Curious about SPRINT, my 90-day Product Management job search coaching program?
Wondering what actually happens after you sign up, what kind of support you'll get, and whether it's worth the investment?
This episode is for you! 🫶
In this episode of AFTER THE CERT, I'm taking you behind the scenes of SPRINT to explain exactly how we help experienced Product Managers build a smarter job search strategy, land more interviews, and confidently compete for their next role.
Listen in to learn:
The three core areas we focus on to help PMs target the right roles, stand out, and build momentum
What your first 90 days in SPRINT actually look like, from strategy to resume to interview prep and offer negotiation
How our 1:1 coaching, group sessions, curriculum, and community work together to support you
Real SPRINT client results, including promotions, salary increases, and time to offer
What happens if you don't land a job within 90 days, including our interview guarantee and ongoing support options
How much SPRINT costs, who's a great fit, and how to get started
If you're an experienced Product Manager serious about finding your next PM role and want expert guidance from day one, this episode will help you decide if SPRINT is right for you.
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)
SPRINT is a 90-day program.
specifically designed for experienced PMs.
The first and hopefully most obvious and important element is that we make sure
you are targeting the right opportunities for you.
Ultimately, what I want to do is help you avoid spending way too much time targeting jobs where you are not a strong fit.
So the second thing we're going to do is work on your competitive positioning because you being qualified for a job is very different than your ability to convince someone else to hire you. We need to make sure that you are ready to
pitch yourself and show why you are the strongest fit for the role.
The third thing that we are working on is helping you build momentum in your interview process in ways that are sustainable for you
Because chances are, your job search is going to last longer than you want it to.
We are going to give you the strategy, the structure, the tools, we're going to give you expert support, but you're the one who's going to be applying to jobs, having conversations, networking, interviewing, doing outreach, and ultimately making the decisions during your job search.
Jess Sherlock (01:05)
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 (02:03)
Hello, hello.
So, if you've been listening to this podcast for any amount of time, you have most certainly heard me mention SPRINT But you know what? I thought it was long past due to do a little bit of a deep dive behind the scenes of the program because I talk a lot about it and how I work with clients, but you're probably curious exactly what it looks like. So instead of telling you about job search tips and tricks and mistakes to avoid today, let's go behind the scenes of the SPRINT program. So
What I'm going to do is tell you exactly how the program works, what happens when you join, what kind of support you get, and what it looks like during the 90 days while you are inside the program. I'll also talk a little bit about who it's for, who it's not for, and you know, make sure that you understand if you are considering SPRINT whether it would be a great fit for you. So, first things first, what is it? Well, SPRINT is a 90-day program.
Focused specifically on product managers' job searches, and it's designed as a hybrid program, meaning it's a combination of one-on-one coaching and group coaching with content, worksheets, videos, and curriculum to support you along the way. It is specifically designed for experienced PMs. So think people that are mid-career, maybe three to ten years of experience.
And specifically folks who know they're looking for their next role. They're committed to a job search and they want support along the way. They don't want to waste a bunch of time and energy kind of guessing their way through the process, Googling, you know, best resume templates, et cetera, et cetera.
So I typically work with folks who are currently employed, really busy with the day job, know they want something better, but just aren't quite sure where to start. I also work with folks who have been laid off and want to make the most of their severance package and make sure that they're getting their next role as soon as possible. And I also work with folks who maybe were promoted within their current company to a product management role and either haven't
Interviewed for a PM role recently, or maybe have never interviewed for a product management role because they were promoted internally. So doesn't really matter what your situation is, but it's most important that you have decided that you're ready for your next career move and you're committed to putting in the effort required.
And one small note.
We do not recruit people. I do not place people into roles, but I do have a pretty healthy network of hiring managers and folks that I have worked with before, folks that I'm connected with through various product management communities. And I will often be able to make direct intros to hiring managers, but remember, we're not a recruiting service. We are helping you with your job search. And you know, another thing to note, this is not one of those kind of like self-paced online courses where you
Watch a couple of videos, and then it's like, okay, good luck, and you run out of steam, you never quite finish everything. It's really intended to be supportive of you from end to end in your job search with everything that you need along the way. So it's a combination of personalized career strategy conversations, coaching when you need it, interview preparation, both in one-on-one settings and in group settings.
