The Vanishing Job Market: What Every PM Needs to Know
The market for job seekers is really tough at the moment.
I talked to a hiring manager who said they got 100 applicants for a Principal PM role in the first day.
Many of the candidates were qualified. This person works at a venture-backed startup you probably haven’t heard of.
And she mentioned that it was across every function:
- Product management
- Engineering
- Marketing
This trend is now translating into the applicant experience.
I was also talking with a different PM with 8 years of experience earlier who had this to say about his experience searching for a job after leaving his last job:
- Over 150 apps, 2 Interviews from those
- 2 inbound processes
- 2 final rounds
- 0 offers
This is a professional who never had a career break. In fact, these were the stats of his last job search three years ago:
- 8 applications, 2 interviews from those
- 3 inbound processes
- 3 final rounds
- 2 offers
So the world has totally turned upside down for him.
And this experience is really common now.
But what’s driving it?
1. Employer Side: Supply is Down
In September 2022, there were 426,104 jobs worldwide open on LinkedIn for the search product manager. When I checked in April 2023, there were 296,264. Today, there are 33,937.
This means that jobs are less than 10% of what they were about 2 years ago. That’s an insane drop in demand for product managers. Now, some part of it may have to do with changes in LinkedIn. But, overall, the data is worrying.
2. Employee Side: Demand is Up
Most people may not realize this, but layoffs spiked again the last few months. Quite badly. This attached data from The Challenger looks at all US job cuts. You can observe that they reached near last year’s levels.
The result is basic supply and demand. With supply down and demand up, the qualified applicants per job has gone up dramatically.
Due to this, the job market has become very tough for job seekers.
Therefore, to compete in this market, you need a strong strategy.
