product manager

Some of the duties and tasks of a product manager include the following.

• setting the product vision and strategy: As a product manager, you determine the direction of the product and its vision. Your job is to articulate the vision of a product to ensure the team understands it. You lay out the investment areas and prioritize them to achieve product goals. The role also involves creating a product roadmap and timeline visualizing the product's delivery.
• evaluating ideas: As a product manager, you curate ideas and prioritize those that deliver value to customers. You run the company's idea management process and determine the ideas to be developed by the design team. After reviewing the ideas, you communicate the status of each idea to customers, partners, and stakeholders.
• prioritizing features: During idea conceptions, many features are suggested for a product, and it is your job to rank them. As a product manager, you prioritize the features by ranking them against strategic goals and initiatives. Sometimes, the process involves making difficult trade-offs based on the value the new features add to a product. Defining the product's featured requirements and desired user experience is important when prioritizing.
• creating the product roadmap: As a product manager, you develop a roadmap visualizing the product development process. The roadmap also defines how the product achieves business objectives and keeps work on track. You create different roadmaps for the executive teams and engineering teams.
• analyzing and reporting work progress: As a product manager, it is important to focus on results. You oversee and monitor the progress of the product development stages. You also ensure the production team is efficient and maintain the production timeline. During production, you ensure the company doesn't suffer any capacity issues and that the team has the necessary raw materials. After production, you monitor the testing processes.

A product manager works in a diverse setting depending on the industry and the products they produce. For instance, if you work in the manufacturing industry, you regularly visit the production floors to ensure everything runs as expected. In pharmaceutical and technical companies, you also work with the teams on the production floors. However, software product managers work on products that don't require work in a climate-controlled facility. Aside from supervising production, product managers also attend meetings with stakeholders and complete administrative functions. Hence, product managers also work from an office. The role may involve traveling if the company has offsite production facilities. Sometimes, you also attend conferences and tradeshows in your industry. Working remotely or from home is possible for product managers. However, you have to show up regularly to supervise projects onsite.

Product managers work in various business sectors, from finance to technology and manufacturing. Hence, your colleagues include commercial agent roles, project and program managers, and retail managers. You also work with marketing and sales managers and other specialists, including factory managers, software developers, and engineers.

The work schedule of a product manager involves regular business hours, regardless of the industry or business sector. Product managers only work evenings if they are attending a client meeting or trying to meet a deadline. Sometimes, you work weekends to assist the design or production team in meeting deadlines. Product managers may also work outside the 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. hours if the company has an office in other time zones.

Most companies employ product managers in full-time positions. Part-time and temporary contracts are rare. However, you can secure a temporary situation if you manage one aspect of a larger product.

Most product managers start as part of the product team focusing on one aspect of the production before moving to senior roles. At the entry-level, you oversee a small product team before moving to senior product manager roles that involve monitoring the entire production department. Most product managers progress to executive levels, like vice president of product, chief technology officer, chief marketing officer, or chief operating officer.

Working through Randstad offers you a range of benefits:

• being paid weekly
• flexibility
• always a contact person you can fall back on and ask for help from
• many training opportunities
• a range of jobs in your area

Want a permanent contract? But you wonder why it would be interesting for you to work with a staffing company? A temporary job as a product manager is often a stepping stone to an attractive permanent job. Every year, thousands of people earn a permanent contract with great employers thanks to a temporary job found through Randstad. What's more, many companies recruit their permanent employees through Randstad too!

Earn a bachelor's degree in marketing or business. This will give you a foundation in relevant disciplines like communications, economics, and statistics. Project-based coursework and group activities can help you develop soft skills like problem-solving, communication, and collaboration.

Enrolling in a product design boot camp builds specialized skills in a short period of time. These immersive programs simulate real-world experiences through industry-related projects, like creating roadmaps and conducting market analysis. You can choose between full-time, part-time, and self-paced options to fit your schedule.

Although certifications aren't mandatory, they showcase your commitment to continued education and bolster your credentials. Consider the Certified Product Manager® (CPM) certification from the Association of International Product Marketing and Management (AIPMM) or the Product Manager Certification™ (PMC) program from Product School. Both cover core skills a product manager needs throughout the product lifecycle and end with a final exam.

• emotional intelligence helps you succeed as a product manager. This skill set enables you to develop genuine connections with internal and external stakeholders, stay calm under pressure, remain objective, and grasp customer emotions and concerns. Strong relationship management abilities are essential for productive negotiation, conflict resolution, and collaboration toward shared goals.
• self-awareness allows you to avoid projecting personal preferences onto users, prioritizing features without evidence, or jeopardizing relationships with engineers.
• effective stress management skills help you focus on priorities without conveying panic. Social awareness ensures you understand how your product meets customer needs and helps build social capital to impact success.
• technical knowledge is required, depending on the product, its users, and the company. Tech companies, for example, require PMs to pass a technical skills test, regardless of their assigned product. A SaaS CRM may require more knowledge of go-to-market and customer lifecycles rather than the product's technical details. However, a data science product with machine-learning algorithms and APIs may require a deeper technical understanding to communicate with customers effectively.

Product management and product development are interconnected roles. You need software developers, designers, engineers, and testers in product development to turn your idea into a tangible product. On the other hand, as a product manager, you will focus on the product lifecycle's strategic aspects, including market research, translating customer needs into requirements, maintaining the product roadmap, and ensuring customer satisfaction. Remember that product management teams can have different structures. Still, your primary focus will be on the "what" of the product, taking a strategic approach to the entire product lifecycle, while product development focuses on the "how."

Being a product manager rewards you with a focus on people, problem-solving, and continuous learning. You work closely with end users and cross-functional teams, understanding their needs and providing solutions. You thrive on problem-solving, which is at the core of your role, finding solutions that bring a sense of accomplishment. Your curiosity and drive for continuous learning push you to understand underlying causes, make informed decisions, and stay updated with market trends. Overall, product management combines creativity, collaboration, and curiosity, making it an exciting and fulfilling career choice for you.

As a product manager, you may prefer small to medium-sized enterprises due to their flexibility and experimental nature. Larger companies often offer more resources and better compensation despite the potential presence of bureaucracy and siloed thinking. The choice ultimately depends on your personal preferences and the work environment that best suits you.

The generalist product manager is a popular role that requires skills in multiple areas, such as discovery, delivery, and market adoption. On the other hand, new venture product managers are in high demand as they are responsible for discovering and launching new products and are skilled in product strategy and influence. Lastly, the platform product manager is a vital role that focuses on high-impact product decisions for platform features, making it a consistently sought-after position.

Business strategists create plans for their company's future and tell their workers how to make the plans happen. In large tech companies, designers sometimes come up with ideas and also take on product management responsibilities to oversee the entire development process. Product developers are responsible for creating products based on product managers' ideas. They use their expertise to make market-ready products. Some even start their own companies.

Applying for a product manager is easy: create a Randstad profile and search our product manager jobs for vacancies in your area. Then simply send us your CV. If you do not have a resume, no worries. Just check out our resume builder. This state-of-the-art tool will help you to create your own resume. Need help with your application? Check out all our job-hunting tips!