Hey, it’s Yi Lin! 👋 Welcome to my monthly newsletter on how to land, grow, and thrive in your dream product marketing roles. Today’s issue is inspired by my newest program, ​ The PMM Dream Job System ​ ,  designed to guide you step-by-step through every stage of the hiring process - from application to offer. 👉 Join the waitlist now and get 3 exclusive bonuses! Bonus 1: The perfect mock interview answer on how to introduce yourself Bonus 2: Interview insights and tips delivered to your inbox Bonus 3: Exclusive early access to The PMM Dream Job System What Hiring Managers REALLY Want (and What You Need to Ace the Product Marketing Interview Process) I’ve helped over 200 candidates land their dream jobs, coached dozens of hiring managers, and designed multiple hiring processes myself. Here’s what I’ve learned: Most candidates work incredibly hard but don’t always focus on the right  things. Why? Because they don’t truly understand what hiring managers want. It’s like studying for an exam without knowing the test material. With layoffs increasing and the end of the year approaching, it’s more important than ever to get this right. That’s why I’m here to help. In this newsletter, I’ll share: What hiring managers are really  thinking at each stage.  The mistakes that quietly cost candidates their chances How to stand out and land the job - by tailoring your approach Now, let’s dive in. Step 1: Define the role and source candidates Good hiring managers don’t start with a job description - they start with a problem. They ask: What’s missing on the team right now? What skills will make the biggest impact? What kind of candidate fits our growth stage and budget? The job description (JD) is the result of these questions. For PMM roles, it’s often broad - listing general requirements - but the priorities are specific. Hiring managers want a T-shaped marketer : someone with a range of skills but deep expertise in areas like messaging, product launches, or customer insights. Once the JD goes live, hiring managers don’t just wait for applications. They’re: Tapping into their networks (sometimes reaching out to me). Searching LinkedIn for candidates who’ve solved similar problems. As one hiring manager told me: “I needed someone to refine positioning and messaging for our platform product. The JD mentioned other responsibilities, but the main focus was on someone who could solve this specific problem for the complex ecosystem we are in.” What You Need to Do: To stand out, you need to think like a product marketer and position yourself as the solution to their problem. Here’s how: 1. Identify Your Ideal Company Profile (ICP) Pinpoint companies that need your unique expertise - whether it’s messaging, product launches, or a specific domain. Craft a clear, differentiated positioning strategy that shows you’re the perfect fit for their needs. 2. Don’t Be a Jack-of-All-Trades The biggest mistake candidates make? Applying everywhere and presenting themselves as “I can do everything.” Hiring managers rarely hire generalists. Instead, focus on showcasing your specialized value proposition. Read between the lines of the JD to highlight how your skills align with their priorities. 3. Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile Use keywords that hiring managers and recruiters are searching for (e.g., B2B SaaS, Platform, Ed-tech). Highlight measurable achievements and be specific about the value you bring to attract the right attention. Remember: clarity and focus will always stand out over trying to be everything to everyone. Step 2: Screen Applications Once a JD is posted, applications flood in. A typical PMM role can attract 300+ candidates in just a few days. Hiring managers need to narrow it down quickly—often reviewing hundreds of resumes to identify the top 10–20 candidates for interviews. Here’s how it breaks down:  ❌ 80% of resumes are rejected in the first pass.  ❓20% make it to the “maybe” pile.  ✅ Only half of those move forward to interviews. What are hiring managers skimming for Relevant experience  aligned with the role’s priorities. A clear narrative  connecting your skills to the company’s challenges. Signals of effort , like tailored resumes and thoughtful cover letters. As one hiring manager put it: “When I get a hundred applications, I skim quickly to separate the ‘no’ from the ‘maybe.’ If a resume doesn’t connect the dots for me in one paragraph, it’s a no. I need to see clear, relevant experience at a glance.” At startups and scale-ups, hiring managers often screen resumes themselves. At larger companies, HR may handle the first pass, but hiring managers still review the final shortlist to ensure alignment with their team’s needs. Either way, the process is the same: stand out or get overlooked. What you need to do: 1. Tailor your resume: Your resume isn’t a list of responsibilities—it’s a solution to their problem. Highlight relevant achievements:  Choose 2-4 standout accomplishments that directly solve the company’s challenges. Do not stuff the resume with more than 5 bullets per job. Add a strong summary statement:  Position yourself as the ideal candidate right at the top. Example Summary Statement: “Product marketing manager, ex-consultant with expertise in GTM strategy, positioning, and messaging for B2B SaaS products in [industry]. Increased adoption by 30% through data-driven campaigns. Excited to bring similar results to [Company].” 2. Make your application stand out: Write a thoughtful cover letter:  Use it to connect your achievements to the company’s challenges and demonstrate your communication skills. (Hint: Cover letters are NOT dead. Reach out thoughtfully:  Don’t rely solely on your application. Contact hiring managers or advocates directly. This shows initiative and highlights your unique value. Even if not every manager replies, those who do can significantly boost your chances. Remember: hiring managers are looking for clarity and relevance. Show them you’re the perfect fit, right from the first glance. Step 3: Interview Candidates Once a candidate passes the application screening, the product marketing interview process begins. A strong hiring manager should design each step with a specific purpose to narrow down the best match. For example, I typically create a detailed interview plan for every hiring process. This includes identifying the right stakeholders to involve, defining the areas they need to evaluate, and outlining the key questions they should ask. Involving key stakeholders ensures alignment and builds buy-in from the teams the candidate will work closely with. Unfortunately, many interview processes today are excessively long, often due to poor planning. A well-structured process should take no more than two months—dragging it out signals inexperience. After every stage, there’s a team debrief. Hiring managers ask:  Can this person solve the problems we need addressed? Do they align with the team dynamic, culture, and role? Will they bring energy, ideas, and be a strategic asset? Why “good answers” aren’t enough Here’s the truth: even good candidates can fade into the background. As one hiring manager told me after eight back-to-back interviews, “I couldn’t remember who said what—most candidates gave the same cookie-cutter responses.” The issue? Candidates focus on what  they’ve done without explaining the why . Most answers are forgettable, even when they’re technically correct. What you need to do instead Standing out requires thoughtful preparation and structured responses. This isn’t about overloading your answers—it’s about making them memorable. Here’s how my clients prepare using a tailored interview prep workbook: Study the company and role. Research each interviewer’s background. Craft a personal story that highlights your most relevant experience. Tailor responses to match the unique demands of every interview stage. How to take your responses from good to great in 4 steps: Use a structured framework like PSAR that I created (Problem, Solution, Action, Result) to organize your answers. Focus on the “why” behind your actions. Hiring managers care about your thought process. Refine your delivery. Confidence and authenticity make your answers stand out. Ask thoughtful follow-up questions to demonstrate curiosity and engagement. Here’s the thing: mastering interviews is one of the hardest skills to learn. It’s not just about what you’ve done—it’s about aligning your experience and messaging with the company’s needs. That takes preparation and practice. A hiring manager I coached told me: “I remember a candidate who had never been a dedicated product marketer but had a strong related background in content marketing. What impressed us was how they discussed collaborating with sales and using customer feedback to refine messaging, with very detailed examples that didn’t get lost in the weeds. It showed they understood the bigger picture.” Stage 4: Evaluate with an Assignment Ahh, the dreaded assignment stage - the most time consuming round in the interview process. While I don’t agree with overly lengthy or poorly designed prompts, assignments give hiring managers a deeper glimpse into how you’d perform on the job. In fact, I’ve seen candidates who were just “okay” in interviews blow the competition away with their assignments—and vice versa. So, while this stage can feel daunting, treat it as your opportunity to shine. Assignments are typically crafted to mirror key tasks you’ll handle in the role. For PMM positions, common assignments include: GTM launch strategies Sales pitch decks Positioning and messaging exercises This is what hiring managers are really looking for: Strategic thinking:  Does your solution directly address the company’s challenges? Creativity:  Do you bring fresh, innovative ideas? Storytelling:  Are your ideas clear, compelling, and easy to follow? One of my clients, for instance, delivered an outstanding GTM launch assignment that not only answered every single step logically but included additional “wow” components, including a real customer video he made by interviewing a customer to articulate the value of the feature. He got the offer within the same day. 4 things you need to do instead: 1. Understand the goal: What is the hiring manager really  asking for in the assignment? If anything is unclear, don’t hesitate to ask for clarification. Most hiring managers are happy to provide additional context. 2. Create an outline first: Map out key story points or themes before diving into the details. Many candidates skip this step and end up with disjointed work or missing key information. Starting with a solid structure ensures your narrative flows logically. 3. Research and build content thoughtfully: Focus on quality, not quantity. Include one or two standout elements that showcase your creativity or unique perspective. 4. Edit, review, and practice: Polish your work for clarity and conciseness. Practice delivering your assignment if it involves a presentation. Confident delivery can elevate even a solid but unspectacular idea. Step 5: Make the Offer Congratulations—you’ve made it to the final stage! At this point, the hiring manager wants to close the deal. They’ve spent time and energy finding the right candidate, and now they’re ready to secure you quickly. What you need to know: Sometimes the process stalls - don’t panic. If you haven’t heard back, reach out to the recruiter or hiring manager with a polite follow-up. Delays often happen due to internal discussions or evaluation of other candidates. If you’re in competition at the final stage (likely), set yourself apart with something extra: Send a thoughtful follow-up email sharing actionable ideas or insights. Reinforce your value with creative, specific contributions. (This is how I landed my first tech role!) When you get the offer, always negotiate.  Companies expect it, especially from strong candidates. This is your moment to secure the best package, and good hiring managers will advocate for you. Pro tip:  Negotiation isn’t just about salary. Look at the full package including benefits, equity and perks. Make sure the role aligns with your personal and professional goals. Stay professional and focused. Negotiation is about ensuring the role works for both you and the company. Closing the deal isn’t the end - it’s the start of your next big chapter. How can you land your dream job faster? Here’s the truth: landing your dream PMM role is an entirely different skill set than being a great PMM. It takes strategy, focus, and support. Even confident VPs struggle to stay motivated and consistent in today’s volatile market. So over the past months, I’ve put everything I’ve learned from years of coaching, student feedback from my previous courses, running my community, and industry changes into creating my newest program - the ​ PMM Dream Job System ​ . This is a proven program to help you: Navigate the entire job search process with 30 impactful, bite-sized lessons across 9 actionable modules, packed with exclusive PMM job search content, templates and guides. Stay motivated with monthly  live group coaching,  a daily-active job search community , and a buddy accountability system . This is truly my best work yet. Ready to take the next step? Join the waitlist today and start building the career you deserve. As a reward for those who take action, you’ll get access to 3 exclusive bonuses 🎁 : Bonus 1: The perfect mock interview answer on how to introduce yourself Bonus 2: Interview insights and tips delivered to your inbox Bonus 3: Exclusive early access to The PMM Dream Job System To your success, Yi Lin

