🎧 Listen to this before your leave your current product management job
Don't wait until you're already job searching to capture your product management accomplishments, work samples, and success metrics.
Getting into a habit of documenting your successes can not only help you prepare you for a future job search, it can ALSO be an early signal if you're not growing in your PM career.
Bonus: This episode includes a REAL example of a take-home assignment from a recent PM client’s job search, so you can see whether you'd be ready to tackle one.
Could you use some support on your product 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 accomplishments that you build up, those outcomes that you drive, those are the reps that become the strength and the credibility of your career. If you're not in a role where you're able to get reps or quite literally, you're right now thinking to yourself, I've been at this job for six months, a year, two years.
actually don't know what I would put on resume bullet points That is a red flag and I don't want you to ignore it.
Jess Sherlock (00:25)
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 (01:21)
Hey everybody. Today I want to start with a story about a client of mine. One of my favorite clients that I've ever worked with who I had known for a long time, was actually a previous student of mine when I was teaching for General Assembly and who ended up choosing me to be their coach while they were working at their first product management job. Long story short, this person had just knocked it out of the park with performance, had tackled some really complex projects.
had built super strong relationships with their stakeholders and over the years just had such tremendous growth. And I remember this person had just had their performance review. And so we jump onto a call and I was so thrilled to hear how it was gonna go. Of course, I knew it was gonna go well. And he let me know that.
He had gotten a promotion from PM to senior PM, which was absolutely huge. This came with a little bump in salary as well, which is always a nice touch. And I believe this conversation was on a Wednesday, but what I remember vividly was on that Friday, getting a DM from this person and they said, I just got let go. And if you're taking a gasp, that's about what I did, but times 10, because this person
had been doing everything right. They were a strong performer, had fantastic relationships with their founders and leaders. And unfortunately, this was an early startup situation where the company was unable to raise funding and had to make some really difficult decisions. If given the choice, this person absolutely would not have left. And this layoff was a real surprise to all of us, myself included. But it serves as a really important reminder.
that no job is permanent. And I don't say that to scare you, especially right now. I know the job market can feel scary and there's layoffs happening everywhere. But instead today, I wanna offer you a perspective that even if you are a bit nervous about layoffs, that can hopefully put you back into a position of power and give you some semblance of control so that you feel like you are doing something to prepare
in case the unthinkable happens. if you are in a job currently, I would strongly encourage you to take these tips today and take them to heart and actually follow through on some of these actions right away. Or if you're thinking you might be ready to pursue a job search in the near future, then I recommend you do these things as soon as possible because if you don't,
it can really be problematic when you get out on the job search. So let's start with a little bit more information about what happened with this person when they did get laid off. pretty shortly after getting laid off, of course, they were excited to get back on the job search and the market was pretty good and they managed to make it to a nearly final round interview, at which point they got a take-home assignment. So if you haven't ever been through the product management job search,
or you've been lucky enough to not have a take-home assignment, sometimes also called a case interview, consider yourself lucky because this is a point of the interview process that can sometimes really throw a PM into a tizzy. It can feel really stressful and like a real surprise if you're not expecting it. So consider this a little heads up. So a take-home assignment is typically an opportunity for the company to give you some sort of...
presentation or challenge that you then either send in in a slide deck format, a document format, or you actually go in person and present. every company's approach to take home assignments are a little bit different, but the one that I want to talk about today has common lately. more and more with folks in my SPRINT program that I'm helping with the job search are getting take home assignments where they're being asked
to present on a previous project that they've worked on. And in this instance, this person was let go pretty suddenly. So they didn't have a chance to prepare, but fortunately, they had friends on the inside.
So to give you an example of what a take-home assignment like this would sound like, I want to go ahead and read to you verbatim an actual take-home assignment email that a client of mine received recently that is very similar to what this client I'm telling you about received. And so here, I'll give this a quick read. And while I'm reading this, I want you to imagine that you received this right now.
I want you to really think about how prepared you would feel to respond to this take-home assignment if it were given to you. So here it is. The next step in our interview process is a presentation with the hiring manager and a couple other senior members in the product organization. The session is 60 minutes in total, but your content should only account for about 30 to 40 minutes. The rest of the time will be for Q &A.
more generalized follow-up and interview questions from the team, and time for you to ask questions as well. Please know that the session does take a more interactive format with the team asking questions throughout the presentation rather than saving them all for the end. The full prompt is below. Please review and let us know if you have any questions. Okay, so far so good. We've got an hour with about 30 to 40 minutes that I would lead. Okay, great. So I'll leave out the company name, but it says...
we value creating exceptional product experience for our customers that deliver measurable business impact. please put together a slide deck and walk us through the development and release of a product initiative that you led in the past that delivered measurable business impact.
