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Career | How to have experience when you don’t have experience?
I know the question sounds trivial, but in the job hunting, the classic catch-22 problem is real——
I know this struggle firsthand. When I decided to break into product management(PM) world, I was at my final year of college, so I had no time for a PM internship. I was constantly frustrated by job posts that list PM experience as a prerequisite. People told me that it was impossible, especially during a pandemic.
I am glad I didn’t give up. So I wrote this to encourage more people to pursue what they love and use the right strategies to break into a new field. Below are what have helped me to get a Product Manager job at Microsoft, straight out of college, without any PM experience or internships in big name companies.
0. Mental Framework
Before we dive into specific ways to address this chicken-egg problem, let’s take a step back and understand why it exists in the first place.
From the employer’s perspective, this prerequisite makes sense because they would prefer a new employer to add value from Day 1 rather than spending time and resources training him/her. After all, employers are not schools. They pay you because they believe you add more value than cost, while you pay for school because you believe you gain more value than cost. Even if they pay for your learning, they still bear the risk that you aren’t able to reach the expected skill level in a timely manner. Therefore, you are less likely to change employers’ preferences, so you have to adapt.
From job seekers’ perspective, however, I strongly believe that one can always always break into a new field. No matter where one wants to be, one has to start somewhere.
During my job hunting, I was initially frustrated by not getting interviews for lack of experience. I said…