Hello, and welcome to the Courageous Careers newsletter, read by 4,000 professionals looking to land, grow, and thrive in their dream product marketing roles. Want to sponsor a future newsletter or learn more about other sponsorship opportunities? Email hello@courageous-careers.com . I recently returned from a much-needed family vacation in Switzerland, which was refreshing (to say the least!). I want to emphasize to everyone that taking time off is both possible  and essential . Don't get caught up in the hustle; take a step back and recharge. Today’s content covers part three  in a four-part series on How to Build Your Product Marketing Strategy : ​ Part 1: The 3-step product marketing strategy framework ​ ​ Part 2: Aligning the strategy with the business stage ​ Part 3: Operationalize product marketing through growth tactics ← today’s newsletter 😍 Part 4: Scaling the strategy to action by building a team With that…let’s dive in! How To Build Your PMM Strategy Part 3: Operationalizing Product Marketing Through Growth Tactics Growth is all the buzz. Companies want to grow again, and they want to do it smartly. ​Lenny’s​  latest hiring data shows that growth-titled roles are growing faster than all other roles. ​ Source: Lenny’s Newsletter ​ While the data is mostly from product roles, the same applies to marketing. I recently helped a startup hire its first marketer. The profile we determined? A combination of product marketing and growth marketing skills—the golden combo. Why is this the golden combo? If you think about it, the best marketer needs to know strategy AND how to execute tactics. But the challenge I see with PMMs is they can be too much in the silo of their world. The result? They can’t tie what they do to their results and have a harder time proving value. Key point: To be a great PMM (whether you want to be a CMO or not), you must understand growth tactics and how they relate to strategic planning. So, let’s dive in to help you understand growth tactics and planning. Step 1: Understanding Growth Tactics Growth expert ​Elena Verna​  describes growth as “your ability to predictably, sustainably, and competitively answer the question of how you acquire, retain, and monetize customers.” So, to drive growth, we need to consider these three levers: Acquisition lever:  The company acquires customers through awareness (top of the funnel), interest (middle of the funnel), and activation/purchase (bottom of the funnel). Retention lever : The company retains and expands existing customer revenue through feature expansions, reliability, and services. Monetization lever : The company charges customers to optimize for revenue and profit. While these concepts are PLG-focused, they apply more broadly to every type of business. Most businesses, no matter what kind, use a combination of tactics across these three levers across sales, marketing, and product. Understanding the most common tactics is extremely important for PMMs to inform their own strategy and determine which efforts require collaboration with different teams. I built the tactics table below to use as a guide. Note that this is not exhaustive and some tactics will fall into multiple buckets across teams. A word on monetization—many PMMs have not worked on monetization, as it can be owned by other teams like product management or sales, depending on the business model. However, because monetization relies on a thorough understanding of personas and customer research, PMMs should have experience with it. In my private client community, I did training on monetization and pricing 101 and how to get involved in pricing as a PMM. Source: Yi Lin Pei, Courageous Careers Section 2: Operationalizing the tactics to drive marketing Now that you understand the common growth tactics by growth lever and business model, it’s time to use it as an input/consideration when you create a marketing plan. According to the book LOVED by Martina Launchengco , product marketing work gets embedded in larger marketing plans that cover all marketing activities. So, it’s essential to ensure the GTM strategy and PMM foundation research work are covered in the larger marketing plan. No matter who PMM reports into, ensuring marketing plans encompass details of GTM will help bring it to life through the GTM engine, and connect marketing with product. If you are trying to figure out how to do this, this is the process I used to go through every quarter to ensure our team’s plans are embedded in the marketing plan. Step A: Determine the key growth lever to meet the business goal It’s usually very hard to focus on multiple growth levers simultaneously and achieve the best results. Instead, I recommend prioritizing the most important lever and funnel stage first. For instance, if your company’s key goal is to reach $20M in revenue by driving pipeline and increasing conversion rates, then it’s important to focus on the Acquisition lever. Then, evaluate which stage of the acquisition journey has the biggest drop-off and therefore the most significant room for improvement. For instance, if your company consistently hits their top-of-funnel goals and captures a lot of leads, but they are not converting well into accepted opportunities, it makes sense to focus your efforts on this middle part of the funnel to drive better lead → opportunity conversion. Step B: Use the PMM framework to map out product marketing strategy and tactics Before jumping directly to growth tactics, it’s important to run through the key gap/challenge from Step A through the ​ PMM framework in Part 1​ . This ensures the foundational issues are addressed. Using the same example above, let’s say you are now trying to understand why leads are not converting to opportunities. You found two key reasons: The lead quality is low.  In this case, it’s important to define the audience, better define the ICP, and set better qualification criteria to select the leads. The lead quality is good. In this case, leads are not properly nurtured and segmented so the messaging sent to leads is generic. You need to segment the ICP and create more appealing segment-specific messaging. Step C: Choose the growth tactic to double down as a bit bet. With a solid strategy in place, it’s time to pick a growth tactic that fits the company’s business model. If the company has a history of being marketing-led and boasts a strong lifecycle marketing team with a good email marketing track record, a key growth tactic could be to create a segmented email nurture sequence. Even if product marketing doesn’t directly own this tactic, you’re in a great position to suggest co-owning it with lifecycle marketing. You can offer valuable insights on your ideal customer profile, segmentation, and messaging to help them develop effective email sequences. Step D: Complete the rest of the marketing plan with additional tactics. Once that tactic has been determined, you can use a similar process to complete the rest of the marketing plan and show the final result in a funnel, which could look like the graph below. Source: Yi Lin Pei, Courageous Careers Congrats! You’ve now used PMM fundamentals and growth tactics to build a strong PMM team plan that feeds into the overall marketing activities. You've pinpointed the highest-impact strategies for growth based on your market insights, customer understanding, and growth levers. Implementing this approach every quarter will shift you from a passive role to a more proactive and strategic PMM, whether you're an individual contributor or a team lead. Let me know what you think! You don’t have to do it alone. If these ideas sound exciting but a bit overwhelming, you’re not alone—I’m here to help! With my signature coaching programs , you can confidently step into your new role or become the leader you’re meant to be. Together, we’ll tackle any tactical or strategic topic that will help you achieve the best results for your team and hit your career goals. ​Learn more about both programs here.​ ​And schedule time with me to get set up here.​ “Through working with Yi Lin, I was able to identify my priority and craft an action plan that I was able to immediately put into action and deliver impact. Yi Lin also had the right resources and answers to all of my questions and customized our coaching to fit the specific challenges I faced at each juncture - from product activation, launches, to goal setting and more. I highly recommend Yi Lin's coaching if you are looking to level up!” How Susan Landed A Senior PMM Job in Just Five Weeks I’m thrilled to share Susan's inspiring journey from layoff to landing a senior PMM role at Semble! As a client of my Job Search Membership Program, Susan transformed her job search techniques and her career: She went above and beyond to "show vs. tell" in her assignment She honed her communication skills and other pinpointed areas of improvement identified in her interview process And she stayed positive. Her strategic efforts and my program’s support helped her overcome final-round rejections and land a dream role. Susan's story highlights the power of resilience and the right guidance. Learn more about how you can achieve similar success here (click on the membership program option).

Hello, and welcome to the Courageous Careers newsletter, read by 4,000+ professionals looking to land, grow, and thrive in their dream product marketing roles. Today’s special edition features some of the most frequently asked questions I get on job search and career development. I share: What to do when you feel stuck in your career 🪨 What to do when you keep getting denied a promotion 💸 How to ace stakeholder/loop interviews 👩‍💼 If you are looking for part 4 of the series “How to build your product marketing strategy,” don’t worry - it will come out next month. You can read the previous three articles here . With that…let’s dive in! Let me work directly with your startup… Recently, on LinkedIn, I announced that 🌟 I'm growing! 🌟 After years of helping individuals excel in product marketing, I'm expanding my focus to empower startups in building strong PMM functions. Building a successful product marketing team in a startup is hard- especially now. The role's ambiguity, limited resources, and pressure to deliver quickly have left many young PMM teams struggling and founders doubting PMM's value. That's where I come in. Over the past year, I've helped startup PMM teams: Build a GTM launch process and hiring strategy. In 6 months, the PMM team grew from 1 to 4, significantly boosting conversion. Develop US-market positioning in 2 weeks, enabling confident market entry. Streamline team strategy to 3 key priorities, improving funnel metrics while keeping the team's sanity intact. 😂 Whether you need team coaching or fractional PMM advising, I'm here to help. Please email me at peiyilin09@gmail.com if you'd like a free consultation. Best of My Product Marketing Career Advice Question 1: I've been at my current company for four years, and I feel stuck. It's not terrible, but I fear I'm just letting time pass. I'm unsure about my next steps or how to make a change. How can I create a career plan? Deciding what to do next in our careers can be daunting. Many common fears hold us back, such as “What if I make the wrong move?” or “What if my next job isn’t perfect?” Early in my career, I felt the same way. Despite feeling stuck in my consulting job, it took me nearly six years to make a change because I feared making the wrong decision. So, the first step in any career planning is to let go of the idea that there’s only one perfect path. Instead, embrace the concept of a winding career journey with multiple possibilities—most of which are reversible and could lead you to exciting, unforeseen opportunities. Once you've embraced this mindset, you can follow these steps to create a career plan: Write your future vision story: ​ This isn’t about a specific job title or salary. It’s about envisioning your day-to-day life and how you want to feel. Do you want a work-life balance that allows for deep work in the morning and family time in the evening? Or do you see yourself leading strategy in a fast-paced company, working on high-stakes projects? Your vision should capture the essence of your ideal life. Identify 2-3 potential paths: ​ Once you have your vision, identify a few potential paths to achieve it. Assess whether your current role aligns with your vision. For instance, if you imagine a 35-hour work week but are currently working 80 hours, you’ll know a change is needed. Your options might include switching jobs, changing teams, learning new skills, or exploring something entirely different. Prototype your potential paths: ​ After identifying your options, test them as much as possible. The beauty of career paths is that others have walked them before you. Reach out to people in your network who have the roles/careers you’re considering. Conduct informational interviews to understand if those paths align with your vision. You can also test the waters by volunteering for related projects or taking on part-time work. Choose the path that energizes you the most: ​ After prototyping, choose the path that excites you the most and feels easiest to start. Then, take the smallest, easiest first step to start moving in that direction. Using this approach, my clients have successfully discovered fulfilling new directions. One client moved from big tech to a startup, became a freelance consultant, transitioned from PMM to Chief of Staff, and returned to school to become a creative writer. While their new careers may not be perfect, one thing is certain: they are much happier. I hope these tips help. For further reading, I highly recommend the book Designing Your Life , which is rooted in design thinking principles and has profoundly influenced my coaching style. Question 2: I excel at work, but after three years, I'm still being denied a promotion and paid below market value. I like the company but feel undervalued. What should I do? It's challenging to feel undervalued, especially when you're consistently performing well. To determine your next steps, consider the following approach: Objectively evaluate your performance: ​ Assess your achievements and understand how your organization and manager perceive your contributions. Benchmark your level and pay against industry standards by reviewing market reports and talking to peers and mentors. This will help you determine if your compensation and role are aligned with your skills and contributions. Understand your company’s promotion criteria: ​ If you've consistently received positive feedback in annual reviews but haven’t been promoted, it’s important to ask why. A good leader should provide clear reasons and outline the criteria for reaching the next level. Sometimes, a lack of promotion may be due to the absence of a business need for someone at that level, which may not reflect your performance. Determine your options based on your values: ​ Based on your manager's