Hope your week went well, and if it didn’t, the story I am about to tell would definitely make it better.

A few weeks ago, during one of our weekly check-ins, a member shared some news. She had just landed a junior PM role with a startup in Berlin.

In between congratulations, emojis, and a few “this is huge” moments. Someone asked the question we were all quietly waiting for:

“How did you get the job?”

There was a quick pause and an answer that was so short, it almost felt like she was lying.

“Their product lead sent me a DM on LinkedIn.”

She had not applied for this role. She had not been referred. She had not cold-emailed anyone. She had simply shown up on LinkedIn in a way that made a product lead in Berlin stop scrolling and send her a message.

This is the thing about online visibility that nobody really prepares you for when you are starting out in product management: it is not just about being good at the job. It is about being findable by the people who are looking for someone exactly like you.

This week, we are talking about what it actually means to build an online presence as an aspiring or junior PM and, more importantly, how to do it in a way that brings global recruiters to your inbox.

Think about it the way a PM thinks about anything: there is a market, there are users (recruiters and hiring managers), and there is a product (you). If your product has no distribution, no one can buy it, no matter how good it is. LinkedIn is your distribution channel. And right now, most junior PMs are shipping a great product with zero marketing.

We ran a quick survey among a team of 100 hiring managers and recruiters, and here’s what we found:

And here is the part that should matter most to you if you are building a PM career outside of traditional tech hubs: LinkedIn is borderless. The recruiter who will give you your first PM role may be in Amsterdam, San Francisco, or Singapore and they are searching right now. They just cannot find you yet.

Open to Opportunities" tells a recruiter nothing. "Aspiring Product Manager | Mobile & Fintech | Open to Remote" tells them everything.

Profiles with professional photos get significantly more views. You do not need a studio. Good light and a plain background will do.

This is your cover letter to everyone who finds you. It should say who you are, what you care about in product, and what you are looking for.

LinkedIn's algorithm surfaces active profiles. A comment, a post, a share, even once a week, signals that you are engaged in the industry

Recruiters search by terms: "APM," "junior PM," "product analyst," "agile," "roadmapping." If those words are not in your profile, you will not appear when they search for them.

We are hosting a live webinar on the 28th of February at 3:00 PM GMT+1 to show you how to Optimize Your LinkedIn to Attract Global Opportunities. We would be having 3 awesome speakers:

They are going to walk through every section of your profile together, live, with real before-and-after examples.

You don’t want to miss this.

Here are roles worth checking out:

Visibility isn’t about chasing attention. It’s about reducing friction between your work and opportunity.

That DM didn’t happen by accident. It happened because, at some point, someone could see the value clearly enough to act on it.

This week, ask yourself one question:

If the right person looked at my profile today, would they know exactly why I matter?

With 💜
Your buddy from PMHelp