Berk Ozak

99% of PMs are stuck in inside out thinking. They are looking at data all day but missing insights. ********************* Going down the wormhole of data feels exciting. Everything feels like an insight. But the problem is that most of them will be non actionable. It only tells you what is happening, you will not know what to do with it. Particularly true when the low hanging fruits are already gone. Lost? Let me explain - Let's say you worked very hard on your e-commerce booking funnel & the current conversion is say 10% from search results page to order confirmation page. Now, Let's say the booking funnel itself is a 5 step process - Step 1 - Search Results page (SR page) Step 2 - Product details page (PD page) Step 3 - Add to cart (AC page) Step 4 - Checkout (CO page) Step 5 - Order confirmation page (OC page) and step conversions are SR - PD (50%) PD - AC (70%) AC - CO (60%) CO - OC (50%) making it about 10% (0.5*0.7*0.6*0.5) Now, you look at the same step conversions by different device types, geographies & you find step conversions are worse on low end handsets or Tier 2 geographies leading to lower overall conversion but again this is what you expected. So you have looked at the data, sliced and diced it but you are still far away from a true consumer insight. You can go more granular. You decide let me zoom in on checkout to order confirmation as it has one of worst conversions. You look at conversion by pay modes & you find that net banking has lower payment success rate but it still is 20% of all payment attempts. Can you take it off? You probably can't, it still contributes significant attempt %age. At best you will stack rank it lower on payment page giving it less visibility hoping some users will shift. You get 10 bps (0.1%) improvement in step conversion you feel you have added great value. Now, let's say instead you did some customer calling, you profiled your user. You find the avg demographic profile is - the user draws a monthly salary of about 50k Rs/month. Let's say the median ticket size of your product category is 3.5k. That means buying your product is equal to parting with 7% of his monthly salary. Paying 7% of salary online in a self serve manner is hard, what if things go wrong. You try a simple experiment you take 10% of your traffic and experiment with call to buy. You get great results - 70% of users who call convert. Just calling calms them. Now you have materially changed the metrics. If you don't want to invest in a call centre, other options part pay, pay some token amount & confirm. So, speak to the user. Data is an imp tool, don't make it the only tool. Follow me at https://lnkd.in/dVGHnkRB AND https://lnkd.in/g7J_sDyN While you are at it grab my product assignments playbook, 19 real product cases, all successful submissions, real job offers, ~258 pages of content. ***Grab it now**** - https://lnkd.in/gHzyN-Xc #analytics #productmanagement #data

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One of the questions I get asked most often is, "How do I break into product if every PM role asks for experience?" It’s a classic chicken-and-egg problem. Most PM roles require experience, but how do you get experience if you’ve never had the job? My advice: don’t wait for the opportunity. Create it. It’s often easier than it sounds. Here are a few ways to build real product experience before you have the title: 1. Do a small consulting-style product project: Help a friend in product or partner with a founder at an early-stage startup who needs product help. Learn the business goals and KPIs. Dig into the core product. What’s working? What isn’t? Talk to users. Run a usability study. Do a competitive analysis. Synthesize what you learn. 2. Look for product problems around you: If you’re a student, your university is full of opportunities hiding in plain sight: a campus website or app, ticketing for athletic events, the admissions experience, or a local campus business trying to improve discovery or conversion. If you’re out of school, look around your neighborhood: a restaurant with a broken website, a small business struggling with online ordering, or a mom-and-pop shop that can’t be found on Google. 3. Use AI to help businesses work better: A huge number of small and mid-size businesses are exposed right now and don’t know where to start. You can help them get organized, whether it be cleaning up their site so AI tools can interpret it or setting them up with basic AI tools for internal workflows. 4. Analyze products you use every day: Apps you love. Apps you hate. Shopping, streaming, social, fitness. Why do they work? Where do they fall down? What would you prioritize if you owned the roadmap? Write it up with screenshots, tradeoffs, and reasoning. If you’re solving real problems for real people, you’re doing product work. And that absolutely counts as experience. Product experience isn’t just about the title you’ve had. It’s about the problems you’ve tackled, the decisions you’ve made, and how you think. And if you’re doing that, it belongs on your resume and LinkedIn. #ProductManagement  #Careers  #CareerSwitching  #TechCareers  #MBA

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Is product marketing at a startup an ideal career choice? A lot of aspiring or first-time PMMs I speak to want high leverage, broad scope, and a front-row seat to product-market fit…which sounds super exciting. But data shows a different picture…most PMM teams are tiny: from solo to max 1–5 people. Which means a as PMM you will wear many hats. A dedicated budget is also a rare luxury which then creates uncertainty. What this means for your day-to-day? You’ll likely be the glue across product, sales, and founders. One week you’re validating ICP and win/loss insights; the next you’re rebuilding the story, re-packaging pricing, and enabling sales often without an army or big budgets. Therefore it is important to look beyond the glam and take decisions based on the reality. When startup PMM is IDEAL You want scope over specialization and can move from research → narrative → enablement quickly. You’re comfortable influencing without authority and love solving for ambiguous “who/why/when.” You’re okay trading brand name and resources for outsized learning, visibility, and impact. When it’s NOT (yet) ideal You need clear swimlanes, established processes, and dedicated channel owners. You prefer campaign execution over shaping ICP, positioning, pricing, and sales plays. Your risk tolerance is low (runway, role clarity, equity illiquidity). Bottom line Startup PMM is a career accelerator for builders who want to own the story and at times bend the curve on product-market fit. It’s not “easy mode,” but the learning and visibility are unmatched when the environment fits your risk profile and strengths. ___________________________________________- If you are an aspiring PMM and want to understand about PMM career..DM me

