🎧 How to Land a New Product Job in Q1 (Hint: start your search now!)
You want a new job in the New Year? Cool.
Then you need to kickoff your job search, like, yesterday.
The PMs who will be landing job offers in January are already interviewing. 🔥
In this episode, I share the top 3 reasons why November and December are the best time to kickoff your job search.
Plus, I give you specific tactics that I use with clients on how to build the kind of momentum that gets you interviews (and offers) faster.
I’ll also share a REAL client story that proves the market isn’t as bleak as your LinkedIn feed makes it look. If you’re feeling stuck, unsure, or tempted to wait to kickoff your job search, this is your nudge.
Limited Time BONUS Offer 🎁🎁🎁
Sign up and pay in full for SPRINT before Thanksgiving to unlock an extra 30 days of Job Search Support! (a $1,662 value)
Wish you had support for your PM Job Search? ✨
Whether you’re 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)
the people who are going to be landing jobs in January started their job search in October. They're already underway, they're already in interviews. And so if you've been thinking about making a career move in the new year, now is actually the time to start.
Hey everyone, welcome back to AFTER THE CERT I took a minute off there. I actually took some time to drive out to New York to visit with family and in the process I've been just busy busy helping folks land jobs and helping other folks move towards promotions. And so we've gotten into Q4 here. The top question that I'm getting right now is when should I start my job search?
Is it crazy to start it now with the holidays? Should I wait until January? And my answer to that is simple. You should be starting now. Because the people who are going to be landing jobs in January started their job search in October. They're already underway, they're already in interviews. And so if you've been thinking about making a career move in the new year, now is actually the time to start.
And so this episode is the start of a little series that I'm gonna call Smarter Job Searching. And...
deciding to start your job search is one of the smartest things to do. So today I want to share three reasons why November and December are the best months to get started.
Okay, so the first reason why you want to get started now is quite straightforward. You need time to get your things in order. Rage applying on a Tuesday afternoon after a crappy day at work is not a job search. To be effective, you must be thoughtful. And there's so much more that goes into it than just updating your resume, popping it into chat GPT and calling it good. It starts with your job search strategy, your positioning and your pitch. It's going to inform how we structure your resume.
how we optimize your LinkedIn, the keywords that we're choosing to include or not, and even your narrative, which is that all so important response to the question, tell me about yourself. Your job search strategy is also gonna dictate the types of jobs that you apply to and the types that you won't apply to. So think titles, domains, industries, types of products, because this market is favoring candidates who have the most proven experience.
and specific expertise in what these hiring teams are searching for. And if you have what they're looking for, but they just can't tell, that's a miss. So I call this step the Pitch & Package. And basically we wanna make sure that every artifact that we are working on to get you ready to start your job search, so think resume, LinkedIn, et cetera, we want these to be tailored. We want them to be targeted towards your key strengths and your superpowers.
This is not about trying to be everything to everyone. And you might be surprised to hear, I believe in a one resume philosophy. I do not want you editing your resume every single time you apply to a different job. And this surprises so many people, but trust me when I say having one resume works for a number of reasons. It's clearer, it keeps you focused.
And it also preserves your energy so that you don't burn out on all these low ROI activities, popping your resume into ChatGPT and getting the same adjustments that 20 other people are getting on their resume. We want to make sure that your one resume is putting your best foot forward in terms of the strengths and positioning that we want to put you out on the market with. And so if you're someone who's been applying to hundreds of jobs and you're not getting at least screener calls, there's a problem and it's fixable.
you're telling the wrong story or you're talking to the wrong people or both. And that's what we help you with in SPRINT all right. And reason number one, you want to get started in November and December is that it just takes a minute to get all your artifacts in order to figure out how you're going to position yourself and to just get your kind of homepage ready. If you want to think about it that way, you know, your LinkedIn, your resume, all the things that are going to be telling your story of why a hiring team should consider you.
We want to make sure those are telling a cohesive and compelling story that positions you for the types of jobs that you're going to be a great fit for and that you're going to enjoy.
All right, reason number two why I think it's great to get started in November, December instead of January is you need time to build momentum. successful job searches really do require that you build momentum from the start. And notice that I didn't say volume, I said momentum. So what does this mean? This means that you're getting strong applications out to jobs for which you have high alignment. You will be seeing traction.
you'll be getting callbacks and along the way you're going to be getting comfortable with your pitch. You're going to be comfortable with your stories and you're starting to feel more confident because you're getting interviews. You're starting to see that people like you, you may or may not be moving forward, but that energy, that confidence, it's going to be really attractive and contagious when you're in these interviews. And that momentum doesn't happen overnight. It just takes some time. And so if you're just starting to consider your strategy on January 1st,
you're kind of already behind. to give you a sense of timing, over the last year in this current job market, we've been seeing that it typically takes about two to six weeks to start landing a significant number of those initial interviews, and then roughly about four to six months for product managers to be accepting an offer. In one of my next episodes, I'm going to share some trends that I've been noticing in our SPRINT clients who've been landing offers the fastest this year.