response, decide on the best course of action. You might choose to stay, seek a different role within the company, or explore opportunities elsewhere if you feel undervalued. Ensure your decision aligns with your core values—such as learning opportunities, the caliber of colleagues, and your future career vision—not just extrinsic factors like title or compensation. Move forward with focus: ​ If you conclude that the company no longer aligns with your values or doesn’t appreciate your contributions, it may be time to move on. In this case: Clearly define your target, including the size of the company, business model, industry, and desired role. Determine your value proposition for potential employers: Articulate in your application materials why you’re the best hire for those companies and what unique value you can bring. Apply to those companies with a polished resume, cover letter, and direct outreach to hiring managers to maximize your chances of landing interviews. Practice interviews using structured frameworks, like my PSAR framework, ensuring your answers reflect the level you’re aiming for, not your current position. Negotiate your offer and title confidently based on your value and market rate. Example: A client of mine, a founding PMM, was excellent at his job and asked for a promotion after over two years at his company. Despite clearly demonstrating his significant impact and crucial role in key projects, the company repeatedly refused to promote him, citing budget constraints. After discussing his options with me, he decided it was time to move on. He quickly received an offer from another company with a 50% pay increase and a higher title—perfectly aligned with his career vision and values. When he resigned, his old employer immediately matched his new offer (!), proving there were no budget constraints—they had simply taken advantage of him. While this situation may not apply to everyone, if you’re a top performer but are repeatedly denied a promotion, it’s likely time to evaluate new opportunities where your contributions are truly valued. Q3: I am currently interviewing for new roles but I keep getting stuck in loop interviews with PMs and Sales. What should I do differently? That’s a great question. Many people get stuck at this stage because their responses don’t match what their audience wants and needs to hear. Here are three steps to follow: Step 1: Understand each stakeholder's perspective. Once you do, anticipate the questions they’re likely to ask. Here are the two most common stakeholders: 👩‍🔧 Product Managers: Product managers want to see your commitment to their product's success. Demonstrate how you've collaborated, championed products, helped prioritize roadmaps, or driven adoption through launches. In startups, PMs may have misconceptions about PMMs. This is a chance to clarify what a great PM-PMM relationship looks like. Potential questions: Can you describe your product marketing experience? How do you approach understanding a new product and market? How do you develop a launch strategy? How do you ensure product-marketing alignment? If post-launch adoption is low, what steps would you take? 👩‍🔧 Sales: In B2B companies, product marketing's relationship with sales is crucial (and sometimes contentious). Sales teams need to see your strategic value in the enablement activities that product marketing does. Potential questions they might ask: How do marketing initiatives support our sales goals? What sales collateral will you provide? How do you ensure product messaging resonates with our target audience? How do you gather sales feedback on marketing materials? What KPIs do you track for sales enablement effectiveness? Step 2: Prepare your responses using a structured framework, such as the PSAR framework I developed: In your answers, emphasize the role of the stakeholder team and how you collaborated with them, explaining the rationale behind your actions, not just the actions themselves. When describing a work experience, follow this structure: [Process] Outline your approach to show systems-level thinking. [Situation] Briefly state the task, challenge, or goal. [Action] Detail your actions, following the process you outlined. [Results] Share the impact, results, and learnings. Here is an example: Can you tell me a time you had to launch a product to market? [Process] When I launch products, I follow a three-step process to ensure the best results. First, I validate the product/market fit to answer the what, how, when, and why of the launch. Then, I develop the positioning and messaging. Lastly, I determine the promotional and channel strategy, including internal enablement. [Situation] Last year, I was tasked with launching a DEI tool to help SMBs track their diversity metrics easily. The goal for this launch was to drive pipeline for our sales team. [Action] I first aligned with my PM counterpart to understand the target persona, problems we'd solve, and our unique benefit. I then created a brief capturing these details and identified positioning for the SMB market. After sharing this with cross-functional teams for buy-in, I developed the promotional strategy, focusing on educational webinars with industry experts rather than simply pushing product features. [Result] We exceeded our launch target within the set timeframe. My launch playbook became widely adopted across the team due to this success. Step 3: Finally, tailor your messaging by using the exact language each stakeholder uses. For example, when speaking with product managers, use terms like "roadmaps," "adoption," "release/launch," "product development lifecycle," and "backlog." When speaking with sales, use terms like "deal cycle," "win rates," and "win/loss analysis." You don’t have to do it alone. I offer three programs that can help product marketers like you: ​ Land: My job search Blueprint Course to help you land your dream job fast (currently on sale!) ​ Grow: Succeed in your product marketing role in the first 90 days. Deliver value quickly and minimize stress. ​ Thrive: Thrive in your product marketing role. Achieve your career goals and get to the next level. That's all for this issue. See you next time!

Susan Liu is a client who enrolled in my Job Search Membership Program . When we met, she was trying to overcome the final round of rejections and bounce back after a layoff. Through hard work, she landed a senior product marketing manager job at a reputable startup within five weeks of working together.  Her story is truly transformational.  I recently caught up with Susan to have her tell her story and share some of what she’s learned. I hope she inspires you the way she has inspired me! Yi Lin: What did you do for work before your recent job search? Susan : I had a varied career, starting as a pharmacist and then working in consulting roles in digital transformation, strategy and innovation, and product management.  There was a layoff at my last consulting role. And initially, when I was made redundant, I was in denial. I thought, "Oh, it's okay, I'll just get another job," but I didn't realize how tough the job market was.  Coming from a consulting background, I had a very generalist skill set. I was applying for various types of roles, which made my applications weak because they lacked focus.  It was an even tougher market to be trying to make a career change.  But I didn’t want to give up on myself; I wanted to find a job I was interested in. Once I zeroed in on product marketing roles and started only applying to them, I started having success. Wow, you have a fantastic background! Why did you choose to focus on product marketing?  As I struggled through interviews, I took a moment to think about what type of work I enjoy most and how that overlaps with my skill set. A lot of that converged around product marketing. In consulting, I often tested new ideas, making fake landing pages and prototypes to see if they solved a pain point and whether people would pay for them. Realizing that I enjoyed these elements more made me understand that I actually preferred product marketing. Amazing. Switching back to job searching, how did you stay positive during the search? That’s a great question. Since the search was long (I spent six months searching before joining the coaching program), I had to stay positive and keep moving forward. Instead of just grinding, I focused on building new skills while on the job hunt. I realized no career is ever safe, so adapting and changing with the times is essential.  In my time off, I attended a data analytics boot camp, which is something I was always curious about but didn’t have time for before. Additionally, it gave me time to invest in a side project I’d always been interested in—thinking about how to communicate with more impact in a work environment. I started a TikTok channel, researching how we can communicate with impact, and that was instrumental in helping me land my current role. The most important thing for staying positive was realizing that I can learn and apply different skills and be adaptable in a tough situation. How did you identify and address challenges during your search? Improving my communication skills  There were definitely a few challenges I had to overcome. I realized that to stay sane and improve my interviewing skills, I also needed to improve my communication skills. So, I researched different communication techniques, attended improv classes, and took a stand-up course.  It may sound unrelated, but I applied these techniques during the interview to improve my communication and storytelling.  Specifically, I learned to reduce the amount of information for the other person to process and explain it in a way they understood. Before, I struggled to articulate my experiences because of the wide range of projects I've worked on. I realized I needed to communicate in a way others could understand. This mindset shift improved my interview success. Improving job search strategy  In addition to communications, I also found that I kept having the same problem with product marketing interviews–I was doing everything right to land interviews and get all the way to the third or final round, but I couldn’t quite nail the case study or assignment. So, I was getting very close but was struggling to close offers.  I had been following you (Yi Lin) for a while and loved your content. Then, as I began reflecting on my mistakes and identifying areas where I required additional assistance, I realized I wanted more dedicated support than reading your content online. That's when I joined your Job Search Membership Program . Immediately after I joined, I attended a case study workshop you hosted and immediately realized my mistakes. I applied all the techniques I learned, specifically your "show, don't tell" approach  - and that was one of the most important things that helped me land the role at Semble. In addition, I was pleasantly surprised by all the other elements of the program.  The masterclasses you offered were a shortcut to mastering PMM best practices and techniques. Plus, the community you built is incredibly supportive and knowledgeable, and the buddy system kept me motivated throughout the search.  All in all, I just want to say to everyone that you can’t put a price tag on the technical knowledge shared in the program, but what truly sets you apart is Yi Lin's genuine kindness and commitment to each person’s success.  Thank you so much! It’s been a pleasure working with you. Can you tell us more about landing your product marketing job - the breakthrough moment, and how you felt?  The job search membership program was a real game changer in my job search. As a career switcher, I landed a Product Marketing role just five weeks after starting the program, beating candidates with over five years of experience. The breakthrough moment was truly the “show, don’t tell” approach for the case study. This method highlighted my specific skills and creative thinking, which helped me secure the job. I even created a sales enablement video as part of my project. This approach gave me confidence during the interview and allowed me to showcase my abilities effectively.  Starting the new job was an emotional and exciting experience. I laughed and cried when I got the news. Meeting the team and diving into the product and industry has been amazing, and I’m eager to address the significant healthcare challenges ahead. What advice would you give to other product marketing job seekers? My advice to people in a long job search is to focus outward instead of inward. You can lose confidence when something traumatic happens, like losing your job. But if you focus outward, you have the clarity to think about why a company is hiring, what problems they're facing, and how you can solve them.  Don't worry about not having perfect skills; reframe your mindset. Previously, as a career switcher, having a generalist background was a disadvantage.  However, by systematically building my strengths and applying these new ideas in interviews, I landed a role.   Even though I had more time off than I would have liked, it gave me time to think about what I wanted to do and helped me refocus. I zeroed in on product marketing and companies with a mission I believed in. During the job hunt, I realized that our time in life is limited and moves simultaneously fast and slow.  I want to spend my future on something I care about, like improving healthcare, which is Semble's mission. I'm eager to make an impact in my role by setting up new processes. Most of all, I'm thrilled to keep working with Yi Lin.  I want to continue asking for help and building my strengths to succeed, even beyond the interview process. If you’re still in a job search, focus on your strengths, showcase them in interviews, and believe in yourself. One day, this will be a blip, a transformative experience. Thank you so much, Susan!  For a step-by-step walk-through on how to land your next PMM job with ease and confidence, check out my free guide here . To learn more about the Job Search Membership Program, navigate to this page and click on “The Membership Program” option (Currently on sale!) Susan also created a free course on how to use the communication skills she learned to ace storytelling in interviews. Check it out here !

