Full Transcript for 162: Chris Mason on Product Management Jobs and the PM Job Market

somebody is a PM and they're either looking to get their next job or they're looking to get a job because they're out of work. What should they be thinking about? [00:05:41] Chris Mason: There are lots of points with this. So I think, being organized, getting your resume sorted optimizing your resume. There's lots of advice online. There's advice on our website about this as well. Structure, clarity. Impact statements is really important. So we're constantly telling candidates that their CVs could be better, their resumes could be better because they talk about what they've done and their responsibilities, but they don't talk about what they've achieved and the impact and the effect of their work. The most powerful way to state that is with a data reference point. So if it's not confidential, think about the things that you've done that have been most impactful. And is there a number you can attach to it in terms of driving sales, reducing costs, reducing customer churn, customer engagement, whatever metrics you're tracking. If you've done something that's impactful then try and state that on your resume because it makes it more powerful. So all of the clients we work with for product hires, they want people that whatever you're doing, you've got an outcome in mind, you measure against it, you know whether something is successful or not. And failure is fine because testing is, it's a big part of product management. But as long as you recognize where you are with that testing and kill things that aren't working or change it. So a good way to show that you are impactful and also that you think that way is try and include data reference points. And I think just making sure that your LinkedIn profile is aligned to your resume as well, Cause people cross check both and, if there's any differences or disparities, then that's a bit of a red flag. And again it's, it's not necessarily something that we coach candidates on individually, but making sure your LinkedIn profile is optimized is really essential if you're job seeking because, you might apply for adverts if you're actively looking, but. You should make yourself discoverable by having the right data on your linkedIn profile. Now, if you're in a job and you suddenly update your LinkedIn profile, then that's a red flag for your boss. So I really recommend that you do it as you go along. Any new bit of responsibility or role change, celebrate it on LinkedIn and say how proud you are and update your LinkedIn profile. If you're approached on LinkedIn about stuff that you feel is irrelevant, it's because you've got the wrong data on your LinkedIn profile. Try and go heavy on detail in terms of what you're doing, the types of products you're working on, if you're managing a team, what team size you're leading, because somebody who's leading a team of 50 is very different to somebody who's leading a team of five. It's a different profile entirely. And it's sometimes just not obvious on LinkedIn. So if

you want to get approached about the things that are right sized for you, then, make sure LinkedIn is updated. And that's not just recruiters or agencies or consultancies, but it's also your own network. There'll be people that you've worked with years ago, or connections of connections that might discover you and, they'll, they maybe have forgotten about you. And so make yourself discoverable on LinkedIn. That's really important. And obviously the LinkedIn open to work tab, make sure that if you are active, make sure that it says that you're open to work because most recruiters , that's their, first point of contact, people who are actively looking or who are open to work. . [00:08:50] Nils: That's good recommendations. Back to your comment about resumes. I look at a lot of people's resumes, and I help them with them. I haven't seen one that's good. I've seen some that are better, but it's amazing to me how many are, they just don't talk about the impact that somebody had. They're not at all differentiating. Yeah. And I talk about that on the podcast a lot. So I like that, the fact that you echoed that as well. Do you have a recommendation for a resource on guidance for optimizing LinkedIn? [00:09:19] Chris Mason: If people search out my LinkedIn profile, so I post on this fairly regularly, and I give bullet points and pointers. So you'll find that in my activity history, so come and connect to me on LinkedIn and, have a look for that. We've almost certainly got resources around this on our website as well. I'll post them again on my LinkedIn profile so people can easily find them. [00:09:41] Nils: And I'll put all these links into the show notes for this episode as well, [00:09:44] Chris Mason: yeah, fantastic. And particularly with your resume, because,, people really do read them in detail. So yes, so the reason we talk so much about,, format of resume and simplicity and clarity of information is because you might be one of 200 people applying for a job. So your resume is going to, be, someone's going to make a decision within a couple of seconds. So that's really important. But also. Just the the quality of the detail and the accuracy is really important as well. And, I challenge people on this. There will be an error on your resume and you won't see it. So get a friend, family member to proofread it because they'll find