And even in this quote unquote bad market, I'm talking about people who got an offer 27 days after their first application, 42 days after their first application, 59 days from their first application, right? These are people who got their story together quick, but they also picked the right compelling story and they were applying to the right jobs, doing outreach to the right people. all to say, momentum is key. I really do believe that. And so...
Imagine going into January, having your resume updated, your LinkedIn is fully optimized, maybe you're even getting some inbound requests for interviews, your stories are prepped, you've got interviews scheduled, you're in the groove of sending out applications, handling responses, taking calls, and by the time the right job comes along, you slide right through the interview process smoothly because you are prepared.
So starting now means that you hit January with that momentum while everybody else is just getting started.
Okay, reason number three for why you should consider starting your job search now. I want you to consider the market, but I don't want you to try to time the market. Because let me make one thing clear. You cannot time any market. That's why it's called a market. There's unpredictability, there's multiple factors at play. Things are always in flux. It's no different than...
trying to play the stock market, right? You can be a day trader on the stock market and have a big win, but then have a big loss. Same thing with the housing market. Every time we think the housing market's gonna burst, it just keeps going up, right? So similarly with the job market, I want you to really take this to heart. There is never a quote unquote perfect job market. And trying to time your job search for the perfect market is just going to be impossible. It's just gonna drive you crazy.
So here's how I think about it and how I would encourage you to think about it is what time is right for you to embark on a job search? Because consider this, I really think that there are three questions to consider that are way more important than is this a good market? know, should I start now given how the market is? Those are just not helpful questions. So instead, I'd encourage you to ask this. Number one, do you have a strong desire or need
for a new job right now. obviously if you just got laid off, the answer is probably yes. If you're frustrated in your current role, that might be something you need to think about. But the point is, no matter when you jump in and do a job search, there is going to be tedious, uncomfortable, annoying work that is involved. I don't care how good the market is.
You're gonna have to sit down and look at those stupid bullet points on your resume. You're gonna have to think about what to put on your LinkedIn. You might even have to do some activity on LinkedIn, right? I know, terrible. But the point is, it's more important to think, do I actually have a strong need or desire for a new job right now? Because no matter how good the market is, there's gonna be stuff I have to do to get that new job.
The other thing I tell you to ask yourself is, am I ready to commit to the job search as an intentional focus? am I ready to commit to the job search as an intentional focus? Because again, any market, but especially
challenging job markets, are going to require consistency and focus in order to actually build that momentum and then traction. Because if you're just kind of half in, you're applying to things, but you're not really doing a lot of volume and you may not be super responsive to the messages you get, like,
Just being half in isn't gonna get you there. It doesn't matter how good the market is. if you answered yes to both of those, if you both have a strong desire or a need for a new job right now, and you're ready to commit to the job search as an intentional focus, then Here's the final question you have to answer for yourself. Am I willing to do what this market requires of me?
Because again, no matter how good the market is or bad the market is, every job market is going to have unique requirements and have unique characteristics that you need to understand in order to be successful. A few years back, it was making sure that you were prepared for these case style assignments or take home assignments.
At one point it was product sense interview questions. All those things kind of became a standard part of the PM interview process at one point and people had to be ready for those. Now, it's a willingness to be patient, to be persistent, to be resilient. It's also a willingness to navigate all of the, I'll say, interesting new steps that companies are incorporating to vet and validate their candidates.
everything from automated AI chatbots that help you apply to actual AI screeners who will call you or vibe coding challenges and you whatever other random stuff's going to come up along the way. So the really important thing is to consider whether you are ready to embark on a job search and do what's necessary of you to be successful in this market. So
I mean, if not every day, definitely every week I get asked, is now a good time for a job search? And my response is always the same. We'll make it work if it's a good time for you, okay? Because there is no perfect time. But by working with us in the SPRINT program, here's what I will tell you. You can trust that we have a pulse on what's going on right now, what's working best for people right now.
and that we'll help you apply that to your job search, You've been busy working a job, you've been busy PMing, doing all your product manager stuff, hopefully busy doing customer discovery and looking at analytics and doing all the things that you need to do to be great at your job. you're not paying attention to the job market and a lot happens in the market and you're not getting the full story when you're doom scrolling on LinkedIn after a bad day at work. I'm gonna tell you that.
for every layoff story that you give me, I can tell you about a client that just landed an offer. Okay? So just know that you're getting a version of the truth on LinkedIn, but it's often not the full truth. So it's less about trying to time the market and more about knowing when you are ready, that you're ready to jump in and tackle whatever it's going to take for the market that you're embarking on a job search inside of. So as I said, for every layoff story that you give me, I can tell you about a client that just landed an offer. So...
