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- [00:00]
A
What should people be focusing on to get great interviews?
- [00:04]
B
Being a product manager we prioritize. Number one, definitely the resume. Straightforward without resume, product for everything just doesn't make sense. And I believe the best methodology is to customize your resume for group of jobs in this deep dive. We talk with Dr. Nancy Lee, a former director of product turned job search expert about the tactics that are actually working.
- [00:24]
A
Layoffs are down. For the first time I'm seeing people like MBA candidates, aspiring PMs who don't have PM experience actually get offers. Again.
- [00:33]
B
This is actually really great trend. I've seen as well really boost the confidence of other candidate who is currently want to either break into PM or land their next senior PM role. There will also be more like interesting AI related job openings. We have seen the trend of more and more AI related jobs and out there for product management and non product management role as well and lots of AI startups. Product management has evolved and product managers need to really learn and create a better product because if you don't innovate, you don't create. You'll be replaced by
- [01:09]
A
welcome to today's episode of the Product Growth podcast. We have Dr. Nancy Lee. If you've been reading my newsletter, you've seen she's a multiple time collaborator. After being a director of product, she now helps product managers land job offers. And given the subjects we care about in this podcast and newsletter, she has a lot of expertise. You all loved our articles on how to succeed in PM interviews, how to become an AI product manager with no experience, how to write a killer AI product manager resume. And today we're back with hopefully what's going to be kind of the deepest conversation that you can find anywhere on the web into how to get a job and specifically how to nail that PM role of your dreams. So Dr. Nancy Lee, thank you for being here.
- [01:55]
B
Thank you for having me Akash and Happy New Year.
- [01:59]
A
Happy New Year. And that's actually where I want to start is the state of the job market here in early 2025. How is the PM job market looking in the start of 2025?
- [02:10]
B
Great question. Right now I've seen the demand has shifted and the competitive landscape have changed and through some insider information I heard Google might have some kind of reorg within the company. This is part of the some internal board. They've shared with the internal employees but nothing has announced yet. Hopefully it's not true regarding the rework. However we also have seen starting from January 1st like the first week of January, have two student currency interviews Google so we don't know it's true or not. What I'm seeing right now is the market start to become very dynamic. Companies start to shift their strategies and the second thing is Amazon start to announce work from home policy as we all know starting from January 2nd, which means a lot of candidate existing product manager and Amazon start to think about whether or not they want to stay in the company because the new work from home policy, especially as a new mom, I find it's very, very, very difficult to fully work from home. Like no more work from home, just a working office for five days per week. So I will see the prediction 2025 is that there will be more and more competitive candidate in the job market number one and number two there will also be more like interesting AI related job openings. We have seen the trend of more and more AI related jobs and out there for product management and non product management role as well. And lots of AI startups getting more funding. And we have seen way more companies that pivot into AI space. For example have seen a crypto company not able to do well. Oh, they become crypto plus AI then start to raise more funding. So basically there will be higher demand towards AI domain. But the market is also very competitive. So 2025 is a little bit tricky.
- [04:05]
A
Yeah, I think the plus side of the 2025 job market as I've been tracking it, is that layoffs are down. There weren't actually that many layoffs here in the last five to six months, which means that your pool of highly qualified, currently experienced PM candidates is actually kind of low. For the first time I'm seeing people like MBA candidates, aspiring PMs who don't have PM experience actually get offers. Again, trust isn't just earned, it's demanded. Whether you're a startup founder navigating your first audit or a seasoned professional scaling your GRC program. Proving your commitment to security has never been more critical or more complex. That's where Vanta comes in. Businesses use Vanta to establish trust by automating compliance needs across over 35 frameworks like SoC2 and ISO 27001. Centralize security workflows, complete questionnaires up to five times faster, and proactively manage vendor risk. Vanta can help you start or scale your security program by connecting you with auditors and experts to conduct your audit and set up your security program quickly. Plus, with automation and AI throughout the platform, Vanta gives you time back so you can focus on building your company. Join over 9,000 global companies like Atlassian Quora and Factory who use Vanta to manage risk and improve security in real time. For a limited time, my listeners get $1,000 off vanta@vanta.com Akash that's V A N T A dot com A K-A dash H for $1,000 off. This episode is brought to you by Addio the Next Generation CRM. Imagine a world where your CRM is powerful, easily configured and actually intuitive. Addee o makes that a reality. As I've profiled in the Product Growth newsletter, setting up ADEO takes less than a minute and within seconds of syncing your email and calendar, you'll see your relationships in one place enriched with valuable data including things like relationship strength. Add IO lets you build zapier style automations, create powerful reports and works for any go to market motion. From PLG to sales led, Adeo is designed for the next era of companies like yours and companies like yours shouldn't have to deal with inflexible one size fits all CRMs. Join industry leaders like Elevenlabs, Replicate and modal head to add IO.comproduct growth and you'll get 50 15% off your first year. That's a T T I o.com product growth.
- [06:41]
B
This is actually really great trend I've seen as well which actually really boosts the confidence of other candidate who is currently want to either break into PM or land their next senior PM role as well. We also recently January 3rd we also have another student land head of Product openings as well. So the market has start to warm up and also start a very interesting dynamic regarding your new strategies in 25 as well which I can share more.
- [07:08]
A
What I'm also noticing is that the compensation is continuing to tick upwards. I think that people kind of got used to in that 20222023 period potentially accepting an offer that was at the same level they were earning before. That was very very common as companies would try to give you that or maybe even a little bit less. Now I'm noticing that people are consistently getting a bump up.
- [07:32]
B
Yeah this is really good trend and I've seen that as well some of our student recency she jumped from 370 total com to 5 to 510k total comm. That happened in the last 3 months the latest offer we just got and like just like people start to grow their salaries as well in general I think people have brighter future in 2025.
- [08:02]
A
Yeah the PM job market is looking about as good as it has I would say in the last two years.
- [08:11]
B
I think Good point. But we have seen some interesting up and downs for FAANG companies in terms of how they hire. Not hiring, but very happy to see that actually more and more FAANG companies are hiring again. And for example we have seen Llama start to hire one of our students in like November. The offer was given out in December for the Meta Llama team and as I mentioned Jeremy, Google start hiring. So that's something I'm very excited to see where the dynamic had changed recently.
- [08:42]
A
It does seem like AI is the big vacuum for PM talent both in terms of these big companies that they're hiring on their AI teams and then the startups that are getting funding. Their AI startups.
- [08:57]
B
Yeah, exactly. So the AI startups where the one of the data we've seen is that the AI venture, the VC they gave away 30 more than 30% of funding to AI company in the last quarter. And no wonder there's so many different kind of AI startups coming out. It's a spring season, there's so many more AI opportunities and we also within product manager accelerator we also build three a product ourselves. It's funny, really fun itself to see the fast prototyping and early user engagement based on AI.
- [09:36]
A
Let's jump into that. So AI PM job, what are the things that you need to do to get these AIPM jobs that are opening up in big tech and AI startups that is different from your average product manager job?
- [09:53]
B
Great question. I think the highlight should be differences here. The AI product management job we're seeing right now they are looking for lots of hands on experience. Hands on in terms of hands on AI model training, fine tuning experiences and also deal with end to end AI product management experience. For example, after you develop the AI product, fine tune the model and the model also start to do like data drift. And during the interview people already start to ask questions about hey how you deal with data drifting. So they're looking for a lot of real life hands on experience during the interviews and of course before the interviews as well. I think that's the number one biggest differences. Now the second thing that different from the traditional PM interview and job hunting process for AI is that they like to have a lot of technical conversation. I know this sounds a little bit scary for people who doesn't come from engineering background but the technical conversation is not about how you code. The technical conversation is about what data model would you select and why, what challenges have you seen? Oh yeah, you talk about hallucination which everyone know AI hallucinate how you deal with Hallucination. What kind of hallucination have you seen? They like to dive deeper into those kind of technical decision making process in landing the AIPM job nowadays. And now the third thing which is also has a lot to do with your specific experiences, relate to your domain knowledge in the AI space. Domain knowledge has two parts. One is the AI knowledge, the second part is industry knowledge. So if you already have prior experience related to the problem they want to solve, you might have edge into the AI for blank space for say AI for architect, if you're architect and then you have PM experience so it's easier for you to break in for sure. Of course we also have people who don't have any prior industry domain experience, but the break in is mainly leveraging. They have prior experience using ad build products. So those kind of very mixed up opportunities and the skillset people need to leverage to become the strategies to join those new companies.
- [12:10]
A
That's what I've seen as well is what you're looking at with aipm jobs is first of all that they're paying more than the average PM job. So basically average PMs who are employed are even applying for these jobs. Then you have your normal mix of people who are job searching who are applying. So you have a tremendous amount of demand despite there being a lot of supply. So it's very competitive and you have to have that real world experience. Ideally like you explained building an AI product, but if not building an AI product, tinkering on top of the APIs or trying to use the AI tools a lot and writing about your experience or maybe doing some sort of AI research, it feels like you have to go above and beyond within the AI space.
- [12:57]
B
Yeah, exactly. This is quite like true and also make lots of sense because nowadays AI product is completely different from the traditional product because a lot to do with you have new model and in the past maybe you create an uber app and you figure out like uius design front and back end and nowadays are like AI companies. Well if we use AI to help blind people and the features company new now you need fine tune AI model and there's a lot of real life challenges you're facing when you deal with those AI issues. So it's not as easy as what people thought. So therefore I have seen all the recruiters always ask did you work on AI Pro before it is theoretical or you actually work on it? If you work on it. So tell me, how do you deal with data drifting? So tell me exactly when data has to shift, where do you find Data. So that's a very, very legit questions. If I'm the AI like CEO or those kind of companies or even recruiters, I want to be responsible for my stakeholders. So it's. That's a trend must happen for sure.
- [14:07]
A
And I'm not sure how often you work with non PMs but we have a lot of non PM listeners as well. And what I've reflected on is that there's also so many AI growth related jobs and AI marketing jobs. It's very similar trend as what's happening in the PM job market where that's where big tech is hiring on the AI teams and those are the startups that are getting funding.
- [14:32]
B
Yeah, exactly. Actually we see. We have seen our student learning job for example, the latest one, I find it very very interesting which is the product marketing manager for Llama for like Llama team and Meta. So we have seen more than this AI product management or adjacent roles and as people also landing job at girls PM or at girls prop Marketing manager around the same domain. That's very interesting. We even see the take home exam for those like those tier one companies see how they design it and lots of time the take home exam is reflecting what they're thinking. For example, let's say use LLAMA team or use OpenAI as example. We also have students interviewing with OpenAI just use that as an example. Right. So if say for OpenAI their real life, those kind of questions conversation will have a lot to do with hey, what do you think about new use cases leveraging like OpenAI API today? What's the next level? How we run ads on top of our existing platforms and working on next level. So that's where the demand is is coming from. Generate every aspect regarding AI take homework
- [15:47]
A
seems to be everywhere. I know when I job searched five years ago for director of product role, I don't think I got any homework. Three years ago when I job searched I started to see it. Now when I talk to candidates it seems like a lot of the top companies are instituting homework.
- [16:05]
B
Yeah, homework is a trend right now. I think it is a good thing or bad thing. Bad thing is the candidate have to really spend lots of time just get ready for your homework and you may or may not be able to land a job and sometimes they do homework since the first round of interview it's really different. Depends on some companies. But the good news is you have lots of time to prepare for those homework. So actually the chance of you passing the interview is higher than someone throw out some Questions and do it on the spot. So pros and cons definitely there's a trend for sure Even within my own company when hire people join my company, everyone does homework. This is the way to select a candidate nowadays. What do you think? Do you. Do you do the same thing for people in your company? Akash?
- [16:54]
A
Yeah, we do homework. I think that's the only way to actually figure out how they are to interact with. How quickly they can do things, what quality bar they view is acceptable. If you don't. Every time I don't do that homework I regret it.
- [17:08]
B
Same here. Same here. And as well as reference check at least for our company we do vigorous reference check as well for the previous employer because we're a small company we do reference check. I think for larger companies they don't do reference check or not all the large company they will call the prior employer. We also see this is a way to filter the best candidate as well. But definitely homework is a trend. People start to get used to it nowadays and also spend lots of time do it for fun at least enhance your skill solving those problems.
- [17:37]
A
You mentioned OpenAI. So what does the OpenAI recruitment process look like today?
- [17:43]
B
Oh great question. So I know start from round one first round all the way to final interview questions at OpenAI. What's it look like? So in round one so in general OpenAI ask question very similar to meta. So they will ask questions like you have a trans. Let me think about the question English. Um how would you use technology to communicate with your dog or pets? So and. And design the product. So it's a product design question but more focus on AI. And we're also going to ask you product metrics question. For example if you have a self driving car, what is the product success metrics for the dashboard of self driving car? So it's quite similar to the meta interview product design, product execution. Nowadays it change the name execution to analytics interview. It is the same framework, same methodology but more focused on AI. Just in general was like this is the first round interview. Then you go through several rounds of interview. I also have another student currently in the final round interview. The type of interview questions he was asked is similar to the first round with design product execution question. Now plus the engineering team and also plus the company fit and culture fit. So quite actually quite similar to the FAANG companies nowadays. And majority of people actually intervene for OpenAI nowadays they also come from FAANG companies so they leverage similar type of intervene questions database just more focused on
- [19:25]
A
AI nowadays and the homework assignment how do they structure and evaluate that?
- [19:29]
B
One is top three companies. They are, they have the foundational model built within the company. Could be anthropic, could be OpenAI could be like llama team, one of those companies and out there when they give you the homework assignment, it literally it is a real life stimulation. They will give you questions like there's a website where we are going to launch this ABCD product. The design go market strategy for those like additional AI features. And then there are the marketing messages, there's how user use it, there's how user complain because, because the AI hallucination and how it doesn't work for users. And then they have the website and AI interface for you to take a look and then ask you the following questions. If they were you facing the challenges, what would you do in terms of drafting your product? Launch strategy, messaging, what is a go to market strategy? What would you say to those user who use those AI product? And give me the specific like solutions and also like go to market strategies and messaging as well. Something literally so real life and so true. And also the AI simulation they had looks like real AI product. It's not the real AI product launched by one of the top three companies. It is something you feel like yeah, they're probably working on it. They say so real life. That's what it look like nowadays.
- [20:59]
A
Very interesting. So if you're coming up with the response to a question like this, I imagine you have to put in quite
- [21:06]
B
a few hours, many, many, many hours. And actually I think people do it like days during the weekend and coming back and forth to figure out what's the best solutions, best answers. So they're going to test two things. One is the future of AI strategies. You have a product, so the next part is driving user engagement and also what's additional new features you can run of AI. The strategy side. Now the next part regarding AI is more like practically how would you be able to communicate with cross functional team as well. So there's all those kind of like details you need to work then into a homework assignment and luckily like obviously you go through the process like they're working for one of those top three companies, I just mentioned that, just guess which one. But those are the process what's look like nowadays. Very competitive. So everybody get ready.
- [21:57]
A
So that's AI product management. Now I want to get into the topic of getting interviews because there's so many different approaches out there on how to get an interview. You know, as we all know most people, they hit Easy apply on LinkedIn. Then there's the next level up of people they go to maybe company job boards that they're tracking and they submit their resume. Then there's the level up of people who customize their resume. Then there's the people who add the COVID letter, add the portfolio, add the work product, they cold DM people via email, via LinkedIn. There's like, you know, this escalating ladder of work you can do towards getting interviews. What's your advice? What are the, what should people be focusing on to get great interviews?
- [22:48]
B
Amazing question and actually everything you list above is necessary and very important. But I like to give people priorities. Take a product manager. We prioritize I think the four key elements everyone needs to focus on right now. Now here are the sequence and also priorities and I think priority number one definitely in the resume. Straightforward without resume portfolio everything just doesn't make sense anymore. Definitely have your resume. But when I recommend people looking into the resume do not just bulk apply easy apply. I'm against easy apply because it's playing a Numbers game. Only 1% chance you hit Easy Apply, maybe less than 1% when applying on jobs online people get back to you. So I'm highly against it. And you can also customize your resume for individual jobs. I also think it's very time consuming and I believe the best methodology is to customize your resume for good group of jobs. For example one type of resume for AIPM jobs, maybe one type of resume for cloud PM jobs or maybe one type of resume for certain industry fintech resume or girls PM resume. The many different ways you can customize your resume for group of jobs so it's gonna save you lots of time but of course if you do have lots of time, do one by one customization and another trick something very funny. A friend of mine, not sorry my my one my student she made her husband customize each individual resume for her so that she increased successor and she did land a job. Yeah as a girl's pm but like husband does a job but it, it all works. Depends on your time.
- [24:24]
A
Depends how much you can bribe your significant other.