it, Offer them a cup of tea or coffee if they if they find an error and they usually find something and they'll point it out and you'll be staggered that you didn't, that you missed it yourself. So. [00:10:26] Nils: Offer them a steak dinner because it's worth that much to find the error. [00:10:30] Chris Mason: It really is. [00:10:31] Nils: Because one of the things I talk about is the hiring manager, whoever's reading it can discard your resume for any reason. They might just say, Oh, this person's sloppy. I can't have a sloppy person on my team. And you just lost that opportunity that otherwise might be perfect for you. And just on a, just based on the typo it sounds. [00:10:50] Chris Mason: Yeah. one other thing I'd mention in terms of, this is probably a bit more holistic around job seeking and looking for your next product role, Whatever level that you're at. is the value of mentorship and having a mentor to help you understand actually what should you be applying for, what's the right move for you, what's going to be the best career opportunity based on your own circumstances and, passions and desires and all the rest of it. And I'm always banging the drum on this because we actually launched a free mentorship platform earlier on last year, and it's a completely free. resource. It's a marketplace. We've onboarded 170 product leaders, CPOs, VP products who are offering their time for free to help people. And the intent here is to make it, make mentorship and mentoring accessible to all product managers, regardless of background. And the feedback we get is incredible and many people use it when they're job seeking because they want advice around a process or a task they have to do. And other people use it more generally for learning and career development and maybe problems they're trying to solve in their current environment. Sometimes, it can be a lonely job. Sometimes you're a, you're an IC and you're the only product hire in the company and you might need help trying to influence stakeholders or whatever the challenge you've got is. So having a mentor, just some, a friend that you can bounce ideas off, someone who's more experienced than you is super valuable and there are free resources out there, like on our website. [00:12:17] Nils: Nice. And so that's on Intelligent People's website that people can find that again, I'll put a link to that. in the show notes into your mentorship platform. That sounds fantastic. Yeah, excellent. Anything else to talk about? in terms of individuals who are between jobs or looking for that next PM job, before we get into some of the other topics that we've also lined up? [00:12:40] Chris Mason: The power of your own network is something you should really try and leverage. So if you're in between jobs, in particular, and there's a lot of heat on you to, provide, get, and find something just really, first of all, get your LinkedIn profile updated, but then think about who have I worked with in the past? Where are they? What organizations are they within? Usually you're a known quantity and that, they'll recommend you. Often they have referral schemes internally. They benefit as well. So try and use, try and leverage your own network because you'll be surprised what you can uncover. And it's, just drop people a note and say, even if there's nothing that's advertised. Just say, look, I'm, I'm looking for something and this is what I'm looking for. And, they'll have all of their connections as well. They may hear about things and, that may uncover things as well. So try and use your own network. [00:13:27] Nils: So do

you feel like you can just drop a note, a DM to folks and say, Hey, I'm in the job market, or do you need to warm them up at all? Or do you have any advice around that? [00:13:37] Chris Mason: I would say, yes, you can, and you shouldn't feel worried about doing this. Obviously you've got a bit of a spectrum of connections and some people you're quite close friends with and others less but there's no harm just reaching out and saying, "Hey, I hope you're doing okay. Haven't spoken to you for ages. And, just wanted to say, I'm looking for this and, really appreciate you just flagging anything if you see anything." That's all you need to do. [00:13:58] Nils: Thank you for saying that. It's a, I think that's a major load off people's minds to realize they can just get out there and talk about what they need. [00:14:06] Chris Mason: Yeah, absolutely. And you might get ignored, Someone might be busy, someone might not get on LinkedIn that often. And so don't take it personally if you don't hear back straight away or not for three months but you've got nothing to lose. So I would really recommend that. [00:14:18] Nils: Really great advice. Obviously product management is the hot career in a lot of ways, right? Everybody wants to be a product manager, it seems. What about advice for people who want to get into the product management? In this environment, obviously it's even more challenging than normal, but it's always challenging. What do you recommend to folks like that? [00:14:37] Chris Mason: There's definitely a few things you can do. We get called about this a lot. It's not something that we can usually help with directly because we specialize in experienced hires. So our clients come to us for people with certain specific product expertise, but we often get calls saying, "Oh, how can I get into product? Really