 Right. Welcome to the webinar. My name is Deepi and I'm a product manager at Google and today I'll be talking about how to transition to product management. And before I jump into the actual agenda, let me give you a quick overview of my own journey into product management. So I started my career as a software engineer after pursuing engineering in computer science and I really enjoyed solving complex problems as an engineer. But I also wanted to develop business acumen. So I pursued MBA and after my MBA, I worked in a consulting firm for a bit before joining Google. And at Google, I joined the product support team where I was working very closely with the product teams. And after a few years of working in support, I developed a strong inclination to move into product management. And because I was working so closely with the product teams, I was able to establish strong relationships with them. And as a result, one of the lead PM offered me a part-time product management opportunity and I really enjoyed working as a product manager. So that further solidified my conviction to move into product management. And then of course, I prepared for the interviews and eventually landed into a product manager role. Before I jump into the actual agenda, I also want to put a disclaimer that whatever I'm sharing today is all based on my own personal views and are not reflective of any of the organizations that I've worked in the past or I'm working in present. So while we are talking about transitioning into product management, it's very important to understand and answer this question of why product management, right? Why do you want to move into product management and are you the right fit for this role? And then I will also talk about imposter syndrome, which is so very common and more so in those who are aspiring to be a product manager. So I'll talk about some of the strategies on how you can fight this imposter syndrome. And then we'll look at how you can develop the relevant skills and experience that you need for easy transition to product management. And then finally, I'll share some tips and strategies on how you can place your interviews. And if you have any questions, feel free to post them and I'll be happy to answer those at the end of the session. All right, so let's jump into the first topic. Why a PM and am I the right fit for PM? So it's very important to have the clarity on why you want to be a product manager and also identify if you are the right fit for this role, right? First and foremost, you need to answer what is your primary motivation to move into a product manager role? Is it because it's a very much sought after role? And you have heard that they get paid very highly, they have their product managers like the CEO of the product. So they get to make all the decisions, they get to lead and manage the teams. If it is because of any of these reasons, then you are in for a big surprise. Yes, a product manager has to do a lot of good work. It's not that fancy that you may have thought about. So definitely you should reconsider your decision if it is because of any of these three reasons. But if you genuinely love building products, if you love understanding customers pain points, identifying ways to improve customer experience, and you love collaborating with various cost functional teams to build amazing products, then definitely this is the right next step in your career. Now we need to understand what are the key skills that are needed for a product manager? So if you look at the diagram on the right side, there are four key skills that are crucial for a product manager. The first is the strategic thinking. As a product manager, most of the times you will be developing the vision and strategy for the product area that you are tackling. So very, very important for a PN to have strategic thinking. The second is the business acumen. Are you able to identify the right problems to solve, the right metrics to measure the success, and come up with ideas or the roadmap that can help create impact on the business as well as the end users. So that's what the business thinking is all about. And then the tactical is more on, are you able to collaborate with other teams to actually execute whatever roadmap you have put together? As a PN, you will not have people reporting into you. So influencing without authority is very, very critical for a PN. So you need to see if you are comfortable with that. If you are not, then you need to figure out ways to develop that skill. And then the last is the technical. As a product manager, you will be working very closely with engineers. So you need to have foundational understanding of the technical, key technical concepts, especially around how the systems are designed, more around the distributed systems. And at scale, like what are the constraints, what are the trade-offs that you need to consider. So it's very, very crucial for a PN to have good technical skills so that they are able to earn the trust and credibility of engineers. Alright, so now we have understood what are the skills that are needed. Next step is to do your self-assessment and identify what are the areas that you are strong in and what are your weaknesses. And for the areas that are your strong areas, probably those are your transferable skills. So that is great. But areas that you are not that strong in, you will need to see how you can develop the right kind of, how you can develop those skills through the relevant experience. And I'll touch upon that in another slide. But another important thing is you don't necessarily need to be strong in all these areas. As long as you are good, I think you are strong in two areas and good in one of