Thinking about searching for your next PM job on your own?
You might be saving money upfront...
But what could it cost you in missed opportunities, lost income, and wasted time?
In this episode of AFTER THE CERT, I'm running througg the hidden costs of DIY job searching and why getting expert support before you start struggling could be one of the smartest investments in your career.
Listen in to learn:
Why you might be targeting the wrong PM roles or overlooking higher-paying opportunities
How poor interview preparation can cost you your dream job
Why AI and generic job search advice can't always diagnose what's holding you back
How a prolonged job search could cost you thousands in missed income
When it makes sense to invest in a career coach instead of going it alone
Plus, I'm sharing real stories from SPRINT clients and announcing a 🎁 special holiday bonus 🎁 for November and December SPRINT enrollments.|
Ready to land your next awesome Product role? ✨
SPRINT helps you position yourself as a top-tier Product candidate so you can land high-quality interviews consistently and confidently - without guesswork, burnout, or wasting months applying into the void.
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Jess Sherlock (00:00)
Let's say you're able to bump your salary by 30K, going from 150 to 180 with this job search. That's 2,500 bucks a month And if you spend
three months searching, that's $7,500. Six months searching, $15,000 that you could have been making
Not to mention, right, the time you wanted to maybe spend with friends, family, your kids, on the nights and weekends as you're kind of stumbling through trial and error how to move your job search forward.
Most people forget to factor in the hidden costs, the opportunity costs, the time, and the energy that goes along with doing it yourself.
Jess Sherlock (00:35)
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 in 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 (01:31)
Recently I've been hearing the same thing from many folks who are interested in the sprint program. And that is, I'll just try job searching on my own. And listen, I get it, you're smart, you're capable, you've got Claude by your side. Of course, you can do it. A lot of folks job search on their own. But what I want to spend a little time today talking about is, you know, just because you can doesn't mean that you should. And so I want to make sure as you're making the decision of how to embark on your job search.
you have the best information at hand to make the strongest decision for you.
Because Most people compare the cost of coaching to zero dollars and they forget to factor in some of the hidden costs, the opportunity costs, the time, and the energy that goes along with doing it yourself.
So let's talk a little bit about what those hidden costs are so you can make a smart decision for you. Because remember, free doesn't always mean that there is no cost. So the first hidden cost that I want to talk about is that you might end up spending a lot of time.
Targeting the wrong opportunities. I can't tell you how many times I've come across product managers whose current job title does not actually reflect the level that they are qualified for and competitive for. Sometimes this works in your favor, where you're actually qualified for more senior or higher paying roles that you haven't even considered.
And you know, in these situations, people are undervaluing their experience, applying to jobs that they're overqualified for, which sounds like a great thing, but can actually get you eliminated pretty quickly in the screening process. Um, or situations where folks are coming from consulting fields or other roles where titles aren't industry standard and they're not quite sure how to map it to product management. And what can happen is you kind of undervalue yourself or undermap.
Where you could apply your experience to and product. The flip side of this, though, is that you could actually waste weeks or months applying to roles that you think you're a great fit for, because you maybe currently have the title, but they're not actually a strong match for you. This is especially true when someone's coming from a role where maybe their title is inflated or their company has an unusual or
A typical PM leveling system and they just have no idea. I had a client once who had the title principal product manager simply because their company didn't have a senior level. When we dug into their experience, they were most qualified for senior level roles. They simply weren't able to speak at the level required for principal roles. And so that person could have spent a lot of time applying to roles where they would have been screened out immediately simply because they didn't have the years of experience required.
The type of strategic ownership that would be required, and so on. So I want to share a real story about a client who came in and actually had a PM title in her last role. Very qualified individual. This person was working as a growth PM and signed up, joined the SPRINT program, we did their strategy conversation. And
As this person was starting to get traction, they were interviewing for a PM opportunity that they felt really good about. And the recruiter during the conversation said, Hey, you know what? I actually think you might be a better fit for this other role that we're interviewing for. It's a senior role. We think you'd be a great fit. She panicked. And she told us if it was up to her, she would have passed on the opportunity because she didn't think at all that she was qualified.
