Alek Lekic’s Post

Just completed your first fundraising round? Here’s who you hire first… - Software Engineer: Even if you’re technical, or have a technical cofounder. This hire increases your output and technical innovation opportunities. Look for candidates who thrive in ambiguity. Who aren’t afraid of the 0-1 phase and like to work fast. - Product Designer: There’s a higher expectation of user experience nowadays. Friction kills. This hire increases your chances of success exponentially. Look for candidates who love research but aren’t above making your pitch deck look beautiful when you need it. - Product Manager: Most controversial. Hiring a PM this early doesn’t mean you’ll lose control of your product. Let them earn your trust. You have many hats to wear and you need someone dedicated to your product. They’ll unlock your team to work smarter and faster. Look for candidates who understand your vision. Those who can recognize positive and negative signals and quickly adjust. ——— Individually these hires are important. All together they are a foundation. One more thing and this is Important! Look for candidates who would be comfortable on a small boat in shark infested waters with no map. Not the ones comfortable operating a cruise ship. Same title. Different skill set.

It's not popular to say but I am just going to say it: For MOST people its going to be hard to do the job of a Software Product Manager without some exposure to writing code. If you're skeptical, simply review the job descriptions for Product Management positions at all major software companies. But that doesn't mean you should despair. Far from it. You can get a lot of knowledge and background you will need quickly. I am actually going to start creating a lot of content around this concept. Giving you all the technical knowledge you need to understand how software gets built and more importantly how it gets built quickly, iteratively, and to solve problems that people will actually pay for. 🚀 So let me know what questions you have. Especially those that you are too afraid to ask. Remember, the only stupid question is the one that you never ask. Stay tuned! #productmanagement #productdevelopment #productengineering

Product manager opening with Darla in Texas Tribune. Are you noticing the pattern it’s the same types of companies that are hiring product managers over and over again that are looking for the same types of experience. This should be a clue as to where the market is headed and why you may or may not getting any traction on your product manager job hunt. You can see the data on my LinkedIn feed. The majority (not all) of these product manager roles are in the following niches: Digital Payments Healthcare or Health Tech E-commerce Data Privacy  Cybersecurity Growth AI Product Strategy and Roadmap Recently Funded Startup of First PM Hire (💰💰💰) Automotive Product Leader (ie Head or Director of Product Management) I have a resume template for each type of product manager role in Skool! https://lnkd.in/gtQjCfUH See you in Skool.  https://lnkd.in/gtQjCfUH Don’t be late to Skool.  https://lnkd.in/gtQjCfUH PS Are you curious how my team is able to get to these roles as fast as we do? You can find out the hack in Skool! https://lnkd.in/gtQjCfUH Don’t be late to Skool! https://lnkd.in/gtQjCfUH #productmanagement #productmanagementcareers #productmanagementjobs #speedtolead

In Set & Forget we try to differentiate ourselves from other agencies by being part of our client’s own team. We’re not an agency that you hire as a third party to do software development, we work as partners that add value to your team. When hiring us, you’re counting with: - A Product Owner - A Tech Lead - A Project Manager - A Developer And all this for a way smaller price than hiring all this team yourself. Why would you hire someone if you can have a whole team working for you and saving money at the same time?

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Do I know any Associate Producer looking for a new job? Because Secret Mode is hiring 🤩 Check the details below: Associate Producer | Secret Mode | Hybrid (2 days in their Leamington Spa office) Full JD: https://bit.ly/43EAXrW 💡 Collaborate with the Production team to ensure all projects stay on track, adhering to our best practices for development success. 💡 Facilitate key meetings, capturing and acting on essential discussions to keep our teams aligned and our projects moving forward. 💡 Maintain and update project schedules, ensuring timely delivery and clear communication across departments. 💡 Resolve scheduling conflicts and contribute to risk analysis, ensuring project goals are achievable within capacity limits. What you will bring: ➕ Familiarity with Jira, Confluence, Miro, and Excel to support project tracking and team coordination. ➕ Strong communication skills to liaise effectively with both colleagues and partners. ➕ A proactive attitude towards problem-solving and project management, with a keenness to learn and adapt. ➕ An organized approach, ensuring information is accurately collated and disseminated. If you decide to apply let me know! 👀 ➡️Ps.: Are you at entry-level looking for material to prep? Check the #ELSH: https://lnkd.in/e9YT9Fht --- 📣 Follow #RethinkRecruitment and ring the 🔔 to read about: 📙 #GameDev Recruitment Best Practices 🔎 #JobHunting, #CareerAdvice & #RecruiterTips 👁️ Bird's Eye View & the #ELSH ⏩ https://entrylevel.games/ 🌟 Opinions are very much my own™️

