An engineering position is certainly among the project manager jobs that you might be considering, because in some respects, whenever you do an engineering job, you’re also doing a product manager job. You will be looking at the way the given product is handled, from its very conception and fabrication to its actual delivery.
Product manager jobs are jobs in which you are constantly coming up with new ideas for products, figuring out how to create those products, and then overseeing the actual production process. You have to make sure that the product is exactly what you intended it to be before you ship it out to clients and customers. These are all tasks that you should do as a project manager, so you will hopefully find that you’re able to do these tasks quite easily.
There are also product manager jobs that are a bit more explicit in terms of what they’re looking for. For instance, there are software product manager jobs. With these jobs, you’re going to be looking at managing software that needs to be developed. You’ll be brainstorming the various software types, making sure that you have a good plan for creating the software, and then doing what you can to ensure that the software is created correctly. You might be in charge of developing the software as well, and you will probably be involved in distribution in some way, too. With product marketing manager jobs, meanwhile, you’ll be in charge of marketing specific products and bringing them to the forefront of public consciousness. It’s going to be important for you to figure out how to best market the products, so this is something that you’ll need to work very hard at.
No matter what type of product manager job you do — whether you’re working in a software product manager job or a product marketing manager job -- you’re going to need to have a certain set of skills that will serve as your qualifications to do the job and to do it well. When it comes right down to it, there are many different qualifications that you’re going to be looking at for this type of job.
First of all, you’re going to need to have a good idea of your own organizational skills and what they can do for you. You’re going to have to be able to be completely organized in order to work with the various ideas that might be going through your head when it comes to the products. You’re going to need these organizational skills in order to get the most out of the world around you and manage the products effectively.
Also, any sort of product manager job, you’ll need to be sure that you have good skills when it comes to working with a team. Teamwork and diplomacy are both going to be important skills for you when you’re doing jobs like software product manager jobs and product marketing manager jobs.