Mission :
Increase digital product talent while fast-tracking people's careers.
Plan to achieve this
- Enhancing the skills, expertise, and capabilities of individuals in the digital product domain by providing training, education, and skill development to create a more skilled and capable workforce in this area.
- Providing opportunities and support for career growth and advancement through mentorship.
Why now
Digital products are in hyper-growth. As a result, careers in digital products are booming.
From product management, and design to technology, there is a shortage of talent and skills.
This is further coupled with a poor candidate experience for talent and a poor learning experience for potential talent.
The 2 key problems
- Talent shortage:
As a digital product leader, I found it hard to search & recruit product talent that is both capable (has the skills) and has the ability to do the job (experience). - Organization maturity:
I also found it fairly hard to find product-led organizations in APAC.
With this experience as an employer and candidate, I wanted to do something to further product careers.
Hence digitalproductjobs.com was born.
Challenges
- Old-school management practices from the 1900s haven't evolved fast enough to create product leadership across the globe.
Our education systems are lacking. - The knock-on effect is the lack of maturity of product functions in most organizations.
This is also coupled with ever-evolving complexity and hyper-growth, which further intensifies the gap. - There is a significant misunderstanding of product management and product-led growth globally, there is no standard and one size fits all solution.
Probably never will be one.
Too many pundits out there to get any alignment as they are all in it for survival.
Solutions
- One-stop knowledgebase:
Have a one-stop shop where anyone can build a career in digital product development from scratch.
We will be the guide in their product journey. From courses to content - guides, research, and articles. - Coaching & Mentorship:
Coach existing product people and help them fast-track their careers from associate to principal or lead roles.
While I continue to learn and explore my journey, I will share the lessons learned through publishing newsletters, regular training material - guides, and providing opportunities for mentorship to guidance on educational materials, workplace experience opportunities, resume creation, and interview prep. - Talent pool:
Build out a talent strategy to enhance, retain and acquire new talent for product organizations.
As a hiring manager, I found that it would take me 2 - 3 months or longer at times to get a product role recruited. Much of this was to do with our talent strategy.
I was then able to bring this down to weeks.
Now I share my talent strategy which will help you enhance your acquisition and retention rates.
From working with you on your on-boarding process to talent acquisition process to training needs for your product managers via a product coach program, we aim to partner with product organizations wanting to enhance their existing talent pools.
For Individuals
For Recruiters & Hiring Managers
Case studies
In recent years, I helped people with different backgrounds in their career pathways.
For example, someone I mentored over a 2-year period is now in a head of role leading individuals under them.
Another is in a group product manager role in e-commerce while some of the mentees are in junior roles such as associate product managers.
The approach I take is organization agnostic and has shown to work at organizations such as Tesla, Amazon, Big Commerce, Real Estate Group, Jio Reliance, and more.
Are you looking to make a shift into product management and unlock that 6 figure salary and not sure where to start learning to become a product manager?
Or perhaps you have started the journey and want to learn more to progress into a more senior role?
Then this is for you.
My experience
I have had multiple career pivots in my life.
Career pivots
I grew up in a family business which taught me trading and project management at an early age. During this time, I also became one of the youngest karate coaches in the world at the age of 15!
After moving countries, I got into accounting and then into system projects as a business analyst, and then moved into digital project & program management.
Along this way, I had the opportunity to do roles such as scrum master, Agile coach, transformation consultant, head of product, product director, staff product manager, etc.....
Unsure about the future
When I landed in the tech career, I wasn't sure where it would go.
I went from earning minimum wage and struggling to make ends meet to earning a solid 6 figures. All in 2 years from post-graduation. But soon, this wasn't enough - because family commitments just kept growing!
Perpetual learning journey
It took me a while to learn what product management was and how to practice it correctly.
I still invest in this daily as my view of this is that product management is a set of skills that needs to be fine-tuned daily.
IC to Lead
During my journey, I have moved from IC to Lead to IC to Lead roles.
When moving from an IC - individual contributor role to a leadership role with an accelerated career path, I faced some major challenges such as not having the skills to manage upwards to political complexities to not knowing how to manage direct reports with complex needs.
It took me a while to inspire and lead the teams to build products that add value.
In total, it took me 2 years to get to a state where I could efficiently lead, coach, and manage product teams who want to add value and build products that scale.
As part of the mission to enhance product careers, I am providing coaching & mentorship opportunities along with industry benchmarks in the skills matrix, supporting tools, and educational material on how to unlock the next stage of your career and fast-track promotions.
You don't need a fancy certification or course to get to a senior role - register below to get access and a kick-start on your journey.
Enhancing Product Talent Strategy
Are you a recruiter or talent acquisition person in need of product people and are struggling to find them?
Or are you a company looking at going through a product-led transformation and in dire need of product talent?
From working with you on your onboarding process to the talent acquisition process to training needs for your product managers via a product coach program, we aim to partner with product organizations wanting to enhance their existing talent pools.
These programs can range from 4 weeks to 12 months in length and can enhance your product talent quickly.
Additionally, if you are interested and open to partnerships, want to share product jobs in our featured top jobs in our newsletter, or even hire an experienced product coach, reach out via the button below.
What is a product coach - click here.
Impact of problems
- Talent Scarcity:
The product talent is scarce in APAC and we are on the verge of talent scarcity. It's not going away anytime soon.
Building out talent is the only way to address this problem - from training to upskilling. - Role Definition:
The product space is gravely misunderstood - jobs are not clearly defined, product manager roles are confused as project managers, product owners, or business analysts and there is a clear need to define the role and attract the people that are interested in actual product management.
We help here by designing and advising on job descriptions, skills assessment to job adverts to help attract candidates and ensure you have the right core competencies in your team to build products that customers love. - Talent Strategy:
Organizations lose many talented professionals because they struggle to innovate but also have effective talent strategies in place which result in a poor culture and eventually high turnover.
We help here from designing on-boarding programs for product managers, to intern and graduate programs to breed product management via an associate product management program. - High Sunk Costs:
Organizations get stuck in the feature factory/ the build trap and assume that product teams are there to deliver a requirements backlog instead of add value to the customer and organization while innovating and solving customer problems.
This is partly due to the lack of product talent experienced in the strategies and tactics required to do product management and sometimes related to coaching required at the executive level.
We help by providing you with product coaches who help guide and coach teams to enhance their skills.