What’s the Secret Behind Product Gym’s High Placement Rate? Interview with Co-Founder, Cody Chang

Product Gym members enjoy a 98 percent job placement rate for an average investment of 45 to 60 days in the program. We’ve shown you how the membership works, and how you can tell if it’s right for you. But you may still be curious about how the program achieves such consistent success.

Product Gym Co-Founder Cody Chang has given us some insight into how the program has changed over 1,500 lives in just a few short years, along with more about some of the secrets behind PG’s success. 

For people who haven’t yet heard of Product Gym, do you mind giving us a quick introduction? What is Product Gym?

Cody: Sure. So in a nutshell, Product Gym is a selective membership organization that helps new and experienced product managers around the world start their product management careers or take them to the next level. We train our members on core product management skills, while they also learn from our curriculum. This curriculum is specifically tailored to help them communicate their existing and new abilities and crush the job market. 

How did you come up with the idea to start Product Gym? How do you see yourselves as being different from other bootcamps for product managers?

Cody: Basically, the way we started Product Gym was by taking a different approach to product management training. Our other co-founder, Richard Chen, and I reverse-engineered the program around the product management job market instead of the other way around. What this means is, in many bootcamps or equivalents, their students learn concepts in theory only and then spend a short amount of time at the end on the basics of finding a job. For lots of people, it just ends with them getting frustrated and wasting time in getting the job that they actually want.

So what we did, in contrast, was design our program around the job market’s key demands for both on-the-job skills and knowledge, as well as the ability to effectively communicate this and navigate the job-hunting process. We dissected every molecule of the job interviewing process to find out exactly where people got stuck and what it took for good candidates to make it through. 

We then listed out the challenges that people had in converting to the next round of interviews and focused on building a curriculum that would help position the right people as irresistible candidates for employers.

Along the way, we noticed that a lot of existing product management training was done without properly leveraging a candidate’s existing experience first. We would have missed this if we focused only on job skills rather than working backward from a job-hunting strategy. This is a big point because we’ve noticed a lot of people devalue their own experience, so turning that around is a big plus.

Because of this, we’ve been able to design a program that would start with the end in mind that both saves time and is more effective. Members are given the opportunity to unearth their existing experiences first and thus save time on the learning process. Only then do we lead members to dig into the core skills that they truly need while learning how to effectively secure more interviews and crush them. 

We’ve now helped over 1,500 new members from a range of backgrounds so we’re really happy with the results. What is most encouraging to me is that we’ve also been able to help people with backgrounds not conventionally thought of as product management-related disciplines such as marketing, customer success, and finance. 

With that said, this is a highly selective program—all our members are very capable people. We can’t help everyone because the program requires hard work. So we try to ensure only the best candidates make it into the program.

What kind of people do you accept into Product Gym’s membership?

Cody: So for context, we only accept roughly 10 percent of applicants. 

Again, the program works for people that really commit, but it can only do so much to make sure of that ahead of time. We really want to make sure the people we admit succeed and that everyone in the process walks away satisfied. For those who are interested, there are some key traits we look for in potential members.

Fearlessness is one. Members have to start applying for new jobs from day one, so they can’t be afraid to put themselves out there to progress their careers. As they work their way through the program, they will build the management and interviewing skills that we believe have become hallmarks of our program. 

Members should also be high achievers with a real interest in business and a willingness to learn. Since most people we help don’t have an existing technical background, they have to be willing to put in the work to pick up the knowledge and skills of a real working product manager. After all, if you’re going to understand customer needs, you’ll have to do plenty of studying anyway. 

Most Product Gym members come from a business and finance background, but we know anyone can succeed in the program. We’ve seen wedding planners, chemical process engineers, mortgage underwriters, and other people with really varied backgrounds be able to make a solid career change to product management.

One thing I will mention is that, if you’re not sure whether you can succeed based on your background, please talk to us about your situation. We may be able to share a case study or story of how someone in your exact situation became a Product Manager. We often find that this is just the information people need to really know that they can actually change their career path.

Tell us a bit more about the placement rate. How do you get such a high success rate for your members?

Cody: I think the foundational reason for our members’ success is that we worked backward from the job-hunting process, and have an effective mix of product management and career skill development. Something we push a lot, more than practical product management skills, is demand generation. 

I think that if you were to try to enter into just about any field through traditional training programs, you’d find they kind of gloss over one of the most important parts: actually getting the job using the education you’ve received. So we really doubled down on that with the Product Gym program. We work hard to ensure you know how to make potential employers actually take note when they receive your application. 

So in this part of our program, we help members revamp all their job-hunting materials like their resumes and LinkedIn profiles. It starts on the first day of the program. After the revamp, we start working on your hard skills, while also making sure you can actually apply them in the workplace and demonstrate your training during the job-hunting process.

Can you share any case studies you are proud of?

Cody: I am proud of all our members, really. Haha. But I will send you some testimonials from people who have written about us that you can share. 

Testimonials: 

“Thanks to Product Gym’s guidance, I built momentum in interviewing that brought me where I am today.”

“It’s been a year since I changed my job and started working at a new company. I’m so grateful for all the materials and classes that Product Gym provided, and especially for all your help and supporting words during the background check process!”

“Joining Product Gym has been the best decision I’ve made since I decided to change my career and move into product management. It’s been less than two months since I started, and I have multiple final round interviews lined up and an offer in hand. It truly is a gym because the more time you put in, the faster you will see the results. Consistency is the key! Product Gym’s curriculum is very well-structured and it offers great educational content and weekly classes led by industry experts to give you the most up-to-date knowledge in the product management space. More importantly, the community is all about collaborative learning and sharing! The investment is worth it!”

“Practical and tactical, Product Gym is an accelerator and community that supports your career interview as a product manager. Whether you are someone with experience, or someone fresh, Product Gym expands your toolkit in recruiting, provides strong resources to get you started, and the coaching and community to support you through the journey. Product Gym focuses on helping you unlearn a lot of misconceptions and traditional recruiting viewpoints and then replaces them with confidence-building exercises and discussions that help you be a better recruit. Combined with the skills courses offered Tuesday and Saturday, Product Gym can really be a valuable experience. Just know that you will get feedback, it will take time, and it will not be easy. But it will be worth it.”

“Product Gym has been instrumental in helping me land a Product Management offer. Before starting with Product Gym, I was getting rejected for PM internships and now have landed an offer and made it to final round interviews for senior-level positions. My background was initially in product design, and before working with Product Gym I was really struggling to pitch myself as a product manager and effectively show that I have the skills for a product management position. The highest value for me has been the branding update and learning how to pitch myself to tell effective stories in the interview process. Some of the skill-based courses were also really helpful to brush up on certain aspects of a PM job that I didn’t have as much experience in. Overall I highly recommend Product Gym and I don’t think I could’ve made the progress that I have without them.”

More testimonials are available here.

Great. How should people apply or connect with Product Gym?

Cody: So the first step is always going to be to speak with us. We want to know more about your situation and who you are before we can talk about joining us.

Having said that, don’t be shy to actually reach out and book a call with us. 

As mentioned above, we’re happy to talk through your individual background and share the numbers and case studies of people from a variety of backgrounds who have made the change and see if we can help.

Here’s the link: Talk With Product Gym