Getting Hired: How to Get a Job as a Product Manager

How to Get a Job as a
Product Manager
Jason Shah
@jasonyogeshshah
Product Manager, Yammer
Product Manager in Residence at General Assembly
Founder, HeatData
@jasonyogeshshah http://blog.jasonshah.org
You’re Hired: Product Manager

Don’t be shy.
Email me@jasonshah.org
and take my Udemy course with live videos,
answers to the interview questions,
conversations with other PMs, and bonus
content
https://www.udemy.com/how-to-get-a-
job-in-product-management/
Before we begin…

A. Who are you?
B. Who is a product manager?
Goal: A=B
Today’s Goal

+ Define you. Define the Product Manager role.
+ Discuss what a Product Manager actually does
+ Identify key qualities of top Product Managers
+ Show how to frame yourself as a PM if transitioning
into PM from another role
+ Practice interview questions: brainteasers, reverse
engineer features, measuring success
How We Get There

Entrepreneurs?
Rockstar unicorn hacker? Get out.
Designers?
Engineers?
Analysts?
Bankers?
Consultants?
MBAs?
Dropouts?
Students of life?
Who Are You?

Product Manager Identities

5 Things Product Managers Do

+ Drive product vision
+ Spec features
+ Work with designers and engineers
+ Work with everyone else
+ Analyze the performance of features
and make release decisions
5 Things Product Managers Do

What crazy thing should our product do 5 years from now?
What features or designs in our product don’t make sense
anymore?
What are our competitors doing, or can do, that we’re failing to
do well?
Which inefficient behaviors do people exhibit today in the world
that our product can help change or eliminate?
(...and asking other questions to push your product to ultimate market, and world, dominance.)
Drive Product Vision

+ Brainstorm with folks from various teams: design (UX, UI),
engineering, sales, marketing, customer success*
+ Write down the goals of the feature, which metrics should
change and in which ways / to what general magnitude, and
how the feature should actually look and work
+ Iterate with designers to build UX mocks and high fidelity
UI designs (or build them yourself if needed) to ensure a
good user experience + help engineering move faster
*Ultimately you are responsible for the product, though. Don’t let other teams, or your
users, dictate the feature. That is lazy. Use them as inputs. You’re the PM.
Spec Features

+ Come to designers with some sense for the goals of the
feature, but give them autonomy over visual design
+ Negotiate the minimum viable product with engineering
and reach compromises that are good for users but not
overly expensive for engineering to build
+ Keep the team cohesive and reduce transaction costs, e.g.
designers should work directly with front end engineers on
implementation. It’s usually more efficient and helps morale.
…and a million other things that don’t fit on this slide that
you *hopefully* will learn on the job
Work With Designers + Engineers

+ Listen to the problems that customers face and sales /
marketing believe that customers face
+ Communicate likely release dates but don’t overcommit*
+ Challenge your analytics team to help you ask the right
questions and analyze feature experiments accurately**
+ Be an ambassador of your team. People should understand
why the company is building certain features and not others
* Product marketing may handle this in some companies
** Some companies don’t have an analytics team. Better remember what a p-value is.
Work With Everyone Else

+ Figure out which variations should be included in product
experiments
+ Ensure variations align with your product hypotheses
+ Accurately interpret multivariate test results and consider
implications of choosing certain feature winners
+ Don’t be committed to features. Winning is about building
and testing - not rolling features out to 100% of users.
Measure Features

Finding the Right PM Role

+ Identify the companies you want to work for
+ Frame yourself as a good PM (resume, then in future
interactions)
+ Phone screens, preliminary assignments
+ Interviews with PMs, designers, engineers, analytics
+ Negotiating and preparing to dominate as a PM
Finding the Right PM Role

+ Basic: Size, industry, team
+ Intermediate: Product team quality, relationship with
engineers / marketing, nature of role
+ Advanced: Who do you want to be in the long term? A
director of product? An entrepreneur?
Identify the Right Companies

Entrepreneurial
Rational but visionary
Self-aware
Frame Yourself as a PM

+ Looking to assess your degree of interest and
qualification for the role
+ Show you have good product sense, understand
engineering tradeoffs, can measure and iterate
Phone Screen + Assignment

+ Meet with product managers, designers, engineers,
analytics
+ Questions can be brain teasers (analytics), ask for
anecdotes about your experience with teams
(designers/engineers), feature-related, e.g. What would you
build if you were a PM at Facebook?
+ Don’t wear a suit.
+ {Boiler Plate Interview Advice}
PM Interview

+ Meet the team after you get the offer. Get as good of a
sense for the day-to-day as possible. Interviews can mislead
you. Meet for beers or something. Coffee works, too.
+ Get other offers, don’t sell yourself short, balance equity
and salary with your risk tolerance, don’t forget about
intangibles (e.g. health insurance, vacation policy)
+ If they give you an offer, they will pay you well. Don’t be
desperate. It’s sort of like dating.
Negotiate Your PM Offer

Interview Questions

Here’sYammer.
What would you add, remove, or change?

Say you are a product manager at Facebook.You released
a change to the publisher that increased days engaged
meaningfully, but also reduced posting and invites sent.
What would you do?

Many sites have implemented “infinite scroll” in
recent years. Reverse engineer this decision for a
specific product (Pinterest, Facebook, or another).
Why do you think the product manager and team
working on this product did this?

Don’t be shy.
Email me@jasonshah.org
and take my Udemy course with
live videos, answers to the
interview questions, conversations
with other PMs, and bonus content
https://www.udemy.com/how-to-get-a
Q&A

Getting Hired: How to Get a Job as a Product Manager

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