A ‘Side Hustle’

Applying to that coveted PM job & you see how it is mandatory to have min. 3 years of experience which you don’t. When mentors advise a 'side hustle' how do you go about choosing one?

Breaking into Product

The recent past has been witnessing quite a huge increase in numbers over the interest in the keyword “product management” and also the questions pertaining to “breaking into product” that seem to get increasingly popular by the day, as a wide range of people across the world from really diverse and varied experiences aspire to become product managers.

Here’s a measure of the interest levels in the keyword “product management” over a 5-year period from 2017-2022.

Data source: Google Trends

And just like good PMs do, some seasoned product people who may have come across these questions repeatedly might have got into research that eventually led to some good discovery.

That may have led to the birth of “product mentors” who essentially are product people themselves with day jobs at product-based organizations, some F-50 / F-500, some growth stage startups whilst some are early stage yet-to-make-it-big / on-a-clear-path-to-making-it-big kind.

When the topics covered as a part of their product management course could grossly follow the same outline, I strongly believe that mentors ought to have a personalized action plan that ought to be closely dependent & intertwined with the past experience of the candidate with proper bridge courses designed to first upskill the mentees as needed before getting them started off over the topics that carry the flavor “salient features of product management”.

But, some generically important areas one’s got to work on making it a mandatory part of the suggestive framework for any wannabe / going-to-be PMs / aspirants could roughly be:

There’s already ample material available for anyone who want to break into PM over the steps listed above here. But, the one certain place that could use some more clarity is over what that side hustle ought to be and how that ought to be employed to showcase one’s skills effectively, bringing all those strong points as required over the job to the foray whilst being totally prepared to explain the “why”, “whom”, “what” & of course the “how”.

So, the central idea of this article would be to double down into point 3 & build clarity over what it ought to be & how it ought to be picked.

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The Side Hustle

Image credits: Vectorstock.com

So, going over the previous section, it is now very evident that you ought to build something of a side hustle which is also what mentors ask you to do over being able to prove those skills & intern add some semblance to your worthy candidature.

But as is common and a natural progression of the steps taken over solving problems, you picture yourself at a place where you know you have got to do something, but now the next big questions you find yourself stuck at are:

• What should that be?

• And, how do you go about deciding & picking one of them over those hundred-odd options that are in front of you?

Well. When the choices are pretty wide and could lead to a confusing state of mind as well over what ought to be chosen, here are some factors that could help you decide:

1.      Relevance

The first thing that ought to be on the back of your mind is the kind of an organization where you’re aspiring to work & plan to tender that all important job application and the relevance to the kind of products that have been built there, that is assuming they are already an established org into advanced phases of growth. And, when one talks of relevance one can’t miss out on desirability.

And, just supposing it was a startup, it makes sense to research the domain, subdomain, problems they’re trying to solve for over building their products. It is possible that obtaining this information could not be as straightforward as it looks sometimes over visiting their website for an understanding of their vision / mission statements & rummaging through some social media content. In such cases some more research over analyzing the competitors in the space could help you build that understanding, clearing up the clout and helping build the relevance.

2.      Purpose

It is crucial that you decide on what you’re building and even prior to that it ought to resonate with the problems that could be prevalent over the given space / domain being totally relevant to the work the organization does / you'd be expected to get down to when spearheading those internal teams once you are on the job.

When there is no real way to get a check on and perhaps eliminate what’s already identified & currently in the build phase if not on the backlog / roadmap, your best bet would be to cover all the aspects starting with a deeply immersed research to a well charted out understanding of the user’s needs / pain areas tying it to the organizational / product vision explaining why considering those ought to make sense to the org. and then proposing a few alternate solutions only to pick / prioritize the most valuable one and circle back to how that’s going to solve the problems in question & also align with short-term goals whilst eventually contributing to long-term goals as well.

3.      Goals / success criteria

Nothing ought to happen without goal setting and this thing should be prominently made visible over not only the solution to the problem that you’ve prioritized but in fact the entire process all the way from the start after the culmination of your research. And research if anything ought to help you strengthen & add semblance to your ideas and build a proper validation to your hypothesis.

And, once you’ve identified all those important things that matter, it is also just as important to define the parameters that contribute to the “success criteria” which would then put you in the clear over achieving those goals whenever that happens.

And, over defining those goals it is definitely advisable that you dive a few levels deeper taking a leap out of that well conducted research and chart out multiple stage-wise goals that ought to matter to the org. just so that they could see themselves on a consistent growth path if not being perched somewhere on the top. A Do, Now, Later Roadmap is a good tool to convey this.

4.      Pricing

Look around you and the world today and you’d find tons of examples where there is more than established need for building those products / features making it all totally worth it as it confirms the desirability pretty well and beyond any reasonable doubt, but most of them drop out failing to make the cut on the feasibility over the build when some don’t seem viable making it seem like very myopic when you consider the longer term.

Make sure you get down to conducting some detailed vetting process over digging into all aspects that make your product / feature firstly feasible & then viable for all of them actors involved, especially the users of your target markets & of course why it ought to make sense for your organization to even consider building it.

5.      Value chain

I’ve come across countless instances where people at interviews just go flat after they say they’re going to build & release a feature / product. No doubt, when it is important to do that well, it is equally important to not just stop at that but to also anticipate a few things on the field and build some action plans over how you are going to factor them all in / tackle situations / counter them over their occurrence. It is important that you perceive it as a continuous process of consistently adding value to the users over a period of time. CLTV ought to be a good friend for you here.

Also, it is a good time to remind yourself that you would be responsible for directing all internal stakeholders / teams (not to mention the external stakeholders & their countless expectations) and so it just makes sense to have a few alternatives planned and well scoped before the situation hits you taking you by surprise.

6.      Feedback loop

Success in essence depends on what your users think about your product / feature, how they receive it and it only makes sense to analyze all those numbers, pin on analytics, define those KPIs, collect feedback and learn from it factoring that into your workflow. To exhibit that inclination here over this exercise could be a great value addition.

Whilst gaining feedback which could be an eclectic mix really, it is also important to show how you’re going to use that to gain an understanding & propagate the same team-wide so that every stakeholder is aligned over what ought to be done and why it is important to do so which could be a great addition across the value chain whilst also contributing towards enhancing the product offering continuously.

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Things not commonly taught!

Having said all of that, there are a few things that aren’t taught over courses. And that’s not because it is impossible / tough to teach. It is because they are traits that a person has to carry as a part of fueling his ambitions, his career goals & then has to be able to chart out a stage-wise career plan over how he is going to get there.

NOTE: If any of you are undergoing some mentoring right now, please make it a point and ensure you book an exclusive session with your mentor to discuss all of these. It may be something of great value for all of you involved.

Some of those traits could be: -

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Conclusion

Now, putting all that understanding together of what could be a normal progression of an aspirant’s journey starting out with finding a good mentor, right through acquiring all the skills needed and looking to build something tangible over a side hustle whilst also paying a lot of attention to a few of those traits that are very essential but still not taught and how one ought to go about imbibing them all, we arrive at this:

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