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Intro to Product Management

Product Space @ UCSD hopes you're staying safe 😷❤️

💜 About

Product Space at UC San Diego is dedicated to establishing a Product Community for undergraduate students looking to enter the world of Product Management. To help us realize this goal, this resource includes a curated list of product management advice sourced from our Product Leaders.

You can expect to find relevant frameworks, interviews, experts, resources, books, products, career preps, and much more below.

PS @ UCSD's Product Management Resource is an amazing source of content specifically for undergraduate students looking to break into Product Management. (Not to say that if you are not an undergraduate student this resource won't be helpful, it's simply geared towards undergraduates). This is by no means an exhaustive list of all possible Product Management resources; however, it does include information or links pointing you to places where you can find out more! If you would like to contribute to this resource, please visit the Contributors section.

Be sure to check out our office hours! Office Hours & Advising

📚 Table of Contents

📑 Section 1: The Basics

😅 What Is Product Management (PM)?

Product Management guides every step of a product’s lifecycle: from development, to positioning and pricing, by focusing on the product and its customers first and foremost. To build the best possible product, product managers advocate for customers within the organization and make sure the voice of the market is heard and heeded. The following articles dive more in depth as to what you can expect the role of a Product Manager to be in industry.

As an undergraduate Product Manager, you will likely be an intern with a subset of these responsibilities. Oftentimes at this level and at Associate levels, you will be responsible for a specific feature or set of features that belong to a product. The product and its strategic iterations will be coming from a Senior or Director-level Product Manager. Check out the following links to learn more about the basics of being a Product Manager.

🔱 What Product Resources does UC San Diego Have?

Other than Product Space, as an aspiring PM at UCSD, what resources do you have? The answer: not many. None of the following resources have a focus on Product Management, but they do cover individual aspects of the discipline (Design, Planning, Marketing, etc.). Utilizing a majority of these resources can help you translate your degree into a career in Product Management!

  • 🏫 Courses
    • CSE 110 Software Engineering - Agile Processes, Sprint planning, User Stories, Retrospectives and Velocity
    • CSE 112 Advanced Software Engineering - Testing, Software Design
    • CSE 100 Advanced Data Structures - Provides solid technical background for more tech-focused PM roles
    • MGT 18 Managing Diverse Teams - Provides insight as to what a great looks like
    • MGT 103 Product Marketing and Management
    • MGT 164 Business and Organizational Leadership
    • MGT 172 Project Management - Provides technical terminology for Project Management, some agile experience
    • MGT 187 New Venture Finance - Pitching and justifying your design choices
    • ENG 100D Design for Development - Consulting for non-profits, design process
    • COGS 120 Interaction Design
    • COGS 127 Designing Human-Data Interactions
  • 🏢 UCSD Extension
  • 👥 Organizations

⛰️ Product Management as a Career

Sharyl Sandberg advocates that you think of your career as a jungle gym, not a ladder.

This is true especially for Product Management. With all of the competition and school politics involved with Product Management, you may elect to specialize in something like philosophy or design before transitioning into a PM role. What we at Product Space want to make especially clear is that although this resource is designed for aspiring undergraduate Product Managers, this is actually one of the least common times for one's career to lead to Product Management. A majority of PM's in industry transition into the role as a function of their product expertise in whatever their previous capacity was. If you are interested in Product Management but do not know whether now is the time to pursue this path, do not feel pressured to do so!

In a recent AMA hosted by the Product Team at Jumpstart, every single person on the team shared their story as to how they became Product Managers and not a single one entered PM within five years of graduating, or even had computer science degrees. We currently function in a collegiate bubble, however Product Management is not the same once we graduate. Explore other possibilities and do not feel confined to follow a certain path because it leads to Product Management sooner rather than later. Be YOU.

And for those whose interest never waivered, let us begin!!

💡 Section 2: Internship Preparation

Before the first application, you need to know your stuff. Product Management Interviews include questions that test you in multiple ways. The interview will test your intuition and "product sense" along the lines of what was covered in the first section, but now it's time to become competitive.

A typical job post may read: "Product Managers are hired as product “generalists” who fit any of our evolving product lines. In the later stages of the hiring process, we identify a team that matches your interests and background." ... But how do you prepare for being a Generalist??

We are here to help. The four main interview areas are Product Design, Product Strategy, Analysis aka Fermi Problems, and Technical Ability. These main areas vary from company to company, but these areas are taken from Google's APM Interview Process. Preparing for this interview will likely cover all other possible interviews. If you are curious about the main sections of other PM Interviews, here are a couple:

Before we take you through each area, we have to first get the interview, and to get the interview we have to build a solid resume.

