Hey, Corinn here - founder of Speckled, the tool that helps PMs build the
right thing at the right time.
Today we're going to be answering the question "how do you figure
out which product management certification is best for you"?
Now the challenging thing about this question is that there
really isn't one gold standard for product management certification.
There's a lot of courses, certifications, programs, and even related certifications
out there that you can take.
figuring out which one to pursue can take hours, if not days of research.
The good news is that once you find the right one for you, it can really
help you further your PM career goals.
I personally got my certified scrum master and PMP at a
previous project management gig.
And after that, I jumped into a product apprenticeship.
While I didn't take any product management specific courses, having some background
in agile and project management definitely helped me out in my product roles and
I definitely would recommend some kind of training or education before jumping
into your first product management role.
So there are a few things that you should think about before
deciding which training to take.
These are things like, what is your experience level?
What are your career goals?
How much money do you have to spend on this?
And also how much time can you devote?
So the first thing is to talk about your experience level.
If you're looking for your first role as a product manager, the
certifications and courses that you're probably going to be looking at are
different from someone who's been in the field for quite a few years.
For example, if you're looking for an APM role, you may want to choose a
more general product management course.
While if you're mid-career in product, you may want to choose a more specific
course, something, maybe like a certified product owner course.
The next thing is to figure out what your career goals are.
Are you cool with being an individual contributor and you want to get
really, really good at what you do?
Or do you want to maybe move into upper management?
This may decide whether you go to really in the weeds of workshops or really high
level stuff like leadership training.
Another thing is what is your budget and how much time are you willing to devote?
There are some really expensive things you can do, like go get an MBA.
That not only knocks out two years of your career, but also two
years of your potential earnings.
But on the other hand, you can earn more in the long term and
you can expand your network.
Or you can take something like a product apprenticeship, like I did,
where you really are taken under the wing of a product person and
you learn everything on the job.
The only thing is sometimes they don't pay as much, so it really depends
on what your budget is for this and how much money you're willing to
give up and what kind of opportunity costs you're willing to deal with.
Now that you know, and you have a general idea of what kind of certifications
and programs you should be looking for the next step is to do the research.
So you want to check out job placement rates for some of these
certifications or programs that you're thinking about entering you
want to scour the web for reviews.
These should be pretty easy to find, especially if it's a program
that's been around for a while.
And another thing you can do is join some of these private Slack communities.
Some of these are Mind the Product and PM HQ.
Just go ahead and join those and do a quick search for the programs that
you're thinking about and maybe ask around and see if anyone has done
them and what they thought about them.
This way you'll get a little bit more candid feedback than something that's
maybe written about in a blog post on the web that might be sponsored by the program
that you're thinking about joining.
Alright.
Another thing I just want to put out there is a product management certification
isn't necessarily a requirement.
You can definitely get a PM job without one.
Don't get one just because you feel the pressure to, or
you think it may be useful...
get one because you really know that it's going to help you reach your goals.
Alright.
So we talked about choosing the right product certification for you by asking
yourself what your goals are, where you are in your career and how much
time and money you're willing to spend.
We also talked about how to figure out if a program is good by checking
reviews and doing the research and looking at job placement rates.
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In the meantime, I hope you find the right certification for you.