Tips to Land a Product Management Job

111

---

In this conversation, Anna Naumova, a product manager and career coach, shares insights and tips on product management and job search in the tech industry. 

Takeaways

• Communication, strategic vision, and leadership skills are crucial for product managers.
• Domain expertise is increasingly important for product managers in a competitive job market.
• Job seekers should focus on visa status, optimize their resumes for specific job descriptions, and leverage networking and personal branding.
• Preparation and practice are key for successful job interviews. Resumes are important and should be tailored to the job description. It is crucial to showcase achievements and have confidence in one’s abilities.
• Common resume mistakes include not tying the resume to the job description, listing multiple job titles that require different skill sets, and not including important information like location and technical skills.
• When managing multiple resumes on LinkedIn, it is important to focus on one specific role and tailor the profile accordingly. It is also possible to use different names or remove certain information to maintain privacy.
• The future of work may involve a combination of remote, hybrid, and on-site arrangements. Companies have different policies, but remote work and offshore teams can be cost-effective.
• Product managers should acquire skills in technological trends such as AI, ML, VR, and automation. They should also focus on efficiency, lean approaches, and critical thinking.
• Job seekers should be patient, prepare extensively, and seek support from psychologists, coaches, or friends. It is important to stay motivated and consider alternative ways to make money if job search becomes challenging.

Connect with Anna

• Website: https://annanaumova.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/naumovaanna/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@prodcastUS/videos

Connect with Vit

• Website: https://vitlyoshin.com/ 
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vit-lyoshin/ 
• X: https://twitter.com/vitlyoshin 
• Other: https://linktr.ee/vitlyoshin 

Timestamps

(00:00) Introduction and Background

(03:23) Qualifications and Skills for Product Managers

(10:06) Demand for Specific Hard Skills

(16:12) Job Search Tips and Strategies

(29:08) Other Job Search Techniques

(33:50) The Importance of Resumes and Self-Confidence

(36:32) Common Resume Mistakes

(40:43) Managing Multiple Resumes on LinkedIn

(46:31) The Future of Remote, Hybrid, and On-Site Work

(51:13) Skills for Product Managers in the Future

(57:37) Advice for Job Seekers

Transcript (Edited by Vit Lyoshin for better readability)

Vit Lyoshin (00:00.15)

Hello everyone, welcome back to the podcast. We have a guest here, Anna Naumova. She’s a product manager and has some experience working with B2C and B2B products. She’s ex -Apple product manager and built web-based tools and mobile apps and worked on launching a social network in Europe. Just to name a few things that you’ve done in your career. And you’re also a career coach and mentor working with tech professionals and helping them with their job search and build skills and adjust with the jobs of product managers. And you also help people who are new in this country, who came from Europe and Latin America. And help them adjust here and settle.

So that’s a lot of things on your plate that you do. And today I wanted to invite you and talk about product management in general and job market and job search, some trends. And you as an expert can help answer a few questions that I have and maybe anything else or share some of your journey, that would be great.

 

Anna Naumova (01:31.6)

Hi, Vit. And thank you for inviting me and thank you for the great introduction. You actually covered like a lot that I’m doing. I’m a principal product manager right now at Oxygen Company. So far I’m working there. Also, I’m a business owner and host and an author of the podcast about job search in the US. I also coach in product managers and people who want to improve the career journey, get more money, get a job offer in the US, et cetera. And my background, I’ve been working as a product manager for 10 years. I started my career in the social network in Europe, one of the largest social network in Europe. And I’m also a marathon runner, a single mom, and a cat owner.

 

Vit Lyoshin (02:27.344)

Okay, yeah, that’s a lot. Let’s jump in and start with talking about product management stuff here. So let’s talk about some of the qualifications that currently are hot on the market. What are companies looking for when they’re looking for product managers?

 

Anna Naumova (02:54.556)

I would probably split product managers in two buckets. Product managers who are individual contributors. It includes product managers, senior product managers, and associate product managers. I’m not talking about the social product manager. It’s a different topic because it’s usually people with one, two years of experience, like junior product managers, they usually do some a lot of manual stuff like research, like data, like analysis, something like you can do manually. Product managers, regular and senior product managers, are usually responsible for implementing, driving the product, already on this more strategic vision and level. And also, I’m talking the second bucket is a product managers who are in the leadership position, people managers who actually managing other product manager. That’s bucket includes VP of product, a CPO, director of product, and all that leadership staff that mostly focusing on. And people management, managing their team of product managers.

So I think that your question is probably about like regular product managers or the senior product managers. So the quality that’s required in the US market for product managers is definitely communication skills. You have to be a good communicator. You have to be a good presenter because 80% of product management job is actually involve communication.

