What if I tell you that there is a NEW role in town..
that is in crazy demand right now,
pays an amazing salary
and doesn't need any 'must-have' qualifications to apply for.
Yes. We are talking about the role of a Product Manager.
But who is a Product Manager?
What do they do?
Can you become a Product Manager even without any experience?
I'm sure you had all of these questions and more when you clicked on this video.
And our guests today, Jackie Bavaro and Sugandh Rakha
are the 2 most qualified folks to answer them for you.
Jackie Bavaro is the co-author of 'Cracking the PM Interview' and 'Cracking the PM Career'.
She has been in Product Management for more than 15 years and has worked
as PM at Microsoft, Google and Asana.
Thank you so much for having me here at The Urban Fight.
I really appreciate the chance to talk to you and your community.
And Sugandh Rakha shifted his career from a Dev role at Amazon and Microsoft
to becoming a Product Manager at Service Now.
Hi. Thanks for having me.
With the help of these 2 experts, in today's video we are going to understand...
What does a Product Manager do and the minimum eligibility criteria to become one.
Skills required to become a Product Manager.
How to prepare for a PM Interview?
Salary to expect for a Product Management role in USA and in India.
And towards the end I'll give you a Bonus Tip, that'll help you switch your career..
whether it is from a Tester to a Developer
or from a Developer to a Product Manager.
And as always, if you like our work, smash that 'like' button
because it motivates us to make more videos.
Let's begin.
A Product Manager is considered to be like a mini-CEO of a product,
which means they need to be involved in everything
right from the big picture to even the tiniest of details.
Let's ask Jackie how she would define a PM role.
Some people say that he is like the captain of the ship or mini-CEO
but I think the best way to describe a Product Manager
is that they are the member of the core feature team
and they work along-side designers and engineers
to ship great products.
But the problem is, a Product Manager has no direct authority over a team.
Instead of authority, they need to use their credibility to lead a team.
And there are no minimum qualifications to apply for this role.
Jackie has a B.A in Economics
and Sugandh has a B.Tech in Computer Science
and they are world's apart.
So what qualifications are companies looking for in a Product Manager?
So you don't need an MBA to become a Product Manager
and you don't need a Computer Science degree.
Depending on the company, some companies prefer PMs who have gone to business school,
and some prefer PMs with a technical background.
But because, the PM's role is really filling in the white spaces,
it's doing whatever the team needs to be done
and different companies, depending on who the other roles are, who the other people you work with are
have different needs and that means
that different companies like to hire different kinds of people.
That's great news, isn't it?
Because no matter your qualifications, you can still apply to become a Product Manager.
Now, let's see how to acquire those skills that companies look for in a PM.
Let's first ask Jackie
how she categorises skills that companies look for in a Product Manager.
The way that I group the skills in my book is..
Product Skills, Execution Skills, Strategic Skills and Leadership Skills.
When we talk about Product Skills, I really talk about.. these are the skills that it takes
to design and ship a great product.
So this is like.. Customer Insight, Data Insight.
Then you've got Execution.. to keep your team running successfuly
so that you can ship a good bug-free product on time.
And next is Strategic Skills.. so that is, how do you set a long-term vision
of where you want to get to and come up with a plan of how you are gonna get to there.
To sum it up, through your skills companies want to find out if you can make decisions that are good
for the User, for the Business and ofcourse for the Technical team that's building it
so that the product gets delivered on time.
So if you are a student, here are a few things you can do
to increase your chances of becoming a Product Manager.
Take on a Leadership Role. For example..
Start some college club, be a part of the e-cell,
lead a sports team or even, pick some role in organising the upcoming college fest.
Start a side project. When you have a mobile app, a website or
some service of your own, it tells the recruiter that you've had some exposure
to product design and customer focus.
Intern as a PM or even as a Software Engineer
because there is nothing like learning on the job.
And the best thing to do, is to start some small company with your college friends
to solve a problem that is bothering you.
Best-case scenario, that company will do great and you won't need another job.
And in worst-case, that company will tank but
you will have some interesting product management stories to share with your interviewer.
Moving to experienced professionals. If you are already
working as a developer or a designer, then here is what you can do..
to increase you chances of shifting to a Product Management role.
Create a spectacular profile first, listing everything you have done
be it on LinkedIn or a personal website that showcases all your projects.
Consider working for a start-up where you will get to don many hats, including that of a PM.
Start Networking. Try meeting people who are already doing what you want to do
either offline, through Meetup events or considering the pandemic,
e-meet people and follow them on Twitter, specially Product Managers like Jackie and Sugandh.
And finally, the easiest way to become a Product Manager is to look for
an Internal Transfer.
