An MVP Approach to job hunting - Part 2
Product Market Fit
In terms of skills and experience, desired salary and work life balance, Y would be a good candidate for a senior product manager role in a mature startup or large company that builds software products or SaaS services. Given his experience, this points towards several PM roles including in Big Tech firms, Financial Services as well as marketing organizations. His interests also align with companies whose products are geared towards parents with young kids or pets. Finally he would also be interested in companies that work on sustainability initiatives including green energy, recycling, clean water, housing, etc. One area of interest that he has worked in before is AI and specifically GenAI. While he has some idea of the core concepts in AI and GenAI, he does not have much hands on experience other than building a prototype for a recycling can using computer vision that he built on Google Vision. Y is also interested in AR/VR and would find a role in that space fascinating. It has also been a while since his last job hunt and his resume as well as interviewing skills could use a tune up.
Addressing Gaps:
Lack of hands on experience in AI: Y would need to complete some courses on platforms like Coursera that get him up to speed on skills needed for GenAI PMs. He would also need to identify a real world project that lets him do something to showcase those skills
Interview and resume prep: Y found a great resource in TryExponent that provides paid coaching, resume review services as well as free mock interviews with peers. He consulted with an ex Google recruiter who gave him actionable feedback on his resume and LinkedIn profile as well as encouraged creating his product portfolio website. He also did peer interviews twice a day on their matchmaking tool.
Go To Market Plan:
Creating a database of companies to target: Y went through lists of job postings as well as tech news to identify companies that he might like to work at and came up with a list of about 100 companies based on whether they had a presence in Denver or had remote job postings. He would update this sheet with job links, names of contacts that worked there as well as a status and next steps on each job listing.
Peer Feedback: One drawback of the MVP approach in this situation is that while it is understandable for a product doing beta testing to have some issues, here the stakeholders would expect a polished and finished product. One way to mitigate this is to gather feedback from alumni and friends who are in the industry on Y’s resume, LinkedIn profile and website. An important consideration here is not to react to all feedback but to prioritize the ones that are relevant to the companies Y would apply to.
A/B Testing: Another way to tackle this issue would be by applying first to companies which are not the first choice to Y. This would let Y understand which version of the resume and website results in more callbacks, which ones initiate interesting conversations and so on in a low risk setting.
Leveraging AI: When struggling to find a way to represent something on the resume or LinkedIn, Y can run those questions by ChatGPT or other LLMs. However, the downside here is that the output from these tools can be familiar to people who use the tools so he has to use it as inspiration and then express it in his own style and vocabulary rather than copy pasting
Posting on website: This entry being the first blog post, it will be important to keep adding content and publishing via LinkedIn. There is a chance that a contact likes or shares a post which might lead to a recruiter getting in touch as well
Build interview pipeline: Y needs to make a daily schedule of applying to all new jobs that fit his criteria while continuing to prepare for interviews and keep the momentum going even after receiving calls to ensure that there are multiple options even if some don’t pan out
Job Search Buddies: Using Exponent’s network and alumni, Y can find peers who are also doing a job hunt and create a peer group to exchange pointers and leads, do mock interviews and keep each other focused and motivated.
Note: This post is the result of an amalgamation of inputs from my friends, TryExponent coaches as well as my own thoughts. So credit to each person who has helped fine tune my approach
