Andrew Bowker

☀️ Product manager by day ☀️  |  🌙 Dad by night 🌙  | 🔨  DIYer / 'maker' by late night 🔨 

I write about product management, career lessons, side projects, and soft skills. 

A core belief: humans are the backbone of business.  Because of that, I like to spend time developing and nurturing personal relationships. I've found that to be the most useful skill despite the random collection of 'hard skills' I've acquired over the years. I've spent time developing start-ups, diving into the intricacies of digital marketing, managing products, selling, creating successful customer outcomes, and sharpening statistical analysis skills to make better business decisions. 

Strengths:
1. Achiever - I come alive when I can work hard, get many things done, and achieve audacious goals.
2. Belief - I can talk to the hearts of people and see past the surface. High Emotional Intelligence.
3. Self-Assurance - I have the power to persuade and lead passionately. This shines during presentations and in situations where I need to persuade. 
4. Restorative - I love to solve problems and constantly improve things. "It can be done better".
5. Woo - I have a knack for "winning others over". Relationships are important to me.

Owner

Now accepting clients for Career Cheat Codes 2023 - https://careercheatcodes.tech

It took me 3 years and 60+ failed applications to break into Product Management. If I could go back, I'd focus on 3 things from the start:

1. Create products
2. Build relationships
3. Interviewing skills

Now I help a community of 24k+ do the same. So far, I've helped folks land at places like Amazon, Zoom, Pfizer, Pendo, IBM, Bandwidth, & more.

I specialize in helping non-technical professionals land roles in the tech industry. Non-technical roles include product management, program management, project management, customer success, strategy, business operations, marketing, sales, and more. When we work together, you'll be heavily guided on:

· How to craft a resume that gets noticed
· How to craft the perfect linkedin presence w/o the cringe
· How to build important relationships w/o the awkwardness
· How to abolish imposter syndrome and interview confidently
· How to perfect your story and pass any recruiter screen
· How to SHOW your work and beat other candidates
· How to negotiate for 45% more money

Ultimately, there is no such thing as a dream job. As we learn and grow, the "dream job: changes. I coach people to find a "dream fit" based on skills, passions, and what the market values that allows for future optionality and growth.

Nils Davis

I help product managers ramp up their confidence and impact. Start with one free call! | secretsofpm.com/free-call

I’ve reviewed hundreds of resumes, and in just one call I can show you why yours isn’t getting interviews - and how to fix it.
Book *your* review using the “Make your resume amazing!” link in my profile.

If you are having problems getting interviews when you apply to jobs, it's not you. It's your resume and your LinkedIn presence. 

I help amazing people like you *sound* amazing in your resume and your LinkedIn profile. 

Most resumes are terrible - and I've seen a lot of them!

* They're boring.
* They all sound the same.
* They are hard to read.
* And most importantly: They don't show the real impact you've had.

If your resume is boring and doesn't show how amazing you are - you won't get the interview.

WHAT OTHERS SAY:

* "Nils turned my overlooked skills into impactful stories and helped me land my next role." (Brenna B.)
* "He pushed me to tell outcome-driven stories—now my resume finally feels like me." (Summer H.)
* "Nils brought out the business value of my achievements—I got multiple interviews and an offer." (Sifat R.)

ABOUT ME: Nearly 30 years in enterprise software product management, discovering market problems, creating innovative solutions, and helping sales and marketing teams succeed. I thrive on new challenges, cross-disciplinary insights, and finding solutions where others see roadblocks.

Senior Product Manager

Ensuring our customers' first experience with TriNet technology is stellar by curating their onboarding process from signed contract through first payroll.

Most of the senior PMs I work with can't see their own accomplishments.
 
Not because they haven't done impressive things. They have. The impact is real. 

But the stories - they aren't there.
 
They've spent years describing their work in the language of activity. 

• Managed the backlog. 
• Ran sprint planning. 
• Coordinated with stakeholders. 

That's the vocabulary the job trained them to use - in Jira, in performance reviews, in standups - and it's the vocabulary that ends up on the resume.
 
When I help them surface the story behind what they actually did - the problem that existed, what they figured out, what changed because of them - they're amazed. 

And they're impressed! (With themselves.)
 
I hear things like, "I have never talked about my experience this clearly."

The stories were always there. They just couldn't see them anymore.
 
My job (literally): Take people who've done extraordinary things and give them the language to finally sound like it.

Resume and LinkedIn coach | 25+ yrs of enterprise software product management | perfectpmresume.com | Resume, LinkedIn, and interview coaching for product managers and professionals seeking $150K-$300K+ roles.

You're applying to a job and trying to "match your resume to the JD." But that's not what gets interviews. 

