What is a good career path if you are a recent grad looking to become a product manager?

A number of tech companies (Intuit has one I am familiar with) have rotational development programs that allow new college grads to try different business-related roles within the company.  At Intuit the program lasts 2 years and they switch positions/divisions every 6 months.  I was impressed with the PMs that came out of this program. I think these programs rock for PM development because: It's like working in 4 different roles.  They get to do rotations in product management, marketing, sales, strategy, business development, and UX, among others. It's like working at 4 different companies.  Different divisions at large companies are surprisingly unlike each other with different cultures, revenue models, and approaches to building software.

Join a startup as an engineer and try to put yourself in as many customer conversations, sales calls, etc as you can.  You'll learn how to interpret customer requirements and translate them into engineering features. If you're more of a business guy, find an early stage startup that has a small number of "business guys" (or no business guys) and needs to increase the amount of feedback they're getting from the market on their product.  Drive both the acquisition of those beta users as well as the gathering and synthesis of the feedback, and you'll build some great PM skills.

Product Management is a highly cross-functional role, so it will help for you to develop experience in, or at least get exposed to several business areas. This is one reason why many companies like to hire folks with start-up experience, and / or MBAs. Most PMs don't start in the Product Management field. I've even heard it referred to as the 'accidental profession'. Many do start in sales, support, and engineering roles but show an aptitude for recommending new features and finding areas of the product to improve. Top areas in which to gain experience: Marketing (particularly product marketing) Sales Customer support Engineering (if you're so inclined)

Here are four different paths to becoming a product manager: https://pmblog.quora.com/The-4-ways-to-Break-into-Product-Management

I just blogged about my first few years in product management, starting as an intern. You can read about it at http://jaredfranklin.com/post/4407554454/product-management-early-career-lessons-learned. The summary: I’ve learned as many valuable lessons from 19-24 as I will during my career between 39-44.  Work your ass off and  do whatever needs to be done to learn as much as you possibly can.  If  you aren’t passionate about what you’re working on or who you’re working with then stop wasting time and pursue your passions.  Surround yourself with smart people and work on things that can potentially reach millions of people.

To become a great product manager you need to understand all aspects of the business (i.e. Sales, Marketing, Engineering, Services, etc.) and it takes time to gather this understanding. The best advice I can give you is that you should take on a role after University within a small startup, doing whatever it is that you do best.  After you get comfortable with your job and are excelling at it (usually after about 6 months), take on extra responsiblities that fall outside of the normal scope of your job and set the table for a move to a new completley role (usually after about 12 months, but could be earlier if an opportunity presents itself); examples of such a shift are might be from engineering to services, marketing to sales, etc..  If you repeat this process a couple more times to gain more experience (could all be within one organization or spread across multiple organizations), you'll be in a good spot to become great product manager.

I am an Engineer that transitioned to Product Management 7 years ago, and now I teach other Engineers to do the same from Product School, a 6-week part-time Product Management course for Software Engineers in San Francisco: http://www.product-school.com/ Here is the presentation I recently gave about "https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1QDAPzjrQoWn2Z-kP2qsviBGw4ZEIdG08cobgakavVCA/edit?usp=sharing". In summary, there are 3 critical skills you have to develop in order to get a job as a Product Manager in the software field, independently of what channel you use to find recruiters: Technical Background Industry Domain Communication Skills Does an MBA guarantee a job as a Product Manager? No, but it helps to prove your business backgound and communication skills. Does coding knowledge guarantee a job as a Product Manager? No, but it helps to prove your technical background. Can you get a job as a Product Manager in the software field without a technical background? Maybe, although I am a strong believer that an excellent PM needs to understand code and be able to have a conversation with the Engineering Team at every level. The main reason for Engineers to decide to make a career shift to Product Management is because they are interested in having more decision-making power on the product strategy of the company, instead of just coding what somebody else tells them to code. One of the most common mistakes in landing your first PM job is to set to high of expectations. Instead, you should map out realistic career paths (inside or outside your current company, ideally): Engineer —> Technical Program Manager —> Product Manager Engineer —> Customer Support in Startup —> Product Manager Engineer —> Sales Engineer —> Product Manager Engineer —> Project Manager —> Product Manager Your ideal PM job will likely not be your first PM job but ensure it is relevant to your career goal.