PM gets a job offer after ~2.5 months

The market’s been tough for tech workers.

Especially for PMs.

Orgs are flattening out, meaning companies want less managers & functional folks in favor of engineers & other types of individual contributors.

Budgets are cut, so less products & features are being shipped.

Granted, I’m a small corner of the job market, but PMs seem to have it rough at the moment.

But that’s no excuse, there’s still jobs to be had. We will just need to get creative and get on offense.

A Sr. PM reached out to me in early October for some help.

Here was his situation:

• ~10 years of experience

• No industry specific experience, but worked at a few F500s

• Based out of Dallas, TX, a strong tech market.

• Making a strong total compensation package

• Solid resume. No quantifiable metrics but clearly articulates his value.

• Strong LinkedIn.

• Only had 3 employers in his career.

• He was referred into his last 2 employers through people he worked with in the past.

• The person he worked for left the company earlier this year. The person who took his spot seems to be a train wreck.

• While he is currently employed, he is miserable at work and wants to find something else.

• He was spending all of his time applying to jobs.

Analysis of his situation

• While not ideal, he’s still in a relatively good spot. There are a lot of PMs out there without a job, so at least he’s able to bide his time and look for the right role.

• He was referred into his last two positions, which tells me 1. he’s good enough at his job that people vouched for him twice 2. he has a solid network.

• He lives in Dallas - lot’s of good companies out there - and open to hybrid work - so that will expand his options.

• He does have a comp package on the higher end - but he may be willing to compromise for a good environment and something seemingly more stable.

• The person who referred him into his last role keeps in touch regularly.

Call To Action

The first course of action was to stop spending all his spare time spam applying to jobs.

He was referred into his last two gigs, so the first course of action was to reach out to previous co-workers for confidential referrals.

The person who referred him to his current role - his boss - was taking time off. However, he would keep an eye out if he knew anyone looking.

The person who referred him to his last role would hire him again. He wants to try out something new, but this is a good “last resort” option on top of him currently being employed. We decided not to reach out to this person yet.

I then had him identify other previous co-workers, five at a time so he wasn’t overwhelmed, to rekindle relationships. The key here was he didn’t start off asking for a referral, we made sure there was some solid back and forth before asking for a favor.

While this was going on, I also had him go on “offense”. We took three approaches here:

1. I had him develop a target list of people he wanted to network with. Since he was employed along with a standing job offer, we are taking the “long game” route here. If someone ends up offering a referral, great.

2. He “sought out” jobs. I showed him how to go on LinkedIn and run boolean searches for open roles. This allowed him to find immediate openings & decision makers.

3. He went to a huge state school with a massive alumni population. He started looking up former alumni to network with via LinkedIn.

The Results

This PM ended up getting multiple offers through multiple avenues.

Started working together in October to multiple offers in December.

None of them came through cold job applications.

One came through his network. Someone he worked with two jobs ago referred him to his manager, who interviewed him & offered to create a newly opened role for him.

Another one came through his alumni network.

And then he mentioned he landed a few interviews through the boolean search strategy.

And let’s not forget that standing offer.

If you’re looking for a bespoke approach to your situation, let’s schedule a call here: