The author summarizes his own career planning experience and helps small partners to master the ability to do career planning.
Editor’s note: This article is from “ everyone is a product manager “, Author: Lu Zifan
It is said that the financial industry is the industry closest to money and the industry with the highest per capita year-end awards. Although the profitability of domestic financial institutions has been good this year, the company’s strategic adjustments and investment in recent years have resulted in relatively low profits, let alone year-end awards.
Fearing that salary income and career development and ideals are getting farther and farther, many people around them are beginning to think about job-hopping.
I went online to see my resume, but I also found that there is no great advantage in the same age and the same number of years of work, most people want to jump but dare not jump, worried that they can not find the ideal job. So I have recently found time to sort out my own career planning experience, hoping to contribute some people’s experience in the path of career development for my little friends.
From a grassroots source, all the resources mentioned in this article are content that you can obtain through publicly available materials or non-public materials at a cost of less than one thousand yuan.
Let’s talk about personal situation first: 15 years of graduation, currently working 4 and a half years, 2 years of team management experience, 2 years of project management experience, 3 years of securities industry experience. In terms of projects, he is responsible for the product, operation, and project work of multiple company-level core projects from zero. In management, he is responsible for more than 20 project teams, more than 20 related teams, and 5 people directly under the product team.
A few days ago, all product managers released the “2019 Product Manager Survival Report”. Based on the product report and resumes of products of the same level on the recruitment platform, in the current age, current working life, and second-tier cities, , The conditions are not good (not too smart, three bachelor degrees, average family background, no relatives and friends in the Internet industry), can get 3 to 5 years of experience before about 1/3 of the salary is quite satisfied.
The salary levels of different working years in the “Product Manager Survival Report 2019” may be more suitable for the situation of product managers in first-tier cities.
I. Select positions and industries with dividends based on social trends
When I graduated in 15 years, I was faced with a choice. My undergraduate degree was in electronic information engineering. Everyone who has studied this major knows that the average salary of a hardware engineer who is not over 985 in 15 years is about 4k, and the salary of 10 years of experience is about 15k.
In the past, it was impossible to do hardware without a postgraduate entrance examination. It happened to be 14 years that the Internet began to recruit products, operations, and research and development positions on a large scale. In addition, I am more interested in psychology and consider whether to cross-industry postgraduate entrance examination; so the choice before me was to enter the Internet industry.
The rise of any emerging industry is often accompanied by industry dividends. Forgetting which article mentioned which social scientist in the United States did a survey, everyone will encounter 3 to 4 major social changes in their lives.
For us, if we can seize these social changes, it is possible to complete the social class transition. In other words, with the rise of the Internet, the demand for jobs and the number of talents exceeds the pursuit of quality.
If you look at the more mature industries such as finance, construction, and accounting, you will find that these industries have mature “national certifications.” Some positions explicitly require “xx years of work experience”, ” Master’s degree or above. ”
Year-on-year, school enrollment is no longer the only stepping stone when entering the Internet with academic qualifications, experience, and qualifications, but it does not mean that you can directly enter the big factory. Therefore, in the year of graduation, I finally chose the Internet industry, and the choice of product positions was due to interest (more friends around me have postgraduate research + R & D).
Second, determine career goals and development plans
After identifying the industry, I set a small goal for myself: to be a product director in three years and a CEO in five years.
In retrospect, the plan set at that time was almost impossible to achieve. If you re-establish your career goals, you will now analyze through the job search platform. What are the job requirements for product directors in the market? Plan based on the average.
Next, based on this unrealistic goal, I made a plan breakdown: what requirements does the product director contain, and which capabilities do these requirements correspond to; when developing these capabilities, how should priorities be formulated, etc .; and applying product manager work The “Assessing Priority” approach resulted in a development plan.
The following figure is a plan made since 14 years. It can be found that basically every year the plan will partially overturn or refine the previous capability items. At the same time, previous plansThere is also a lack of very important “project experience”. Whether it is a “competence item” or a “project experience”, these key items can be summarized through the positions of large factories.
In addition to summarizing the positions of major manufacturers, there are several ways to build a product framework. Either way, it comes down to “information collection and collation capabilities.”
Taking job information as an example, during the collation process, I collected several materials through search engines, forums, Taobao, WeChat and other channels. The job career planning part includes the “Tencent Company Career Development System Manager Manual” “Tencent-Quality Capabilities Needed by Product Managers”, “Tencent Product Manager Capabilities and Quality Model”, and the sharing of product capability framework by N-level product industry seniors.
For most product managers, non-BAT and TMD Internet companies basically do not have a comprehensive product manager training system, training resources, assessment standards and other professional development plans formulated by human resources departments. The growth of product managers is often led by leaders or participating in external training. The system is not suitable for the project they are experiencing and it is expensive.
So, from the perspective of personal development, we must have the ability to formulate career plans, obtain career development resources, and improve ourselves in an environment without professional development.
The goal must be set, even if it is not realistic (of course it is best to set it based on the market average). At the same time, in the process of implementing according to the plan, we also need to constantly revise our goals based on our own review and industry data to ensure the sustainable development of the goals.
Second, after you have a goal, you must decompose the goal. Doing anything requires the ability to match it. For example, to become a product director of a small company or Tencent or headline, what capabilities and project experience are needed; like the goal, we must continue to make corrections in the work.
Understanding the market situation through the recruitment website is also an important means to optimize career planning
Three, implement a career development plan
After joining the industry, based on the capability plan that was made earlier, I have prepared a plan for improving myself.