The hiring manager has a problem to be solved and some outcomes they've promised to leadership based on this hire. 

They want to find the person who's most likely to solve those problems and deliver those outcomes. 

• But the problem they need solved is not on the JD.
• And the outcomes they promised are not on the JD.

So, how can you persuade them you can do it? 

Your only option is to show how you solved similar problems in the past, and delivered meaningful outcomes. 

Not that you "did your job." No one cares (much) about your qualifications. (There are 100s of qualified candidates.)

They want to know "can you make a difference for me?" 

Does your resume answer that question?

"In my last job I was doing product management, but my title was something different. What should I do?

"I'm afraid if I say I was a product manager - which is accurate - I'll be exposed and disqualified during the background check."

This is a common problem for product managers. 

We're called different things at different companies. 

Program manager, product owner, technical product manager, product marketing manager, are just a few of the alternative titles I've seen that literally mean "product manager." 

What should you do?

The #1 job of your resume is to get the hiring manager to say "I think we should interview this person." 

And the first thing the hiring manager tries to assess is "Is this person qualified?" 

If you have the WRONG title for the role they are looking for, 
that naturally counts against you being qualified. 

They might even stop reading, because they have a stack of 100 other resumes from "real" product managers. (Including some who have given themselves the title.)

So, using your "correct" title is a non-starter if it's not the title of the role. 

You need the hiring manager to buy into you as the role you are applying for *before* they talk with you, and often before they've read your resume in detail. 

Solution: use the name of the role you did, not the job title. 

This applies to both your resume and to your LinkedIn profile. 

What about the background check? 

- Make sure you've explained to the recruiter that, while you were *doing* product management, your actual title was something else. They've seen this before, they will understand.

- At least in the US, background checks related to employment are usually limited to "I can confirm that this person worked here from <date 1> to <date 2>," and they don't provide or validate any other information about the employment, including title. 

- In your Linked profile, under your job title, in the description of what you did, use something like "(role was product management, but actual title was Program Manager.)"

(Of course, you can't lie. If you were being a program manager, then you can't call yourself a product manager no matter what your title was.)

I'm happy to answer questions about this - leave a comment or DM me and I'll give you my best advice on job titles in your resume.

---
Want your resume to do more to get you in the game?

I can help. Book a free resume review with me. ("Find your resume's blind spot!" link in my profile.)

I'll show you how to craft a resume that gets you noticed (and doesn't get disqualified).

Your resume is underselling you. Let me prove it. | Resume + LinkedIn coach | perfectpmresume.com | 25+ yrs of enterprise software product management | For product managers and professionals seeking $150K-$300K+ roles

Most senior PM resumes look like this:
 
"𝘚𝘱𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘪𝘮𝘱𝘭𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘧𝘪𝘨𝘶𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘳𝘦 𝘑𝘪𝘳𝘢 𝘪𝘯𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘢𝘯𝘺'𝘴 𝘋𝘦𝘷𝘖𝘱𝘴 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘤𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘦𝘴, 𝘦𝘯𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘰𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘞𝘰𝘳𝘬𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘤𝘦 𝘔𝘢𝘯𝘢𝘨𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘚𝘰𝘭𝘶𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘴𝘰𝘧𝘵𝘸𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘥𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘭𝘰𝘱𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘢𝘨𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵."
 
A hiring manager has seen "Spearheaded the <something>..." a hundred times. It registers as background noise. Next.
 
Here's what they actually needed to see:
 
𝘍𝘶𝘭𝘤𝘳𝘶𝘮'𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘳𝘥-𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘺 𝘥𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘭𝘰𝘱𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘤𝘢𝘶𝘴𝘦𝘥 𝘥𝘦𝘭𝘢𝘺𝘴, 𝘣𝘶𝘨𝘴, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘶𝘴𝘦𝘳 𝘧𝘳𝘶𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯. 𝘐 𝘩𝘪𝘳𝘦𝘥 𝘪𝘯-𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘥𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘭𝘰𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘴, 𝘣𝘶𝘪𝘭𝘵 𝘑𝘪𝘳𝘢 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘬𝘧𝘭𝘰𝘸𝘴, 𝘱𝘳𝘪𝘰𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘻𝘦𝘥 𝘧𝘪𝘹𝘦𝘴, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘳𝘦𝘧𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘤𝘰𝘥𝘦𝘣𝘢𝘴𝘦. 𝘙𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘢𝘣𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘺 𝘴𝘰𝘢𝘳𝘦𝘥, 𝘳𝘦𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘤𝘤𝘦𝘭𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘮𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘩𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘸𝘦𝘦𝘬𝘴, 𝘶𝘴𝘦𝘳 𝘴𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘴𝘧𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘪𝘮𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘥, 𝘥𝘦𝘮𝘰𝘴 𝘪𝘮𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘦𝘥 𝘤𝘭𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘴, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘯𝘢𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥 𝘭𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘮𝘺 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘮𝘰𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘰 𝘗𝘳𝘰𝘥𝘶𝘤𝘵 𝘔𝘢𝘯𝘢𝘨𝘦𝘳.
 
