Top Skills for a Product Manager Job

The last post titled Top Skills for a Data Scientist Job led to many individual pings, DMs, and conversations. Some of those conversations were with people who were totally new to me. One of the requests was to parse out skills needed to be a good Product Manager.

Product Management is more of an art than science. Most of the job-descriptions don't codify the "how" but certainly talk about the "what".

Unlike a Data Scientist job, a Product Manager's job was heavy on job-specific skills vs. the tech skills. Broadly, Product Managers are being hired in 4 categories - Tech (APIs, AI systems), Consumer (eCommerce, Marketplace or other direct to consumer solutions), Customers (B2B solutions), and then a Generalist (Unclear definition of what the person will be building). The skills associated with Product Manager are as follows:

Top Job Specific Skills

1. Product Requirements (including User Research, User Stories, and others)

2. Product Development

3. Product Launch

4. Product Vision

5. Product Strategy

6. Digital Marketing

7. Agile Development

8. Product Roadmap

9. Machine Learning

10. Supply Chain

Top Leadership Skills

1. Collaboration (including numerous references to working cross-functionally)

2. Visionary

3. Communication

4. Results Oriented

5. Influence

6. Project Management

7. Problem Solving

8. Decision Making

9. Business Strategy

10. Negotiation

Top Tech Stacks

Again there was very minimal references to tech stacks.

1. SQL

2. Jira

3. SAP

4. Android

5. Python

6. Google Cloud

7. Asana

8. Linux

9. iOS

10. Github

The above mentioned skills have a point-in-time reference. For example, Google is hiring for Product Managers for various Google Cloud related products. That is causing Google Cloud to index a bit higher.

A more live feed all the skills needed to be a Product Manager is available at Skillguide (click on the link). I have analyzed about 5 Jobs against 600+ skills and have also exposed the AI Model to allow you to extract skills associated with a job. The model continues to get better every single day!

If you like it and believe was helpful, then feel free to leave a comment on what other jobs would be most helpful?

#productmanager #career #tech