Today, I will share my framework for building a strong product marketing strategy - the foundation you need to up-level as a product marketer or leader. Today’s content covers part two in a multi-part series on How to Build Your Product Marketing Strategy: ​Part 1: The 3-step product marketing strategy framework ​ Part 2: Aligning the strategy with the business stage (today’s newsletter 😍) Part 3: Operationalizing the strategy through growth tactics Part 4: Scaling the strategy to action by building a team What to level up in your product marketing career? Then my Grow and Thrive programs might just be for you. Being a startup PMM can be stressful and lonely, but you don't have to do it alone. Through my 1-1 coaching programs, you can succeed in your role and level up faster and more confidently by having a trusted guide. Learn more about the program here. How To Build A PMM Strategy Part 2: Product Marketing Strategy by Business Stage I recently advised a service-based startup that has been in business for 20 years and has thousands of customers. When they first reached out, I assumed they wanted to scale their business and optimize their GTM. However, I quickly realized that’s not what they need. Despite being an established growth-stage company, they had one newly hired PMM and no established processes. Even though it was a mature company, its new product—its first-ever SaaS product—required significant learning and market feedback, much like an early-stage startup. So, instead of building out processes for them or suggesting they spend months on extensive research for positioning and messaging, I guided them to leverage the collective knowledge of their entire team to create a V1 version of their positioning and messaging for the new product. I also helped them establish a quick launch process and trained the team to launch it and capture customer feedback. This saved months of work and helped them quickly capture market feedback to iterate their GTM. I share this because while the core components of a strong product marketing strategy should be the same across companies, their applications can differ significantly by company stage. This article highlights the differences and sets the right expectations for product marketing strategy at three different company sizes: early, growth, and mature stages. For current PMMs and job seekers: I hope this newsletter helps you understand the companies most suited to your skill set. For managers, founders, and team leaders: This newsletter will help you better understand how to scope out product marketing and hire the right PMM for your stage. Early Stage: Validating Product/Market Fit and Rising Awareness (Series A) Early-stage startups are all about quick iterations and learning. This is not a time to obsess over processes or invest heavily in deep research—you won’t have the resources to afford it, nor do you have enough confidence in your PMF to pour money into scaling it yet. This is about being scrappy and making educated guesses to find your best customers who will consistently choose you over others. Research: Research at this stage should be gathered directly from any team that has direct contact with customers: Product Management, Founders, Customer Success, Sales, etc. The job of a PMM is to be able to synthesize this information quickly to provide insights. Primary research, e.g., customer interviews done at this stage, should generally take weeks and not months and focus on methods that will generate the most useful information with the smallest possible resource requirements. Positioning and messaging: The insights from the research gathered should immediately inform the positioning and messaging. For early-stage startups, it’s important to create positioning with a strong point of view. This POV needs to capture the market's attention to drive awareness, which the company desperately needs at this stage of the business. The PMM should pay attention to market feedback on the positioning and messaging (e.g., from sales conversations) to iteratively improve it. GTM strategy: The GTM strategy should focus on identifying a few channels that will deliver 80% of results. For instance, if you are in the LLM or developer space, prioritizing channel partnerships within the ecosystems may give you much higher returns than paid media. The PMM’s role here is to provide insights into the customer’s journey to help determine the critical channels of focus. This is also a time to create the first version of the sales playbook and sales process. PMM profile: At this stage, there is likely a solo PMM acting as the head of product marketing. Given that this PMM needs to be scrappy, fast-moving, and able to deliver a wide range of tasks with relatively little supervision, this hire will need to be a senior PMM level hire, at minimum, with some prior entrepreneurial experience or tendency. Example: When I was the founding PMM at a Series A startup (when AI was in its infancy), the company led with a very strong AI-focused messaging. Yet, while initial customers were excited about AI, the company had trouble capturing more “mainstream” customers. I took on a challenge to conduct some research by talking directly to salespeople and reviewing Chorus calls. I realized many customers had no technical background, didn’t understand AI, and even feared it would eliminate their jobs. This led me to create an AI demo video and shift our positioning to focus on improving their jobs and elevating their status in the company. Growth Stage: Scaling For Rapid Growth (Series B -> C) Let’s say your early-stage startup found PMF. The next stage is the growth stage. This stage is “all hands on deck” and is about scaling success as quickly as possible. This is the time to build repeatable processes and ensure all three growth levers (acquisition, retention, and monetization) are on fire. Research: At the growth stage, there should be a more standardized effort to regularly conduct market, competitive, and customer research, including investing resources in routines to conduct interviews, surveys, and other analytical methods (either through third-party agencies or internal employees). The results of the research should help refine a detailed understanding of buyer personas, market trends, and competitive dynamics. Positioning and messaging: At this stage, PMM should have created clear, tested, and differentiated positioning. Multiple products could also be present at this point, so an aligned product portfolio and brand-level messaging will also be important. The positioning and messaging should also be revisited and reviewed frequently to reflect changing market dynamics and customer insights. GTM strategy: In addition to core channels, product marketers should provide insights to cultivate additional channels for growth and support multi-channel marketing campaigns throughout the funnel, from awareness campaigns to retention campaigns. There should also be a fully built-out sales enablement process to support a growing salesforce, as well as a repeatable and tested product launch process. PMM profile: The PMMs who will succeed here are business strategists with proven experience executing. Given that many of the responsibilities here are focused on enabling field teams to scale their efforts, the PMM must also have exceptional skills in building relationships, influencing without authority, and making convincing business cases. The head of PMM, in this case, is usually a director-level person who is a strong coach-player. A strong early-stage founding PMM may NOT make a great director at this stage, as the key strengths differ. Founding PMMs trying to get promoted here must reframe their roles to be focused on scaling, building processes, and enabling others instead of being the Swiss Army knife do-it-all. Example: As the director of product marketing at Teachable, my main mission was to build and scale product marketing to enable the rest of the organization. As Teachable is product-led, one of my main focuses was piloting a product launch process. I then scaled our team to launch products effectively to the market to maximize each launch effort and support four separate product teams. Mature Stage: Maintain Sustained Growth And Market Share (Series D+) When a company has reached the mature stage, it’s likely to have a significant market share and be a category leader. At this stage, product marketing activities are more specialized to provide more advanced and deeper support. The goal for this stage is to maintain sustained growth and find new market entry opportunities for expansion. Research: At a mature company, there are usually fully dedicated insights teams that provide detailed customer, competitive, market, and product-level insights. Product marketing aims to uncover insights to drive business growth (e.g., reducing churn, expanding to a new market, and optimizing pricing). The data here has robust depths and breadths, and PMMs should have the skillsets to analyze and interpret the data and use it to influence the product roadmap regularly. Positioning and messaging: While the core positioning should be well established, this stage will likely focus on strengthening the positioning to prevent competitors and challengers from taking over market share. This could also involve repositioning efforts that respond to major product developments, mergers and acquisitions, or expansions into new markets and verticals. Positioning for product suites and portfolios will continue to be important, given the scope of products at this point. GTM strategy: In addition to dominating every channel, PMMs here generally need to support and lead large-scale, global, and regional launches and campaigns to reach business goals. Sales enablement here will also have reached its most mature state, with dedicated sales enablement roles that provide even more in-depth support. PMM profile:—The PMMs at large mature companies are generally more specialized and have a narrower scope but much larger impact from a business perspective. This means they need to be able to think extremely critically about the proposals they put forth, as each will have major financial consequences. In addition, they need to be comfortable presenting business cases, getting buy-in, and knowing how to navigate the organizational culture deftly. Example: When I was a newbie marketer at Autodesk, the flagship AutoCAD brand faced increasing competition from cheaper imitation brands. So, my team created a global campaign to strengthen AutoCAD's positioning as the original brand for original thinkers. I led the development of major customer stories around the world that became a main pillar of the campaign. This helped re-establish and reinforce AutoCAD's value in customers' minds. Wrapping up The point here is that while the foundations of PMM are the same, its scope, application, and complexity change by stage. The best PMMs should be able to adapt to the growth stage, clearly communicate that to others in the company, and act as evangelists for the function. Of course, these are guidelines (not hard rules), and as some of my examples demonstrated, mature companies can have the product marketing maturity of a small start-up. The most important thing is that you understand which stage your company is at and act accordingly. There’s so much confusion around what a modern go-to-market is, and what marketing’s role is in developing and executing against a successful GTM strategy. Are you a modern marketer? Check out my Episode with the Marchitect In the first episode of The Marchitect, Sangram Vajre, Founder at GTM Partners, Trinity Nguyen, VP Marketing at UserGems, and Yi Lin Pei, Founder at Courageous Careers share: The modern go-to-market, and the role of the CMO and their PMM leader The difference between marketing the business and the business of marketing The key characteristics of a modern CMO & PMM leader What GTM motions should be top of mind for modern marketers ​Listen to the episode here. ​ That's all for today. See you next time! Yi Lin

Welcome to the Courageous Careers newsletter! My goal is to help you land, grow, and thrive in your dream product marketing role with confidence and courage. Today, I will share my framework for building a strong product marketing strategy - the foundation you need to up-level as a product marketer or leader. Today’s content kicks off the first part in a multi-part series on How to Build Your Product Marketing Strategy 🎉 Part 1: The 3-step product marketing strategy ← this newsletter 😍 Part 2: Aligning the strategy with the growth stage and funnel Part 3: Operationalizing the strategy so you can see results Part 4: Scaling the strategy through building a team ​ But first, I would like to start with an announcement. Everything You Need To Land Your Dream Job For the last five months, I’ve been working on something that will be the most valuable tool for helping you land your next role as a product marketer: The Dream Job Blueprint Course for Product Marketers. This is the culmination of my work as a job search coach. It includes everything you need to land your dream job (in weeks, not months). It is the ONLY system designed for product marketers and has been vigorously tested over three years. The course combines my own proven pathway to job success plus a supportive community to help you stay focused and committed. The public launch is coming in May, but I am excited to invite you to join the waitlist to access early bird discounts and get exclusive content and bonuses. The 3-Step Product Marketing Strategy Framework No matter the organization, product marketing almost always struggles to show/generate tangible results, is poorly understood across the organization, and is at risk of being delegated as a supportive function. Product marketing often struggles to emerge as a strategic role at the same table as product, sales, or other marketing functions. While there are many reasons for these challenges, the root cause is a lack of a clear, simple-to-follow framework. While tactics can get us started and may result in quick wins, only true SYSTEMS can help us deliver sustained results that will lead to the right growth for the business. So what foundational system should we adopt? Over the years, I have studied and researched half a dozen PMM strategy frameworks ranging from highly complex to overtly simple. But none of them did the trick for