interested." Now, the first thing we normally say is seek out communities. So there are you know, content creators like yourself, and there's lots of product communities, many of which are in person all around the world. So if you live near a big city, I'll challenge you, and I bet you can find a product community or a meetup that's happening in your vicinity. And, they're just really friendly, really friendly bunches. That's my experience. We've sponsored a lot of them in our, different regions over time. You can go along. Usually there's some content or presentation from product leaders on stuff that's topical and, you'll learn stuff. But there's always a networking component to it as well. And just chat to people and say, this is my background and I'm really interested in this. And, you never know, you may come across opportunities and you'll probably learn stuff. And even if it's learning the terminology and it demystifies product managers and it makes you think actually they're humans like me and I can do this, it will give you more confidence. Get into the communities is the first thing. Obviously, consider upskilling, look for courses, do stuff on the side just to try and, build build your academic profile and, you'll have more that you can talk about and list on your resume that's directly related to product, even if it's just a course. And for people that are, , let's say you're a raw grad, you've got nothing to lose, you're just looking for a product role. That's great. You're starting at the bottom and you're going to be moving on up. Sometimes people want to transition into product from another career. And that can be a bit more difficult because, often you have to take a step back to do that because you have to recognize that there's a learning curve. Sometimes that's challenging for people because everyone's got bills to pay. If you're working within an organization that has a product team and you want to get into product, try and do it internally. And at the very least, just try and build relationships or, see if there's any project work or anything you can do voluntarily with your product team because that gives you experience and it gives you something to talk about. And maybe a product role internally might open up that you can then go for and you'll be in pole position for it. But if not, you've actually got some practical stuff that you can amplify on your resume when you're applying for something else and that may give you an edge. So that's a good way of thinking about it if you're able to do that and taking a sideways step and taking a hit on the salary is challenging for you. [00:17:11] Nils: Yeah that's certainly good advice. And it does seem at least in history, product managers have more likely come from lateral moves than anything else. Within companies, right? In the old days, I've been product manager for decades. In the old days, people didn't move into a product management role directly from school, for example. That just didn't happen, right? You always move from something else. [00:17:36] Chris Mason: yeah, definitely. And no one knew what product was, but it's really interesting because we see raw graduates coming out of university or college and saying, I want to be a product manager because it's increasingly high profile, which is incredible. And also we're starting to see, I'm not sure if they're actually degree courses on product management, but certainly there are components on product management in degree courses now. And that's also brilliant. It's brilliant. Really fantastic. [00:18:00] Nils: And are people getting roles straight out of school as product managers? Are you seeing that happen? Oh, [00:18:06] Chris Mason: Yeah, definitely. And I'm a big fan of internships, paid internships. I always share them. If I see internships being offered, I always check that they're paid because I, I think it should be paid even if it's expenses or, a small amount of money because it makes it more accessible. If it's not paid, it means it's only a certain demographic that can possibly do that. But I always share those and that's absolutely

brilliant. Just try and spend whatever time you can in the environment. Do anything that's asked of you. Soak up as much as you can, talk to as many people as you can, learn about their journey and what they love and, the ups and downs of the product world as well. [00:18:42] Nils: Yeah. I love that. Great advice. Let's flip it again. Not so much on the people trying to get the jobs, but the people trying to hire. PM leaders that are building a team or an organization that wants to get their first PM. What are some of the things that they need to be thinking about? [00:19:01] Chris Mason: The starting point is always just being really clear on what it is that you need and what impact you need from the person. You might be a big organization, lots of product people, and they're pretty, they might be pretty clear on that. And also what's realistic, but sometimes we're approached by scale ups where the founders are the first product people and they're making, kind of official product hire number one. And they're not really sure what they need. They're not really sure what's realistic. Try and document and write down the impact you need. And then if you need to take advice on that and whether it's realistic. And it could be, people in your network or, , obviously that's the sort of thing