AMA: UserTesting Director, Product Marketing, LeTisha Shaw on Developing Your Product Marketing Career

Whenever you are starting a new role, it's critical to understand what's important to your manager and what the objectives are for your new organization so you can align yourself well to them. Every company has a different onboarding plan, and for PMMs I think it's critical to get the lay of the land through meet and greets with the people you'll work with to hear first hand what is on their mind, so you can start to understand how you will work together. I also work with my manager to define wh ...Read More

Yes, this is a pretty standard PMM interview question. When I ask, I am typically looking to see if the candidate understands product launch and go-to-market fundamentals. I'm also interested in which parts of the launch they led (i.e. was it a specific marketing channel or soup-to-nuts?).  I also like to ask different variations of this question, like "tell me about a product launch that did not go well and you had to get back on track" because let's be honest, not every launch goes exactly the ...Read More

I'd say presentation skills are pretty critical for a PMM. I've often heard other say that PMMs create "pretty slides" jokingly, but everyone knows we do far much more than that in developing positioning, messaging, enablement materials, etc. I'll I'd admit, I'm still working becoming a better presenter myself ;)  Because we work in such a cross-functional manner, communication skills are pretty key and presentation skills are a tool in that arsenal. We are successful because we effectively shar ...Read More

I think this depends on your past work experience...are you an undergrad very little work experience or grad with several years of work experience?   It's challenging to get a PMM role coming straight out of undergrad, mostly because when we look for entry-level PMMs, we look for people who have work experience in general marketing areas or have shown they have transferrable skills from functions that work closely PMM, such as Product or Customer Success, and this comes with several years or wor ...Read More