Craft Your Story to Land Your First PM Internship

How to frame your previous experiences to show potential and preparation for a PM role

A few weeks ago I was talking with a student interested in landing a PM internship at Ancestry, where I worked last summer. One of the most interesting questions he asked me was:

“How do I frame my previous experiences to show potential and preparation for a PM role?”

I like this question because it speaks to a few key points about product roles that I’d like to dive into:

1. Hiring managers ARE looking for candidates that can bring value. It’s important to understand where a PM’s value comes from.
2. PMs come from all backgrounds. Often, having a breadth of experiences is a real advantage. Sure, if you have done a PM internship before that will be a great experience to dive into in conversations for future roles. For those without a ton of PM experience, the relevant question is: which of my experiences show the best preparation and potential for a PM role, and how do I best express that?

What Value Does a PM Provide

I’m smiling as I write this, making a mental note to include some of these points next time I need to convince my grandma I do something useful 😅. Here are the main value-adds. Think about how your experiences may apply to these as you are reading.

• Act as an expert on the customer and competitive environment
• Write clear requirements for what a feature must accomplish
• Define a product roadmap to hit higher company-level goals
• Effectively lead and guide engineers, designers to build
• Collaborate with a variety of stakeholders: marketing, science, etc.

Be an expert on what your customers’ problems are, and go fill them. Photo by Clem Onojeghuo on Unsplash

How Your Experiences Fit In

Going through the above list, what kind of experiences may be valuable? Aim to highlight these on your resume, or in conversations with recruiters.

Act as an expert on the customer and competitive environment

I think this is one of the most important. In my interview for my first product internship, I shared about a project I worked on for Venmo, and how the focus groups we performed allowed me to derive insight from customers and translate that into shape their marketing.

• A project that involves insight interviews, focus groups, surveys, or user research — you can do this through a club for a company, for a startup idea, or as a side project for an article like this one
• Having performed a SWOT or other analysis on a company’s position in the market
• Staying up to date on the latest innovations and market news. Two of my favorite resources are: Snacks Daily for their daily 20-min podcast which makes me laugh out loud without fail, or Morning Brew for their entertaining newsletter.

Write clear requirements for what a feature must accomplish

This one is a little simpler, so I won’t write out bullet points, but what have you done that shows you can communicate your ideas clearly through speech and text? This may not be the highest priority experience to share, but I feel that soft skills learned through public speaking and writing are very valuable. An article I wrote a few years ago on Quora came up in one of my Ancestry PM interviews, and I’m certain it helped my chances 😉

Define a product roadmap to hit higher company-level goals

When have you practiced breaking high-level goals and problems into smaller pieces? Did data drive your decision in any way?

• Lead some organization, business, or student group to hit a goal — for example maybe you want to have 50 people on your triathlon team race this fall, so set specific plans to keep people motivated and in shape and pay attention to what activities get the largest turnout

Effectively lead and guide engineers, designers to build

• What have you started from the ground up, of your own accord? This takes courage and drive, both of which are super important
• Experience designing something like a website, t-shirt logo, app, etc. What were the goals of the design and the key decisions you had to make? Does this design have any drawbacks or advantages when it comes to implementing it? If you haven’t used design software before, Figma is my favorite tool and it is super easy to learn.
• Any programming experience is helpful too, with emphasis on the trade-offs of certain decisions

Collaborate with a variety of stakeholders: marketing, science, etc.

One of the things my first manager showed me through example was that it wasn’t enough to just communicate — you need to over-communicate your vision so everyone stays aligned.

• When have you worked in a team before and dealt with competing opinions and priorities?
• What is your biggest strength when it comes to leadership and what experiences show that?

Photo by You X Ventures on Unsplash

To Summarize

In answer to the high-level question of “How do I frame my previous experiences to show potential and preparation for a PM role?”, do two things:

1. Find out where your experiences align with the value that a PM brings to a team.
2. Craft your narrative so those experiences shine through.

Good luck!