How to Upgrade your Product Management Role in Finance

What Made you Want to Pivot into a New Industry?

Having worked almost exclusively financial services at big banks, I was really ready to just do something a bit more digital and technical. I really felt in own my personal passions that I’m really interested in innovation and technology, and thought why don’t I try to pivot into fintech or just true tech. That was really my goal when I set out to look for different jobs and kind of put myself out there for other opportunities. I was looking mostly at mature startups, tech companies and fintech companies like Stripes, Squares, and PayPals of the world.

What’s the Biggest Change that you Saw When you Joined Product Gym?

One of the biggest changes was just creating a strategy for how I was going about interviewing. There were a couple of things in the “career accelerator” course that I learned I was doing wrong. When I was doing the interviewing myself, I was being really selective about what interviews I was taking. I was not casting a really wide net, and I didn’t even think to position myself for jobs that were in other markets. Since I’m based in New York, I was so focused on only interviewing for companies that were in New York. I think doing so, didn’t really allow me to test my skills broadly. In terms of that strategy, joining Product Gym and having a structure and accountability was super helpful.

What are Some Words of Encouragement you Have for Current PMs Looking to Pivot their Career?

My advice is to just have faith and just go for it. I think that being a mid-level PM (where you’re not senior or entry level), it can be a very weird space to navigate. Sometimes we feel that we need to follow a certain path to get to where you want, but you can totally break from that path. There is no set path to get to where you want to be, but it does require you to have faith and take those calculated risks.