An ultimate guide to prepare for your dream product management role

With 1+ years of preparation to get into a Product Management role at campus and few months in Flipkart’s Product Management, I wanted to publish a guide on my learnings and resources that helped me land at my dream profile of ProdMan. 

This guide is primarily for people who want to get into a Product Management role directly from campus. But can also help other such aspirants trying to switch to Product Management from their current domain.

We can divide the preparation into 3 parts:

1. CV preparation
2. Domain preparation
3. Hard Core Product Management preparation

This would help you prioritize and schedule* your preparation considering the stage you are in your career and the time left for your interviews.

Enroll in this free course to ace Product Management interviews.

Part 1: CV Preparation

This is the first touchpoint between you and the interviewer.

The CV should help the interviewer understand if you have the skills or experience for a Product Management profile acquired either in previous work experience or in any current/recent internships or if you are putting the effort to acquire those via certificates or side-projects.

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Major CV headers to focus on is Work-experience, Side-Projects, Internships – both mandatory & non-mandatory/Live-Projects, Business Competitions, Certificates/courses.

• Work-ex/Internships: Go back to the drawing board, brainstorm to think about the elements in your work that had Product Management related learnings. Or elements where you acquired skills that would help you in a PM role, for example, risk management, leadership skills, analytical skills to assess the profitability of a project or product, etc. 
  
  
• Live projects: Try to find Product Management internships apart from your regular mandatory internship. This is the closest opportunity for you to experience PM and let the interviewers know.
  
  
• Product management side projects: This could be anything that you’re doing alongside your acads/job and has a PM angle (Product thinking, prioritization, ideation, etc) to it.
  

Refer: https://productschool.com/blog/product-management-2/product-management-side-hustle/

Live projects & side projects will set you apart from other candidates. 

• Business Competitions: I look at these competitions as the shorter version of internships. Try taking up cases that are in the periphery of Product Management. 
  
  
• Certificates: The value of certificates has come down, but having a Product Management-related certification on CV helps in shortlists at times.
  
  
• Courses: If you have done a project in any academic course which is related to Product Management, that can also add to your CV.

Part 2: Domain Preparation

• Product Management Books: 

1. The Product Manager Interview by Lewis C. Lin 
2. Cracking the PM Interview b McDowell Gayle Laakmann 
3. DECODE and CONQUER by Lin Lewis C 

Tip: Take up any 2 books and read it twice so as to internalise. Reading these books will help you understand PM role which would help you structure your CV points accordingly (Refer: https://www.productplan.com/glossary/).

• Institute Specific: Some institutes specifically ISB, IIM Bangalore, and to an extent IIM Lucknow are creating good resources around Product Management. 
  
  
• Websites to refer to:

1. https://www.productplan.com/
2. https://www.producthunt.com/
3. https://prodmonk.com/
4. https://medium.com/
   

Part 3: Hard Core Project Management Preparation

• PM Cases: Primarily there are 4 types of PM cases - Product Design, Product/Feature Improvement, Metrics, RCA (Root Cause Analysis), Business Case
  
  
• Online Resources:
  

1. https://www.productmanagementexercises.com/
2. https://www.tryexponent.com/
3. https://medium.com/stellarpeers
   

• Consulting Cases: 

Consulting cases helps structure thoughts and improve PS required during the case-solving round of interviews.
Primarily focus on Profitability, Market Entry, and to an extent on Market Sizing cases.

Refer: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/consulting-and-strategy-club-iim-lucknow_iim-lucknow-casebook-2021-activity-6760804140181528576-IjsG

• App Analysis: Categorize all apps into different industries, pick an app from the industry and analyze on:

1. 3 best features
2. 3 features to improve problems in existing features
3. 3 add-on features to improve CX

• Guestimates: Some of the resources are:
  

1. Basics covered in width in IIM Ahmedabad Casebook
   
2. Then, in-depth in FMS Casebook

• Institute Specific Resources: There would be some company-specific resources, take this up when you’re close to interviews to tailor your preparation towards the specific company you’re applying to.

Lastly,

• Make your own cases by making your own Project Management prep group. Practice as much as possible before the D-Day by making your close group with one of you being the moderator. Occasionally, create your own Project Management cases.

*Callouts for campus aspirants: Make sure to run ‘CV Prep’ and ‘Domain prep’ in parallel by making sure you’re done with your Project Management version CV - Prep before the CV freeze deadline.

This article is submitted by Akash Prusty, who is currently working as a Product Manager at Flipkart and is a graduate of IIM Lucknow (2021).

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