In SPRINT though, she was able to send us a quick message and say, hey, here's the situation, here's the job description. What do you think? Right? Imposter syndrome's really taking over. I don't think I'm qualified. What do you think? She was convinced it was too senior for her. I insisted she take the call. And long story short, she got the job. The only thing that was getting in her way was herself. So
Hidden cost number one is really around not spending your time looking at roles that you are most qualified for, which in many cases are above where you might be convincing yourself you're qualified. So remember, you can't land an opportunity that you never realized you were qualified for or that you eliminate yourself for.
Okay, hidden cost number two is all about wasting your best interviews. So something I say often is being a great PM does not automatically make you a great candidate. Knowing how to actually pitch your value, interview well, this is a skill.
And you have to develop this skill. You have to sort of like a muscle that you need to strengthen. And what I do not want to see you do is land an interview with your dream company, a role where you're like, this is such a perfect fit for me. And you are practicing your answers for the first time. Don't do that. It's hard enough to interview for PM roles. But the good news is these interviews are predictable and you need to be ready to show your ownership.
show the strategic impact that you have had. to know the question behind the question and be able to answer that real question that they're asking. You know, questions that sound simple like, tell me about a product that you launched is actually about 10 questions packed into one where they want to hear about, you know, where did this idea start? Were you the one to generate the insight? How did you go about validating the problem?
How did you move from problem into solution with valid data and bring along your stakeholders and counterparts? How did you brainstorm ideas and not just go with your first idea? How did you bring this idea to market? How did you partner with your marketing and go-to-market teams? How did you measure the success of it? And then what PMs often miss, how did you then iterate based on what you learned? And so
not knowing the detail that's actually expected behind these questions can set you up for failure when, like I said, you have the information, you are competent, you've done this before. You just didn't realize that this question, you know, had this level of depth to it. You also need to make sure that as you're interviewing, your answers are aligned with the level of the role. Something I see pretty often is folks spending a lot of time talking about the execution, a lot of time talking about.
story writing or writing PRDs when really the interviewer for a senior level role and above, and even PM, is wanting to hear about your strategic ownership, your critical thinking skills, how you navigated disagreements and trade-offs within your stakeholders. So these questions are often not just at face value. How do you make sure that you are clearly pitching your value, not just memorizing answers and sizing your answers to what's expected? So
I want to share another story about a client who, in their interviews, just had so much going for them. They had really strong executive presence, lots of confidence, really great experience, super confident, likable. And what we noticed during his mock interviews is that he kept forgetting to hit on the impact of his work. It's not that he didn't have the metrics or that he wasn't measuring the success of what he was building. It just never came out of his mouth. It's something I often say is.
You know, you only get points if you actually say it. And what we realized is that his nerves were just kicking in. So he'd kind of like breeze through his answers, feel kind of nervous, wrap up his answer too soon. And the worst part about this is he didn't even realize he was doing it. it was through coaching that he was able to recognize this gap, but then also find ways that worked for him.
To kind of manage his nerves so that he could make it to arguably the most important part of these answers. So, long story short, hidden cost number two is we do not want you to get into your dream interview with your dream company, have this fantastic opportunity, and end up practicing answers for the first time and bombing that opportunity. I want to make sure that you are ready to perform and you're ready to nail that interview when the opportunity shows up.
Okay, hidden cost number three. And this one's super important, especially with AI as a tool for us to use. you simply don't know what you don't know. I see it all the time. So PMs will attempt to search on their own, they'll get stuck, and then they'll start to diagnose their search using all the same assumptions that are actually holding them back. So they'll show up in a call with me, having searched for sometimes months and months, sending hundreds or
Recently I chatted with a client who had sent about 2,500 applications, had landed 200 interviews, and still had not managed to diagnose the actual problem at hand. And they were asking a lot of the questions that I see getting asked that I don't think are the right questions. Things like Should I be tailoring my resume more or differently? Am I networking enough? I've tapped my network already. I can't possibly message any more people.
