No one majors in Product Management. Personally, I majored in Communications and Spanish, and my first job out of school was as a Paid Search Analyst on a Marketing team. So how did I turn this seemingly unrelated background into a career as a PM?

I have had many young, aspiring Product Managers ask me for advice on how to break into the field, but there really is no single traditional path. In my experience, I’ve seen PMs of all different backgrounds and skill sets.

For example, I have worked with many engineer-turned-PMs. These are people who started their career as engineers and most likely have a Computer Science degree. Somewhere along the way, they decided that they had more of a passion for the business side of a development project than the building side, that they cared more about why something needed to be built than how it needed to be built. Or maybe they just decided they could do a better job than the incompetent fool writing their Product Requirement Docs. Whatever the motivation, many engineers jump over the fence to the Product Management side, and often bring with them a technical understanding and empathy with their engineers that I will never be able to match.

On the flip side, I have also seen the experiential PM. These are people who generally come from customer-facing sides of the business like Marketing, Design, or Support. Like the engineer, they decided that maybe they picked the wrong horse in the product development race and would actually get more fulfillment from driving business impact than determining the user experience. For them, understanding the why means more than dictating the what. These kinds of PMs often come with a deep care and empathy for the customer, but can also lack some of the skills necessary to lead extremely technical product initiatives (or need to lean more on an experienced technical lead). 

In the final lane, we have the MBA Product Manager. Whether or not this person actually went to business school, just finished a couple years as a consultant, or just really enjoys wearing vests and khakis, they are typically maniacally focused on the numbers and usually experts with an Excel formula. Their presentations will impress everyone, but they might need some help understanding the nuances of a product development cycle or an API doc. 

As for me? Well I’m none of the above. I never took a Computer Science class, I’m color blind, and I don’t understand the appeal of vests (is your body cold but your arms are warm? I don’t get it). So how did I end up here? What experience in my early years built the skill set that allows me to do my job every day and dare I say, do it well?

1. Greek Life is more than frat parties and secret handshakes. As an adult, it’s almost embarrassing to admit that I was in a fraternity in college. At the same time, it’s an experience I wouldn’t trade for anything. In addition to the lifelong friends I made, I truly believe that taking on leadership roles in a fraternity or sorority will prepare you for any profession, and Product Management, in particular. As a new member of a fraternity, you have to learn how to work with teammates, how to manage up, report on progress toward goals, and recruit new talent. You have to create advocates throughout campus, build a brand, and constantly be innovating. You have to show up on time to meetings, volunteer to take on responsibilities, and be accountable for fulfilling your commitments. If you do well with those commitments, you later get promoted to be an officer, at which point you have a team looking to you for direction. You need to learn how to delegate and prioritize. Like a Product Manager, you need to translate the needs of the organization into actionable steps for your team, then translate the results back to the rest of the org. When problems or blockers arise, it’s your job to call them out and identify solutions. As an officer in the fraternity or sorority, your product might be the new rush class, or next weekend’s party, or the house itself, but whatever it is, you are responsible and need to manage a team to deliver the best possible outcome.
2. Restaurant life is more than tips and free food. Just like my experience being in a fraternity helped prepare me for the responsibilities of managing a team and stakeholders, my experience working in a restaurant prepared me for the stresses of working at a startup. Whether you were a host, waiter, bartender, cook, busser, barback…every job in a restaurant comes with its own pressure and need for efficiency. Like in a startup, priorities can change at any minute, and you have to be willing and ready to adjust when the time comes. By the same token, you have to develop a system that works for you and your team, and there can’t be any confusion about who is responsible for what. That means creating your own language, adapting to your environment, and delivering a flawless end product without the customer ever seeing how the sausage was made. You need to be able to take criticism, whether it’s from your boss or your customer, iterate quickly, and never take it personally. Life in a restaurant, like on a Product team, is a constant stream of high stakes, pressure filled iterations. 
3. Solve a problem. Start a side project. I never went to business school, but when I tried and failed to start my own web-based business, I feel like I got my own mini version of an MBA – but without the crippling debt. My first project was born in an entrepreneurship class my senior year of college and blossomed into a serviceable product with a couple hundred users. While it never turned into the rocket ship business I imagined, it did introduce me to the world of working with engineers, and more specifically, freelance engineers who need incredibly specific instructions and detailed requirements. When I started, I thought, “I’m a Millennial. I know the internet. Designing intuitive user experiences will be easy.” I quickly learned that I knew nothing about UX, but by trial and error, eventually picked up a thing or two. More importantly, I learned the value of iteration and experimentation, and how to be scrappy and build products with limited resources, lessons that I carry with me every day as a leader in Product organizations. 
4. Learn from the people around you. When I first started as a Product Manager, I read all the blogs and books and watched all the videos, but I had no idea what I was doing. Fortunately for me, I had experienced teammates around me who were patient with me, but also held me accountable. If a user story wasn’t clear, my engineers would insist on more details before diving into the code. If I wasn’t able to justify why we should work on a new problem or initiative, my designers would demand an explanation before breaking ground on any wireframes. But more than that, my teammates would collaborate and work with me to hone my craft, and my managers weren’t afraid to let me take risks and make a few mistakes along the way.

Today, when I interview Product Managers or talk to aspiring PMs early in their career, these are the types of skills and attributes I look for. Can they manage a team, communicate to stakeholders, and execute against the organization’s goals? Can they adapt to shifting priorities and keep their calm in a hectic environment? Can they identify a problem, deliver a solution, and iterate toward the ideal user experience? And can they learn on the fly, all while being comfortable with ambiguity and getting a little scrappy?

Yes, experience in tech or design or business school can certainly help with all of the above, but I am living proof that they are not necessary to develop these kinds of skills. So if you’re thinking about jumping into a career in Product Management and you’re not sure where to start, I’d recommend a bartender’s license and a WordPress account. Don’t be afraid to list your fraternity leadership position or failed side project on your resume. Or just surround yourself with smart people. If it can work for me, it can work for you.