data, managers typically earn an average of $123,370 a year. The BLS also points out that:
- The top 90th percentile earns more than $208,000 a year, and
- The bottom 10th percentile earns $47,860 a year.
Where is the Best Place to Be a Manager?
According to the same data by the BLS, some states pay managers more than others.
For example, these are the top 5 highest paying states for management occupations:
- New Jersey: $158,300
- District of Columbia: $156,530
- New York: $156,420
- Delaware: $147,140
- Massachusetts: $143,980
Read our relate article on How to Become a Finance Manager. Learn what it takes to pursue this career.
How Do I Earn More as a Product Manager?
There are 2 ways you can earn more as a product manager.
Firstly, you can do so by pursuing certifications related to product management. There are plenty of recognized certifications on the market, such as those by the Pragmatic Institute, the Product School, and several others.
Besides that, you can also earn more by developing industry-specific knowledge.
As you know, product managers can and do work in various industries. However, you’ll be of more value to your employer if you develop specialized knowledge in one industry.
For example, plenty of product managers specialize in the tech industry. So, they know the ins and outs of that industry and its products better than a non-tech product manager.
Product Manager Job Growth
Learning how to become a product manager can be quite exciting and promising. That’s especially true given how mainstream the role is becoming across companies of all sizes and in many different industries.
It used to be that product manager roles were only common in the tech industry. These days, that’s far from the truth.
Any industry that involves producing, selling, or distributing products will require your product management skills and knowledge.
Some examples include the healthcare, automotive, and consumer goods industries.
Despite its growth, the product management role is still relatively new. That means there isn’t much hard data to predict how much the product manager job will grow in the next decade.
4 Types of Product Managers in 2022
There are no fixed background requirements for product managers. As a result, you’ll find yourself surrounded by several different types of these managers when you meet them in the industry.
Companies will recruit different types of product managers depending on their unique requirements. For example, some companies’ products are more technical than others, so they’ll need product managers with technical backgrounds.
Here are 4 examples of common product manager titles that you’ll find across multiple industries.
1. Technical Product Manager
In this role, you’ll be expected to have a deep level of relevant technical knowledge in this role. For example, a tech company hiring for this role would likely require you to know about coding.
You may also need a strong understanding of how digital products like software and mobile apps are produced to work well as a technical product owner.
2. Data or Analytics Product Manager
Working with data or analytics means working with numbers. Here, your focus will be on analyzing the numbers related to your product and then developing it accordingly.
With a stronger focus on data and analytics, this role will involve working closely with data scientists and similar roles on your team.
3. Product Marketing Manager
Some product managers focus more on marketing the products they’re responsible for. So, while the technical staff build the product, you will focus more on planning how to promote the product to current and future customers.
4. Growth Product Manager
This type of product manager role is a bit more focused. Instead of focusing on the product’s overall success, you’ll focus on growing just one metric, such as sales.
Professional Associations
As you enter the industry, the best way to continue learning how to become a product manager is through networking and mentorships.
You can do so by meeting fellow product managers by participating in associations like:
The Product Development and Management Association (PDMA)
The Association of International Product Marketing & Management (AIPMM)
The Association of Product Professionals
Location-based associations like:
Silicon Valley Product Management Association (SVPMA)
Boston Product Management Association
Top Colleges and Universities
The product manager role is multidisciplinary, which means that you can learn how to become a product manager through many different degree courses. For example, you can go to college to study business or marketing.
Here are the top institutions for those degree courses:
