100OFFER launched “Beijing special” after launching “Shanghai special” last week. This article, part of a series on Beijing, focuses on product managers in the city.
What happens to product managers’ pay? How do product managers chart their own path? How are the product managers in Beijing doing so far?
With these questions in mind, we examined more than 200 resumes of product managers in Beijing and found an interesting phenomenon: product managers who specialize in a specific niche tend to earn higher salaries in their careers.
Next, we will analyze this phenomenon from multiple dimensions, such as candidate cases, average annual salary and interview invitation number of candidates, enterprise HR, and 100offer Consultant.
Two product managers live in Beijing and have more than 10 years of work experience. A’s annual salary is 530,000 yuan and B’s annual salary is 330,000 yuan. What causes the difference in their salaries?
Is it a degree?
A, with an annual salary of 530,000 yuan, graduated from an ordinary bachelor’s degree, while B, with an annual salary of 330,000 yuan, graduated from A 985, 211 prestigious university. It seems that educational background is not the direct reason for their salary. This time, we are not going to tell an inspirational story about how an Internet person with an ordinary education background counterattacks. 100Offer will deeply analyze the career development trend of various positions in the Internet industry. Today, about the career development of product managers, we want to discuss a topic: what is the salary and development of product managers related to?
Comparing the two candidates’ work experience, we found an interesting phenomenon —
A has been working in the field of enterprise management informatization and Internet product management for 12 years. He has strong planning in career development and will concentrate on working in this subdivision field. B has worked for 10 years. In the first two years, HE was a development engineer, and then changed to product manager. He has 8 years of product manager experience.
After in-depth analysis of the experiences of the two candidates, we consulted the career development paths of product managers with more than five years of work experience in the background of 100 offers, and found a rule: the more specialized a product manager is in a certain direction, the higher his salary will be after working for many years. We also consulted the opinions of the Consultant with 100 offers, HR of some enterprises and several headhunters, and made a conjecture based on all the information
The salary of product manager is high or low, and the development of product manager is positively correlated with his/her years of experience in the field, that is, product manager who works in a specific field will develop better.
Next, we’ll explore this idea in depth.
What kind of product manager do companies like?
In the past year, HR staff in Beijing issued 2921 interview invitations to product managers out of 100 offers, with an average salary of 30.2W and an average number of interview invitations per product manager of 3.9. Compared with other cities, the average salary of product managers in Beijing ranked second and the average number of interview invitations ranked first.
Considering the current recruitment market, Beijing is still a good choice for senior product managers.
Before making an in-depth analysis of the career development paths of A and B, we selected the JD issued by the enterprise for product manager of big data, product manager of advertising direction, product manager of APP mobile terminal and product manager of B terminal. After deleting the necessary skills of product manager, we summarized the core requirements of the enterprise for these four product managers
Through the above four JD letters, we can find that different fields or different types of products have very different requirements for product managers’ ability. Although product managers in different fields have similar responsibilities and require similar skills, there are still significant differences between different industry segments. Everyone needs to spend many years in the industry to have a deep understanding of an industry. If he or she keeps changing fields after career development, his or her understanding of the industry will not be very deep and the products presented will not be satisfactory.
Next, we will demonstrate the above views in depth from the perspectives of enterprise HR, 100offer Consultant, candidate data and cases.
This time, 100offer consulted the HR of an Internet e-commerce enterprise, mainly asking two questions: One is whether the experience of the product manager in the e-commerce field is important when selecting the product manager; the other is what is the difference in the recruitment of the e-commerce product manager?
On the first question, HR gave a positive answer: the product manager’s work experience in the e-commerce industry will be highly valued. When selecting a candidate, even if a candidate is from a famous university or enterprise, he or she has no work experience in the e-commerce industry, so it is not likely to be hired.
HR gives the company’s opinion on why it values product managers’ experience in niche areas so much —
1. Improve efficiency, reduce costs and reduce risks
Into a new industry, anyone takes time to learn, to precipitate, for enterprise recruitment needs, they want to recruit the assistant product manager rather than product, the product manager understanding of new areas for enterprises is a waste of time, the enterprise party tend to recruit a “quick” product manager.
2. Field changers are just as restless as job hoppers
When hiring managers look at resumes, they don’t like job hoppers. The face of experience for a long time and fewer job-hopping employees, HR will go to watch their working areas enough “single-minded”, more strict to the requirement of product manager that on the one hand, often change the product manager in the field of HR would feel insecure, in a few candidates have the same qualifications, enterprise more inclined to “single-minded” product manager.