me. So, I came up with a three-step framework that is both easy to understand and comprehensive. I have used this framework in my roles (it helped me go from newbie PMM to director in three years) and coached my clients to adopt it and rapidly gain traction in their roles. Understanding and building your product marketing strategy using this framework is the first key step to creating a powerful PMM engine for the company. So, let’s look at the components. Step 0: Pre-requisite (not included in the above chart) You need to have product-market fit (or at least be on the way to finding that). If your product doesn't address customer needs, no matter how much marketing is done, it won't generate results. If you can do a detailed breakdown of your product capabilities and how that leads to value, you'll be in a much better spot to begin setting a strong product marketing foundation. Step 1: Research The most important question any business should answer is “Who do we target?” But this should go beyond merely a persona profile. It should include segmenting customers, understanding their market, knowing what frustrations and problems they face, and understanding the customer journey. For that, you need to conduct three kinds of research: customer, competitive, and market research. Market Research: This is really important to help you understand the market today and in the future to determine the most viable customer segment to focus on and how to position against emerging threats/opportunities. It will also help you understand the partner ecosystem. Competitive Research: This will help you map out the competitive landscape within your market segment, understand the strengths and weaknesses of similar products that solve the same JTBD for target customers Customer Research: This is the most important research activity you should do. This is how you get a detailed understanding of target customers' jobs to be done, needs, and how they make purchase decisions and use your product. Together, these three research activities will help you build a strong Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and detailed buyer personas. A product marketing team should spend a minimum of 20% of their time engaged in research to get insights and power strategy, messaging, and GTM. The table below lists the most important research activities to undertake. Step 2: Positioning and Messaging The insights from activities in Step 1 should power positioning and messaging - the most important role of a product marketer, as we are the storytellers of the product. According to the book, LOVED: Positioning is the place a product occupies in people’s minds. It sets a context in which the value prop of a product is clear. Messaging is what teams use to communicate the positioning to customers. A narrative is a story that stitches all of that together to make it stick. There are various positioning and messaging gurus like April Dunford and Emma Stratton out there sharing valuable tips, so I won’t dive into this step in too much detail. One call out I want to make is that if you work at a one-product company, your brand's and product's positioning may be hard to distinguish. They should be the same when it’s one product. As the company matures and you have multiple product lines, the positioning for the brand and the product will need to be separated (e.g., Adobe the brand vs. Photoshop the product). ​See my post​ here to distinguish the two. As product marketers, we need to spend at least 30% of our time on positioning and messaging and revisit it often based on the specific dynamics in the market and product marketing industry. Step 3: GTM You developed strong positioning and messaging, but how can customers learn about your product and buy it? You need a clear GTM plan that aligns with business goals. To have a great GTM strategy plan, you have to consider the specific channels customers are most likely to find your product, price, and package the product to align with perceived value and enable internal teams. Hence, they understand the product's value and can communicate that to customers. While most B2B teams focus on sales enablement, it’s equally important to enable other teams, such as marketing and customer success (which I collectively call field enablement). One of the most useful frameworks on GTM I have seen is from the book LOVED: the GTM Launch Canvas. Instead of an extended deck or checklists, having a dynamic, big-picture canvas that all teams can see and contribute to will help drive better transparency and ownership. This is my recreation of her canvas with my examples. To read more about how to create one, ​read this post here.​ Effective PMM strategies require an organic flywheel to work together. A strong process like this creates a feedback loop, with one step feeding into the next. Once this foundation is built, you can customize the framework for your needs. We’ll explore this in the next newsletter. Ready to land your next job? If you don’t want to spend MONTHS looking for your next product marketing role, this is the course for you. The ​Dream Job Blueprint Course for Product Marketers​ is the ONLY system designed for product marketers and has been vigorously tested over 3 years. It covers the A-Z of job search and includes everything you need to land your dream job in weeks and not months.

Welcome to my newsletter! And Happy International Women’s Day! 🦸 You should have four different types of people in your career: mentors, sponsors, coaches, and thought partners. No one is just self-made. We all stand on the shoulders of people who came before us and propped us up along the way. And if you’re strategic about the different kinds of support you seek, you’ll be more successful. Mentorship, sponsorship, partnership, and coaching are greater together than the sum of their parts. I’ll explain what I mean. Let’s dive in. When I started my journey in product marketing, I was completely new to the industry. Feeling isolated, I contacted a VP at my new company who went to the same school as me for a coffee chat. She didn’t respond for several weeks, and I gave up on the idea that she might. But one day, she approached me at my desk, apologized for not reaching out sooner, and we went for lunch that day. Over lunch, I learned about her journey from non-profit to tech and then her rise from manager to VP of Sales in just a few years. Her story inspired me, and I told her I would love to assist her team on sales deals. Surprisingly, she took me up on my offer. Over the next six months, I helped the team on several special enterprise deals by providing collateral and research support (in addition to performing my core duties). Through consistently providing reliable and quality support, I started getting more opportunities at work to enable larger and larger deals, including jumping on planes to fly cross-country with Sales leaders. Then, the Sales team nominated me for a company award, which gave me great visibility and helped me secure a promotion within one year. I think back to this story often because if I had not sent that initial email to the VP, I don’t believe I would have had the same opportunity or success. My product marketing career was accelerated because someone advocated for me. This is an example of a career sponsor. The VP of Sales gave me a chance to work on something I didn’t have easy access to, which opened the door for future opportunities, promotions, etc. (Note: I did have to work hard to earn a lot of the things that resulted, but that wouldn’t have been possible had she not taken a chance on me). But I certainly didn’t start my career there. When I first came to the US, I had no relatives, family, or friends to support me. As someone who came from a traditional Asian culture, I grew up with the belief instilled in me that “you have to do things by yourself; otherwise, you’re a failure.” It was only through hard lessons that I realized I could not succeed alone and asking for help is not a sign of weakness but strength. No One Succeeds Alone: Build a Career Team to Accelerate you Product Marketing Career My personal story is one proof point, but research supports what I’ve experienced to be true. Our success is positively correlated with the number of people who want to help us succeed. Recently, I learned about the concept of a career team, a term from my friend ​Al Dea​ (check him out!). A career team is comprised of four main types of people: 1️⃣ Thought partners These are peers to bounce ideas off of. Early in my career, I was fortunate enough to meet awesome peers who challenged my thinking in all the right ways. They can also advise you on sensitive matters and act as confidants—they are right alongside you in their careers and know what you’re going through. 2️⃣ Sponsors It’s nice to have many people who are your peers, but you need people in positions of power, too. Sponsors are generally senior to you and have the power to give you more opportunities. These could be the head of sales, the head of product, your boss, or more. My VP was my sponsor. 3️⃣ Mentors Mentors are people who are more senior to you and can give you advice and inspire you. You generally have to proactively manage the mentor relationship. Most of my mentors are outside of the companies I worked for, and they helped me think through sticky situations, provided insights, and helped me see around corners. 4️⃣ Coaches Coaches are dedicated professionals who help you reach your goals in a structured fashion. They provide you with frameworks, structure, and accountability to a higher degree than mentors. I benefited significantly from the coaches. My coaches taught me how to advocate for myself, earn trust, and be a better leader. Their advice fundamentally changed my mindset. This is the reason why I became a coach to others. Mentors vs. Sponsors The line between mentors and sponsors can be blurry. But they are decidedly not the same thing. According to Deb Liu, author of Take Back Your Power, a mentor supports you by giving advice, whereas a sponsor lifts you up and opens doors. Sponsors are more powerful because they use their reputations to help you grow and create opportunities in a way a mentor could not. So, how do you build your team and specifically find more sponsors? Start by identifying individuals within your company/network whom you admire and may already have a good relationship with. Go to them to seek advice on something specific they can help with. Take their advice, implement that, share with them how you improved based on the advice they have, and offer to help them as well. Continue to do that, and you will develop a trusted relationship over time. Then, ask them to advocate for you to get a new project or put in a good word for your promotion. As you saw in my story, part of the deal with my sponsorship was that I also did more work outside of my core responsibilities, which unlocked doors for me. Sponsorships can’t be forced. When you get a sponsor, you will know it. You will feel they are willing to invest the time and effort to help you. You can use the same technique to find thought partners within your company at similar levels as you. What about coaches? When do you need them? While sponsors, thought partners, and mentors are essential, they cannot provide a coach's structured guidance and neutral perspective. Most people get a coach for the first time when approaching a major career milestone, like wanting to secure a promotion or managing a team for the first time. However, having a coach earlier in your career will help you map out a career roadmap and develop the necessary skills early on to be successful in the long term. I suggest reading ​this article by HBR​ to understand when you should hire a coach. Next steps: So, as you finish reading this article, I suggest doing this exercise (inspired by my friend Al Dea’s work once again) to map out your career team. Specifically: Who was/were the most helpful in your career so far? What relationships do you want to invest in more in 2024 (old or new)? Here is a table you can use to capture the information. If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. Other resources How to Choose the Right Company To Work For The company you choose will have a HUGE impact on how you feel about your career. BUT how do you choose a company in your job search when you have been burnt by toxic work environments, suddenly laid off with zero warning, ghosted multiple times, or have generally lost faith in the system? I know how awful this can be and feel. So here is a 3-step process to make an informed choice on selecting the right company on your job search journey. It includes: How to vet the company How to vet the team How to vet the role ​Read the full post here!​ Related… 23 Reverse Interview Questions (Things To Ask Your Future Boss) Sometimes, your direct manager can have a bigger impact on your mental health than the company you work for. Even though we all know it’s important to find the right manager, most people don't know how to determine the quality of the hiring manager during the interview process. ​Read the full list here!​ From Layoff to Job Offer: Navigating Product Marketing Job Transitions I was recently featured on an episode of Product Marketing Maestros: Tales From the Front Lines. Nitin and I discussed a time when I helped a client land a job in product marketing within two months during a challenging job market. ​Listen to the full podcast episode here.​ Find Coaching and Thought Partners Here: If you want to make a career move, my ​Job Search Membership Program​ is a budget-friendly way to dip your toes into coaching and thought partnership. It combines group coaching and a supportive community of peers you need in this critical juncture. Membership gives you access to: Up to 4 live monthly group coaching calls and workshops, including interview prep, resume review, guest speakers, and more! We’ve had some heavy-weight guest speakers lately, from Emma Stratton, to Anthony Pierri, to Julien Sauvage. Recordings are included in the community as well. My full Job Search Resources Hub has 20+ templates and guides on every stage of the job search journey. The private Slack community with 100+ members and alumni to ask questions, participate in the discussion, connect with others, and access exclusive job opportunities Special offer available now. ​Check out the Membership Program here.

