What is the Product Management Apprenticeship all about?
At Sidebench, we’re investing in the Product Management community by creating an opportunity for historically underrepresented people in technology, allowing them to earn real world product experience by shipping actual functional product experiences for real products.
We are, and continue to strive to be, an inclusive environment and welcome applications from Women, Black People, POC, as well as Identities across the gender and sexual orientation spectrum. The apprentice program will be available to individuals who are historically underrepresented in tech.
What does the opportunity itself look like?
This is a 6-month program where you will get hands on experience and work alongside one of the Sidebench Product Managers on real products. This isn’t the type of program where you’ll do some book work, hear from talking heads, and do sample projects that you’ll leave with a certificate — it is nitty gritty, messy, real in-the-trenches work where you will get your hands dirty and ship real solutions to real products.
By the end of your cycle you’ll be ready to start interviewing for Associate Product Management positions with a strong baseline in the basics and with a number of outcomes shipped to production environments to proudly show on your new resume.
In some cases, we may choose to bring on the top performers in the program as Associate Product Managers on the Sidebench team. If not, we’ll do our best to help you find an APM role with other tech companies.
When does the program take place?
We’re aiming to hire 2 Product Management Apprentices in February 2021 with the goal of having the Apprenticeship last from March 1 to September 1, 2021.
Why
We understand how hard it is to get into Product unless you have Product experience. We believe that Product is a mind and skill set that is learned best by DOING. We believe in investing in the Product community and creating opportunities for historically underrepresented people in technology.
Pay/Hours
The PM Apprentice program is a paid opportunity at $15 per hour and will have a maximum commitment of 38 hours per week. While we seek to hire close to full-time apprentices, we also understand that we may need to accommodate or flex the hours based on individual needs of the selected apprentices.
Equipment & Services
The equipment and services you need will be provided for the duration of the program.
Time, Expectations, and Responsibilities
The Apprentice Product Manager will split their time 50/50 between working on a real product for an existing client partner and working on skill building by iterating on internal products for the rest of their time. The Apprentice will be paired directly with a Sidebench Product Manager for their cycle who will be responsible for developing the skill set of the APM. Responsibilities include and are not limited to:
- Practice Product Management by understanding problems, defining success metrics, ideating on solutions, identifying risks, validating solution concepts, conducting and analyzing research, advocating for the user and creating the roadmap
- Learn how to build and maintain project and product documentation that pertains to budgeting, strategic planning, client deliverables, and more
- Learn and practice agile software development through hosting sprint ceremonies, creating epics and user stories, and more
- Aid in the research process before, during, and after client engagements
- Be an active member of creative brainstorms, solutioning sessions, and other team activities
- Own the launch of at least 2 real features on client partner products
- Lead internal projects and process improvements
- Support QA efforts on multiple products
- Communicate with clients and be expected to represent Sidebench as a client facing employee
- Work with other Apprentices to maintain office operations and administrative duties
- Never stop searching for ways you can add value to the Sidebench team running with little direction and maximum passion
- Think BIG picture and apply this level of thinking to everything you do; your job is not only to complete tasks, your job is to understand why you are doing what you are doing and how it adds value
Eligibility
- This opportunity is designed for those who have been historically underrepresented in tech
- You must not have any professional product experience
- You should have a general understanding of what Product Management is
- Adjacent experience in roles like product marketing, business analyst, software engineering, product design, visual design, or otherwise is not required but will help you accelerate in this program if you do have adjacent experience
Please apply through this link
