 So today we're going to learn about how to jump into product roles at top tech companies. So let's just dive right in. All right. So briefly, so I am Sri and I am a product manager currently at Google. And I enjoy contributing to your product management careers. And you can find more information about me at my website, which is SriGari.com. As you can see below here. So what are we going to cover today? Some of the topics are going to be, first, we're going to establish your goal, right? Because you're trying to jump into a product role. What is your goal? And how do you shortlist the top 10 companies where you're going to jump into product? Second is once you have that goal, how do you reach that goal? Meaning, how do you craft your LinkedIn resume? And then once you've done that, what is a good preparation plan for acing your interview? And at the end, I'll also have some links for email templates to reach out to recruiters, hiring managers, a sheet that I use to shortlist companies, and then some interview resources. Okay. So with that, let's jump right into the first agenda topic, which is going to be how to shortlist your companies. But before we get into that, we want to make sure you have a clear career goal. What do we mean by that? Is you have to have a clear product role at one of the 10 companies within X months. And this X months could be six months a year, but make sure it is time bound, right? And when we say product role at top 10 companies, you would want to have it narrowed down by industry, location, experience, and title, right? And that is what our shortlisting framework is going to follow here to see how you can shortlist those 10 companies. Now, as you're already embarking on a journey to land a new product role, it's always good to step back and think long term. So what is your career aspirations? And how do you think about it is by looking at these three things here, which is skills, interest, and value. And you want to find what is your career aspiration that falls to the intersection of the three things. For example, if you take interest, let's say you're interested in music and you are very analytical, right? That's your skills. Then your value is going to be something like a data PM for a music product, right? So as an example, your career aspiration could be a PM at Spotify, which is a music company, right? That is an example you could use so that you'll know where you want to be in X number of months or years, right? So once you have that so that you've established your clear career goal, now you have your current role. And so here you need to make a transition or a jump from your current role to your ultimate career role. And sometimes the path is not as straightforward. And that is why I'd like to introduce to you something I call minimum variable transition. So your goal, thinking like great product manager is also reducing your risks to land your career goal. And here, if you see, if you have a lot of variables, like for example, let's say you have to change your company to land your career goal, or you have to be at a different location or a different industry, the more number of variables you're going to add, the more difficult it's going to become to land your career goal, right? And that is why you would want to change the minimum number of variables needed to get into that career role, right? So you already have, let's say you're not already a PM, you already need to change your role to become a PM. So there's already one variable. And then you want to minimize the other variables. And I'll show you an example in action, right? So here is a minimum variable transition example. Let's say we take Sammy here, who is currently a software engineer at a B2B API based energy company, right? And Sammy's ultimate career goal is to be a PM at a top UI based consumer energy company, right? Now, as you can see here, Sammy would need to change multiple variables to reach that career goal. That is, Sammy would have to change from an API backend based software engineer to a PM on a front end. And so there's two things, role needs to change. And also, the company is have to be changed, right? So one way to do this is in two steps, right? One is, as you can see here, it's a transitionary role. That is, Sammy only changed company and keep all of the other variables the same. That is, Sammy is going to land a software engineer role at a UI based B2C energy company and then take another hop to become a PM at that same company. In general, it's always easier to transition into a PM role at your current company and then look for PM roles in other companies, right? This is just one of the examples. So moving on, there's other examples you can look at in this table to see what is a possible PM trajectory you can take, right? As an example, let's say you're already a PM, change one variable at a time so that you can land your next PM role unless you already have great connections and people who can vouch for you, then you can always go change multiple variables at one time and that applies to all roles. But let's say you're currently a data analyst, then look for cloud analytics companies or a data PM, you're currently a UX person, then look for consumer companies or somewhere where there's UI application products. Or if you are a sales person, look at sales tooling companies or enterprise products where you have to be in front of the customer or you're a software engineer, then you can transition into an API-based product or an infrastructure PM, right? Again, these are all examples. You don't need to follow this by the book. This is just so that you get an idea that sometimes you don't need to leap from zero to n, you can take multiple steps to reach there. Now that you have a clear career aspiration, your goal and you know what are the transitions or variables you want to take, here is a short listing criteria you can follow so that you can make a short listing sheet of different companies and rule out which companies do not apply for you, right? So again, the example here is Sammy who is looking for a PM role at a UI-based business to consumer energy company, right? Now if you see