The Competency Model Of Product Managers In Internet Industry: Based On Social Network Analysis

With dramatic change in the global business environmentand and with rapid development of technology in computers,Internet service and industry have become prosperous.Many internet companies' structureare increasingly product-based,and are redefining their new product development(NPD)process.Those workplaces are characterized by cross-functional teams,responsible for all aspects of a certain product during its lifecycle,with one or more collective objectives on product development.Most Internet products or services are charged by a cross-functional team where designers,developers and product managers(PMs)work together.The product manager is responsible for managing requirements,defining releases and product functionalities.Working in a complex interdisciplinary environment places extreme demands on product managers to respond flexibly to rapidly changing markets.The product manager is therefore one of the most demanding roles within the modern Internet industry.The competency-based approach is the better way to identify an individual's underlying characteristics,especially for positions that require more comprehensive abilities of candidates.The first goal of present study is to construct the competency model for product manger in Internet industry.A total of 330 questionnaire form present PMs in internet industry are collected to construct the competency model.Exploratory factor analysis wasused and extracted five factor,namely team integration,professional competence,perspective,user-centered thinking and analytic,total account for 62.07% of the total variance.Professional Social network sitesprovide rich information for selection and recruitment.Product manager always come from various education background and have spiral career orientation,which meansunclear career development paths.We are interested in what kind of factors will influence the competencies of product managers?A total of 1223 profiles from famous professional social network site are collected.The MANOVA was used to test the significance of the independent variables(element from social networking profiles)and dependent variables(five competencies).The results show that work experiences(including function,position,work year)and educational background(include majors,degree,school)significantly affect the overall competency.A product manager with rich experience and higher position is significantly stronger than others in team integration and user-centered thinking.Software development knowledge and the concept of design are the most required professional skills of PMs.The education planning and career choice reflect the prospective.Not all interdisciplinary are good for competencies,engineering and economic management may be the best interdisciplinary combination for product manager,especially in team integration and analytic.These results imply the clues of career path amd development that product manager may follow.The study further applies the machine learning algorithms to construct the prediction model,taking all the element of social networking profiles as features,to predict the competency.The F1 score of five competencies are 0.57,0.79,0.52,0.50,0.53.This model can be applied in human resource management and development area,such as selection and recruitment,personnel career development and succession plan.