Paco continues his guest post arc (see part 1), allowing the Cranky Product Manager to rest yet another day
Guest Post: A Short Guide to Being an Unemployed Product Manager – Part Two
In the previous installment, I blathered about how bad the job market is right now. Think Les Miserables except less French people and ten times the drama.
Your mileage may vary, especially depending on your location. But don’t be surprised if you don’t get a call-back about that PM job that seemed absolutely tailor-made for you. They may agree that you’re the exact candidate they’re looking for, it’s just that they might not want to fill the position anymore. Be patient, and when possible, talk directly to the recruiter to see if the position is still approved.
Learning to Drink Dirt
If the well for PM jobs has obviously run dry, you gotta change your plan and consider other positions. Personally, I recommend trying roles that are related to your current experience and I DON’T recommend trying to train for a completely new role. More on that later.
So, as a PM, what are some related roles you could look for?
1. Sales Engineer
2. Consulting as a Business Analyst
Yeah, you probably could fill a marketing, QA, or customer support position as well, but honestly, they’re not in-demand right now. These are the best bets in my book. Again, gotta think about jobs that are closer to the revenue stream. If you think you could work as a straight-up salesperson with a quota, go for it, but an SE role would take advantage of your technical aptitude better.
The Sales Engineer role is essentially what a PM does every time they parachute into a deal to fill-in all the technical details. You’re just doing that every day instead of once in a while, and you’re doing it for all sorts of customers, not just the big accounts. Shouldn’t be too hard. Plus, you get to be the Cranky Sales Engineer who pisses-off the Cranky PM ;)
If the Business Analyst route doesn’t seem obvious, this is a climate where companies are frequently outsourcing work to consultants rather than hiring full-time employees. It’s a much safer route for them because they can calculate a one-time cost to get a project completed.
And a Business Analyst is essentially a person who interviews customers, collects requirements, and writes specs. It’s a subset of what most PMs do anyway, so it should be an easy transition.
I did a gig as a BA for a major corporation just a little while ago, and it was actually fun! You get to talk to customers, cook-up insights, document them, and then you walk-away with a job well-done. Some other schmo has to worry about getting it resourced and implemented for a change :)
Any other positions you think a PM is a natural fit for? Brain surgeon you say? Bar bouncer you say? I see many little minds reading this with thought balloons that have “bounty hunter” written in them. What do YOU think? In the next installment, we’ll talk about ways to pimp yourself on paper, not the street corner.
Also in The Product Manager's Guide to Unemployment
- Guest Post: A Short Guide to Being an Unemployed Product Manager – Part One
- Guest Post: A Short Guide to Being an Unemployed Product Manager – Part Two
- Guest Post: A Short Guide to Being an Unemployed Product Manager, Part Three
- Guest Post: A Short Guide to Being an Unemployed Product Manager, Part Four
{ 12 comments }
My first two jobs out of college were in the roles of Business Analyst for Product Management–basically just the tactical side of the role and not much of the strategic. Then I became the PM for that 2nd job. Then the company crumbled (not because of my promotion) and tomorrow I start my 2nd consulting contract, back as a BA. I’m okay with this. My area is very sparse on PM jobs…and I’m actually making more money this way (even in this economy) than I was as a PM. Go figure…
roadmapwarrior – I too found it odd that the consulting firm I worked for suggested an hourly rate that blew my mind. And I’m talking about the hourly rate I got paid, let alone the marked-up rate charged to the client. Granted, a higher rate is justified by the convenience-factor for the client and also the fact that, as a contractor, you can’t count on year-round employment.
That said, I met other contractors who had been working for the same client for as long as 8 years. 8 freakin’ years! Yes, the client in that case finally hired that person. But it’s amazing how some orgs can’t get additional headcount approved, but they always have the budget for expenses like contractors. C’est la vie :)
I can SO relate to this! I worked my way up from Data Analyst to Business Analyst (in Product Management) and then to Product Manager. I should have known that something was up though…can’t merge all products into one and have 3 product managers and 2 product directors! I’m networking a lot and that’s sometimes gotten depressing – it’s true – no one’s hiring! Guess I’ll have to follow CrankyPM and roadmapwarrior… BA jobs, here I come…
Lead-gen related Product Marketing.