Let's ask Sugandh how he managed to shift from
a Technical role to a PM role.
So when moving from a Technical role to a Product Management role,
knowing how to build stuff is very helpful, but
here are 3 additional things you need to do on the job.
1) Talk to the customer, product manager or the sales team
to understand about the target audience of your product.
2) Volunteer to handle some customer calls.
This will help you build some customer empathy.
3) Go check your old performance reviews for any leadership or communication concerns
and take steps to address those concerns.
In my case, I also kept on filing patents for the work I was doing.
This helped my resume stand out.
So it doesn't matter if you are currently into Engineering, Design or Marketing..
you can get into a Product Management role, as long as you get some hands-on experience to acquire those PM skills.
Now, comment below and tell me..
What is that first thing you are going to do to gain some PM experience?
Is it re-designing some App, applying to a Startup or
networking with Product Managers on twitter.
I'll be waiting to read your comments.
Different companies have different interview processes..
be it Google, Apple or a Startup.
Even though the 'special focuses' of each of these companies might differ,
most of them will ask you a combination of..
Technical, Product and Behavioural questions.
Product related questions, can be like..
'How would you re-design Twitter?' or
'Design an alarm clock for the blind.'
The purpose of these questions is for them to know how good you are at understanding what the user wants.
Some companies might also ask you some basic coding questions related to
stacks, queues, linked lists and how to
compute their space and time complexity.
But every company will ask you behavioural questions.
So let's ask Jackie how to prepare for them.
I recommend creating a few key stories, so think about..
5 things in your Career that you are really proud of.
5 things that really show-off your skills as a PM.
So you are able to answer a 'Tell me about a time when..' behavioural question with one of these stories or
chit-chat at the beginning of the interview and be like..
'Oh, did you see this cool side project I did..'
This lets your shine in the interview.
Most companies are going to score you on.. 'No hire', 'Hire' and 'Strong Hire'.
So you need to have atleast some people giving you a 'Strong Hire'
and the stories that you can tell, that are really the things where you shine
are what are going to help you move from 'Hire' to 'Strong Hire'.
So that they know you are a person who knows what they are doing.
Now, let's ask Sugandh how his PM Interview experience was.
So while I was moving from a Developer role to a Product Management role,
my questions were around 3 different areas.
#1 was around System Architecture and System Design..
what things I've built in the past.
The second was basically around, what kind of customer handling I have done
and I told them I handled Customer Escalation calls,
these are the issues we've faced and this is how we resolved them.
The third part, was where they wanted to understand
how I have used data to understand customer needs.
For this, I actually opened the Youtube analytics of The Urban Fight
and showed them how using data, we were able to take this channel from 10K to 1 Million subscribers.
Coincidentally, the book I used to prepare for my PM Interview..
was 'Cracking the Coding Interview' by Jackie Bavaro.
You can find out more about how to prepare for the PM Interview
and how to Crack the PM Career through these 2 books that have been co-authored by Jackie.
And I cannot stress enough how brilliant they are.
I've left their Amazon links in the description. Make sure you check them out.
The salary for a PM varies, depending on..
your experience level, company type or even company location.
But here is a rough estimate.
For freshers, for the role of a PM, you can get a salary between
12 Lakhs per annum to 18 Lakhs per annum.
And in USA, you can get a salary from
80K USD to 120K USD.
And if you have 5 years of relevant experience, in India you can expect a salary between
15 lakhs per annum to 35 lakhs per annum.
And in USA, you can expect a salary of
100K USD to 150K USD.
Before I give you the Bonus Tip, allow me to remind you
incase you still haven't, then do subscribe to our Youtube channel, The Urban Fight
and hit that bell icon, because we make..
Career, Finance and Communication videos, regularly.
If you walk into your office and pay attention,
you will notice that everybody has more work on their hands than they can handle.
All of us are over-worked.
And to switch your career, that's the opportunity you need to exploit.
Just go to their desk and offer to take some of their burden away.
If you are a tester, and want to become a developer
solve a bug that the Dev team is facing.
If you are a Developer and want to get into Sales,
offer to help your Manager with a Sales PPT.
So today's Bonus Tip is this...
'Not just dress, but actually work for the job you want.'
Remember, companies want to hire and retain good people
and if you go above and beyond your job to solve a problem,
then they'll happily give you that switch.
And if not, you'll atleast get some experience that you can walk away with to some other company.
Now you go and solve those problems, that you'll be proud
to talk about in your next interview.
And if you need help with that, then check out our website
SkilloPro.com, where we help you answer 14+ most asked behavioural questions
with sample answers, through our Interview Preparation course.
I've left the link to our website, in the description.
I am Taskeen. This is The Urban Fight
and I'll see you in the next video.