You talk to people a lot as a product manager, with stakeholders, with your development team, other teams, marketing team, sales, your customers, your clients, partners, whoever. Like 90%, like 80%-90% of your job is actually communication. That’s the first and very critical stuff.

The second one is definitely strategic vision. You should not be on a leadership position, but you have to understand where your product is going. You have to identify goals, values of your product, where you’re going to be in few years and all the strategic part, who is your clients, what their problems and drive your team toward these goals. So you have to understand your future or imagine your future, design your future or something.

And the last one I think is super important is the leadership skills, because product managers, they do have, product manager definition has word manager, but they’re not actually manager. They don’t have authority to kind of fire people, lay off people, et cetera. So you have to manage your team without authority. And what helps you is your leadership skills. You have to push your team, individual contributors, developers, designers, marketers, QA, all your team to move towards what you need, towards your goal. So, you cannot use your power. You have to influence them using your leadership skills, charisma, analysis, your ability to explain, your ability to motivate your team, encourage your team to do the job.

 

Vit Lyoshin (06:40.996)

Yeah, I see. Looks like those three areas are the top, should be the top focus for somebody who wants to break into this job. Communication, leadership and also the strategy, the vision, long-term vision.

 

Anna Naumova (06:58.554)

You can probably notice that all those skills are soft skills. Product managers definitely have to have hard skills, including analytics. Some product managers are required to have design skills, technical skills. So, but hard skills is easy to acquire if you have a soft skills and hard skills usually depends on the company. Some company needs specific technology to know. For example, if you work for, I don’t know, ChatGPT, I assume they would require AI knowledge. But if you work for market place, they probably require some different technical skills and other skills. So hard skills are usually different from company to company and technology they use. And you can acquire pretty easily.

So you need to pass the course, and you don’t need to code as a product manager. But you need to understand how the specific product works from the technical perspective. But you can learn it. But soft skills is the hardest one. It takes a lot of time to acquire soft skills. It takes, I don’t know, years to be a good listener, good presenter, good communicator, good leader, et cetera. So that’s why I say focus mostly on soft skills and less on technical skills. But technical skill definitely is necessary. So I don’t want your listeners think that, oh, this is not a product manager’s job.

 

Vit Lyoshin (08:39.884)

Right. This is very funny because that’s what I usually tell to my teams as well and I say, guys, if you need to pick up a new programming language or we need to learn a new, I don’t know, cloud technology or whatever, it’s easy. It’s so easy to do these days, not rocket science anymore. But if you need to communicate, if you need to convince somebody to follow you, that’s the hardest part.

So yeah, for somebody who wants to start doing this job, that’s what they should practice and that’s what they should pay attention to. 

This leads me to the next question about hard skills. Now, are there any demand for any specific hard skills in product management that companies are looking for?

 

Anna Naumova (09:36.204)

Yeah, there are some trends. For example, right now, it’s a machine learning, artificial intelligence trend. So if you look for a job, you probably find a lot of these requirements: AI / ML for product managers. But again, they are not looking for someone who can code. They’re looking for someone who understands how it works. What is AI? What’ are the neural networks? How to use it actually, and do I really need to use AI for my product? Or is just like a trendy stuff, trendy buzzwords I can use just because it’s trendy. So you need to have your critical thinking for that. So that’s why a lot of product managers, I see the trend is adding AI / ML to their resumes and LinkedIn without even understanding why do they need it?

So if we talk about general knowledge for product manager, it’s definitely good to know analytics. Not every company requires to know analytics, but it’s definitely one of the critical technical skills, hard skills for product managers. And again, you don’t need to be a data scientist. You don’t need to use SQL. Some company requires SQL. Some companies do not. The majority of companies don’t need SQL knowledge. But they require you to understand metrics, because metrics can showcase that you are data-driven, that you are goal-oriented, and you achieve your goals. How you can prove that you achieve your goals, by just showing your metric and show that you achieve this metric.

So that’s why analytical skills are important for product managers. So what else? It’s good to know if you can create mock-ups, wireframes, and draw something or design diagrams for your flow, like a website. Very, very helpful. Scheme diagrams.

Interviewing skills to conduct user research, also super helpful for product manager. Some company require that. Also not 100% critical, but it’s definitely good to have that. Some companies requires programming skills. And, again, not everyone, but also if you want to work as a technical product manager is probably would be a required skill.

So it really depends, and depends on the company and their needs. So some company require presentation skills, creating presentations. So for example, companies like Apple, where you should present your work in front of your team. So you have to create presentation. You should be able to do that without asking your designers to do that for you. So it’s a lot of heands on work you have to do, even digging into data, conduct research, create a form, create a survey. I don’t know, do whatever you need to do without involving your team. That’s the scope of work for product managers.

