 Hey, folks. Good morning. Good evening. Welcome to this webinar session about the paths you can take to break into product management. I'm Ankit. So a quick intro of me. My name is Ankit Sherpaspa. I work as a product manager in DocuSign. So I've been in product field for almost about a decade. I was lucky enough to start off my journey at Microsoft. I first started off on product known as OneNote, which is an Evernote Compete and then worked in the AI world. So the AI cognitive services world and then moved on and boom ranked out of Microsoft, did my own startup in the AI space and then came back to Microsoft in the analytics space and then joined DocuSign about two years ago. I lead a team in AI space at DocuSign and yeah, I am super happy to be presenting today in product school. So just a quick overview of what are we going to be discussing. So I'm going to be talking a little bit about product management and giving you an overview of the role itself and then sort of digging into different strategies that you can take to get into product management and become a product manager yourself. I'm also going to be digging in a little bit into different strategies that you can take specific to the target level that you want to get into. So if you want to start at a very low level and if you're a new grad, what is the best targeted level for you and what are the strategies that you can take? I'm going to be digging a lot into that. Then secondly, I'm also going to be talking about how do you land that FANG interview. So those big companies, how do you get interviews for them, any tips and strategies? I'm going to be sharing all of those as well. So let's get started. Let's talk a little bit more about how do you become a product manager? Product roles now are very competitive. They're very fierce and here's a quick study that I found on the internet where it shows it breaks down all of these big tech giant companies and tells us that about 21% of the employees in these companies are developers, but only 2.7% of them are product managers. So you can see the low percentage of product managers across the board, which makes it a very desirable role. Often it is marketed as the mini CEO role, rightfully so. So just like a CEO, you guide product strategy, you guide product vision, and you work towards driving growth. So growth could mean revenue, it could mean users. And relatively, of course, it has multiple levels all the way from new grads who join in as associate product managers to product managers and then senior and lead product managers as well as directors of product management management. So of course, with years of experience, you move up to these levels and I'm going to be talking about a bunch of these levels and how do you transition from one role to any of these levels. So before we do so, I do want to break a few myths and talk a little bit more about what do product managers do. And when you google this, very often do you find this Venn diagram which says, hey, a product manager is an intersection of user experience, business, and technology. I don't think that's fully true being in this field for a lot of time. I think like, of course, knowing either of these three is a great thing or knowing these three areas is a great thing. But at the end of the day, I think what you're really, really responsible for is setting product vision, product roadmap, the strategy behind this product vision, success metrics, which sort of show you whether you've succeeded in where you were heading or not or whatever was your goal. And then, of course, if you're a manager managing different product managers, then there are other management tasks that you need to do as well. Your day-to-day as a product manager looks like the following. You do customer studies, you do competitive studies, you do vision setting, you're involved in driving your go-to-market strategies, and at the end of the day, you are responsible for driving growth. And again, as I said earlier, growth could mean a lot of things. It could mean growing users. It could mean growing revenues. But that is how your day-to-day is going to look like. You're going to be doing all of these things as well as talking to your customers, as well as setting the right priorities to make sure that the product is heading in the right direction. So if all of that excites you, let's talk about how do you get into product management? Is there a linear straight path to get into product management? Unfortunately, no. I don't think there's a straight path that you can take. You can go take courses at university and get right into this field. Not really. Can you get an MBA and would that qualify you to get into product management? I don't think so. I think, of course, if you have a background in user experience, in business or technology, yes, it does help for you to move to product. But you will have to carve your own path to get into this field. So agenda and question. What should you do? And how should you craft your own path? So let's break this down a little bit. Let's dig into this a little bit more. I sort of talked about these levels. I want to dig into strategies that you can take for each of these levels. So, of course, at the very bottom is like new grads who want to be associate product managers. Similarly, as a hiring manager, I have seen so many consultants, project managers, marketing managers, trying to make that shift to being a product manager or a senior product manager. I think all of these fields and all of these folks with large and different skill sets can definitely jump into the field of product management. Similarly, I've seen staff or principal contributors, so principal engineers who want to be product leaders. I've also seen managers who are like managing different engineering teams who want to shift over and now be responsible for driving product strategy. What do they need to do? What can they do is the question. And I think I tried my best to answer and club all of these strategies that you can take into a single slide and I think we're going to be spending most of our time there. So, let's jump right into it. For new grads, let's start with the bottom there. You're a new grad. You're coming right out of university. How do you become a product manager? I think for most of these new grads, the best way to become a product manager is take some courses, understand what a product manager does. You can do university courses as well as certifications, but at the end of the day, I think what would really, really help you is product management books. I can recommend quite a few all the way from cracking product management interviews to what it takes to grow a product to articles. I think there's a lot of content out there for new grads and I think all of that content is beautiful and you should be reading all of that. I think more importantly, you should be networking. You should be growing your network of how many product managers do you know? You should understand what they do as well as make sure that when these product managers have new open roles in their companies, they're referring you to these roles. I think as a new grad, you have a lot of homework to do and I would certainly encourage you to do so. I think if you need any help, please feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn. I can recommend different courses and