- [24:28]
B
Yeah, exactly. And well it's also a way to test your relationship I think. So after grab your husband, you have a recipe ready. Next part which I believe is critical, very, very important is networking. And nowadays in today's job market and without a customized networking script, it's actually very hard to land interview. So you can either get referral from your friends in the company or you can directly pitch the hiring manager or you Connect with people already in the company, have some someone get a coffee, chat all three different ways is going to help you make your profile stand out much higher. So referral definitely very very important. And now the next part which I believe is the product portfolio which nowadays as we both talked about in good news and more people hiring right now and they're like less layout PMs nowadays. However, there are still a lot of qualified candidate in the job market right now. So how would you differentiate yourself compared with other people is something we need to think further. So I highly recommend everybody have a product portfolio. You can have a summarized version product portfolio. You can also have a deep dive. You can have an AI focused product portfolio. So you go for AIPM job a different version style of product Portfolio and many YouTube videos and playlists about product photo will also blog post about portfolio. And also Akash I know you have a like a piece newsletter about proportfolio as well. You guys should definitely go out and start to create a proportion so many resources. But I highly recommend everyone to have one. And now next part which is your LinkedIn branding. And I believe LinkedIn branding is quite important as well because it's going to generate inbound lead from recruiters number one thing. Number two, it's also going to play a critical role when you start to play out the linking algorithm. Actually they say secret things we can discuss further. There's a different secret things you can do to optimize your profiles in the higher in the search result. Different way can do so that you're going to be one of the top candidate on LinkedIn as well. So therefore your LinkedIn profile need to be very updated, hit all your keywords and also use algorithm in the right way. So leverage those as well. And now towards the end finally and definitely you need to get ready resume LinkedIn profile 9.4 okay, so now with all the four things, the last one is definitely you just need to put in the work. So four key elements and then put in the work. They going to lead you to the PM interviews.
- [27:11]
A
I want to pick on two of those specific pieces of advice and dive deeper. The first is the PM portfolio. A lot of people when I talk about the PM portfolio their kind of first reaction is gosh, that's a lot of work. How many people are actually going to see this? We know that people only spend six seconds on the resume. They hardly read the COVID letter. So how do you actually get people to see your PM portfolio? And even if it is only a few people seeing it why is it still important to build one?
- [27:43]
B
Great question. First of all, I do agree it's a lot of work. It is a lot of work. Usually our students spend like 20 hours create a proper photo which is a full weekend or a couple weeks if you spend a few hours every single day. What takes a couple weeks? Yes, it takes a really long time to create one. But I believe the proportal is the new cover letter. I believe most people do not really take cover letter very seriously nowadays. Yes, you can use ChatGPT to customize your cover letter as well. I have a different videos about this and everyone you can check it out later on. But yes, cover letter is a way. It's old school, but I believe the product portfolio is a new way to demonstrate your interest for the company and also your skill set. Even if it takes a really long time to create this. But once you create one, it serves you forever for all the jobs you're going to apply for. And now do people really check your product portfolio or not? It really depends on which round of interview you're at. For example, product portfolio can be used for networking process. If someone network with me in the first message and was there a very great pitch plus a product portfolio I definitely will say yes to a LinkedIn organic connection because the first message most people do not have a product portfolio and this person sent me a link I was like interesting, I want to see what look like. I will accept LinkedIn invitation and click the link just out of curiosity number one thing. So definitely people will click it. But do they really go through each line by line? Depends on other recruiters, hiring manager, different places and and then product portfolio can also be used during the interview process. This actually happened many many times through our students journey. We have students who land the senior gen AI PM job in Amazon by sending her AI product strategy portfolio to the hiring manager at Amazon and she didn't ask for job at all. She just be like hey, I know Amazon is kind of behind in the AI space and I created AI product strategy for Amazon with different kind of ideas. Here is a link to it and let me know you like to discuss on those strategies. Hiring manager accept LinkedIn invitation click her profile. This is what looks cool. Looks like what she's talking about had the first conversation and Gwen Su interviews and she land a job. This is not one person. This happened to all the amazing tier one companies that help candidate land those interviews as well. So proportion is not just like people read through each line. It's more about here's my initiative depends on your time. You can read through everything. You can also directly check out, scan through and then you use opportunity to network and then interview and land a job offer as well.
- [30:30]
A
I think this is really important so I just want to marinate on this for a second for our listeners. I think people tend to believe that at the giant tech companies like faang you can't really do this extra stuff like portfolios or work products or different items like that because they're so ATS driven. But here you've come up with several real world examples over the last four months or so where people are using it to get interviews. It sounds like the key here is to take what you create and then send it to people on LinkedIn.
- [31:02]
B
The ones I just mentioned, the ones that joined land offer from Meta in December. She has a product before posted on her LinkedIn profile right now of course after landing job offer she lock it down had a password to go in. But our student in the PM accelerator program we saw her product photo before we know what's look like she did the same thing now she worked for Metalama team. So yes, even for FAANG companies you can do it. And if you look up the APM application page for Google there is a space they ask you hey, you can put the links to your gig hub or product portfolio here, but it's optional if you put it or not. But you can of course when they make an optional well what they really mean is if you really put it in I will check it out and you go above beyond. Yeah so it's a trend nowadays and really depends on how much people really want a job as well. If many people start up, you know what do not send them product if you don't care. But usually product portfolio you created once you serve for all companies anyway.
- [32:07]
A
Another strategy you mentioned is really useful for getting interviews is optimizing your LinkedIn to drive inbound leads. So how should you optimize your LinkedIn?
- [32:17]
B
There are specific strategies around this and first of all LinkedIn is very keyword searched and starting from Kaido for example we inside very very excited actually Akash and this summer we are giving free AI product management bootcamp for kids from low income families for the high school students because been running this for since last year and when we since we run it last year we started to hire lots of AI developers working for us. When we hire people we realize that as a recruiter here's what I see when people apply for jobs my company and or when we search Right. And you first of all you need to optimize your title under your LinkedIn. There's a name Darkness City and there's a short description of who you are and those are what the recruiter is seeing. Just only the top up without clicking into your profile. So therefore I have seen a lot of people putting the wrong description or irrelevant description. For example biggest mistake for people try to break into pm they will say aspiring product manager. Don't do it. If I'm the recruiter, I search your profile and then aspiring product manager. Oh, she doesn't have experience. Aspiring product manager out it is right away you kill yourself before they even check your profile. And of course we also have people who are senior product manager want to go into next level and their short description could be, for example senior GenaIPM and with any award, for example a top like AI female leader, something like that or something like speaker, public speaker or board member. Any and may not be the board member if you're like a senior pm. Right. Or you can describe something else like the important product at launch and for example like product leader of meta llama team, something like that, Whatever, anything important that can represent you are very significant at the description is very important. And then for LinkedIn profile itself, I highly recommend people to leverage two things. One is a skill session. The skill session should be very keyword focused and also put the top three skills, the most relevant skills on the top. You can add like 60 different skills on LinkedIn skills but move the most important things on top. And now the third thing, you should also start to put the link your resume. Basically you can take lots of information from your resume that keyword focused and copy paste them to LinkedIn in the description session of your experience. And also make sure that putting different kind of keywords relate to the future type of job you're looking for, not your product management keywords. Let's say as we collaborate on a piece before regarding AI product management, if you want to go for AI, the product management plus AI keywords like fine tuning model, large language model and also rag all those keywords you put there. Of course looking for cloud, you have cloud keywords so combo of different keywords so they can be searched. That's important strategies. And then there's something very interesting I've discovered because we have people working for our company and you can also mark the jobs you apply for as you as a candidate very interested in this job and that give you another mark as a recruiter. We're able to see oh this Candidate choose my company as a top number one company from his angle. So I can see this as well. So yeah. Wow. He thinks I'm the. I'm our company's top one. Wow. Great. Cool. What also makes their profile stand out then? Definitely check your profile for sure. If you mark my company number one as example and then you can also turn on and off different kind of open to work notification the mark and you can also I suggest also maybe you can turn off during the weekend turn back on on Monday so you show up with a higher search result because you open to work. So there's a lot of LinkedIn algorithm strategies and everyone must implement right away.
- [36:31]
A
I've heard differing takes on content and PMs publishing content to increase visibility of their LinkedIn profile. Should PMs be writing on LinkedIn?
- [36:42]
B
Great question. I feel like people need to do content on LinkedIn be active on LinkedIn but not like an influencer. You and me a LinkedIn influencer. We publish on LinkedIn every single day. We research the content algorithm for LinkedIn. If you're a product manager only for the job hunting purposes you only need to post once per week. But I do suggest people to post something once per week that sometimes doesn't be post sharing. Sharing matters as well or even comment. Those are all important things you can use to trigger the LinkedIn algorithm to show that you're very active on LinkedIn. Because LinkedIn always recommend user profile who's active to the recruiters and that's you show up in the higher ranking result as well. Yeah, everyone needs to do it.