So prioritization also, it’s the required skills for product managers. You can use specific framework like, oh my god, I forgot. RICE, sorry, reach, impact, effort, and confidence. That’s the framework you can use for prioritization. You can use another frameworks for that too.

 

Vit Lyoshin (13:50.606)

I see. Okay. That’s a good list. Some people can pick and choose, depends on the company. We just have to research, you know, based on industry, based on company, the size of the company maybe. Because sometimes you join a smaller company and you have to wear multiple hats.

 

Anna Naumova (14:09.66)

Exactly. It really depends on the company size. For startup, you have to do a lot. You have to do probably all work as a product manager. You can be a QA. You have to test, you have to design, you have to talk to your clients, you have to be sales and marketing manager, et cetera. In bigger companies, your responsibilities are more narrow and focusing on specific parts.

It depends, especially if you work for, for example, for internal tools, like building something, enterprise tools for your company. You don’t even need to do research. You might not have data because you have, I don’t know, 100 employees. So that’s not that quantity of data you can use, like check via Google analytics.

And you have to understand how you would measure your results. It’s probably communication. It’s probably qualitative research. You would go to your users because it’s your peers working within your company and ask them some questions. So it depends.

 

Vit Lyoshin (15:24.464)

Right, okay, that makes sense.

So let’s talk about job search tips and tricks. So what would be some of the strategies that people can use to start, where to start basically?

 

Anna Naumova (15:45.052)

And here’s my question. Are we talking about American market?. 

 

Vit Lyoshin (15:50.256)

Yes, here in the US.

 

Anna Naumova (16:14.78)

Okay. So first I would think is visa status. It’s critical right now. So if you are not living in the US, if you don’t have work authorization, I would recommend to start with that and think about how would you get this permission to work because companies, at least so far, are not interested in sponsoring visa for you. So that’s a crucial topic if you don’t have work permit in the US. You have to think about it. And you have a bunch of options of that. For example, like Visa 01 or EB1, that’s a great visa for talented people who work in tech, especially for product managers. It’s a great visa.

Probably the most, I cannot say like affordable visa, but feasible visa for product managers is O1 or EB2. So O1 is a visa, temporary, and EB1 is a green card. So just like it depends on your skill set. If you are super talented, you can apply for a green card. If you have concerns about your talents, you can apply for a O1 visa. So that’s my recommendation for product managers to dig into this area to acquire a visa and work permit in the US.

So let’s say you do have a work permit in the US and visa is not an issue for you. So the second step is your resume. A resume is a crucial step. It’s top of the funnel for any job seeker in the US because it’s how your employer actually selects you from the pool of candidate. And your resume has to be perfect, ideal image for this position, especially now when the market is super competitive. There are like 1,000 applicants for one position, especially if it’s the top tier companies. So you have to be the best of the best for that. How to be the best from the best? Definitely to keep specific guidelines and templates for American resume. It’s very specific. It’s pretty lean, pretty boring, I can say. There’s no customization, no beautiful pictures, no personal information or photos. It’s usually very scheme and lean and consists of very specific your achievement, your work experience for a specific job.

So the key is to match with the job description. So your resume has to be super relevant for this job description. So how to make your resume relevant? You have to read the job description several times. Check points that you have in your resume. Highlight those points. Highlight your experience that would be crucial for the specific job. Highlight in your resume and remove anything else that’s not relevant. So just focus your recruiter on the most demanding skills.

So what might be an issue for the majority of candidates is domain expertise. Domain knowledge. It’s very important right now for product managers. Five years ago, it wasn’t so crucial. But right now, since there are many candidates on the market, and market is very competitive, the employers are more likely to select someone with the specific domain knowledge. For example, if you have experience working in Marketplace, you would rather be selected by companies like Amazon or eBay or Etsy. If you don’t have this experience, you are more likely to be rejected because there are so many other candidates that have similar experience. And for employer, they’re interested in people who already have this knowledge. They don’t want to spend their time on your education and wait for you when you acquire this knowledge, domain knowledge. So that’s why domain knowledge is very critical right now for employer and for candidates, to showcase your domain knowledge.

And the second one is definitely your skills and experience. If job description, I don’t know, AI knowledge. Like for some reason, there is a product that require artificial intelligence. You have to show that you have this knowledge, like practical knowledge, not just like a general understanding, but you have experience working with AI on your previous job. So that’s like, you have to be a perfect candidate. A unicorn. Employers are looking for a unicorns right now and they can afford that because so many candidates in the market.

