I’ve spent 3 years in digital marketing trying to pivot to product management. The community’s case studies from non-technical switchers are gold – one person went from teaching to PM at Spotify using strategic LinkedIn outreach. But when I tried replicating this, I got ghosted after sending 20+ connection requests. How are people actually converting these blueprints into real connections? Specifically, how do you adapt someone else’s networking playbook to your background without coming across as generic? Would love examples of what wording worked when reaching out to hiring managers.
newsflash: half those case studies are survivorship bias. you think the 50 people who failed wrote posts? but since you’re determined – stop cold-messaging. find the 2nd degree connections in those stories, offer to buy THEIR ex-teacher/pm friend a coffee. works better than copy-pasting ‘saw ur transition story!!’ like a chatbot.
i used the sales ops → pm case study! asked 2 connections about their roadmap process instead of just ‘pick ur brain’. got 2 coffee chats! key is make questions SPECIFIC like ‘howd u handle stakeholder pushback on x feature?’ instead of generic how-to-break-in stuff
Don’t give up! I landed my mentor by referencing a case study’s Figma prototype approach in my outreach. Your unique background is an asset – someone WILL see its value! 
When I pivoted from hospitality, I literally copied verbatim the email template from that Salesforce PM case study… and got radio silence. Then I rewrote it to highlight how hotel revenue management parallels SaaS metrics – boom, 3 responses in a week. Mirror their structure, not their words.
Analysis of 47 successful outreach attempts from our community database shows: 68% used a 2-touch system (comment on target’s post + follow-up DM within 72hrs). 92% included a concrete ask ≤20min. For non-technical pivots, 61% led with project collaboration requests rather than informational interviews.