Of late we are seeing this new trend of companies seeking a BE/BS graduate plus MBA to be a mandatory requirement for a prospective product manager (PM) position. Until a couple of years back it was only the likes of Google, Yahoo, Amazon, had this criteria for a prospective PM. However, nowadays almost every company is making it clear in the JD's. Even if the PM role is mainly for customer experience, user experience for front end products in Web or mobile.
I had a couple of chats with other product experts to understand why is this happening, and this is what came out of it;
1. Companies believe if the prospect is an engineer he/she will be able to talk to the developers more easily and in their own language.
2. An engineer understands the product better than a non engineer.
3. An engineer can buck up his skills on UI/UX and consumer experience, but a non-engineer cannot learn engineering terms that quickly.
4. An engineer can pick up business skills on the way, but a non-engineer cannot do the same with equal ease.
Well, I agree that for some technical PM role it is important for the candidate to understand technology and perhaps know a bit of coding. But I fail to understand how engineering degree can help the candidate understand consumers better than non engineers.
In fact recently the Institute of Product Leadership published an Infograph on the current state of Product Management & Marketing in India and they have rightly mentioned a Product Manager needs to have a Brain of an Engineer, Mouth of a Diplomat and a Heart of a Designer. However, I would like to slightly change the attributes for a Product Manager working on consumer facing products, as the focus of their thought process needs to be consumer centric and not engineer centric. These Product Managers should have a Brain of a Consumer.
And this can only happen through experience. If a prospective Product Manager has a solid experience in the function that an organization is looking for in the prospect it may be good idea not to reject the prospect only on the basis of his/her educational background. A telecon may provide a greater understanding of the suitability.
I know this may be expensive affair in today's hiring condition, where rejection is much faster than selection, this little more pain can actually get organizations better prospects who could take their products to a different level all together.
Would love to hear from other Product Managers and Industry experts on this... and what they think is the right approach. Please in-box me or connect with me on Linkedin.
I had a couple of chats with other product experts to understand why is this happening, and this is what came out of it;
1. Companies believe if the prospect is an engineer he/she will be able to talk to the developers more easily and in their own language.
2. An engineer understands the product better than a non engineer.
3. An engineer can buck up his skills on UI/UX and consumer experience, but a non-engineer cannot learn engineering terms that quickly.
4. An engineer can pick up business skills on the way, but a non-engineer cannot do the same with equal ease.
Well, I agree that for some technical PM role it is important for the candidate to understand technology and perhaps know a bit of coding. But I fail to understand how engineering degree can help the candidate understand consumers better than non engineers.
In fact recently the Institute of Product Leadership published an Infograph on the current state of Product Management & Marketing in India and they have rightly mentioned a Product Manager needs to have a Brain of an Engineer, Mouth of a Diplomat and a Heart of a Designer. However, I would like to slightly change the attributes for a Product Manager working on consumer facing products, as the focus of their thought process needs to be consumer centric and not engineer centric. These Product Managers should have a Brain of a Consumer.
And this can only happen through experience. If a prospective Product Manager has a solid experience in the function that an organization is looking for in the prospect it may be good idea not to reject the prospect only on the basis of his/her educational background. A telecon may provide a greater understanding of the suitability.
I know this may be expensive affair in today's hiring condition, where rejection is much faster than selection, this little more pain can actually get organizations better prospects who could take their products to a different level all together.
Would love to hear from other Product Managers and Industry experts on this... and what they think is the right approach. Please in-box me or connect with me on Linkedin.
Well I believe, Engineers are very well equipped with handeling data. Organizations now want a logical explaination towards making changes on their website. Understaing and Interpretting data gives engineers an edge over thier counterparts from other backgrounds.
ReplyDeleteHey Rishabh, Thanks for stopping by and expressing yourself.
ReplyDeleteJust to understand your thoughts better; what do you mean by understanding and interpreting data? Is it something to do with customer data and analytics? If yes, I would beg to differ with you. I think the skills of understanding and interpreting data is not confined to individual's educational background. I would say it is based on common sense and experience in reading analytical data; and if a Product Manager has a lot of it, he/she would be great at understanding and interpreting data with ease.
Love to hear from you on this further :)