- [37:28]
A
We talked a little bit about referrals and referrals being an important avenue for getting interviews. What's the best strategy for earning a referral?
- [37:39]
B
The best, the best strategy is that if you have a friend's referral as in the best one friends already working for the company or friends friends someone who can make introduction and even if someone who making an introduction like you and me knowing the third person you should start with asking for advice instead of asking for a job. So I and when you asking for advice you tailor your message to the specific person. Now the second part getting referrals is co pitch to the hiring manager which you also find it very very effective. You can pitch a hiring Manager directly through LinkedIn. You can also do code email as well. You can use many different ways to pitch yourself both ways is going to get you those referrals into the company. And I have found both ways actually quite effective. Really depends on do you know people in the company or not. If you don't know, you have to code a code pitch. Either way gonna work.
- [38:40]
A
How do you find who the hiring manager is for a role?
- [38:43]
B
Ah, great question. You search hashtag hiring or keywords a product manager hiring all those keywords. You can find people who self identify themselves saying that they're hiring. And of course not all company is going to self identify themselves and saying that they're hiring. And then you can actually like build out the org chart within the company and guessing who is a hiring manager. For example, when I was doing joined Amazon I mentioned earlier recently joined Amazon with a gen AI senior gen AI PM role. She basically was looking at there's a job openings about ABCC team within Amazon and then look up on LinkedIn the org chart who is working on that specific product in Amazon. Let's say Amazon backrock as example who is working on Amazon Backrot in the company. And then it's a list of PM out there. And then because your senior genai PM who is above senior genai at least group PM or director. So those are potentially the hiring manager. And even if sometimes you're not sure are the hiring manager. Maybe there are three group PM in backrock so you don't know which one. Right. If that happens, you don't need to directly say that I know that your team is hiring and it's your team. Don't make it too specific. You can say something like I noticed that the Amazon backrock team is growing significantly and I had 10 years experience launching ABCD product with ABCD different kind of impact. I believe I'm the great addition to the growth of backrock team. I love to connect and discuss some AI growth strategies something like that. So you can modify a little bit if you're not absolutely sure. But more likely like backrock team the only three group PM and one of the three will be the one for that job you're you're applying for.
- [40:39]
A
And then is the best strategy to send them a personalized connection request? Because I think we only get five of those a day. Is it to send them an inmail using premium inmail Is it to try to find their email? If so, how do you find that?
- [40:53]
B
Um, we like to. First of all I recommend people to do organic outreach inside of email because email has a limitation. I think that every month 30 or 15, something like that it's not that many anyway an email also being perceived as very salesy and I personally whoever sent me email someone may sell me something. So the perception email is not that good. So therefore organic outreach. Now how to break through those five organic outreach. You can pay for LinkedIn Premium. Once you upgrade to LinkedIn Premium, you can reach out to more than five people. You can actually reach out to lots of people every single day for organic outreach to make sure you customize your message when you reach out to them.
- [41:37]
A
Got it. Okay, let's move on to the interviews. So you finally got in your interview. The first you know set of interview questions that we'll cover is behavioral. Then we'll go into the various case types. Let's start in the behavioral side of the house. How should people answer Tell me about yourself.
- [41:58]
B
Tell me by yourself. Let's read the first interview question everyone gonna have and tell me by yourself. And usually when it happens I recommend four step framework. Tell me about yourself. Number one is your name I am Docnizy Lee and number two you give a summary of your career impact and years of experience. For example I have 5 years experience launching developing technology product or I have 10 years experience or I I am the product lead of Amazon Backrock something like summary of who you are and with years of experience upfront. Now the third part is the most impressive story of yourself. So the hurt is going to fall off the chair. For example my original pitch that lend me a director job. I will say this to the people I want to connect with or do an interview. I will say I launched the first 5G edge computing in the world in collaboration with Amazon and Microsoft with projected revenue of $2 billion in the coming few years. I also launched the first AI Empower Smart Cities product to help cities reduce car crashes that received $200 million in PvP adults and receives Mayor's best practice award in 2017. Something like highlight your career accomplishment as something make it very memorable because stories is what people remember but you need to give them three short stories. When you introduce yourself as an introduction and then towards the end is really depends on your call to action. If you're doing the live interview as you and me interviewing with Google for and probably you can summarize is here in terms of I believe my years experience in AI and edge computing is a great addition to the Google AI team working on ABCD product. Things like that you have a close call to action towards the end depends on what jobs you're applying for or what interview round you're in.
- [44:11]
A
So probably like me you've given this formula out to students and they still struggle with executing on it. What are the most common mistakes people make with Tell me about yourself.
- [44:23]
B
Too long and not impact driven. They usually tell them lots of roles responsibilities without impact. I'd rather they cut off all the roles responsibilities, Even maybe leave 10% roles, responsibilities and majority should be about impact. For example, we have lots of students submit the 30 seconds elevator pitch which you tell me about yourself. They will talk about use mine as example. Right? They will talk about their experience launching edge computing product. They will say, well, I launched the first 5G edge computing product in the world in collaboration Amazon and Microsoft. And then they will say by writing requirement, conducting voice, customer interview, running daily stand up, designing go to market strategy. Basically they list out the roles responsibilities as a product manager, showing them, I had experience, see. I had experience, see. Come on, introduce yourself. You must be able to do everything writing requirement, all those product strategies or you're not able to launch such product in collaboration with like top two fan companies out there. Right. And so lots of people reversed it. They really want to show you have experience, they have what you're looking for. Um, so I'd rather people flip your impact what look like and leave the role's responsibility to the next interview question people ask you. So, oh, you launched a AI product in 2017 that led to $200 million in the PPP deals with the government. How do you do it? What's your role responsibility? Who's in your team? And then you thought, oh yeah, rule requirement, like different people, this size of my team. But before that it's unnecessary unless that can lead to impact that I launch this product and lead into so much money getting closed. That's relevant. So put impact up front instead of going through your roles of responsibility. Like, your resume is very boring. Yeah. What do you think in your experience with your students, whoever you help, what their biggest mistake?
- [46:36]
A
So the biggest mistake by far is they're too long and there's no structure. So they go on usually a chronological story of their work experience and it ends up being three or four minutes and there were no clear takeaways. I always tell people, like structure it in terms of like ideally three messages you want them to have. And those messages should really flip this what they're skeptical about about you because they've already seen your resume, so they already know. Okay, Nancy, she was a director of product, but what I'm skeptical about is she's switching industries. So then in your tell me about yourself, you want to say, okay, this is why I'm qualified for this industry. Here are three stories related to this industry. And then you kind of drive Those points home with impact. Like you said, I think that's critical.
- [47:26]
B
Yeah, I agree. Regarding changing industry, I usually suggest people do not proactively say I'm changing industry, but lots of people do it. But they can talk about all the experiences that master make them a better candidate for the specific job towards the end the call to action.
- [47:50]
A
That's a good point. You don't want to call attention to your weakness. You just want to make them not even think it's a weakness.
- [47:56]
B
Exactly. I agree. And I also think it's normal to change industry and changing jobs all the time. People need to. It's so bored. Can you believe this? When you and me, 60 years old, what we do, we do the same thing, the same product, same industry. If I'm sales coaches at age of 60, I feel bored, to be frank. Like we're thinking about what the next growth in my life already. So people need to change anyway just for the mental health reasons. So therefore it's more about how can you navigate how can you talk about it and talk about your value. You can add to the company as well and also strategically maybe pre learn some new content. Same thing. AI. Right? So before you become an aipm, maybe why don't you start to build some AI product ahead of time and then you can talk about yeah see I built this AI product like let's read AI so cool. You can build AI product very fast. We have people then we build like so far 21ai product inside of AIP and Boot Camp real life AI product with real user only within 3 months. It's very fast and anyone can do it literally. So plan ahead of time.
- [49:03]
A
What's the roadmap to building your own AI product? How do you start?
