Getting a Gig: A Guide (PM EDITION)

Introduction

Hey friends! I was inspired by cassidoo's getting a gig to create this guide on how to get a gig in product management (PM from here on out) as a tech major.

Please note: I left a lot of the original material from getting-a-gig (attitude, resume, cover letter, search and conclusion sections) because it is still relevant to PM. Also, what is here reflects my personal opinion on PM as a whole.

Contents

• Introduction (you read that already)
• The Role (aka what PM is)
• Misconceptions (aka what PM is not)
• Your Profile
• Your Skills
  • Building Them
  • Selling Them
• Your Attitude
• Your Resume
• Your Cover Letter
• Your Search
  • Events
  • Networking
  • Referrals
  • Cold Calling
• Some Common Gigs
  • Internships
  • Fellowships
  • New Grad
• Conclusion

The Role (aka what PM is)

In recent years, product management has become a hot topic, and there has been a lot of hype surrounding the role. But, what does it really mean to be a product manager? The real answer is that product management is ambiguous. The role of the PM varies from company to company.

We are going to define a product manager as someone who takes ownership over a product (or a part of it) and does everything in their power to make that product succeed. They communicate with major stakeholders (users, internal teams, etc) to determine their requirements and then come up with the best way to make a product move forward. In many ways, product managers act as the glue between the business and the technology, understanding business needs that drive the development of a product.

Here are some good primers by people smarter than me:

• Sachin Rekhi's talk on product management
• Microsoft's blogpost on program management - their version of Product Managers
• Should I become a Product Manager?
• A classic article on product management by Ben Horowitz (albeit rather dated)
• The Modern Day Good Product Manager/Bad Product Manager by Hemal Shah, a seasoned PM

Misconceptions (aka what PM is not)

Misconception 1: Product Managers are managers

Despire the name "manager" in the title, product managers tend to not directly manage people. In some companies, there may be a product manager managers or a head of product who tends to manage other product managers. But in general, the product manager's role is not directly above that of engineers, QA, etc. Instead, product managers practice "influence without authority", which means that they need to be able to get buy in from the rest of the technical team and get them onboard without their vision. This is one of the reasons why product managers need to be strong communicators and great at dealing with people.

Misconception 2: Product Managers are glorified project managers

While it is true that product managers do some project management, the role of the product manager is fundamentally different from that of the project manager. A project manager tends to already have requirements/scoping given to them. They then divy the work up and set timelines. A product manager's job is to gather the requirements and develop an understanding of where the product is going and communicate this understanding to others to get it done.

Misconception 3: Product Managers are non-technical

While it is true that majority of product managers do not directly touch code, many do come from a technical background. Product Managers need to understand how the development process works and how to communicate with developers. Having experience directly in the development process as a dev, hence, is valuable to have as a product manager. But technical backgrounds are not the only backgrounds that product managers come from. Here is a great blogpost by Sachin Rekhi on the various routes one can take to become a product manager.

Your Profile

As a a tech major, there are three major areas of skills that you want to posess that you can sell yourself to move towards being a product manager: development, design and business.

Development (aka Software Engineering)

I will not go too much in the details here, but having a software engineering background is quite useful for someone going into product. Also, because you are a tech major, I am assuming that you have had some programming courses before and know some of the basics. You will not be directly asked coding interview questions (it is highly irregular for you to be asked them), but knowing the process of the creation of software is invaluable. Furthermore, PM's tend to need to go through data, so knowing some SQL is valuable.

BUT HOW? Get a software engineering internship somewhere. Go to hackathons and build things. Pick up some side projects along the way.

Design

Depending on the type of product management you are doing, you will have to have an understanding of design. Why? If you are the product manager of an app, you are going to need to have a sense of design to know how to aesthetically make a feature. Beyond that, there is the theory of design (ex: usability heuristics, types of interaction, etc.) as well as the design process. You will need to know how the design process works (defining the problem, coming up with key metrics, brainstorming solutions, determining which one is best to go forward and testing it to see if it's the right one). So, having a background in some form of design is valuable as you will be going through the design process as a PM and a lot of PM interview questions are design oriented.

BUT HOW? Take design courses in school in areas such as Human Computer Interaction or Interaction Design. Challenge yourself to do redesigns of common websites/products and document your process online (ex: Spotify, Facbook, GMail, etc). Do web design for free for organizations you care about to get a sense how things are designed. Read design blogs/books.

Business

Great product managers are able to understand the market they are in, and the business needs of the company. Using this understanding, they are able to come up with the best solution to move forward. As a result of that, having a good business acumen is a valuable asset. A good product manager is able to understand the competitive landscape and other stakeholders when coming up with the direction of a product. In interviews, this a valuable skill to have too (ex: what are the competitors of a business?).

BUT HOW? Get involved out of school with clubs/extracurricular activities. Start a business or a non-profit and get involved with the business side of things.

A Note

The best product managers are the ones who are able to build great products. So, to demonstrate that, pick a product and make it a reality. Here is a repo with some ideas. Or, make a personal website/portfolio, it serves the double purpose of making you look like a stronger candidate and developing your skills. If those bore you, make a clone of your favourite app, but make it better. Show that you have what it takes to make great products and then launch them. Not only will this look good as a PM, but you will have a ton of fun doing it and will learn a lot about what it means to be a PM by doing it.

Your Skills

Obviously, your skills are what a company is buying from you when they hire you. So, honing in those skills and presenting them in an effective way is probably the most important thing in getting a gig.

Building Them

Unlike software engineering, product management in general is more free form. Part of the reason why is because the role is much less technical and more "soft". This does not mean that getting into product management is easier, it just means that the skillset you need to develop is different. Product interviews and skills can be broken down into the following categories:

Behavioural Questions

Behavioural questions are your time to tell interviewers what you have done. Remember to follow the CAR method (Context, Action, Results). This is also known as the STAR method in some places. Behavioural questions boil down to 5 major types of questions (thanks Cracking the PM Interview for this insight):

• Leadership/Influence
• Teamwork
• Successes
• Challenges
• Mistakes/Failures

Make a table to come up with answers to all of them (thanks to Cracking the PM Interview for this one).

Estimation Questions

Estimation questions (also known as fermi problems) are where you are asked to calculate something that you do not know. A classic question is: How many ping pong balls fit in a 747 airplane? My personal approach here is as follows:

1. Ask questions to clarify the problem
2. State what you know
3. Come up with a formula to get the answer
4. Fill in what you do not know (remember to state any assumptions)
5. Calculate your answer

Remember to use round numbers to simplify your calculations (i.e. use something like 10,000 instead of 9876)

Design/Product Questions

These are arguably the most important questions. They fall into 3 common categories (thanks Cracking the PM Interview for this):

1. Design a product (ex: how do you