E-commerce product managers, for example, have very different job responsibilities than product managers in other niche areas. Electricity product manager data, don’t spend too much time on interactive prototype, more need to focus on the system set up and optimize, and electrical contractor’s center of gravity to consider is also different, although the product manager is to the user experience in the first place, but the duty that electricity product manager in order as the center, not in the user as the center.
Based on the advice given by HR, it’s not hard to see why product managers who specialize in a niche are more likely to earn higher salaries later in life. The salary is decided by the market demand, the more scarce talent, the higher the salary naturally, the future career development trend of product manager is more inclined to subdivide the world.
Product managers should have a clear career path
Let’s look at the work history of candidate A and candidate B.
A graduated from general university in 2004 and began to work as A product manager in Beijing in 2005.
There is no doubt that this is A very beautiful resume with A clear career development direction. It can be seen that A specializes in enterprise management informatization and Internet product management and has A clear career plan. Most of her work has been in enterprises for more than three years. At present, A, with an annual salary of 530,000 yuan, is looking for new opportunities, and currently has an offer of 600,000 yuan in hand, which is being further communicated with HR.
B graduated in 2007 with a degree of 985, 211, and began to work in Beijing in 2007.
Now B has an annual salary of 330,000 yuan and is also looking for opportunities in Beijing. The minimum annual salary is about 300,000 yuan. During the probation period of his last job, he had conflicts with his superiors and finally left his job. In addition, he had many years of development experience before, and then he made a career transition. In six years, he has been involved in three fields with different product types.
Regarding B’s career development path and current situation, the Consultant of 100offer gives the following views —
1. Experienced, but not brilliant
With rich work experience, B’s annual salary is equal to the average annual salary of product managers in Beijing. However, compared with product managers with the same work experience, B’s resume or annual salary is not outstanding.
2. Technological transformation is blind
B to make the workplace transformation is during 2009 to 2011, when the heat of the product manager in China is beginning to rise by about 2010, the years, the product manager’s salary soaring, were once the jobs of the Internet industry with the highest average salary, let many technical or market and even the Internet industry people tried to turned product managers, From B’s constant change of fields, it can be said that B’s transformation at that time was relatively blind.
100Offer believes that when making career transition, we must think twice before making a decision. We should not see the job popularity in the market and make a blind choice. Although technology and products have something in common, they differ greatly.
Currently, product managers can be divided into mobile client products, WEB products, user products, customer products, community products, social products, content products, tools products, etc.
For example, the product manager of social network and the product manager of enterprise service face completely different user groups. The former is To C, while the latter is To B. The different user groups also result in different job responsibilities of the product manager. As the example of e-commerce product manager mentioned above, being senior in a certain field is more likely to be favored by HR.
Airbnb looks for even different types of product managers at different stages. Before the match the validation of the product/market stage, growing company needs to pioneer product manager, asked for mining user requirements and understand the product with the matching degree of the market, rapid expansion phase period in the company, an need immigrants settled type product manager, user conversion process and requirement of the function to the user, the influence of stability in the company, Airbnb needs urban planning product manager, who is the manager of the product platform and is required to measure the success of the platform products through indicators.
From the point of the case of reality, which can be found, as the company’s size, the greater the niche requirements for product manager will be higher, in early days, only the “pioneer”, understand user needs and products and the market is headed by matching degree, in the back, the settlement and urban planning, is evident from the type, this is in the field of direct request.
Internet industry capital feverish period is over, after the market return to calm, enterprises will be more and more high to the requirement of product managers, and the experience of niche, is one of the important evaluation criteria, and the future trend of the development of the industry focus on product design and product manager in the recruitment market slowly in saturated state, the refinement of division of labor and specialization is the inevitable trend, According to the comprehensive case, HR and Consultant, 100offer believes that the high or low salary of product manager and the good or bad development are positively correlated with his years of working experience in the field, that is, the product manager who works in a specific field will have better development.
100 the offer said
Returning to the phenomenon discussed in the article, 100Offer believes that product managers can be divided into O2O, e-commerce, enterprise service, social network and game from the field of Internet. Product managers can also be divided into mobile terminal, back-end or strategy from the field of demand.
With the development of the Internet industry, enterprises will have higher and higher requirements for product managers, no matter professional level or field experience.
Either way, product managers need to be aware of where the industry is heading: product managers will become more and more segmented, and their salaries will be influenced more and more by those segments. Finally, I attach zhang Xiaolong’s famous words about product manager, wish you become the best product manager —
“Products should have their own values, ideas and visions. It is not products, but works with soul; the words in products reflect your temperament, and the beauty of your products will not exceed your aesthetic ability.”