And then you know, all the tools, videos, worksheets, everything that you need to be supported ongoing throughout your entire job search from strategy to offer. So let's talk about the three things that we focus on inside of SPRINT. The first and hopefully most obvious and important element is that we make sure
you are targeting the right opportunities for you. It's one of the biggest mistakes I see experienced PMs make is they will look at their current job title. They'll look at their years of experience with the PM job title and maybe the industry this is that they've worked in. And they make assumptions about the jobs that they're qualified for. And sometimes those assumptions are completely wrong. And
unfortunately will underestimate their value in the market. So some real examples are, you know, I've worked with PMs who underestimated the level of seniority that they could actually compete for. People who are coming to me saying, I think I need to go for associate PM roles or I think I need to go for PM roles. And once I dug into their experience, I was like, you're way overqualified for those, right? You can easily compete at the senior or above level. I've also worked with plenty of PMs who just overlooked
entire categories of opportunities because they didn't see their transferable experience. They were too close to it and they couldn't see that, for example, all of their experience, you know, optimizing conversion rates in e-commerce translated perfectly to growth PM roles. Or they didn't realize that all their work with
Building out integrations or partner integrations could actually work really nicely for building out developer experiences. And Ultimately, what I want to do is help you avoid spending way too much time targeting jobs where you are not a strong fit. We wanna make sure that well before you start sending applications, even before we touch your resume, we're gonna look closely at your experience, what you have done, where your strengths are. But then we're also gonna think about
What do you want out of your career? What are your in a near-term and longer term career goals? And then where do we think you have the best ability to stand out and find something that, you know, you're not only competitive for, but is going to drive your career
in the direction that you want it to go?
So the second thing we're going to do is work on your competitive positioning because you being qualified for a job or you having the competence to do a job is very different than your ability to convince someone else to hire you. We need to make sure that you are ready to
pitch yourself and show why you are the strongest fit for the role.
It's about identifying and surfacing the things that actually differentiate you from other qualified candidates and then learning how to communicate them. because I often say the most competent person is often not the one who gets the offer. It's the person who instills the most confidence in the hiring team. And so in order to do that, you have to be able to sell yourself and understand.
How to make yourself the obvious choice for the role that they're hiring for. this is something that's going to show up, of course, in getting your resume written, getting your LinkedIn put together, but it plays a really key role in how you answer interview questions. Because our interview prep has very little to do with just memorization. I don't want you spending hours and hours memorizing your stories.
what's more important is how do you take all of that experience and pitch your value in the context of that experience to the person that's hiring for a specific role. Essentially, the hiring manager wants to hear how are you going to solve the problems that we need solved with this role? And you need to craft the bridge between your experience and the needs of that role in a way that the hiring team can understand. So we work a lot on that
during your interview prep.
The third thing that we are working on is helping you build momentum in your interview process in ways that are sustainable for you because your job search is so much more than the resume. People will often say to me, like, Oh, I can handle writing the resume. I don't need help with that. It's like, well, the resume is the very, you know, tiny piece at the very beginning. Um, you know, and completing one interview is is great, but there is, you know, week in and week out.
work that you need to be doing to complete this process. You need to be really consistent in finding the opportunities, generating those interviews, you know, preparing for those interviews, incorporating the feedback that you're getting, adjusting your approach, doing your follow ups. And so we are focused on not just making sure that you are strategically spending time in the right places and you have the right tools and techniques, you know, to make all these things easier.
But we also want to make sure that you have the ongoing accountability and support when things come up, when you get the rejection that makes you just want to throw your hands up in the air and give up. When you get a curveball request from a company and you're not sure what to do, when you recognize that something needs to change, but you're not quite sure what. That's what we want to help you with. We want to make sure that you are maintaining that consistent momentum
week in and week out. Because chances are, your job search is going to last longer than you want it to. On average, people in the SPRINT program getting their first interview within a few weeks and they're getting their first offer around about a hundred days from joining the program. But certainly there are some folks whose job searches extend into four to even six months if they're being really
picky.
or if they're targeting really competitive roles. Okay, so now that you know what we focus on, let's talk about how the program actually looks and works.
So we accept folks into the SPRINT program on a rolling basis. So you do not have to wait for, monthly or quarterly cohorts or anything like that.
And once you join, you'll get immediate access to all of the curriculum, access to coaching, and access to the community of other job searchers. The curriculum itself is ever evolving and currently, as of this recording, includes more than 45 lessons, worksheets, templates, videos of me walking you through everything that you need to know for your job search. think,
Defining your target roles, how to update your resume, how to, do outreach that can lead to interviews, how to approach all sorts of interviews. There are well over 20 lessons on interviewing alone across behavioral, technical, functional leadership, case, take homes. and then we want to make sure that you're prepared to negotiate an offer as well. So you know the thing to remember with this curriculum is that.
You're not going to sit down and just go through all 45 lessons at once. It's there to support you as you need it, and to work through things when you're at each stage of the process. also don't lock the curriculum. So if you want to, let's say, jump ahead to some of the interview content because maybe you got a screener way earlier than you expected, great. Let us know. We'll point you in the direction of the lesson that might be the best fit to support you.
we don't want that to distract you because your first major milestone is going to be getting your personalized job search strategy in place. But if you need to jump ahead or if you're curious and you want to jump ahead to any of the content,
you absolutely can.
