SoC #51: "I Want to Transition Into Product Management: How Can I Update My LinkedIn Profile Without Jeopardizing My Full-Time Job?"

I'm Lisa - welcome to this week's edition of Stream of Consciousness - the newsletter for product leaders who want to build products and their careers more consciously, in ways that are inclusive, holistic, ethical, accessible, and sustainable.

Join 1417 conscious product leaders who want to put their time and energy into building more conscious products (and careers):

Q: "I Want to Transition Into Product Management: How Can I Update My LinkedIn Profile Without Jeopardizing My Full-Time Job?"

A: This is a challenging situation to be in - people who are transitioning into product from other careers are called "the forgotten pocket":

A gap in the PM hiring system where anyone coming from a previous profession (i.e. customer success, education, user research) looking to land their first PM role is left out because they don’t have 2–3 years of formal product experience necessary to be hired, but they also don’t qualify for most APM programs to get that experience because they are not recent grads and have more than 2 years of work experience.

It can feel incredibly frustrating to figure out how to make this change while working full-time in a role like customer success, marketing, research, design, or others. It's normal to want to preserve your current job and stable income while making moves to switch over to product management.

Here are a few suggestions if you are in this situation right now:

1) Talk with your manager

One of the lowest-friction ways to transition is an internal transfer. Talk with your manager about your career North Star and plant the seeds for what you want your future to look like. If they say yes, it could turn into shadowing a product manager at your company and and then moving into a FT role. If they say no, you've been open about where you want to take your career and you've just cleared space for yourself to update your LinkedIn profile without worrying about what your boss will think. (I realize it is not always possible to have this conversation with your direct manager and it depends on your relationship with them and your current context. But, if you can have this discussion, try to.)

2) Focus on business and customer outcomes

Communicate like a product manager. In every role you've had previously, in your "Experience" section of your LinkedIn profile, speak to the specific impacts you have had on customers, on the business, or both. Use numbers and metrics as much as possible to show tangible proof.

For instance, say you have experience in operations: “Increased revenue by 500K USD per year by implementing same day delivery.”

Say you have experience in content creation: “Wrote a guidebook that increased user system adoption by 80%.”

Say you have experience in customer success: “Created a system that reduced time from a customer reporting an issue to responding to that specific customer by 70%.”

3) Stay in your industry

It's easier to make a role transition while staying in your current industry. For example, if you currently work in health tech as a researcher, it's a lot easier to transition to a product management role that is also in health tech vs. climate tech, fintech, or education.

While this may not ultimately be the industry you want to end up in, you can think of it as a stepping stone to help get you to where you want to be more efficiently.

4) Use common product words and phrases

If you look at 5 job descriptions of product manager roles in your industry that interest you, you'll see quite a few patterns in terms of verbiage used, skills they are looking for, and how they talk about building products.

Things like:

• What kinds of customers have you worked with in previous roles? (i.e. B2B vs. B2C)

• What kinds of technology do you have expertise in? (i.e. mobile products, SaaS platforms, AI, data products, etc.)

• Do you have experience talking with customers?

• Do you have experience in essential components of the product development process? (i.e. product discovery, product vision, product strategy, product roadmaps, requirements, prioritization, etc.)

• Do you have experience using commonly used product management tools? (i.e. JIRA, Asana, analytics tools like Mixpanel, do you know SQL, etc.) The specific tools companies are looking for are usually stated in some form in the job description.

• What stages of products have you worked on? (i.e. pre-market, just launched, in-market for X + years, etc.)

5) List any relevant product building and product management experience first under your "Experience" section

Did you build your own app while working full-time? Do a product management bootcamp program where you built and launched your own product with a small team? Offer services as a side hustle and had to figure out how to productize your offering, conduct market research, figure out pricing, market your services, etc.?

These are all relevant experiences to not just mention, but to highlight at the top of your "Experience" section.

Tip: You can also add any of these projects to the "Featured" section that will appear at the top of your profile.

