Best Jobs For Former Product Managers [2023]

It’s tough to be a product manager nowadays, and more and more of them are losing confidence in their own profession.

While the amount of people majoring in courses preparing people for a job as a product manager isn’t necessarily dropping, fewer and fewer people are applying to become product managers in the first place and the workforce itself is looking grim.

With so many product managers no longer sticking around, this begs the question:

What are they all doing now?

We were curious, so we looked through the resumes of former product managers to see what kind of jobs they were moving into after leaving the field. There were thousands of answers, so we made the cutoff at the top 100 jobs.

But given that there are some very surprising and interesting items on this list, we’ve decided to highlight a few of those instead.

Best Jobs For Former PRODUCT MANAGERS

Some of these items are admittedly more attractive than one another as far as actually working the job goes, but one way or another, you’ve got to admit they’re eye-catching.

The full list of those jobs can be found below.

Detailed Ranking of the Most Common Jobs of Former PRODUCT MANAGERS

Rank	Job Title	%
1	Senior Product Manager	4.17%
2	Marketing Manager	2.51%
3	Project Manager	2.2%
4	Consultant	1.3%
5	Product Management Director	1.23%
6	Vice President	1.23%
7	Marketing Director	1.18%
8	Program Manager	1.11%
9	Senior Project Manager	1.05%
10	Sales Manager	0.91%
11	Senior Manager	0.9%
12	General Manager	0.83%
13	Product Marketing Manager	0.77%
14	Business Developer	0.73%
15	Account Manager	0.72%
16	Business Development Manager	0.68%
17	Owner	0.65%
18	Operations Manager	0.64%
19	Business Analyst	0.63%
20	Director	0.61%
21	Principal	0.55%
22	Product Director	0.49%
23	Manager	0.49%
24	President	0.47%
25	Account Executive	0.47%
26	Regional Sales Manager	0.45%
27	Product Development Manager	0.45%
28	Research And Development Technician	0.45%
29	Global Product Manager	0.44%
30	Purchasing Manager	0.44%
31	Marketing Consultant	0.42%
32	Director Of Sales	0.42%
33	Sales/marketing	0.39%
34	Senior Product Marketing Manager	0.39%
35	Sales Representative	0.38%
36	Director Of Product Development	0.38%
37	Brand Manager	0.38%
38	Buyer	0.38%
39	Director, Product Marketing	0.36%
40	Product Developer	0.35%
41	Store Manager	0.33%
42	Product Line Manager	0.31%
43	Production Manager	0.29%
44	Information Technology Project Manager	0.29%
45	Product Owner	0.28%
46	Vice President, Product Management	0.28%
47	Operations Director	0.27%
48	Principal Consultant	0.27%
49	Co-Founder	0.26%
50	Founder	0.26%
51	Director Of Sales And Marketing	0.26%
52	Senior Consultant	0.26%
53	Chief Executive Officer	0.25%
54	Product Manager, Mobile	0.25%
55	Sales Engineer	0.24%
56	Business Manager	0.24%
57	Managing Director	0.24%
58	Territory Manager	0.24%
59	Senior Manager Of Marketing	0.22%
60	Sales Associate	0.22%
61	Category Manager	0.22%
62	Senior Director	0.22%
63	Senior Buyer	0.22%
64	Office Manager	0.21%
65	Service Manager	0.21%
66	Sales Consultant	0.21%
67	Chief Operating Officer	0.21%
68	Senior Business Analyst	0.2%
69	Management Consultant	0.2%
70	Senior Account Manager	0.2%
71	Business Consultant	0.19%
72	Manager, Product Management	0.19%
73	Senior Director, Product Management	0.18%
74	Product Specialist	0.18%
75	Customer Service Representative	0.18%
76	Vice President-Products	0.18%
77	Internship	0.18%
78	Supply Chain Manager	0.17%
79	Technical Product Manager	0.17%
80	Assistant Store Manager	0.17%
81	Sales And Marketing Manager	0.17%
82	National Sales Manager	0.17%
83	Owner/operator	0.17%
84	Engineering Manager	0.17%
85	Marketing Coordinator	0.17%
86	President/owner	0.17%
87	Vice President, Business Development	0.17%
88	Associate Product Manager	0.17%
89	Application Engineer	0.16%
90	Marketing Communications Manager	0.16%
91	Marketing Specialist	0.15%
92	Founder And Chief Executive Officer	0.15%
93	Territory Sales Manager	0.15%
94	National Account Manager	0.15%
95	Customer Service Manager	0.15%
96	Executive Director	0.15%
97	District Sales Manager	0.15%
98	Business Development Consultant	0.15%
99	Key Account Manager	0.15%
100	Director Of Strategy	0.14%

Most Common Jobs For Former PRODUCT MANAGERS

These are all good jobs, all of them either utilizing some skill that a product manager would have or being a stepping stone to a different career.

Here’s the thing about these jobs though — they’re pretty much exactly what you’d expect a lot of former product managers to do.

How We Determined the Best Jobs of Former PRODUCT MANAGERS

Using resume information from our database of over 7 million resumes, we looked at all resumes that listed product manager under their work history. Then we looked at which jobs showed up on their work histories following their stints as a product manager, sorting them by their most frequent.

That’s how we made the initial ranked list.

To make our list of most interesting jobs, we looked through the ranked list to see if any positions:

Showed up in fewer than 1% of all new jobs
And, were not part of the 100 most common jobs in our database

Author

Chris Kolmar

Chris Kolmar is a co-founder of Zippia and the editor-in-chief of the Zippia career advice blog. He has hired over 50 people in his career, been hired five times, and wants to help you land your next job. His research has been featured on the New York Times, Thrillist, VOX, The Atlantic, and a host of local news. More recently, he's been quoted on USA Today, BusinessInsider, and CNBC.

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