here in this table, you have the various columns, company as one, then you have type of PM role, number of jobs. Why is number of jobs important is because the larger number of jobs there are, that means there is already an existing community of PMs in that company. So if you're new to the PM role, then it will always be good if that company has a lot of mentors so that can coach you and get you into properly trained as a PM, right? If you're making that leap. And the company type, if it's backend, analytics, more UI focused, then your match level, what is one to five? Five being a high match, one being a low match, that is based on where you want to go, your skill set, does that company match or the role match, connections. This is how many people you know in that company. And the connection strength, which is an average strength of connection that is a number of people that can vouch for you at that company. So as an example here, again, these are all fictitious companies and examples here. If you see here for Sammy who wants to be a PM at a UI-based B2C energy company, this low energy, Sammy can strike that off right out of the bat because there's only two jobs there and it's backend heavy. Again, Sammy is going to be doing backend and Sammy wants to go more UI front end. And then it's not a great match, doesn't have many connections and even that one connection is not strong. So Sammy can rule that out. And this is how you list several companies and then select the top 10 companies where you want to be at. With that, now following this, you should have 10 companies or roles shortlisted with a clear carrier goal of these 10 companies and these product roles within X months, right? Now that you have said that, let's jump in a second part of the agenda, which is how to create a killer profile so that you can reach out to those folks in those companies. So when we talk profiles, let's talk about LinkedIn first. So here are some basic tips, right? First, make sure your profile is complete. Second is on headline and title, make sure your current title or even in the summary about you have the words product manager owner because that's how recruiters search. Third is skills. I have skills pertaining to product manager and in the slides coming up next, I'll list some of the skills or keywords you can use. Four is activity. LinkedIn at the end of the day is a social platform. That means the more active you are, the higher you would be ranked on LinkedIn. So publish posts, like, comment, especially related to product management, right? And then five patterns. LinkedIn gives you like a summary and some analytics of how people are finding you. So is it through some other colleague or is it through searching? Then you can go and further improve those particular areas by studying that. And then here are some advanced LinkedIn tips, right? Now that you have a clear career goal and a short list of 10 companies, you can use that to your advantage. So look for PMs in those shortlisted companies. Then look at what are the keywords that those PMs are using and try to match some of those which apply to you. Research what universities, companies, are they actually hiring from? Does it kind of align with where you are? Right? Fourth is also match the skills, groups, influencers that those PMs follow in those target companies, these interests. Make sure there's some synergies there. Fifth is connect with those PMs and seek advice. Instead of directly emailing them about this job position, you can ask them about, I want to learn generally about PM craft or I want to learn about the culture of the company and you can always get at least a few people replying back. So that's how you will also build your network. Right? Again, all of these tips ultimately should improve one or two metrics. One of the most important metric that you would see improving in LinkedIn is the number of the emails you're going to be getting. Right? So as a good PM, you're going to test and learn. You're going to test and change all of these and see if those emails is going up or down. And that is how you keep changing and testing. Now getting to the second part, which is resumes. Right? LinkedIn is more inbound. That is once you set up, you should have recruiters reaching out to you. But then once you need to reach out, you need to have a good resume at hand. And here are two examples of a bad resume and good resume. So why is the first one here a bad resume? So this one is bad because of two reasons. One thing if you see here, our fictitious candidate here, John Doe. So they have everything here is a responsibility. They're not accomplishments. But there are also some accomplishments like save costs for customers. But there's no numbers on metrics for people to gauge what is the actual impact. So if the same John Doe has to be converted into a great resume or a good resume, here is what you could see how that looks like. So instead of saying shipped software to users, which is a responsibility that any product manager is supposed to do, here we call out that launched flagship product to 10 million users collaborating with all of these stakeholders. Right? That's more concrete. Hiring managers and recruiters can now get a sense of the scale at which you've operated. Right? And also, if you see every line here has an impact statement and what that candidate has to leave them. So make sure your resume reflects this at a high level. Right? So with that, there's some tips on resumes you'd like to make sure you have a great resume. Right? Make sure it's only one page, even if you have 10 years, 20 years of experience still prioritized which ones you want to highlight for that specific job and condense it to one page. And this also shows off your prioritization skills, which is important for a PM. And second is have a clear place where you have your contact info. No summaries are needed. Your resume itself should be a summary. Achievements always, accomplishments, no responsibilities, task and impact. Each bullet should be a task and an impact as much as possible, as you've seen in the example before. And some people I see have a skills galore where they