Making It Happen: A 6 Month Plan to Landing a Product Role
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Product management roles are becoming more and more popular, and structured preparation is key to landing your dream role. The following plan details how to best use your time in the 6 months leading up to PM interviews.
If you have more than 6 months, there are many ways to gain valuable experience that would well position you for a product role, such as:
- Working in a product role at a startup
- Completing a software engineering internship
- Doing personal technical projects or projects for a SWE club
- Holding a leadership position in a cross-functional club or organization at school
- Taking Coursera classes on product management, UX Design, data analytics, project management, marketing, business strategy, social psychology, or decision-making!
Starting at the beginning of the summer up until interview season, here is a plan to optimize your preparation and chances at a PM role!
June & July: Understanding the Job and Interview Process
Learning the basics
Whether you’re completely new to product or familiar with the basics, Cracking the Product Management Interview is your best resource for getting up to speed on what product management is, what the interviews look like, and how companies differ in their product management roles. If you can only read one book, this one is by far the best.
Other recommended books include:
- Decode and Conquer: This is a useful book for seeing PM interview questions with solid answers. You can also borrow questions from here to use for mocks.
- Swipe to Unlock: This book won’t directly prepare you for PM interviews, but it is useful content for thinking about product decisions. Especially helpful if you don’t have a tech background.
- Case in Point: While this book is used for consulting recruitment, it is useful in answering business strategy questions and is also very framework heavy. Read if you have time or are interviewing for Google/Uber as they have more business strategy questions.
- Our other Aspiring PM articles!
Developing frameworks
Frameworks help you break down big, open-ended questions or problems into smaller, manageable questions that can be answered. The books aforementioned will demonstrate how to answer typical PM questions with frameworks. Another good resource for frameworks is Youtube videos. Watching videos of PMs interview and utilize frameworks helped me immensely in my preparation.
Pay attention to the frameworks and take notes — ideally, you want to come up with your own framework for product sense questions and product execution questions. Product sense questions focus on how you think about products — the users, pain points, and features that drive product need. A common question is: “walk me through your favorite product and what you like about it, what can be improved etc.” Product execution questions, on the other hand, focus on measuring success and making data-driven decisions.
August: Applying to Jobs
Because of the high demand for PM roles, many job applications are only open for 1–4 weeks. It’s important to be aware that deadlines can be as early as August (i.e Facebook’s RPM program, Uber APM, Coinbase APM).
Finding Jobs
For finding PM roles, websites to continuously check are LinkedIn, your school’s job posting website, and Jumpstart. Alanz.me also has an updated list of available PM internships and new grad roles. It is worthwhile to look through the list, decide which companies interest you, and subscribe to their emails (usually found on their University page) or check their careers website periodically for updates. On LinkedIn, you can set notifications for when jobs titled “product manager”, “associate product manager” are posted.
Resume
Have your resume reviewed by several people, whether they be friends, family, or people in your school’s career center. Even better, have your resume reviewed by people who are product managers or recruiters for technology roles.
It is helpful to look at the job description and the ideal skills a candidate would have, because these are critical aspects worth including in your resume. Some of these skills may be related to stakeholder management, team leadership, entrepreneurship, public speaking, product design, software engineering, marketing, psychology. If you have any experience in these fields, definitely include them in your resume.
It is also worthwhile to include metrics in your resume and quantify your accomplishments, i.e “grew club membership by 60%”, “reduced crashes by 10%”. Quantifying can be difficult, so think creatively or even ask your previous managers for advice on how to describe the work you did in internships.
Referrals / Coffee Chats
Definitely take advantage of referrals if you can, especially for the larger PM programs such as Google and Facebook. They receive thousands of applications, and getting a referral means your application is looked at earlier.
Getting a referral is easier said than done, but it doesn’t have to be! Use LinkedIn to see what connections you may have to employees at specific companies, and then reach out to them for a 15 min chat about their experience and to ask for a referral. It helps to find people that went to your university, high school, or are from your hometown.
September — December: Interviews!
Do mock interviews 2–3x a week
Ideally, do mock interviews with product managers, as they understand how candidates are evaluated in interviews. However, it can also be useful to do mocks with friends who did PM internships or are also recruiting for PM. People with consulting experience can provide valuable feedback as their interviews are also framework-heavy.
For mocks, you should simulate the real interview conditions as much as possible. This might mean doing a 30 minute product sense interview with a 10 minute break and then doing a 30 minute product execution interview. See how the companies you’re interested in conduct interviews as each one does it a bit differently, and tailor your plan accordingly.
Craft your personal narrative as a PM
Understand what value and skills PMs bring to the table and how your experiences and personality align with the role. This will be key in having an impressive, memorable response to the “tell me about yourself” question. Some PM’s have a business background, others have a technology background, and all are equally valuable to building great products.
Record yourself answering common questions
An underrated tactic, record yourself answering questions and redo your answers until they’re great. This is especially useful for internalizing frameworks and the ‘flow’ of PM interview questions. You should also do this for questions like “Tell me about yourself”, “why PM?” and other behavioral questions that are frequently asked in interviews.
Prepare for company-specific questions
Understand the company’s goals, business model, core products, KPIs, and culture. This information can be garnered through their website or from networking with people at the company (either coffee chats or info sessions).
These questions often are not asked in the first round, but it is always a good idea to ask your recruiter so you aren’t caught off guard. Showcasing that you understand the company’s culture and goals can help you stand out in the final round interviews when they are choosing among very qualified candidates.
Best of luck! It can definitely be a stressful process, but know that by reading articles like these, you’re already ahead of the curve :)