So tie your resume to your experience to specific jobs, and maybe vice versa. So when you think about your experience, create a list of companies or projects that would be best fit for your experience.

For example, I have a lot of experience working with B2C, consumer social networks, some entertainment. I also have hobbies like writing. I’m a good runner and I run a lot. I use a lot of Strava and some running tools. I am a very fitness oriented person. So I like educating people. I like coaching people. I’m involved in recruitment as well. So this is my domain knowledge. I know these domains a lot. So I can apply for companies like LinkedIn, for example. It’s a perfect fit for me. I’ve never worked for LinkedIn. But since my blog is about recruitment, about the job search, I have a lot of knowledge of that. So for example, I can apply for Strava, the application for runners, because I am a user. I’m a part of running community. I am a race ambassador. I’m involved in that business, this industry. So I can apply for that and show this part of my life.

Or I can apply my experience from social network when I apply to Meta and say, Okey, I used to work at the largest social network in Eastern Europe. And I know how it works. I know how to bring value for you. So those are perfect companies for me. Which company are not good for me? For example, I don’t know, HealthTech. I’ve never worked for HealthTech like hospitals, I have no idea what’s going on there. Or I don’t know, maybe specific financial application. Or very technical, be a platform manager for like API, for example. That’s not my strength. I would not apply for these companies for this position because that’s not my strength. So also as a product manager, think about your ideal company and ideal jobs and apply for them. Spend time on that rather than spreading your resume to companies that are not relevant for you.

 

Vit Lyoshin (24:08.368)

Yeah, there are higher chances of getting in if you have domain knowledge or you have just good knowledge about that area, that’s for sure. That’s a very good tip.

So what about networking and personal branding? How those things can help? If, for example, somebody is new and don’t really have knowledge or maybe they’re trying to change industries, how does networking and personal branding play?

 

Anna Naumova (24:36.7)

That’s super important, especially in the US. I personally found four out of five of my jobs in the US using my network by recommendation. So that’s only one job I got when I applied on the job sites. So that’s why I think having friends and people you know in this industry is super crucial. And I know it might be hard for people who are not super communicative or who are just moving to the US. And I have two tips for that.

First tip, if you are just relocating to the US, you can use people from your origin, from your country. So there are a lot of people from Eastern Europe. You can start with them. You can start networking with people who speak your language from your country, from your area. And you have a lot in common to start your relationship with. So that’s the easiest way for you. And I bet each company has people who can speak your language, especially top tier companies. There are a bunch of people from Eastern Europe. So start from that.

And the second tip, start adding people on LinkedIn. Just start adding people that are interesting for you. For example, if you’re a product manager and you want to work for Meta, start adding Meta’s product managers, just add them and that’s it. You don’t need to like grab coffee with them. Just build your kind of connection first. And then the next step is start commenting their post, reacting to their post. I don’t know, asking for advice, start being closer to them.

I know that some people can reject you, but if you add 100 people from Meta, product managers from Meta, 50% reject you and no worries, you still have 50% who would be interested to talk to you. Like maybe at least chat with you and maybe 10%, 10 people really want to have a phone call with you or Zoom call and just talk to you. Start doing that.

And there are a bunch of people here.

 

Vit Lyoshin (27:27.34)

Yeah, that may seem very strange to some people and I was in the same category until a couple years ago. I would not talk to strangers, I would not reply to whoever was asking me on social media or whatever. But now it’s different and I encourage everybody to follow this. If you want to start advancing in your career or you’re building your network and things like that, you have to reach out, you have to do this first step.

It’s like in dating, right? If you have a person who you like, you need to go and do first step and try to attract attention. Otherwise, you know, it’s not gonna work. That person may never pay attention to you and never say anything. You just need to get out of your shell and talk to people. 

 

Anna Naumova (28:13.764)

Absolutely.

 

Vit Lyoshin (28:26.522)

Other than networking and trying to build a perfect resume,  are there any other techniques, maybe, I don’t know, anything job searches, I mean job searches like meetups, or is there any specific websites to use for applications? Any of that nature, any of that tips?

 

Anna Naumova (28:50.78)

I don’t think that I’ll give something unique. So LinkedIn and still the main site for the job search. There are a bunch of other alternatives, but I talk to people a lot who got a job offer recently and the tool number one is LinkedIn. And what they usually do is to apply, prepare for the interviews and just spend a lot of time.

Consider this preparation part. Not everyone spends a lot of time on preparation. But preparing for the interview is a very important step. For example, I had an interview with iOS developer. She just got a job offer at Meta. And she spent 100 hours on preparation for Meta. 100. Yeah. So just think about it, how serious you should be. Take this preparation if you want to have a really good job offer and talk to your company. So that’s crucial part. So the people who succeed in their job search usually prepare a lot. They do, like, if you are a developer then go to Leadcoat and do these tasks. So she did like 250 tasks on Leadcoat.

