Manage your career like a product

I attended Pragmatic Marketing, Inc.’s Practical Product Management  seminar this past Monday and Tuesday.  Pragmatic Marketing has a great “framework” for helping companies increase the effectiveness of their Marketing  resources – especially the role of the Product Manager.  During the seminar, it occurred to me that people could apply the Pragmatic Marketing framework to their own careers.  Basically, everyone should assess their skills and interests, find places where those skills and interests can be put to use by employers, and then develop a plan to get “out there” and land a new job.

You can use the Pragmatic Marketing framework to help you manage your career – even if you are not a product manager or marketing manager.  Just start in the upper left corner of the framework and follow these steps:

1)  “Distinctive Competence” – What are your natural skills and talents?  What is your unique mix of experience, interests, personality and motivations?  What sets you apart from your “competition” in the job market?

2)  “Win/Lost Analysis” – Look back at all the jobs you’ve had.  Which ones did you love and which did you hate?  Why?  What were your favorite tasks on each job?  What caused you to leave a job and what were you looking for in the new job?

3)  “Market Problems” – What do employers need?  Do some research on the hiring front and find out what sort of needs hiring companies have.

That’s a pretty good start in figuring out what is possible.  Your next step would be to move into the Strategic category and define your targeted jobs and industries.  More on that in a future blog post.