Navigating the APM recruiting process
Throughout college, I noticed many resources targeted towards students pursuing engineering and business analyst careers. These included courses, clubs, and professional organizations focused on consulting and software development. On my campus, there were also (albeit fewer) initiatives for product designers. There was a noticeable gap in guidance for another core member of the product team: aspiring PMs. I filled in this gap by leveraging extensive online resources, including the Medium community, and by attending panels and talks from experienced product managers. I’m hoping to contribute back in some small way by sharing my experiences.
The scope of this post is solely on optimizing the PM/APM recruiting process, given a current set of experiences. There are many online resources detailing endeavors you may want to consider undertaking to build your PM skillset, questions that might be asked, and what interviewers are looking for from candidates.
With this in mind, let’s dive in!
First, what is a product manager? Understand how PMs add value to a team. This will inform your interview process and how you showcase that you have potential to be a great PM. In short, PMs sit at the intersection of other members of a product team (designers, developers, business analysts, marketing, etc). Diverse backgrounds can sometimes create different paths to the same objective, which is ultimately to create an exceptional digital experience that will also deliver business value. It is the PM’s goal to leverage the diversity of skill on her team and align each team member’s unique expertise to ensure the product’s success.
I’m segmenting the recruiting process into four main stages — preparing your application, applying, interviewing, and selecting an offer.
1. Preparing your application
Resume
Designers and developers often have concrete outcomes from their work; designers have the user interviews that they’ve conducted or the prototypes they’ve tested. Developers have the code they’ve pushed. In contrast, the only mark of a PM’s contributions is her product’s success. Convey this understanding on your resume — for each of your experiences, showcase the impact of your work. Frame your bullets around how you define success, and use vocabulary that highlights your PM skills (think “Led,” “Owned,” “Directed,” “Transformed”).
Cover Letter
Take advantage of the opportunity to tell more of your story through a cover letter. While many companies probably only review your resume (I can’t confirm if anyone ever read my cover letter), I also can’t imagine how having a cover letter could harm your chances of getting an interview. I used a similar cover letter across my applications. It highlighted my PM internship experience and an important personal project. I also always included a few reasons that I was interested in the particular company I was applying to. This section might quickly analyze a product or feature in the company’s suite that I loved, note a recent change in the company’s strategy, or mention a unique feature of the APM program. Do your homework about the company and the role that you are applying to! You will reuse this research in both your career fair conversations and formal interviews, and ultimately when deciding which offer to accept.
Website
I didn’t have a personal website, but many of my friends recruiting for PM roles did. If you can illustrate your story and experiences more clearly through a personal website, certainly create one and link it on your resume. However, I felt that developing a personal website was too big of a time investment for the payoff (specifically for recruiting) that it could create for me; it would not showcase skills that were not already on my resume. Instead, I linked my GitHub and LinkedIn for more context.
2. Applying
Referrals
- Personal Network: I was initially very hesitant to bother people that I wasn’t well acquainted with for their time. After some thought, I rationalized that it was a relatively low investment on my part to request, and a similarly relatively low investment on the referrer’s part to submit my resume (many companies even offer bonuses to employees who refer a candidate who goes on to receive and accept an offer). That said, remember that you are asking someone else for a favor. I always initially asked if I could send my acquaintance my resume for her review, and requested that she submit it on my behalf only if she felt that I was a good fit. Also, note that while it is preferred, it isn’t necessary to have a current PM refer you to a PM position — most of my referrals were from software engineers because most of my network is in engineering.
- Recruiters and Job Boards: In addition to my personal network, for companies that I had researched with an entry-level product role, I reached out to recruiters directly that posted senior-level product roles on job boards like the Women in Product listserv. These recruiters sometimes forwarded my information directly to the recruiting team for entry-level product roles.
Career Fair
Research the company and role before you approach the booth. Have your pitch ready, and be prepared to talk about the suite of products. You should prepare for this conversation as you would any behavioral interview in any of the later stages. In addition to my campus career fair, I also had the privilege of attending the career fair at the Grace Hopper Celebration. I received a scholarship through my school to attend. It was definitely a memorable experience, and it gave me face time with companies that did not come to campus. I was surprised how many companies sent product representatives to the event.
Pitching: A conversation at the career fair might look like this:
“Hi, thank you so much for coming to campus. I really appreciate the opportunity to chat with you today. Can I give you my resume?”
“My name is <name>, and I’m a <year and major>. I’m really interested in product management because <reason>. In particular, I would love to work at <company> because <reason>. On campus, I’m primarily involved with <list top 1–2 involvements, with a one sentence description for each>”
The employee (often a software engineer if you are on campus) will look over your resume as you give your pitch, then dig deeper on anything he/she has interest in (probably either details on your interest in the company’s APM program, or the team and technical details of your campus involvements).