Three years ago, a LinkedIn post changed the trajectory of my life. At the height of COVID, I saw many of my friends getting laid off. I shared a post offering to help anyone who needed help landing their next thing, especially if they were transitioning into something new. I was surprised by the flood of responses I got from it. I worked with over a dozen people from that post - reviewing resumes and helping them with interview prep. Not only did they successfully get jobs, but I also fell in love with the experience. I realized helping people achieve their dreams was my purpose. Since then, my coaching practice has grown little by little. I started working nights and weekends, then finally took the plunge to full-time last year after I felt it was taking off. I have helped over 150 clients directly realize their dreams, from breaking into the industry they want, going after their dream roles, gaining the confidence to succeed in a new role, to getting the promotion they deserve. Helping people achieve their success has been meaningful, and it has also taught me so much in the process. The most important thing it taught me is that it does not matter what your background is, where you come from, where you went to school, or how much experience you have. As long as you have the courage, grit, and follow-through, anyone can build the career that they want. It takes an incredible amount of courage to make our way in life. It takes courage to change careers. It takes courage to ask for help. It takes courage to admit a mistake. It takes courage to speak up. It takes courage to try something new for the first time. It takes courage to quit a job. It takes courage to ask for what you deserve. It takes courage to move to a new country, continent, or even city. It takes courage to keep going even when it’s tough. And it takes courage to admit that where you are is not where you ultimately want to be - that you desire something greater in this life. I was spending almost all of my time helping courageous people face their fears and push themselves to new heights, and the name and structure of my business didn’t match that. I wanted to make sure that, from the outside, my business appeared as it really is. So, to better reflect my purpose, I’ve rebranded my business and re-upped my offerings to be centered around courage. Starting today, my business is no longer “Tech Growth Coach.” Starting today, I show up every morning to build “Courageous Careers.” While the core of the business is the same, here is how Courageous Careers is different: Instead of only “growth,” Courageous Careers is aimed at helping you build a more courageous and confident career by empowering you to overcome your doubts and challenges. And to grow with courage, you need more than just 1:1 coaching. You also need community and best practices. So Courageous Careers will also offer additional offerings, including a job search membership program (which I have been building for more than a year and is finally available now!), and more in the future. Finally, Courageous Careers will be solely focused on product marketing coaching. Given my passion for the role and its increasing importance, I will dedicate myself fully to helping aspiring and current product marketers. So, how can Courageous Careers help you: If you are looking for a job: You can work with me on a custom, 1-1 basis, OR You can join my membership program to enjoy group coaching and support in a close-knit community (new offer to join the existing member class!) If you are looking to onboard a new job with confidence: You can work with me on a 1-1 basis and enjoy group workshops and a supportive community of peers. If you are looking to thrive in your role (to get unstuck, get a promotion or more): You can also work with me on a 1-1 basis and enjoy group workshops and a supportive community of peers. To celebrate this rebrand, all the programs are on sale for the months of Feburary. Please check them out and let me know if you have any questions!

The first 90 days on a new job is usually the most critical and challenging period in your professional career - the actions you take (or don’t take) during your first 90 days will largely determine whether you succeed or fail. Even those who pass the period may do things that hinder career progress. But it does not have to be a time fraught with only anxiety, overwork, sensory overload, and a singular focus to impress. With the right strategy and approach, you can rise above the challenge, start the role with a bang, and do so without burnout. Today, I will share my playbook on how to onboard as a PMM, with research gathered first-hand from having helped dozens of clients ace their 90 days, and having done so myself and risen from a newbie PMM to director within 3 years. Before we dive into the content today, I want to note that this newsletter is the last part of a four-part series on landing your dream job in product marketing: ​Part 1: How to land more product marketing interviews ​ ​Part 2: How to ace the actual interview process ​ Part 3: How to ace product marketing assignments Part 4: Launch your first 30-60-90 days with confidence ← this newsletter 😍 The 5 Most Common Onboarding Mistakes PMMs Make Doing too much In the early days, you want to impress your new team by trying to build every pillar from the start. Not only is this confusing to colleagues about your priorities, but burnout can happen, and you run the risk of each pillar being just “okay” but not great. In reality, you do not have to build every part of PMM all at once - start with what is most aligned with the company’s goals/OKRs. And work with your manager to strategically add work when you nail each pillar. Falling into the action trap Similarly, you believe that to show value quickly, you must produce outputs as quickly as possible. Doing so without understanding the context or having enough research will make your work seem sloppy and unnecessary. You risk suggesting the wrong type of work, working on irrelevant projects, or doing things that have already been done. Setting unrealistic expectations You agree to do too much or propose doing too much without pushback, but this will almost always cause you to fail to deliver on everything, which will harm your reputation.  It’s always better to plan a tight set of tactics aligned with your manager than to create a lot of output that isn’t aligned with their goals. Work only to impress When you only work to impress, you stop asking hard questions and only focus on doing things to make yourself look smart. We’ve all worked with that type of person, and you’ve likely seen that it doesn’t get them far. Learning things the wrong way You spend too much time learning anything thrown your way instead of trying to learn smart by harvesting the existing institutional knowledge. Often, much of the information you need to succeed exists already within a handful of teams at your new company. Assume it does, until proven otherwise. Instead Of The Above, Here Are 6 Things You SHOULD Do: Reset your mind It’s extremely easy to let an old job or a prior bad experience affect how we perceive and approach a new role. But remember to reset your mind, let go of any baggage when you start a role, and give yourself the mental space to prepare yourself for the new role strategically. Tactics essential in a previous company may not apply here. For instance, marketing may not have a strong relationship with product (yet!), or maybe goals are more/less aggressive. These all will change the things you do when you’re starting out. Match your activities to your team’s and company’s goals Different goals require different activities. For instance, if your company is struggling with closing deals in the later stages of the sales cycle and is trying to increase win rate, you should focus on sales enablement instead of top-funnel website traffic. I can’t overstate how critical it is to align your work with the goals and challenges of the company. Learn smartly As mentioned before, create a strong learning plan for yourself that starts from the most important business fundamentals (understand how the business works), product marketing fundamentals, and then tap internal knowledge centers to get the most important information quickly. Secure early wins The earlier you can create value correctly, the faster you can earn trust. So, in the early days, notice the low-hanging fruit opportunities and deliver them quickly. This could be improving a pitch deck, building collateral, or anything that takes less than weeks or months but only days to deliver. (Make sure these early wins are aligned with the team’s biggest goals or challenges) Establish a feedback loop with your manager The most important person in this new role is your manager. So you have to get their feedback quickly and establish clear expectations. Voice how you’d like to be managed, communicate when the workload is unrealistic, and actively seek feedback on what you should continue, stop, or start doing. Build horizontal relationships and add value The role of PMM is unique because it is a connector role. Your success depends on the value you add to other teams: product, sales, and customer success, for instance. You need to immediately figure out whose support is essential for your success and unlock how to add value to them so they are on your side. The Ultimate 90-Day Playbook for Product Marketers With that said, what specific things should you be doing in the first 30-60-90 days? This section will explain it. Here is the caveat: this playbook is a framework that should be adjusted based on your unique needs. The key principle to keep in mind is the concept of break-even. Your goal in a new job is to reach that point as quickly as possible, where the value you add is greater than the value you consume. This is why they can justify your salary. No matter what people say, your first 90 days are NOT just to learn. You need to do three things concurrently: 1) learn (consume value), 2) deliver (produce value), and 3) network (helps you both consume value faster and produce value faster). 🌱 30 Days: Goal: Establish trust and credibility When you are new on a job, you want to establish trust quickly so you feel validated and your manager feels they made the right hiring decision. Building trust requires 1) making people feel heard and 2) adding value. This means that you also need to deliver results and build relationships in addition to learning. Focus on getting a core understanding of the market, customer, and product and then tackle 1-2 small (but high-priority) projects to show value. Most importantly, go on a listening tour to understand the needs of your key stakeholders (sales, PM, marketing team) and create a gap analysis of the key needs you see. This also gives you great ideas on what the quick wins are. 🌿 60 Days: Goal: Deliver larger wins, keep learning With some small wins under your belt, it’s time to move on to larger wins. Using the gap analysis you developed, come up with a project plan that you can share with your manager and get it prioritized. I recommend using the 2x2 difficulty/important matrix to rank your projects. This is also a stage where you can dive deeper into customer insights, perhaps conduct some interviews on your own, and start talking to more stakeholders to map out a 360 view of the key centers of influence around the company. 🌳 90 Days Goal: Ramp up for peak performance (and cross the break-even threshold) With some larger projects moving forward and a plan in place, this is a great time to start improving your plan based on any feedback you have heard. This is also a time to start SOCIALIZING the deliverables you have completed, the results you achieved, and your future plan. Socializing your wins and next steps with other teams is especially important for solo PMMs who must educate other teams on the value of product marketing. In these meetings, you want to invite conversation and partnership opportunities that will further enhance your social capital. Being this intentional with your first 90 days requires discipline, planning, thinking ahead, and open communication with your new manager and team. It’s harder to go about it this way than to just put your head down and knock out a lot of work, but the impact on your long-term success in your new role is much greater. Also - you don’t have to go at it alone. My onboarding coaching offering (Grow program) helps product marketers in new roles excel in their first 90 days, setting the foundation for a great run. Other resources Speaking of making sure your work fits into your company goals/challenges…here’s another way to think about this, which I explored on LinkedIn last week: Great product marketing requires a balance between strategic and tactical work. If you do too much strategy, you have nothing to show for results in the short term. If you do too much tactical work, you become an order taker and drive no influence. You need to have a balance between the two, which means understanding there is a spectrum of PMM work and where each task falls on the spectrum. Read the full post here.