different books that you can take and do for sure. The path for the next level becomes a little bit more difficult. Let's say you're a senior consultant at one of the big four consulting firms or you're a developer, you're a project manager or you are a marketing manager and now you want to shift to the field of product management. First, I think what you really need to show apart from your understanding of product management is your ability to execute. Can you actually define product strategies? Can you define what the competitors in this space do? You need to be an area expert as well as a person who can execute on strategies. I've interviewed a lot of consultants who come in and who've never really executed on features or are never really executed on products. They've only defined strategies which is a big strike for them. I think apart from understanding what product management is, you need to be an area expert. You need to be an expert in the field as well as an expert in executing any of these strategies that you define. The best way to do so, best way to show this in your resume is let's say you start a small business. It could be any business. I once had a person that I interviewed and we spent a lot of time talking about their renting machine business. It was very interesting. I think that was a great conversation starter for him. That was a great conversation starter which showed that this person had initiated and was interested in commerce. He initiated projects and he executed on them. Even if you start a small business and you learn from its failures, that is more important than not starting anything. I think that would be my top recommendation for you. Similarly, I would say staff and senior are probably on the same band. You need to thrive as an entrepreneur. You need to thrive that small-scale business and scale it up and show that you can scale businesses. I think that is what would fit in well with principal or staff band as well. A lot of times we see entrepreneurs who went from a company that was very small to mid-sized companies and then jump in as principal or staff, product managers. I think that really shows their capability to understand how businesses work, to hire people, to make sure that they understand how competition in that field works. I think that those are really brilliant plus points for them. Now, the last level which is director or M1 and above as we call them, so managerial roles and above, this is very tricky. Out of all of these bands, I think jumping in from director of engineering to director of product is a very, very hard process. I think, of course, you need to not only understand what product management does and have certification and courses around it, but I think and have referrals. But at the end of the day, what we are really looking for is your ability to gather a team, work as a team, make sure that the ICs under your individual contributors under you, you can rally them up to execute on something. So what we call this as impact, showing impact is not impact done by me or I, but impact done as we. And it's fascinating when we interview these people, we are actually looking for the number of times they speak we rather than I. So I think they have leadership interviews where, yes, of course, we want to know what you specifically did, but we also want to know how you gathered people to execute on a mission and what changes did you bring in into the larger picture of the company. So I think director of engineering is the hardest amongst all of them are shifting from director of engineering to director of product. But at the same point of time, I think the best path possible for them is to explore internal, you know, internal openings. I think we're going to be talking about this a little bit more, but switching from a director of engineering in Uber to a director of product in Uber would be an easier path for you rather than going and exploring other businesses, because you would automatically understand what is the business of Uber, you would automatically know people inside that can refer you. So I think that would be an easier switch for you for sure. Now, we talked a little bit about these strategies. I sort of want to change gears. Of course, if you have any questions at any point of time for any of those bands, please do feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn. I can answer any questions. Changing gears a little bit on how and what should you do to even land these interviews for product management. I think here's some very interesting tricks and tips that I found in the last few years of me interviewing. I think first and foremost, if you've not downloaded Blind, I would recommend it. I think people are very, very, very friendly in terms of finding you the right references, finding you people working in different companies so that you can get a reference. So I think one of the greatest apps that I found useful during the interviewing stage was Blind. Of course, if you have a great network, you would know people in different companies. So do have a strong network, do meet a lot of people, do meet a lot of product managers. I think we talked about the second point, which is internal transfers are great opportunities and obviously they're better than you looking outside. If you're higher up in the level band, I would highly encourage you to look for internal transfers first. And I think the third point here is once you start interviewing around, you will understand why this third part is so important. And I'd love to elaborate a little bit more. I think in this current job market as well as when it wasn't that competitive, it was always helpful, not just for me, but for people around me, I've noticed this, to know the hiring manager beforehand. I think you would have to battle just knowing who is hiring and having a conversation with them. Often, I would say in product management, if you throw your resume into a company portal, it's usually most likely a black hole. So I think what you really need to do is find the right people and help connect the dots between the right people in that company to the hiring manager who's hiring in that field. And I think that would be the best thing you can do. And that would be 50% of the battle right there. And once you do have that interview landed and once you have contacted your hiring manager and once you have that referral, I think what is super important for you to do is understand the business in and out. I think, so a quick example, like you should know, so let's say you're interviewing an Uber, you should know how many sides are there in this business. There's the side of drivers who actually drive these Ubers. There's a side of customers who are actually taking these rides. And then of course, like, hey, you are the application doing the interaction between these two. So I think knowing each side and each persona of this business is super important. Similarly, I think once you do have your first round landed and you have your first round locked in, what helps me personally is talking to product managers in that specific field. So again, I'm not publicizing for anyone, any website or anyone over here. But I think what has really helped me is like going to try Exponent and finding product managers in that company or product managers in that field that I can interview with. So if I was