How to Build a Product Manager Portfolio?

“What should I add in my product portfolio?” - Someone asked this question in one of the session I was taking a few months ago.

The topic for the session was “Transitioning to a product role”. I answered that question is detail.

Then, as I took more and more 1:1 calls with aspiring Product Managers, the same question kept coming up. And why would it not? In a market where everyone has optimised their resume for ATS and everyone is trying to build a network for getting a referral, you need to do something to stand out, right?

What is a Portfolio?

A portfolio means a collection of a person's past work in a specific field. For example:

If you are an artist, the art pieces you create can be presented as your portfolio.

If you are a marketer, all the ad-creatives you work on, which are clearly visible to the world is your portfolio.

Let's talk a bit about tech - If you are an engineer, all your past work, the software you have built, initiatives you have taken and the impact you have created through them is part of your portfolio.

Portfolio helps the creator by making it easy for them to share their work and show the impact they have created. It also helps the consumer of the portfolio (a client, a recruiter, or a friend) gain confidence in you and your skills as they are seeing actual work done by you and not just listening to you blabber about how great you are.

But, why do Product Managers need a portfolio?

Simply put - It can help you get a job.

If you are an aspiring Product Manager, how would you prove that you are a right fit for becoming a Product Manager?

Why would a recruiter, who already has 1000+ applicants for a role trust you or care about you if they don't know anything about your skills.

In this scenario, a portfolio can help. Unlike a standard resume, a portfolio allows you to showcase your capabilities through real examples of your work.

A Product Manager's portfolio needs to be a collection of all the work they have done in product management in the past. So, as an aspiring Product Manager, you can present your best work as a proof of your capability to do the work, and to do it well.

But not only this, even if you are already a Product Manager, creating a portfolio can be helpful because of the following reasons:

1. You get a chance to convert your learnings into real and tangible outcomes.
2. It's a reflective experience, it can prepare you for PM interviews and other challenges that require you sharing your achievements.
3. You can share your work and build a personal brand for yourself which will help you in you career in long term.

What should a Product Manager portfolio focus on?

When it comes to building product portfolio, people always ask questions like

1. What format should I use to build my portfolio?
2. Can I put it on my personal website?
3. Should I put this on Notion or design it myself?

But most of them always forget the important question - “What story should I tell while building my portfolio?”

I can give you a list of all the type of things you can put in your portfolio but I am sure it won't help you that much.

What sets you apart from others is not only the content of the portfolio, but also the presentation of it, the story that you narrate and how you communicate everything.

What's your goal with your portfolio? To show your capability as a Product Manager, right?

Showcase your core Product Management skills:

1. Prioritisation
2. Execution
3. Problem Solving
4. User Empathy
5. Leadership

So, focus on adding projects and narrating a story that is a testimonial to your core PM skills.

How to build this portfolio?

Start with yourself

Tell your story - who are you and why you do what you do? Why do you want to become a Product Manager? Why does building products excite you?

A brief intro on yourself, your skills and interests is a good start to your portfolio.

Add your projects

You can add the following type of projects to your portfolio:

1. Product Teardown and Case Studies
2. Designing solutions to a problem
3. PRDs and Requirement Documents
4. Building and launching a product to real users

You can add any of these things as a project in your portfolio. We will take a deeper dive into each of these just now.

Product Teardown and Case Studies - Improving Products

One way to show your product skills is to take an existing product and improve it. You can do it in the form of a product teardown or case study.

Here is what you can include:

1. What is the product and what is the company's goal?
2. What problem does this product solve and for whom?
3. How does this makes money?
4. Who are the competitors and how are they solving this problem?
5. What user segments does it serve?
6. What is unique about this product?
7. What can be improved in the product?
8. What would be the impact of this improvement?
9. How can we measure this change?

Doing an in-depth breakdown of a product, understanding the users and coming up with ways to make their life better while also improving some business metric is a great way to showcase your PM skills.

Product teardown is a very common and popular form of doing such an analysis amongs aspiring Product Managers nowadays. Case studies are something not a lot of people write, as it is experiential and is better suited for experienced PMs.

An example of a Product Teardown: https://www.theproductfolks.com/teardown-winners/shalu-goel-varun-garg

An example of a good case study: https://soumya.work/Daily-Savings-Drop-Jar

Designing Solutions to Problems

Just like you do an analysis of a product and the problems user face, you can go one step further and come up with a solution for it. Now, “designing” here doesn't necessarily means using Figma and coming up with a high fidelity prototype.

You have to come up with a solution to the problem in the form of a product that actually solves the user problem.

For example, if you observe that a lot of people are struggling with keeping a zero inbox in their mails and are complaining about it. That's a problem, and there can be lots of ways to solve it.