How about a real example? This one's really exciting. It's fresh off the presses in the last week. I'd love to tell you about a client named Olivia. So Olivia came to us in August, just a couple months ago. She had a very unexpected layoff. She emailed me in a panic and we got on the phone and sure enough, a private equity firm had taken ownership of the business, decided that the part of the business that she had been working in was just no longer a priority.
Dozens of people were laid off and here's what's worse and this is why she was panicking She just closed on a new home right big mortgage. She was freaking out. But guess what she got to work she jumped into the SPRINT program hit the program milestones
and she was applying with her new job search strategy, her SPRINT style resume, her SPRINT style LinkedIn, just a couple of weeks after joining the program. Her first interview request came in in just 10 days and her first offer was for a senior PM role. It came in just 45 days after her first interview, which in this market, you just might think that's crazy, but that's not my fastest this year.
That's the importance of having a really clear understanding of where your value is and targeting the roles that are going to appreciate your value. So she got her offer. You're probably wondering how that went. Well,
she actually managed to negotiate a 10 % increase over the initial base salary offer using our offer negotiation tools that we provide in the SPRINT program. And on top of that, she got a healthy starting bonus, which again, you might be saying, what? A starting bonus in this market? You she's not the first and she's not the only that I've seen this year get a starting bonus. Plus I'm not done yet.
This company that she ended up at also offers a healthy and sizable yearly bonus based on company performance. It ranges between 15 and 30%, but the last couple of years, the company's paid it out in full at 30 % of your salary. And so with all of this, the base salary negotiation, the starting bonus, the additional yearly bonus
total comp in this role is 35 % higher than her previous role That's incredible so in short and these are her words She said I joined feeling totally panicked and hopeless and I left with a better title better salary better team
better company, better benefits, and even more confidence. If all of that wasn't good enough, my favorite part. She accepted this role, signed the offer, the week before her severance ran out. It's incredible. I'm so excited for her. So that is the payoff of literally focusing on building momentum fast.
and putting your energy towards the right activities at the right time. I hope this episode inspired you to think a little differently about your job search and to recognize that there is actually a lot of your job search that is in your control. And so number one, you can be sure you're pitching your value clearly and effectively. You can focus your energy on the right activities early so that you can build momentum.
And you can decide when you're ready to jump into the market as it is and not try to time it perfectly. So if you've been thinking about making a career move or you've been job searching so far with no luck, now is the time that I would seriously urge you to consider SPRINT. SPRINT is my 90-day job search program. It's built just for product managers and it helps folks get traction faster so they can land their next role faster. this is not...
generic career coaching, I am an accomplished and experienced product manager, and there are unique nuances to the product management job search, and I know them, I can anticipate them, and I can help you navigate them when they come up. So I'd really encourage you to consider SPRINT. It's kind of like having a personal trainer for your job search. It's cool because all you have to do is show up. We'll make sure that you know exactly what to do next. We eliminate the guesswork, we eliminate the trial and error, so that you can focus on landing your next role.
And dare I say, it's pretty fun. You get to meet some friends, you get to build some community, you'll network a bit. And if that isn't enough great stuff, I'm running a bonus right now because I believe so much in starting now and not waiting until after the new year. So if you sign up for SPRINT, pick out your start date and you pay in full for SPRINT by Thanksgiving to secure your spot, you'll unlock an extra 30 days of job search support.
which is a $1,600 value. have a few spots left if you want to start in December, and then I'll be pre-selling spots for January, but the sooner the better. So you can start to build that momentum. And as soon as you sign up for SPRINT, you'll get full access to the entire course content, everything from setting your job search strategy, optimizing your resume and your LinkedIn.
templates, worksheets, everything that you need to kick off your job search and get started on practicing for interviews. And then your access to live events and all your one-on-ones will start during your starting week. So if you're ready to apply You can visit jesssherlock.com/sprint or you can find me on LinkedIn and send me a DM and let me know you're interested in SPRINT and I'll take it from there. So are you ready to kick off your job search?
I'll see you in the next episode of AFTER THE CERT.