If you product managers do mock interviews, go to TryExponent.com and practice, practice, practice, because the majority of your questions on the interview would be very typical. It would be product design questions, like design something, improve something, improve the autopilot for Tesla, improve, I don’t know, a chair, design riding shoes for senior people, whatever they can ask you, any type of question. But the framework for answering those questions are the same. So you have to be familiar with this framework. You have to feel comfortable answering those questions without being nervous, and thinking about, oh, what should I answer here? No. Just go to these websites and practice.

Or the second type of questions are behavioral questions. It’s about your past experience. For example, tell me about a time you disagreed with your manager. Tell me about a time you motivated your team. Tell me about a time you dealt with strict deadlines. So that type of question referring to your past and why interviewers ask you those questions because they want to understand how you would behave in their company. How would you manage those situations in their company? And the questions are super typical. You can go to Glassdoor.com and check top 10 questions that they ask for specific companies. It’s super transparent. The process in the US, hiring process and the interviewing process in the US, usually super transparent. You can Google. You can understand everything. What you need to do is practice and prepare.

 

Vit Lyoshin (32:28.56)

Do you have any tips in your podcast that people can go and listen to?

 

Anna Naumova (32:36.526)

Yeah, absolutely. So my podcast consists of the stories from successful people who succeed during the job search and they share their tips and hints, but they usually the same like resume, networking and preparation and be this unicorn, be ideal candidate for your potential company.

So yeah, and I talk a lot about resumes. I talk about some psychological parts. For example, I love this topic. I don’t have achievement. So I’m a software engineer. I don’t have achievement. I can’t measure my achievement in numbers. I can’t set metrics for my achievements. No, you can. So that’s a separate topic, because resume is your kind of outfit. But what’s inside? It’s your belief in yourself, so your feelings, your confidence that you showcasing your resume. So if you have understanding of your achievement, of your role, if you confident.

You can easily create a resume, but the problem is that most people are not confident. Most people have imposter syndromes, they cannot accept their achievement, they devalue their achievement, they say that they don’t have achievement, they are not proud of their work, et cetera. So that’s a super different topic. I usually work with that because everyone has achievement.

Every role has achievement and every job can be measured. Yeah. So you have to just be like, think about it.

 

Vit Lyoshin (34:37.776)

Yeah, what I find sometimes is that people who are very good at doing something, it’s easy for them and they don’t consider it as an achievement. But for somebody else, it may be extremely hard to do. And they don’t highlight these things, they just completely ignore it. But that’s how others see them. And like, this person is extremely good at this. But when they write their resume, they’re like, oh, that’s nothing.

 

Anna Naumova (35:05.372)

True. Yeah, that’s why you need someone to help you. If you have this issue, ask at least your friends, at least people like your colleagues, someone to help you with that, to understand your achievements. Or you can go to the career coach and like work on that with the coach. So, but if you don’t want to spend money, like go to someone you know, your friends and ask them to help you. So you need someone to look at your work on your achievement from a different angle, independent angle and said, oh, come on, Vit, you have a lot of achievements, come on. I cannot do that. You are super talented. You did a lot.

 

Vit Lyoshin (35:47.504)

Yeah. So speaking of resumes, what are some of the biggest mistakes that you see that people do in their resumes?

 

Anna Naumova (35:56.38)

Oh yeah, there’s a lot, but I can say the biggest one is the resume are not tied to the job description. And especially with titles. There are mess with titles. For example, product managers. I see a lot of people mentioning, I’m a project manager or product manager or program manager or like Scrum Master. And this is in one resume, but I said, no, product manager and project manager are two different titles, two different jobs and requires two different skillsets. No, you cannot promote yourself as a product and project manager. No, that’s absolutely wrong.

So if you have these skills and if you have this experience in the past, just create two resumes. One is for project manager and describe all your achievements related to project management.

What is project management? You usually have to deal with strict deadlines and deliver your product on time and with the best quality. That’s a perfect achievement for project managers like on time, great quality, great timeline, very detail-oriented, scheduling. This is a project manager. If you have this achievement skill set, please create a separate resume.

Product manager, mostly focusing on strategic side, user research, market research, competitive research, creating a vision, roadmap, et cetera. This is absolutely different skill set. So you might be very bad project manager being a good product manager. And vice versa, you can be very great project manager, but you cannot be great product manager because you don’t have the strategic vision and you cannot zoom in, zoom out and look at your product from the top perspective.

