How Avi Cabessa got into Product Management

Avi Cabessa

Product Manager

First product job

🐣 Joined a company as a PM in 2018

Before becoming a PM

💼 Founder

💻 7 years of exp. in tech companies

🎓 Business Management and Administration

The Story

How did you land your first job as a product manager?

My biggest challenges when landing my first PM job were as follows:

The knowledge gap. Product management may sound very straightforward, but it in fact involves a lot of skills that are acquired through practice. It took a lot of hard work to bridge the knowledge gap and gain the relevant experience. Udemy courses, side projects, crashing, burning, and learning.
The experience gap. Everyone and their mother is hiring a PM with 3-5 years of experience, but no one seems to be willing to train a new PM. Bridging that gap involves as much networking as humanly possible, hunting for Junior PM roles, and making sure that you know exactly what to say when you finally get your foot in the door. You need to be able to sell your experience so that it seems as relevant to product management as possible, user all the PM buzzwords, and be your absolute best self.
The brutal process. Hunting for a job in itself is a very difficult process. Hunting for your first PM job is torturous. Some people get lucky, but for most people it involves a lot of hard work and persistence. Stick through it and one day you’ll look back and pat yourself on the back.

Did you ever build or lead any side-projects outside of work before becoming a PM?

I started off doing freelance front-end development and eventually turned that into a web & app development company. That experience allowed me to build numerous projects from start to finish and learn about the challenges involved.

The challenge

What was the biggest challenge in your first year as a PM?

You fought your hardest to get on the team and now it’s time to show them what you’ve got…except now you realize you have no idea what the heck you’re doing. So what do you do? You learn from everything around you. You practice twice as much and twice as hard as everyone else. Eventually, you not only catch up, but you find see the impact of your hard work and become an essential part of the company’s success.

Connect with Avi Cabessa on Linkedin

How Avi Cabessa Got Into Product Management

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