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Nothing is better to see when sipping morning ☕ than how, even in the age of AI, product sense and a first-principles approach to solving problems remain the secret sauce. Frontier insights from Jackie Henning about how, as PMs, we can continue to orchestrate immense value for the business and customers by refactoring old workflows and using AI/ML to compress time-to-value ruthlessly. AI is not a feature; it's a value-creation OS. Faster TTV brings in new customers and makes current users feel smart, not frustrated. Strip away the hype, and it’s basic product craft. Help people feel confident in the value they create. 💪🏼

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If you’re applying for a PM job in this day and age, the following are all anti signals: - Strategic product leader - “Innovation” expert - Cross functional gtm expert - Literally any mention of Agile Or Scrum Please just start with what you actually shipped and what the impact was.

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The most powerful word in a PM’s vocabulary isn’t “yes.” It’s “no.” Product managers aren't measured by how many features they ship. They're measured by the outcomes they drive and the problems they refuse to solve. Every great PM I’ve worked with had one thing in common: They could say “no” clearly, calmly, and without flinching. No to feature bloat. No to loud stakeholders chasing shiny objects. No to sprint chaos. No to things that don’t serve the user or the strategy. And the best ones? They said no without ever saying the word.........they guided teams to clarity, alignment, and purpose without friction. Saying no isn’t negative. It’s an act of focus. It’s how you build products that matter. 👉 If you’re a PM trying to level up your ability to say no, or a founder drowning in feature requests, let’s talk. I’ve coached teams through it, and I love helping others do the same. Drop a 💬 if this resonates, or DM me. #ProductManagement #Leadership #Focus #Startups #PMTips

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I was interviewing a PM candidate this morning, and they asked me "What do you think a high-performing product team looks like?" It's not a definitive list, but here were some top of head thoughts, and not in order: ✅ Proactive Leadership: Driving the product forward and making things happen rather than just waiting for instructions. ✅ True Business Partnership: Acting as partners to the business, rather than just passing messages between teams. ✅ Effective Storytelling: Using narrative to align the team and win the "hearts and minds" of stakeholders. ✅ Empathy for Stakeholders: Doing discovery on their colleagues and not just their users, and understanding stakeholder motivations and goals. ✅ Collaborative Alignment: Focusing relentlessly on bringing people together and ensuring everyone is on the same page. ✅ Company Context: Being wary of obsessing over "best practices" that might not work for the specific company context ✅ Diversity of Thought: Incorporating diverse backgrounds and perspectives to prevent ideas from slipping through the cracks. These are some of the things I prize and aim to drive through my work with organisations... what would you add?

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Product Management is dying fast. Sounds shocking, right? But it’s true—traditional PM roles are fading across industries. If you’re a Product Manager (or an aspiring one), chances are you’re already facing challenges—fewer opportunities, slower growth, or stagnant salaries. Here’s the reality: 🔹 Traditional Product Management is declining 🔹 AI Product Management is exploding Just last week, I spoke with the HR team at Shiprocket. Their top requirement? Candidates with an entrepreneurial mindset and strong AI skills. Today, companies aren’t just hiring PMs. They’re hiring PMs who deeply understand Generative AI—especially AI Agents and how to build them. If you master agent development, you won’t just keep up—you’ll leapfrog 90% of PMs in the market. 𝗜𝗳 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗱 𝗵𝗲𝗹𝗽 𝗯𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁 𝗠𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗿, 𝗳𝗲𝗲𝗹 𝗳𝗿𝗲𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗺𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝗺𝗲. 𝗜’𝗱 𝗹𝗼𝘃𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗵𝗲𝗹𝗽 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗼𝗻 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗷𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗻𝗲𝘆.

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Q: "I was doing product management in my last job, but my title was something different. What title should I use on my resume? "I'm afraid if I say I was a product manager - which is accurate - I'll be exposed and disqualified during the background check." A: This is a common problem - and worry! - for people doing product management, Different companies have different names for the 𝘳𝘰𝘭𝘦 of product manager: Program manager, product owner, technical product manager, and product marketing manager are just a few of the alternative titles I've seen that literally mean "product manager." What should you do? The #1 job of your resume is to get the hiring manager to say "I think we should interview this person." And the first thing the hiring manager tries to assess is "Is this person qualified?" If you have the WRONG title for the role they are looking for, that naturally counts against you being qualified. They might even stop reading, because they have a stack of 50 other resumes from "real" product managers. (Including some who have given themselves the title.) Using your "correct" title is a non-starter if it's not the title of the role. Solution: use the name of the role you did, not the job title. This applies to both your resume and to your LinkedIn profile. What about the background check? - Make sure you've explained to the hiring manager that, while you were *doing* product management, your actual title was something else. They've seen this before, they will understand. - At least in the US, background checks related to employment are usually limited to "I can confirm that this person worked here from <date 1> to <date 2>," and they don't provide or validate any other information about the employment, including title. - In your Linked profile, under your job title, in the description of what you did, use something like "(title was Program Manager.)" (You can't lie. If you were being a program manager, then you can't call yourself a product manager no matter what your title was.) I'm happy to answer questions about this - leave a comment or DM me and I'll give you my best advice on job titles in your resume. --- Want your resume to do more to get you in the game? I can help. Book a free resume strategy call with me. (Click the "Make your resume amazing!" link in my profile.) I'll show you how to craft a resume that gets you noticed (and doesn't get disqualified).

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