๐ง How to Spot a Good PM Job Description
I get it - not all Product job descriptions are created equal.
It can be super tough to figure out which job is likely to accelerate your career growth ๐ and which job is setting you up for failure and burnout.
In this episode, I run through the top 5 things I look for to spot a good PM job description so you can find the best of the best on your job hunt!
Plus, I include a bonus tip most PM's never think of. ๐
Could you use some support on your product job search?
Whether youโre new to Product Management or looking for your next role, the job search can be tough. If know you need guidance, strategy, and end-to-end support, learn more about my SPRINT coaching program that helps Product Managers land their first (or next!) role.
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Jess Sherlock (00:00)
whatever it is that's important to you in this season of your career, I just want to remind you that just because a PM role is good,
according to my little scorecard that I shared today. only great for you if it teaches you and stretches you and challenges you in all the ways that you actually need most right now.
Jess Sherlock (00:19)
Welcome to another episode of AFTER THE CERT the career podcast for product managers who've collected all the certifications and taken all the courses and still feel stuck in their product career. I'm your host, Jess Sherlock, product management career coach. I know firsthand what it feels like to be overwhelmed, lonely, and stuck in your product career. And I'm on a mission to help you feel confident and empowered to take the lead your product career and achieve your unique career goals.
on me for practical and actionable advice, plus relatable stories from PMs navigating the messy middle of their career.
And remember, if you're feeling stuck with your product management job search, worried about making a great impression during your first 90 days in a new product job, or you want to position yourself for a promotion at work, I'm here to help. You can check out my coaching programs at jesssherlock.com/apply.
and book time on my calendar so we can chat.
Let's get into it.
Jess Sherlock (01:16)
Hey everyone, today I want to talk about how you can spot a good...
PM job description because not all product job descriptions are created equal and I am super familiar with PM job descriptions as it turns out. I have written them for roles that I was hiring for in the past as a hiring manager. I've reviewed them for clients that I'm working with or either job searching or hiring themselves. I also post roles to my private job board for SPRINT clients to apply to.
And often I reshare job descriptions directly to my LinkedIn network. So if you're not already following me, you definitely should find me on LinkedIn. And recently on LinkedIn, actually, when I shared a set of job postings, I got a great question from one of my followers. Thank you, Kamilla She asked, what are the signs of a strong product culture in a company, especially one where people can grow and learn?
as a PM? What do you usually pay attention to?"
So when I got this question, I slowed down for a moment because I didn't realize that I had this superpower to look at a job description and just within a few seconds determine whether or not it was going to be the type of role that a PM would really thrive in. And so
you so much for the question, Kamilla I took some time to think about this and realized I have a lot to say on the topic. I've boiled it down to the top five things that I look for in every PM job description to know that it's going to be likely a place where a PM is going to thrive. these are the things that I look for in a strong PM job description. And when I say strong, what I mean by that literally is that there's a high likelihood that the environment is going
to be one where a PM would be set up to succeed, they would be most likely in a position to build good strong product habits, and if you've heard me speak on this before, these folks will be able to get in good solid product reps so that you can grow in your career and really get good solid experience in the craft of product. So let's talk about these top five things that I look for.
so number one and definitely the most important indicator that I look for first is an indication that you will have access to customers. Exposure to customers in some way is the core of any great product work. If you don't have access to customers, whether that is user research, analyzing customer usage data, analyzing customer feedback, being able to actually go out one-on-one and meet with customers, do customer interviews, anything
that gets you closer to the customer, it's going to be very difficult for you to be identifying insights around problems to be solved and more likely you're going to be in a position where you're being handed solutions to go build, right, aka an output. ideally in any product role, you're in a position to be able to generate insights, identify insights, those problems that you see that we can solve with product and not
only
get to identify the insights but actually validate that those problems are being solved. So I look specifically for mentions of what sort of access you're going to get to customers and that will tell me immediately whether this is likely to be a role that's going to appreciate product getting feedback directly from customers.
Number two.
And this one is sometimes a bit subtle, but I want to look at the job description to see if it is clear what this person is going to be owning. the language is always a little bit different, but I'm looking for things like you're going to own the roadmap for XYZ feature or product, or you're going to drive the strategy for this new initiative, or you're going to set the vision for this new growth opportunity. Whatever it is, I want to see some
indication that they have a sense of what they're actually going to be hiring you for. if on the other hand I see phrases like supporting product initiatives, you can see how that's a little bit vague and when I see those phrases I worry that you might be coming in as more of a helper, more of an assistant on the team, more of a project manager and that you won't be in a position to actually make those key decisions about what to prioritize to reach the outcomes
we want to reach. Or, and this might be worse, they don't know what they're actually looking for or what role they're trying to place. And that's a red flag for me because not only can you a harder time positioning yourself for the role,
But that might be an indicator that the company is going to change their mind on even hiring for the role and decide to close the role midway through. So the more vague the ownership is, the less likely it is that you're going to be in a position to know exactly how to market yourself and that you're going to be really clear on how to succeed when you land in the company.
Okay, so number three is I'm looking for signals and language that shows that the company values and understands product as a discipline. a lot of subtle clues that I will look for with this, but I will say often shows up throughout the job description. So let me give you some examples of things that I often see that are good indicators of this. So do they mention things that...
illustrate that you're going to have a team to be mentored by and to learn from. So things like you will be mentored by a senior PM, you will have access to product leadership, we have XYZ structure for onboarding, or we use XYZ type of product process. Maybe they state in there that they use the jobs to be done format, or they do now next later roadmaps, right? But any indication that they have a particular way of working tends to indicate
that they value product and have prioritized maturing that part of the organization. And so those signals can really help you see whether or not you're gonna be set up for success and or whether you're gonna learn anything new.
