My Journey Into Big Tech Product Management Wasn’t Easy
Here is a story for anyone who’s interested in a few pointers for their own product manager job-hunting adventure.
By sharing my story, I’d like to give a detailed narrative will help you realize that all factors play into the process: patience, carefully thought-out projects, and networking — they all matter.
And just to be clear, luck and timing also play small yet critical roles in the process of jumping into the hell-fire role that is product management. I’m not an exception; there are varying degrees of luck that played into my own story, but they weren’t “make or break” influences. Don’t worry — most of the time, they shouldn’t be “make or break” factors for you either.
Looking back, it’s easy to conclude that the “heavy lifting” part of my journey was far more salient, and thus more rewarding. The boring steps of working step-by-step; making small wins; riding the tough learning curve; they all played much larger roles.
I’m going to derive all I can from my own experience to give back to the community of aspiring PMs so that anyone who reads this can gain something out of it for their own tale. This doesn’t matter if you’re still a student or 10 years into your current working life.
Here is a high-level breakdown of my journey, from 1st year undergrad until now, which is a few months into my graduated working life. Remember — the elements of value from my story can still apply to anyone, whether if you’re a student or not.
First steps discovering what PM was
2017
This was a crazy turbulent time. I wasn’t sure yet what I wanted to do after I graduated, but one thing was for certain: I knew I had to explore with hands-on experience. My field of focus wouldn’t matter as much during this time, because without any working experience at all, what was there to leverage or lean back on once I did figure out what I wanted to do?
Thus, I took a small sacrifice and landed a full-time volunteer position at a biotech startup in Waterloo, Canada. This role allowed me to explore the entire spectrum of potential work I could find myself immersed in later in life. I could work in the lab on one day to add biotech experience, or I could help perform investor outreach and other business growth-related activities.
But what ultimately mattered was that this experience gave me my first real internship at Blackberry in early 2018 — triggering the snowball effect to hop from one internship to another until product management was within reach.
How I slowly obtained the PM skills and experience
2018
This year was by far the most pivotal out of all years I’ve spent during my product management-hunting journey.
At Blackberry, I was a general business admin intern — nothing too extravagant, albeit still fundamentally rewarding. This was where I truly discovered what PM was by watching the product team from afar: a powerful and highly coveted role within tech that worked with multiple stakeholders to solve product problems. By definition alone, this already sounded interesting to yours truly, so after my internship ended, I sought to network harder with full-time PMs or other aspiring PMs to one day attain my own sense of belonging within this career path.
After Blackberry, I did some pro-bono consulting with a university club, and then completed an internship in consulting in the fall of 2018. During this time, however, I began diving head-first into hackathons despite barely knowing how to code. Conquering this fear of lacking knowledge for the sake of experience made all the difference — the projects, people, and opportunities hackathons had opened up for me was crazy. I made sure to take advantage of these opportunities by networking with every hackathon sponsor and supporting my team in building our project in any way I could. Lastly, I played the role of a “sponge” — soaking in every piece of knowledge or skill around me as much as I could. Our group even won a prize at Hack Harvard 2018!
2019
I finally obtained my first ever product internship at SAP in the summer of 2019. During this time, I also dived into podcasts to diversify my hobbies a bit, and participated in my university’s product management club by hosting various accomplished product individuals on our club’s podcast to chat about their experience for all to hear.
In the fall, I continued my job search for other product opportunities without letting go of that drive for hackathons.
On the side, while I applied to various product job openings, I made sure to be relentless when it came to the applications and their homework and cover letter requirements. This especially stayed true for jobs I really, really, really wanted. Product openings at Reddit, Facebook, Mozilla, Microsoft, RocketBook, ClickTime, PagerDuty, Apple, Splunk — I remember sitting for 5–6 hours every week grinding out product assignments or detailed over letters for all of them. Even simply improving my own product/design portfolio was well worth the time. Even if a company rejected me, I could take that homework assignment and use it in my own portfolio. With that mindset as the backbone for my motivation, I sat down and did every single one meticulously despite my tight school and extra-curricular schedule. I even wrote out some tailored cover letters alongside those homework assignments; the rationale was: “I’ve already done this much, adding a cover letter isn’t that much more…may as well go all in.”
2020
A COVID-infested year didn’t stop my digital presence; I worked for 3 different companies as a digital PM intern during my college coursework. I never stopped applying — I remember writing out a few more homework assignments, polishing up my portfolio even more, and even attempting to start a few side projects by myself. One thing to note is that even for jobs you don’t feel excited about, apply for that interview experience. You can even almost treat them as mock interviews.
For others who saw COVID as a time to hide away and excuse themselves away from productive work, I saw it as an opportunity to do whatever I wanted: brainstorm side project ideas, improve my coding, Figma designing, and even online volunteering for a startup.
It’s important to call out here (and for all previous years) that I definitely had my downtimes and dips in both productivity and mental health. After all, my journey wasn’t fast — this climb to becoming a full-time tech product manager took me over 4 years.
2021
This was the year I was graduating, which meant a full-time job hunting season. Times were certainly stressful — especially that period spanning from November until March. I’m a restless and impatient individual when it comes to jobs, but I was able to calm myself occasionally during this time by polishing up on my design portfolio and seeking mentorship (you should do this too! I joined WealthSimple’s product & design mentorship program). Mentorship was an absolute game-changer that not only lightened my mood during times of stress and pessimism, but also allowed me to gain valuable product advice from an industry veteran. I’d like to call out my mentor, Saksham, Director of Product at WealthSimple, for the simple yet highly valuable help that he provided every month during the program.
As one can see, my journey was long and tedious, not to mention the countless, and I mean countless (we’re talking perhaps in the 1000s here — I’m not exaggerating, I wrote maybe 100+ cover letters that haven’t even gotten a response, nevertheless interview) rejections, both before and after interview stages. Keep your head down, keep your product/project portfolio and resume up-to-date, write out some tailored cover letters for jobs you really want, polish up your skills (SQL, system design, UI/UX, anything that a product job would want) when you feel they could be refreshed, and don’t stop. Be relentless, but also be patient; stopping to pick up some volunteer work to boost that resume never hurts.
Best of luck out there! Follow me on Medium and connect with me on LinkedIn if you’d like some more offline advice!