- [49:07]
B
Oh, great question. Literally we have a framework. Happy to share with you. Actually I'm writing a blog post about the AI framework that help our students to launch product very fast. And actually there are two circles and one tail framework. So where it's coming from you start with a head. You see it as a at the cat with a head which is the Gucci framework product strategy. We can discuss the Gucci framework later on. Basically I have a YouTube video about Gucci framework how to create product strategy Create product strategy first and now the two circles. Like if you draw a cat this a hat and the first circle is a is a the first body and the first circle of the first body is the AI hypothesis circle. So people have verification process or idea. I think AI can do this different ideas and which is great. Great That's a human innovation. But not all AI product will be successful was because a lot of people didn't verify all the AI hypothesis ahead of time. Actually 70% of the original AI research AI idea failed because and they saw it happening and they build a product and are not able to solve the customer problems or maybe solve problem, but they have hallucination of other challenges. So you need to run AI hypothesis. So now within AI hypothesis you have original hypothesis. And you also need to quickly pull some data to test out the AI input AI output and present it to your customers. And saying that hey, AI generate this like this and this and this and by AI, would you trust it? How would you like to use it? What's your idea in terms of adopting this technology? Can AI actually give the type of outcome you're looking for? There's so many different things you need to test out first. That's all AI part, not even building a product. Just like playing with AI test out can AI do it or not? Our next circle, which is imagine a cat. There's a body and next body is like two legs, four legs. The second circle, the four leg which is traditional product management methodology which building an mvp. That's where you have your front end engineers, backend engineers and designers build those mvp, bring the product with the interface to your end users and let them test out. And if they were okay, AI can solve the problem. And the product itself is also working smoothly in terms of mep. Great. Cool. The next part is join the tail of a cat which is you need to scale your AI product. You need to test out the entire like the AI the data drifting methodology, how you start to manage your data and how you also harness more data which means as end users start use your AI product, then more AI input. How you continuously to fine tune and grow your AI model and reduce hallucination does end to an AI management lifecycle. And then how you scale your product into different adjacent industry. So you continue to expand your AI product to make it broader and for different application and also make it more accurate as you grow as well. So that's why I have a cat model with a head and two circles with a tail towards the end.
- [52:25]
A
And building this AI product I think is very, very useful. And more PM should be doing it even if they're not applying for AI roles. Because let's say you do have a weakness of switching. You could try to build a AI product in the new industry. You could Try to use AI tools like cursor, like V0, like Claude and Chat GPT to help you try to generate a basic product. And what I find is that it's really being an unlock where a lot of people before they used to have doors closed off to them but now they're able to open that door by building this product in their side time. And it really helps in the interview to talk about the product. I think it's actually more important to in the interview than it is to get the interview because once you're in the interview you can reference back to it so much. So we were talking about behavioral interview questions and as far as I know the second most common behavioral interview question you often get is why this company? What is the right and wrong way to answer this question?
- [53:24]
B
Akash, probably you have a deeper dive than me on this topic because you research different companies but in general what I believe the right framework and right thing the hiring manager is looking for is something we use something called three by two framework, three reasons each reason followed by two sentences. The sentences is covered by the summary and plus a longer description a little bit smaller stories. For example most important thing is among the three reasons you must touch on something that's unique and proud of by these companies. And for example like Apple they're very proud of the design. They're also very proud of the entrepreneurial culture within the company. And you also attach something about yourself regarding your royal ideas like as Apple customers and how much Apple product has innovative your day to day life all of different things. So something that's relevant to the culture or something the company is a product plus something relevant to you. I think that high level does the framework should be. Of course I also have seen people didn't do full research about the company. They said something very generic about the company which you can tell it is not the right answer about why that company. So what's your research on the topic Akash?
- [54:50]
A
Yeah, I find that a lot of people they forget that they're usually interviewing. We're talking about usually product management jobs. You know what's pretty important in a product job? The product. What is your take on the product? You know when they're asking why this company? There's there's a few hidden sub questions in there. Do you understand who our ideal customer profile is? If we're a B2B product, do you understand who our user versus our buyer is? Have you researched what our mission is? Have you researched what our values are? Do you know, you know are we remote work or are we work in office? Like they're trying to sniff out those people who haven't done this basic research on the product and the company. And so I almost feel like this answer this is a good way not really to just like suddenly get hired. Like your answer, if it's a 10 out of 10, you're not going to suddenly get hired, but it's a good way to avoid getting not hired.
- [55:47]
B
I agree. And you know the most interesting one I heard which kind of controversial I want to have your take on this. I have students interviewing with those tech companies as why Google, why meta those kind of tier one companies. One of the answer one of the three reasons they said is oh, because diversity and inclusion. The reason I want to work for Apple was because diversity and inclusion culture and they use the same thing for all 10 companies or all tech in Silicon Valley and Uber. One of three reasons one of Uber is diversity inclusion. One of three reasons I work for Amazon diversity inclusion. Okay so I do think important topic but what do you think? Do you think we should or shouldn't including should shouldn't include such interesting and sensitive topic in your answer to why this company?
- [56:43]
A
No, I think it's never a good idea to choose a polarizing topic. You know, even if 85% of the company is in favor of DEI initiatives, their hiring manager sitting across the table from you could be in the other 15%. First of all, second of all, what I try to say for this question is you should look back at every sentence in your answer and if you could have said that for another company then that sentence should get cut. And because the DEI thing can be put everywhere, it really doesn't make sense. Now what might be a better way if you really want to emphasize dei? Let's say you're for a HR position and you're even associated with DI work and you want to talk about that, you might say something like well I really liked how you guys hired Ava Adams to run your DEI initiatives. Right? Because that's something you can only say about that one company.
- [57:36]
B
I agree and I would if I go up an interview I would avoid such topic. It's very sensitive. Too much going on nowadays even if yourself believe in DEI and our company will say it they believe in Di on the website but doesn't mean that you should talk about it during interview. So really do deep research that you truly believe in and the company truly embrace not just something they put on
- [57:59]
A
the website and a framework I used to use this is dating myself a little bit but I when I would have like a startup where there's just not much information even about what their mission is. And it's hard to use their product. I'm interviewing for them. I'd often say something along the lines of like their space. Like, hey, I love that you guys are attacking. You know, I interviewed once with this startup that was using drones to map out solar fields. I love that you guys are attacking the green energy issues. I really resonate with that. It's so cool how you're using drones to map these solar fields. That's like the extent of what I know. But those sentences are very specific to that company. So that's one thing. Then the second thing, you know, often like talk about the size of the company. Like, hey, I love that you're in that series A range. I worked at X other series A company in the past and I think series A is great because you get so much ownership and impact. You know, you can talk about. You try to find things that you can talk about just based on the limited information and then trace it back to your history. Um, what in your mind are the other. Let's say somebody's preparing like, like you know, 10 behavioral interview questions. What should be the other seven or eight questions they should prepare for?
- [59:13]
B
Yeah, number one, Masa's interview question. How you turn a product from concept to execution. Definitely ask those questions. If you're senior pm, senior VP Director, any of those very above level, they will ask you a lot of question regarding product strategy. How do you create product strategy about ABCD product or what is your product strategy for this? Well, sometimes they ask you a question regularly why you create such product initiative within a company even it's a why question. It's product strategy question. Now after that this also have lots of stakeholder management question. How would you align. How would you align the stakeholders who had different opinions and align all the product vision around them? And they also have the next question related to difficult customers. How would you tell customers they were wrong? How do you go above, beyond and and to solve customer needs? And sometimes it's how questions, sometimes it's tell me a time question and then how would you manage product roadmap? And all those questions very typical in all the interview question behavior interview questions.
- [60:21]
A
Got it. So let's go through a couple of those in particular these strategy questions. I see a very common sort of product strategy question like walk me through a past product strategy you wrote or something like that. What's the right way to answer this question?