Same person. Same activity. Completely different impression. 𝘛𝘩𝘢𝘵 candidate gets the interview.
 
The difference is that the second bullet - the one that gets interviews - includes the 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘣𝘭𝘦𝘮 the person solved. 

Including the problem does two things at once: it turns your bullet into an actual story, and it makes everything that follows — the work you did, the results you got — meaningful. Without it, a hiring manager can't judge whether the result matters or whether it was hard to achieve.
 
That's what's keeping you from interviews. Not your background. Not the market. 
 
Jason H., Senior PM, said it best (after going from zero interviews in months to multiple final rounds and an offer from a Series D company after we rewrote his resume):

• "Generic resumes get generic jobs."  
 
I wrote a short document that shows you how to test whether your resume is making your impact visible or invisible - and how to fix it.
 
Comment or DM "TEST" and I'll send it to you.

PMs don't do enough strategy. We all know this. And not just feature factory PMs. 

How often do you actually write down a clear hypothesis about why a feature is worth building, tie it back to real discovery, and later validate whether you were right?
 
We know we should. We just don't, because the day-to-day eats us alive.
 
LLMs change that equation. Strategic thinking used to be expensive - it required time, meetings, cognitive energy you've usually run out of already. Now it's cheap. 

I call it "vibe strategizing."  It's the AI skill that will actually make you more valuable  -- and it nothing to do with building AI products. 
 
A few (easy) examples of what it looks like:
 
• A user story lands in your queue. Before you write acceptance criteria, you spend 5 minutes with Claude exploring what business problem is actually behind it, and what you'd expect to happen when it ships. Developers get better context. You get a hypothesis you can test later.
 
• You have a folder of customer interview transcripts nobody has looked at holistically. You run them through an LLM and ask it to surface the weak signals — the patterns that don't show up in any single interview but quietly repeat across all of them. Humans are terrible at this. LLMs are surprisingly good at it.
 
• You want to find the revenue opportunities you're missing - right now, not in the next planning cycle. Use the AI to help analyze whether your marketing is using the language your customers actually use. Or, are there adjacent segments who could use what you've already built - or who might already be using it?
 
This is fundamentally different from using AI to write PRDs faster. That's just accelerating one of the least strategic things we do.
 
Here's the paradox: a PM who vibe strategizes regularly is more likely to find a genuinely good AI integration in their product than one who was handed an "add AI to this" mandate from above. Because they've already done the thinking.
 
Want to try this today?

Next time you write a user story (or get one thrown over the wall), paste it into an LLM with this prompt:
 
"𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘣𝘶𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘣𝘭𝘦𝘮 𝘪𝘴 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦𝘭𝘺 𝘣𝘦𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘳𝘦𝘲𝘶𝘦𝘴𝘵? 𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘸𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘸𝘦 𝘦𝘹𝘱𝘦𝘤𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘩𝘢𝘱𝘱𝘦𝘯 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘪𝘵 𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘱𝘴? 𝘏𝘰𝘸 𝘸𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘸𝘦 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸 𝘪𝘧 𝘪𝘵 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘬𝘦𝘥?"
 
Read what comes back. Refine it. Add it to the ticket. If it doesn't seem right, you have some work to do. But now you know where to focus your attention.
 
That's it. Five minutes. You just did more strategy than most PMs do in a month.

In the past year, multiple founders and senior PMs came to me because they needed to polish their resumes. 
 
Not because they'd failed. Because their company was failing - even though their product was working.
 
Happy customers. Real traction. Legitimate product.
 
And somehow, still not growing.
 
These folks were making contingency plans, just in case.
 
Here's what gets me about this: losing to a better product is hard, but it's honorable. You fought, they won, the best solution prevailed.
 
But these were a different kind of failure. The product is good. Customers love it. And the company is dying anyway - because they're showing up to the wrong stadium, on the wrong day, with the wrong uniform and the wrong ball. The game is happening somewhere else and they don't know it.
 
They don't have a product problem. They have a clarity problem. About who it's really for, how to talk about it, and why the right prospects should care.
 
I've started to wonder how common this actually is.
 
If you've seen this — or been in it — I'd genuinely like to hear about it. DM me or drop a comment.

Everyone's using AI to "optimize" their resume.
And it's working perfectly. Not!

Your resume has to pass two gates before you get an interview:
 
𝗚𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝟭 — 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝗰𝗿𝘂𝗶𝘁𝗲𝗿. They're using the job description as their reference, but they're not playing keyword bingo. They're reading for meaning - strong signals that you've had real impact, that you can think, that you make things better. 

They'll disqualify fast, but not because you missed a keyword. They'll disqualify because nothing on your resume made them stop.
 
They like metrics, but only when the metrics tell a story on their own. "20% improvement" makes them work too hard - 20% of what, starting from where, and is that even good? They'd rather see a number that needs no footnote.
 
And here's the thing: they genuinely want to find great people. That's the job. 

They want to walk into a hiring meeting and say "you need to talk to this person."
 
The catch: they're now reading hundreds of resumes that look almost identical, thanks to AI. 

zSame structure. Same action verbs. Same decontextualized percentages. 

All "AI-optimized" for the same job description.
 
When everything looks the same, nothing stands out. Your "optimized" resume is now just noise — and you've made their job harder, not easier.
 
𝗚𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝟮 — 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗵𝗶𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗿. They ask one question: 

• "𝘊𝘢𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘰𝘯 𝘴𝘰𝘭𝘷𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘤𝘪𝘧𝘪𝘤 𝘣𝘶𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘣𝘭𝘦𝘮 𝘐'𝘮 𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘨𝘨𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘳𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘯𝘰𝘸?"
 
The job description isn't that problem. It's their best attempt to describe someone who might solve it.
 
So when you paste your resume into ChatGPT and say "optimize this for this job description," here's what happens:
 
→ Gate 1: You sound like everyone else. 
→ Gate 2: You're answering the wrong question.
 
AI is great at matching your resume to a job description. But a job description isn't the recruiter's gut reaction, and it isn't the hiring manager's actual problem.
 
The resumes that get interviews make one thing unmistakably clear: 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘰𝘯 𝘩𝘢𝘴 𝘴𝘰𝘭𝘷𝘦𝘥 𝘩𝘢𝘳𝘥 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘣𝘭𝘦𝘮𝘴 - 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘳 𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘶𝘮𝘦 𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘶𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘸𝘴 𝘪𝘵.
 
AI can't write that. It doesn't know what makes you 𝘺𝘰𝘶. It only knows the job description.
 
And the job description isn't the point.
 
𝗥𝗲𝗰𝗿𝘂𝗶𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘀 - Am I describing your experience right? Are you seeing this in the resumes coming across your desk?

The goal of your resume isn't to list what you did.
It's to make a hiring manager say: "I need to talk to this person."
Most resumes don't come close.

On a recent resume review call, I worked with a product manager to rewrite one bullet point using my story-based process.

I put the original bullet point (#1) next to the new one (#2).

Then I asked her: "Which candidate would you want to bring in for an interview, #1 or #2?" 

Same experience. Different lens.

She said:

"The second person for sure. 100%. Oh, amazing. Life changing. I actually feel really proud of myself reading that second one. The first one I’m kind of like, I get it, but reading the second one - damn, I'm such a badass. Definitely hire the second person for sure."

Here’s the thing:

• You don't have to invent new accomplishments.
• You don't need to be someone else.
• You need to show your real impact, and tell the story so others see it too.

(I get that "I'm such a badass!" comment a lot! It's why I love what I do.)

==

If you want to transform how you (and the market) see your story, let's talk. Click the "Find your resume's blind spot!" link on my LinkedIn profile page to set up a free resume review with me.

How to read a job description...

Hiring manager's internal monologue:  I need someone who will help make my team better, who will make my life better, and who can solve the problems I and the business are facing.

(What they write down on the JD) I think people who can do this have this title <title> and this set of skills <boilerplate for the role>. 

I have three specific things that are critical to success:
* Thing one
* Thing two
* Thing three

(Narrator: None of them is actually critical to success.)

Your resume should be focused on their internal monologue, not on their half-hearted attempt to capture that in a non-commital job description.

If what you did was 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘩 𝘥𝘰𝘪𝘯𝘨 - and it had an impact - you can always come up with a way to show that impact. Even if you don't have numbers. 

• If things were getting worse, and what you did contributed to them getting better, that's a quantitative result - a sign reversal. (Even if it doesn't quite 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘭 like it because you don't have the actual numbers.)
• If a bad thing was happening a lot (e.g., lots of errors) and now they aren't happening, that's a quantitative result. 
• I could go on...

Don't panic if you don't have numbers/metrics. Just think deeper. (Or get my help to do that.)

---

I can help you create a resume that shows your impact - with crystal clarity. 

With 30+ years of experience as a product manager, I'm not like other "resume writers" who don't understand PM or depend on old resume rules (that never worked anyway). 

To learn more, book a free resume review call with me, using the "Find your resume's blind spot!" link in my profile.

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