 Hi everyone. Thank you for joining. My name is Shilpi Gupta and today I'm here to talk about what to expect when transitioning to product. Let's get started. Little bit about me. I'm a senior PMT, which is product manager technical at Audible, which is an Amazon company. I have about 14 years of overall work experience in various domains, including CPG, retail, financial services, media and entertainment. This diagram shows my career path so far. I started out as a software engineer and I worked on many projects in data warehousing and BI space. As I get more experience, my role matured from a software engineer to technology analyst and then to technology lead. After spending a few years as a technology lead, I decided to transition into management and so I took up a role as technology manager and I managed a team of 15. At that time, I felt that I could create more value through my work by honing my business skills and I decided to pursue MBA full-time. Since I had background in tech, I decided to go for an MBA program that was specialized in tech. After completing my MBA with specialization in product management and strategy, I took up a role as product manager in data science and machine learning space. I formed a small team so I was responsible for both product as well as program management. After spending some time in that role, I decided that I only wanted to focus on program management and I joined Audible as a senior TPM. As I was progressing in my role as TPM, I was continuously reflecting on my career journey and thinking about next steps and how I want to take my career forward. That's when I decided to transition to product management. In this presentation, I will talk about my transition journey and I will also share some resources that I have found helpful throughout my transition journey. I also want to say that although this presentation is focused on transitioning to product management, most of this framework can be applied to any career transition. Let's dive in. After I transitioned, a lot of folks reached out to me for coffee chats to learn about my experience. When I reflected on those conversations and my transition journey, I came up with this framework which comprises of three different phases, research, prepare and transition. Although I will go through each phase and sequence, I want to emphasize that this journey is more like an agile project where you iterate and continuously improve and course correct rather than a waterfall where you have a distinct start and end of a phase. So first step is to conduct your research, right? And within your research, the activities that you will do will fall into three main categories, reflect, explore and review. You need to first reflect on why you want to transition and then explore target roles and also review your skills. And of course, these can be done in parallel because the insights that you gather from each of these can be used to refine the other phase as you learn even more. So let's dive deeper into each of these. So starting with reflection, I think this is the foundation of any transition journey. It is crucial that you are crystal clear on why you want to transition. What is your deepest motivation that is driving you towards making this transition? There are many different ways to do this. You can do journaling or mind maps and my personal favorite is a five-wise framework in which you repeatedly ask yourself why till you get to the bottom of your motivation. This technique is commonly used in root cause analysis and I have found that it works well for this use case as well. So here's an example of starting with product management. Ask yourself, why do I want to transition to product management? And that also could be, well, because I want to product manage customer-facing products. Then you ask yourself again, why is product managing products important for me? Well, the answer could be because I want to work on creating vision for products and working on their road maps. Then ask again, why is working on vision and road maps important? You might discover that it is because all of these involve thinking strategically. Then ask yourself why strategy important could be that because working on defining strategy involves decision making, which also involves a lot of accountability, risk-taking and ask yourself again, why is making strategic decisions important? The answer could be because making those strategic decisions is where we have the biggest opportunity to make an impact. So again, this is just an example. Try doing this. I think it's a really good exercise for self-awareness and reflection. Next, let's talk about exploration. This is where you dive deeper into the specific roles that might interest you. Because product management role can vary so much depending on your company, on your target company and even within the same company. So go for coffee chats with other product managers in your target company. Understand what their day looks like because very often the actual work that people do is not fully described in the job description. So I think it's best to talk to someone who's actually doing that work to understand what their job involves. So talk to them about the challenges that they face and then reflect if you are up for those challenges. Ask them about their recent launches or a product that they worked on that they're super proud of and this will really get them excited and interested in the conversation. Also ask them about the opportunities that they came across and see if those opportunities excite you. Next, start looking at the relevant roles based on both your skills and your interest. Also remember that industry knowledge is super important for product management. So try to look for roles in an industry in which you are already experienced. So in a way you are product managing your career, right? You're establishing the grand vision for your career and then working on a roadmap to realize that vision. It is about taking those stepping stones that can take you from point A to point B in your career roadmap. For example, if your goal is to transition to product management role in robotics and you have background in analytics. You