- [60:37]
B
Um, we literally have a framework I love to share with others all of you guys at the audience and let's read. I make a YouTube video about this which is called Gucci Framework. It's one of my most popular videos on my YouTube channel. So the Gucci framework is used for people who is already in those tier one company and also can be used for people who are outside looking for a job. And how we create product strategy for ABCD companies. You can go through the framework like this. Gucci stands for goals and mission which you start with. Why company even try to solve ABCD problems? For example, is your companies running out of funding if it's startup? Or is your company try to create long term strategy initiatives? For example like doing ads. I know OpenAI is working on ads right now because we have. We have student interview there for the ads team. So for example OpenAI for ads, right? And then you started why what's your strategy for openais? Right? You talk about why we want to start the initiatives you can talk about. As an example. OpenAI currently we already build very strong foundation with billions and millions of users every single day using our platform. Our next initiative is growing top of stream to create real life application that can serve customers. One way for us monetize those real life application is through ads. So that's why we believe this running ad is in alignment with our strategy initiative with a company which is driving more top line revenue within the company. Right. As an example. So you create a product but what's the goals and mission that in alignment with what company want to achieve? That's G part of framework. Now CC Gucci. CC stands for customer segmentation. What's your customer segmentation? So was your product straightforward? And next part unmet needs. I want to emphasize unmet needs. Unmet needs sound similar to pain point. However, unmet needs should be bigger the pain point. Ideally any bigger unmet needs and that's not addressed by anything today or addressed by your competitor. But they solve it very poorly today and could be some problems that's so big nobody wants to tackle it as well. Any kind of big unmanese, you need to put it in your product strategy. However, in contrast people like talk about pain points like small pain points. For example people like oh Uber driver people love to talk about oh you know what, take a really long time for Uber to identify my house. Yes, we know it's been there for a little bit. Can you talk about something bigger on many that related to Uber as example. Right? So talk about that now. Next part of framework is C Gucci framework has two Cs okay, the next C is competition. That's where what your competitor is doing because in the space of technology it's more likely you're not the first person who want to create such product. So you look into what competitor is doing and how would you able to differentiate yourself. And that lead to blue ocean strategy and red ocean strategy. Did you decide to create blue ocean strategy which is usually we like it or red ocean strategy which in general people compete for price just eventually people like lowering their profit margin significantly. So it's better you create blue ocean strategy. So therefore competition is very important. Now lastly but not least which is important part of framework is I integrate ecosystem. Integrate ecosystem related to your own company and your own like systems of network. And for example integrated ecosystem could be. Let's say you create something for Google for Google Gemini. So now integrated ecosystem for like Google Gemini could be. We are part of the Google larger ecosystem today which we already have all majority of people's user data where they live. And on top of that we also have existing like way more technology. Right. You can talk about different things part of integral ecosystem within the company and as well as all your vendors that's outside the company or your partners have good relationship with and people within the eco. Integral ecosystem is going to give you the opportunity to create your own unique competitive strengths and also something you can choose to laser focus on. Because everyone let's say today all fan company want to do something about AI. But integrated ecosystem for Amazon is different from Apple is different from Google. But each company decides to play a role in the AI space differently because the integrated ecosystem is different from other competitions out there. So with the school sheet framework you should leverage those five top talking points to talk about how you create such product strategy for ABC probably work on in the past.
- [65:38]
A
Let's move on to case interviews. So I think that the case interview, the product management case interview as a whole it's a. It's an area that a lot of people mess up on because it's so much unlike the product management job. Talk to me a little bit about some of the most common mistakes people make in PM Case interviews.
- [65:57]
B
Yeah, so case interview have nowadays product design interview, product execution interview. Recently they also interest introduced analytical interview which part of Google interviews it also was in the execution interview. Google also add additional more real life like problem solving style of the execution interview as well. There's many different cases you're doing right now. Now regarding the typical mistakes for the cases, number one thing is the product thinking methodology of two sided marketplace Framework. Actually I am big fan and I might be the inventor to say Marketplace framework. Basically I took the Louis Linz Circles framework, I modify it and add in the two side marketplace on top of it. I see lots of people, especially senior PM out there when they go out. When they go out to do product case, let's say design Uber app for blind people. The only thing about blind people and they didn't think about the driver to create the best product out there. You think about two sides so that you're able to have the balance of the supply demand for both sides of Marketplace. I believe that's a top one bigger mistake when people go out to solve those cases so they only have one sided answer.
- [67:21]
A
One of the things that I've noticed is that people have trouble like using frameworks properly. Like how do you use the modified Circles framework or the Circles framework or whatever framework you're using without kind of being too rigid on the framework.
- [67:37]
B
Great question. So there's the way to apply those framework. What I believe is number one, there's a trick which is you only write the keywords of those framework instead of memorizing the framework. For example, all the Gucci framework or modified Circles framework you can do a sticky notes of those like framework only write keywords and put on top of screen. Assuming this is a remote interview. If in person by the time hopefully you already memorized all the keywords. First of all, only go by keywords now second part, in order to not be very rigid about those the framework which is really have more empathy of the real problem you're trying to solve. And at cash you and me did the collaboration for mock interview on each other's channel like half a year ago, right? So when we did it, we both had a great time trying to solve the case the problem itself. So therefore be specific to the problem you want to solve and be realistic. And then you can modify the framework as you go if you like to. But in general I don't recommend people for the purpose modifying framework. But you really need to think about the specific case first and then think about what's something most applicable that with strong customer empathy and strong like a customer pain point and the correct customer segmentation they able to lead the correct answer to those cases as we go through the interview process. And finally it's also you engage with interviewer get some clues, a hint from the interviewer that is going to make your answer less rigid. And because the interviewer going to tell you you're right, you're wrong or you're off track.
- [69:17]
A
So those product design questions, I feel like these give people the most heartburn. These are the questions like design a pencil for a blind person. What's the best way to approach these?
- [69:28]
B
Um, good question. And I believe those kind of interview questions, yes, it's very hard if you're caught off a guard. It's actually very difficult because you have 45 minutes really talk about it. But in general, for example, design pencil for blind people we can get started with for the customer segmentation. Blind people. Right. And, and what different kind of customer segmentation was in blind people and what's the other side of the marketplace? So blind people probably trying to document something. So what the other side, who is serving the blind people could be someone who is, who is helping blind people, who could also be the content provider for blind people. We need to consider them as well so that you can like effectively communicate. Because after you write it down from blind people, what the purpose behind it when you think about other, other people, who's involved in the process as well. Now within blind people, what type of blind people out there which could be partially blind or like fully fully blind because partially impaired and fully impaired blind people. And then you prioritize the sub customer segmentation. Then you pick the challenges which is in this case a pain point for those sub customer segmentation. If you want to get those browning points, you can talk about the other side of marketplace, whoever is serving the blind people, but only if you have lots of time during the interview. But you can just mention that if you have more time to interview. We're going to go back to talk about as people serving blind people right now. Let's focus on helping help them to use pencil and start writing for now. So and then you continue break down the pain point and prioritize one of those pain points and pick the top pain point. Design top three solutions. Among top three solutions, you pick the top one. And also top of the trade off prioritization of the top solutions as you go through this product design process. But usually you were thinking this takes probably fast. Design pencil for blind people in reality will take you really long time if you are not organized in terms of answering those questions.
- [71:43]
A
Yeah, I find a lot of people spend too much time early on in their framework, whatever framework it is they're using, even if it's customer segmentation at the beginning, they'll spend so much time on that, it's like get to the bottom of your framework. Let's hear those deep user needs, those pain points. Let's hear those problems. Let's hear that creative problem solving. In these design questions, ultimately the interviewer needs to walk away with thinking, wow, that person really can analyze problems and come up with creative solutions. So don't spend too much time at the beginning of your framework.
- [72:14]
B
Totally. And lots of people actually failed at the first five minutes of the interview questions because they did the wrong customer segmentation. This is a typical mistake I've seen. They did wrong customer segmentation and they just went to the wrong direction completely. We did a mock interview with one of my students. I think the question is I designed the airport like experience. More like too many people line up at the airport, improve the airport experience, managing high travel demand during holidays and then she end up I believe she solved a corner case because she did the wrong customer segmentation. Just went off the tangent. So therefore lots of people actually fell in the first five minutes by just going to the wrong directions and spending lots of time talking about the wrong thing at the beginning.
- [73:05]
A
Let's move on to those analytics, execution metrics, whatever you want to call it. Case interviews I believe you have the my CSPHD framework for those. Walk us through it.