have skills all the way from word to databases. So don't have so many skills, just have skills that pertain to that specific job. And then also have keywords that are pertinent to a product manager role. And this is important because all resumes go to an applicant tracking system and they always weed out which keywords are not there. And also have some extra curricular activities that apply to that particular role. As an example, let's say you want to get into Spotify and if you're a musician, always list that out because that sets you apart from other candidates. So what are some of the advanced tips here is because you have these 10 companies and more might show up. So you cannot always craft like a separate resume for each of those jobs. So that is why create a master resume covering all your achievements. And then from that master resume, you can create trimmed versions for specific jobs. And this master resume doesn't need to be limited to one page. It could be three-pager, four-pager, how many ever it is. But then what you're doing is you're cutting it down to one page every time you're applying to a specific job. And then here are some of the keywords I was talking about earlier, which you can use within your resume. And also have some of those in your LinkedIn because these are typical keywords that are needed in a product manager resume or LinkedIn. Now that you have your resume and LinkedIn, the next step is going to be reaching out. The best is inbound. So you receive emails, so LinkedIn, but outbound works too. And when we see outbound, you can reach out to recruiters, hiring managers, and most importantly, referrals. Right? These are your best bet. These are people who can vouch for you and connect you to those hiring managers or recruiters. But I see a lot of people actually don't know where to start with having a template for reaching out to these different hiring managers or recruiters. So here is a template that I'm giving out to you and also provide links to this at the end of this session. So here, as you can see, you start with a clear link to the role you're applying and then mention something from the recipient's role, the recruit or hiring manager that is interesting, the recent article they posted, or if you have common group affiliations, and then connect something from your past experience. And then briefly mention your skills and experience. And your goal in this email is to get a meeting with that person. Right? And that's what you clearly state at the end of this template. So as an example, this is what's something I've used. And so I start out with product manager at X company and put in a link. And this recruiter happened to be a foodie and I'm a foodie, so I made that connection. And then this was a food related company that I was applying to. And so I ran a venture backed marketplace startup before. So I had added that in here and then briefly explained my years of experience in product management. And then ended with some time to chat with the recruiter. Right? Short and simple and very to the point. And I'm not going to be covering a referral email example here, but I'll provide a link to that at the end of this slide deck. So now you have your profile created so that you can reach out to your inbound, sorry, you can reach out to your outbound or you can get inbound from your LinkedIn profile. Right? So so far you've completed two things by now. You have short listed 10 companies and then you've crafted your profile so that you can go after these 10 companies and roles. With that, now it's time for preparing for the interviews. Right? And before we dive into interviews, we want to look at what are the different question types for interviews you would want to prepare for. Right? So you have design, analytical, strategy, technical and behavioral. And not all companies would ask for all of this, but this is something I've noticed across the board. So if you prepare for this, you're covering most of the surface area here. But again, you have to get it specifically to the companies you are applying for. So let's dive a little deeper into each of these question types. So let's say you go to design first. Right? And you have four question types starting with new product, meaning this is something like design X for Y here, design alarm clock for blind. So you're coming up with a totally new product, which wasn't existing before or improve a product question. Right? An example is how do you improve Google Docs? Third is product for specific technology, meaning the interviewer would give you an existing technology that already they already have. And then you're asked to design a product around it, like your designer teleportation product or product preferences. What is your most or least favorite product? So make sure you practice these questions so that you get more and more comfortable to ace your interview. Similarly, analytical, right? Four types, estimations. Not all companies these days are asking estimations. But as an example, it's usually a question where you need to come up with a number end of the day. Using Fermi level estimations or back of the napkin calculations. And then the second type is success metrics. Right? How do you measure success of a certain product for like Facebook, for example? And then the third is metric troubleshooting. Profit went down. What do you do? Some metric went up. What do you do? And then trade-offs. How would you launch feature A or feature B? And then you have strategy. So here again is four types. So the first one is market entry or exit. Let's say a question could be what is a new product line if you are a CEO of Amazon that you would introduce? Or what product would you kill? Second is mergers or acquisitions. Should Facebook acquire Uber? Third is pricing. How do you price something futuristic? Like space travel? Fourth is go to market. What would be a launch strategy for a recipe app, for example? So these are four different types of strategy questions you can practice. And then technical. And again, not all companies ask for technical questions. But if you go deeper, the technical questions are again four types. First one is