can start as a PM in analytics or BI area and then you can build your skills in data science, machine learning and then transition to being a technical PM for maybe machine learning products. And then you can choose to specialize in a specific type of ML area, for example robotics or even Alexa. So next let's talk about review. So once you have identified the relevant roles, look at the skills that are required to perform those roles. And you can gather this information from the job description, from the coffee chats that you have had and after that spend time reviewing your own skill set. You should identify the transferable skills based on both your current job experience and also your prior job experience. And this is where you should also start working on the stories from your work experience that you can tell to demonstrate how you have applied those skills in the past. And the output of this exercise should be a skills gap analysis, something that looks like this. For example, these are the common skills for a product manager and you might already have some of these and you may have to work on some of these. It's important to identify your areas of improvement so that you can work on bridging those gaps. Next let's look at prepare phase. After spending some time doing research, you can start preparing. As I mentioned earlier, this whole process of transition is iterative and you can do most of these activities in parallel and iterate. So for prepare phase, let's start with closing the skills gap. So once you know your areas of improvements, you can select the method that works best for your needs. You can go for training. There are a lot of schools out there, including business schools that offer focused executive education. For example, we have MIT or NYU. And if you're looking to improve upon your technical skills to transition to a technical role such as PMT, you can go for boot camps. For example, Flatiron offers a boot camp in data science. Even though as a PM, you may not have to work on creating models, but having that knowledge, it's super helpful in understanding and also contributing to the discussions and making those trade-offs that you as a product manager will be responsible for making on a daily basis. And my personal favorites are the courses from Udemy and Coursera. But before you enroll, be sure to check out the syllabus to ensure that that course has the required depth for your needs. Webinars are also a great way to get an overview of a topic and you can also find references to the resources that you can explore later. And last but not the least, books are a great way to increase your knowledge and also for practicing interview questions. And I've listed a few of my favorites here. Next, let's talk about networking. I recommend using this time to network with people who have gone through similar transitions. So in the research phase, we were talking to people who are doing those roles in your target companies. In the prepare phase, we are talking to people who have gone through similar transitions because understanding the challenges that they faced, the resources that they found helpful are super helpful for your own transition. And in my case, understanding the process of transition was also crucial because in my org, a transition from program to product had never been done before. I also recommend finding a mentor who can guide you through this process. They can hold you accountable for making progress towards your goal and also staying true to your career roadmap. They can advise you when to course correct because after all, this is an iterative process and being agile, adapting to new information, that's the name of the game. And last but not the least, mentors can connect you to their network and this can also open new opportunities for you. And although I did not put a bullet point for it, but initiating that conversation with your manager is also super important and depending on your situation, you can choose to do so. In my case, throughout my career, I have regularly had career focus discussions with my managers and I found those discussions extremely helpful at every stage of the career, including my transition. Lastly, let's look at gaining experience. So if you're looking to gain experience as a product manager, you can look at pro bono opportunities for nonprofits. For example, you can check out US Digital Response. It had volunteer opportunities for PMs a while ago and you can also consider small companies, companies that can't afford hiring a full-time product manager, but those are also great opportunities for you to gain some practical experience. Another great way to gain practical experience is to learn on the job. You can volunteer to take up PM responsibilities within your area of work. This is an excellent way to get taste of product management without making it too formal or official. And you can also consider internal job rotation, something that I did for my transition. And for those of you who don't know, job rotation is a temporary work arrangement in which you work in some other area or a role for exploring it. This is also an opportunity for management to evaluate your fit for the role and also for you to experience that new role, new position. And also, these are great opportunities to practice putting on that new lens to look at things because as a product manager, you will be faced with a lot of ambiguity and the way you think about things will shift. For example, if you're transitioning from program, it might mean that you now have to look beyond those timelines and dependencies and think more about the overall vision and business value of the product. If you're an engineer, then you have to practice looking beyond solutioning to now understanding how to evaluate those different trade-offs and what features truly deserve to be included part of your MVP. Next, let's talk about the final phase, which is transition. Although most of this applies to any job hunt, I think this completes our topic of transition and offers some helpful reminders. So for transition, use artifacts from your research and prepare phase to demonstrate your competence and readiness and find your next best