Ask Teresa: How Do You Get Your First Product Job Without Experience?

Teresa Torres addresses the catch-22 of landing a first product role when employers want experience. Her core argument is that aspiring PMs can manufacture credible experience through self-directed side projects, even tiny ones built for a handful of users. She explains that hiring managers use years of experience as a shortcut to confidence, so candidates should demonstrate they can do the work directly. She recommends doing your own discovery work, such as interviewing users and mapping opportunities, and shipping something that gets traction. The advice matters because it gives people without a product title a concrete, accessible path to proving product skill.

01Key takeaways

• Build a small product that solves a real problem for a few people to create evidence of product skill.
• Show you can identify customer problems, build a solution, and iterate on it over time.
• Recognize that hiring managers want proof you can do the job, not just years on a resume.
• Conduct your own customer interviews and opportunity mapping for a product category to prepare for interviews.
• Ship something and get even modest traction, since it demonstrates the full product cycle.
• Pursue side projects even inside a company that does not practice product well, since you can often do more than you think.

02Key sections

The experience catch-22

Hiring for product roles often demands prior experience, yet experience is hard to get without a job. Torres argues that anyone can now build product experience with accessible tools.

Build something small and useful

A side project does not need engineering skill or large scale. The goal is to identify a real customer problem, solve it, and improve it iteratively.

Think like a hiring manager

Hiring managers look for evidence that a candidate can do the job, and years of experience are a shortcut to that evidence. Side projects provide direct proof.

Do discovery without company access

Candidates can interview users, map opportunities, and sketch solutions for a product category even without internal company data. This discovery work gives an advantage in interviews.

A personal example

Torres shares how she built D&D spell cards with XSLT for fun, showing that a small product used by others counts as real shipping experience.

03From the post

“Landing your first or even your second job in product can be really tricky. Many candidates encounter a Catch-22 situation: Most companies only want to hire product managers with experience, but you can’t get experience if no one will hire you. And what do we even mean by”

04Frameworks mentioned

Summary and takeaways written by PM Atlas; quotes are short excerpts. © the original author.