Product Management: straight after undergrad

A new and emerging role in the Indian job market for the undergrads straight out of the college in the field of Product Management coined as “Associate Product Management”.
Product Management as a role is not new in Organisations rather it is one of the most prominent roles in any company, especially in a product-based company. One of the naive and interactive ways to understand the role of a product manager is that a product manager stands at the intersection of the user, business, and tech.

The beauty is that you can be the person who can affect the lives of millions of people through this role. One needs to be well versed about how business works or how technology is structured or how the users behave. All that we plan to is the quantitative aspects of the field. The business vision of the company can change, users are evolving in the market with time and the technology is also advancing daily. A product manager should always be versatile and open to the above changes.

Product Management is the desired field for people who are open to learning. To start your career in product management you need to have constant learning and improvement mindset. You should have a knack of solving problems in a structured way and must be open to feedback and criticism.

Just a tweet i came across on twitter

In my initial few days i was told to be curious and question a lot about each and every thing you see in the system. My first assignment was to compare Amazon, Flipkart and Paytm mall, and the buying behaviour difference between the two

Key skills/qualities you should have to be an APM:-

1. Curiosity — If you want to be a successful PM, you need to be peculiar about each and every thing happening around you. In my case i had a knack of playing around with every new feature that any app in my mobile launched ranging from a small UI improvement to a big consumer behaviour changing feature. I had joined beta programs of all the major apps because i was always curious on what new is gonna come up.
2. Awareness — Everyone loves a product whether its a physical or a digital one. Awareness around the subject of a product is really important if you want to grow in product management. It can be awareness about your competition, awareness about the market of your product, awareness about the consumer and their behaviour towards the product. In the PM interviews there is always a question about your favourite product and the more you are aware about the product, easy it becomes for you to answers the questions thrown at you.
3. Good orator and writer — Great PMs ensure that others successfully understand what they need to know
   Product managers often serve to keep internal and external team members up-to-date, both digitally (email, chat, wiki, etc.) and physically (meetings, presentations). Good communication effectively shares the information that an organization needs to function well. When different parts of an organization don’t understand each other, important information is lost, time sensitive execution suffers mistakes, and both performance and morale sink. Poor communication, resulting in mismatched expectations and deliverables, is often at fault at surprising and derailing an organization that is otherwise moving in a sound direction.
   This Product Management article on product release blogs provides a concrete tool for strong cross-organisation communication.
4. Sufficient Technicals — Product managers need to be as technically proficient as makes sense for the product and team, typically so the PM can better understand the context and possibilities of the product space. For example, working on e-commerce requires understanding the backend technologies to make good decisions. Today many product managers need to understand data thinking and use tools such as Google Analytics, Excel etc. that require a base level of technical thinking or training.
   Additionally, product managers can be better partners to, and command more respect from, engineering and design partners by understanding the technical limitations of their respective worlds, such how product ideas may impact memory usage or processing time for engineers and pattern libraries and usability rules for designers.

There are more skills that a PM should have or build once he starts his APM career but the above 4 are prerequisites to audition for a PM.

What is asked in the Interview rounds of APM?

1. If you are applying straight after undergrads than any past internships in this domain helps. Also, if you are from a Tier-1 college like IIT, NIT’s then it really provides an edge over others.
2. All the past experiences and activities done in the college counts. This will be your first round expounding what all you have done.
3. Second round onwards is the real test. Generally you will be asked for a favourite product you like, it can be any app or even a physical product like water bottle. Choose the domain you are most comfortable in.
   Questions like why is it your favourite product, things you like and dislike about the product and if you are the PM of that product then what changes will you suggest and why. If you are able to tell minute details about that product which even the interviewer doesn’t know then you have a lead.
4. If you cracked your second interview then third interview is more of a “to know you better round” but if you were not able to put a satisfactory impression then this round is more interesting than second for you.
   Generally this round revolves around your critical thinking and the interviewer will ask you to design a new App or a new feature in the app you like the most. Please stay calm and always communicate with the interviewer on what you are thinking. Also, don’t overthink, he just wants have a feeling about the way you approach a new problem and is not looking for a correct and detailed example.
5. Last round is basically done with the product head of the company and is the most relaxing one, the product head will tell you about the vision and roadmap of the company and how is the company performing so that you also develop a sense of affinity with the organization you are going to join.

Some material to familiarise you with the questions asked in Round 2&3

Website — https://www.productmanagementexercises.com/

https://www.pminterview.in/

Book — https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NlWIiOR-uJ9cb-5TEDpVqWUZmmOgFLXk/view?usp=sharing

Also — watch Mock interview videos on Youtube of Product Management interviews

My Journey as an APM

For me it has been a rollercoaster ride. From having 0 knowledge about product management, i applied for the APM role at Paytm in campus placements.

After joining Paytm, i was told to be the PM for Catalog and Pre-order experience for the e-commerce arm of Paytm i.e. Paytm Mall.

First 2 months i learned a lot and about what and how a PM does. My manager was extremely supportive to me and gave me enough time and resources to get accustomed to the new role.

I worked on small features at the start and slowly i started to work on prominent features. I was given the responsibility to handle the pre-order consumer experience of Paytm Mall once my mentor left the company.

I worked on some amazing and extraordinary features which significantly improved the customer behaviour and also helped the company monetarily
GMV increased by 12% and DAU by 20% (As a PM its important to talk in metrics)

After working on an established product, i was given a new responsibility to design and develop a product from Scratch which is Paytm Stores. https://business.paytm.com/scan-order

This is my first attempt to share my experience in this illustrious role of a Product Manager.
I will share as much knowledge as i can so anyone who wants to start his career in Product Management domain get a fair bit picture about this eminent role.
Stay tuned for my next blog…

Apologies for grammatical and punctuation errors!