Now, if you're getting nervous because you haven't done this, don't worry, we're going to talk about it. Okay, next up in the prompt. This session is aimed to help the team better understand who you are as a product manager. They want to get a feel for how you operate, your processes, your product philosophies, et cetera. As you are building your deck and telling your story, you to answer questions such as the following.
but not limited to. And then they go on to list about 10 separate questions that the team will be listening for, but they know that these are listed in no particular order. So let me give these a read and then we'll talk about it. What was the problem the product sought to solve? How did you determine this was the right problem to solve? Who did you partner with throughout the process to bring the product to life?
What enabled you and the team to deliver measurable impact? How did you generate buy-in with key stakeholders and leadership? How was success defined and measured? What insights did you leverage and how did they help you gain confidence along the way? What went well? What didn't go so well? And if you were to do it again, what would you do differently?
Okay, so if you have never gotten a take-home assignment, I wonder if you're feeling a little worried right now. If so, don't worry. That is what the SPRINT Program is for, is to help you navigate these exact take-home assignments. I have seen dozens and dozens of these. So trust me when I say they are doable. You just have to understand the formula to get it right.
So with a take-home assignment like this, where you're being asked to present on a previous initiative, there are a few things that I often see that will cause a product manager to have trouble delivering a successful presentation that will result in them getting the offer. Remember, the take-home assignment is typically the step right before you get an offer. So it's usually down to two, maybe three candidates at this point. So you really want to make sure that you're putting your absolute best foot forward.
back to my client who got suddenly laid off without any expectation of going out on a job search. I bet it wouldn't surprise you when I say they had no screenshots or data or information ready to go for their resume or for their take-home assignment.
thank goodness this person still had some old coworkers on the inside who were willing to hook them up with some screenshots of projects they had worked on, some work samples of things that they had worked on. And so this person was off the hook. But here's what I want to offer to you is that these take-home assignments, like I said, are becoming more and more common. So if I read that and your initial reaction is, my goodness, I would have no idea what to do, then we should probably talk.
Because if you're not getting the opportunity to work on product initiatives that would allow you to tell these sorts of stories, we really need to take a hard look at what sort of work you're doing and see if there are ways that you can navigate your current role to get good stories like this. Because accomplishments are the thing that are going to drive not only the bullet points in your resume, the stories that you tell in your interviews,
but they're also gonna be the things that give you meat on the bone to talk about in your take-home assignments like this. So if you're thinking about the last year or six months at your current job and you can't think of something that you launched, or you can't think of how you measured success on something, or you can't remember the last time that you actually defined the problem you were setting out to solve, that is red flags that we wanna get ahead of.
Because when you go out to get your next product job, you've got to be able to tell stories like this in order for you to come across as credible and also as a competitive candidate.
Okay, let's assume the best. Let's assume that you're working a job right now, you have great stories to tell, you know for a fact that you'd have good examples that you could use for a take-home assignment like this. Awesome. But here's what I want you to make sure that you do before you leave the job. Because I'll tell you, folks end up kicking themselves when they don't have this information, and I'm bummed every time I see it. So if you're listening to this podcast, because I told you to,
in a session because I knew you were about to embark on a job search. Welcome. This is the list you've been looking for. If you just stumbled across this episode, then take your notepad out because you're going to want to jot down these must do things. And I'll tell you what, you want to get these things as soon as possible and consider setting a reminder on your calendar, maybe once a quarter to go ahead and pull these sorts of things on a regular basis so that you're not left in a lurch if the job search happens to you.
Okay, so first, I want you to think about what screenshots you might want to grab of the feature itself, maybe even a screen recording or a video recording of the feature itself to show how it works. If you were to present a take-home assignment where you want to talk about the feature, wouldn't it be nice to show a real example of what the end result looked like? In addition to that, I've found that folks find it helpful to have work in progress or...
deliverable screenshots from how they worked with their team initially. So one of the best examples of this was a client who used the Double Diamond framework as they worked through projects and
they were able to use a screenshot from a Miro board to kind of illustrate not only that they were able to break the work down, but they were able to show how they broke the work down. And I'll tell you, there's something show a real screenshot of your actual work in progress so that you can give that future employer a taste of what it would be like to work with you.