that we help with all the time or other recruiters and consultancies. Be clear on what you need and the impact you need, and then take advice and make sure it's realistic, both in terms of a profile of person, does that person exist? Is it realistic? And also price points and how much you have to pay if you're, if what you're offering is gonna get you the type of person that you need. So that, that's the first thing I'd say. Think about routes to market. You may have people in your network or you may have an internal talent team. Obviously, you may want to use a specialist consultancy or recruiter like us. So think about the best way to get to the, people that you need. And it's not just about uncovering the right sort of people, cause that's only half of it. Engaging candidates in the right way is equally as important, particularly if you're looking for specialist skills or people that are highly sought after, or some organizations have a very high bar in terms of the type of profile person they're looking for. So. engaging people in the right way is really important and telling the story of what's in the roadmap for a role is a really good way of doing that. So if someone joins you, what are they gonna be doing? What are they gonna be building? What are they gonna be talking about in two, three years time in terms of what they've done and what they've achieved and the impact they've made? Thinking about your employer brand is really important. What's going to attract someone to you as an organization? Very large organizations and scaling organizations, put a lot of thought into this and they're really good at it, but, early stage businesses, they're still getting

their head around what's their employer brand, what does their brand mean? What's their culture like as well? We can give advice around that, but there are specialists that can help build out your employer brand and your offering and, help to really document and understand your culture and making sure that your package is competitive in terms of the benefits wrapped around the salary equity bonus, whatever it is, whatever else you've got included. We always try and encourage clients to not hire for culture fit, which feels like really counterintuitive to say and it was a given 20 years ago, like someone's got to be the right culture for us, but what that what does that actually mean? Does that mean we're going to hire people that are just like us? It kind of perpetuates perhaps, baked in discrimination and bad stuff that used to happen in the past. And there's lots of product leaders now talk about diversity of product teams and the actual commercial impact that brings, having a broader spectrum of ideas, people that disagree, people from different backgrounds. Obviously that presents leadership challenges to manage conflict and make sure that people are talking and listening as well and being respectful of others and actually not dismissing people's ideas until they've actually thought about them. We have lots of clients these days and organizations we work with who say we need people who are humble, people who listen as well as talk and are big enough to say your idea is better than mine when that's the case. So that, that helps with a, a diverse mix of of product people from different backgrounds. , Thinking about hiring process is really important as well. And making sure that you're doing everything that you need to be able to make a good decision about people and not make missteps with hires, but also. trying to make sure that your process is fast paced and keeps pace with the market as well. And whether you have assessments and, making sure that they're actually valuable assessments and also that they're not onerous, like asking people to do a business plan for you, which most people think is free consultancy. So we normally recommend to clients two to three hours prep, 10 to 15 minutes to present, which is probably a a reasonable size for a task. [00:23:07] Nils: I do love this idea of watching out for the culture fit. The negatives of culture fit, it depends on how you define the culture. If you define the culture as being open and diverse and inclusive, then maybe culture fit will work, right? Respectful, humble, but it can go badly as we've seen historically for sure. [00:23:29] Chris Mason: Yeah. And the flip side, we used to come across this I've worked in recruitment for 30 years, but, you have a team of white males and they say, we want someone who's culturally like us. That's a really dangerous thing to to say and think about. Being open minded and really understanding the value of diversity not just because , it's. necessarily