the other two areas, you should be okay. Alright, so next, what is imposter syndrome? It is a feeling that I do not belong to this community. Doubting, am I really the right fit for this role? And it's important to know that you are not the only one feeling this. Almost everyone goes through this. In fact, the stats show that 40% of the product managers experience imposter syndrome frequently or all the time. And only 8% of the product people said that they never experienced it. So yes, it is a real thing. But how can we fight it? First and foremost is that you need to believe in yourself. You should once you have decided you want to move into PM role, then you need to have full faith in your abilities, have 100% confidence that you will do it. Right? And then of course, it's easier said than done. There are some techniques that can help you develop that confidence and suspend that. So first is practice. Doing as the famous saying goes, right? Practice makes perfect. So the more you practice, the better you will get at it. And practice again improves doing practice by yourself or practicing with others. But essentially, you need to develop that product thinking lesson. Right? And that's what practice helps you develop that. And then the other thing you could consider is joining some spiritual or motivational groups. I have been practicing with this philosophy as a member of SGI. And I have found it very, very useful in various aspects of my life. So you can definitely check it out. I've added the link to it. And lately I also started following Sadhguru. They have a lot of great content, free content on their YouTube channel and an app as well. So you definitely can check that out as well. So I think the ultimate goal here is that you need to stay positive and continue to persevere. No matter how many ups and downs you encounter during the journey. Right? So see whatever works the best for you. There are some things that work for me. All right. So next, now that you have evaluated your fitment to the PN role and you have decided to pursue the path to becoming a PN, then the next step is to develop that relevant skills and experience. So how do we do that? First is leverage your network. You can reach out to people on LinkedIn. Reach out to PNs, PM managers in your organization or other organizations that you've worked in the past. You can also reach out to alumni from your university who are already into the product management. So again, reaching out to as many people as you can and see if they have any part-time PM role that you can support in. Most of the times, product managers are really swamped with work. So they are looking for people who can help them. So that could be one way to look for getting relevant experience. Other options could be building your own products. Could be as simple as building a blog or your own YouTube channel. Right? So, or you could consider doing other finance projects. So those are different ways to develop the skills that we looked at earlier, which are crucial for a PM. All right? So now comes the next step of facing the interviews. The interviews play a very, very big role in determining the success or failure of your transition into product management. Very important to ace the interviews. But before we talk about how to prepare for the interviews, I want to first talk about what is being evaluated in the interviews. So in terms of the key skills that are being evaluated, there are four key skills like I mentioned earlier. The first is the product sense. What is product sense? It is also called product intuition or product judgment. It is your ability to understand what makes a product great. Are you able to identify the key user insights and then come up with ways to transform the user experience? Right? So that's what product sense is all about. And some of the questions that you may get asked as part of product sense are improve a product. Could be improve Google Photos. Or it could be design a new product. Design a Smart Show is an example. Or it could be design a product for a specific type of persona. For example, design Google Maps for blind. Or it could be what is your favorite product? Or what is your other product that you hate the most? Right? And these questions are very, very common, favorite and hated product. So it is advisable to prepare these questions. Think about the products across different categories. Favorite tech product, favorite non-tech product, and favorite product, favorite app or things like that. So that's very, very, that's going to help you. And then next is the product analytical and execution ability. So here they are evaluating on whether you can identify the key metrics to measure the success for the given product. And are you able to crunch numbers? So you may get asked questions like estimate the market sense. Again, as a product manager, you will be looking at a lot of data. So they are trying to see if you are able to analyze the data and come up with good insights based on the data. So that's why they ask these kind of questions. There could be a question around what should be the pricing strategy for the product. So again, these are all under analytical ability. And then the third is the product strategy. What is product strategy? It's all about big picture thinking. Are you able to identify what you need to do and what we should not do? What will be your differentiating strategy to differentiate your product from the competitors? And how will you respond to a competitive threat? So those are all under product strategy. And then technical skills is all about evaluating whether you have the fundamental understanding of how systems are designed. What happened under the