To illustrate the importance of the way you submit your application, I want to note that I only reached the interview stage with one PM role that I cold-submitted an application to (without a referral, direct recruiter submission, or face-to-face interaction at a recruiting event) out of fourteen that I started the interview process with. There is no automated way to review a product challenge, versus a coding challenge, which can make companies more selective around who they allow to enter this stage. A lot of skills that are critical to being a PM are conveyed best in person, and you can use a face-to-face conversation as an opportunity to prove these skills and give yourself an edge.
3. The PM/APM interview process
[Recruiter Screen]
You may or may not have this round, since the recruiter screen is interchangeable with the informal career fair conversation.
Product Challenge
The product assignment can come before your phone screen or after, before your onsite. You will often be asked to define a feature to improve in the company’s current product suite, or to describe the strategy behind a product that takes your breath away. In retrospect, I often focused too much on making my slide decks beautiful and clean with my initial idea, rather than on the ideation process itself — weighing out which ideas were best and considering how they could contribute to the company’s mission. Ideally, your presentations would be beautiful and functional. Under time constraints, I chose to focus on the former, when the latter was most important to optimize for. Focus on your process, define your objectives early on, and ask friends that are designers or developers for feedback. Product challenges are exercises in being a PM, so approach them as you might approach a real product; by focusing on a value proposition for both the company and users, and leveraging others’ expertise. Finally, I always submitted my proposals as a slide deck, because this format forces you to be concise with your words and to illustrate your suggestion with visuals.
On Campus/Phone Interviews (1–2)
These are similar to onsite interviews. Mine were always with a PM and a combination of behavioral and case or product. Solving the case or product questions is most important, but a close runner-up is the questions that you ask. To stand out, prepare questions that will illustrate your PM skills while simultaneously extracting the information you’re looking for.
For instance, if you are chatting with a PM, rather than asking “What is [company name’s] culture like?”, you could ask, “I’ve noticed many PMs either go on to found their own companies, or become product leaders at their current companies. If you feel comfortable sharing, can I ask what your next career move is?” Your interviewer’s response will probably justify his/her next goal and how he/she plans to achieve it, as well as describe trends from other PMs at the company. The response will also illustrate the company’s culture, because it should convey whether the company’s employees are ambitious, hard working, and supportive towards one another’s aspirations. Finally, it will also show that you understand the PM career path and that this role fits into your personal ambitions. Asking great questions not only helps you stand out, but also opens the door for a great follow-up email. Because the interviewer has disseminated unique knowledge on you, you have created the opportunity to thank them for it.
Onsite
While my phone interviews were always with PMs, onsite I also spoke to developers and designers. Keep in mind who you are talking to, and tailor the conversation to showcase what someone from this background would want in a PM (probably someone that is empathetic towards their domain of expertise). For instance, if you are talking to a designer, frame your conversation around the users and the ideation process. If you are talking to a developer, discuss the technical decisions behind the product.
Furthermore, prepare a great answer to the inevitable “Why do you want to work here?” question. Ask yourself:
- What is the company’s mission and what changes have been launched recently to drive this mission forward?
- How does the company showcase its strong product culture — its technical prowess, user-focused design, and strategic business decisions?
- What are you looking for in a position, and how does the company and APM program fit this expectation?
Interview Follow-Ups
Follow up with your interviewers within 24 hours of your interview (both phone and onsite). It’s important to be prompt with your follow-up because many interviewers will submit feedback very soon after the interview. Highlight things that stood out from the conversation. I’ll reiterate that it’s critically important to ask strategic questions, because you are setting the stage to remind the interviewer that you had a great conversation and to thank them for their insights.
4. Navigating an offer
Congratulations(!!) on making it to the offer. Calling this a huge accomplishment is an understatement, but we’re not quite done yet.
Requesting an Extension
Generally, recruiters and hiring managers are flexible with your decision deadline because they are hiring so many candidates. An example of how you might make an extension request:
Hi <Recruiter>,
I hope you’re doing well! I wanted to give you a quick update. I’m currently nearing the end of the interview process with a few more companies, and I’m committed to finishing. I’m still really interested in <company> but I also want to know that I’ve explored all of my options, since this is a really big decision. The other companies have committed to finishing the process by <date>, and I’m hoping to have <number of days> to decide, so I wanted to see if it would be possible to move the <company> deadline to <date>. I realize this is a really big request so I definitely appreciate any flexibility from your side.
Thanks for all your support and help,
Choosing a Position
No matter what you decide, you will find brilliant, talented leaders that will teach you a lot. You will have opportunities to push yourself to develop your skill set, both in the personal and professional contexts. Assuming that the location and compensation are on par, some factors to consider when choosing a position may include
- Will you have opportunities for face-time with senior leadership?
- Do you think this role will set you up for your next career transition? Where do PMs from this company end up moving next?
- What types of products/projects do entry-level PMs work on? What might a team look like and what is the relationship between entry-level PMs and more senior PMs?
Additional resources
Communities
- Product School: Advice from experienced product managers are streamed live on Facebook and then posted to YouTube
- HH Product Management and Women in Product Facebook groups: Current and aspiring PMs post job opportunities and advice
I hope that you found this post helpful, and I would love feedback about your experiences, whether or not they aligned with mine. Good luck!