📃 Resume

  • 📜 Cover Letter
    • Unless you're applying to Bain or McKinsey, chances are you do not need a cover letter. A few companies may ask you to write a few short sentences about their product, but a cover letter is often not reccommended.
    • If by chance you are required to write a cover letter, check out the following resources:
    • Cover Letter Examples by ResumeGenius
    • Cover Letter Examples by LiveCareer
  • 📃 One Page of Awesome (General Resume Tips)
    • Keep your resume to one page, but make sure to fill the page
    • Always have 3-5 bullets per position -> formula: Verb ___ because/to ___ insight. Make sure to use metrics (numbers) where applicable
    • Include relevant PM technologies: Jira, Tableau, SQL, Agile, Scrum, SDLC, etc.
    • Emphasize Product Management and Leadership, be sure to show these traits rather than tell them i.e. use the formula above with insights that justify a trait rather than using the word itself
  • 💼 LinkedIn - The Online Resume
    • Make sure to upload a profile photo and cover photo
    • Make use of the "Featured" section to showcase your best work, posts, or website
    • Use your profile to tell a narrative. Why have your experiences shaped you to become a PM? If they haven't... craft a compelling narrative that showcases your potential!
    • Keep your industry in mind: Silicon Valley? Let your personality shine through. Wall Street? Maybe wear a suit.
    • Highlight Leadership, Initiative, and Public Speaking
    • Do not repeat your resume in your experience descriptions. You have more room -- use it!
    • Do not be afraid to borrow from other profiles -- check out our example LinkedIn Profiles
  • 💻 Personal Website (optional)
    • Creating a personal website is a great way to showcase your work and build your personal brand
    • Consider making a website if you feel your resume and LinkedIn do not tell the whole story
  • Example resume and template

📏 Product Design

Begin by thinking about user experiences from the customer’s perspective. Recognize the importance of even the smallest product details in producing great results. You should be as comfortable with sketching a wireframe for a designer as you are with explaining your reasoning from a business standpoint. Example interview questions:

  • How would you improve Google Calendar?
  • If you were to build the next great feature for Yelp, what would it be?
  • How would you monetize a certain product more effectively?

This is the most difficult part of interview. Why? Because it is completely open-ended, requires a deep knowledge of the product, and a justification of your proposed idea. This is answered directly to someone who has most likely spent a good portion of their life pouring effort into said product. The last thing you want to do is be caught off-guard when asked to choose a product to improve given x conditions. Thankfully, you have time to prepare.

Often, the best solutions come out of your frustrations. Try to think about what you would love the product to do in an ideal world. There are many different approaches to this portion of the interview, for more informtation be sure to check out The Design of Everyday Things and The Product Manager Interview.

📈 Product Strategy

Get very familiar with the company's competitive landscape and vision for the future, the mobile market, the ad market, and internet and technology in general. Be able to discuss long term product roadmaps and strategies to increase market share. Example interview questions:

  • If you were Uber’s CEO, would you be concerned about Postmates?
  • How should Microsoft Teams position its feature releases to stay competitive with Slack?

To study for this portion of the interview, check out Swipe to Unlock and the following case studies:

:trollface: Analysis aka Fermi Problems

Product Managers are fluent with numbers, and are able to validate and effectively present data and articulate their analyses. They are comfortable using metrics and data to make decisions. This role may require decision-making from A/B test results, writing SQL queries, or running scripts to extract data from logs. Example interview questions:

  • How many scooters does Lime need in San Francisco?
  • How many Androids sell in the US each year?
  • How do you know if the product is successful?

These questions are covered extensively in Decode and Conquer and Cracking the PM Interview

💻 Technical Ability

** May not be required ** This portion of the interview is usually reserved for PM positions in highly technical disciplines. Make sure to clarify with the job posting to see whether or not technical skills are required.

In order to prepare, you should review basic algorithms and computer science fundamentals, a large part of your credibility with engineers will be rooted in your technical competence. Example interview questions:

  • Write an algorithm that detects and alerts meeting conflicts.
  • How is a set different from an array?

Most technical questions will be LeetCode easy or medium. This is not the focus of the interview. Do not get caught up on the technical aspect, as some Product Management Interviews will disregard this portion of the interview entirely. To brush up, visit the following resources:

:bowtie: Interview Tips and Tricks from our Board Members

  • Practice explaining complicated product workflows or CS topics to improve your speaking skills
  • MOCK INTERVIEW!! Try to interview with multiple people before the real deal -- take it seriously.
  • Always research your interviewer/team on LinkedIn and learn the ins and outs of the market for that product
  • Know the difference between B2B (Business to Business) products and B2C (Business to Consumer) products and how they affect strategy
  • Come up with features you would like to develop for the team you'd be on if you were hired
  • Clarify the position. Product Management varies widely -- make sure you are interested in the position's responsibilities
  • Always have well-thought questions ready to go (Think interviewer background, product knowlegde, interesting connections)
  • Identify your market and clarify your problem, never begin developing before you know the scope
  • Find previous interns on the team and reach out to them for interview prep -- people want to help!!

