Product managers have become a key part of the tech development life cycle over the past 20 years. Even though the position has continued to grow, many people still aren’t sure what a product manager does.
Product managers are in charge of helping a company find what customers need, and then delivering products to fill those needs. They research gaps in the market, come up with an idea to fill those gaps, and work with multiple teams within the same company to bring that vision to reality.
We haven’t even mentioned the word “code” once, even though product managers are an integral part of the tech ecosystem. That’s because product managers focus much less on the technical intricacies of software production, and more on the big picture.
What Is Product Management?
There are plenty of niches for coders to find lucrative work in the booming tech industry, but that route isn’t for everyone. Product management is a great entry point into the tech industry for people with analytical and creative minds who may not be interested in coding.
But because the field is relatively new, it can be hard to find a quality education that can guarantee results and a new career.
Luckily, we live in a time where organizations like Product Gym are raising the bar for product managers around the world. Much like the best gyms you’ve been to, Product Gym provides a high-intensity workout with a strong community feel. And it gets results.
In as little as 45 to 60 days, Product Gym can help you enter the booming tech industry. It’s already helped more than 1,500 first-time and experienced product managers land the jobs of their dreams with a 98% job placement rate for its members.
What Is Product Gym?
Product Gym is a selective membership organization for product managers around the world. Members learn more than just the skills they need to work as product managers, they also become part of an exclusive community for networking and career acceleration.
Product Gym was born from its co-founders’ realization that people needed a clear roadmap to find jobs in tech. They also realized that people needed an entry point into tech even if they weren’t interested in coding, data science, or UX/UI design. To that end, they set out to build an organization that did things differently.
This isn’t a bootcamp. It’s a membership organization dedicated to disrupting the way that people enter tech.
How Was Product Gym Founded?
The co-founders of Product Gym come from business backgrounds. Cody Chang started several businesses in many different countries, and he felt like he needed to find something new. Once he returned to New York City from one of his international ventures, he decided he wanted to transition into tech. During a coding bootcamp, he realized that coding wasn’t for him.
Cody stumbled into the product management field where he met Richard Chen, the top technical recruiter at a local firm. Richard had misgivings about what he felt was a disconnect between career training at bootcamps and the way he saw it working at his job.
Both men felt there had to be a better way to bring people into tech.
They worked together to dissect every aspect of the job interview. Through that process, these two men reverse-engineered a curriculum that became the foundation of the Product Gym experience.
How Can Product Gym Help Start My Career?
If you’re admitted into this organization, you’ll be exposed to every element that makes an elite product manager. You’ll gain the hard and soft skills you need to succeed at your job interview and on the job itself. You’ll learn how to supervise a product’s progress while working with the people building the product to get great results.
But just as importantly, you’ll learn how to find the job that allows you to use those skills. Product Gym members regularly generate 15 to 20 calls per week inviting them to the first round of interviews, and in some cases, get requests for additional calls that they start to lose track.
As members get to the offer stage, if they don’t like their options, they know exactly how to go out and get more interviews until they find their dream job.
Product Gym’s rigorous program demystifies the job hunting process to make it very digestible. As you work through the program, you’ll learn exactly what you need to do to land an interview, and exactly how to turn those interviews into job offers.
How Does Product Gym Work?
As we’ve mentioned above, Product Gym isn’t a bootcamp. It’s a professional organization that works with you from the day you’re admitted to long after you’ve landed your first job. With new skills and a support network that lasts a lifetime, there’s no end to your Product Gym experience.
The Product Gym Process
Instead of giving you a short career training at the end of the program like other options, Product Gym starts the process from day one. You’ll revamp your resume, LinkedIn profile, and cover letter and immediately start applying for jobs.
Since it takes two to three weeks from an application to see an interview, you’ll have time to work through the program before you start sitting down with recruiters. By the time you’re getting your first interviews, you’ll be a polished candidate that recruiters would love to bring aboard.
The Product Gym curriculum gives you an idea of what to expect in the thick of the program. Throughout this uncompromising curriculum for managers at all stages of their careers, you’ll learn the key skills you need to thrive in the field.
The curriculum rotates depending on your cohort and the availability of the experts. Every day, on class days, you’ll start your courses at 9:30 AM and work until 3:30 PM with a 30-minute break between your morning and afternoon courses.
Learning Product Management
Many of your first days will begin with lessons on the fundamentals of product management and interviews. For example, one portion of the lesson plan teaches you how to ask recruiters the right questions to gain their confidence and prove you’re qualified for the position.
From there, you’ll expand your product management mind frame with case studies and technical instruction. As the sessions continue, you’ll study product launches and the data science skills you need to understand the data behind your decisions. You’ll then work on polishing your job hunt materials and pitch before delving into UX research and design, technical concepts, and marketing.
Career and Interview Prep
Throughout this process, you’ll also learn everything you need to pass the first, second, third, and final round of interviews to land the job you’ve been training for. Every facet of the curriculum shows you how to use your newfound knowledge on each subject to impress recruiters.
Though it will be a challenge to study data science, engineering, marketing, management, and more every day for weeks, you won’t be going through it alone.
An Exclusive Community
The challenges of this program help you form a bond with your fellow members during your Product Gym experience. The ideal Product Gym member is a high achiever by nature, who isn’t afraid to work as part of a team to achieve a common goal. If these key traits describe you, you’ll be primed for success as a product manager as you learn among like-minded people.
Throughout your time in the program, you’ll see it working in real-time. The program admits members on a rolling basis, and you’ll regularly see people around you getting hired. Before you know it, it’ll be your turn to advance into the next stage of your product management career. But even after you land a job, you’ll still have the lifelong friendships you forged in the program and lifetime access to membership perks.
Lifetime Access
If it takes you longer than expected to land a job, then don’t worry. Whether it takes you a month, a year, or even longer, your Product Gym membership will never expire. You’ll always have access to the program’s full features if you ever need to come back and brush up on your skills.
Conclusion
With a career-focused curriculum and lifetime access to membership, there are a lot of perks to the Product Gym experience. Though the program leads to tangible results, you’ll also find rewarding intangibles that make the challenging program even more appealing.
According to Product Gym, you’ll make lifelong bonds with like-minded people in the community, and you’ll build the confidence to never settle for a job out of convenience. With recruiters constantly calling, you’ll have your pick of jobs whenever you’d like.
And if you ever find you’ve picked an unfulfilling position, or you’re not being valued as much as you’d like, you don’t have to stay at a job you dislike out of necessity. You’ll always have options when it comes to your career, which is an uncommon luxury in the modern job market. And you’ll have Product Gym to thank.
If these qualities sound appealing, you can attend one of Product Gym’s free trainings to find out if the program is right for you, and if you’re right for the program.
About us: Career Karma is a platform designed to help job seekers find, research, and connect with job training programs to advance their careers. Learn about the CK publication.
