Resources for Product Managers

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Resources for Product Managers

Roadmap to Becoming a Product Manager

Milestone 4: Complete the interview process

Hopefully, by now you are at the point where you are ready to start applying to product jobs. When it comes to your application process, put yourself in the shoes of the recruiter or hiring manager. They receive hundreds or even thousands of applications for a single job posting and they need to very quickly find a short-list of candidates that match their criteria.

In order to get a call back or interview, you need to find ways to stand out from the crowd. Below are some ways to do that. The good news for you is that most candidates do only the bare minimum of submitting a resume, so if you do take the extra steps below, you will have a much higher probability of success:

A. Preparing Your Resume & Getting Interviews

1. Target the right companies (quality is better than quantity)

Target companies based on areas that match up with your location, background, industry experience, etc.

The more factors you can match on, the higher your chances of getting the interview.

For example, if you are currently a data science engineer at a pharma company in Boston, you will have a higher chance if you target product jobs at data science startups in health care in Boston versus just going after general big tech product jobs at Google or Facebook (you can still apply to these if you like of course).

You can use

crunchbase.com⁠

to help you make a list of 10-15 high priority target companies; these will be the ones where you put in your maximum effort.

2. Make sure your resume is:

Clean, easy to read and well formatted - simpler is better, no need to get fancy

Highlights your most important product experience first (or at the top)

Has relevant keywords related to the position, so that you are picked up by the automatic screeners

Lists not only your responsibilities for a given job, but also the results that you actually achieved (ideally quantified results)

Once you have a good resume, you don't need to keep spending time over-optimizing, focus on other areas below to get the most out of your time.

3. Make a personal connection.

Reach out to product managers or hiring managers at your target companies and try to setup a coffee chat. You can find product managers through LinkedIn and also by reaching out through slack communities.

Attend events where you know your target companies will be present and speak to someone at their booth. Even if it is not the right person, you can ask for an introduction to someone in the relevant department or division.

4. Go above and beyond to demonstrate interest. Here's some ideas:

For your target compan(ies), write up a blog post breaking down one of their products or do an analysis or breakdown showing what you would improve. Make sure this is your best work and you can share it on your social media or when you reach out to people at the company.

Develop a cool prototype or experiment of a product idea related to your industry

Organize an event yourself that is relevant to your target companies. This is a great way to get people to come to you, as opposed to you chasing after them,

If you follow the above steps, you should start to get interviews.

B. Mastering the Interview Process

If you have an interview, congratulations, there is something in your resume or experience that the company liked! The interview process at most companies is designed to assess your overall communication skills, your product sense, and your cultural fit with the company. Interviews are usually conducted over a few rounds.

1. Behavioral Interview - For the behavioral interview, what's most important is to be able to tell your "story" and provide examples of how you've demonstrated the skills needed for the job. Practice your 60-second "elevator pitch" so you can clearly and succinctly describe your background, why you're transitioning to product, and what value you can provide to this particular job or company. Also make a list of key experiences from school or previous work history where you demonstrated leadership, showed collaboration, overcame a challenge, etc. Here's some examples of the types of questions you might get in a behavioral interview:

Tell me about yourself

Communication: Can you describe a situation where you had a disagreement with a team member or a stakeholder? How did you handle it?

Decision Making: Can you talk about a time when you had to make a tough decision with incomplete information? What was the outcome?

Customer Focus: Can you share an example of a time when you had to prioritize the needs of a user or customer over the preferences of your team? How did you navigate this?

Innovative Thinking: Describe a situation where you identified and implemented a creative or innovative solution to a problem. What was the impact?

Time Management: Tell me about a time when you had to juggle multiple high-priority projects. How did you manage your time and resources?

Collaboration and Teamwork: Can you provide an example of a project where you had to work with cross-functional teams? What challenges did you face, and how did you overcome them?

Communication Skills: Describe a situation in which you had to explain a complex issue to stakeholders who were not familiar with the subject matter. How did you ensure they understood?

Product Development: Can you discuss a time when you oversaw a product from conception to launch? What challenges did you encounter, and how did you address them?

Product Strategy: Tell me about a time when you developed a product strategy based on market trends and data. How did you validate your assumptions and measure success?

Prioritization: Discuss an example of when you had to prioritize one product feature over another. How did you make your decision, and what was the outcome?

Failure and Learning: Can you talk about a product or feature that didn’t perform as you had hoped? What did you learn, and what would you do differently next time?

User Experience and Design: Describe a time when you worked with designers to improve a product's user experience. How did you ensure the changes were beneficial to the user?

Etc.

2. Case Interview - The case interview is where you're given a specific problem or challenge to solve which demonstrates your product thinking and problem solving skills. There is not one "right" answer to the question, but what's most important is to have a structured approach to the problem and to be able to walk the interviewer through your thought process.

Examples of case study questions include:

Product Launch: Imagine you're tasked with launching a new fitness app for our company. How would you approach the first 90 days?

Product Improvement: We've noticed that engagement on one of our core features has dropped by 20% in the past three months. How would you diagnose the problem and propose a solution?

Prioritization: Suppose you have three features on the table: one requested by a top-paying client, one that has been highly upvoted in our user community, and one that the engineering team says is easy to implement and would significantly improve performance. Which would you prioritize and why?

Market Entry: Our company is considering entering the smart home market. How would you evaluate whether it's a good idea or not?

Competitive Analysis: A major competitor has just launched a feature that’s gaining a lot of traction in the market. What steps would you take in response?

Monetization and Pricing: How would you approach pricing for a new premium feature we're planning to add to our existing freemium product?

Roadmap Planning: How would you approach planning the product roadmap for the next year, given limited resources and a multitude of requests from various stakeholders?

Etc.

The key to solving the case interview is to learn structured frameworks that can help you break down the problem and walk through it in a logical way. There are many resources online to help you practice for case study interviews, here's a few:

Learning Frameworks

Cracking the PM Interview:

https://www.amazon.com/Cracking-PM-Interview-Product-Technology/dp/0984782818⁠

Practice

The PM Interview: https://thepminterview.com/

Exponent:

https://www.tryexponent.com⁠

Product Management Exercises:

https://www.productmanagementexercises.com/⁠

Mock Interviews

The Product School slack community has a mock interviews channel where you can find partners to do a mock interview with you

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Up Next:

Mission Accomplished! What's next?⁠

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