From Marketing to Product Management: Lessons Learned From One Woman’s Career Pivot

Career pivots are daunting, but they can also lead to incredible growth and opportunity. After 14 years in marketing and reaching a Managing Director position, Jenna Hasenkampf faced a pivotal moment: "I had always said I would do advertising until it wasn't fun anymore... I realized I wasn't having fun anymore."

This honest self-assessment led her to explore new career paths, eventually discovering product management – a role she hadn't even worked with before. Her story demonstrates the importance of being open to unexpected opportunities, how to leverage your marketing career into a new role, and more.

Leveraging Marketing Experience

One of the most valuable insights from Jenna's transition is how marketing skills translate to product management (or any career you want to move into). Key transferable skills include:

1. Relationship Building

"The relationships, that's something that actually gets written about a lot in product management pieces... how highly valued a skill of being able to communicate and have relationships outside of your product team is."

2. Data Analysis

Jenna believes that “anyone working in marketing can have a data background.” Being comfortable with reading data and measuring results is an invaluable skill to many roles, such as product management. “I’ve worked with data since Facebook started advertising…if you’re in marketing, you have to be able to understand what you’re measuring your outcomes against.” 

3. Problem-Solving Under Pressure

Agency experience provided crucial skills: "I have a lot of experience driving under stress and creative problem solving. I am totally comfortable being in situations like 'house is on fire, break it down one step at a time and move forward' situations."

Career Transition Tips

Jenna also had a chance to share some tips for those who are looking to pivot careers: 

1. Focus on Core Skills

"Ask in an interview what skills they most valued for that role versus things they felt like could be learned or taught in six months." This approach helps highlight transferable skills rather than focusing on technical requirements.

2. Embrace the Unknown & Overcome Imposter Syndrome 

A great way to overcome imposter syndrome is to look back at your career, and identify situations where you didn't know what you were doing and you figured it out. Remind yourself of what you're capable of. Being able to share these examples and even better, how you learn, is an asset in an interview. Jenna's new career is in a remote role and she shared "it's been very challenging learning something totally new remotely, but it's also empowering seeing what I'm capable of."

3. Don’t Sell Yourself Short (Literally)

When Jenna decided to explore Product Management as a career pivot she was inundated with "it's so hard to break into", "you need an MBA", "you need an internship", "you need to code" and it was intimidating. But she didn't want to take a big salary hit without giving it a shot. She gave herself six months to try to get a Product Manager role without paying for a degree or taking a salary hit. She got a Product Manager job in two months. With the wage gap continuing, she hopes her experience will inspire fellow women career pivoters to shoot their shot before they pursue other routes that may set their salaries back. "Product managers start in six figures at most jobs... The salary space that product managers are in is just massive in terms of what other marketing or similar business roles start out at."

A compelling reason to consider product management: "Product managers start in six figures at most jobs... The salary space that product managers are in is just massive in terms of what other marketing or similar business roles start out at."

Breaking New Ground

Jenna's story is particularly relevant as companies like Airbnb begin combining product management and product marketing roles, recognizing the value of marketing expertise in product development.

For marketers considering a similar move, Jenna offers encouragement: "If you're someone who really likes to fall in love with problem spaces and be curious and not be afraid to have no idea what you're doing, but be excited to figure it out, this can be a really, really great fit."

The key takeaway? Your marketing background might be more valuable than you think in a product management role - or any role you want to pivot to. The key is to identify your transferable skills, be fearless in learning new things, and embrace the challenge of solving complex problems.

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