Game-Changing Resume & Interview Tips with Product Management Coach Blair Presley
As anyone in product will tell you, there’s no cut-and-dry track to becoming a product manager. In some ways, this can make transitioning into product very exciting, because you can forge your own unique path! However, it can also be a bit overwhelming — if all roads lead to Rome, how do you know which road is the best one for you? Don’t stress! We spoke to product management consultant and coach Blair Presley about the interview and resume tips she gives her clients.
Here are some of the highlights from our January 2021 interview with Blair. Want to listen to the whole interview? Check out our podcast below!
What is something that you wish that interviewees knew or did more often in interviews?
[4:50] I wish interviewees knew or felt comfortable being more bold. [Interviewing] can be an uncomfortable and vulnerable place to be in, meaning maybe you’ve just lost your job so you’re doubting yourself. Or, if you’re trying to transition into product for the first time, you are going to get a ton of rejections. But that doesn’t mean that you are not on the right path, right?
I was on my Instagram the other day and I posted a quick story about a really crude rejection I got early in my PM career. I had already been a product manager for two years, and I was interviewing to transition into another associate product manager role, and the interviewer stopped me and said, “Blair, I’m going to stop you there. I don’t think you are the right fit.” And it crushed me, like crushed — for a moment. But I put myself together, put my mascara on, put my red lip back on, and I got after it, and my product management career continued to flourish. I didn’t let that thing stop me.
Being bold relative to, you know, continuing with resilience. Or, relative to applying for the job and finding a recruiter at that company through LinkedIn and sending a message and really selling yourself. Being bold relative to asking questions to decide if this is a place that you want to work.
Answering interview questions concisely can be a challenge — can you tell us about the STAR method and how it can help?
[8:18] This is one I feel was an absolute game-changer once I learned it, and learned how to communicate in a way that wasn’t so staccato. So essentially the STAR method is a framework to answer interview questions pretty concisely. It’s an acronym for “situation,” “task,” “action,” and “result.” So provide context first: What was the situation? What was happening when you were asked to do a thing? Second is the task: What was your task, what were you asked to do? Next is what did you do: What was the action that you took? And then last is: What was the result?
So this framework is particularly helpful when you are asked a, “tell me about a time” question.
Do you have any advice on how to make an interview more conversational and break away from the strict “Q&A” format?
[14:00] So, I have two things on this. First, I think it goes back to being bold. And, for me, that looks like not saving my questions until the end. I think we are trained to follow interviews in a particular cadence such that you are interrogated for 20 minutes and then you have to rush and ask all your questions in the last five minutes, which is awful, right? […] I sometimes will tell whoever is interviewing me that I am super inquisitive and I don’t want to forget all of my questions so I may interject with some questions along the way.
[16:00] The second is that I end all interviews in the same way, which is I ask the interviewer, “based on our conversation today, what about my background excites you and what makes you a little bit nervous?” That humanizes it a little bit. Back in the day, that question may have been, “what would prevent you from advancing me to the next level?” This could put them in an odd spot, right? Who wants to answer that? […] So, again, make it a little bit more of a conversation, give them the feeling that it’s a safe space for them to provide some feedback, even if it’s negative. […] And from there you are able to have a conversation, particularly about the thing that makes them nervous.
LinkedIn is a huge tool for people to find jobs and put their professional selves out there. What are some of the best ways to optimize your LinkedIn profile?
[28:15] I typically recommend for my clients to first make sure that the header section — that little section just below your name — is straightforward and super clear. So, again, not “aspiring product manager/project manager/designer,” because we really don’t know who you are or what you bring to the table. So be very clear in that headline section about who you are and the value you bring.
[28:57] Make sure to also fill out that “about me section” ( right below the short header section.) That section should be your narrative — if people don’t read your resume or the rest of your profile, what should people be able to glean about you in that section? I think that section is real estate that is not used to its full potential but should be. It doesn’t need to be incredibly long — something like two paragraphs with just two to three sentences per paragraph. Something small that describes precisely who you are and what value you would bring to a company.
[30:15] Lastly, that skills section at the bottom is really valuable. I find that clients haven’t looked at it in a while and the skills that are there are relative to their old job that may not be product management focused. So, now’s the time, especially at the start of 2021, to dust off that section and make sure you have skills that are relevant specifically to product that recruiters will be looking for.
If you’ve held multiple roles or worked in multiple industries, what’s a way that you can tell your story succinctly on your resume?
[32:20] So when you’re developing your resume, I am a fan of having a short narrative section at the top of your resume. If I can sidebar for a second and say that we spend so much time perfecting our resumes and recruiters hardly pay attention to them and it breaks our heart. But, what they will look at is like name, location, maybe the companies you’ve worked for, and the job titles you’ve had, but they won’t always dig into the nuts and bolts of the specific bullet points. So if we have a short narrative — two to three sentences about who you are and the experiences you’ve had — they’ll read that. That is a great place to tell that story in brief. And, I will say that if you can do that on your resume, that exercise of doing so will help you be able to verbally tell your story concisely as well.
Continuing on the topic of resumes, what are some of your resume “do’s and don’ts”?
[34:40] The big don’t is going back to the job that you had or the job you are currently in and then copying the responsibilities of that job into your resume, because it really doesn’t show your outcomes. So I challenge my clients to not just list what they did but the outcomes of what they helped to produce. Another way I might frame that for my clients is to think, if you weren’t at the company for the past two years, what would they not have been able to accomplish? What’s that shining thing that you are really proud of that you talk about in your performance review? Put that and show me some results.
[35:45] The other “don’t,” and this is a don’t with an asterisk because it depends on the role, but sometimes I will have clients who will bring me a super cute resume. They’re pretty, they have like teal and purple and there’s a picture — there’s just so much happening. […] long story short, stick to the basics and make your content strong. Make your content sing. If it needs to be cute, there’s something that is missing. […] Your font doesn’t need to be Times New Roman, that’s not what I’m saying when we are talking about a basic resume. But you want something that is really telling your story as to who you are and the things you’ve been able to accomplish without relying on color and razzle-dazzle to get it done.
