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So exactly two years ago, we were shooting MBA in USA Part 1 in this downtown.
And now it's time for Part 2.
So let's start with congratulations. These two years went by quickly
Throughout these two years, Arpit was my roommate and I have seen his struggles.
How difficult was it to clear every
single interview?
To do an internship even though I thought he already had 5 years of experience.
But it's so hard to even get
your first internship
So today let's talk about
struggles and how come MBA made this
journey worth it
To have 5 years of experience then 2 years of MBA and finally after that a job.
So overall, let's start with the struggle.
First, tell us after having 5 years of experience as a software engineer
To come to the US, how difficult was it to take an MBA experience in the form of a Product Manager?
It was very difficult. To be honest you
you have hired people right? You have
seen people's resume would you take a
sales person for a software engineering role?
No not at all. Would his resume be
filtered for this role?
Yes. No, no. Not at all. It will be filtered
out. Yeah it would be filtered out right.
So that's what I'm saying that
if you want to switch a career
it's a very uphill battle. Even I have
five years of experience
it was not easy for me. I had to do so
much networking and I got my product
management break
when I worked for free for a startup. So
I worked for three months without getting
paid for a startup. So that I can have
that experience and I can have that
title on my resume and once that title
was on my resume I started getting calls.
Like earlier before that internship I
was getting like four or five calls but
after that title was there I got at
least 20 25 calls.
That's amazing. This means that there is an unemployment cycle.
We used to read memes in childhood that
I don't have a job because I don't have
experience I don't have experience
because I don't have a job. That's true in reality.
You have to get your experience
for free at any cost. If it's free or non
free. Yeah, yeah
you have to make sure that somehow
somehow you can convince the recruiter
that you have these skills required for
the job. You
work on the side as a product manager
you work on the side to do software
engineering projects and put that
software engineering project on your
resume to show that you have those
skills. So if you are looking for a
change from your existing career try to
do something
starting today
talk to people
and
try to bring those skills on your resume
somehow. Do free projects, work for NGOs do
anything. Yeah. Cold email to startups.
Yeah.
Do all these things
so somehow you have this experience on
your resume because without experience
it's very difficult for you to
put your foot in the door.
If you are liking the placement journey of me and Arpit then you would really like
to interact with me live on Unacademy
class as well. Last time I had done many Unacademy classes
and many of you
voted for me to come back. So that's why,
I'll be taking a live class this
Saturday 7:30 p.m IST. There
I will be answering all your questions
and sharing how you can get started with
preparation for placements as well. And friends,
just like Arpit and I gave quite a lot
the mock interviews & mock exams. Similarly
it's important for every student to give mock exam
and Unacademy prodigy is coming
with free test series.
There you can get an opportunity to win up to
20 lakh rupees of college grant and this
test series is for everyone. So if you are in
class 7th or 8th, 9th, 10th. Even in high
school and college. Because if you
are even in your top 100 rank then also you can get up to
50% of scholarships which
is amazing and for every test you give
you'll get
awards like Macbook Air, iPhone, ipad etc
which is amazing and the best thing is that this test series is absolutely free
if you use my code: Singh22 to get started.
And many people also think that IIT-JEE preparation is expensive but if you want paid test preparation
you can get it as low as 1499 rupees but
with my code 1350 rupees on the UA light
program so definitely check it out.
Two years ago, Arpit told me that he wanted to be a people's person cause he couldn't code for 10 hours.
Now are you a people person? What do you do now?
Tell us about your responsibilities. I'm a product
manager. If people are not familiar with
what product manager is so I can give
you a small example.
Like currently there is iPhone 13.
Next year iPhone 14 will come out.
A Product Manager is someone who decides what should be included in the iPhone 14.
Any person without thinking can say put
the best camera in the world in iphone
14. Yes. But that is
not the
but that is not good business strategy
because after Apple puts the best camera then their
profit margins will become low.
So the work of a Product Manager is to
decide the strategy of the project.
In iPhone 14 put this kind of camera that will make my customers happy and at same
time the profitability also increases.
So you work on the future of the
product. So I am a product manager and
this is my role. I have a list of
features
and I decide uh which features are going
to be shipped next year and then I work
with my engineering team
to make sure that
those features are shipped. I work with
marketing team so that I know what my
customers want and finally if it's
software or website I work with design
teams to decide what my website would
look like. Awesome. For example just like
in iPhone 13 there is only big sensor as of now but
Apple had the ability to give
8K cameras. But they decided
to hold that for next year.
That is product strategy. That would have been the decision of the product manager. 100%
Awesome. Now last but not least overall
this MBA experience. So you did five
years job. Doing an MBA after
experience. Then to struggle in the MBA also.