Or, making themselves believe that they're getting rejected again simply because they don't have the experience. And my take when I hear these, you know, potential diagnoses is yeah, your resume might be the problem, but it could also be the targeting. It could be that you have a great resume and you're handing it into the wrong opportunities, right? It could be that your resume does need work, but without a strong strategy and without
data, it's difficult to diagnose the exact core. networking is awesome. And I love when folks are focused on trying to make the most of their network. But listen, as I look back at the last 10 offers that have come in to SPRINT clients, more of them than you would think were cold applications or inbound recruiters coming in from LinkedIn. So networking often will land you interviews, but at least in the last 10 offers that have come in through SPRINT
Networking was only for 1 of the offers. So I think we often, overlook the value of cold applications and setting yourself up to get inbound requests through really strong LinkedIn optimization. And finally, we can sort of be self-obsessed when it comes to diagnosing why we're getting rejections. And what I typically hear folks do is blame themselves. I don't have enough experience, or this role was too senior for me. And first of all, that might be true, but going back to our other hidden cost.
If you are going into interviews for roles that you are wildly overqualified for or underqualified for, that rejection can be happening really early in the process. And you're blaming your experience when really it's an issue of that's an interview you probably never should have focused on getting to begin with. You can spend your energy applying to and getting interviews for much stronger fit roles.
Beyond that, rejections can happen for so many other reasons that have nothing to do with you. It could be that that organization already pulled in their first batch of candidates. It could be that they closed the role, right? There's all sorts of things that it can be. And I find that when folks are searching on their own, they're so focused on blaming themselves that they lose sight of some of the other external factors that might be playing into their search, going not as well as they want it to. So
Free advice from the internet, from blog posts, from LinkedIn, even AI tools, they can be great, but they can overwhelm you with generic advice. And you might not even be asking the same questions if your assumptions are off to begin with. So more personalized advice is usually what is most helpful to get you unstuck in your actual situation.
The information isn't the expensive part. You can go online, you can find 57 different templates for resumes, but figuring out where you're going wrong with your resume or your applications or your interviews, that's where the real value is. And if you don't have the right questions, you might be getting lost simply because you don't know what you don't know. Okay, cost number four. And this is the final one. And in this, is maybe the most.
tangible cost. So whether you are employed or unemployed, every month that you spend job searching has a price tag on it. if you're unemployed, the price tag is pretty direct, right? A prolonged search for every month is a month of income that you are missing out on. That one's pretty straightforward. But if you are employed and you are looking for a job, the cost is a little sneakier. It could be
That you are delaying raising your income potential. It could be that you are burning yourself out or continuing to lose more energy as you're feeling kind of stagnated, frustrated by your current role, not growing in your current role in the way you want to. And maybe more importantly, when you are full-time employed and you're trying to job search, you are spending a lot of time and energy in your evenings, in your weekends, trying to move your job search forward.
And this can be really challenging if you're not sure where to start. An hour spent Googling how to format my resume isn't an hour well spent compared to, being able to sit down with a video from an expert saying, here's everything you need to know about your resume as a product manager, get it drafted with the information only you can provide. And then, hey, meet with us, we'll get it done for you.
So let's take an example. let's say you're making 150,000 now in your salary and your next role is gonna net you 180k. And this isn't random. Our SPRINT clients average around a $25,000 to $30,000 salary increase That's been our historical average. So Let's say you're able to bump your salary by 30K, going from 150 to 180 with this job search. That's 2,500 bucks a month difference. And if you spend
Let's say three months searching, that's $7,500. Six months searching, $15,000 that you could have been making over that time you were searching. Not to mention, right, the time you're spending in the evenings, weekends, time you wanted to maybe spend with friends, family, your kids, on the nights and weekends as you're kind of stumbling through, trying to figure out through trial and error how to move your job search forward. So
Inside of SPRINT our average time to first offer hovers right around three months. And folks tell us they spend about five to 10 hours a week on their search, more if they're getting a lot of traction, which is awesome. So, you know, listen, I can't guarantee you a faster offer, but what I can promise you is that SPRINT is set up to make sure that.