something that makes business impact, but it's, also the right thing to do. [00:23:54] Nils: So morally right. And then business benefits, the data shows it clearly [00:23:59] Chris Mason: yeah, definitely. And Bex Yelland as well, who is a product leader talks a lot about psychological safety. So creating an environment where people feel they can contribute. People feel they can speak up. People feel that they can throw ideas in and, and make decisions as well. That that's really important. And that's a leadership challenge, fostering an environment where people feel that they can be a part of the team and contribute towards the team and make decisions. So that's really important too. [00:24:28] Nils: It makes a lot of sense to me. So you mentioned you've been in recruiting for 30 years. You don't look old enough to have done that actually. But what was your path into recruitment and then into product management recruitment? [00:24:39] Chris Mason: I graduated from university, wasn't too sure about what I wanted to do. Applied for a role for a recruitment agency, ended up working for that recruitment agency. I think that's often the path a lot of people take. But actually really enjoyed it. And I started working in sales and then sales recruitment, then technology recruitment, and then founded Intelligent People 22 years ago with a friend. And it was. Soon after that, that we came across our first product role. And I remember it was with AOL. So we were working with AOL back when it was a broadband and content company. And they used to send those discs, those CDs, they used to be everywhere. I used them as coasters and yeah. And we had a product role and we thought we didn't know what it was. Is it a project manager role? Is it a marketing role? Is it a technology role? And it took us a while to, to, figure it out, but then we saw more and more of them and we spotted a trend and so we. We were successful early on and it was really challenging because in those early roles, we were always looking to try and move people across from another area and sell product management as a career choice. When you actually describe product management, that it's all about thinking about the customer and solving customer problems, creating value. It's about saying why are we doing this? So if you think about back in the day, a lot of decisions were made by, say, technology or IT, and they'd maybe make decisions because there's a new version of something that comes out. And oh, we've got to do that as opposed to thinking what value does that create and what problem does it solve? When you think about product from that perspective, it's actually really exciting. You're improving the lives of people, making people's lives better. And, if it's a, B2B or SaaS or enterprise software, you're making companies more efficient, more cost effective and making them better at what they do. Then it's just snowballed and we started to see communities popping up and I think it was

Mind the Product and Product Tank in the early days. It's great and you meet people and then you get this sense of community. And then that really accelerated the learning because people were coming together and, sharing war stories and talking about their experiences. And here we are, it's getting into universities and there are modules in university degrees now, and we have graduates coming out of university saying, yes, I want to be a product manager. Yeah, a lot has changed over the years and we see the, product candidate pools just growing and growing everywhere, which is great. [00:26:54] Nils: This has been really interesting, Chris. Lots of good information for seekers and for managers. But your expertise, obviously you're a recruiter, and you obviously want folks to work with you. Why should people work with a recruiter for their product roles? I can think of a few reasons, but I bet you have a lot of 'em. [00:27:11] Chris Mason: So with product management, we've worked in this area for 20 years, so we've got a deep expertise and we understand the the spectrum of product roles, whether it's B2B or b2C. So we work across consumer markets and b2B, which is mostly SaaS software vendors, but also enterprise software and services and devices as well, to a small extent. There's a lot of expertise there and, we've got lots of data we can advise on candidate profiling and price points. We can deliver shortlists of candidates very quickly as well because we have really strong and live networks and over the years, we've sponsored lots of events like Product Tank and Jam London and others as well. And we also launched our product mentorship platform so that people know us and trust us as somebody that puts back into the community. It means we've got really strong networks. And even when we do our, we've got the GDPR legislation over in the UK. And, when we, when a relationship lapses, we delete data and we notify people. And so many people reply saying, "Keep my data. I'm not looking right now, but I'll be back to you when the time's right." It's great that we feel we have a connection with the product community and relationships with candidates and the clients we work with. And that makes us more effective at what we do in terms of, understanding and advising our clients on what they need, the best route to market, how best to engage candidates as well, and how to do that quickly and effectively too. [00:28:33] Nils: Do you do any guidance for the hiring manager or the team that's hiring for how best to interview, how to validate that candidates are somebody they should hire? [00:28:47] Chris Mason: It's a big question because there are lots of different types of roles, but and this is something that we give advice around through the, through the process. And, When we're, engaging with clients as well, but I think you've got to be clear on what you're looking for so have a list of competencies or experiences or attributes that you're looking for,