I started as software engineer / modeler, then essentially a business analyst type, side trip to billable road-warrior Project Management (ugh!), back to full time Product Manager for Multiple products, and now I am very comfortable in my skin in Product Marketing…..
Key thing is most of my activities – creating content, doing webinars, etc. have been related to lead generation. So as you say…get closer to the revenue stream. I think a Product Manager who loves to write, present and get out there and mix it up could find a Product Marketing job… you may find in that role that rather than hiring a new PM, suddenly Product Management tasks also come your way.
Also consider Partner Manager, aka Evangelist. Uses similar skills to PM, at less depth but across a variety of projects at once. Gives you good contacts and an inside view of several companies at once. It has a salesy aspect you have to like.
Graham & Lee – Those are both positions I haven’t thought of, and they definitely sound worth a shot for anyone with the relevant experience. Partner mgmt doesn’t sound so hot to me, but feel free to convince me otherwise. I’m skeptical because I managed quite a few of our partnerships at my last gig. Except for those first few euphoric deals that get closed because both companies put “certified with XYZ” on their websites, it really wasn’t a high-profile activity.
But then again, if I had been more involved on the marketing/channel side of those partnerships, it might have been a higher-impact activity. In my heart of hearts, I doubt that too, though.
Again, your mileage may vary, but my experience with partnerships of like-sized companies in the same market is that both sides eagerly want to get each others’ leads. But after you compare notes, you find out that you already have the same resellers and maybe a few big customers who would be targets for cross-selling.
If you’re managing partnerships with companies in adjacent markets with lots of opportunities to cross-sell – awesome. Keep it up. People love you.
Why didn’t I have any of those types of partnerships? Because I was in a market where the major vendors offer product lines that cover comparable customer needs, however customers would often buy best-of-breed solutions instead of sticking with a single vendor. In that situation, you spend a lot of time in awkward meetings with your fiercest competitors as you share product tech with each other in order to meet customer needs.
That brings us to lead gen. Personally, I was never very involved with lead gen – I was always happy to leave that up to my marketing counterparts. But if I had done more lead gen work, I’m sure that would look really sweet to a lot of companies. After all, who doesn’t need more leads right now? Yet another role that’s directly in the revenue stream.
In summary:
a) leads convert to money
b) partners may provide leads that convert to money
I would choose the shorter path to the cash,.
I have learned a huge amount about lead-gen related marketing in my current role – partly because I am partnered with some excellent people who run the lead gen campaigns.
Lead gen used to = e-mail blasts and cold calls and may be frowned upon as one step above telemarketers and robocalls.
However, in the past year I have learned about and used
- Marketing / buyer personnas,
- How to mine contacts for THE guy who gives you the best chance at a deal,
- How to write and generate content (white papers, webinars etc.) that seem genuine (i.e. tech features alone don’t sell and the marketing BS radar is excellent on tech buyers these days).
- Search engine optimization (paid and organic) for your web site and content
- Creating and editing presentations, demos, and videos in Flash and other formats
- How to try to leverage Twitter, online communities etc. for B2B (still learning)
The best thing is, to be in Product Marketing for tech, you have to love to play with…technology!!!!
I was a Product Manager and really had to sell myself into my current Product Marketing position… but if any of the above sounds appealing, definitely add Product Marketing to your list (for tech companies – the techier the better)
Also don’t be discouraged in the switch. I was turned down for one Marketing position only to be called by a recruiter for the SAME position after I had found a job. Persistence pays.
These are all great suggestions from folks – thanks for sharing! And thanks again Paco (apparently my twin :)). I’ve got some project details for the consulting gigs I’ve done on my about page, if people want some anecdotal “how close can BA be to PM” data. Be warned though – the page is definitely written with a “why you should hire me” ultimate objective, so this might look like a shameless plug to folks who don’t know me yet. My apologies in advance. I do think the examples of projects I’ve worked on would help someone thinking about doing stints as a BA.