interviewing for Uber, I would go find a product manager in DoorDash or I would go find someone who is willing to do a one-on-one quick interview with me for 30 minutes. It could be paid, it could be unpaid. But I was willing to spend in those extra dollars to go do a quick mock interview session with a product manager in that specific field. I think that really, really helps. It sort of opens your mind into what are they exploring in that field. It opens your mind into different areas that you must have not thought of before you talk to this person. So how do you land the big fang interviews? And I'm going to be writing a bunch of articles about this as well. But I think what is, and I've compared only two over here, I think what is interesting to see is like Facebook, and just to give you some context, I actually did crack the Facebook interview earlier and I had an offer from Facebook and I did not take it. I actually used it to match Microsoft's offer, which was very interesting and that's another technique that I'll talk a little bit more about after matching later on in some other session. But I think what is very interesting is the larger the company, the more standardized their ways of interviewing are. You can see if you ever interview for Facebook, they have these three sessions and one or so they have five interviews, two interviews, our phone interviews, and then there's three more interviews which are on site, but essentially they're all about these three things. Product execution, product sense, leadership, and drive. Product execution measures the way you look into metrics and the way you look at success of a product. Product sense is a behavioral product, what we call this product, sorry, not behavioral, but product sense interview where you're figuring out products and you're sort of understanding customer requirements and then sort of coming up with some solutions. Leadership and drive is more on the behavioral end, so it sort of tries to understand what kind of leader you are and there are definitely behavioral questions overall. So these are very standard sort of product interview settings or interviews and you would see the same overlaps in Google with one or two more editions. So I think preparing for them means finding certain frameworks for answering questions for each of these areas. So product sense has certain frameworks, you want to make sure that all of these, you know all of these frameworks, you've practiced all of these frameworks and you become so good that you actually don't even remember what the framework was, but you just follow these steps and then each of these steps have nuances which make you good to a great product manager and I'm going to be writing a post about this as well. I think what is super important is to keep practicing enough times to go from a good to a great product manager and that great product manager would be able to dig in deeper into each of these areas. So yeah, I think one key point over here is to get your first call, you need a referral. You need to know someone in Google, you need to know someone in Microsoft, you need to know someone at Netflix because these company portals are basically just black holes. So if you have your resume and you send in your resume, you will not get a call, most likely. I think what you really need is someone for you to file that with a reference and don't be shy in asking people for filing for references. I think a good amount of new grads don't really know that if our references succeed, as I referred you and you do get a job, I actually get a certain amount of money. So I think do not be shy at all for asking for references. I think it's a great way to get your foot in the door. So just a few more tips and we can sort of stop here. Yeah, I think what is very interesting and I think when you start practicing for these interviews, you'll notice that let's say product sense has a standard framework, but going from a standard framework to a very deep dive in deep dive in framework would require you a month. And I think that's that's all about practicing every day. And I think, you know, use books, use people, do mock interviews, and you'll get better at it. It's not rocket science. And then I think a few more tips around interviewing itself. So generally, now, most of these interviews are virtual. So even if it's an onsite, you can ask your recruiter to space out these interviews. So have two interviews in one day and three on the other. And I think that really helps mentally, at least for me, what I've seen is I need those 15 minutes breaks between two interviews to reset myself. And if I have two interviews, I think that's great. I can channel all of my energy into those two interviews. I think after the fourth or the fifth interview, definitely I am almost ready to give up. So I think space, you know, like spacing it out over certain days or spacing it out over over days, definitely helps. And then I think I made this point earlier. I think large companies have standard set of questions. So if Microsoft has certain sets of questions, of course, you know, interviewer can bring in their own question. But most generally, you will find, you know, questions similar to those standard questions online. So what you really need to do is have unique answers, have creative answers, and don't be shy in being creative. I think what most of these large companies are looking for is how unique can you be in your thought process? And no answer is wrong. Every, you know, in most of these cases where you're looking into product sense questions as you go on into your interview, the more creative you are, the better you will be. So trust me, just, you know, think outside the box. And I think the last one, the last point that I sort of added over here, and this is with me interviewing people, this is with me interviewing, you know, more and more people, what I've absorbed now is competition is fierce. And I think you will need to actually ace all of the five or six rounds or six interviews that you have. Earlier when, you know, the market wasn't this tough, you could sort of go through the loop and ace five out of the six, and you could probably still get an offer. But unfortunately, I think the market has turned quite a lot and you will need to ace all of them. So there will be a little bit of preparation required for you to ace all of these rounds for sure. So yeah, I think we're almost at a 30 minute mark. So I do want to talk about offer negotiation, but that's the next session that we're going to have. I will walk through strategies of, hey, how do you make sure that you have landed more than one offer and how do you make sure that, you know, once you do have that, what sort of strategies do you use to make sure you're coming in with an higher base or an higher, you know, equity offering? So yeah, I think that's topic for next time. Until then, if you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn. Add me, follow me, just throw in questions. I would love to answer them for you, keep a look out for those articles where I deep dive into, you know, product sense and product execution and how you should be varying your answers according to the levels that you're targeting. So yeah, let me know if you have any questions and thank you so much for attending this session. Appreciate it and hope you have a great day.