College Students, Product Manager is the Best Job You Never Heard Of
Do you like technology and problem solving? Are you interested in starting a company some day? Do you like working on a team? Do you want to define the vision and strategy of products to delight customers?
If so, being a Product Manager (PM) might be your dream job.
PMs are key members of the teams that build software products, working alongside software engineers and designers. PMs are responsible for setting the team’s strategy, defining goals, determining the roadmap, representing the customer, and shepherding / cat-herding the team to a successful launch.
Think about the products you use all the time like Instagram, YouTube, SnapChat, Quora, Spotify. PMs at those companies are leading teams figuring out what people want and deciding what to build.
As a PM you might spend your day talking to customers about the problems they have, analyzing data about how people are using your product and looking for opportunities, working with marketing to prepare for an upcoming launch, brainstorming new features, going over designs with a designer, discussing tradeoffs of a technical issue with engineers, leading a retrospective discussion with the team, testing early versions of the product before they go live, or planning a fun launch celebration.
In addition to being a fun, creative, impactful job, product management is a great career. Salaries for PMs are similar to software engineers and there are many opportunities for advancement. Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo was a PM earlier in her career. Asana (where I work) was co-founded by a PM. Dare Obasanjo who leads the Bing Advertiser platform was a PM. Brett Taylor, the founder of Quip and FriendFeed was a PM.
If this sounds exciting to you, many companies, including Asana, are hiring PMs right out of college!
Asana is looking for entrepreneurial, customer focused new graduates and early career talent to join our Associate Product Manager (APM) program. You’ll rotate between teams and take on high impact, company-wide responsibilities. You’ll also gain mentorship in key skills: how to lead a team, product design, customer research, data analysis, communication, and launching products — all working side-by-side with our amazing PM team.
Learn more and apply at https://asana.com/jobs . Please include a cover letter describing your product experience (side projects count) and why you want to be a PM.