system design. So this one is design YouTube system architecture, for example. Explain a technology kind of questions wherein you're explaining a complex technology to a five-year-old. And tech troubleshooting. So the same version where you're doing business metrics and troubleshooting that, that could be applied to tech as well. So you have an API and latency has increased. What do you do? Lastly, algorithms. This one is, as an example, design a sorting algorithm. And this usually varies in popularity. That is, system design is highly popular. Algorithms is the least popular, right? And then moving on, behavioral. So there are three types of behavioral questions. The first one is your story that is something that they're asking about yourself. Like tell me about yourself or some question about your resume. Situational. Watch your biggest failure or team conflict kind of questions. And then why are you entering into a product management world? What do you dislike about it? What is your three-year plan and so on and so forth, right? You could put this into these three broad buckets. So now that you have a high-level view of the type of questions, we also need to get into how interviewers assess for each of these different type of questions, right? For analytical, they would see how well the candidate is clarifying, right? And as you can see, clarification is, must have for all of the questions, right? But then specifically for analytical, are you coming up with more than one method? Are you breaking it down into a clear problem statement and further components? And then are you verifying your answer at the end, right? And then for design, are you coming up with a high-level goal? Are you segmenting your users well for the design question? And are you prioritizing them right as per the goal? Are you deeply empathizing with that user segment and clearly calling out the pain points? And are you coming up with a creative solution or multiple solutions at the end, right? And also providing trade-offs for those solutions. Strategy, are you coming up with a clear structure? Are you following a series of logical steps and then making a conclusive recommendation? So strategy is more about structure and how well you are versed with what is happening in the current world and what you can use to validate your answer, right? So there's not really a right or wrong unless you are defying laws of physics here. But typically, you should make sure that your answer is not self-contradictory to your logical steps, right? And then lastly, you have technical. And there, the interviewer is looking at, are you scoping the problem well? Are you communicating in a technical language? Are you identifying all the loop holes? And are you making the right trade-offs for that technical design? And lastly, for behavioral, right? Are you able to do a great job once you land in the new environment of that company or culture? Then they're trying to verify your experience, right? Whatever you say in your resume, what is a true impact? What have you actually done? And then they're also verifying your communication skills. So at the end of the day, the interviewer is just looking for two things. Can you do the job? Will you do the job? So behavior is mostly on the will you do the job at the scale that the company is expecting, right? Now that you have the type of questions you know how they're going to assess, then it is time to prepare an interview plan assuming you have two months time, right? So here you have a series of steps and then a detailed meaning for each of those steps. So again, the first step is to look at your 10 companies you've shortlisted and see what is the interview process like, right? Second is now that you have these five questions, evaluate yourself on those questions and see what is your weakest area and what is your strongest area? And then also study the target company really well, like who their customers, what are they saying, what is their business model, so on and so forth, right? And form an opinion on the products of the company. And then next one or two weeks, practice daily, starting from your weakest area, right? That is let's say design your weakest area the first week, only practice design. And then the next week compound it, meaning add design plus your next week area, let's say analytics. So combine both of them into the second week and then do one month of mocks, covering at least around 20 mocks. And you should see after 10 mocks, it becomes second nature for you to answer these mock interviews. And right before the interview, stop all your mocks, still follow business trends and news, what is happening in the world, you can use that on your day of interview and just relax, right? So this is a high level interview prep plan you can follow. And also get some interview mocks in those different areas that I called up. So by now, you should also have the prep plan created for these interviews, following these steps that I've outlined, all right? With that, we come to an end of this session. So again, to summarize, establish a clear goal of a product role at 10 companies within X companies, then craft your profile, your resume, LinkedIn, and reach out to these recruiters, managers, and your referrals, and then create a preparation plan for these interviews at these companies. And remember always leaping directly into the end role might not be the right way of doing it. You could take multiple steps using the minimum variable transition to reach your ultimate goal. And then here are a few links for the emails that I've shown. I have a short listing sheet, which you can use to shortlist your 10 companies, and a few interview resources for mock interviews, some books I have also linked here in this interview resources. And feel free to reach out to me at my website, which is Shrigari.com, or at my LinkedIn, if you have any other carry help you need, or if you need a step-by-step framework to answer each of those interview questions that I've laid out about. With that, thank you so much for being here and listening through all of this session. I hope you derived value from this. Thank you all, and bye for now.