hood? So there could be questions on system design, question like design Instagram, or what happens when you search on Google? Explain what happens under the hood when you search on Google? So those are like some system design questions that you may get asked. And other could be algorithm design. So again, you are not expected to code, but you are expected to know about the algorithms, how the algorithms are designed and how they work. So those are some of the questions you may get asked for technical evaluation. And another important thing is that in one interview, you may get evaluated across different skills. So it's not that it's only product. If the recruiter has told you it's a product sense interview, they may still evaluate you on some of the other skills that you see here. So very important to have open mind when you go for the interview. Alright, so now we've looked at what is being evaluated. Now let us see how do we prepare for the interviews. So I opted for the three pronged strategy for interviews. First is developing a strong foundation. What do I mean by strong foundation? Basically having a very good understanding of what a product manager does on a day to day basis. And what are the different types of problems that they have to solve. And what are the different types of frameworks that could be helpful in tackling those problems. So what helped me in developing that foundation was the books such as cracking the PM interview, decode and conquer. I think they cover the basics pretty well. And then you could also consider some of the courses such as try, exponent or product alliance. And another thing which is very important for a product manager is to stay up to date with the latest trends. So some of the resources that helped me with that was A16Z. They're pretty good at what's happening latest in tech. And then Medium has a lot of great content. You can definitely subscribe to that. And the strategy is very good when it comes to strategic thinking. Product Hunt has Product Hunt, Vergecast. Again, they have also great content with the latest tech trends. And then Webinar's forward school has a great collection of webinars by experienced PMs. So all these resources were very helpful with building the foundation. After you have gone through all this, then comes the next step of doing the practice. So for practice, it's both practice by yourself and practicing with others. Practicing by yourself, you could look at products around you and think of how you can take this product to the next level. So that could be one example or you could act as an interviewer and interview yourself and then see how you care, how you're doing. So that's all about self practice. And then practicing with others, there is a Slack channel by Luis Lin. A lot of product managers share their availability and offer to do mocks with each other. So that was a great resource for finding peers to do mocks. And then TriExponent also has a platform for finding the peers for mock interviews. Of course, you can also reach out to experienced PMs either through LinkedIn or in your organization to do mocks with them. So again, if I were to look at the allocation of your time across these three buckets that I mentioned, I would say 20 to 30% would be in strong foundation, but 50% of the time, at least perhaps provided 50% was spent in practicing. So practice really plays a huge role. But just doing mocks will not help until you, unless you actually review the feedback and figure out moment areas for yourself and revise your frameworks if needed. So I think this is the full loop that you need to go through and you continue doing that until you reach a point where at least 80% of your mocks you are getting fairly good feedback. So that is a pretty good signal that you are ready to go for the actual interviews. Alright, so finally, I also want to share some practical tips for interviews based on my experience. First is to never jump to answer the question. Very important to take time to organize your thoughts, structure your thoughts and then answer the question. I cannot tell you how many times I made this blender and every time I did that it backfired. So important to structure, be very organized and structured when you are answering the questions. And then second tip is very important to tie back your solutions to the goal that you had proposed to begin with. And also state the goal very clearly. And third, be very crisp and concise. There's a thumb rule of three. So see if you can follow that, like follow the, you know, everything you are saying like bullets, points, keep it in bullet points of three that helps you stay organized and be crisp. And another thing is when, especially in the product sense questions, see if you can take the experience to plus and plus plus level. What do I mean by that is not just thinking incrementally, but thinking about big picture moonshot ideas that can really transform the experience for a particular problem that you're tackling. And another thing is very important to state your assumptions and explain the rationale for those assumptions, especially when you're doing estimation questions. And the last thing is when you are doing prioritization, very important to state your criteria clearly and evaluate each option before you pick one. So yeah, those are all my tips. And I've also listed some resources that were helpful during my preparation journey. Feel free to check them out. If you have any questions, post them. Happy to help. Anyway, I can I know it is not an easy journey, but believe me, if you are committed to making it happen, you will do it. So wishing you all all the best. And I hope you found the session useful. Thank you so much.