Advice for PM Internships from Eliana, Jerry, and Havi | Remote Students
PM vs TPM interviews, PM interview questions, working at a startup vs big company
Members of the Remote Students Community had the opportunity to meet 3 PM interns this week and ask them questions about their experiences coming from technical vs. non-technical backgrounds, working at big companies vs. startups, breaking into PM, and more. Apply here to join our community and meet our amazing lineup of guest speakers, including interns like Havi, Eliana, and Jerry!
Havi is a first-gen student studying Computer Science at Columbia University. She is currently interning as a Product TPM at Facebook and leads Female Founder Track to empower underrepresented founders with Dorm Room Fund. Havi loves meeting and working with people to drive impact.
Eliana is a junior at Northeastern studying Business, Cognitive Psychology, and Design at Northeastern. She is currently a Venture Partner at Contrary, Co-Founder/Director of Envision Accelerator for underrepresented founders, and is leading product at a startup in the community space called Helpful.
Jerry is a first-generation college student who immigrated from Haiti and is currently the Co-Founder of an edTech startup, Peerlift, and an Associate Product Manager Intern at Google. His MO is empowering underdogs to break through the glass ceiling, thrive, and pay it forward to the next group.
What advice do you have for students with a non-technical background for transitioning into PM?
Eliana: Going into PM, I had absolutely no technical experience, and I was super worried about that effecting my value and input at my first product job. However, that did not hinder me at all. What effected me the most was that this was my first product role and didn’t have that much industry knowledge starting out. Technical-wise, I think you learn what you need to know on the job. For example, I was working really closely with this amazing engineering lead who could sit down and explain to me a lot of the inner workings of the product, and I was able to build up that technical literacy over time.
Most of the struggle is not even knowing the actual engineering, but how to work with engineers.
For those of you that are really worried about coming from a non-technical background, my best advice is to sell yourself from other angles. For example, I really focus on the fact that I have a background in neuroscience and cognitive psychology, as well as a graphic design background that really helped me a lot at the startup I was working at. If you want to pick up some coding, I would say learning SQL is really valuable and goes hand in hand with Data Science. Either way, don’t disqualify yourselves; the soft skills of being a PM can be way more valuable that a lot of technical knowledge.
Jerry: I took a slightly different path, and tried to gain as much CS experience as I could before my first PM role. I would recommend reading up on general CS principles: an overview of API’s, frontend/backend, system design, etc, and there are resources I can recommend for learning these which you can find in the post-event discussion. If I had more time, I would just build a side project, which will help you gain a lot of technical experience and is also something to add to your portfolio.
Havi: I agree with what Jerry and Eliana are saying coming from non-technical backgrounds, but from a technical background, I think what is more important than having a lot of skills is just having good logical thinking and problem-solving. A beginner CS course would be more than enough to carry you through a PM role.
What is the difference between APMM and PM roles? Why did you choose APM?
Jerry: Last summer, I was at Google for their bold immersion program, and one of the roles was APM, which was presented to us as an extension of PM, except that it required technical experience. My understanding of APMM is that it is more marketing-driven, while PM is more product-driven. I find that I have to make longer-term decisions for the health of the product and I’m thinking more about what the user wants and how we can translate that into the product.
What’s the main difference between being a PM intern at a startup vs. big company?
Eliana: For startups, I think a big factor is what stage the startup is in. At the Series C startup I interned for, I had a lot more oversight and responsibilities than I would’ve had at a bigger company. For example, you may not have a UX researcher, or Data Scientist, or as many programmers yet, so you kind of have to be very scrappy and learn how to do it on your own. My experience at that startup was a great way for me to become more well-rounded and be able to take on lots of different work. On the other hand, at a pre-series A startup, there is really a lack of resources all around, and you are kind of acting as the CEO’s assistant. Its definitely important to evaluate what kind of experience you are looking to gain from a PM internship - whether it is more generalized or specialized-, because that will change drastically depending on the size of the company.
Jerry: Being a PM intern at Google so far has been a lot more of internal convincing, and less of external convincing. For my project, I’m spending a lot of time collecting data, speaking with users, and doing a lot of strategic work to justify product decisions that I think we should make. There are a lot of levels to it too: first I have to work within my own team, pitch my idea, resolve any issues, and get that approved before I move on to surrounding teams and do the same, moving up different teams to get my idea approved. Once the idea has been approved by all of the teams, Google will start to pour resources and engineers on it to bring it to life.
