Can You Become a Product Manager Without a Degree?

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There’s no shortage of qualifications needed to become a product manager. While the majority of job seekers and professionals in this field have a college degree, this doesn’t hold true across the board. There are people out there who have entered the field without a degree. It may be more difficult but it’s not impossible.

If you’re seeking a PM role but lack a college degree, find ways to prove that you have the experience and knowledge necessary to succeed. Building on this, here are some of the things you can do to help your cause.

1. Show Your Career Path and Progress

You may not have a college degree, but your career path to this point could be just what a hiring company is looking for. As long as you have the proper experience and knowledge, it has the potential to supersede any education (or lack thereof) to this point in your life.

Maybe you’ve worked in product marketing or product design. Neither one is the same as product management, but you’re “in the ballpark.” For example, as a product design professional, you’ve worked with PMs throughout the entire build process. This experience makes it much easier to move into a product manager role in the future. 

Don’t assume that your work history isn’t relevant to your goal of becoming a PM. Get creative in the ways you tie it all together. 

2. Share What You’ve Built (or Build Something)

Have you built a successful product in the past? Have you built a product that solves a real pain point for a specific group of people?

If your answer is yes, share your product with the companies to which you’re applying. You can do this in one of two ways:

• Provide a brief yet detailed overview on your resume. This is likely to pique the interest of any HR professional or hiring manager who reads it.
• Use it as a conversation starter. For instance, you could directly contact smaller companies that are hiring product managers. Send a brief email to express your interest in the company and share your product. It’s a good icebreaker that puts you in a favorable light from the start.

Don’t have a product you can share? That’s okay, too. Think about the type of company that you want to work for. Maybe it’s a SaaS provider. Now, build a product in this space before applying. Yes, it’ll take time to do so, but it’s extremely helpful in helping you land a job. 

3. Showcase Your Technical Knowledge 

While it’s possible to become a product manager without a technical background, you must still showcase your technical knowledge. Here are a couple of the best ways to do that. 

• Show how you’ve used your technical knowledge to build a product. (more on this above)
• Explain how your current and past positions have prepared you for the technical side of a PM role. 

Remember, the hiring company may assume you don’t have much, if any, technical knowledge as you don’t have a degree. So, you have to work extra hard to prove that this isn’t true. 

4. Advance Your Analytical Knowledge 

No college degree is a red flag to interviewers that you may fall short in regards to analytical knowledge. And without this, it’s much more difficult to excel as a product manager. 

There’s no one size fits all solution to closing the analytical knowledge gap, but there are general steps you can take to make progress. The ability to think analytically is critical to problem-solving, so start by reviewing our problem-solving, estimation, and metrics questions and potential answers. Examples include:

• You’re a PM at Amazon. You released a new feature in the items search functionality recently and found out that searches increased by 10% but the results page load time is 2 seconds longer. What would you do?
• You are the PM for a streaming video service. You come into the office and see that one key metric has dropped by 80%. What will you do?
• There is a data point that indicates that there are more Uber drop-offs at the airport than pick-ups from the airport. Why is this the case and what would you do within the product to change that?
• You launched a new signup flow to encourage new users to add more profile information. A/B test results indicate that the % of people that added more information increased by 8%. However, 7-day retention decreased by 2%. What do you do?
• New patients are not showing up for their first telehealth appointment. How would you solve this issue?
• ​​How would you measure the success of Facebook Likes?
• What metrics would you look at as a product manager for Instagram ads?
• If you are opening a new Walmart branch, how would you decide how many cash registers are needed for the store?
• Calculate the number of queries answered by Google per second.

Analytical skills include but are not limited to problem-solving, estimation, metrics, data analysis, critical thinking, and research. You may not have knowledge and experience directly related to all of these, but find ways to showcase what you do have. 

Should You Go Back to School?

You can absolutely land a job as a product manager without a college degree, but if you’ve continually come up short it may be time to consider going back to school.

For those without a bachelor’s degree, consider enrolling in a computer science, engineering, or business administration program. If you have a bachelor’s degree and want to take your education to the next level, a master’s in business administration (MBA) or business management and leadership will help you secure a PM job and excel in your role.

Enrolling in any college degree program is a big step. It’ll affect your personal life, finances, and career path. So, carefully consider the pros and cons before you go in this direction. 

Final Thoughts

Regardless of your education, landing a product manager job comes down to one thing: preparation. These jobs are highly competitive, so you need to perform well during your interview(s).

At PM Exercises, we have several ways for you to prepare. Start by browsing our 2500+ product manager interview questions (there are answers, too). From there, sign up for our interview course and consider partaking in mock interviews. The more prepared you are going into your interview, the greater chance there is of hitting a home run!