Handling PM Interview Assignments

Picture Credits: tnstateparks.com

When I talked about how to crack PM interviews recently at a workshop, there were a lot of queries around assignments. Assignments are a great way of learning how the candidate thinks and applies his knowledge to a new problem statement. Most assignments are interesting, and as a PM you should be enjoying doing such a thing. Here's a framework I use to tackle the assignments. Have seen 100% success at the assignment round so far. As the world does it, and, for my own recall I call it PUNPICR (Pun-picker)

This is how I structure the response that I create to the problem statement given (as an assignment). I may not use them as explicit sub-headings in the document, I use it as a subtle structure underlying the document. I like to use it as a checklist instead of a template. Based on the context feel free to split, merge, reorder the following sections. 

Problem
Identifying the problem(s) correctly is half the solution. Rephrase the given scenario and put down how you see the problem. Product is usually a Solution to a Problem. That Problem is what you need to elaborate on. Call out your assumptions. Imagine yourself as the founder/CEO/owner and then describe why this is a problem, how big is it etc. Any data that you site from the internet can be helpful. Do mention the source.

Users

Who has these problems? OR Who is the target for the problem that you are trying to solve through your solution? Everyone is obviously the wrong answer. As specific you can get a better understanding of the Target Group you will showcase. You can talk about personas, demographics etc. 

Needs
What are the needs of your users? And what are their hopes dreams and fears? Sometimes it would make sense to explicitly write them down, sometimes it doesn't help to be apparent about it. But, doing that analysis will help you focus the solution better.

Priorities
Which of these needs and problems is BIG? You should totally present the impact versus effort analysis that clearly shows solving which of the problem will have a bigger impact on the target audience.

Ideas
Go ahead and put down all the ideas that can potentially solve the problem. All of them, good ones, and bad ones.

Comparison
Play the devil's advocate and identify why one idea is better than all other ideas that you've put out or may have been obvious. Sometimes, more than one idea may be awesome in your eyes. If that is the case, just choose one for elaborating if you can't pick all of them.

Recommendation
Keep the best for the last. Now is the most interesting part that you've been restless to present. The Solution. Since you've established the background, state the obvious. Why is this the most preferred solution? And then, describe the solution with Diagrams, Wireframes, Pictures, User stories, Analysis, Business Model etc. whatever it takes to establish the idea clearly.

Also when you elaborate on one solution, feel free to talk about the costs, the pricing, and projections on how you break even, etc. Deep diving into one of the ideas showcases your business mindset and analytical skill. In the absence of numbers please assume based on your general sense. The closer you are to real numbers the better it gets (Google is your friend). 

Happy interviewing!  

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If this post has been helpful, do leave a comment and let me know. 

Product Management: Dreams & Heartaches

A whole bunch of newbie product managers and wannabe PMs are a victim of content marketing.

They've imagined a discipline/role that is not practical. Their world view is based on the enormous amount of reading material, the free ebooks, the blogs, the podcasts that they get free access to. The material may be actually helpful and well received by the known thought leaders across the world. However, if one looks at the most popular material on the web, it is either from companies selling their culture or companies selling their courses. And guys who are consuming this without much context of product management practice are setting themselves up for disappointment.

I'd add two instances that triggered this rant:

Case - 1: A techie, say Kriti, is doing a formal product management course but can't see the similarity between what she sees the product managers do in her current organization versus what she thinks they should be doing based on what she is being taught. She is confused about whether she has picked the wrong course or whether her colleagues are doing it wrong. Both could be possible, but, since she's not the only one finding that disconnect, I can see that something is broken.

Case - 2: A startup maverick, Vivan is an energetic fellow. He joins a mid-sized company and he wants to become a product manager, knows a lot about what's happening around in the world of product management. The source is, of course, the internet and the articles from the product course companies and SaaS companies which have built their story on content marketing. That's the world view he comes with and when he gets a real opportunity he is not able to match it up with the imagination. He thinks there are things that PM would be doing and certain things he would not be doing. Which ideally should be the case, but, as a PM you gotta fill a lot of white space. You need to get shit done. But, he is confused. Within the first few weeks, he starts to think about whether he is in the right role.

And then I ran a quick poll on twitter to see if there are others suffering. More than 50% think they aren't doing what a PM should be doing. 

Product Management articles look so perfect. But...

Honest enough?
A lot is written in retrospect by content writers, who have to come up with a story that sells. Even when it is based on true events they can always sequence the events and modulate certain sections to make it presentable. Makes for great reading, also drives the insights home, readers can definitely learn from it. I love reading them and drawing from them. However, as an existing PM, I can imagine the missing details. Those who haven't really done product management - have no way to read what's left between the lines.