opportunity. So first and foremost, update your resume so you can focus on showcasing your product management skills. Since you're transitioning, see how best you can adapt your resume to showcase the skills that are valuable for your target role. Be sure to add that certificate of course completion or maybe your volunteer experience to your resume to show how you work towards bridging those gaps in your skillset or lack of practical experience. And remember to update your LinkedIn as well because that's a great way for you to reach out to recruiters and for recruiters to find you. Next, leverage your network. Reach out to the contacts from your coffee jabs to find more opportunities. Attending a conference or a product focus meetup, these are also great ways to grow your network and also reach potential recruiters. And lastly, start applying to jobs and interview. Before going for actual interview, spend some time researching the company. Because as I mentioned before, product management looks very different across different orgs. So if you haven't done so already as part of your research and preparation, meet some product managers in your target company to understand their peculiar ways of product managing products. I also strongly recommend doing some mock interviews. Your friends and family can also help here and you can practice selling your stories in front of the mirror. Some companies require you to do whiteboarding, so be sure to practice that as well. And lastly, I cannot stress this enough, but be sure to treat this as an iterative process where you learn, practice, apply and then repeat. It is all about continuous improvement and establishing that feedback loop into each of the phases that we discuss. And also remember that it's completely okay to change course. As you go through the process, there is also this possibility that you might decide that this target role is not for you and that's completely fine. Because even if that turns out to be the case, this exercise will help you increase your self-awareness and help you understand your inner motivation. So this completes the transition framework. Next, let's talk about some of the FAQs from my coffee class. So first one, I'm due for a promotion in my current role. Should I transition before my promotion or after? Well, it's a choice that you have to make based on your career goals and aspirations. But in general, transitioning at a lower level, it's easier as the bar is lower as compared to more senior roles. So my advice is that if you know for sure that you're going to transition, it might be worthwhile to transition first and then work towards getting promoted in that new role. Should I bring up my intention to transition with my manager? So even outside this transition process, it's a good practice to have career focus one-on-ones with your manager at least once a month. Many times our one-on-ones, they become very tactical and we use that time to talk about immediate work items. But it is important that we have that continuous dialogue about our career path with our managers. And then your transition automatically becomes a part of that conversation. This is something that worked for me. But if for any reason you believe that your manager won't be supportive for your transition, then it's best to seek guidance from a mentor and then work towards that transition process. Should I look for internal opportunities or apply externally? I feel that moving internally is always easier. Most companies try to retain the talent and they are generally supportive of their employees' career aspirations. And you also already know a lot of folks in your current org that you will cross paths with even in your new role. So having said that, you also have to consider the kind of PM roles that you're interested in and if those are available in your current company. Like I mentioned before, in the research phase, spend time thinking about the next logical step, the next stepping stone that will take you closer to your vision. And if that is available in your current company, I highly recommend just jumping on that opportunity. I like the idea of being a PM but I'm not sure if this is the right path for me. And this is where I suggest folks do the things that I talked about in the research phase. You need to reflect on your internal motivation and be very clear on the why. And also you can go for internal job rotation. That is a great way to experience product management without fully committing to it. Is it too late in my career to transition? No, never say never. Well, we all have days at work when we feel uninspired. But if you feel that way on most of the days, then I think it is better to transition to something you enjoy doing rather than being stuck in the wheel. So I would suggest just cut your losses rather than waiting for too long. I don't have a PM title in my resume, but I have performed PM duties. Does that count towards practical PM experience? In my opinion it should, but unfortunately most of the recruiters don't see it that way. And it is not entirely their fault. They are looking for someone who has managed products before. And the easiest way to cut through the noise is to look for the word product management in the candidates experience. So when I was talking about the prepare phase, I recommended working for nonprofits or small companies to gain that practical experience. So having that experience will help you get the interview. And while interviewing, you can definitely tell stories from your prior work experience to demonstrate your product management skills. And last question, how long does it take to transition? Well, this entirely depends on you, your experience and your target role. I recommend choosing an industry that you are already experienced in so that your transition is quick. And also share your transition plans with your mentors and your trusted friends who can really hold you accountable to make steady progress towards achieving your goals. And this completes our FAQ section. That's all I had to share today. I hope you found this useful. And if you have any questions or feedback, please feel free to reach out to me. Thank you so much. Take care.