So that’s two absolutely different roles. And what I commonly see is just it’s messing up in one resume. And I can say about other jobs fo similar position. For example, designer, product designer and designer illustrator. Absolutely two different skillset. Product designer usually has to have that great UX skills. Illustrator has to draw pictures very well. And it’s two different skillsets. You cannot be the best UX designer and illustrator. So, please, if you do have these skillsets, please separate it and apply for two different jobs.

So that’s the biggest mistake people cannot focus. And also some tiny portions of that, like also, you know, focus on the job description, your location. Sometimes if it’s on-site job, they’re looking for someone in this specific state and this specific city. Just change that. If you consider to relocate to this city, just don’t let your interviewer thinking about it, your recruiter thinking about it. Just put that location on your resume.

Experience, education, skills, skillset, technical skills. So it has to be in your resume. If it’s missing in your resume, you’re more likely to be rejected because you’re not tied to this specific position. So that’s the most common mistake I see on the resume.

 

Vit Lyoshin (39:59.6)

LinkedIn being one of the best or the best platform to apply for jobs, how can you manage multiple resumes and having a single LinkedIn profile? Because employers or recruiters, they will look you up on LinkedIn. And if I have different versions of resume that I sent, how can I make one generic LinkedIn profile. Does it even matter?

 

Anna Naumova (40:30.78)

Not everyone actually looks at your LinkedIn. Think from the recruiter’s perspective. You’re a recruiter of a company like X. You post a job description somewhere, job posting. And you started gathering resumes through the ATS system, like Application Tracking System. You don’t even think about their LinkedIn. The first step, you need to pass through is this ATS system. Your resume should be selected, filtered by the system. So by the time the recruiter actually looks at your resume and or maybe click on the LinkedIn, it’s going to be a lot of time from that. You would be already selected. So that’s why I should not pay a lot of attention on that. So, and spend a lot of time. So that’s just my first suggestion. And the second one, you still have to focus on something. You cannot be a sales manager, possess yourself like as a sales manager and I don’t know, marketing manager and product manager. That’s kind of bullshit. You have to understand who you are.

If you have product and project, similar experience, just listed out on your LinkedIn is not a big deal. But if you have absolutely different experience, I would rather remove irrelevant risk experience. If you don’t want to be a sales manager, just remove this experience and like focus on something that’s important for you.

 

Vit Lyoshin (42:19.184)

So there has to be focus. First you have to decide where you want to be and tailor everything towards that and don’t spread yourself thing. Yeah, that makes sense. Okay. Because that’s what my personal thing is about LinkedIn and having multiple resumes because I used to do that. And what I mean, I’m not applying right now, but when I was applying for jobs, I was tailoring resumes and then I like, oh, but my LinkedIn is the same or my whatever, monster.com or whatever. The other one is this is just one instance. I’m like, okay, now it makes sense. Don’t worry about that. Just get selected first and then worry about it later.

 

Anna Naumova (43:01.69)

Yeah. And the last advice is if you just really worried about your LinkedIn, just rename yourself. For example, your resume is Vit Lyoshin, but your LinkedIn can be Vit L. And just remove your profile picture. This is so your recruiter won’t be able to find you.

If you’re really worried about your LinkedIn, just do something that they cannot easily find you. And don’t put your LinkedIn profile in your resume. It’s not required by recruiter to have LinkedIn. It’s nice for you to have this profile looking great, but it’s not a requirement for the job search. Care about your resume, not about your profile.

 

Vit Lyoshin (43:56.592)

Yeah, resume is still number one, right? The first stop.

 

Anna Naumova (44:22.194)

Resume is number one. And anyway, when recruiter reach out to you, they are more likely to ask you to send their resume anyway. And sometimes they ask for resume. And even if you have kind of diverse profile, you can ask your recruiter because recruiter, when they reach out to you, they probably like your profile. So you can ask, OK, I have this experience. Should I remove this specific experience, and should I keep that? And they can recommend you.

So for example, I have my own company on my LinkedIn. But not every employer likes that. And I can ask a recruiter. I asked my previous recruiter for the company I was hired for. He asked me to send resume and I said I have two resumes for leadership position and for like individual contributor what would you like me to send you and he said individual contributor, because I applied for ICR role not for leadership role so recruiter can also help you with that.

 

Vit Lyoshin (45:33.764)

Okay, I mean they have interest in placing the person too, right? So they should be able to help, that’s their job. Okay, that’s a great thing to keep in mind.

So my next question is about remote work and hybrid work and on -site. There is this trend right now that. Well, I don’t know, but at least here in Washington DC where I am, even like looking at the traffic in the mornings, everybody’s going back to the office. Is this everywhere right now that you see? Are we really going back to office eventually or you think still hybrid and remote stay here for quite some time and what people should expect?

