Dean Peters is a former opera singer turned product management leader, coach and educator who works with Productside to uplevel teams.

His hot take? That there's more to say about the Instagram-ification of product management, the root causes and contributory factors.

If you'd like to appear on Hot Takes, please grab a time!

This episode is sponsored by June. June is a user retention hub for early-stage B2B SaaS companies that enables early-stage B2B SaaS companies to understand and act on their product usage, dig into activation, churn and key feature usage. Check out June here.

• Survive the Feature Factory by Applying Product Thinking to Product Thinking (John Cutler, Product Evangelist & Coach @ Amplitude)
• The Five Dysfunctions of Product Management Teams (Saeed Khan, Founder @ Transformation Labs)
• Practice Makes Perfect: Embracing the Messy Reality of Product Management (Matt LeMay, Product Management Consultant & Author "Product Management in Practice")
• John Cutler's Hot Take - The Instagram-ification of Product Management is Driving us Crazy (John Cutler, Product Educator & Author @ The Beautiful Mess)
• Applying Product Management Principles to Life (Miloš Belčević, Author "Build Your Way")
• Nils Davis's Hot Take - Product Managers Need to Tell Better Stories on their Resumes (Nils Davis, Resume Coach & Go-to-Market Consultant @ Confidence & Impact LLC)
• Debbie Levitt's Hot Take - Democratising our Work means AI is Going to Steal all our Jobs Sooner (Debbie Levitt, CXO @ DeltaCX and Author "Customers Know You Suck")
• Build Better Products at Scale with Product Operations (Melissa Perri & Denise Tilles, Product Consultants & Co-authors "Product Operations")

Aakash Gupta is a product leader turned author and professional newsletter writer, with a huge following on LinkedIn and Twitter. He writes regularly on product management principles, and personal and career growth and recently put out an article about nailing the product leadership job search. We also recently collaborated on an article about fractional product leadership! In this interview, I spoke to Aakash about his journey into full-time content creation and some of the lessons he learned about the product leadership job search.

It's been tough out there, and loads of amazing people have been laid off and struggled to find new roles. Some might doubt they'll ever get another job again! But there are good and great jobs available if you know where to look.

There's a "dark web" of networking and personal relationships, without which you might struggle to get introduced to some of the jobs. At the highest level, the majority of jobs are not posted publicly. Whether you like it or not, you need to play the game and build strategic relationships with boutique recruiters and especially investors.

Most people are trying to optimise for something in their new job. Maybe it's a big pay packet. Maybe it's a mission they believe in. Maybe it's the stage of company, influence and impact. There's no wrong answer, but make sure you know what you're getting yourself into and what success looks like.

Many of us have squiggly careers and we've bounced between industries or types of company. This is fine, but if you're looking to get a job in a particular niche then you need to optimise your career narrative to tell a story about why YOU are the person for that niche.

Some founders or business leaders will always prioritise someone with a stellar name on their CV, and this can leave people who have worked for lesser-known companies feeling adrift. However, you can take a strategic view of your job search, outwork and outsmart your competition.

You can catch up with Aakash on LinkedIn, or Twitter or check out his newsletter.

• Connecting Product Management to Business Goals by Mastering your Product Strategy (Gabrielle Bufrem, Product Leadership Coach & Advisor)
• Moving Beyond Founder-Led Product Development & Setting PMs up for Success (Jennifer Yang-Wong, VP of Product @ Contrary)
• How to Build Products when the Founder IS the Product (Saagar Bains, Fractional Product Leader & Former Head of Product @ The Body Coach)
• Landing That Perfect Role by Finding Your Inevitable Edge (Erika Klics, Job Search Strategist & Founder @ ErikaKlics.com)
• Supporting the Next Generation of Female Product Managers with Women in Product UK (Namrata Sarmah, Founder @ Women in Product UK & CPO @ INTO)
• Making our Product Teams Stronger through Building Communities of Practice (Petra Wille, Author "Strong Product People" and "Strong Product Communities")
• Nils Davis's Hot Take - Product Managers Need to Tell Better Stories on Their Resumes (Nils Davis, Resume Coach & Go-to-Market Consultant @ Confidence & Impact LLC)
• Transforming your Organisation to the Product Operating Model (Marty Cagan, Author "Inspired", "Empowered" and "Transformed")

Nils Davis is a resume coach who wants product managers to realise they're AMAZING, and help others realise it too.

His hot take? That the majority of product managers are doing themselves a disservice by producing resumes that simply list a bunch of tasks that pretty much all product managers have done.

If you'd like to appear on Hot Takes, please grab a time at https://www.oneknightinproduct.com/hot

Visit Nils's site: https://perfectpmresume.com/ Nils on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nilsdavis/