Overall by coming to US usually
some people come on scholarship. You are an
inspiration for getting
the scholarship but those who don't get the scholarship
is it
worth it to take loans to come and MBA?
And overall is an MBA worth it? Cause now there are online
opportunities. In many places you get an
online degree. So is the overall experience worth it?
To be honest, even my degree has mostly been online
because of COVID.
3 out of 4 semesters of mine have been online. So even mine is maybe kind of online only.
I would say if you are thinking of
taking a loan to come to the US to do an
MBA.
Aim for top 10 schools.
Because the return of investment of our loan there will be higher.
If you're looking for
medium or low-level school try to get in with
scholarship. Because
after you get into those schools you
are on your own.
They would teach you but they wouldn't help you that much in getting a job.
So that time if you have a loan and nobody is supporting you then it's a double bummer. I won't recommend it.
But I would if you are getting into a
Harvard, Chicago booth, Columbia business
school definitely go for a loan. Yeah.
Also Gaurav from Harvard business
school, when I first interviewed him he also said
he also said one plus one is two at
every school. Take Harvard or do an
MBA online, the syllabus is same, everything is same.
But the main advantage was that you got
to network.
By staying in US you get the opportunity
to interact with the maximum
number of people for
recruiting, venture capital, for investment,
to launch a startup.
Like I went to Harvard, I got to know that
overall the
student to opportunities ratio is
maximum. Be it a startup or a job. Anything you want to do
in terms of tech is maximum. So that
makes it worth it. No no, I definitely agree
because the friends I made in my
first semester. Then as soon as everything became online, I didn't make any friends.
Everything was virtual, there was no interaction with others and hence no friends.
The connections you make can only be made in person.
You can't make friends in virtual classes.
If you're looking for an online
MBA
to build connection. No that's not the
way to do it. Yes. Now the last question. How
did you prepare to be a product manager?
How did you make the transition? Step by step.
As I mentioned the most important is to try to
do an internship.
I reached out to a lot of people.
I talked to a lot of
product managers who are already working
as product manager and I asked them this
question like this is my situation
and
what would you suggest?
So first of all I
changed my resume completely.
I look back at my experiences and
find out experiences where the skills
which are required by product manager is
also needed such as leadership skills
communication skills so I highlighted
those points on my resume. Earlier my
my resume was more tech focused with
more technologies and everything written
so I focused
reworded my resume to be more
leadership oriented and communication
oriented.
That was one thing and then I did a lot
of mock interviews and I prepared
my interview stories like product
management interview are of two
questions are of two types one would be
like tell me every time when you led a
team.
This would be a behavioral question and
second would be
okay you are the product manager for
youtube how would you improve youtube?
So these are the two major categories of
questions that
they ask. So for category one
I went through a list of like 30 40
behavioral questions which are most
frequently asked
and found a theme and made like 10
and whenever a question would be asked I
would just tweak that story and then
answer the question for behavioral one.
And for
the second kind of question
I did online interviews. There is this
online community
I joined that community and I did a lot
of mock interviews.
What's the name of the community?
Stellar Peers. Anyone who's
searching for how to be a product
manager the first result is Stellar
Peers. What an amazing thing.
And best thing I've learned from Arpit is that
whenever you answer a behavioral
interview question 5W and 1H. Right?
No.
This is not behavioral question. That is
for
this question how would you improve
youtube? So you have to ask 5W.
What do you want to improve in youtube?
When do you want to improve?
Which location do you want to improve?
How do you want to improve?
Is it for mobile, laptop? These are the questions that you
have to ask. So that is for a different
question with your answer.
But even it is valid for every beginner. For example if
you ask me... Well tell me of a time
when you showed leadership? When
you start asking like which time do
you want me to talk about?
That doesn't make sense. That is right.
For example, have you ever had a
colleague who was difficult to work with?
You will solve why he was sad?
What was the problem with the colleague? First, we'll fix the root cause of the problem. Only then we'll be able to move forward.
But this is not 5W and H. If someone asks me this I would say
give me two minutes. Let me think about
the time and then in my mind I would
frame the story and then I would say
okay let me tell you about a time when I
was working for XYZ company
and I was working in XYZ team and here I
had a challenge with a particular
colleague. So I would give a first like
a contest and then go deep. I see. Now I
got it. Awesome. So thank you so much Arpit.
It was so much learning. I personally give mock interviews these days for software engineering. Learned a lot. Thank you so much.
Yeah, no worries.
And definitely follow him on instagram
to be connected with him.
So thank you so much for watching. Thank you.
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