AMA: PayPal VP, Product, Clara Lee on Product Management Career Path

There are many ways to move from Product Management consulting to Product Management in industry. Shifting to a current or former client is a popular path. But if you don’t have those connections or aren’t particularly jazzed about your clients, there are other aspects of consulting that you can leverage in an independent search: 1. The alumni network. Seek out firm alums who have moved into companies that you would like to work for, ideally in the function you are targeting (Product Management). They will understand where you’re coming from, and be able to provide tailored advice on how they transitioned, referrals into relevant groups, and help to navigate the organization and process. 2. Your diverse client experiences and projects. When preparing for interviews, choose reference situations with problems, industry, and tech similar to what those Product Management leaders would be looking for you to solve. 3. Case interview skills. Depending on how long you’ve been in consulting, case interviewing may be natural to you now – but if not, brush up by practicing your approach to breaking down ambiguous problems and verbalizing your thought process at every step.

This "problem" is not uncommon, especially at junior PM levels. If customer or business impact is unclear, I would recommend speaking to how closely your work aligned with the company’s strategic plans. While your contributions maybe did not have direct impact on customers or the business, you can allude to their indirect impact via supporting top-level corporate initiatives.

It can be difficult to change companies AND domains in one step. I would advise you to consider the possibility that this may be a two step process, where you focus on changing one variable at a time: 1. Change companies while keeping domain constant. 2. Change domains once you are internal and you’ve built up enough credibility. Ultimately, it is up to you what you are comfortable with. Personally, I have found gradual transitions have allowed me to achieve greater success at each stage.

Business intuition and creative thinking are only part of the expectations for junior strategy candidates. Analytical rigor is typically table stakes for these types of roles, especially at entry levels where you may be competing with Business Analyst-types. Junior strategists often run the financial and operational modeling and the detailed quant behind the opportunities that are identified, sized, and recommended. Additionally, strategy positions typically involve case interviews where your interviewers will want to test your comfort and speed with quantitative analysis. If you have experience you can allude to, make sure you speak to your ownership of those models and analyses. If not, then I would find a way to start doing that type of work.

Coming from a Marketing background, you’ve probably got customer focus and communications down pat – those are very important parts of the Product Management "package". Depending on what type of marketing you are doing, here are some other areas worth highlighting or augmenting: * Managing execution. Bringing a product to market is a great example. Even if it’s from a marketing angle, you can show that you've worked closely with product and understand phased delivery. * Design thinking. Consider examples of times when you have dug deep to understand customer problems and ideated toward creative solutions. Bonus points if you’ve facilitated others in customer-centric workshops. * Result-oriented analytics. Ensuring that your goals are measuring the right outcomes, and owning the tracking toward goal achievement will demonstrate that you take accountability for results.

While obtaining a relevant certification does not hurt, being able to speak to hands-on functional experience will be more interesting, to internal and external interviewers. To that end, I would start by exploring internal opportunities: * Are there open Product Management roles in your company that you can network toward? Internal Product Management teams be open to helping you ramp up in a new function, valuing that you already know how the company works. I would suggest highlighting your frontline customer exposure and any poignant VOC that demonstrates your deep understanding of customer needs. * Alternately, you might consider pursuing Product Management-type work in your current Customer Success organization. This could include Product Managing internal tools, helping set internal/team strategic goals, and reporting out on customer impact.