Before we dive into the content today, I want to note that this newsletter is part of a four-part series on the entire job search process. Check back in January for the next issue, focusing on launching your first 90 days with confidence: ​Part 1: How to land more product marketing interviews ​ ​Part 2: How to ace the actual interview process ​ Part 3: How to ace product marketing assignments <- this newsletter Part 4: Launch your first 30-60-90 days with confidence Now, let's dive in! You've secured and aced interviews, but anxiety sets in when faced with the dreaded assignment. Although I can't entirely agree with using assignments to test candidates, more and more companies are using them to differentiate among applicants. These assignments aim to understand your critical thinking, storytelling skills, performance under pressure, and enthusiasm for the job. With a proven approach, you can turn this challenge into an opportunity to differentiate yourself and land the offer. After reviewing hundreds of assignments and assisting over a hundred individuals in acing theirs, here are four proven steps to help you achieve your goal. Step 1: Understand the goal of the assignment Assignments typically fall into two categories: writing assignments and presentation assignments. Writing assignments assess your ability to quickly understand the customer and product and tell a cohesive story. The emphasis is on cohesion, persuasiveness, accuracy, and customer focus. Presentation assignments usually involve creating a GTM/product launch strategy or sharing a previous work experience. Both test core product launch and storytelling skills, with product launch strategy assignments being the most common lately. In either case, the focus is less on technical details and more on storytelling, the voice of the customer, and whether you have done the appropriate research. Pro Tip: If you are unclear on the assignment goal or what assumptions you should be making, ask the hiring manager. Most companies allow you to get clarification through email or a dedicated prep call. ALWAYS take the opportunity to do that. This shows you have thought about the assignment carefully and also mimics real-life situations - as PMMs rarely do projects alone. Step 2: Create an Outline for the product marketing assignment A general rule of thumb for creating any great deliverable is to outline first. Most candidates make the mistake of jumping straight to slides or spending days doing extensive research, only to realize the story does not flow/ they are missing information and have to start over or make huge changes. If you are writing a blog, start with the key message you want to convey, write the beginning and the end, and then add the middle. Instead of writing whole sentences, write all your key ideas as a bulleted list and read through them. The bullets alone should tell a cohesive story. If you are making a presentation, start an outline on a Google doc and follow the same format as above. Each bullet should be the header on each slide to tell a cohesive story. Any supporting information should be sub-bullets. Pro Tip: Avoid doing extensive research before writing an outline. Once you outline it, it will become clearer what research is necessary. Remember, more research does not equal better. Step 3: Research and build up the content Once you have a strong outline with the key elements of your story already built out, it’s time to add the “meat to the bones” by researching and adding content. I cannot stress enough how important it is to define how many hours you want to spend on research. Typically, I recommend spending around 5-10 hours, which is the time needed to create an outstanding assignment that will stand out. Generally, you should research the customers, the positioning/messaging, key products and features, the competition, past product launches, industry trends, news, and more. The specific areas you must research will depend on what you laid out in the outline. Once you have researched and consolidated the information, start building your deliverable from the outline. I recommend using Google Slides or Canva for presentations to quickly create simple yet beautiful slides. Start by titling each slide (the key message) and adding the most important bullet points before adding graphics. Pro Tip: Present one key idea/insight per slide, using visuals to organize information cleanly. Avoid text-heavy teleprompter slides. Step 4: Edit, review, and practice your assignment Once your assignment is done, let it sit for a day, then go back and review it. Giving the assignment time to “breathe” allows new thoughts and ideas to form and makes addressing any final changes/gaps easier. Finally, do not forget to practice delivering your presentation. Not only is this essential for you to deliver a smooth presentation with confidence, but it is also essential to help you work out any kinks in your story. Having helped over 100 clients with their presentations, I can say this is one of the most important yet neglected steps. Pro tip: When delivering the presentation, engage with the interviewer instead of just delivering a monologue. Make strategic pauses and invite questions to make the presentation lively and engaging. Remember, it’s supposed to mimic real work situations. How Hiring Managers Evaluate Assignments Following the above steps and rubric sets you on the path to success, but standing out requires going above and beyond. Here's the exact rubric I used as a former hiring manager to judge the quality of product launch assignments: A few final thoughts… By following the above steps and rubric, you should be well on your way to acing your assignments. However, I do want to point out a few things you should keep in mind: Know when you should NOT do an assignment. While most companies have a fairly standard and acceptable process, some take advantage of candidates. When encountering the red flag situations below, you should exercise caution and consider turning it down: They require you to do an assignment very early in the process before even speaking to the hiring manager. When the assignment is excessive in length or tasks, usually consisting of multiple parts. When an assignment specifically asks you to solve an actual problem they are facing, and there are clear indications they are looking for free work. Determine how much effort you want to spend on an assignment. Juggling a full-time job and being a working parent may mean you have little time to do the assignment. So make sure you ask for enough time to complete the assignment and be realistic about how much you can handle. Generally, successful candidates have taken anywhere from 10 to 40 hours to complete an assignment. In Summary… To ace your assignments, follow the steps below: Understand the goal of the assignment (and how you are being evaluated) Create an outline Research and build up content Edit, review, and practice Know when to say no What’s next? All in all, product marketing assignments can be extremely challenging and taxing. So, when you get an assignment, take a deep breath and follow the framework above. If you need additional help, consider working with me in a ​dedicated assignment review session.  During the 60-minute assignment review session, you will: Receive personalized feedback and detailed insights into what you did well and specific areas of improvement. The feedback will include specific areas to stand out, from actual content to delivery. Get your burning questions answered. I will answer any questions regarding assignments, interviews, or the general job search process to help uncover what is blocking you and what you can improve. Feel more confident moving forward. I will share strategies beyond the above tips, which you can apply to any assignment/interview. ​Book your assignment review session now.​ With that, I hope you have a wonderful holiday season, and see you in 2024!! 🎊

Imagine you have gone through the hard work of ​landing your product marketing interview​ by identifying your targeting, creating a killer resume and personal story, and using referral outreach to secure an interview with your target company. Now is your opportunity to ace the interview, and see if that role is truly a great fit for you. So today, I am going to walk you through how to ace your product marketing interview. As a quick note, today’s newsletter is part of a series of 4 newsletters on the entire job search process. This is the line-up of the series - make sure to check back in a few weeks to learn how to ace assignments: ​Part 1: How to land more product marketing interviews ​ Part 2: How to ace the actual interview process <- this newsletter Part 3: How to ace product marketing assignments Part 4: Launch your first 30-60-90 days with confidence So let’s do this and dive straight in! Step 1: Prepare before the Interview Study the role Before jumping into any interview, you want to understand what the role is looking for. Pay attention to the key responsibilities and the keywords they specify in the job description, and notice words they repeat over and over. This is important for 3 reasons: You will want to customize your personal story to the key responsibilities they care the most about. You may even want to create a personal messaging house to match this role specifically. For instance, if they ask you to have experience with building research programs and product positioning and messaging, you should mention these as your key strengths right away. You want to match any keywords you are using in your examples to what they write in the job description. For instance, some companies prefer to talk about “product narratives” instead of “storytelling” - so using the right keywords here could make your responses sound more relevant. Last but not least, you will want to prepare 5-10 examples that correspond directly with the key responsibilities they are asking for on the JD. This will help you focus on preparing for the right questions. Study the company Next, spend a couple of hours also researching the company - understand its customers, size of the team, investors, competition, and how it’s performing. All this information will help you sound more informed during the interview and also help you determine what questions you want to ask during the interview to give you more valuable answers. If a company is public, you can learn a lot about the company’s business strategy by browsing through its 10K financial filing. Conduct a PMM audit Lastly, I suggest spending a couple of hours doing a product marketing audit. For instance, review the company’s website messaging, social content, assets, ad copies, and anything you can see publicly. Note anything you think they are doing well on and areas they can improve on. This will not only allow you to feel much more confident about this opportunity but also stand out above others in the interview process if you bring them into the conversation. Step 2: During the interview Your performance during the interview matters just as much as your actual answer. No matter how well you have prepared on paper, you need to say your answers out loud so your answers are concise, you are seen as more confident, and as having a real conversation. To improve your performance, ​read this post​. But before you can get there, you need to create answers using the best frameworks. Below, I share my framework for the three most commonly asked questions as well as sample answers. Question 1: Tell me about yourself “Tell me about yourself” is the first question you get asked in an interview. It’s also the most important, as it will make or break the rest of the interview. To answer this most effectively, let’s study this question: What the interviewer cares about: They want to learn about your accomplishments throughout your career that are RELEVANT to the job you are interviewing for and why you are a natural fit. Your goal: Make your story as relevant to the job as possible, start with a bang, and do the work for them by articulating why you are the best fit for the role. Tie in your personal story/messaging house here. Framework: Intro - Start with a powerful highlight of who you are in 1-2 sentences, including the best attributes that describe you. Experience highlights - Share 1-2 key highlights from your career that relate to the role you are applying for and call out any major outcomes. Why you are here - End with why you are looking for a new role and why you are a great fit for the role. Here is an example: 🔥 [Intro] "Hi, my name is Ashley and I am an empathetic and strategic product marketer with a diverse background in education and building successful businesses. 🔥 [Experience highlights] I started out my career as a small business owner, helping small brands improve their website copy. In this role, I saw firsthand the importance of understanding customers’ needs and translating them into compelling and powerful messaging. My proudest accomplishment was helping a struggling mom-and-pop shop increase its business by 100% through the work I did. I decided to take a break and pursue my passion in teaching and joined Teach for America, where I taught English for 1 year in Chile. In this role, I conducted deep research to understand what students really want and created a curriculum that allowed them to increase their speaking efficiency by 2x within 6 months. 🔥 [Why you are here] As I think about the next steps of my career, I want to combine my customer empathy, business acumen, and passion for education to create a greater impact. When I saw this role at your company (Edtech startup), I felt it was the perfect fit given my deep understanding of your customers and my background. I am so excited to chat with you today and happy to dig into any areas in more detail. Note that this framework works no matter your experience level. The key is telling a relevant and compelling story to set the tone for the rest of the interview. Question 2: Tell me a time when you launched a product This is perhaps the most frequently asked “technical” interview question you will get, as being able to launch a product is a core skill set of any PMM. Unfortunately, many candidates’ answers sound like a laundry list and are not memorable or structured enough. To answer this most effectively, let’s study this question. What the interviewer cares about: They want to learn whether you can manage product launches. While great results are important, it’s equally important to understand whether you know what the right process should be. Interviewers want you to demonstrate strategic thinking, and collaboration instead of just being a launch machine/order taker. Your goal: Make your process easily understandable, and your story easy to follow. Then add one or two deeper highlights to call out specific aspects of your experience to make it stand out. Framework: Process, situation, action, results (PSAR framework). ​Read more about the framework HERE.