Prowess

Hi Product Hunt Community 👋 Himanshu and Leslie here, co-founders of Prowess. Our product, Prowess, is a merit-based upskilling and hiring platform for professionals to advance their career, irrespective of background. A Bit About Us We are an EdTech couple with 15+ years of combined experience in the EdTech industry including prior roles at Coursera, Stanford and UVA. In these roles, we realized that there is over reliance on pedigree and self-reported data during the upskilling and hiring journey for professionals. With Prowess, we are looking to make the world more equitable by championing meritocracy and increasing access to opportunity for professionals. The Problem Hiring is broken and current signals of skills (e.g., pedigree, a day of interviews, and referrals) are biased at best. Professionals should receive opportunities based on what they can do instead of where they learned, how they learned, or who they know. It seemed like the world was missing a system that reduces bias, focuses on skills, and gives a fair opportunity to anyone with the drive and curiosity to grow their career. These are the reasons why we decided to apply our own knowledge and skills to create Prowess. The Solution A platform that brings professionals, experts, and employers together to build a community where: Professionals learn and showcase skills by sharing prior work or starting new real-world projects, building their skill profiles; Experienced product leaders provide anonymous and actionable feedback, contributing to a professional’s skill profile; and Employers post jobs with target skill profiles and get matched with qualified professionals. Anyone, anywhere can join Prowess. There are no application process, no admission criteria, and no cohort limits. You can just sign up and start building your skill portfolio right away. The Target Customers Prowess is designed to help: - Aspiring product managers: Young or mid-career professionals who want to break into product management - Early to mid-career product managers: Existing product managers who are looking for their next challenge can share their work and participate in the community to build reputation. - Expert product leaders: Seasoned PMs who are looking to hire professionals based on skills, grow their leadership skills, build their brand, and give back to the community. Employers - Hiring managers and recruiters who are willing to go beyond antiquated resumes to recruit professionals based on demonstrable skills, drive, and potential. The Business Model We have a freemium subscription based model where professionals can build their skill profiles for free and pay for only the most advanced features. Our Request If you like everything you have read so far, please support us. If you think we can do better, please don’t hesitate to share your candid feedback. It would mean a lot to us. Feel free to drop us a note at team@prowess.com. Check us out at www.showprowess.com. A big thank you to @kevin for hunting us. Thank you, Himanshu and Leslie

This is pretty cool and congrats on the launch! Some thoughts / questions: - How is my skill level calculated and how do you promise consistency of scores if it’s calculation is done by experienced product leaders? - Successful product leaders have a strong network + influence already, so they join Prowess to get exclusive access your talent pool? Is there any benefit for them over others? - Recruiting is more than just reviewing objective values of skills. So do candidates also get coaching / mentorship?

Congratulations 🎉🎊 Leslie and Himanshu on the launch 🚀. Product management is very hard to define and even harder to master. More power to you. I have seen great PMs from diverse backgrounds with varied skills and I always wondered what a “leetcode” for PMs would look like? The typical case studies in interviews try to evaluate the “product sense” for a candidate. Would be great to see some examples of those in Prowess with scores. I was wondering how some of the quantitative scores are calculated in the platform for various skills? Also are there case studies candidates could compete on and get ⬆️ like product hunt? Would be great if Prowess could analyze candidates “upvotes”and “comments” in ProductHunt to gauge some of their product thinking. A personal idea 💡 board in Prowess could be a great watering hole where folks can collaborate and find their future cofounders 😀.

Congratulations on the launch! Prowess is a useful product that would help both the candidates as well as the employers. It would level the playing field and ensure that all candidates have access to the same resources and network to upskill themselves. Similar tools exist for other roles like Software Engineering, but not for the PM space. I am excited about the future of Prowess, and cannot wait to see where you take it :) Best of luck!

This is top notch, congratulations

This tool seems to have pretty holistic approach to career development. Congrats on the launch. I'd also be interested to know answers to @utsengar 's questions.

Good one. Congrats!