Build Your PM Portfolio From The Get Go!

I joined an intense Product Management internship program at the start of the year, and after six weeks, this is my key observation: At the end of the day, ‘your creation is what matters’. I started my product management journey in April 2023. Wow! I am so surprised that it is already February 2025 😮. It’s been almost two years since I decided to transition from marketing to product management. After working in marketing for about two and a half years as a content marketer, marketing and communications intern, and social media marketer, I gained a lot of marketing knowledge and had a solid foundation to pivot into a more strategic role, however, the path to achieving that goal was not clear. But I always believed I needed to try. I was in my final year at the University when I made this decision. I had just finished a 3 months internship at a Fintech startupy then. The internship taught me a lot and opened my eyes to my strengths and the career options available in tech. However, returning to school I juggled academics, my small business (yes, I sold beauty products in school, I would talk about how this made me a better product manager in another entry), and my lab work. I knew it would not be easy to explore product management in school. Of course, I dived into the rabbit hole whenever I stumbled on product management websites and resources and even took a few certifications including the “Udacity product management Nanodegree course” under the Advance Africa Scholarship as well as a few courses like “Product-Led Growth Micro Certification” and “Product Analytics Micro Certification” with the renowned Product School. This allowed me to combine school, writing my final thesis, and preparing for life post-university without being distracted from my academics. These short courses allowed me to learn the fundamentals of product management, understand core tools like Jira, Trello, Mixpanel, and Draw.io, and the transferable skills I possess that would make pivoting seamless. Although I have consumed a lot of information in the past 18 months. What I have not done is turn that information into practical knowledge by practicing what I was learning. In the program I am enrolled in currently, I am constantly creating, writing about my learnings, and engaging in group discussions. This has helped me to close a huge knowledge gap and transform residual information into a portfolio of work. I have worked on competitive analyses, created task flows for some apps, and crafted market intelligence reports. In the course of creating these documents, I had to research, review past works of other experienced product managers, and collaborate with team members with other skill sets. Creating my own body of work has 10x my growth. And yes! some people and platforms created a sound foundation for my growth by sharing resources and knowledge. Creating my own body of work and a portfolio has made me grow faster and I wish I started sooner. I am a better product manager than I was 18 months ago. In the end, doing the work is what helps you learn and grow.