and ask questions that try and demonstrate that. . If you're looking for somebody who has been through a scaling journey or somebody who's transformed something or somebody who's built something from scratch then that's what you're looking for. And your questioning should be based around the competencies that you're looking for. So "Give me an example of where you've done this" and talk through the life cycle. What did you decide to do? How did you do it? What problems did you have? What did you learn along the way? What was the outcome? What would you do differently? So that kind of process of questioning to understand whether someone has done something, talk through the detail. It gives you some insight into their decision making and psychology along the way. But then you're looking at the effect of it. Is what you've done successful and did it make impact? So competencies and then questioning around those competencies. And it's better if you have a kind of a scoring system against them as well, because then that helps to remove bias as well, personal bias. [00:29:58] Nils: Good suggestions. And how do somebody decide that it's a cost effective move to start working with a recruiter such as yourself? [00:30:07] Chris Mason: I would argue that it's always cost effective to work with a recruiter because if you think about marginal gains, how much better does somebody have to be to make a big enough impact to justify a moderate recruitment fee? I would argue it can be really cost effective. And we have different services as well. We grew up as a contingency recruitment company. So we only charge a fee if we place someone. So in that sense, it's low risk. And some of the clients we work with, they will use their own network alongside us. And, more often than not, they end up hiring someone from us because the person we find is, there's daylight between our person and the person that they find from their own network. We also have executive search services as well. So we have clients that come to us with something that's very confidential or something that's very specific or a new initiative that they're involved with, or it's just such a critical role that they need to leave no stone uncovered to find the best possible person. That's a very different type of service. [00:31:01] Nils: and I would imagine that you accelerate the process significantly or often do. [00:31:06] Chris Mason: Yeah, we do. And even with retained searches, because we've got that domain knowledge, we can deliver retained shortlists within four to five weeks, which is really quick. So even for CPO level roles and a lot of clients choose us because of that, because usually there is some heat around timing. when someone decides to go to market. So being able to deliver really effectively and evidence that as we go which we do in weekly catchup meetings, but do it in a very time effective way as well is is a big part of what we offer. [00:31:36] Nils: Makes a lot of sense to me. Chris, this has been great, really good information for all the different types of people who listen to this podcast. Individual contributors, want to bes. and leaders. We all have listeners on all those categories. Any last words you want to share with my listeners and then tell us how to get in touch, follow up, connect, all those things. [00:31:58] Chris Mason: Yeah, fantastic. It's been great talking to you Nils. There's loads of resources on our website, intelligentpeople. co. uk around job seeking, around looking for you're building a product team. We also have details of our free product mentorship platform. If you're a product leader and you want to help the community, it could be just a couple of hours a month or more go and read about it on our website. If you don't have a mentor at the moment then come and see what you're missing and, look at Intelligent People's website. You can browse through that. I think one of the other things that's perhaps a little bit different is that you can actually browse through the mentors and find someone you think is relevant for you. And we have bios of all the mentors, so you can approach someone that you feel comfortable with. And also there's the latest job section of our website. So if work isn't confidential, we list our latest opportunities on our website too. [00:32:46] Nils: And then people can connect with you on LinkedIn and I'll put that, I'll put that link into the end of the show notes, all the links that you mentioned. That sounds great. Excellent. Thanks for, thanks again for coming, Chris. And hopefully you'll see a little, see some visitors and some folks will get some mentorship opportunities if nothing else. It's been great information. Hopefully people will be able to get jobs faster and fill jobs faster based on listening to this. [00:33:11] Chris Mason: Thank you, Nils. Great talking to you. [00:33:13] Nils: Thanks again to Chris Mason and his valuable insights on product management jobs, both getting them and hiring people into them. You can find links to Intelligent People. Chris's recruiting company, as well as Chris's LinkedIn information and other related links that we mentioned during the episode in the show notes, at secretsofpm.com/162. Now, if you like this episode and want to share the ideas in it, please share it with your friends. It's a great way for the show to grow. If you want to reach out to me about this episode or any other topic that I cover on the podcast, I'd love to hear from you. You can leave a comment on the show notes or drop me a line on LinkedIn or via direct email at nils@nilsdavis.com. Until next time, this is Nils Davis. Bye-bye.