Graham – You’re making me reconsider my exclusion of “marketing” positions :)
Scott – How the hell did you cook up the name “Tyner Blain”? It’s unusual – not like a porn star name, more like a character from a Vonnegut short story.
On a more topical note, give me your 2-cents about the key skills for a good BA consultant. I think some people might second-guess their qualifications because, as a PM, they didn’t use some of the formal methodologies that some BAs do – like Lean, Six Sigma, RUP, etc. My take is that just having common sense, good people-skills, and broad business experience (two things most PMs should have) are much more important. So, in honor of Saeed who hasn’t commented yet, please either violently agree or violently disagree with my assertion ;)
No votes for Sales Engineer? I personally have found Sales Engineering to be much more fun (and lucrative) than Product Management, though not as rewarding personally. But being a SE can be good for a few years – especially when you work with a decent sales team. It also gives you in-the-trenches exposure to customers, so if you can spare a little time, you can be a really valuable conduit back to the PM team. Or even transition back to PM in the future.
@paco
Tyner Blain is much better than or as a name. Longer story, will tell you in person some time. Thanks for the Vonnegut props – much better mental image :).
Key skills for a good BA consultant?
I’ll start by saying “BA” is too broad – much like asking what the key skills are to be an engineer. You have to specify (mechanical, electrical, etc).
For a “real answer” I’ll defer to the IIBA and Kevin Brennan – they are putting in some standardization around role definition and required skills, ala PMI – and there is now a certification.
For a “what I’ve seen” answer, I’ll say that you’re spot on. Surprisingly, most of the (employee) BA’s I’ve worked with (as a consultant) are people who were immersed in the domain and “write well.” Most of them had very little training in requirements, etc, and relied on subject matter expertise and horsepower to be effective.
As a consultant, there are a bunch of “table stakes” skills that you have to have to succeed. I always refer to them as consulting 101 in aggregate. From the trivial (be early to meetings, always remember names, return calls quickly, meet the dress code (plus one level)) to the more significant – identify and navigate political waters on accounts, find champions/sponsors and support their biggest initiatives, be able to osmotically absorb a domain at warp speed, etc. Those are key to being a successful consultant, regardless of role (and I did about 5 years of ‘technical consulting’ – basically a developer who is on-site and focused on the customization part of COTS software).
The BA skills that have served me best fall into two buckets, strategic and tactical.
On the strategic front, it is making sure that the team is focusing on the right problems, and that the solutions have the desired ROI. That involves research, “math”, communication and expectation setting, stakeholder interviews, etc. A lot of IT projects are executed “inside out” and refocusing a team to be “outside in” has dramatically improved the value of projects I’ve been on.
On the tactical front, it comes down to choosing the right form to document things, choosing the right things to document, and writing / modeling really well. Finding the salient elements of a complicated domain and expressing them clearly usually involves a mix of spatial (diagrams) and linear (prose) documentation. Knowing the UML models (as tools) and understanding learning models (for selection of the right tool), learning data-visualization techniques (and why they work or not given a context), and the rules of writing requirements. I wrote those 3 years ago as part of doing this stuff, and while the writing might be a little dated, the concepts really hold true.
Scott – Thanks for the great info. I’ve only been doing the BA thing since last year, and your depth of experience definitely comes through in your advice.
Greg – I’m surprised too that nobody else has jumped in to trumpet the path towards the dark side. I’m still keeping my options open on that side and might be interviewing for a regional Technical Acct Mgr job (the description is essentially for an SE). And from what I can tell, SE jobs seem to pay more.
The weird thing right now is that I’m approaching each of these “filler” jobs like I’m registering for MBA classes. E.g. I’m only going to be doing this for a limited time (I HOPE), so what experiences will be the most useful for me when I return to the world of Product Management? I’m split over which would look better on my resume – that I took a year-long detour into an SE or a BA role. Something to think about.
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