 

Anna Naumova (46:24.262)

Yeah, that’s true. That’s a trend right now. And I see this trend after COVID. Companies started asking people to come back to their offices. And for example, my previous company, Apple, they required employees to start going to the office. Started from like May or June last year or two years ago. But I don’t think that it’s going to be 100% on-site. So some companies still have some benefits from remote works, for example. They don’t need to pay for the office, like all those expenses. And they also can hire people all around the US. And they’re not limited to a specific location. So that’s a lot of pros and cons for the companies. Big companies usually ask people to stay away from remote work to their employees to go to their office like Meta, Apple, Google, Amazon. And I’ve heard a lot of stories that people had to quit their job just because they didn’t want to move to other state, other city, and they wanted to work remotely. But the company did not allow them to do that. And I know a lot of examples that people still work remotely. I work remotely.

So my headquarter is in New York, New Jersey, actually. And I work from Texas. And I said, no, I’m not willing to relocate to New Jersey, in New York. And I see that a lot of people work remotely just because companies save money on those people. If you work, if you do your job, if you don’t need to sit with your team, if your team is also distributed, why not?

 

Vit Lyoshin (48:18.128)

I work in the government agency now and as a contractor I’m not required to be in the office. If I want to, I can go. I still have my place where to work, but I’m not required to be there 100%, even any percent. But federal employees, they’re required to be on site for some amount of time. I don’t remember which one it is. But it’s still mostly remote.

So yeah, it depends, but like looking at the traffic in the morning, like two years ago and one year ago and right now, it’s almost like pre-pandemic time. It’s unbelievable how many people go in to work now. I mean, welcome back. I wonder what happens to the people who got hired remotely and now they being laid off or they get stuck or they have some options. It’s complicated now.

 

Anna Naumova (49:14.574)

Yeah, it’s complicated. So Apple required to come to the office and some people they are literally do for that. So some people relocate back to California because I’m in Austin in Texas. Apple has a campus here, two big campuses and they moved. So like during the pandemic, they moved people from California to Texas.

And then they require people to move back to California. So that’s wild.

 

Vit Lyoshin (49:45.124)

Yeah, I mean if people get their place, bought a house or something, and now you have to move again and that’s kind of Interesting

 

Anna Naumova (49:55.25)

Yeah. Meta is supposed to open an office here in Austin, but during the pandemic, they froze this project. And now they don’t have that planned office, big office here. And people who work here probably had to either move to another state or just quit their job.

 

Vit Lyoshin (50:06.4)

It could be challenging. Well, I mean everybody, all of us were affected by this. 

So, are there any skills that product managers should look for to acquire in the future with all these trends like we talked about artificial intelligence maybe or maybe like remote work? Are there any skills to look for in the future that will become important?

 

Anna Naumova (50:57.118)

Yeah, good question. I think definitely technological trends should be considered. So like AI, ML, VR, like self-driving cars and all that stuff, like automation, all kind of, I don’t know, personalization, recommendation should be considered. No code website, I think it’s a trend right now, especially during this time when the company wants to save money on engineers. So I see the trend that the company more likely to use no code, especially small, tiny startups launch fast, save money, spend less, all that stuff.

Talking about nowadays, product managers should be lean as well. Efficiency in a trend. Efficiency means spending less money. So far, like MVP approach, lean approach is a trend. You cannot think about something super complicated. As a product manager, you have to learn how to select a scope for your MVP. Launch, measure, estimate, all these small cycles, spending less and less time, less and less money on that. So, and trying to test your hypothesis without even involving coding. Like no code, prototypes, user interviews, research, questionnaires, forums, whatever you can do. Just even like fake button “But” with a placeholder behind it. Also a good test. So as a product manager, you have to value each dollar your company spent on you. So that’s, I think, would be, at least now it’s a trend. Yeah, and critical thinking, definitely. 

I just remember the time like five years ago, for Meta, they were looking for people like super creative. You don’t need to think about money. So question about like, do we have budget limitation sounded really weird for them. No, we don’t have budget limitation. You can just, we are looking for your creativity. You have to be creative. You have to design something super innovative, super cool. And now that’s opposite.

 

Vit Lyoshin (53:44.208)

Now, when hard times came, everybody start counting money. That’s what happens. But that’s good. That’s It also it requires to be relatively creative to be testing all these things and come up with solutions that don’t require a lot of effort from engineers and people in that area designers 

 

Anna Naumova (54:10.434)

Yeah, I think remote work, I mean, remote not in the US, remote outside of the US offshore team would be a trend as well because it’s cheaper hiring people, remote people here in the US actually doesn’t make sense. So I would rather to hire like 10 engineers in India than like two for the same price in California.

