I Passed My Power Day!
I started at Capital One in July 2020, right after graduation, as part of the Management Rotation Program (MRP). The program is coded under the project management job family, having a variety of potential roles, some of which go outside of the project management window. For my second rotation, I received my placement as a product manager on our enterprise messaging platform and started my product journey last summer.
I’ve been working as a product manager here for a year now, but my job family has always been coded under project management, instead of product management, due to the MRP being a program that typically provides project management roles. In order to officially make the jump over to product, I had to go through a formal interview process that all external candidates, and those internal candidates who are switching job families to product, must go through. In short, this process ensures that candidates have the product chops to be successful as a product manager at Capital One.
I had my power day (the final round of the interview process) last week and I passed, meaning I’m now officially part of the product management job family!
The process consisted of a mini case (a pre-power day product screening to get an early gauge on a candidate) and a full power day that included a business analysis case, product design case, product skills interview, and a job fit interview. The process went fairly smooth, due in large part to how much studying I put myself through, and I’m really happy to have the process behind me.
Here are a few learns throughout the case process:
- Make the time to prepare. With most things, preparation is a major pre-requisite to success. You may be swamped with work, caught up in life, or simply just want to not do anything, but it’s critical you find the time to prepare. Some candidates only need to prepare a little, while others may need to a lot, but everyone needs to.
- Don’t overwhelm yourself or lose confidence. While preparing I put a lot of pressure on myself to be perfect, and when I stumbled over a business problem or felt lost on a question I lost confidence. It impeded my progress, simply by thinking I wasn’t progressing. Have the confidence that by putting in the effort, you’ll be the most prepared you can be and it’ll work out as it should.
- Be excited & bring the energy to the interviews! It’s easy to feel anxiety or pressure going into an interview, but it’s important to let your preparation do the talking and go enjoy it. You get to meet a handful of new people, and you have a chance to make a great first impression. Have fun and enjoy your time talking about yourself, a business problem, a design, or their career among other things. **I also think it’s so important to have an interviewer(s) who brings out the best in you and makes you feel comfortable and at ease. That can go a LONG way.
I’m not totally sure where I want to be or what I want to do in the future, but product is my focus right now and I’m stoked to continue down that path, building upon the past 12 months, and see where it takes me.
If you have any thoughts or comments, I’d love to hear them. Drop me a note on this post and/or on LinkedIn.
