What are the best paths into PMM for early in career folks? What do you look for when you're hiring?

The great thing about Product Marketing is that there are so many different entry points. I came from more of a content marketing background, but I've known amazing PMMs with a product background or customer success background that also crush it. Each path comes with its own strengths and value to the organization. So there isn't a wrong path.

If you want to go into PMM, try getting involved with more PMM activities that will give you the experience to add to a resume. Find a mentor (when I discovered PMM, my head off marketing had a PMM background and mentored me).

Take classes if you can (PMA Core is great). And get involved with different communities (like sharebird or PMA).

So happy you found product marketing and it interests you! I actually wrote about this topic years ago: https://medium.com/projectproduct/10-skills-traits-youll-find-in-exceptional-product-marketers-12fccfd35e2a

Now, today, I can narrow it down to just a few traits I look for as I find these skills very difficult to teach/train in the workplace. I can help and teach those early in their careers how to overcome public speaking fears, how to price and package a SaaS product, or how to go about competitive research, but I find these 3 traits difficult to teach:

1. Curiosity: If you're not a person who is curious, product marketing is not for you. A willingness to research, dive deep, and ask questions is critical.
2. Solid writer: Product marketing is all about communicating the value of what you're selling. If you cannot clearly articulate your message and the value, a career in PMM will be tough. And you might work at places where there are no other strong writers to lean on, so being able to clearly write is a key skill. 
3. Project management: As with many professions, there is plenty to juggle and competing priorities. And a core responsibility for a PMM is launching products, which can be large, complicated projects with many stakeholders. All this requires the ability to manage projects, stay on top of deadlines, and remain organized.

Hope this helps!

Exciting that you're considering product marketing as a career! One good thing: you’re not competing with 100 graduates from Product Marketing University because no such school exists. I have seen successful transitions to product marketing from product management, sales engineering, consulting, corporate marketing, consumer brand management, and customer success. I have also seen people come straight from an MBA program. (occasionally directly from an undergraduate program, but IMHO it's better to gain experience in another discipline first.)

Qualities I look for: 

• An interest and ability to understand the product you’re marketing. You don’t have to know how to code it; you don’t always have to be able to use every capability; but you have to be able to demo it and deeply understand the problems it addresses.
• Empathy, especially when it comes to being able to look at the world through a customer’s eyes. Product marketers also need to have empathy for their sales teams, development teams, and the rest of the marketing organization.
• Strong communication skills, both written and verbal. No matter how big the organization is, product marketers are constantly having to win over customers and internal stakeholders, verbally and in writing. And they’re constantly having to align their stakeholders on competing priorities.
• Perseverance: Success in product marketing depends on the success of others in the organization—sales, demand gen teams, product management, and engineering. You’re often fighting some strong headwinds.
• Critical thinking: Product marketing has to be able to turn “what” into “so what.” It can be like solving a 3D puzzle with 10 people handing you pieces from different sections in random order.

I've been hiring entry-level (and higher) PMMs for 8 years, and beyond the typical things that are in the job description, here are the differentiators that separate the great candidates from the so-so candidates:

• Comfort with ambiguity: The problems we deal with in product marketing are inherently ambiguous. There's no "right" answer, but there are answers that are "better" than others. If you're looking for a role that has step-by-step instructions or a checklist, PMM is not your job.
• Have a point of view: Your job as a marketer is to articulate a story. You can't articulate a story if you don't have a point of view.
• Demonstrate Impact and Influence regardless of your role in the organization: Ultimately marketing is a persuasive endeavor. We may not have authority over our audience but we still must influence them. This goes for internal and external stakeholders: Can you influence a product team to make certain roadmap decisions, even though you are not their boss? Can you influence sales enablement? Can you influence customers?

Fortunately, these skills are transferable: Even if you are an entry-level product marketing candidate, you can still provide examples to show you have these attributes.

As a PMM leader, I am looking for the product marketer who has the following skills - curiosity, open and empathy. 

Yes, disciplines and your signature skill in PMM - from positioning to launch to enablement are key, but having empathy for your customer, your team and yourself is critical to be a rockstar PMM.

Sharing my experiences with PMM career path and job search

https://divmanickam.substack.com/p/pmm-pm-career-path