So to work towards this first milestone, as soon as you sign up for SPRINT, we are going to point you to the pre-work for your strategy call. This is where you're really going to dig into the work that you have done, your career vision and ambitions, reflecting a bit on your competitive advantages. And then we are going to meet, to figure out what are the actual roles you should be pursuing? What level are you most competitive for?
Which parts of your experience are actually going to be the most valuable to the types of companies and types of roles that you're going to be targeting? And what activities should we include in your job search so that you can be focused and realistic and sustainable in your search? Someone who's balancing a job search with a full-time job, they might have a very different strategy than someone who is laid off and has a ton of extra time to devote.
And this first step is honestly my favorite part of SPRINT because it's the time when people most often have these aha moments about their own experience where they realize their unique value or they start to appreciate those random things on their resume that they thought were distractions are actually really beneficial to their story. And, you know, this clarity is so energizing. And usually after this first call, people just wanna.
Run off the call and go straight to working on the resume. And so that's awesome because next we're going to focus on your resume and your narrative. So your resume is so much more than just a chronological list of everything that you've done, all the jobs that you've had. It's a strategic document. It should communicate the most relevant experience and really illustrate why you're a strong fit for the opportunities you're going to be pursuing.
Because guess what?
We create one resume in SPRINT, because we want to make sure that you are tailoring your resume initially to target the types of jobs that are going to be a strong fit. So your bullseye jobs should not need a resume update. Even your what I call bridgeable jobs, the jobs that are kind of like a yellow for you, right? It might not be a bullseye fit, but it's pretty darn close. Your resume should work for that too. So you will work with Carin,
Our associate coach here in SPRINT on your resume, and we will get you to done. You just need to show up with it in a strong draft format, and then she will help you get it done. From there, going to shift you into interview prep mode because we want to make sure you're ready to answer questions like, tell me about yourself, or tell me about a time when, you know, all these behavioral questions we can predict.
We'll help support you with everything from behavioral interviews to cases to take homes and making sure that you're illustrating strategic ownership, critical thinking, the ability to manage stakeholders, your product judgment and product sense. You will have mock interview support inside of SPRINT, opportunities to practice one-on-one, but also opportunities to practice with other PMs
and coaches so that you can improve because it's not just a one-time thing. And by the way, as you progress through your job search, you can continue prepping and bringing in the learnings about what's going well or what's not going well. So maybe you have an interview coming up. Maybe you just got a take home assignment. Maybe you got a curveball question about your compensation expectations. You don't have to figure that out by yourself. You can come and get support from us on that.
So this is what I mean when I say SPRINT is high touch. We are working with you. We're just a DM or a voice memo or a live event away from actually giving you an answer to your questions from people who have been there before and have seen the process
time and time and time again.
So you might be wondering, okay, who actually supports me? Well, I'm a big part of it. I'm the head coach. I bring in all of my product experience as a PM, as a director, as a startup founder, and as a career coach. And all of the content is Jess approved But you're also gonna work with Carin. She's the associate coach. She brings a ton of experience on resumes, career strategy, interviewing.
And she knows the program inside and out, and she is there to support you in addition to me. So you've always got two folks ready to support you through the ups and downs. You will also find support in the community because there are a number of small group coaching sessions every single week. Things like office hours to kick off your week and get unstuck, dedicated behavioral interview practice sessions, dedicated mock offer negotiation sessions, case prep, take-home prep.
And these are not huge, you know, webinars with 100 people in it where you don't get any personal attention. These are small. an event for us typically is between five and ten people. So you really do get to know everybody who's there. You get to pick up on tips and tricks from other SPRINTers who are in a job search, get feedback, build your community, get feedback from the coaches.
And good news, all these events are recorded
if you can't make it.
So let's talk about what results you can expect. SPRINT is set up to help you get a job. More than 200 people have gone through SPRINT. Clients have landed roles across gosh, every industry you could think of: fintech, health tech, ed tech, gov tech, B2B, B2C, B2B2C. people have increased their compensation. Many people have moved into more senior roles.
Many people have made shifts from industry or, you know, the types of product work that they're doing. I can think of, you know, a few folks who are highlighted on the website, Brendan. He negotiated a 22% salary increase, landed an offer in under 90 days, and was able to take his publishing experience and shift it towards a growth PM opportunity where he was able to work on subscription retention.
