So you really want to be a Product Manager?
There are a ton of posts about product management flooding the internet. The field is ever growing and that is good. But for someone like me who was completely new to it, last year, parsing through them was indeed very difficult — I didn’t know where to start and it frightened me. Honestly, one year later, it still kinda does. But now I know better.
If you just google “so you want to be a product manager” you will come across numerous articles and course links (try it out!) and find yourself lost in a ocean of content.
And that’s why I’m writing this. If you are an international student, in your early twenties, deeply intrigued by product management, but lack professional experience and are thus confused if it’s for you — read through. This is my story. An interpretation of my journey so far. A record to capture the beginning of my career and for me to look back on, in the years to come. By putting it here, I just want to share my story to let others know of my path. If you are looking for solid tips and tricks, please close this post right now. Unfortunately I have nothing to share on that front. I’m no wannabe product influencer nor product guru. Just an average girl with big dreams!
A little bit of background
In the fall of 2018, I was sitting in a huge auditorium waiting for Padma Warrior to address the audience at the Grace Hopper Conference in Houston. If you have been following my posts — you can see how GHC has had a profound impact on my life. You can read more about my experience here.
So there, I was listening to this highly accomplished woman talk about “being on the move”, what the cars of the future would be like and throwing light on the incoming major disruptions in the automobile industry. She asked the audience to pay attention to how technology is changing the industry and how it impacts on the world. I was sitting there in awe, intently listening to what I thought were trends that were so amazing that it would never ever touch my life.
Two years down the lane, my assumptions could not have been more wrong. More on that later in the post.
Here is the link to her keynote address.
Why Product Management?
At GHC, I spoke to a lot of cool people and I met a few product managers while standing in queue for lunch. You see the conference had an unspoken rule — you could never find so many accomplished women under one roof apart from at the conference. So you networked wherever you could and it was amazing. It was indeed a first for me so I imitated and learnt to talk to people around me.
Now I had no idea what product managers did but I was curious to learn more. It was there I met Arunima who would soon be my senior at Columbia University who was incidently interviewing for her product manager interview at big tech company. I had a brief chat with her and what little she told me on her way to her interview was enough to get me hooked.
And that’s where the story begins. Upon further reading, I decided that the best way to dip my feet and learn about the field would be to study in the US. I knew I had to develop my product thinking and business acumen. And so in my last semester , I raced against time to apply to a few select colleges in the US to pursue a masters degree.
I was beyond thrilled when I received my acceptance letter to Columbia University and today I’m happy to write that I’ve officially graduated from my program.
The Journey
When I initially spoke to a few people and expressed my interest in pursuing a career in product management — I was met with a look which I could only decipher as “are you really really serious?” I didn’t know what it meant back then. Maybe I didn’t seem serious enough. But now looking back, I think it was my naivety that stood out.
You see product management was always around but it was regarded as a tough field to break into without relevant experience. Furthermore, the role demanded a wide range of interpersonal skills and managerial skills. Despite its big appeal, the job was indeed very difficult to learn, let alone master. And here I was, so adamant that I was determined to land a pm role.
Interviewing
The best way to learn something is by doing it which is why I tried to land a pm internship. As luck would have it, my first ever PM interview was with Google. I was absolutely ecstatic and shocked when I opened my mail the day I received my interview invite. I knew for a fact that my chances of getting were not very good but I crammed and read all the industry hailed product interview fundamentals religiously. And as expected, I failed.
I then wrote a post on the whole Google experience which garnered over 10,000+ reads. I’m grateful to all my readers!
It was only later that I realized how there are books to be read, product thinking to be developed, courses to be enrolled into (if that’s how you jam) and mock interviews to be done before you can really call yourself fit to interview to be a product manager.
And there were only rejection messages piling up in my inbox. I was feeling dejected but I wanted to come out of the negative spiral. Finding a product management internship is hard — it’s super competitive and I was fast losing hope. I remember sitting in uris libabry and just sending out as many applications as I could. I would quickly edit my application to account for the skill sets mentioned in job description and send it in. I was a little late to the world of networking. But I reached out to everyone I knew and they tried to help me out as much as they could. Referrals are great but there are just a way to ensure that your resume is read by a recruiter.
And then the pandemic made everything worse. But let me tell you that all this struggle hurts only till you land your first role. Things supposedly get a little easier once you break in.
Luck favors the prepared
In what I would call a twist of fate, I had applied to a different internship role at Tesla but the recruiter forwarded my resume to another team and this is how I landed my first pm internship. And so I truly believe that luck plays a very important role in this numbers game. As a matter off fact, I didn’t have a referral for my application. But luck alone won’t get you far — you have to do your part and put in your hard work to make things work.
I strongly believe that discovering your content on your own is the best way to learn. Nothing in life comes easy and if it does, you don’t value it for what it’s worth. And that is why, it’s best to do things the hard way at first. You can always refer to what others are reading and build your own product resource list as you go. I add any relevant resource I find to my slowly growing list. I started a year ago, but I have over 150 list items. I’m probably not gonna read all of them but I regularly go through them to find something that catches up attention and read it through.
In a recent conversation with a product manager from Microsoft, I was introduced to this brilliant idea that you should only consume content that leaves you hooked. We all have limited time on this earth and only content that’s worth your time and interests you should be devoured. And you know you best — figure out what you need to work on and adjust your taste accordingly.
Again, finding your own drift is hard but I suppose it’s beneficial in the long run. And now to answer the question, “where do I look?” — I think the answer is simple. Blogs, YouTube channels, LinkedIn groups, content shared by your peers and senior professionals is the first step. Building a strong network makes it easier for good content to make its way to you. Your network might also post openings for roles in their teams on LinkedIn and this way you can also directly reach out to them. And yes, I’ve definitely grown a lot following the right people on LinkedIn and Twitter.
But now that I’m finally here (woohoo) I hate to say it to again — it’s not been a very easy journey. I still don’t know if I’ve made the right decisions and that is something only the future can tell me. However I’m very happy with where I am! My internship was the best thing that ever happened to me and I learnt a lot. I’m super excited to start my first full time pm role as a Software Product Manager at Tesla next month.
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