What does it take to be a product manager?
Product management is an essential organizational role that functions within a company and deals with the designing, forecasting, production, marketing, and termination (if required) of the product(s).
In the present scenario, there are numerous professionals preparing for their transition to product management from a different job role. Also, to be honest, product management is currently one of the most lucrative departments in a company setting.
We recently got to interview a seasoned product professional – Utsav Parashar. The interview was hosted by one of our Product Management Bootcamp course Learners – Prakhar Gupta.
About Utsav Parashar:
Utsav Parashar is a Senior Product Manager at Better India. He initially started his career in the development field. Then he did an MBA, and post that moved into the world of product management. In the last five years, he has worked with several companies, including Reliance, Make My Trip, and a few startups.
In this exclusive interview with us, he discusses the sudden change of draft amongst the professionals who are or want to pursue product management. He pointed out the necessary factors one must consider during the transition phase to emerge as a quality product manager.
When the interviewer, Prakhar Gupta (a Learner at Pragmatic Leaders), asked him about the particular skills or areas that one must emphasize during the transition period, Utsav said that there are different aspects of being a product manager.
“If you are aiming for a product management role at a start-up, then you must focus on the technical facets of product management.”
He further said that one needs to understand how to work with engineers, how to analyze and understand metrics, customer needs, etc. In short, if you are working with a start-up, you must focus on the technical aspects.
Conversely, he said that “If you are working for larger companies or MNCs, then your focus should be on the consumer side and the brand side”.
On being asked how he improved or looked into his problem-solving skills, Utsav said, “It is all about your ability to breakdown a problem. Once you do so, it becomes easy to solve. However, he also emphasized the fact that practice is a must to improve one’s problem-solving capabilities. These two things combined will make you better at problem-solving in the long run”.
When Prakhar questioned, “What do you actually mean by practice?” Utsav replied that as a professional who is new to product management, one must stress on the design, analytics, and technical aspects of the problem. If you can examine these different levels of the problem, you will easily start finding the solutions.
Here are a few aspects, the interview focused on:
What it takes to become a product manager
The skills you need to emphasize
The role of understanding the design, analytics, and technical aspects of the problem
How to improve the problem-solving capabilities
Well, starting as a product manager, like any other job role, requires the basic knowledge of the field. As a product manager, having excellent problem-solving capabilities could help you in the long run, as explained by Utsav, during this interview.
Check out the recording of this amazing insightful interview here:
