u/adarshrajoria

Been talking to a lot of people in the PM/PO/BA job market lately and everyone seems stuck at a different stage. Some can't get interview calls at all. Some get the calls but go quiet after a round or two. And a lot of folks switching from another domain are struggling to actually crack the interviews.

Curious where most of you are stuck right now. What's been the more painful part for you, getting the calls or clearing the interviews? And have you found anything that actually helped fix it, or are you still struggling with it?

Been talking to a lot of people in the PM job market lately and everyone seems stuck at a different stage. Some can't get interview calls at all. Some get the calls but go quiet after a round or two. And a lot of folks switching from another domain are struggling to actually crack the interviews.

Curious where most of you are stuck right now. What's been the more painful part for you, getting the calls or clearing the interviews? And have you found anything that actually helped fix it, or are you still struggling with it?

Been talking to a lot of people in the PM job market lately and everyone seems stuck at a different stage. Some can't get interview calls at all. Some get the calls but go quiet after a round or two. And a lot of folks switching from another domain are struggling to actually crack the interviews.

Curious where most of you are stuck right now. What's been the more painful part for you, getting the calls or clearing the interviews? And have you found anything that actually helped fix it, or are you still struggling with it?

A bit of context: I have 3–4 years of core PM experience and 4.5 years total including business and product roles. All of it has been in startups — early stage, zero-to-one, MVP-to-PMF kind of work.

I'm now looking to move into larger, more structured organizations and wondering if pursuing CSPO or POPM would actually help — either in clearing filters or being taken more seriously in interviews.

A few things I'm genuinely unsure about:

- Do big orgs (or their recruiters) actually care about these, or is it just checkbox stuff?

- Is POPM only relevant if the company runs SAFe? Because most product-first companies don't seem to.

- For those who got certified at a similar stage — did it change anything concretely?

I know portfolio and outcomes matter more in theory. But curious if anyone has seen certifications actually move the needle in the hiring process.

Would love to hear from people who've been through this, especially if you've made the startup-to-big-org transition.

After talking to dozens of founders, I noticed something frustrating. Everyone knows they need a clear ICP, but the way most define it is completely disconnected from how their actual customers behave.

They define ICPs by demographics, job titles, company size - the stuff that looks good on a slide deck. But real buying decisions are driven by behavior: urgency, budget control, pre-purchase research patterns.

So I built PMF Insights - a free tool that helps founders map this gap. It analyzes your real customers across 5 PMF dimensions: retention, positioning, distribution, monetization, and market fit. The diagnostic flags exactly where you're losing people.

It's completely free. No email, no paywall. I built it because I kept seeing the same mistake over and over.

Here it is: pmf-tool-fe.vercel.app

If you've struggled with defining your ICP, give it a try and let me know what you think. Happy to improve it based on founder feedback.