To design a solution for this problem:

1. Use Design Thinking framework to empathise with the user and understand their problems and why they aren't able to solve it. Define the problem and come up with all the solutions that can potentially solve the problem.
2. Finally, based on the impact, finalise the best solution and go deeper down on that.
3. Focus on what all features would you keep in the MVP of this product and how the users will interact with this.
4. Create a wireframe for your proposed solution. If you want, you can even create Figma prototype for the solution and test it with real users and come up with insights that you can put in your resume.

💡 You can create wireframes using tools like Whimsical, Excalidraw or Figma

💡 To create high fidelity designs and prototypes, use Figma

Writing PRDs

Another way to showcase your skills is to write requirement documents for features and products.

As an APM, you spend a lot of time writing PRDs and you need to write it well so that everyone in the team can be on the same page. Communication proves to be a very important skill here.

Writing PRDs for features and showing that as your proof of work can help you give a proof of your communication skills.

This PRD can be for a feature you are doing a case study on, or it can be a complete new feature that you come up with for a hypothetical product.

💡 You can write PRDs using tools like Notion or Google Doc

Build and Launch a Product

One of the toughest but maybe the most useful and smart part of portfolio is having a real product that you built from scratch for real users. With the case studies, teardown and hypothetical scenarios, you give proof of your ability to think like a Product Manager. With them, you lack the proof of how well you can execute all these things you ideate and plan.

Now, to do this, you have 2 ways:

1. If you don't know how to code, you either partner up with someone or use a no-code tool to come up with a v1 for your idea and then go to market to talk to real users.
2. If you do know how to come, you can team up with others or build a quick version of the product and launch it to the early adopters.

By actually building and launching your product, you will understand the small details about being a PM that can't be taught and can only be learnt by doing.

This is not the only benefit of building a product. If you build a product, you can document your journey of building and launching it along with your learnings on social platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter. This will give you accountability, visibility and people will trust you as they can see your progress.

A lot of folks have gotten their first jobs because of being vocal about their learnings and sharing them with the world.

Once built, you can also launch your product on platforms like Product Hunt, Peerlist or just launch it on Twitter. This will also help you learn a bit about building GTM of the product.

Where should I create this portfolio?

The answer to this question truly depends on the efforts you want to put into it and the easy of accessibility.

1. The easiest option is to put everything up on a Notion Page. It's a very common way of creating a portfolio. Create a Notion page, add everything to it and make the link public.
2. You can host your portfolio on your personal website too, if you have one. If you don't then it's fine too.
3. You can use no-code tools to create a quick website to hold all your projects. Use tools like Wordpress, Framer etc. for it.
4. You can use already existing portfolio platforms like behance, bento etc. to add your content and get an easily sharable link too.

Overall, I would say that it doesn't matter much where your portfolio is, what matters is that what's inside it.

To create the content like case studies, teardowns and wireframes, use these tools

1. Google Slides, Canva or Pitch for presentations
2. Notion or Google Doc for documentation
3. Whimsical, Balsamiq for creating wireframes
4. Figma, Framer for creating high fidelity design and prototypes

How can a portfolio help me get a job?

Having a product portfolio helps you showcase your work and hence gain the trust of recruiters and potential employers on your capabilities.

Although most of the hiring even today happens via resume, hence you need to optimise your resume. But make sure you always mention your portfolio and add the link in the resume itself. This will help the recruiter access it easily and increase your chances of getting a call back.

You can also share your projects on Twitter and LinkedIn and get connected with people from the industry. Sharing your portfolio and putting yourself out there helps you make connections and get referrals. If people know about your work, they will be more than happy to refer you, hence helping you get the job.

There's a problem with product portfolios!

With increasing competition, the bar for “good work” is increasing day by day. With so many people trying to get the same jobs, recruiters see 1000s of resumes and 100s of portfolios daily. And most of them are the same.

With such conditions, the chances of your portfolio to stand out or even being opened decreases if you are applying normally through a job board.

So, how do we tackle this problem?

1. Be creative. Go deeper into the problems and find things that are actually interesting to you. Don't just follow someone else whose portfolio you saw 2 days ago.
2. Just like your resume, tailor your portfolio too. Every company is unique and their challenges are unique. But there's still a pattern.
   1. If you have done a case study on the company you have applied to, give it a special place in both your resume and portfolio.
   2. If not the same company, but a competitor, mention it too.
3. Reach out to people directly with your feedback. Try to create a case study on what that company can improve in their product and try to reach out to the founders directly. The chances of them reading through the content is higher if it's about something they are currently working on.

How do I know that my portfolio is good enough?

Honestly, you don't. That's why you need an outsider's perspective. If you know anyone who is working as a Product Manager, get it reviewed from them and get a detailed feedback.

If you have a mentor, make sure you get their feedback on the portfolio too before applying to jobs.

If you don't have any senior or mentor, you can reach out to me on LinkedIn too. I will try my best to reply whenever I have time.