Yeah, if I need to save money and I think every business needs to save money, they would rather to hire someone offshore.

 

Vit Lyoshin (54:47.116)

That’s what I heard like a year ago. So there is one well, there’s a lot of companies like that, but with this remote work people in the US here were afraid and actually some people engineers they were moving to like Mexico Costa Rica or somebody moved to Europe and they I still work at Amazon and still make this much and they live in Spain, which is twice less expensive than US and their income increased basically twice for the same amount of salary. That’s an interesting thing.

 

Anna Naumova (55:27.346)

I might be mistaken, but there is a legal requirements for big companies to have specific amount of employees in the US. So I don’t think companies, a top tier companies can hire all their employees remote, like outside of the US. I think it’s like a legal restriction on that. But anyway, small startups can easily do that, especially if some of founders are immigrants. Because they know culture. So Indians usually hire people in India. I talked to the guy recently. He’s from Bangladesh. And he hired people from Bangladesh, like Mexican here can hiring Mexican in Mexico for a cheaper price.

 

Vit Lyoshin (56:04.912)

Oh yeah, I see that all the time.

 

Anna Naumova (56:26.386)

So that make a lot of sense. People with the same culture, you can speak the same language and it’s cheaper. I don’t want to deal with Americans, like super expensive Americans here.

 

Vit Lyoshin (56:41.264)

Yeah, well, we are in the same category now, so that’s unfortunate

Okay. Well  we spend a lot of time talking about these things. Do you have any final advice for anybody who’s on the job market today?

 

Anna Naumova (57:06.646)

Be patient, because the job market right now, we’re in 2024, it’s still hard. It started a year and a half ago, two years ago, and it’s still hard. So that’s why be patient. Don’t consider to find a job super easily, super quickly. So the average time for the job search right now is six months. So keep that in mind when you go on the market. That’s number one.

The second tip is prepare. Prepare a lot. So as I mentioned before, all people who succeed in the job market and got great job offers, prepared and trained a lot. They did a lot of work before. So job search is a job. So that’s why you need to train, you need to practice.

And the last one probably I would recommend work with a kind of psychologist and work on your psychology because you have to present yourself and sometimes you discouraged, sometimes you’re sad, sometimes you’re tired, sometimes you burn out, you hate recruiters, you hate these interviews. So you have to have someone, psychologist and like your coach or maybe your buddy, your, I don’t know, partner, someone who will help you, who will encourage you to move forward. I’m not talking like exactly about partners, but because partners might be different. Sometimes partners can discourage, but like coach and psychologists definitely will encourage you. There is a job to encourage you to give you energy, to give you a power to move forward. If you fall down, get up and move forward, just move, do something. So if you can afford that, go to psychologist or coach. If you cannot afford that, find a friend, find a buddy, find people who is looking for a job like you, partner with them and support each other. Because it’s hard, it’s psychologically hard, especially dealing with a lot of rejections and it’s not pleasant experience.

 

Vit Lyoshin (59:27.9)

Yeah, especially for those people who have been laid off recently or will be, who knows what’s going to happen. This is really tough because you have to quickly find something. It’s not like somebody is employed who’s just trying to switch jobs and they have a little bit of luxury of having an income. But for people who deal with layoffs, that’s double trouble.

 

Anna Naumova (59:51.17)

That’s true. I was laid off last year and I was looking for a job for three months last spring. The market was dead. So it’s just completely dead. And I realized I just could not afford to look for the job because I’m a single mom. I have a daughter. I have to pay bills. So, I switched, I pivoted quickly to my business. I started earning money differently. I started consulting businesses. I started recruiting. I started career coaching. I started creating webinars for people. So I started making money differently. So also if you are laid off and you cannot find a job, this is not the only option for you to make money.

So think from the different angle on this problem. Maybe you dreamed about something long time ago, and there is a chance for you, an opportunity to start something new. Think about it. So everything has a purpose. And support, it’s very important to have support.

 

Vit Lyoshin (01:01:10.352)

Right.

Let’s wrap up on this motivational note and we wish everybody to be strong and find their next dream job.

Thank you very much for your time. That was a handful of tips and suggestions. So thank you very much. I think people will really appreciate that.

 

Anna Naumova (01:01:41.01)

Yeah, thank you, Vit, for inviting me. I enjoyed talking to you.

 

Vit Lyoshin (01:01:43.44)

Sure, thank you. Alright, bye.

 

Anna Naumova (01:01:46.662)

Thank you.