The other thing you want to make sure that you grab is some sort of data. So I'll tell you right now, because I've heard it more times than I can count, you will not remember the data that you were tracking. And you certainly won't remember the exact numbers. So do your future self a favor. And for any project or initiative that you think would be a candidate to present in a take-home assignment like this, go ahead and...
get the latest data, go in and grab a screenshot for yourself of a chart or a graph if you have one, or at least grab those raw numbers so that when the time comes down the road, you're not left guessing at what you tracked success by. So this could be quantitative data around engagement or usage or adoption, or maybe it's qualitative data like customer quotes that you get, right?
Now, as I talk through this with clients, because it comes up a lot in conversations when I have a SHINE client who recently launched something new. I actually had a client just a couple of weeks ago that I was chatting about who finally launched an initiative that is going to be an absolute game changer for their company. It's going to be a real competitive differentiator, and it was just a massive effort. So if this person ended up on the job search or decided to go job search, it's...
pretty much a guarantee that they're gonna wanna talk about this project. So what I made sure to remind them of was, hey, now's the time, right? Before this project becomes old news and this launch is super far behind you, take the time now to go ahead and grab some of those key screenshots of your works in progress, of your PRD, of your maybe launch materials or...
a little video of how the feature worked. And then of course, go in and get some initial data of the first seven days, the first 30 days, whatever's appropriate for the product and project that you're working on so that you have that stuff when and if you need it. Like I said, your future self will be so glad that you grabbed those random screenshots and random notes and pop them in a file somewhere so that when you do need to update your resume or you do need to start preparing for interviews.
or you end up with a take-home assignment that's asking you to share about a previous project, you are ready to go.
Awesome, okay, so to recap, if you're in your current job and you're thinking, you know what, a job search is in my future, I'm ready for something new, then take this advice right now, give your future self a gift of grabbing some screenshots and some data and information about what it is that you accomplished so that you have that stuff handy for your job search, even if the unthinkable happens and you get laid off suddenly.
If you're working a job right now and you're listening to this and you're going, my goodness, I don't even know what I would grab screenshots of, or my company doesn't even track the success of things, right? We're very output oriented. If it's done, it's done. And then we move on to the next thing, right? I want you to really treat that like a red flag. I tell my clients all the time that accomplishments are really the reps of your career. So if you were trying to build muscle and get stronger, you'd be doing a lot of reps.
on certain muscle areas to build that strength. In your career, The accomplishments that you build up, those outcomes that you drive, those are the reps that become the strength and the credibility of your career. So If you're not in a role where you're able to get reps or you're not able to get accomplishments or quite literally, if you're right now thinking to yourself, my gosh, I've been at this job for six months, a year, two years.
actually don't know what I would put on resume bullet points about the last two years. That is a red flag and I don't want you to ignore it.
I want to help you solve it because I've had folks in that position and there are ways to solve it, right? So we could take a fresh look at what you're working on right now to see if we can approach it in a way that's going to be beneficial to these stories and to these accomplishments on your resume down the road.
even if your organization isn't going to celebrate you doing those things. I've had plenty of clients in the past who, you know, the company definitely measures success on outputs, but that doesn't mean that you still can't measure success in your own way. Okay. Or that you can't connect that work to the business outcomes or that you can't connect it to customer satisfaction at the end of the day. So,
I don't want you to fear leaving your job to go out in the job search, but I do want you to feel prepared. And so if this whole conversation about take-home assignments and a job search got you thinking that things have been a little bit stagnant, it might be time to start thinking about how you can overcome that. And that can look like going out and pursuing a new job, but oftentimes it can look as simple as shifting the way that you work and approach the work that you're working on.
So if you could use the help of a coach, I'd be happy to help you. This is exactly what I love to help folks with in my SHINE program. SHINE is all about navigating the messy middle of a product career. And you know what? You're not alone if you're in an organization that values outputs over outcomes. So if able to eventually go out on a job search when you do leave this job, let's talk. You can learn more about the SHINE program at jessherlock.com/shine.
or you can check out all my programs, including SPRINT, the job search program at jesssherlock.com/apply
As always, I'd love to hear from you. So please connect with me and DM me on LinkedIn or like I said, check out all my programs at jesssherlock.com/apply. And I'll see you on the next episode of AFTER THE CERT
