3 tips that will help you land your first Product Manager job

and how Porn helped me to find mine.

By Cristina CrucianuPublished 4 years ago • 7 min read

3 tips that will help you land your first Product Manager job

Throughout my career in Product Management, and even before I could call it a career, I’ve applied and been interviewed at many companies for a Product Manager role.

In this article, I will be sharing my top learnings and also, the access to a Google Drive folder with Study Cases -at the end of this article-, data points, so you can practice on your own and be a successful candidate.

As a non-tech background candidate, moving into Product Management has been one of the most torturous journeys I’ve ever taken; I still remember the early days when I wouldn’t receive any callbacks for the jobs I applied for. It felt like the entire recruitment world made me walk Cersei’s walk of shame every time, I wouldn’t hear back or their answer started with “We regret to inform you…”.

It really hurt my feelings and self-esteem not understanding why I was not the right candidate, and I would like to share my learnings to remove the roadblocks between you, and your next product management job.

However, please understand that passing or not an interview does not define your worth as an individual or professional.

And, as they say, rejection is redirection.

Here go my tips to help you land a job in product management:

1. If you are early in your career, interview for as many companies as you can to hone your interviewing skills.

After more than 20 interviews that I’ve had for companies like Revolut, Canva, Skyscanner, Eventbrite, The Knot Worldwide, FreeNow, etc. the learning had been quite vertical and equipped me with a mindset to achieve success.

I must say that I was extremely angry when I received the first rejections as I thought there were unfair and biased. I was not coming from an Ivy-League school, no worldwide known companies in my CV, and no tech background. I was a newbie and nobody was interested in my profile.

Despite all the efforts to make my former experience as a startup founder transferrable to the product management position, my profile was failing to meet the expectations.

But, I didn’t give up!

I had already worked with a tech team building a digital product and I had a user-centric approach for it as I co-created the product with my customers. I was a hands-on professional who landed from London to Barcelona, trying to live up to the Spanish dream by getting into Tech and I knew that I had what was needed to build product teams and successful products.

While trying to make it, I went to all interviews where I got a callback. I even interviewed for a company building porn sites! When I was told about what their product was, I hesitated a bit, but I was ready to share with relatives the bomb if I had been hired:

Mom, I work in Porn…as a product manager! Nothing to worry about!

But at the job interview, I was told that I didn’t have the growth experience they were after, but the interviewer kindly offered to introduce me to an early-stage start-up where my experience as a co-founder could be useful to build the platform of the company.

And this is how Porn helped me to get into product management. So you never know where the Land of Opportunity may be!

2. Every company’s recruitment process is different

The first company I worked for as a product manager, took me through several rounds of interviews and Lean Startup methodology came up, and some of the must-read books that you should have read or read to get on the fast track to landing a job interview.

Find some other interesting must-reads at the PM Library, but Marty Cagan’s are a must! There are also many relevant product management resources here.

Early-stage start-ups don’t have a very specific recruitment methodology in place and they rely mostly on gut feelings for hiring or on very superficial details.

Get to know the founders before entering the interview process as you will get to know what are they looking for and what they expect from the role.

In companies, that never had a product manager, there can be misalignment about what product management is really about. Make sure to understand their expectations to know if it’s the role you want, and to avoid misunderstandings along the way.

Note: If the hiring offer comes in too easily that’s a red flag and you should ask all the uncomfortable answers to ensure that you are saying yes to the right position.

— I know that we are not always in the position to choose but it is good to make your due diligence by asking uncomfortable questions that you care about —

I particularly use the Reverse Interview methodology when I feel that I need more information to make an informed decision.

Scale-ups have a well-established process that tells you what they expect from you at each stage and whom you will be talking with. Knowing this structure beforehand really helps me to get ready to meet the expectations.

There are several stages and they normally are organized as:

recruiter screening
interview with a member from the product team — most likely to answer situational questions like these.
followed by another interview — most likely to discuss the case study requested in the previous interview
followed by a final interview with the Head of Product, VP of Product.

Note: Such an established interview process implies that these companies get a lot of applications so it is a good opportunity to review platforms like Glassdoor to learn more about the company and what other questions did other candidates were asked.

The process is time-consuming so make sure to save all your case studies in a Drive folder as you will probably be able to reuse or get inspired from them in other interview processes.

Whenever solving case studies - or situational questions, make sure to not jump into solutions straight away.

We deceitfully think that being witty is coming up with the right solution on spot, but in fact, being smart means understanding the root cause of the problem by using the 5 Why’s or any other lean methodology. The time spends on framing the problem is crucial to ensure that you are solving the right problem.

While interviewing at FreeNow due to the assumption that if I took too much time to answer, it made me look like a slow-thinker, I failed to focus on the problem, and I jumped too quickly into solutions. It was a deadly trap for me, and I got the following feedback regarding the study-case, and in-person interview:

Good structure, she has covered all the steps. Really good questions that she asked herself about the problem she is trying to solve. I also liked that she made some assumptions on the faked research, that didn’t stop her to continue with the whole process. On the other hand, the problem analysis was poor, from the data that we send her she only took the % of the cancellation reasons…and she didn’t even show all of them. From the data shared she could have a better understanding of the driver's journey. I was expecting something more detailed. Also, the prioritization was poor, she only made it on the solution level, but not on the problem level…and that’s one of the reasons she picked the wrong one. (+ the poor problem analysis). She was also struggling with the follow-up questions, she didn’t take the time to understand the question, and instead of asking she tried to answer.

Come up with real examples (if possible) and use the STAR method as it is one of the methodologies used at big companies such as Amazon, Typeform, etc. Make sure to read the Cracking the PM interview book to understand what you are expected to deliver in terms of content.

In most cases, you will be expected to explain the Situation, Task, Action you took to solve the problem, and the final Results you got for that particular strategic plan.

Some companies, like the neobank Revolut, will require you to do an Aptitude Test where you will be evaluated on your spatial reasoning, verbal ability, math, and logic reasoning. They have a benchmark for it, and the good thing about it is that you won’t be wasting your time, nor theirs, to finally be told that you are not a fit.

These tests must be practiced for a long long time!

3. Contact PMs at the targeted company

It may seem obvious, but the fast lane to land an interview is through a referral program. Most startups have one in place offering compensation for the employee that can refer external people. It is a win-win situation for you, and the person referring. Also, it is a great way to get insights into the company’s values, culture, and obviously the interview process which may help you to better prepare, and be a successful candidate.

After several unsuccessful events, I finally landed a job at ManoMano where after being a PM on the tool that our sellers use, I am currently implementing Product-Ops to align, ensure standard processes & share data insights for all the PMs in our gear for better decision-making. At ManoMano, we have our referral program for Product, and Tech people, and we are always on the go to recruit profiles from different backgrounds and experiences.

At ManoMano, we bet on mentorship, and training programs to help you land a job as a PM, or tech professional. We believe that mentorship is at the core of personal, and professional growth, and I am more than happy to share more info about our company culture, and interview process if needed. Just get in touch!

I hope you find this content useful as it has taken me a lot of time, and rejection experiences to bring it all together. Please, feel free to share, and subscribe to get access to my drive folder with specific use cases that I mentioned above. Thank you for reading, and Never Give Up!

You will eventually find your dream job! Keep at it!