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Chief Marketing Officer

Shailendra Jha 10+ years of Industry Experience

Currently Working As Associate Product Head, MagicBricks*

Summary

Over 10 years of experience in the industry with specialization in building and scaling world class consumer products in mobile and web. Currently working with MagicBricks as the Associate Head of Product

Shailendra is Graduated from NSIT Delhi and done his MBA from Indian School Of Business Hyderabad in Marketing & Finance.

Shailendra’s Career Track Towards Associate Product Head

Understanding of a Product Manager Role in an internet company

Shailendra As a Associate Product Head

Key Responsibilities

  • Creating and delivering on the product roadmap for the organization
  • Collaborate with the multiple stakeholders- business, operations, marketing, engineering, design etc to keep everyone on the same page and manage expectations
  • Own the product- from ideation to conceptualization to getting it built and then making sure it hits the market with the right impact and ensure that it has appropriate adoption and growth.
  • Be the voice of the customer and make sure that whatever is done, must be done keeping customer in the centre.
  • Manage an energetic and top notch team of product managers to make sure that the product vision is being carried out to execution.

Typical Day of Shailendra as a Associate Product Head

 

typical day of a product manager

A typical day starts with having a look at the reports and analytics tools to analyze the key health metrics of the product- to make sure everything is alright, else there’s a further deep dive with the relevant team to understand any deviation in the metrics.

The day is interspersed with meetings being called by different functions- sales, operations, finance, legal, marketing etc as the product team is the central team around which all the other teams operate. So managing the calendar religiously becomes very important and the trick is in understanding which meetings are relevant and which ones to avoid.

Most Challenging Aspects Of The Job

A Product manager is supposed to know everything about product. You have to understand the intricacies of technial architecture with P&L of product. You should understand the marketing campagin for a newsletter or an ad, at the same time be able to negotiate a deal with the VP sales of a leading bank.

The ability to switch between different roles is what makes this role both challenging and interesting.

Essential Requirements & Key Suggestions By Shailendra

Required Skills Suggested

  1. Ownership: It’s cliched but Project Managers need to have the mindset of CEOs - which means- ‘the buck stops at you’. You have to make sure that the product metrics are met- whatever it takes.
  2. Decision Making : Project Managers have to make decisions- always!. Decisions like, Which design is better? Now or later? In-house or outsource? etc. Expand >>
  3. Analytical : Best Project Managers are extremely analytical and metric driven. You need to be able to quickly find the root cause of a failure by looking at huge pile of data.
  4. Team Player : This is one of the most important and almost essential skills of a product manager. He is the one who has to take everyone together and keep the spirits of the team high.
  5. Tech understanding : Project Managers don’t write codes but they need to be able to speak to the engineers in their language.
  6. Understanding of good design : Design doesn’t mean good looking images and nice color. Design means how usable is the product by the users who intend to use it. Collapse >>

Approach to Acquire Skills

Most of what I’ve learnt in product management has come by doing and experiencing.
One should keep himself/herself abreast with the latest technological and design trends.
One should also try to keep oneself informed of the customer usage and behavior specifically in his/her industry.

Blogs

Silicon Valley Product Group

Articles /Newspaper to Read

  1. Library | Google Ventures
  2. Inside Intercom Blogs on Customer Success , Design & Startups
  3. Flip Board
  4. First Time User Experiences
  5. Useronboard
  6. The User Experience Guide Book For Product Managers by Margin Treder
  7. The Guide to UX Design Process & Documentation
  8. Mobile & Multi-Device Design by Luke Wroblewski

Books & Videos

  1. Living with Complexity by Donald A. Norman
  2. The Design of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman
  3. Dieter Rams: As Little Design As Possible by Sophie Lovell
  4. Microstyle: The Art of Writing Little by Christopher Johnson
  5. Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman
  6. Designing with the Mind in Mind by Jeff Johnson

Leaders To Follow

Brian Lovin – He has a great approach for product design.

Facebook Pages

Creative Product Managers, Consumer Insights Interest Group

Twitter Handle

Tech Crunch- @TechCrunch

Shailendra as an Interviewer : Product Manager Profile

Is Product Management The Right Career Option For You?

Questions You Need to Ask yourself

Q1.Do you find yourself clueless if nobody tells you what needs to be done?

Q2.Do you relish working in groups and managing stakeholders across functions?

Q3.Do you look for ideas and solutions in technology to solve complex business problems?

Most Inspiring Brand Stories

Uber is a classic example of how a product can redefine the way people solve a problem, in this example of hailing a cab. Uber has completely changed the way people travel or move around in a city, by doing 3 things:

  1. Understanding the pain points clearly and utilizing technology to solve it (demand supply mismatch)
  2. A very simple and elegant design which makes it extremely simple for a user or a driver to use it
  3. It keeps on learning and evolving- from a high end black car premium model to every day use pool

Courses/Case-Studies Suggested By Shailendra

Important Case Studies

Course Library

Other Opinions

 

Skills required to become a Marketing Manager

Karan Kumar, Marketing Manager - American Express

Role of a Brand Manager in FMCG

Nikhilesh Sharma, Brand Manager - Nestle

Typical day of a Marketing Manager

Shailendra Kaushik, CMO - Edureka

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*: As of September 2016