Diversity in Product: Lynette Kicoonco Mutungi
Lynette, we’re so excited to showcase your PM experiences! Would you mind sharing a bit about your background?
I am a product manager at Hotjar, where my team and I are focused on improving the experience of our internal teams; how to help them be more productive and deliver value to our external customers. Prior to this, I worked as a product developer at a medical device company since my background is in Biomedical engineering.
We’d love to hear about your journey into product management. How did you become a PM, and what were some of the challenges you faced in securing your first PM role?
I got into product management about 4 years ago, and at the time I had no idea that what I was doing was product management.
I held a couple of proxy titles in different companies and startups that I had co-founded where my role was centered around innovation and solution architecture, but inherently the job was about discovering customer pain points and offering them value with some kind of solution that was technically feasible and made business sense.
By then I was completing my biomedical engineering studies and so my work was either within the healthcare domain or around delivering social impact which is something I am passionate about. Because product management is not a common career in my home country, it took a long time for me to actually define what I was doing and by the time I was in a role with a product related title, I had already been doing it for quite a while.
Once I discovered what I was really doing, I started searching for jobs that would give me that official switch into a product management role.
I applied for a ton of PM roles and did not get a response from 90% of these. The kind 10% of the replies said I did not have enough “real” PM experience so I decided to shift gears and concentrate on learning and gaining more PM experience first.
I took online courses and listened to lots of podcasts and audiobooks to ‘cement’ the knowledge I had about product management. I also took up PM responsibilities for my side projects apart from my job. In addition to this, I started reaching out to PMs for some of the products that I loved to learn from them which incidentally, is how I landed my current job.
What are some ways hiring managers can make that first PM role easier to obtain for people who don’t look or think like them?
I think it is important to make the recruitment process feel equal for every applicant right from the beginning.
For starters any questions (such as those regarding race, gender, marital status) that do not directly relate to assessing one’s skill for the role you are hiring for used to make me feel like my chances had been reduced even before I submitted my application because they might lead to unintentional bias in some cases.
During later stages in the hiring process such as interviews, I also think it is very important for hiring managers to make it clear that their companies are welcoming of these differences and how they are supported within the company (or if not, what they are doing to make this better).
Most people also are thrown out by hiring managers after seeing their CVs or resumes without well-articulated PM experience.
Hiring should move away from using CVs as the primary evaluation for candidates and move towards hiring processes that hire skills. For example, a 30 min quiz to assess domain knowledge and skills before considering a CV creates a more leveled ground for assessing candidates without prior PM experience.
Hiring managers can be more intentional about directly head-hunting in diverse communities to which these people subscribe in addition to having roles on the usual job boards.
Looking back on that first PM experience, what advice would you give yourself?
There are a million roads to success! I know we have all read the same books and blogs about principles of Product Management but you could bring 100 PMs into the room, give them a particular problem and they will all solve it differently.
If you constantly compare your approach to others you will end up in a spiral of imposter syndrome - do your best, hold your head up high and make bets backed by real data on how to give your users the very best experience.
Product management can sometimes be an isolating role. What are some approaches you’ve taken to get support?
Connecting with other PMs through LinkedIn and online platforms (Discourse, Slack channels, book clubs) has been really helpful. Some of these include AWIT (formerly AWIP), Product People, Women in Product, and Products by Women.
Product School and Product Led Growth also have some active Slack communities where you can interact with other PMs. I am also part of the Better Inside slack community where I get to meet other PMs working with internally focused teams.
I also listen to a lot of podcasts which although is not a direct way of connecting to other PMs, it gives me an opportunity to directly listen to their stories.
I also try to actively look for mentorship from other PMs to learn from them as well. There’s great resources for this such as the Mentoring Club and some of the communities I mentioned above or reaching out to people that you would like to learn from via LinkedIn (this is what I mostly do).
One other form of mentorship that I would like to try in 2022 is becoming a mentor myself. I have learnt that being a mentor does not mean you should know each and everything there about a certain subject, it's an opportunity to share and boost your confidence in what you know and learn from those you are mentoring as well as well.
What do you find frustrating about being underrepresented in product management?
It is hard to find people that truly relate to your experiences. Sometimes my stories feel like a chapter of a fictional movie and while that would be so awesome, it's just not relatable and does not feel real even for me. This is fine most times because you don't have to be relatable for other people to support you or listen to you. It is also comforting knowing that similar people to me who come after won’t be ‘starting from scratch’ and will already have those they relate to.
From your perspective, what’s one thing people should be more aware of?
Building and maintaining connections is more important than you might expect. This sounds very cliché but it is something that a lot of us take lightly (including myself) especially when searching for jobs.
All the employment opportunities I have received (even outside of product management) were from people I met at conferences, my lecturers and professors, or some form of networking online. Even away from getting jobs, there’s always something to learn from everyone you interact with which adds on to who you are and what you know.
When applying for a new job, no one's expecting every candidate to meet 100% of the requirements they have provided. It is always an ideal description and if you feel you meet the baseline of those requirements, go for it.
What are your thoughts about diversity in product management today?
For a relatively new career/ profession, people in product management are taking great strides in being diverse and opening doors to others with different backgrounds and experiences from what they have. It's not work that I have felt alienated while doing and I do not take that for granted.
What’s the best way for readers to connect with you?
Feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/lynette-kicoonco-mutungi/ with any advice and questions.
We’re always looking for new perspectives to highlight, to bring more diversity into product management! If you have someone you’d like to nominate, please send us an email at admin@productteacher.com, we’d love to hear from you!