Another thing I look for is who the PM is going to report into. a red flag for me personally is when product is into marketing or is reporting into tech. I much prefer to see product reporting into directly into leadership like a CEO if it is a very early stage company, but more than likely I would expect them to report into product. Could be a director of product, VP of product, a CPO, but ideally that person is an experienced and
Accomplished product leader my personal preference is and my advice generally is the earlier you are in your career the more experienced and accomplished product leadership you want to have at that organization because that is The next level above you that you will be most exposed to and most learning from So getting a sense of who you'll be reporting into and what their background looks like as it pertains to product Can be a strong indicator of how much you're likely to learn
Another signal that shows whether or not they value product as a discipline and how they think about product is the type of language they use. I prefer to see good strong product language like the team being outcome oriented or an expectation of data-driven decision making that we welcome iteration and experimentation and a growth mindset that we prioritize market research and innovation. All of those things indicate that
we're not just building things as a one and done like a output, right? We're really iterating so that we can drive the outcomes we want to see. if you're not seeing this language, it might mean that you're joining a feature factory, which would be a bummer, but worse, it could mean that you're just being placed in a glorified project manager role with a title that doesn't match the role and responsibilities.
Okay, number four, I wanna see some sort of evidence that there is an expectation of cross-functional collaboration. I wanna see things like you're gonna be working closely with your team of engineers or your partners in design or your partners in marketing, as well as the business and customer-facing teams. Those things are all really strong signals that you're gonna get experience across the entire product life cycle, from the initial idea to,
you
discovery work around the problem itself to of course, design and development. But also there's a high likelihood that you would be involved in the launch and go to market activities, which is really important if you've never had experience in those areas. if you're not seeing language about collaboration, it could be the type of role where they just want you to churn out JIRA tickets, toss those over the fence to engineers and really focus on the productivity of your sprints. And that's just a
not only are going to be lonely, but there's some key skills as a PM that you will not get a chance to build if you're not in a position to be collaborating. So some of those skills that immediately come to mind would be, of course, team leadership, influencing your team without authority towards a shared vision.
Collaboration skills, how to negotiate trade-off decisions or manage conflict within a team. Those are all skills that are really important as you grow as a PM, but if you're just working solo, it's gonna be really hard to develop those skills.
All right, and the final tip I'll give you, number five, is I want to see an expectation that you will have a measurable impact in your role. sometimes this is very overt in the job description where there are specific metrics tied to the role. Things like it might say, you're expected to drive growth internationally, or we're expecting you to help increase retention in this customer segment, or we really want to drive adoption of a new feature. Whatever it is, those are signals that
You're not only going to be held accountable But you're also going to be in a position to understand how your work is directly connecting to business goals really key skill for PMs to develop their business acumen and Remember, it's also really important that you're shipping product that's actually driving outcomes because if you decide to go job searching in the future one of the most common asks that I'm seeing right now in the interview process for PMs is
companies are asking PMs to present, like literally put together a presentation about a product or feature that they have shipped, how the idea came to be, how they went through the design and development process, how they launched it, and what the outcome of that work is. So if you're not in a role in which outcomes are measured and you're just expected to ship for the sake of shipping, right, we just call it done when that thing is done and shipped, it's gonna be really difficult to tell stories about the outcomes that you drove.
always encourage you in advance to look for whether or not they're expecting to create some accountability around the role specifically, because that's just gonna be a really good indication of how they think about the purpose of product managers in their organization.
Now here's a bonus tip, and this one might not be as obvious as the others or something that maybe you haven't thought about, but I really hope that you take this one to heart because it can be easy to look at a job description, a product job post, and ask yourself, could I get this job? Am I qualified to get this job? And I actually think that's the wrong question to be asking yourself.
The question that I would encourage you to ask instead is, will this job get me to where I want to go next?
what that might mean in your case is you want to just get in some more good solid product reps or maybe you want to get experience in a certain part of the product life cycle. I had a client recently who just hadn't been exposed to much of the go-to-market activities because they were so involved in the execution portions of product work. them, a role that would allow them to develop go-to-market skills and get some reps in that part of the product would be a really great fit, but it might not be for someone else.
Or
maybe what you're looking to do is a little bit more nuanced. Like you want to get experience with a certain problem space or a certain technology. Like maybe you really want to work on a mobile app and you just haven't had the chance to. Maybe it's a specific industry or domain and it could be the same industry that you've been working on because you want to continue to deepen your specialization in something like health tech let's say. Or maybe you've spent a number of years in health tech and you feel like it's time to
broaden your skill sets a bit, industry might be really important for you. Another thing might be customer type or business maybe you've got a lot of experience working on B2B products and selling to the enterprise, but you're feeling like it's time to move to a B2C product where you can be more data-driven in your decision-making and less sales-driven, for example. whatever it is that's important to you in this season of your career, I just want to remind you that just because a PM role is good,
according to my little scorecard that I shared today. It's only great for you if it teaches you and stretches you and challenges you in all the ways that you actually need most right now.
if you find that you look at job descriptions and these indicators of whether or not a role is going to actually accelerate your career, or if it's a type of role that's just gonna be a trap where you're gonna get burnt out and not really develop your skills, you might wanna consider checking out my SPRINT program. the very first step in the SPRINT program for product managers who are job searching is to help you identify the right opportunities for your goals, your level, and your skills, we build a job search strategy
that actually gets you hired faster If you're curious about that, you can check out all the details at jesssherlock.com/sprint You can book a quick call so that we can chat. Or if you want to follow me on LinkedIn, you can go ahead and DM me SPRINT and I'd be happy to send you over the info.
as always, if you have any thoughts, feedback, or questions on this episode or another topic that you'd like me to cover, send me a DM on LinkedIn
I'd love to hear from you.
And
see you on the next episode of After the Cert.
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