Havi: My recommendation for bringing a “startup-like” environment within a big company is to pick a team that is very new. For example, the team that I’m working at with Facebook right now is only 2–3 years old, so it still moves and operates like a startup and is fairly small. Through this, you become really close with the team and tend to have a greater influence over decisions. A perk of working at a small team in a big company is that you also get access to a lot of resources and training, and you learn best-practices through professionals along the way.
What are your tips on standing out among a pool of applicants?
Eliana: If you do get rejected from some of the larger companies, or you’re more interested in working with smaller companies that don’t actually have formal PM roles, I would encourage you to just reach out. Build your network: talk to alumni from your school, if your school ever has an event with the founder of a company, talk to them and create connections; there are a lot of creative ways to land a PM role without going through the standard application process. In your cold emails, you should be really specific about why you’re interested in that industry or solving that problem. You can even include what you might be interested in working on, like writing a one-pager or cover letter that specifies why you’re a good fit for the role.
If you don’t know what companies to look out for, try not to look for companies that have only 5 employees, because they probably don’t need a PM. Instead, look at different VC funds that have invested in early stage startups, especially ones like Pear VC and YCombinator, and you can usually find good companies to look out for there.
Jerry: On the other hand, this is for if you’re trying to jump into a role at a big company. Last year, I cold-emailed and applied to hundreds of positions, but I did not get back from any of them and only got back from the ones where I had personal connections, so I think the path with the highest success rate is through a personal connection. As specific advice:
Apply with a referral, wherever possible, and get referrals from other alumni or people on LinkedIn.
1. A tip for cold messaging would be to ask a specific question that the person can answer in less than 10 seconds, and that is not an obvious question that you can look up online.
2. A tip for building your resume is to talk more about the impact you had on the product, rather than just what you did. Wherever you can, quantify your impact.
3. One last tip for your resume is: if you have startup experience, highlight it. Whenever I go for an interview, that is usually what they find most interesting about my experience. If you have an experience where you were able to interview users to discover problems that they've had, and then work with different teams to build solutions to those problems, include those. Also, anywhere where you had to convince people of your ideas, or build an actual product and make adjustments to it are all very PM-y experiences to mention.
What do PM interviews look like?
Eliana: Both of my interviews were wildly different.
1. When I interviewed at Lola, I had almost no product experience, and a lot of my questions were based on product sense. It’s really just testing your critical thinking and how you’re able to actually evaluate business opportunities and trends. One example question would be like: “Okay, we’re considering building like feature X, ” and then I would have to figure out how to take it from there. I would validate that a little and then talk about how I might go about incorporating that further. I did a ton of research before the interview on the corporate travel space, the company itself, and my interviewer so I could bring up relevant pieces of information to them. I also ended up leaning on prior business knowledge to think about things in a more strategic way.
2. A lot of the other questions were soft skill questions, and I leaned on my previous leadership experience of running a non-profit, leading clubs, and more to help me answer those.
On the other hand, my interview for Helpful was two hours long and split into two parts.
1. The first hour asked, “How would you improve our product process?” Then, I had to figure out what the existing process was and try and set up a roadmap and ideas for metrics through that. They didn’t ask me to, but I ended up creating a slide deck.
2. The second hour was a brainstorming session where they just kept throwing different problems at me, which I understood because I knew a lot about the product and the industry.
What are the differences in the PM vs. TPM interviews?
Havi: For a TPM interview, you really have to know technical fundamentals, and the interview is split into 2 or 3 components.
1. The first component is testing your technical understanding. There will be a lot of system design and algorithm questions, and you won’t necessarily be coding, but you’ll be walking the interviewer through how to address the problem in a technical way.
2. The second component will be around product sense and product execution. A lot of questions will be about ‘how do you improve this product?’, ‘what would you do?’, and it’s really testing your critical and creative thinking skills.
3. The third component is about team management, risk management, and how you work with people. I think leadership is a really big component of a successful PM, so this component is asking how do you lead teams, how do you deal with conflicts, how do you unblock people, etc.
Join Remote Students for access to more opportunities to meet amazing people! Watch the full video on our youtube to get more tips on incorporating hackathons and creative projects as experience, product validation emails, and deep insights on conversations to keep with the interviewer.