One part of the story
They tell you what they did, what was the philosophy behind it and how it turned the tide. Some may also occasionally talk about what didn't work. All carefully drafted and showcased. What you definitely miss out on is that what you see is just tail of the elephant (sorry tip of the iceberg is too cliched). There is Chaos, Failures, Frustrations that are usually summarised in a line for completeness. In fact, there is no use of writing about or reading up the gory details of things that did not work. But, since you are inspired by reading just one part of the story over and over, you are set to be disappointed by reality.

Race to the bottom
As someone who's selling a course or a certification program, you have to meet your numbers. Which means you have to get more people to the top of the funnel, get you excited about "Product Management". So they try to make it look cooler. They have to build upon the imagination of others to stay relevant and capture more market. And that's where they're setting people up for disappointment.

The predicament 

The excitement about Product Management among youth is palpable. Everyone from non-Techie technology graduates (at the IITs) to management trainees from IIMs/ISBs and even people with 10+ years of domain experience is trying to get into this field. Some of the hype is justified and some are not. And there are various articles that bust the myths around product management as well.

However, in my 14 years of experience in the industry and those 6 kickass years as a product guy - I've come to realize that any role at a progressive organization is a lot about hustling and getting-shit-done.

And it is not all about the newbies being at fault. Many startups, organizations also create PM function without much deliberation. They see a gap as they scale and think what they need is Product Management to fill it up. The lack of understanding is evident if you just have a look at the PM JDs on job portals. There is an eerie similarity in all of them, and most of them are quite disconnected with what the real job would be like. E.g. A 2 years PM experience guy  - JD says should be experienced in creating Strategy and Roadmap  - really? (Note that they are an e-commerce site being used by millions of users)

Here are some samples of JDs for an e-commerce company, a fintech, and an ed-tech company:

 

 

 

They are themselves so unsure of what they want. All they seem to be looking for is a person with some proven logical, analytical capacity and communication skills - In short, an MBA from Top Tier institute, preferably with Engineering background. How do you reckon your unsure employers will provide with certainty and job satisfaction?

There are Dreams and there are Heartaches associated with the Product Management function across the board. Anyone planning a career in this needs to be more objective and better informed. It's cool, but, there's a lot of dirt under the rag. If you aren't up for it, find something better.

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If you liked what you read, do leave a comment for Ujjwal Trivedi. That's a great way to converse with the author. 

How to write the BEST RESUME?

Most jobs still need resume. People are trying to disrupt it but Resume is STILL (as of today - June'16) very important. Writing the resume is serious exercise. Please spend some quality time on it.

Here are a few tips to get it right:

1.  Reduce the number of pages to single page. At maximum you can make it 2 pages. Yes, it works. yes, it works in India. Make sure it is either 1 page or 2 full pages. Half a page looks silly. When you do it you'd get rid of all unnecessary sections, redundant words and focus on extremely significant words and achievements. This itself makes your resume more powerful.

2.  Spell Check, Grammar check, Review. And get it reviewed from others whose resume may have worked. No points for guessing this is so critical. Ask friends in HR/Recruitment about how likely is your resume to get shortlisted - no one can tell you better than them.

3. Focus on quantitative aspects - How significant has been your role in past. Writing "Played a significant role..." is subjective. You need to objectify it using numbers. E.g. "Improved conversions by 5.4%". Throw as many numbers as you can. Or try to quantify the impact of your work in some other way. E.g. Saved a big account by reducing their costs.

4. Begin each sentence with an Action Verb. E.g. Managed a team of..., Created documentation for..., Improved signups by..., Increased lead pipeline by...

5. Format it for clarity. Don't make your resume look dull and monotonous. Make it scan friendly so that it highlights things that you want to talk about. If a person looks at it for 5 seconds, he should be able to remember 3 to 4 words that you'd want her to ask questions around.

6. Feel free to use colours, picture etc. But do not even think about it until all previous checkpoints are cleared.

7. Please make sure your LinkedIn profile is up-to-date and provide a link on your Resume.

8. Please top up your resume with a personalized kickass cover letter that tells an organization/founder why you want to join them and why they should even look at your resume. Cover letters work. They are like the subject line of an email. Make it about them and not about you. Count how many I/Me have you used in your cover letter. Try to convert most of them to YOU/Your Organisation. Tell them how you can help them.

Comment here if you have any specific questions.





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