When I first made a product, I mainly improved my ability through reading and practice, and then sorted out a “learning resource + reading notes + project practice + summary review” such a learning method.
Interaction design book list
Based on the “information collection and collation capabilities” mentioned in the second part, a set of product knowledge bases were organized according to the product capability model.
When the plan was launched in 15 years, there were no books about products on the market. For the knowledge of interaction, refer to the two parts of the book: “Human-computer interaction in Europe and America” and “Typographic design in Japan”. In the past two years, relatively systematic learning materials such as Tencent Class and NetEase Class have appeared on the market.
In addition to product professional knowledge, I also collected technical knowledge. I bought a video self-learning IOS and Android development of Chuanzhi Podcast, and now there are technical forums and training materials such as geek time and Qcon.
After collecting data, organize and plan the data, and organize related reading notes.
Reading notes must be organized into a knowledge base to form structured knowledge.
But in actual work, because of limited participation and responsibility for the project (need to comply with company planning), a lot of knowledge does not have the opportunity to practice the project after learning (if you are a back-end product, there is no opportunity to practice front-end interaction design), coping It’s after you finish your studies.
For example, when I first started, in order to cultivate the feeling of front-end interaction, I downloaded hundreds of web design artwork from the petals. After working every day, I used Axure to copy a prototype and think about why I designed it like this. what. In fact, not a few hundred copies have been copied, and the prototype design ability can meet daily work after 2 months.
Download open source projects through github, analyze design differences and principles
The pros and cons of other product managers’ designs under the analysis of product Daniels
In addition to the WEB product template at the beginning of work, each subsequent work has developed the habit of summarizing; whether it is product design or work promotion, whether or not someone requests it. From the perspective of pedagogy, long-term accumulation can transform acquired ability into mechanical ability, and the work processing efficiency naturally improves.
I have a very important opinion on work:
Everyone’s life is limited, and each person’s professional time is also limited, so our goal is to maximize the limited professional time.
Improving work efficiency allows you to devote more time to the study of new knowledge. In the long run, you will naturally accumulate more knowledge than others. This is also a rumor on the market. The essential reason for getting the same salary for two years of work and five years of work.
Summary of interaction design
Summary of application releases
Four-time job changes based on financial plans
From the “Product Manager Survival Report 2019”, most product managers within 5 years think salary is a pain point.
Of course, the main motivation for work is salary. Generally speaking, salary includes three explicit parts of “salary + bonus + performance”, and also includes “five insurances and one fund + employee benefits + disposable career development time.” Three recessive parts.
The dominant part is mainly determined by the company’s profitability and human development strategy. If the company’s annual net profit is 1 million, it is impossible to expect the company to give you another 10% salary increase; on the other hand, the net profit is affected by market size, operating costs, market share, and so on.
The market share and operating costs are relatively subjective and are affected by the company’s management capabilities. However, the market size is an objective factor. If your company enters the market scale of 1 billion a year; for the product, even if you are a director for 10 years, it is difficult to get a high salary of 50k or more.
In the worst case, if the company’s net profit is good, the career development space is also good; but the company does P2P campus loan, and may face criminal liability. Therefore, with enough effort, if you want to choose a career change, it is also important to choose the right track.
The hidden part also has a very important “disposable career development time”. If this company is a start-up company or the leader is more bureaucratic, then your daily work is likely to be such as helping my child to train, write A public relations draft, a trip to the local tax bureau and other non-post matters are filled up.
As mentioned above, everyone’s career development time is limited, and small partners who encounter this situation need to stop losses in a timely manner. Even going to a small company that only does product work or to a technology / operations leading company is better than the environment mentioned above.
How much is reasonable?
You can organize a Personal Financial Development Plan based on your chosen track and market research.
If the first small goal of the job is to achieve financial freedom, based on a fixed income of 5% per year (a lot of fixed income products of securities companies and banks, 5% is normal), and monthly consumption is 10,000 yuan. (Including personal consumption, consumption of parents and children’s elderly education), then the total assets of first-tier cities may reach at least 15 million, and the total assets of second-tier cities may reach at least 8 million (including real estate).
With a development plan, you can also intuitively understand your current career development stage and lack of abilities, and you will be more motivated or stressed when you work.
The data are all demos, friends can try to make a copy yourself
Fifth, the conclusion
The social environment and industry are constantly developing. Even if all the resources that have been sorted out are shared, they will gradually fall behind due to market changes in a few years.
The purpose of this article is also to hope that small partners can master the ability to do career planning, not what to do.
Several important categories of career development planning: ability to set goals, ability to make plans, ability to gather information, ability to acquire resources, and ability to learn quickly.
With the ability to develop, you can thrive in any business environment.
At the end of the year, I wish all the friends who want to change jobs can find their favorite job.
Attachment: Commonly used platform tools for collecting resources (direct Baidu search for the following keywords)
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General: Everyone is a product manager
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Find inspiration: petals
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Find a project: github (train back-end design capabilities through open source projects)
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Find information: it199, MBA think tank document, cloud disk wizard
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Find data: Baidu / 360 / WeChat / Headline / Weibo / Mini Program Index, Business Staff
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Doing competitive research: ASO100, watermelon data, sky eye check, and Miyun
This article was originally posted by @ 陆 子 樊 Originally everyone is a product manager. Reproduction is prohibited without permission.
The picture is from Unsplash, based on the CC0 protocol