I answered this question from a worried undergraduate on Quora, and share it here in case it’s useful for other early-career aspiring PMs.

The vast majority of PMs do not enter the field straight after undergrad, since APM programs are a path generally reserved for graduates with good GPAs from name-brand schools. So don’t worry too much if on-campus recruiting doesn’t go your way, since that’s not how most people get started!

As with any career, there’s the chicken-and-egg problem of most employers wanting 1–3 years of experience doing the exact same job, which begs the question “How does anyone break into these roles in the first place?”. One main way is getting an internal transfer or promotion to PM at your existing company, which is a common path because you already know the software and users well.

But, if you’re looking for your first PM job at a company you don’t currently work for, here are a few factors I’ve seen that help break the chicken-and-egg cycle for software PM roles:

• Subject-matter expertise – As a hiring manager, I can usually get someone with previous PM experience, so it helps a ton if you have some sort of advantage for the particular product I’m hiring for. This could be knowing my vertical (e.g. “job search coaching”) well, or knowing how businesses with this dynamic (e.g. “marketplaces”) work.
• Management or leadership experience – Why would I want you to run my software team if you’ve never ran a team, period?
• Software development experience – Ideally, if you haven’t been a PM before, you’ve at least been close to software development. This is preferably as part of the core loop of software design: developers and designers are closest to the creation process, and so get the most consideration. Other roles, like analyst or testing or marketing or support, tend to get less consideration.

So, if you’re playing the long game towards getting into a PM role, I’d recommend either developing advantages in those areas or trying to get an internal promotion to that role at your current company. Ultimately, it boils down to having a believable reason why someone should hire you for a PM job vs. someone who already has experience.