How Ashish moved out of the railroad industry into a Senior Product Manager role

Ashish wanted out of the railroad industry and into something faster paced. The tricky part was translating his experience. He was a CTO at a startup, which sounds senior but does not map cleanly onto the roles he was after.

We narrowed his expertise down to the thing that travelled best, taking tech products into new markets, and that pointed at product management. It is a harder target than it sounds, because product management is one of the most crowded spaces in the market right now. He landed a Senior Product Manager role.

Fewer, better applications

When a market is saturated, most people react by applying to more of it. Ashish did the opposite.

“We already knew, hey, we can try making 100 applications and nothing will come out of that. Let's focus on the ones where we can make that thing work.”

In a crowded function, volume actually works against you. You are competing on the same signals as hundreds of other people. The thing that moved the needle was picking the roles where his unusual background counted as an asset instead of something he had to explain away.

His verdict, including the caveat

He is measured about it, not gushing, and he makes a point of saying the resume itself was not transformed.

“Even though I was using the same resume and everything, my experience of going through the program, I would say it was well worth it.”

“Overall, I would say it was well worth it and I got the value that anyone would look to get from a program like this.”

The search in numbers

• Moved out of the railroad industry into product management, one of the most saturated functions
• Repositioned from startup CTO to Senior Product Manager
• Level: Manager and Principal. Function: Product