It's amazing how many PM CVs read like a job description. Put yourself in the hiring manager’s shoes and see if you would want to take a first call with someone whose CV reads as follows: * Developed and executed product strategies to align with company goals * Responsible for the product vision , planning , design , usability, and quality of releases * Conducted market research and competitive analysis to identify emerging trends and opportunities, informing product roadmap * Collaborated with stakeholders, including sales, engineering, marketing and customer success to prioritize feature development based on customer feedback and market trends * Managed product launches, including coordinating marketing efforts, training sales and customer success teams Defined clear and measurable Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that align with product goals * Collaborated with product designers to translate user needs and business requirements into intuitive and visually appealing products I would expect that you do all this because that's LITERALLY every PMs job. You haven't told me a single thing about why I should consider you for the role.

Specific skillset Product Manager job alert! You could be me (but better probably) at Honeycomb. Read on for info. We are seeking 2 (two) (for different teams) Technical Product Managers. Key note! I am NOT the hiring manager. I'm posting the job at the request of one of our recruiters because our recruiting team is delightful and I enjoy helping them. Read this post and if you or someone you know fits the profile, send them my way, I can refer good candidates to the roles! These roles will be similar to my job—you need to have engineering experience. We work in very technical spaces where you have to understand code, infrastructure, and the way that production services work. Having been an engineer (I was a frontend eng for 9 years before moving into PM) will be critical in these roles. You'll be working to define the roadmap for infrastructure-level products and teams. But also, it's a real Product Manager role—Honeycomb serves a wide variety of customers from early stage startups to Fortune 500 companies—and we're constantly trying to identify solutions that help software engineers build faster, with confidence. We regularly face situations where the "best" solution is unclear; we have competing business needs, user needs, and team capacities. This is not a project manager role, you'll need to ramp up on the domain, our customers, and your team to find the right solutions that generate the user outcomes your team is driving towards. Honeycomb is still relatively small (less than 250 employees) so there are immense possibilities for you to collaborate and drive value across the company. In my role, I am regularly context switching from working closely with engineers to sort through technical issues we're facing in code, to sharing our roadmap with customers and prospects, to working with leadership to define strategy and build alignment. If this sounds interesting to you or sounds like someone you know, feel free to message me directly! I'll put the job post in the comments so you can read it, but as mentioned above, I can refer you directly to the job, no cover letter or application needed! EDITED TO ADD: Honeycomb is not able to support H1B visas, so candidates do need to be US or Canadian citizens.

What if I had a whole product team for the job search?! Would be glorious. 🧢🎩👒One of the big challenges is all the mode-switching. The lost time and added stress of switching hats. A possible Yourself-as-a-Candidate product team: 🧱‘The developer(s)’ - to build new skills, read books, practice coding, PDUs, develop writing skills and posting ;) ⚜️‘The product designer’: checking how I am to work with, watching with a third eye at how others behave around me. Home the experience from wardrobe to personal affect. 📈‘The product marketing manager’: giving me the real talk on the market, what companies will actually hire for. Writing 🔥 resumes and application copy. Solid GTM plan 📦‘The product manager’: assessing my strengths & weaknesses, what the market wants, and orchestrating all the other product teammates. Aligning me on a vision of where I’m headed. Prioritizing the work. All while keeping the team (my life) engaged & happy Fun to write this all out, but it’s Too Real 😜. Role-switching while developing Yourself-as-a-Candidate takes quite a mental load. Has anyone had success managing that hat-swapping friction when you’re solo? Maybe I gotta invent an AI product team for this. Oy! AI not only doing jobs, but doing the job or getting a job! Haha