What Does It Take to Become a Product Manager?

Do you have what it takes to become a product manager one day?

Product managers have a major impact on the direction of a product and the ease of user experience. Whether they’re revamping the company’s website or app, product managers decide what features to prioritize and they manage multiple projects at once and direct a team of bright, talented developers who will turn a vision into a reality.

We spoke to WayUp’s Head of Product, Matt Powers, who has led innovative product changes in our marketplace and managed the launch of WayUp’s first iOS job app for college students. Here’s what he had to say about what makes a good product manager great and the qualities you should have in order to become one.

What are the top qualities of the best product managers?

1. They are chameleons. They can adjust to the different stakeholders that are part of the product development process, whether it’s understanding the users or empathizing with the development team.

2. They show leadership capabilities. PMs have a lot of different stakeholders that they have to consider; they have to balance the developers wants and needs when working on things with other stakeholders like management and customers. Many times PMs are forced to make decisions where they are put in between a rock and a hard place. When things change or move or if you need to cut features and functionality to meet some sort of deadline, it’s important that you explain the rationale behind the decision making and get the team to empathize with the reality of the situation.

3. They are terrific listeners. All the key stakeholders around any good product feature or request share one thing in common: They want to be heard.  Whether you are the customer, the developer, the designer or upper management, everyone is going to have an opinion and the best PMs are the ones that make you feel heard.

Editor’s note –  A few other important qualities of product managers include:

• Knowing when to say no. A good PM is able to prioritize and say no when a change is not impactful enough or not in the best interest of the customer (and the product).
• Being decisive and adaptable. You will have to be able to iterate functionality quickly.
• Be a visionary to design a transformative product and motivate the rest of the team to execute on it.
• Be a team player.

What types of people would not thrive in your role?

Product management is the ultimate check your ego at the door type position. You are not the one actually writing the code or doing the design, so any sort of arrogance at all should be strictly prohibited.

Also, a lack of patience – especially with new teams.  A lot of product “building” is specing, building, getting feedback, measuring and doing it all over again.  You can’t expect things to be perfect, and you have to expect that sh*t is going to go wrong.  That’s just the name of the game.

What advice would you give to college students hoping to have your position one day?

Have side projects: This is probably the best advice I can give. Getting hired into a product management role right out of college can be tough. You basically have no proven experience building and maintaining anything. Find ways to buck that trend by launching something yourself.

Think you have what it takes to be a product manager? Check out open product manager positions at Infor and Cuyana. Apply for product manager jobs on WayUp!