How to start a career in Product Management / Technical Product Management as a new graduate?

Hi Yihao! Congrats on your upcoming graduation next year!

Starting out directly as a product manager can be kind of tricky. More often than not, hiring managers are looking for PMs with existing product experience, but they'll sometimes make an exception when hiring internal candidates from other departments. Product hiring managers might look for people within their org who work closely with product managers (software engineers, customer support reps, marketers, account managers, etc.) who can demonstrate that they really know the product and the customer, can empathize with users, and are already high performers in their current role.

That said, it might be worth considering starting out as a software engineer. As a software engineer, you work with PMs directly and become familiar with what PMs do. This is kind of like on the job training where you can learn from current PMs and work to position yourself as a viable candidate when an internal opening comes up.

In the meantime, you can also brush up your skills on product management by talking to lots of product managers in communities and on platforms like Merit. Additionally, you can read product blogs and listen to product podcasts (most of which are free) to learn the basics without spending $$$ on a course or certification. And if you're in the tech world already, you can see how current PMs apply in real life the skills you're reading/hearing about online.

Merit has an in-depth blog post about breaking into product management that goes into more detail: https://blog.get-merit.com/3-tips-to-break-into-product-management/

Hope this helps and best of luck on your search!