AMA: Bluevine Senior Director of Product Management, Aaron Bloom on Product Management Career Path

Be curious and take on work based on impact, not on how big or complex they are. Everything you learn and execute on early in your career becomes a platform that you lean on as you get more senior or take on more complex projects. Even the most complex and novel products will almost certainly rely on solid fundamentals like copy and basic user experience to be successful.

There is a lot of overlap between Product Management and Project Management and I've found good Product Managers are also typically good Project Managers. Experience managing complex Construction projects will certainly be impressive to hiring managers, but you need to show that you understand how your experience maps to the software world. Typically this means being ok with a less rigid and more agile approach that I don’t think is possible in Construction, but is often preferred in the software world. In Construction you probably wouldn’t finish and stain the floor before you put up the frame - but you might in software. If you want to be more informed on software development, you can take an online course or bootcamp focused on agile development process, and some 101 courses around user experience. As you educate yourself, get in the habit of really evaluating the software you use every day - think critically about what problems you are facing with it and how you would solve them to improve the overall experience. It’s common in early stage interviews for a hiring manager to ask you about what software you use and how you would improve it - so this will help you build up your product sense while also preparing you for interviews.

Problem solving, collaboration, and communication are critical to being a successful Product Manager. Being proficient in hard skills like user experience, data analytics, and project management are also important. But if you can’t get buy-in, or you can’t effectively lead the team to a successful product launch, your hard skills will have minimal impact on the business. Besides this, think about the brand you are building for yourself as a Product Manager. I want my reputation to be someone who does what is necessary to make an impact for the business / customer, gets the job done, and is respectful in how I do it. I expect the same for my team.

Early in my career I was really focused on what I was delivering - I wanted to work on big, user facing initiatives. Now, I measure my success by the impact I'm making to the business and to our customers. I jump at the chance to work on anything (front end, back end, processes, etc) that will move the needle for them.

You can increase velocity and drive impact by collaborating with your team and stakeholders to write high quality requirements, and by driving deep alignment on initiatives. As a product manager you should constantly ask yourself where you can realistically jump in to get things done or alleviate pressure on the team. Most importantly - keep your team unblocked. This will ensure that your team is building efficiently and that everyone is bought in on what they are working on.

We look for candidates who have relevant experience to fintech or know how to operate in highly regulated industries. To assess hard skills, we do a collaborative exercise where the candidate presents on a product they love and how they would improve it. This gives us a chance to see how they think about product - particularly how they define and measure problems and solutions. It’s a chance for us to see how you collaborate and what it would be like to work with you on a future initiative. Depending on the role, we may also look for other hard skills or relevant experience as well - platform roles might require more experience with backend, while mobile roles we might look for somebody who has mobile specific experience. We also value candidates who are passionate about product management, the problems we are solving in particular, and the customers we are solving them for.

Frankly, be humble, say yes to things that move the needle, and focus on delivering quality. Whether you’re the Chief Product Officer or just starting your career - sometimes building a process, finding a scrappy manual solution that doesn’t require engineering effort, or making a copy update can drive more immediate value than launching a greenfield product. Besides getting the job done for the business, everything you work on is a learning opportunity that goes into your toolbox of experience - you’ll be amazed at how often you lean on things you learned in your first year as a PM later in your career.

Like anything in technology, iteration is key. There are constantly new tools, apps, and best practices coming out to help your productivity - so you need to stay agile to continuously improve your own system. That being said, it's easy to get overwhelmed and overcomplicate your workflow. Having a baseline system that you fall back on can ensure nothing falls between the cracks. For me that is using a repeatable framework in how I approach problems, and managing a surprisingly simple and unstructured continuous to-do list - I add items as they come in, and delete them when complete or if they are no longer a priority.

Your ability to frame and articulate a topic is only as good as your understanding of that topic - be sure you deeply understand what you're going to talk about. Be targeted in the audience you're communicating too so that everybody is relevant and can contribute. Who you're communicating to will also determine the level of detail you provide. Once you’ve done that to the best of your ability, I like to use a framework like this, with bullet points to ensure the message is easy to digest: Context * Short concise background statements to frame the situation Problem statement * Keep the problem high level so folks can follow it, and use simple data where you can (e.g. issue impacts 5% of active customers) Next steps (solution, recommendation, help needed) * Come with a well thought out and viable solution if you can but at minimum come with specific next steps on how you want to proceed. * If you're asking for help - be extremely clear on what you need (e.g. I am asking for 1 engineer to help me assess the impact of this bug

To expand your critical thinking, stay curious, and ask lots of questions. Early on you might need to focus on your specific area or role to ensure you are driving value for it - go deep so that you are a true expert on it. As you build expertise in that area, look at other areas of the product and overall business / strategy. The more you learn, the better you’ll be at connecting ideas, problems, and solutions across the product and organization. As you do this, be intentional about defining your personal framework for critical thinking and what works for you. You’ll be more consistent and can fall back on a known process when you are facing novel challenges.

I use a simple framework for critical thinking and problem-solving: 1. Define the problem: Break it down into a clear need statement. Understand dependencies, time sensitivity, and what you’re solving for. Once you really understand the problem, you should be able to explain it to somebody uninformed easily and in simple terms. 2. Prioritize: Evaluate its importance against your other work based on impact and opportunity size. 3. Ideate solutions: Focus on options that balance impact and effort. The best solutions tend to be the most simple. 4. Execute: Choose the best solution and act on it. Always reassess assumptions, priorities, and impact at each step to ensure you're using your time and resources valuably.

It can be hard to tease apart the line between Product and Project Management - especially since the role of Product Management can vary greatly from team to team. At the end of the day, you should measure your success by the impact you’re making to the business, and to your OKR’s, not the size or type of initiative you are working. . If you feel that you aren’t making that impact for the business, do a retrospective to understand the root cause: 1. Really evaluate the work you are producing and ask yourself if it’s the quality the organization is expecting. 2. Solicit feedback from your manager and from peers who you feel are making a bigger impact - let them know your goal is to drive value. Then act on that feedback - use it to improve your own framework on the initiatives you are already working on. 3. If you’re confident in your framework and output, then communicate with your manager and stakeholders to identify additional opportunities you can take on. Volunteer to take on high impact tasks as they pop up, or proactively identify opportunities to suggest. With any work you are doing make sure you are delivering it on time and with high quality, and that you are measuring the results against expectation.

Keep your resume simple and focused on quantifiable contributions / impact that you’ve made. You want it to pop out that you're someone who can get stuff done as a hiring manager is scanning your resume. For example: I launched feature x, with y adoption goals, and z revenue impact. Besides your resume, leverage your network to make more personal connections, and stay genuine.