Hello folks! Welcome back to our weekly AMA series. This week we were elated to invite Gourav Katyal, VP of Products at WhiteHat Jr.
Gourav is a IIITB and IIMB graduate and is currently the VP of Products at WhiteHat Jr. He has built consumer products across large enterprises like Expedia and Nokia as well as tackled 0-1 problems for startups like Babajob and 1mg.
He loves building PM teams and solving problems that have business and social impact.
In this AMA, Gourav shared insights about switching to Product Management, future of Product Analytics and building relationships with stakeholders as a PM.
So let's jump straight into it!
Shortlisting a CV is primarily done on the candidate’s ability to communicate and quantify their impact. Skills I'd look for during the conversation are-
Unfortunately we end up using external filters like college attended etc. The best way to get your foot in the door is to reach out of cycle. There are usually roles that are going to open up and the goal should be to get ahead and not be a part of the pile of CVs.
A side hustle that solves a problem for your current company may be a good way to show your competency. I am a big fan of folks moving horizontally within a company to a PM role as
a) you don't go through an artificial evaluation loop of an interview
b) you already have demonstrated your value to the organization and
c) your strengths as well as a good mentor/manager can get you to level up on these while getting started.
Trust me, if data processing becomes automated, analysts will be the happiest lot xD. As an analyst you'll spend a disproportionate amount of time cleaning up and aggregating data. Your value as an analyst will be from the insights you give the business and product teams.
Your job as an analyst is to put data in context of the business reality and help stakeholders make sense of what is happening. As processing becomes less painful the good analysts will stand out significantly versus number crunchers.
First of all, figure out where you are using a framework and then identify the action to level up on specific skills. Your actions for each skill will be different.
Most courses I have seen would be helpful only once you start building things out. In the current context, figure out where the requirements are coming from and see how you can make their job easier. A slightly inorganic path would be to join a company/team that has the role defined so that you have someone you can work with as you transition.
As a PM you'll usually have more breadth of knowledge about other functions. For example, working with Legal you'll know more about what is going on with business, sales, operations etc. Use that to help legal navigate issues that they aren't able to solve.
The other approach is to figure out their incentives (e.g. legal is worried about not violating the law and the whole company keeps asking them multiple questions). How can you help them figure out a way that they are only looking at new problems and questions and not repeating the same advice.
I have specific blocks on my calendar for focussed work. In terms of prioritizing problems I usually look at the biggest issue a user is facing, does it move a metric the business cares about and then rank these by probable impact.
This is how my usual day goes about-
I usually have time in the second half when I can go deeper into things the team is building and work with them on the overall path forward.