The Quest to Find an Internship in Product Management — Part 1: Getting the Interview
Advice from a college student for college students.
So you’ve got it all figured out. You talk design, business, and engineering. You’re a leader with strong opinions about products. You’re ready to take on a role in Product Management.
I was just like you three years ago — a fresh-faced, stressed-out college student wondering what I was going to do with my life — when I stumbled upon Jackie Bavaro’s fantastic blog, The Art of Product Management. (Seriously, if you haven’t read it, check it out. It’s superb.)
After struggling so long to find a career that could suit a jack-of-all-trades like myself, reading about a role that seemed so perfectly to fit my aspirations, skills, and interests was practically a religious epiphany.
That’s it, I thought. That’s what I want to do.
Product Management is a very hot field. With a sea of qualified candidates and a limited number of openings, finding a role in Product Management is intensely competitive. Perhaps even more so for finding an internship in Product Management, where most college candidates typically have limited experience in something as varied as PMing, and companies are hesitant to give such a high-responsibility role to an intern. Making yourself stand out from the crowd of equally- and more-qualified candidates is a seemingly insurmountable challenge.
Fast-forward two years. I’ve completed an internship at Palantir Technologies and have just secured a summer internship as a Product Manager at Whisper. In this blog series, I’m going to share some thoughts on how to secure an internship in Product Management. This is the first part in a series of blog posts, and today I’ll be focusing on general tips that you can use to help snag an interview.
Bear in mind that I am not a recruiter, or even the full-time employee of any company. I am a college student who wants to share some advice that I think would have made my life much easier three years ago.
I definitely don’t know everything about job searches. As much as I’d like to give “one size fits all” career searching advice, I’m not convinced that advice of that nature exists, especially since what product managers actually do can vary wildly from company to company.
With this in mind, read on.
1. Learn to network now.
Being proactive in this field is absolutely essential. Frankly, if you aren’t willing to go out of your way to talk to others, you might just be looking for the wrong job. Product Managers absolutely MUST be able to effectively communicate.
That said, if you consider yourself an introvert and you’re interested in PMing, be sure to check out Jackie Bavaro’s great post, Tips for PM Introverts, embedded below. Don’t be discouraged if you have trouble talking to people!
Yes, I know it’s nerve-wracking. That’s something you’ll need to overcome. Networking takes time to perfect. Practice it now while you’re still a student. Ask almost anyone in the workforce — learning how to network at school (where things like career fairs, conferences, networking sessions, and tech talks happen on a weekly basis) is a much friendlier environment than learning to network out in the real world.
Use your classes for this, too. Talk to your professors and TAs in office hours. Talk to your fellow classmates. Connect with them on LinkedIn. Make friends with people who are smarter than you; they’ll probably go on to do some really cool things, and they’ll be very useful connections to have in the future.
You can also use your status as a student to your advantage. In the wise words of Andrew Chapello, a Product Manager at Recurly:
“…most people out there will do almost anything to help a STUDENT. That .edu email address gets you access to people you will have trouble contacting ever again after school.”
Check out alumni networks for your school on LinkedIn. Make sure that you explore absolutely every possible avenue to your desired career that you can.
“Above all, you must be relentless and you must be shameless. Period. Don’t be afraid to talk to anybody.” — Dakota Shane Nunley
Does your distant cousin’s ex-girlfriend’s brother’s roommate work at Google? See if they can tell you about their work. Does your friend’s uncle’s hamster’s previous owner now work at Microsoft? See if you can get their email address and start engaging with them.
If you’re not sure how to start a conversation with someone from the industry, I’d recommend that you do something like this:
- Tell them a bit about yourself in an introductory email (and how you’re connected to them), say that you’re interested in becoming a Product Manager, and ask to schedule a Skype or phone call to ask them about their experiences.
- During your chat with them, ask well-thought-out questions about what it’s like to be a Product Manager at X Company.
- Ask them to critique your resume.
- Ask them if their company hires PM interns. If they say yes, ask if they can pass your resume onto the recruiter involved.
That’s what I do with almost every person that I’d like to connect with, and that process almost always results in a referral.
Speaking of which, don’t EVER be nervous about asking someone for a referral. Referrals usually result in a first-round interview, and they don’t just benefit you. The person who refers you to a company will get a sizable bonus if you’re hired. So really, in the event that someone refers you and you get a job because of it, they owe YOU dinner, rather than the other way around.
Applying online to positions can work. But getting your foot in the door through networking has a much higher success rate. In fact, check out #11 of this wise blog post by Raghav Haran (linked below). Don’t go through the “front door.”
Talk to everyone you can in your industry. Go to career fairs, networking sessions, and conferences. Make connections everywhere you can, and follow up with them, too.
2. Read. A lot.
Here’s a link to one of the single most helpful books you can read as a Product Manager hopeful: Cracking the PM Interview by Jackie Bavaro and Gayle Laakmann McDowell. Buy it. Read it cover to cover.
Yes, I know it’s almost $30. Trust me. It’s worth it.
The practice questions in that book are insanely helpful, and give you a great idea of what to expect during interviews. Gayle Laakmann McDowell also published other books in that series, Cracking the Coding Interview and Cracking the Tech Career, each of which is a great read and well worth the money (albeit not as closely aligned to this career path as the very specific information in Cracking the PM Interview).
Additionally, Inspired: How to Create Products Customers Love by Marty Cagan and Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal are both great books for PM hopefuls to read. Both titles give a lot of insight into the product development / design cycle (especially if you haven’t got any professional experience developing products yet).
Be sure to keep up on tech news, too. Some variation of the question, “What are you excited about in the tech industry right now?” shows up at least once per interview for Product Management positions. I love the tech column of The Verge and Tech Crunch. Re/code is quite good as well. Tech companies need candidates who are up-to-date with the latest product releases. You should be genuinely interested in — and have strong opinions about — the future of different products / apps.