- [73:17]
B
Yeah, I call the my computer science PhD framework because I got PhD myself. I find it rhymes a little better. So my PhD is in material science but CS stands for non computer science. It is customer segmentation. So what stands for is my means, mission and why as we talked about earlier using the Gucci framework, why company solving this problem, what company mission? Only takes you one minute to talk about those but it's going to show that you already thought about the mission of the company especially for strategic initiative within those tier one competition and why and next part is CS customer segmentation. You direct round it out and PhD stands for prioritization and product health de risk and this framework is very specific for the parametrics interview question. For example they will ask you question regarding what do you think is a product success metrics of Uber Eats as example and then when you run this framework you will start thinking about what is the North Star metric. That's where the prioritization coming from the P part of framework priorities. And after you have those prioritized North Star success metrics and then you need to think about next part which is product health metrics and then product health actually product health metrics represent anything not the North Star actually very straightforward because there's only one North Star and there's so many different product health metrics for different things within the product and let's say in product health metric also including technology metrics, any metric of per health metrics. And towards the end you talk about de risk which is different kind of risk might involved when you measure when you create such product because some product might lead to different kind of controversial outcome, maybe some ethnic reason in about the risk behind it and then towards the end followed by CC. CC is additional thing to the PhD framework which is well beyond which is countermetrics and canine realization. So econometrics which is very clearly regarding let's say you have your North Star metric and how would you hold your North Star metric successful? For example, if your North Star metric is the sales of your product, revenue of your product, your econometric could be oh sorry if if your North Star metric is the lifetime value of your product and your countermeasure could be customer acquisition cost because lifetime value product could be $100, your countermetrics could be $200. So you're losing money for the company. So this is what I mean by My Company Science PhD framework +CC
- [76:20]
A
with these execution questions, these metrics questions. I find that a lot of people actually are failing on this round. The biggest thing is that they're not kind of being holistic enough and talking about all the different metrics buckets. How can somebody go about kind of improving their ability on these questions in
- [76:40]
B
order to improve parametrics answers? I think number one thing is you need to really think strategically. Assuming you are the CEO of the company that is going to get your right answer faster. Because let's say you create North Star metric, there's only one North Star, how would you choose the right one? It's more likely if you're the startup, the company, they're more focused on revenue growth. If you are working for FAANG companies, let's say work for meta, those kind of companies are more focused on like improving user experience or user growth. So your selection of the north side metrics might be slightly different based on type of company. So the way to really improve it is literally assuming you are the CEO of the company, it's going to generate lots of great result. And actually another pro tip in the interview round with meta towards end of those parametrics interview questions and people will literally start to ask this question from the interviewer saying that if you're presenting the case outcome to Mark Zuckerberg, what would you do? You only have 30 seconds, you're able to draw a chart in front of him and what is on your chart so that force you to prioritize the right thing that Mark Zuckerberg needs to see. So I believe this is the best mindset help people to create better answer parametrics answer. What about you? What do you think, Akash?
- [78:18]
A
So I think that you should try to apply like four or five frameworks around metrics to each practice question that you do. So let's say you get a question, what are the metrics to evaluate a successful change to the Facebook newsfeed? That's a common execution question you have. You could apply four or five frameworks like well what are the input and output metrics? What are the leading indicators, lagging indicators and guardrail metrics? What are the aarrr, the R framework metrics? What are the metrics across the value chain? And I find that if you do this exercise with four or five frameworks, you'll start to repeat yourself with a lot of metrics. But you'll also get a really intuitive understanding about the types of metrics people care about. So applying frameworks is one and then the second is being a PM. If you're a PM, you have to write a lot of PRDs, you have to identify a lot of metrics and I find that aspiring PMs have the most trouble with this. In which case I say try to be a PM for the features you're building in your side project and for that try to have a holistic set of metrics because then you can really practice coming up with these metrics.
- [79:27]
B
Yes, and that's quite resonate with me. When we teach students inside of Power Manager accelerator we started to do something quite interesting. So we put people into two different groups. One is senior PM group, the other one is more the junior PM group and the same exercise and the junior pm the answer literally not as good as senior PM was because senior PM really thinking for the company as if the pm, the junior PM always thinking oh maybe we could do something like this and something interesting, some interesting feature. But they didn't have enough the product management experience to see things end to end. So that's why the answer to those per roadmap product design question sounds very shallow. So which as you resonate what you said earlier, you need to be a PM or at least work on your product portfolio, gain some hands on experience. So it's going to help you to do better in your interview as well.
- [80:24]
A
The next type of case interview question we see a lot of is the product strategy. And a very common question I've heard people talk about is if you're the CEO of YouTube, what are you going to do in the next five years? How should you handle a case interview like this?
- [80:36]
B
Oh, this is bread and butter are what we do for using the Gucci framework. It's very effective. So let's really and but let me show you what the thinking process for the CEO of YouTube if they ask you those kind of questions and what the real CEO look like of thinking about. Because once you become director or VP in all those companies you start to think strategy long term, maybe product Manager think about three year roadmap maximum and maybe director starting thinking about five years and then if you're like CEO at least 10 years, sometimes 20 years. So therefore you need to create a very long term strategy roadmap as if the CEO of YouTube or Uber those kind of companies. The way to answer those questions is literally using a Gucci framework. If I'm the CEO of like YouTube today, what's my goal for the future many, many years to come? It is to drive revenue for YouTube or it is to create like better user engagement or like better user experience because want to compete with TikTok, right? So many different things. You need to think about what you go to mission company and then you start to think about the customer segmentation of the entire YouTube or entire social media users today which straightforward and then huge unmet needs for the future. That's where it's coming from. The future of huge unmet need regarding content consumptions for different kind of customer segmentation. And then think about competition in this case YouTube competing with TikTok. I really think TikTok is very toxic tool wasting people lots of time, especially young people. Gen Z however has the best user engagement. It just make people very hard to resist the algorithm out there, right? So which means if a YouTube CEO let's really think about what your competition is doing and then you reflect on your integral ecosystem. What's my unique competitive advantage Because I'm part of Google, what do I know? I know all the users information, birthday, home, location, where do they go every single day, right? And what other things that Google can offer. Google also have AI various powerful AI tools today and have search but TikTok or as a competitor especially because they don't have AI or at least they use some AI but not strong AI internal like a product like what Gemini is doing, right? So those integral ecosystem is going to help the CEO which is CEO of YouTube think strategically regarding what unique strategy and you play in the coming 10 years. This lead to their like blue ocean strategy. Usually we recommend people create blue ocean Strategy. That's when you create those long term strategy roadmap and CV CEO of course you can top up some near term thing you can work on immediately to drive user engagement today.
- [83:33]
A
All right. So I hope that helps people really uplevel their game in case interviews. Let's move on to negotiation. You passed your behavioral interviews, you passed your case interviews. You're negotiating the offer. You've helped a lot of people do this. What are your best tips to negotiate in 2025?
- [83:52]
B
Amazing thing, amazing question. So for 2025, what I believe number one thing is very controversial is that you need to perform extremely well in your interview. Especially when you interview with senior level people. Usually last round interview. Usually for example, one of the like the last quarter one of the student who land offer at $510,000 jumping from 370 to 510. Right. She only had one offer. So when we do not have competing offer, we need to think about how you how you have perceived in front of senior executives. In her last round interview, she will ask to interview with lots of like VP of the company, very senior people. By the way, the company who hired her is also one of those like those tailoring company everyone knows about. Right. So they bring in really senior people to really evaluate can she really add value to company so that that sets a tone to move her to the right band. If you're not in the right band, you have a ceiling. So therefore people need to really think bigger. Go into next level first in terms of interview performance to increase your scope and the scale when you interview. Now next part, let's say you're already performing extremely well, the best as possible when you go offer negotiation that where I suggest a framework which called the dance framework. Which means you need to think you and the recruiters as a dance partner. Which means you need to bring her the recruiter on your side of table and have her to help you out or you're going to step on each other's toes all the time. And the way there's a tips, there's a trick actually behind it. The way you make her to help you out is this. You start to talk about your value proposition within the company, why you deserve to get paid this much. And also recommend our students to have higher number ahead of time. So you can ask for the right now do more research first. And then whatever research you have, you ask the number above whatever you think is right. So you anchor it high first and then you always end towards what's on the other side of the table. You need to ask questions strategically. For example, when we negotiate the $510,000. But we already asked 550. And we see the reaction from recruiters though when recruiter heard it was like 550. Wow, that's a lot. And they asked question regarding why it's a lot. Is this because you have limit budget right now or is because the base is too high or is the equity is too high or the sign on bonus too high? Why it's a lot. So what's in your mind right now that you think the number is pretty hard? I'm more than happy to work with you. So fish information from the other side table is very critical. And then the other very important tips you guys can do is always let recruiter know you are willing to accept the offer if they are able to help you to create the ideal situation. And then you can bring your husband again at the backup. The good pop backup. You always say, you know what I really think this. I think the original offer we got is 420. Currently she getting paid 370 in a company. Her offer was 420k and it was really low. We asked for 550. You know it's like the huge gap. It's crazy. And then we use backup for the husband. You know what? This is the dream company. I want to look, I want to work for always assure that this is the right position for yourself. And because the right culture ABCD reason that definitely my dream company. However, my husband and I did some research. I feel like the 420 is actually pretty low based on the contribution I can add for the company. I really want to make sure that this is the right opportunity or my husband wouldn't allow me even accept the offer. So I really want to work with you. Can you let me know how your decision was made? Was be the base area, the equity or is any executive approval and what information I can give you so that you can help me to convince my husband. You know always like I think the husband row was useful interview process. Yeah, that's where the the different kind of tricks they can be used. And then when people then we could have heard it was like oh yeah, that kind of true. You're 370. Only 420. Your husband did some research. Let me tell you the truth. How decision was made. Why this and this. Right? So after you know the truth and you work with the truth and then you say both of you guys are you and recruiter solving problems. So you, the husband and the cop
- [89:11]
A
I want to move off the job search. We just gave people a one and a half hour deep dive into the job search. I want to move on to product management. You were a product manager for a long time. What's your hottest take on product management?
