I’m applying for a product management job and I really feel that I should say the product line I’m currently responsible for results in $12million in sales.
THen I think…can I really disclose that? Its a publically traded company and the product line I’m responsible for is a fraction of the total sales.
Is it general practice to say approximately the sales volume I’m managing? or is it something I shouldn’t disclose? I don’t know how easy it is to find the sales figures(I don’t know how public the knowledge is).
I want to say something more concrete than ‘multiple millions’ but I also don’t want to be so specific that I’m violating something.
This is sort of an oblique response, but the size of your product line is pretty minimally interesting anyway. I would much rather see something like “grew product line sales by 30% ($3mm) over 2 years”
Other than that, in my experience, seeing specific numbers like that is pretty typical on a resume.
I wouldn’t put it in writing,I would stick with percentages and vagueness – but I would definitely give out the numbers during an interview, especially if they are good.
Interviewers know that percentages are meaningless if you can’t follow up with real numbers. You tell me you grew your product line 100% and that could mean you sold one $10 widget in 2010 and two in 2011…OK… this is a huge exageration but if you have a previously underperforming line it may be fairly easy, and it’s not that impressive to add 50% to a low number.
Anyway, this post reminded me of a sales conference I once attended…I listened to an hour of pep talk about how our goal was to make the company into a 25 million dollar company in two years, and my manager asked me ( and everyone else) to write a game plan telling him how I was going to help the company achieve their goal of being a 25 million dollar company in two years.
So-- rebel that I am—I raised my hand and asked the “question we all knew not to ask”…“How much is the company worth now?”
The response was " You know we can’t tell you that, it’s confidential information"…and I didn’t shut up. I said" How can I write this game plan if I don’t have an idea of what this number is…what if we are currently a 50 million dollar company???
I got no response, my manager just glared at me and took the next question.