- What do product managers do?
- Product manager salaries
- Work-life balance
- Pros and cons of being a product manager
- Product manager career path
- Qualifications & training
- Skills
- Key graduate product manager employers
- Product managers graduate jobs
- Related jobs to product management
- More information
Are you looking for a career that combines creativity with the fast-paced business world? Do you want a varied job working with many teams to collaboratively produce one perfect product? For anyone who enjoys working a project from beginning to end with a tangible product that you created as a result, product management could be for you.
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Product managers oversee the full development of most products from software to children’s toys. As a product manager, the products that you help create could be sold to millions of people all over the world.
Are you interested in a career in product management? Many product managers work in the ever-expanding world of technology. Explore graduate jobs and schemes in technology to start your career in this creative and exciting role.
What does a product manager do?
As a product manager, you work with many teams in a company helping to design, create and market a product. Your job is to bring to life the original vision of the product, communicating it to your colleagues at every stage of the process whilst considering the best design, its marketability and whether it suits your target demographic. To meet your objective of producing a great product, you may expect some of these responsibilities:
- Recognise a specific gap in the market
- Develop a product which fills the gap in a new and innovative way
- Become the main advocate for the product, understanding all aspects of it including why it is a good product
- Conduct or assist in market research to know who the target consumer is and why the product suits them
- Present to outside stakeholders about the progress of the product and why it could be successful
- Assist in the designing process by sharing your thoughts about the product and how to improve it
- Assist in the development and marketing stages
- Listen to and act on opinions and comments from other team members and colleagues outside of your department to improve the product
Average salary
Your salary as a product manager depends on the size of the company, where the company is based and the type of product that they sell.
- Your starting salary as an associate product manager or an entry level product manager could be between £25,000 and £40,000 per year.
- In higher levels of product management like senior product manager, you could see salaries between £50,000 and £70,000 per year.
Work-life balance
Since product management is an office-based job, you would typically work between 9am to 5pm on weekdays. Around important deadlines like launching a product, you may work longer hours to complete all your work. Product management jobs are typically paid by salary so you wouldn’t receive additional pay for overtime work.
Pros and cons of being a product manager
Pros
- Your work is creative and gives you the freedom to act on your ideas and have a great product as a result
- You get to work with a product that you love on a daily basis and from its inception to selling
- Entry level positions are fairly paid for the required experience
- You can work up in a company and earn a high salary
- There are many product management jobs available
- You can use the products that you produce as examples of successful work if you decide to move to a different company
- Your workload changes frequently - you may work with the design team on one day and the marketing team on the next
- You can maintain a good work-life balance from working standard business hours throughout the week with little or no work at the weekend
Cons
- If you don’t like the product then it can be a long process
- You need experience and a good understanding of the market before starting the job
- You may be held accountable if a product doesn’t sell well or is received badly
- Your work could be influenced by factors outside of your control, for example a dip in the economy could impact the sales of your product
Product manager career path
Entry-level positions
Your first job in product management could be one of two options depending on your experience and education.
The first option is as an associate product manager. Associate product managers have similar workloads to product managers but with less responsibility. In this job, you collaboratively work with a product manager and other colleagues in the product management team to produce the same product.
The second option is as an entry-level product manager. Beginning your career as a product manager rather than an associate product manager could be down to relevant experience, for example previously working in a business-related job, or having a relevant degree.
The distinction between the jobs is the responsibility you’re given. As a product manager, you may present your team’s work to outside stakeholders. As an associate product manager, you may present the same work to colleagues in other departments. The scale of your work as an associate product manager is smaller than a product manager’s. You still have influence over a product but in setting priorities rather than defining the product’s progression.
Career progression
Your next career move could be as a higher level product manager or as a senior product manager. When moving into one of these positions, you may find that your workload increases, as does your responsibility.
As a senior product manager, the products that you develop are more complex or higher profile. Successfully producing these products takes more experience. Technical understanding and a passion to develop innovative and relevant products could help your career progress to this role.
Future career
The product manager career path doesn’t stop at senior product manager. Having developed many successful products and worked in the sector for five to 10 years, you could become a director of product management. As a director of product management, you oversee the progress of a product. You make important, executive-level decisions about the direction in which to take the product and have a high level of responsibility for the product’s success.
The highest position for product managers is chief product officer. To get to this level, you need a huge amount of experience and many successful and innovative products that you’ve developed in the past. Your track record should be immaculate. As a chief product officer, you have personal responsibility over the success or failure of a product and therefore have a great amount of influence over every area of its production.
Qualifications and training
Education
To have a successful career as a product manager, you typically need both an undergraduate and a master’s degree in a business-related subject. Whilst a master’s degree isn’t always necessary for lower product manager jobs, senior product managers typically require a master’s degree.
If you want to work as a product manager producing software, having an undergraduate and master’s degree in computer science rather than business could help you. Computer science graduates are more appealing to software companies than business graduates because they provide more informed insights into the software.
Work experience
Having work experience in a business-related role could help you secure an entry-level position. You could gain relevant work experience through internships, voluntary work or shadowing a product management team.
Here are product manager internships to help kickstart your career.
Professional qualifications
If your degree isn’t in business, having a professional qualification in product management could help you demonstrate that you have the relevant skills and experience for the job.
If you’re interested in a career as a product manager, consider applying for one of these professional qualifications either online or in-person from The Chartered Institute of Marketing or General Assembly.
Skills
Your work as a product manager could change on a weekly or monthly basis depending on the stage of development that your product is in. Your transferable skills should reflect the diversity of this job.
Soft skills
- Communication. Your objective as a product manager is to make a product the best it can be based on the original concept. To do this, you need to relay your ideas to many teams in the company, telling them what you like about the product and what you would like them to improve. Having excellent communication skills means you can discuss your vision in a clear and effective way without risk of miscommunication.
- Negotiation. Good negotiation skills help you as a product manager to get the best of everything for your product. This could be negotiating better materials with your supervisor, a different scripting language with the software development team, improved graphics with the design department or more time before a deadline.
- Organisation. Having a good level of organisation could help you in your work. This is because you are responsible for the timeline of your product. Organising yourself well and the teams that you work with helps you stick to deadlines and release the product on time. Not running over deadlines could save the company money and demonstrate your success to your supervisor.
Typical employers hiring product managers
Most companies that create anything from software to safety equipment have product managers, some with entry level positions for graduates. Here are some of the top organisations that could hire you as a product managers:
Related jobs to product manager
More information
Are you considering a career as a product manager? Read about Christina’s experience of working as a product manager including how she got into product management. You may appreciate some bright advice from Phil, a sports product manager at Betfair.