Product Management certifications and courses are not worth the money. One of the most common questions I see is, “Should I take a Product management certificate or course”. With mounting frustrations of repeated interview rejections and being ghosted by recruiters, paying $4k for a PM course may sound like an appealing option.
Save your money! We think Product Management Certifications are not worth the money. Most sell an empty promise of getting a PM job while monetizing on that dream. These courses take advantage of the frustrations of desperate PM job seekers. It’s as valid as taking a “course” from your favorite YouTuber. You’ll “learn” things, but it won’t impress the interviewers.
The caveat here is Product Management courses provided by Universities such as UC Berkeley, Cornell. or Stanford. If you were to take a class, we would at least recommend institutions with a reputable academic background.
Our Experience With Product Management Certifications
We took Product School when we wanted to transition into Product Management, thinking it would help. We are now PMs and hiring managers. In hindsight, a course or certification didn’t help us get into the PM role. Now that we are PM’s at “top tier” companies, Product School reached out to us to become “instructors”. We’re writing this so you can make an informed decision about your $4,000.
Product Management Certificates Is Like a Medal For Participation – Everyone Gets One
You get a certification, everyone gets a certification! You pay, you get one! There are no tests or a product built before you get a certificate. It is good as you reading a book, a $4,000 book. Hiring managers don’t care for these product management courses because there is no education rigor. They don’t know what these courses teach and if you actually learned anything. All it tells hiring managers is that you were enthusiastic enough to send 4k to sit and learn about “product management”. The certificate is awarded to everyone for participating.
What would be more impressive is if you spent 4k to hire a developer to code an idea you had. You can fail miserably but that would still be more impressive than paying 4k for a course. More on this later.
Why Product Management (PM) Certifications Won’t Help With Hiring Managers
View it from the hiring manager’s angle. A one-week course and a weekend project will get you familiar with Product Management, but it most likely won’t help you lead a product on day 1 on the job. These certificates can’t teach you the necessary product management skills like customer empathy, good communication, or leadership in a week. Most hiring managers are strapped for resources and don’t have time to handhold a new hire without a PM background.
Translation: “We run a lean product team” = “Understaffed, long hours, no time to train”
Product Management Certificates Are Not Recognized
Product management courses and certificates are only as good as the credibility of the entity backing them. Some courses are more well known than others, but anyone who can pay can attend and get a certificate. Universities keep to a standard by testing and grading students. Students are tested and graded to ensure they meet a certain level of standard. PM Courses have none of this rigor.
Certificate Courses Lack of a solid Curriculum
The curriculum you learn from the product management certificates is more or less a marketing gimmick. It advertises “courses taught by PMs from Google, Facebook”, and “top” brands. Leading you to think you’re learning the best from Google and Facebook. However, it’s really against company policy to divulge company secrets if you think about it.
Do your research and ask the courses how they developed their curriculum. They may claim it’s created with “collective experts from PM in the field”. That’s great, but going back to what matters. The hiring manager doesn’t know and can’t verify what you learned. Therefore it’s just a throwaway when you interview.
Instructors Are Hired As A “Celebrity” For Marketing and Hype
Product Management courses and certifications are advertised with an instructor from hype companies, usually Google, Facebook, or maybe OnlyFans. What you are getting is a “custom” made curriculum by the course, presented by someone that works at these companies. That’s right. You think you’re learning from a Google PM, but it’s just a side gig for the instructor. They might as well train some college TA’s to teach it and save some money. Why not have a product course presented by an OnlyFans celebrity. Now that’s a Product idea. A/B test it. Engagement lift + 5.49% right there.
If you don’t believe us, here’s further evidence where a product manager caught a certification company using her likeness, without permission to try and sell courses.
Playing into the pretentious Product Management stereotype. There’s a lot of boasting about what brand or which company you work at being a PM. There are great product managers at all companies in my opinion, but that’s not what sells.
PM Exercise: Ask a PM what company they work at. Count how many of their ex’s they mention – ex google ex, Facebook, ex-Apple, ex-Amazon, cool story bro. No one likes people who can’t let go of their ex’s.
No Tangible PM Experience Gained
You do not have to complete any deliverable with any success to complete the certification. Sit through the “lectures”, do the “optional” homework, and get a certificate. You paid $4,000 you’re the boss. You’ll have a PowerPoint PRD afterward, but not an actual product or feature that has been launched.
Classes Do Not Help With Interview Specific Case Studies and Questions
Product Management Interviews are events that you will need to specifically study for. The certifications do not help with the types of questions they ask, usually about past job experiences. You won’t answer a question with “well I did a weekend product requirements for General Assembly once”. Check out some of the interview questions in our post here.
What You Can Do Instead
Do Mock PM Interviews
What most people actually need, is to prep for the PM interview. Interview questions are totally decoupled from actual PM work. Even SR. PMs need to study for months to pass the interview. These certifications do not include interview prep. Most likely interviews won’t have any crossover to any of that material anyways. Your best bet is to do Mock interviews and go through the product management interview books to ace the interviews.
Product management books and self-learning
You can learn the same material through free self-learning and online communities. Putting together a feature PRD would help build a portfolio to show what you’re capable of. Product Hired also has a great free resource that covers all the aspects of Product Management.
Some books on practical Product Management can help you to talk about your current roles from a PM lens. You might already be doing PM work without even knowing it. Check out our full list of books and free videos here.
Learn product management at your current job
All you need is to talk like a product manager for the interviews. People look to these PM certifications and courses to learn what you can already find at your existing company. Check your company’s wiki pages, Confluence, get a hold of some PRD’s and study them.
When you interview, talk like you’re the PM for that product. What were some if the issues you faced, and what was the problem the product was trying to solve? They can’t be too far off what you’re doing now but you can always re-phrase projects to talk from a “product” standpoint.
Leverage what you already know from your current area of expertise. Product Management is a blend of disciplines, design, engineering, marketing, business development, and strategy. Reach out to a product manager in your company (don’t be shy), and see how you can help them with your current background.
Launch your own product
With the $4k in savings in not taking a course, you can pay a developer to create an App. Launch it in the App store and call yourself a CEO (what all the “cool” kids are doing). Do document everything along the way, though. I’d say this is the most impactful thing you can do. You’ll have a product launched, an end-to-end experience you can talk about, and a product to show for it. It also tells the hiring manager you can do it and is pretty serious about being a PM. That experience can show you can relate to the struggles you may face on the job. It doesn’t have to be a complex app. A simple game will do the trick.
Why Product Management Certificates Are a Waste Of Money
Product management courses are a business, it’s a win-win situation for the teachers and the school. They both get paid, but you’re on your own after that. If you ask people who have received Product Management Certifications, they will tell you it’s not worth the money. Product management is one of those fields that value hands-on experience. People do find value in these courses and there is solid information. Just know that it alone won’t help get you into product management by itself. Join our Discord Community to learn more about Product Management from peers.