Every minute you spend on your job search, you're spending it on the right thing, you're working on it in the right way, and you're working on that thing at the right time. So I don't want you spending any of your precious time or energy guessing, doing trial and error.
So you might think you're going to save money by not paying for coaching, by not paying for a program, but think about it this way. You have the potential to increase your income faster and save the time in the meantime.
I remember a client who said, this this makes me chuckle every time I think about it. He said, I'd come home from work exhausted and I'd happily spend, an hour or two doom scrolling on my phone. And instead, when I signed up for SPRINT, I spent that hour, two hours sitting down, doing a worksheet, watching a video, knowing exactly what I needed to focus on, and moving his job search forward. That was a client who actually landed an offer well within 90 days and raised his salary over 30K.
so you know, this is how I want you to be thinking about coaching is that it's an investment in moving your job search faster and spending your precious time and energy in the right way at any given time.
So listen, plenty of PMs find jobs on their own. Not everyone needs SPRINT It's, you know, SPRINT is actually not a fit for you if you're just casually exploring your next role, or if you're not committed to product management for your next role, Another reasons SPRINT might not be a great fit is if you are extremely early in your career,
less than a couple years of actual hands-on product experience, regardless of your title, you're just too early to take full advantage of the SPRINT program. I'd recommend you keep getting more experience and really build up your reps in the field.
But if you are an experienced PM, you are committed to finding your next product role, and you are the type of person who wants to get it right the first time, you want and you're hungry for that strategic guidance, you want expert feedback, you want to make sure you're set up for success from the start and you absolutely do not want to have any of your opportunities go to waste, then SPRINT.
would be a great fit. know that there's no requirement
That you go into your job search and struggle for weeks and months in order to earn getting help. You are allowed to get help from step one and set yourself up for success. And quite frankly, I love working with people from the very beginning of their job search because we get to make the most of that energy that you have from day one. We can channel it at the right things right away, versus folks who come to me after struggling for months and months.
We kind have to pick you up and dust you off first. And hey, we're here for it. If that's what you if that's when you reach out to me, that's fine. But hear me when I say a lot of folks who have been through the SPRINT program who did try it on their own before asking for help wish they would have asked for help earlier. if this sounds like what you need, I would absolutely love to help you with your job search. SPRINT, if you don't already know, it's a 90-day coaching program.
It's built for experienced PMs who want to build a strong job search strategy, identify their competitive advantages, make sure you're targeting the right roles for you, prepare for interviews of all kinds, behavioral, take homes, cases, and build the leverage along the way to negotiate a strong offer. if you're wondering if now's a good time to sign up, you know, it's it's November. You might be thinking, hey, is this even a good time a year to sign up? It is, and I'll tell you why.
Not only am I throwing in an extra 30 days of live coaching support at no extra cost, you're gonna get 120 days of support for the cost of 90. You can set yourself up to, head into the holidays market ready already. Imagine how good that would feel. Going into Thanksgiving, going into the holidays, knowing that your resume is already updated. You don't have these like lingering worries and dread about having to update that, or your LinkedIn.
You already know what your strongest positioning is. Everything's done, everything's ready to go. You can focus on enjoying your holidays, starting to send out applications, and even having interviews that are lined up for right after the holidays. Wouldn't that feel awesome? Everything's just done. So spots this time of year are extremely limited. We actually, as of right now, as of recording this, we currently have just a couple spots left for November.
A few spots left for December, and then we're going to be starting to fill up for January. So if you feel like you want to get started, you want to get your job search ready and kicked off before the holidays, I'd strongly encourage you to go to jesssherlock.com/sprint Go ahead and take a look at the SPRINT program, click apply, and set up time to chat with me. I'd love to hear from you, see if you'd be a good fit and get your job search kicked off right. All right, I'll see you next time on AFTER THE CERT
