2 months ago, I was a product manager in a traditional industry.
It is said that it is a product manager, but it is actually more of a soldier at the executive level. The leader will do what he wants, without looking at the data for analysis, which is very different from the Internet industry.
If I want to switch to the Internet, I have to start three years ago. At that time, it was 2015. Mass entrepreneurship and innovation were in full swing. I also wanted to enter this fast-growing industry and allow myself to grow rapidly.
To borrow Lei Jun's words: Standing on the tuyere, pigs can fly!
1. Repeatedly hitting the wall
But unfortunately, I didn't have any accumulation at that time, just relying on the yearning for the rapid development of the Internet and the Latest Mailing Database single-minded pursuit of product managers, I delivered it myself and asked my friends to help me recommend PMs of several big factories. The result was naturally an interview. no chance.
Failure is not terrible, the terrible thing is not to think about why you failed? Where did it go wrong? How can we turn defeat into victory?
Through reflection, I found that I lost without relevant experience.
If you can't change jobs externally, then try to transfer jobs internally. So, through the internal competition of the company, I went to the marketing department, and through excellent work performance, I became a product manager after 2 years.
But this is not enough, as mentioned earlier: this "product manager" is not another "product manager". So, I continued to work hard to "explore" more experience. I joined the book club and became a core operation member, and began to be responsible for online writing and offline planning activities; after giving birth, I started with a group of friends. The parent community has accumulated rich operational experience from actual activities.
Here, what I want to say is that if you want to change careers, you must first find all possible ways to accumulate relevant experience, whether externally or internally.
There are two ways to accumulate. First, the goal is very clear. For example, if I want to be a data product manager, I can first find the relevant job JD from some recruitment websites, and see what skills are required for these target positions and which ones I can satisfy. What are the shortcomings? Either your long board is long enough, or you try to make up for your short board.
The other is to work hard to expand the things I am interested in: such as reading clubs and parent communities, which are all areas that I love. I have accumulated rich experience in the process of doing it, and then push it back to see the accumulation. Which positions are suitable for your experience?
And this kind of accumulation does not need a lot, as long as there is 50%, then you can try to change careers to find a suitable Internet job.
You might ask: why is 50% enough? Instead of 80%, or even 100%?
Because the more you do, the more time it takes. The real Internet positions are very subdivided, and there is no way to achieve exactly the same experience. But most of the principles are the same. If you achieve 50%, firstly, you will save time, and secondly, you will already have some accumulation and experience, and you can fully cope with the interview.
For other deeper things, it will be more efficient to conduct targeted research after arriving at the post.
2. Position yourself
Get ready, act now!
The first thing to do is to find exactly where you are!
Returning to my original intention - wanting to be a product manager, it is actually a very vague idea: why do you want to do it?
Because "everyone is a product manager" - the fired product manager is undoubtedly the No.1 non-technical good job in the Internet industry.
But the actual situation is: I have no relevant work experience. The so-called products are only simple tariffs and packages, which are far from Internet products.