Product Manager Archetypes
A better way to visualize data
I’m still actively involved with my Job Search Council (via Never Search Alone (phyl.org)), and one post that came up was regarding PM Archetypes and if they were useful in interviewing. How would you describe yourself? How do you describe the role?
There was the usual chatter about “I’m an x!” but there was also concern about being boxed into one category or another when you had skills and experienced that overlapped more than one category. For instance, you are applying for a role that is being described as a “Technician”, but you also see the role has parts of “General Manager” as well. Or, for us late career types it’s more likely that while we specialize in one or two of these, we have solid experience across many areas that may be helpful to that role & organization.
Me being me, I thought that there had to be a more efficient way to go about this than trying to do this in prose or a bulleted list. A few minutes of PowerPoint and it’s pretty easy to create a heptagonal1 arrangement where a person can score themselves on a range of 1 to 5.
If the job posting included a graphical representation like this, it would be trivial enough to score yourself and see how you align. I’m not advocating it to be the only way to gage fit, but it can be a useful tool to make a quick yes/no decision before reviewing a resume or a job posting to see if there is alignment.
You can even use it with employees to see how their career progression is evolving towards where they want to grow, or where you need them to grow.
Like any such scoring systems it can be used improperly. We’ve already seen title inflation on LinkedIn or by companies, and it is also true that great people have a tendency to undervalue themselves (Why great people undervalue themselves (substack.com)) and the infamous Dunning-Kruger effect that leads incompetent people to do the opposite.
Used properly however I think it can be an effective addition to helping people gage initial fit against a role, both as an employer and potential employee.
What do you think? Let me know in the comments below.
Who knew that septagon wasn’t a word. Thank you spell check!