Prowess

Maker

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

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3yr ago

Savian Boroanca

Surfsite AI

@kevin @himanshu_singh11 you rock, godspeed! 🤘

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3yr ago

Himanshu Singh

Prowess

Maker

@kevin @savian_boroanca Thanks Savian!

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3yr ago

Cyrus Bakhshi ☀️

@kevin @himanshu_singh11 congrats on the launch!

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3yr ago

Himanshu Singh

Prowess

Maker

@kevin @cyrusbakhshi Thanks Cyrus!

3yr ago

Comment Deleted

3yr ago

GenY Resume

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?

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3yr ago

Himanshu Singh

Prowess

Maker

@utsengar Thank you and great questions! - The skill score is calculated using rubrics that clearly list the attributes required to be proficient in a particular skill. Consistency is achieved by 1.) Having blind review to remove bias based on race, color, gender, 2) Every expert uses the same rubrics to evaluate work, 3) Rubric rating breakdown is visible to the feedback requester so they can know the mechanism, 4) Rubrics are regularly updated based on community feedback. If you want to learn more, check out this example of an expert review - https://www.showprowess.com/expe... - You are correct! Product leaders are already well connected and well-compensated. We have found that they join Prowess for the following reasons - 1) Get early access to talent that is driven and curious to demonstrate skills, 2) Improve their ability to give good feedback (Very important for leaders), 3) Learn from new ideas, 4) Build their reputation, 5) Get paid for expert reviews, and 6) Have that warm fuzzy feeling when you help someone build a career :) You can learn more about expert value prop here - https://www.showprowess.com/expe... - Another great question! Recruiting is more than skills. It is also about finding the right fit based on company culture, candidate personality, company needs, and candidate's stage of career. When experts provide feedback, they not only evaluate skills but also provide tangible next steps to professionals to meet their goals. Good mentorship requires context and on Prowess, experts have a lot of context about the professional (without divulging identity) that helps them provide actionable career insights. We also offer expert-guided group projects where professionals work on real-world problems with peers while getting mentorship from a product leader. You can learn more about group projects here - https://www.showprowess.com/grou... Despite the above answers, I agree we can do a lot more to build a better mentorship-based scaffolding around the product. I hope this helps.

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3yr ago

Anindya Misra

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 😀.

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3yr ago

Himanshu Singh

Prowess

Maker

@anindyamisra So many great ideas and questions. Let me answer them one by one. - Type of projects: Professionals can submit their own projects or work on curated projects. Projects could be case studies, design reviews, or even live products. You can look at examples of projects here - https://www.showprowess.com/sele... and actual portfolio here - https://www.showprowess.com/port... - Scoring system: Quantitative scores are calculated using skill rubrics that dive into a skill in detail making the evaluation structured and objective. This is done using expert reviews. Here is a detailed explanation of expert reviews - https://www.showprowess.com/expe... - Competition and levels: We currently don't have a feature where professionals compete with one another to increase their scores. It's something we can consider in the future but right now our focus is to create a collaborative community where professionals can grow skills at a steady pace and get their dream job. - Social data and skill profile: There is definitely value in integrating with Product Hunt, Reddit, and other tools to build a profile skill profile of the user. The only concern is that most of this data is self-reported and might not have the strongest correlation to skills. Having said that, we are currently integrated with one social platform and look forward to adding more over time IF the quality of the skill profile is improved. Good idea though. Something definitely worth diving into. - Idea wall and 1-1 matching: Another great idea :) We are currently razor-focused on upskilling and hiring features on Prowess but will definitely look into more social networking aspects of the product over time. I hope this helps.

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3yr ago

Anindya Misra

@himanshu_singh11 +100 on proof of work ::block::

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3yr ago

Prowess

Show skills. Get expert feedback. Grow your PM career.

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