6) Be smart about your headline

This is a tough one. Your headline should accurately represent you + what you care about. It often feels wrong to put "Product Manager" as your headline if you aren't working in a full-time product manager role at the moment.

If you have product management experience from side gigs, bootcamp programs, or experience building products in some shape or form on your own or with teams, some options could look like:

"Product Builder | Fintech"

"PM Specializing in Creating Clarity Amidst Ambiguity in the Health Tech Industry"

"Customer-Focused Product Builder, Stitcher, and Climate Activist"

"Human-Centered Product Lead, Ex-Entrepreneur, and Writer | Cybersecurity"

(I like to include the industry to make it easier for someone to connect the dots and understand you when quickly looking at your profile).

7) Use your existing experience as your superpower

Have experience in customer success? Focus on being an expert at speaking with customers and understanding their pain points.

Have an engineering background? Focus on your technical expertise and ability to easily understand complex concepts.

Have a research background? Focus on your ability to consolidate and digest large amounts of information and distill it into an easy-to-understand storyline.

What tips would you give to anyone transitioning into product from an existing career and wanting to update their LinkedIn profile consciously?

Want to learn more tips on not just how to optimize your LinkedIn profile, but also how to interview, prep for your first case studies, and ultimately land your first PM role? Check out The Product Manager's Career Guide: The 30-day playbook to help you transition into product. (It has received 10 5-star ratings from people like you!)

P.S. I'm building a course on Personal Positioning for those transitioning into product from other careers. If you'd like early access and a discount, let me know here.

Conscious Bytes 📰

ALGORITHMS VS. THE PEOPLE: Should big tech companies be held liable for harmful content their algorithms promote? Two cases could have the power to change the internet as we know it - Gonzalez vs. Google (is Google liable for recommending ISIS videos?) + Twitter vs. Taamneh (Is Twitter liable for contributing to an ISIS attack on Istanbul because of content it hosted?). Listen to "Will Section 230 Kill The Internet" on On with Kara Swisher.

TIKTOK VS. CANADIAN PRIVACY REGULATORS: Canada's launching a joint federal and provincial investigation into TikTok over its collection, use, and disclosure of personal information that includes whether the tech company is complying with privacy laws relating to younger users.

MORE PRIVATE WEB BROWSING: Searching for a more secure way to browse the web?Brave, a browser that is gaining traction, sets you on private mode by default and blocks cookies, trackers, and those creepy ads that pop up in your feed that are the exact subject you just talked about with your friend on the phone...

COOPERATION VS. COMPETITION: In our capitalist society, it can often feel like putting people before profits is not possible. Here's a podcast episode that challenges this: "The Race to Cooperation With David Sloan Wilson" by the Center for Humane Tech which focuses on conscious evolution through cooperation vs. competition.

Soulwork 💜

🖼 Four Trauma Responses I Alleviated By Setting Boundaries by @amythelifecoach.

Thanks for Reading!

If you're looking to improve as a conscious product leader and achieve outcomes in your career and the products you are building more intentionally, there are 3 ways I can help you:

1. The Product Manager's Career Guide: If you are an early stage product manager with 0-5 years of experience and want to design your career more consciously this is for you. Get clarity on what to focus on and why, define the trajectory you are moving towards, and use my practical tools and downloadable templates to help you iterate on the systems you are using to reach your goals.

2. Stitch: The Best Resources for Product Managers: The most comprehensive resource for anyone in product looking to save hundreds of hours Googling to search for anything from "How to do customer interviews", "How to get promoted", "Roadmap templates", "How to build accessible products", "Stakeholder alignment", "Product pricing", and more. Over 2000 practical resources organized by product area in a single .pdf.

3. 1:1 Coaching and Feedback: Schedule a 30-minute or 60-minute video session where we tackle the most challenging problem you are facing right now, or ask me for product-specific feedback on something you're building.

Have a great week!

-Lisa ✨

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