​ Here is an example: ✅ [Process] - In general, when I launch products, I follow a three-step process to ensure we drive towards results. First, I try to validate the product/market fit to ensure we can answer the what, how, when, and why we are launching a product. From there, I develop the positioning and messaging to articulate the value of the product, and lastly, I move on to determine the promotional and channel strategy, including internal enablement. ✅ [Situation] - Last year, I was tasked with launching a DEI tool to help SMBs track their diversity metrics easily. The goal for this launch was to drive pipeline for our sales team. ✅ [Action] I first tried to understand the product/market fit. I aligned with my PM counterpart on the research to clarify the target persona, the key problems we are solving for them, and the unique benefits we will bring. I captured that in a GTM brief that outlined all the details clearly. Then I moved on to create the positioning and messaging. Specifically, I realized our tool solved one of the biggest problems SMBs face - capturing DEI information of employees AND protecting their identity easily. I used that as the key insight to drive messaging and shared it with cross-functional teams to get buy-in. With that, I created a promotional strategy. Given the importance of DEI, I worked with our content team to create a series of webinars with leading DEI experts in the industry to focus on education, and not just pushing the product features. ✅ [Result] The launch was a success and we exceeded the target within the set timeframe. Given the success, my launch playbook also became widely adapted across the team. I’d be happy to dive into any area in more detail. Question 3: Tell a time you disagreed with a stakeholder's approach This is a typical “soft” skills question that could be asked in different ways and is generally challenging to answer because most candidates are not strong at telling stories with conflicts. Let’s study this question. What the interviewer cares about: PMMs have to influence stakeholders in order to succeed. Since you don’t have authority over stakeholders, it takes great people skills to get buy-in, build rapport, and have the capacity to admit it when you are in the wrong. Your goal: Demonstrate that you have empathy (EQ) and a clear, logical process to drive influence. Pay attention to both the softer side of influence (e.g. not burning bridges) and the harder side (e.g. showing objective data). You don't HAVE to show you are right - the key is to find an objective solution that demonstrates your humility even when you are wrong. Framework: Process, Situation, Action, Results -> (PSAR) => I recommend starting with a strong process to show your systems-level thinking. Here is a sample answer: 🔥 [Process] Absolutely. My process for influencing stakeholders and resolving disagreements is as follows: 1) See others' perspectives first and understand why, 2) Gather evidence and use data to back up my POV, 3)Communicate and collaboratively reach a decision 🔥 [Situation] One of the biggest initiatives I did at company X was co-leading the pricing increase for our product to drive profitability. After spending nearly 1 year on the research, we are finally about to implement the change. However, the product team wanted to implement the pricing change for all customers at once, but I truly believe that could lead to significant churn. 🔥 [Action] To understand the product team’s POV, I first met with them to understand their rationale - they believed that doing it at once is simpler for engineering, and easier to communicate to customers. After I heard that, I decided to gather some data. I found best practices and benchmark data from leading SaaS companies which showed that a staggered pricing rollout leads to higher adoption and lower churn. I then used the benchmarking data and worked with finance to create a churn scenario analysis to make my case even stronger. With the data, I developed 2 alternative staggered options for implementation, one with a grace period, and one with a discount coupon. I shared the options and data with the product team. They were surprised by the data and agreed the discounting option would be best. As the implementation was happening, I also helped the product team answer tickets from support. This earned the respect of the product team and made them feel I got their back. 🔥 [Result] The result is that we experienced a positive reaction from customers and we were able to come 5% within our financial projections. Moreover, I was able to not only maintain but grow my relationship with the product team. Other considerations At the end of the interview, you will generally be given some time to ask questions. Don’t blow this opportunity, really make this count by asking 3-5 questions that you prepared to show 1) you prepared for the interview, and 2) you actually care about whether this role is a fit. Remember to tie in your research from Step 1 to your questions. If you need some inspiration, ​read this list of 23 questions you can ask. ​ Step 3: Follow-up After the Interview Congratulations! You did a great job in the interview, now what? I recommend sending a thoughtful follow-up to the interviewer. Make sure the follow-up is a personalized note that reiterates key points you learned in the interview, and why you continue to be excited. You could also include a useful resource that is relevant to what was discussed in the interview to add an intentional touch. Generally, the post-interview thank you note won't likely change their decision, BUT it will definitely have a positive impact. In Summary… To improve your interview performance, follow the steps below: Thoroughly prepare for the interview by studying the role, the company, and doing a PMM audit. Prepare answers using appropriate frameworks for 5-10 interview questions Practice your responses as much as possible to optimize performance during the interview Prepare 3-5 reverse interview questions Send a thoughtful thank you note What’s next? With these tips, you will be on your way to acing your interviews and standing out from the competition. But going at it together is much better and faster than going at it alone. If you are looking for expert guidance to help you take ALL your interview answers from good to great while ​getting support from a helpful community​, please reach out for my​ 1-1 coaching program​. Not sure if this is worth it? ​Check out the nearly 50 reviews from my clients ​(recommendations section). 😌 I wish you much success - you’ve got this! 💪 Yi Lin

2023’s job market has been very challenging, to say the least. With ​240,000 layoffs in tech this year​, the market is the most competitive I have seen in the last 10 years, and it’s not uncommon to see 1,000+ applications for a single job. It’s no wonder why so many candidates (even experienced ones) struggle with landing offers or even interviews. If you used to get 15 responses from sending out 20 resumes, today you might hear from only 2, even if you have experience. To help you land a job by January 2024, I have put together a 4-part newsletter series to dive deep into the entire job search process, using techniques that have been ​proven to work​. This is what you can expect: Part 1: How to land more product marketing interviews <- this newsletter Part 2: How to ace the actual interview process Part 3: How to ace product marketing assignments Part 4: Launch your first 30-60-90 days with confidence So let’s do this and dive straight in. 1. Understand your candidate/market fit The biggest misconception people have about landing interviews is that landing more interviews means applying to more companies. In fact, quite the opposite - you want to target fewer roles where you have the highest candidate/market fit, especially in this highly competitive market. Misconception: In a highly competitive market, I need to apply for more jobs in order to land more interviews Reframe: In a highly competitive market, I should focus on targeting roles where I have the highest candidate/market fit This is not only important for landing interviews, but also for closing the offer. One of the biggest reasons why candidates fail to land an offer in the final rounds is because of poor targeting. Imagine you are in the final rounds with 3 candidates who all can do the job - who will the company pick? Likely the person with the more obvious fit and advantage. Case in point: My client Brandon was applying to a lot of jobs after getting laid off. But he kept losing out in the final rounds to candidates with more domain experience for those roles. Once we started working together, he applied to fewer roles and spent more time on ones where he had the best candidate/market fit. He started doing much better and got an offer in 8 weeks at his top choice company. Read about how he did this ​HERE​. So how do you determine your candidate/market fit? You have to evaluate your experience across 3 dimensions: Your key strengths - These could be product marketing skills or interpersonal skills. For instance, are you more of a GTM specialist, or an inbound research expert? Are you great at influencing without authority? Do research on core product marketing responsibilities and map out your strengths across each core area (generally these are research, positioning/messaging, GTM, and enablement). Your competitive advantage - generally previous industry experience has the most bearing, followed by company business model and size. Increasingly, company size is becoming a more important factor in hiring. For instance, if you have only worked in big tech, you may not be fit for early-stage startups where product marketing requires different skills. Your values - importantly you also want to understand clearly your personal values to ensure the cultural match. Do you want to work in a highly fast-paced, ambiguous environment or the opposite? Once you have gotten this clarity you can then focus on targeting the right opportunities. 2. Create a strong personal story Once you have found your candidate market fit, it’s time to create your personal story. Your personal story shows up on your resume, cover letter, and LinkedIn profile and is the first impression the recruiter/hiring manager will have of you. Just like in product marketing, to create the best story for yourself you need strong positioning and messaging - which is why I recommend you create your own personal messaging house so your competitive advantages and elevator pitch are really clear. ​To develop your own personal messaging house, click here.​ Misconception: In order to impress, I need to talk about every aspect of myself so they can know about everything I can do Reframe: In order to impress, I need to focus on what the company truly cares about, and share the BEST aspects of myself relevant to the role Now it’s time to create a resume. To craft a great resume, make sure you are starting with the roles you are targeting, and work backward to match your resume to the requirements of each role. To get instructions on how to create the best resume, click ​HERE​. Case in point: ​My client Diego ​had a very unconventional experience as a former PM and startup founder. When he tried to land interviews he was running into issues with clearly telling his personal story and his resume was not converting. I worked with him to develop his personal story, enabling him to turn his perceived challenges into competitive advantages. As a result, he removed the fluff from his resume and optimized it to focus on what each job requires. Within a few weeks of these changes, his response rate to job applications was near 100%, and he accepted an offer within 2.5 months. One of the most common questions I get is whether you should include a cover letter with your application. While there is a lot of advice that says cover letters are unnecessary, I believe they are crucial for your job search success to signal high intent and stand out. To create a great cover letter, click ​HERE​. 3. Apply the right way to land product marketing interviews Now that you have all your materials prepped, it’s time to apply. The last thing you want to do is to submit your resume online, where it will sit with hundreds of other resumes. What you need to do is to get referrals as much as possible. This is because getting a referral is 15x more effective than submitting online (​Jobvite​). The most effective referrals will come from people who hold higher positions in the company and/or have directly worked with you before. This is why the network you have built really matters. So what if you don’t have anybody you know who can refer you? Then you need to get a cold referral. This means reaching out directly to the hiring manager in your target companies, with a thoughtful message that directly ties your background to why you are a great fit for the role. ​Here are some tips to keep in mind​ when crafting an outreach message. Note- there has been a lot of talk about how hiring managers hate getting messages, but that’s only if they are getting generic messages. If you are sending well-thought-out messages then they will be read. Misconception: Hiring managers hate getting directly messaged via email or LinkedIn and this will ruin your chances Reframe: Hiring managers who are intentional about whom they hire, will read and consider a well-composed and relevant message. Additionally, I often recommend to my clients that they reach out to 3-5 people within the company who could be peers for informational interviews to secure more possible referrals. The key is to do all of the above to maximize your chance of landing interviews. Case in point: My client Stephanie received three interview requests within the first week of working with me on her job search. 1 interview request came from cold outreach, 1 came from a warm referral, and another from a direct online application with a cover letter (as she could not find the HM online). She seized all three opportunities and accepted an offer from one of them in less than 8 weeks. In Summary… Landing a great product marketing job is possible in today’s job market with persistence and the right strategy, and it starts with landing great interviews. To most effectively land interviews, follow all the steps below: Clearly map out your candidate/market fit Create your messaging house for your target roles Work backward to develop your resume and cover letter Work your network to get referrals as much as possible What’s next? Reframing limiting beliefs, finding a support system, and celebrating your small wins will go a long way to helping you reach success without burnout. If you’d like more help along this journey, consider enrolling in my ​DIY course​, which dives into all of the above steps in much more detail. For a limited time only, you also get the opportunity to participate in monthly live group interviews and job search coaching - so you can get expert guidance directly from me and never feel alone in this process. ➡ Get Access Now (and Get 50% off by October 31) 🎃 I wish you much success and see you in Part 2!