📱 Using Social Media

Social media is not required, however to stay competitive with other aspiring undergraduate Product Managers, it is wise to keep up to date with the community. Social media can also be leveraged to establish your brand and to build your network.

💼 LinkedIn: Check out what other Students have done to break into PM

🐦 Twitter: Find and follow Product-Focused Content and Leaders

🔵 Facebook: Groups are a great way to stay updated

📚 Books

📝 Articles

✒️ Newsletters

🔉 Podcasts

📚 More Resources

Lastly, we will leave you with the resource that inspired the creation of a student-focused resource. It is geared towards those already in industry with a few years of experience, but if you feel like you're ready -- or just want an extra edge -- check it out!

📧 Section 3: The Recruitment Process

Now that you have a thorough knowledge of what being a Product Manager is all about, it's time to apply to positions.

Not all Product Management Internships require a CS degree!! PM Internships are all titled similarly, but they may have very different responsibilities from company to company. Make sure to read the job description and keep in mind the difference between Product, Program, and Project Management.

⏰ PM Internship Timeline

Do not wait. Product Manager Internships are often flooded with applicants within a few days. Google and Facebook limit their applicants, and LinkedIn did not even look at outside applications this past year. You can expect Internships to open beginning in July with the Financial companies like Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs. Followed closely by the major tech companies starting at the beginning of August and closing around the end of the year.

🔍 Finding Internships

First and foremost -- believe in yourself. With time and dedication, getting a PM internship is possible. With this being said, make sure to start early and start often. Here are some tips and tricks to find PM Internships.

  • Attend Career Fairs
    • Talk to everyone, not only is it good practice, but often times positions are reserved for only those who ask
    • A personal connection is much more powerful than an online impression
  • Utilize Job Websites
  • Make sure to search the following keywords, as SEO will return various results
    • "Product Manager Intern"
    • "Product Management Intern"
    • "Associate Product Manager Intern"
    • "Associate Product Management Intern"
    • "Program Manager Intern"
    • "Project Management Intern"
  • Take advantage of job alerts, set up weekly or daily emails with new jobs matching keywords
  • Use referrals, a list of PS Board Members offering referrals will be made available in June
  • Follow recruiters on LinkedIn (not "connect", "follow")

📌 APM vs PM

A few elite companies have instituted APM (Associate Product Manager) Programs. These programs are extremely competitive and often attract the best and brightest undergraduate students. They are typically small cohorts (6-10 students per year), emphasize Product Management and Leadership, and last 1.5-2 years. These programs often get to meet with C-suite executives and go on trips to various campuses to explore different perspectives on Product Management. Some of these programs are world-renowned, while others simply use the APM title to attract talented undergraduates -- make sure to do the research!

(PM) Product Management Internships are typically more plentiful and have the potential to be slightly less competitive -- but this depends a lot on the company. They depend much more on your assigned team as well as the structure of the company that is employing you. Do not look at these internships any differently. For example, a startup may not give you an APM title, but you may hold a higher level of responsibility and learn a lot more than in an APM Program.

The companies offering APM Programs will usually also offer regular Product Management Internships. APM Programs are normally seen as more prestigious, however they aren't srictly more beneficial in terms of product knowledge or responsibility. Different teams may not be able to obtain an APM spot, so they offer a PM internship instead. Regardless of title, any internship in Product Management is one to be proud of.

👥 Networking

Networking is a fantastic way to open doors and get reccommended to positions that are not open to the public. Check out some tips on how to network below:

📖 Internship and Job Postings

Our Team will be maintaining an open GSheet with links to selected internships for the upcoming application cycle.

  • Link will be available in June

💰 Salary

The average Product Manager Intern salary can vary a lot due to company and/or location. The range can vary from around $45+/hr in the Bay Area/NY at top companies to around $20/hr in other locations. No matter what your initial offer is, make sure to negotitate!! Use the following resources to help you secure the bag.

🏢 Office Hours and Advising

Our Board Members are here to answer questions about the content found down below or Product Management in general. To schedule meetings with individual board members, click on our Calendly links below!

  • Kyle Gillaspy's Calendly
    • Product Interests: Financial Literacy (PFM), Career Development, Productivity, Tech, High-level Product Strategy
    • Experience: 2x FinTech PM at Oracle (GL, RevRec, FX), Business at Aerojet Rocketdyne (SOx, GL), Market Analyst at Startup
  • Alex Fong's Calendly

To meet with multiple members, view our availability via our Group Calendar and send us an email with two desired meeting times!

🌮 Miscellaneous

The Product Space Team isn't just about Product Management! This section includes random things that we find cool or interesting that may just give you an edge come interview time!

📝 Contributors

If you are interested in contributing to this resource, please contact [email protected]

To see what we're planning on adding to this resource next, check out our 💡 backlog