I want to work in tech and I’m really keen on getting into a product management role. I feel like I have a good understanding of the role (talking to people who work with PMs, reading articles and JDs) and think that I would really enjoy it.
I have a Bachleors in Commerce and a CISA. I’ve had experience working as a financial auditor for 2 years and am currently close to3 years in my current job as an IT Auditor/Consultant. All the years were spent at Big4 firms facing clients in various industries. So I have a good grip of finance and a high-level understanding of tech.
What I know/have (that may be relevant to a PM role):
Critical and analytical thinking
Knowledge of finance and accounting, including costing and pricing models
Stakeholder management (senior internal people, team management, client handling)
Grasp of IT management infra (change management, incident management, security etc)
SQL experience
Ability to understand very basic LINUX stuff
Knowledge (not experience) of the SDLC
Knowledge (not experience) of Waterfall and Agile (Scrum, kanban)
Research and ability to understand an industry/market
What I don’t know/have (that may be relevant to a PM role):
Sales and marketing experience
Ability to code any language or understand system architecture
Ability to understand even slightly complicated code
UI/UX design ability
Digital marketing techniques
Networking
Business Management Skill or Degree
My questions for the community:
What are things I should know/have and is online learning good enough?
I transitioned from a business background to product. Seen many others do it. Some next steps for you to consider:
Easiest transfer without product experience is internally within a company once you’ve built credibility
Given your finance background, recommend joining a company whose product team leans more business-minded - Amazon, Facebook are good examples. Plenty of smaller companies too. You can start on the business team or something more product-adjacent and transfer into product
The other path is to join an APM program but given your YOE I recommend the above instead
Beef up on SQL
No need to learn how to code, but understand the basics of how clients and servers work
I definitely agree with the above suggestions. My list of things to know would be:
Understanding the building blocks of an application
Familiarity with APIs and API structure
Understanding the software development process
Understanding common developer terminology
Learning how to collect and analyze data
I would also add:
technical skills: focus on system architecture. Take a basic cloud cert as I’ve found it’s the best way to learn about architecture - AWS cloud practitioner may be a good course
start a side project - can be anything. Just go out and build something. It will allow you to demonstrate you’ve done this before
don’t try to do everything. Focus on these two things and read the occasional blog etc.
Unfortunately, my company doesn’t have PM roles per se. However, we do have service offerings where we assist clients with PM. However, these are rare and few and not in my location. I have reached out and applied to them, here’s hoping for the best!
I would not mind joining as an Associate PM or Junior PM, assuming it is a good company.