At first glance, Product Gym and Pathrise both seem like pretty similar choices for product management training programs that can help you get a Product Manager job. We both offer digital online community courses to train you in product management skills, career coaching, actionable job-hunting advice and strategies, and more.
When you are choosing a product management training program to lead you in the right direction and help you secure your dream Product Manager role, it is important to know exactly what you’re signing up for. In this article, we will dive into the differences between Product Gym and Pathrise, so that you can narrow down your choices and decide which program is best for you.
Product Gym vs Pathrise: Program Overview
| Product Gym | Pathrise | |
| Location | USA, Canada, UK, Europe, Australia | USA |
| Focus Areas | Product Management | Software Engineering, Product, Strategy and Ops, Product Design, Data Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success |
| Product Skills | Yes | Yes |
| Business Skills | Yes | No |
| Career Skills | Yes | Yes |
Overall, Product Gym is a lot more specialized and focused on product management.
Product Gym Skills Course Content
Here’s the full breakdown of our courses offered, along with the Instructor’s titles and experience.
Firstly, Product Gym offers technical fundamentals that prepare you not only for the job hunting process but also to succeed in your Product Manager role when you secure it. These core product management skills include frameworks, engineering, API, systems development lifecycle, UX design, UX research, product management data science, and more.
Secondly, Product Gym offers business fundamentals that teach you all that you need to know about product management. This includes product strategy, product roadmapping, prioritization, product marketing, product pricing, A/B testing, marketplace management, experimentation, metrics and dashboarding, customer empathy, and investor expectations.
Thirdly, Product Gym offers interviewing fundamentals that help you showcase your skills and position yourself as the best candidate for the role that you are interviewing for. These skills include how to interview with both internal and external recruiters, how to nail your interview and pitch your background, how to close your final interviews, how to ace your case studies – even if they’re technical – how to whiteboard, and how to nail your fishbowl interviews. Altogether, this entire course ensures that you are well-prepared for the interview process and can walk into your next interview with confidence.
Pathrise Skills Course Content
Pathrise covers the following skills:
- Resume and profile optimization
- Launch and iteration
- Behavioral matrix
- Elevator pitch
- Identification and interpretation of metrics
- Interview Preparation
- Product and process discovery
- Salary negotiation and lifetime network
- Written case assignments
Product Gym Instructors
All our instructors have been in product management for many years and have been exactly where you are right now. This means that they are able to provide you with the most relevant and useful tips and tricks to land your dream product management role. Read about our current instructors to learn their areas of expertise and gain confidence in the quality of teaching you’ll receive.
Pathrise Instructors
There is no clear information on who Pathrise’s instructors are.
Product Gym Course Material Access
Product Gym is one of the shortest programs currently on the market. We focus on more robust topics that matter in the transition to product management while cutting out the unnecessary, such as 2 weeks of public speaking training. As a bonus, Product Gym is the only program that will give you course material access after the course has ended.
It would be unrealistic to say that every person who enrolls in a product management course will land a job within the program duration, regardless of which one you choose. We are aware that some people might take more time to find a job than others, so we give our members access to our course materials for up to twelve months after enrolling in the program.
With unlimited access to Product Gym’s course material, you never have to worry about making another payment. Even if you get laid off from your product management job a few years down the road, or are looking to transition to another product management role, you can easily come back to the Product Gym program and leverage the training and community again.
Pathrise Course Material Access
Pathrise provides continued access to their material. However, take note that they receive a percentage of your income once you land the job.
Product Gym vs Pathrise Course Enrollment
With both Product Gym and Pathrise, you can enroll anytime that works best for you and still receive the full six weeks of instruction.
Product Gym Interview and Case Study Support
Product Gym offers both interview and case study support.
In fact, Product Gym invests a lot of time and effort into ensuring that you ace your interview process. This includes giving you a list of the most common questions that product management interviewers ask and a set of the best responses to those questions. In addition, Product Gym teaches you how to tackle even the most grueling behavioral and technical questions, so that you can position yourself as the best candidate for the job.
Product Gym also offers extensive support with the case study. Senior members who have done a similar case study will weigh in on the case study examples that you are working through so that you know how other more senior Product Managers would respond to the same situation. In addition, Product Gym provides you with frameworks, templates, model answers, and everything you need to know to structure and frame your case study well.
Pathrise Interview and Case Study Support
Pathrise also offers both interview and case study support in its curriculum. However, your main point of contact will be your career mentor and your business mentor. This means that while you will have a hands-on, one-on-one mentor available for meetings once a week, you will not have access to a wide range of perspectives and input from a community of peers and coaches. Weekly mentor meetings are a boon, but Product Gym’s online community is fully digital and remote and is therefore available 24/7.
Product Gym Career Coaching
Product Gym’s community includes a team of career coaches that are readily available to assist you with launching or growing your product management career. Take advantage of weekly coaching calls where one of our coaching team members will address the questions that have been popping up on the online channel throughout the week.
The Product Gym membership network is available to you for a lifetime, which means that you can continue expanding your network of product management seniors and peers as you grow your career as a Product Manager. In addition, Product Gym offers on-campus recruiting and web-based resources to help you make the best decision on which role to apply for and how to get it.
Take a look at some of our members asking questions on the platform and getting their queries answered by our career coaches.
Pathrise Career Coaching
Pathrise offers a career mentor but no lifetime membership network, on-campus recruiting, and web-based resources. In addition, although you have access to a career mentor, you will not have access to a community of career coaches that are readily available to answer your product management and job-hunting queries.
Book a Call
If it sounds like what Product Gym offers is exactly what you need to transition into your dream product management role, book a call with us and let’s see if we’re a good fit. We have a 10% intake rate, which means that there is a chance you may not be a good fit for our program. However, if that is the case, we will point you in the direction of other programs that have a better chance of helping you succeed.
