My title is Product Manager but I think my role is really more of a Product Owner. I’m trying to leave my current company but I’ve found years of basically being a product owner is getting my applications rejected. I’m not sure how to make the transition to be truly in product management at my current company despite the title. Anyone have advice? Am I out of luck? More details in comments

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Sorry you found yourself in what feels like a jam. I can't help entirely with specifics but I want you to know that you are not stuck!!! Product owners become PMs all the time. It's just going to take longer than you might want it to. It's definitely not too late. You will be great soon. Hopefully someone else can give you some practical advice for your res or find an opp for you!

likeuplifting

When I wanted to make the move from general consulting (where I did plenty of product management) to a dedicated Product Management role, I completely updated my LinkedIn and resume. It was a complete commitment to owning one particular type of role. I highly suggest this approach.

In a nutshell, remove anything in your profiles that isn't product management and highlight everything that is.

I used www.jobscan.co to upgrade my LinkedIn visibility by aligning it with a generic product management archetype (the to walked me through it). But I primarily used it to tailor my resume for each and every application I submitted. Sometimes it would take quite a while to do this -- and sometimes while doing the work I'd realize I wasn't really a good fit for the role I thought I wanted.

I got far more attention from recruiters than I ever had before -- when I'd left ALL my experience in my profiles. It was a huge differentiator and landed me my dream role.

That's my biggest piece of advice...

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I would see if you can work with a product manager on your res or get some examples of other people's. Keep the format so that you don't have to own up to all the limitations and such - basically something just to cover your title and whatever responsiblities DID fall under that or even just some highlights of things you accomplished or worked on. You proabably have a story in your own mind about this but if you take a different perspective you can position yourself as a product manager that is simply wanting to get a role with responsiblities that are closer to more traditional product management.

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I work in advertising for a client who uses a CMS for B2B and B2C. Features I build might be tools for self serve offerings or internal facing features for content publishers. I have vision and strategy of the roadmap from a tech standpoint, but the clients and account team control the overall roadmap. I write user stories and prioritize the backlog and sprints. But I do nothing with data (that’s the data team) or user research or product strategy (that’s the account and strategy teams), and nothing with driving OKR (that’s project managers).

I feel really lost and like I don’t have a great role definition that will help me transition into a PM job. I’m in my thirties and worry it’s too late to try and change, but I don’t want to be a product owner forever.

I know that the definition of “Product Management” can vary across companies - but for me, the job of the Product Manager is to decipher “WHY” we build something. And the Product Owner is to contribute to “HOW” it gets built.

But if you are more tech stack focused - have you been focusing on Technical PM jobs?

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You should be able to get a job as a product manager. I can help look at your resume. It might be the transferable skills are not highlighted. The major difference I have experienced is a Product Manager manages everything including marketing. The product owner closer with Dev. However some organizations make this role interchangeable because of budget.

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