I think of Olivia. This is someone who was laid off suddenly and you know was really panicked, had just closed on her house and really needed to land a new role quickly. So she signed up for SPRINT very quickly after her layoff, ended up not just getting a new role in under 60 days, but she actually went from a PM to a senior PM and also negotiated a 30% salary increase.
so these are the types of stories that happen all the time coming out of SPRINT. But let me be super clear. SPRINT is a 90-day program, but not everybody gets offers in 90 days. Our current average is right around, I think, 97 or 100 days from joining SPRINT to getting your first offer. but there's a lot of things that factor into when people get offers. It certainly depends on the market,
how long companies are taking to interview. I've seen interview processes that last as little as three weeks, as many as eight to twelve weeks. you know, it's going to vary depending on the types of roles you're targeting, how competitive they are. And so I'll set your expectations that your job search can take three to six months or longer. And I always say it always takes longer than you want it to take. You know, even Olivia had landed her job in 60 days. if you had asked her at 24 days, it was already taking longer. So,
We can't promise when you're gonna get the offer, but I can promise that if you are consistent with your habits and you're generating good interviews that are fit for you, and you take the feedback and instruction we're giving you on how to improve, you will set yourself up to get an offer. And we are here to support you along the way. Now, for folks who
want support after the 90 days, you can continue month to month for as long as you want
to. And many folks do.
Okay, let's talk about the investment. So you can pay in full for SPRINT. It's currently, as of this recording, $4,999 when paid in full. There is also, though, a three-month payment option. So if you want to break it out into three payments of $1,899 per month, you are welcome to do that. The experience is the same regardless of which option you choose. And you know, this is a meaningful financial investment.
But here's what I would encourage you to think about as you're reflecting on the investment is how important is it to you to get your next career move right? what would the value be of being able to make a stronger move than perhaps you could make on your own and have the support to make the most of the time and energy that you're putting into it? know, How much time are you willing to spend figuring out your job search through trial and error?
How much would you value having experts who have done this before hundreds of times, helping you make decisions along the way? Some people do decide they want to do it alone. That's fine. We will cheer you on. And you know what? If you change your mind, we will be here to support you. But if you are someone who wants the personalized attention, the personalized strategy, the accountability, the support, then the value of SPRINT is a no-brainer.
I believe in SPRINT so much that we offer an interview guarantee. So if you participate in all of your one-on-one calls, you hit the program milestones, things like applying to jobs that match your strategy by no later than week three, if you are communicative, you're implementing the work, and you don't land at least three interviews as a result of all your work inside of SPRINT during the first 90 days, I will continue working with you at no additional cost until you do, period.
Now beyond the guarantee, most people are generating a lot more than three interviews very quickly once they start applying because we take traction really seriously. And we are checking in with you on a regular basis about your traction. If it's not where we want it to be, we will iterate and that's all included as a part of SPRINT.
And if your job search continues beyond the initial 90 days you are welcome to stick around on a month-to-month basis as long as you want. We offer what's called the SPRINT Momentum membership. It's a month-to-month membership that allows you to maintain your access to live coaching and support and
You can stick around as long as you want. Most of our clients do stick around after the first 90 days, but it's entirely up to you. One last thing to note is you get lifetime access to the SPRINT curriculum. So the only thing that's time limited is the live coaching, the group events, the live coaching support. And this is really cool because we are constantly enhancing the program materials as the market changes. For example, we recently
Revamped the way that we encourage folks to talk about their career story when they get asked, tell me about yourself. We are in the process of integrating AI prompts and tools into the programming. So, my goal for you is that we're not just teaching you how to navigate this one job search, but we're giving you skills and resources that you can use again in the future. So if you're wondering, okay, would SPRINT be a good fit for me? There's a few things that I would look for.
Number one,
Do you have meaningful product management experience so that you can compete for PM roles? You don't have to have like this perfect career history, but you do need to have had at least three years of hands-on product experience. You need to be committed to product management as your next role, and you need to be committed to the job search.
This is a program where you've got to put in the work. We are going to give you the strategy, the structure, the tools, we're going to give you expert support, but you're the one who's going to be applying to jobs, having conversations, networking, interviewing, doing outreach, and ultimately making the decisions during your job search. So if you are committed to a job search, if you're experienced PM, really serious about making your next move and you're ready to invest in approaching your search strategically, I would love to talk to you. So here's how enrollment works.
You can go over to jesssherlock.com/sprint read more about the program. You'll see some videos from past clients talking about their experience. And then if it sounds like a fit, go ahead and apply. You will enter some information about your job search and your goals. And then you will schedule time for us to talk. I'll chat with you, make sure you're a good fit, and then we'll figure out your start date. So, remember, you do not have to spend a certain amount of time struggling with your job search.
You can decide you want help and kick it off right from the start. would love to help you before you even start applying, making sure that you're targeting the right roles for you, making sure you're ready for those interviews when they happen, and being ready to build the leverage required to negotiate a really strong offer. So that sounds like what you're looking for. I'd love to help. Go to jesssherlock.com/sprint and I'll see you next time on AFTER THE CERT.
