How to make your PM application stand out?

(tldr: consider building a product portfolio)

Work portfolios are must-haves for many professionals, especially in the creative space.

It's hardly possible to imagine that you can hire a copywriter or graphical designer, or other creative professional without referring to their portfolio first. Portfolios are an excellent way to show insights into you, your job, and your working process.

In the tech world, specifically in product teams, portfolios are becoming increasingly popular among engineers, and de-facto are must-haves for UX/UI designers.

Surprisingly, having a portfolio for product managers is still considered a nice-to-have option. The majority of applications happen with reference to a CV and cover letter. From my experience of hiring PMs to a team, I can recall seeing a product portfolio in one out of ten cases (on average).

This trend is slowly changing, though. Now I more often see questions in product management forums on how to create a portfolio and what to include. And sometimes, I come across outstanding applications with well-thought-through portfolios that deserve to be named a product by itself.

In this post, I'd like to share:

How you can structure your product portfolio.
Do's and don'ts when creating a portfolio.
Tech tools you can use to build one, and
Several examples for inspiration.

But before we start, let's clarify - why product portfolios are needed after all? Why is it not enough to have a well-written CV, active LinkedIn profile, and cover letter?

Well, as I said above - portfolios for PMs are still optional.

Your application won't be rejected just because you don't have a portfolio in place. It's not something that will make or break your application process. Think of it as an opportunity to become more noticeable during screening and actual interview processes and get a bit more ahead of other applicants.

💁‍♂️ What to include in the portfolio

Designing a portfolio is a creative process, and there are no strict guidelines on what to include there. However, at a bare minimum, aim to have these three sections in place:

✅ Brief intro about yourself - who you are, what you do, what's your mission.

✅ Your background - overview of your career progression and how you ended up in your current role.

✅ Project gallery - this is the "meat" of your portfolio where you'll include all projects that best describe what you do.

For the product manager role, your project gallery will consist of one or more of the following projects:

⭐️ Projects when you've built from scratch or improved existing products.

If you didn't work as a PM yet, include all projects where you demonstrated skills, critical to the PM role.

To start with, focus on these two:

problem-solving

The essence of PM's work is to find a problem that is good enough to solve to make your customers happier and help a business grow faster. So it's essential to demonstrate this skill through your work samples.

To do so, show projects where you improved things, overcame challenges, and made progress despite obstacles.

Don't assume that you are only expected to talk about improving the software. You are welcome to reflect on the experiences when you set up a team to deliver something or simplify or enhance a business process.

For example, you can speak about your experience when you spotted an opportunity to transform a complex multi-step process into a simple two-step procedure and how you implemented the change.

collaboration skills

Building a product is a mutual effort of multiple teams, with PM driving the process.

Also, a PM is the driver of change in the companies and faces issues with people understanding and getting on board. So any story where you sold another person or team on your idea would strongly resonate with a hiring manager reviewing your portfolio.

It's also a good idea to list down projects when you partnered and coordinated multiple cross-functional teams such as marketing, legal, operations, sales, finance, engineers, designers, etc.

Besides the problem solving and collaboration, brainstorm on what other transferable skills you have. The skills assessment exercise will help you to get started.

⭐️ Projects you work on the side (aka your side hustles).

It can be projects you did on your own, with a small team of enthusiasts like you, or projects you worked on following an educational program like the product incubation.

⭐️ Case studies.

These are the practical exercises that product companies like to include as a part of their recruitment process to deep-dive into your domain knowledge and thought- process. Usually, every case requires quite a bit of work worth including in the portfolio as part of your experience.

💻 How to describe a project

For every project, focus on telling a logical story - why the project was started in the first place (problem), your role in the project, and the final results (project impact).

Think of the portfolio as an executive summary of the work process.

Here are the main components to include (for the case when you participated in the project end-to-end):

Summary of a problem ✔

Critical hypotheses tested ✔
Product / solution mockup / MVP presented to customers ✔
Metrics and results from product validation tests ✔
What you learned ✔
Next steps (optional) ✔

⛔️ What not to do when creating a portfolio

⛔️ Include any project information that's under NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement). You have to omit or obfuscate all confidential information to stay compliant.

⛔️ Use the portfolio to recall your experience in a way you do it in your CV or LinkedIn profile (or similar professional communities).

Your CV, LinkedIn, and product portfolio must accompany each other and create a cohesive, well-rounded story about who you are.

You won't get extra credit for re-stating the same information here and there. Instead, link all artifacts you have so that your reader can walk through them and immerse into different angles of your profile.

CV - Cover letter - LinkedIn profile - Portfolio relation

⛔️ Include your job description when talking about your role, for instance:

“As a PM, I was responsible for platform design and development.”

Instead, focus on highlighting the measurable achievements you made in the role, for example:

“Designed and built a platform to process trades in an automated environment. Reduced time required for inventory and invoices registration by 30%.”

🪓 What tools to use to create your first portfolio

I know people who have been planning to create their portfolios for months and haven't started yet.

So don't overcomplicate things and start with something simple right after reading this post.

Remember, it's more about your story and meaning rather than visual effects. Using famous in product management "build - measure - learn" framework, start with something simple (portfolio "MVP"), send it out to recruiters, and see what the feedback is going to be. Next, improve and beautify the portfolio, and don't forget to keep it up-to-date.

Here is a list of tools you can use 👇

Real-life examples

And finally, examples of several product portfolios you can use as inspiration.

Portfolio 1

Case study format: https://nankiahuja.com/work/unihub - Helping college students discover career opportunities.

The problem
User research
Competitive analysis
User Persona
Product Prototype
Key Takeaways

Portfolio 2

Case study format: https://mprogano.com/cohabz - A neighborhood discovery guide designed to create transparency in the NYC rental market.

My role
Product
Evolution
Key Takeaways

Portfolio 3

Case study format: case study link - AI chatbots for Domestic Violence Shelters.

Problem Definition
Solution
Competitive Analysis
MVP
Pitch
Lessons Learned

That's it for now. I will be updating this article to include other product portfolios for your reference and inspiration - don't forget to subscribe to my newsletter 👇 to know about the updates.

Do you have a portfolio that you want to include in the article?

💬 Just drop me an email