Why Being ‘Diverse’ at the Start of Your Product Career is not all Fun and Games, But You’ll Gain These 7 Valuable Skills Through the Challenges
4 years into my product management career, I wondered:
“If I were to speak in front of high school students, would I recommend taking a non-traditional path to a career they want to pursue? Would I tell them that studying Psychology or English Literature instead of Software Engineering opens doors to being a great Product Manager in tech, with the benefit of getting an ‘edge’ with a unique perspective?”
Yes, I would.
But only if they have an abundance of bravery, empathy, creativity and tons of grit.
The non-traditional path anywhere is a hard one, but the rewards are proportional to the struggle.
If you pursue your goals, here are the 10 skills you’ll develop as a bonus to your success.
You’ll get good at accepting the challenge when you’re filtered out. The start of your journey will probably start with applying for a job and immediately being rejected. Most HR systems are black or white. If you don’t fit the Bachelors or Masters criteria, you’re out. Even if your CV gets past this, you’d be very lucky to come across a hiring manager that will think deeply enough to consider your ‘diverse’ background as interesting — more like a bug that you applied in the first place. — It will feel bad. But you will accept that challenge and will learn to see every ‘no’ as a ‘convince me’.
You’ll start asking better questions, you’ll get creative out of necessity. You’ll learn an essential life skill, and if product management is your goal, you’ll use these skills again to build great products
You’re going to get really good at networking. A CV is not enough. A CV is used by a hiring manager to assess the risk of candidates and their probability of success. It’s all facts of the past. You’re going to get amazing at making human connections so that even if you’re applying to be a gardener and you’ve lived in the Sahara for your whole life, people will take the risk based on mutual trust and your potential. You may never even show a CV.
You’re going to become an amazing storyteller. Most modern careers are zig-zaggy. They make no sense written chronologically on a CV. You’ll get strong at making a coherent story of how you got where you are. And when you’re successful and brave, you’ll have fun telling your raw story full of failures, fears, improvisations and luck, and show that the most inspirational stories don’t make logical sense.
You’re going to learn 3 times more and faster than ‘happy path’ followers. You will have learned a new trader on top of your area of study. Learning a lot and fast will become an atomic habit. Enjoying learning will be part of who you are. Knowledge is power and learning fast will always be your advantage.
You’ll become a great teacher. Having started working in a new field you will have learned new concepts from the view of an outsider. You’ll be able to put yourself into your old shoes when you’re explaining those concepts to others. You’ll help your teammates, and your stakeholders understand your product functionality, feel comfortable and get their buy-in.
You’ll become skilled at developing empathy with others. You know how rich and complex your story is, you’ll know that that’s the case with others too. You’ll learn to ask questions that bring out the unexpected and you’ll develop innovative products based on this.
You’re going to get good at silencing imposer thoughts. Everyone has them and it’s a hard feeling to have. You as a person with a diverse background will have gotten rid of imposter thoughts at the start of your journey to even have had the power to pursue your goals in the first place. When they come again, you’ll banish them easily. In addition, you’ll serve as an inspiration to anyone else doubting their legitimacy.
Grit will be second nature. Having overcome rejections, doubts and confusion from others and framing your story in 37 different ways, you’ll see that anything is possible with grit, positivity and empathy for the doubters.