3. Take on leadership positions.
Learning to lead others effectively is vital for the resume of a PM hopeful. A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of speaking with Thomas Arend, who has worked on products at IBM, SAP, Google, Mozilla, Twitter, and Airbnb and is now the CEO and Co-Founder of a hot new startup, Savvy. He told me something that really stuck with me:
“I prefer the term Product Leader to Product Manager, because anyone can be a manager — anyone can tell other people what to do. Not everyone can be a leader, and inspire others to work alongside them.”
If you’re trying to find a PM internship, it is absolutely essential that you have leadership positions on your resume. Get involved with student organizations on your campus, and commit to leadership positions. It is much better to be heavily involved with a 1–2 organizations than to be lightly involved with several.
Leading in a student group shows a lot about you: you’ve got initiative, you can talk to people, and you can lead meetings. Depending on the group and position, it can also show that you’ve got an eye for finances, event planning, marketing, community outreach, etc. Perhaps most importantly, it shows that you’ve got experience working with your peers effectively.
If you’re involved with an organization that relates to the tech industry, that’s great! You’ve shown that you’re passionate about cool technology and work on it even in your free time. If you’re involved with an organization that has nothing to do with tech, that’s still great! It shows that you’ve got a soul and that you’re a well-rounded individual. Perhaps start a student group that doesn’t exist, or even try putting together a startup if you’re excited about a product idea. Each leadership position shows your commitment to an organization and determination to succeed.
Leadership takes practice. Get involved with a group that requires a lot of work to lead. Learn what leadership styles work for you and which ones don’t.
Remember that you’re probably going to screw up — quite a bit — if this is your first time really leading a group of people. And that’s okay. But you will get better, which is the important part.
4. Never say no to an interview.
Every interview is an opportunity to get some practice speaking to others and gather some industry connections.
Even if it’s for a position or company that you’re not incredibly interested in, take the interview. If nothing else, it will give you good practice for your next interview, and you may even get a new contact out of it.
Remember, bombing a few interviews is a perfectly okay — and perhaps essential — part of your career search. Nothing really teaches you how to be good at interviewing for jobs like interviewing poorly and then resolving to be better next time. Believe me, I did it a lot before I started getting better at interviewing.
Finally, try applying for Software Engineering internships as well as PM internships; even if you can’t get a PM internship, employers in the future will see that you have experience working as an engineer. A technical background is a big leg up for PMs, because it shows that you have a vocabulary with which to hold conversations with engineers. SWE internships are definitely more plentiful than PM internships, too, so if you’ve never had a job or an internship before, it might be best to start out with a SWE internship, and then try to find a PM internship the following summer.
When I worked at Palantir, I worked as a Product Quality Engineer (essentially a hybrid between a quality assurance role and a software engineer in test). Going into that internship, I knew that being a PQE wasn’t the ultimate career goal for me. Even so, I worked hard, made connections with smart people, and gained an extensive vocabulary with which to talk about product development. I even got some first-hand experience rolling out releases in professional setting. I was then able to utilize all of these things as I was searching for a PM internship the following summer. No class or book could have given me such a rich experience or resume builder, and I am eternally grateful for Palantir’s absolutely fabulous internship program.
Remember that taking an internship that might be a less-than-perfect fit for you now can still serve as a fantastic stepping stone towards your end goal of securing a PM internship (or full-time position, depending on your year in school).
5. Manage your time effectively.
I’ve heard it said that college can be described like this:
Sadly, this is not true. College is actually more like this:
Students going through a job search should allot a fair chunk of time each week (5–6 hours or more) to focus solely on their job search. Career fairs, interviews, conferences, applications, networking, and writing emails will eat up a lot of your time, so bear that in mind as you schedule classes, commit to organizations, find part-time jobs at school, etc.
6. Keep trying.
Here’s the saddest thing I’ll write today: A disturbing amount of the success of your job search will be due entirely to luck. This is a cold, hard truth that is essential to understand.
You can go to the career fair, but what if the recruiter at the table isn’t feeling your vibe? You can apply online, but who knows who will read your resume and cover letter in the vacuous black hole that is the online application system? You are going to get discouraged by the hundreds of applications from which you will get rejected. Keep picking yourself back up, keep applying, and keep talking to recruiters.
About 6 months before I interviewed with Apple, a friend of mine referred me for a position at Apple. I never heard a thing back from them, and I assumed the worst. Then, 6 months later, I walked into a career fair and, on a complete whim, moseyed up to the Apple booth despite the eternal line and the fact that I hadn’t heard from them earlier in the year. The recruiter scanned my resume and I saw his ears perk when I said the words “I’d really like to get into Product Management.” He said to me, “Funny you say that. Just a few days ago, a colleague of mine mentioned to me in passing that they need someone artistic, technical, and interested in PMing.” He gave me an interview on the spot. In other words, I got lucky.
I’d estimate that for every 5 jobs I applied for, I heard back from 3 of them. Of those, approximately 2 were rejections. Try your hardest not to become discouraged by the job application black hole. Eventually you will get lucky enough to find something that matches your experience and skills. Whenever possible, try to be referred into a company, rather than applying online. Ultimately, this final point connects to my first — the importance of networking cannot be understated.
Keep casting your net. Odds are, lots of fish are going to slip through at first, but eventually you’ll get damn good at catching fish.
Good luck. You’ve got this.
If you liked this article and/or want to see this series continue, press that green little heart button and also follow me! Keep an eye out for the next installments in this blog series. I’ll be talking about resumes, career fairs, and eventually, interview tactics. Cross-posted from LinkedIn.