- [89:25]
B
Product management has evolved and product managers need to really learn and create a better product. Because if you don't innovate, you don't create, you'll be replaced by AI. It's crazy. Things are changing too quickly nowadays. Not just creating AI product, maybe using AI in your job. And watch out the AI trend. There's a lot of things evolving too quickly in the space right now.
- [89:50]
A
Take us back to your last job as a director of product. What was a day in your life like?
- [89:58]
B
My day in life involves seven hours meeting every single day. And usually if this true to you, let me know seminars. Meeting every single day and starting from different kind of executive. Usually meet some executives in the morning. You can do some presentation or have some executive update. And then you start to meet your team. Your team start to give you update regarding portfolio product they are working on. And then next step you also do cross functional management. You're meeting with other director, director of engineering, director, strategy or senior directors within the company. All different cross functional team collaboration you need to deal with. And then the worst part is sometimes you need to work with legal because especially when you launch a product, you need to do cross functional management with legal team. Yes, basically a lot of meetings and cross functional management and report up and manage down as well. And then you also spend some time to coach and your team and review the results submitted by your team as well. And hopefully by the end of the day you have some time to create the product strategy, which is also my favorite part. I really work on the product side. Think about strategically what you can do, how you can lead a team to generate the best outcome for the company. And on top of that there's also lots of PR and also vendors. If you work with other vendors creating ABCD products such as when we create the edge computing product, we work with Amazon, Microsoft, so you do lots of external stakeholder management. We also hired like McKinsey, consultant part of the process. And you interface with them. Yeah, that's in general what I did as a director product.
- [91:49]
A
Are you earning more now than you were as a director of product?
- [91:53]
B
Great question. I don't like to talk about revenue. I like to talk about roughly what does mean in terms of money for other people? Because I believe that money is just one way it's a material, how we use it right. And what we are doing right now, what is that we are actually giving away the money we make from AIPM Bootcamp and also PM Accelerator to kids from low income families this summer through AIPM Bootcamp. Because what I discovered that. What I discovered is that happiness and also your balance and your health is something cannot be replaced by anything. And when I started teaching PM accelerator I am only making my first year I believe only make like 1/3 of my direct director salary. Actually the second year, 1/3 the first year. I only make $900. The second year maybe a little bit. And so I'm growing. Before I quit my job, before I quit my director job, I'm only making 1/3 of my director salary at the time. Now after my quit, after I quit, we started grow our our coaching businesses. So therefore the success behind it and also was looking for behind it is more about how to really find your true self and also the satisfaction you have in your life. I always wanted to create my startup, sorry my nonprofit. It was always something. Before I quit my director job. We always donate to nonprofit. Now I don't even believe that like money is a measurement to see how great you are in terms of growing yourself as a human. So Therefore and also 2025, our goal of the company is actually it's not about the revenue whatever. It's more about the impact we can make. That's why for AIP and Boot camp it's okay. We have smaller cohorts. So that's what push less on marketing. We push more in terms of helping our students create the best product. The better the product it is, the better the product can serve people and more people, millions people can impact using the product we created outside of AIPM Bootcamp. So that's where the directions I wanna go for 2025.
- [94:31]
A
And of the earnings that you do have today, can you share the pie chart in terms of like percentages? Like how much of it's PM career accelerator? How much of it is one on one? Much of it is YouTube.
- [94:42]
B
Great question. I would say actually majority still PMA and the AIPM Bootcamp start to catch up. Because we only have two cohort right now we're doing third cohort. Is anybody interesting Launching your own AI product and getting hands on experience. Feel free to go to our website pmxcetera IO and learn more. Right now, majority is still coming from the PMA program. The main program prime manager accelerator program. And AI is catching up. So I also and YouTube little bit which is Turned on ads recently. We didn't monetize our YouTube channel for like four years. It's crazy. I should have done that earlier. Yeah, I didn't monetize earlier. It just wasn't a priority. So I didn't rethink the far, the many, many opportunities I missed actually. Because as I mentioned, um, I had. My life is so stressed with two kids, relationship with my husband, trying to manage everything. I didn't have time to do everything I should have been doing. Literally only only recently turn on the YouTube ads. Didn't really do it for four years, which, which I missed out of I should. And the membership as well. We didn't do anything like that. I still haven't done it yet, which I need to turn on. Yeah. That's why I need to have a New Year's resolution, focus on comedy so that I'm happier and talk about all those challenges in a funny way. As a new mom, I think social media really it was giving a lot of very interesting, like misconceptions. People only tell you the best part of your life. Or when you work out in the gym, when you lose £200, talk about others. How about this? When you gained like five pounds, whatever. Nobody talks about it. You have perfect baby, you show it. Your baby get fever. Like my baby. Like as we talked about earlier, we went to Boston for two weeks holidays. My baby got fever. She puke in her crib at night. It is heartbreaking for moms. But social media only show the good part and make other people feel so depressed. At least made me so feel so depressing. But I'm still a good mom. What's going on? Maybe I should like spend even more time with my kids. Made me really doubt my decisions the whole time. So that's why I think is a way for everybody to reflect, start to think about what's most important things for you for your life as well. Which I also deeply believe that like giving back to the community building nonprofit is one of the best way for. For myself to become happier as well. So that's why it's a. It's a different perspective for me to do things and measure success nowadays.
- [97:39]
A
That is where I wanted to go more deeply because I think a lot of people resonate with you, which is that, you know, it's not all roses. It's hard having two young kids. How do you. What are your personal, you know, wins in that space on balancing work and life?
- [97:56]
B
To be frank, I don't have wings. That's why I do comedy. But it's fine. I don't have wings, but I'm just trying to do it. I think that different seasons in your life that you prioritize different things.
- [98:13]
A
We're gonna move into the lightning round. Are you ready?
- [98:15]
B
Mm.
- [98:16]
A
What's the most underrated product management skill?
- [98:23]
B
Public speaking skills?
- [98:27]
A
What's your favorite interview question of PM candidates?
- [98:36]
B
What's your favorite product that's not digital?
- [98:41]
A
What's the most painful product mistake you made in your career?
- [98:49]
B
Didn't have a mentor earlier in my career.
- [98:54]
A
What's your most memorable product launch?
- [98:58]
B
Smart Cities and Helping cities to reduce car crashes in 2016 and received the mayor's best award in 2017.
- [99:08]
A
Very cool. Who's the product leader you most admire and why?
- [99:14]
B
Actually, I really admire Terry Sander and he was my ex director of product at Verizon earlier in my very early career. I really, really admire him even if he doesn't work for faang company. I know everyone just like doing the fan company stuff but I really admire him was because he is a great motivator. He really energized me energize everybody in the team. He's a great storyteller. He really care about the company and the individual employee. Every time we talk to you, he feels like you are the only person in his life looking into you and nothing exists around him. He's a great leader. I really deeply admire him. Actually I'm going to bring him to my insider podcast as well.
- [100:00]
A
Very cool. What's the book that most influenced your product thinking?
- [100:04]
B
I have a book I like who Moved my Cheese? It's more about like change my life thinking, not product thinking but I like that book who Moved my Cheese.
- [100:13]
A
Very cute book. What advice would you give yourself if you could rewind to the day you started as a product manager?
- [100:21]
B
Get a mentor early and make fewer mistakes.
- [100:25]
A
What bold prediction do you have about the future of product management?
- [100:29]
B
Lots of jobs are replaced by AI. Part of product management will be leveraged by AI and there will be fewer product managers out there. There will definitely fewer designer, fewer software developers. The entire job market will be shrinked but potentially will generate new job related to AI. But there are fewer of us moving forward.
- [100:52]
A
What's a tool you couldn't live without?
- [100:54]
B
Software tool Waze.
- [100:56]
A
Where can people find you online and how can they help you?
- [101:00]
B
You can find me by searching Dr. Nancy Lee through all social media, YouTube, LinkedIn, TikTok and Instagram. If you want to DM me, ask me any question, go to LinkedIn and for DM majority of our free training is on YouTube. Of course. Our blog post is on my website, pmxcelerator IO Dr. Nancy Lee it's been
- [101:24]
A
a pleasure collaborating once again. I'm sure we'll do more. Thank you so much.
- [101:29]
B
Thank you for having me. Thank you Akash.
- [101:32]
A
Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Also, please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review as that really helps other listeners find out about the podcast. You can find all the past episodes or learn more about the show at product-growth.com See you in the next episode.