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Writer's pictureHarshal

Announcing Webinar: Getting your First PM Job in 2021

Updated: Apr 28, 2023

Happy New Year 2021! This is an announcement-style article about an upcoming talk and related upcoming articles; this article is not information-heavy. To see the information related to this talk, go to the post-talk details here.


Product School had recently reached out to request me to give a talk to their audience. Glad to have the opportunity, I worked with PS to shortlist topics and decided to give a talk about learning about Product Management and getting a Product Manager role.


Logo of Product School


I found the overall process of working together interesting and will write about that as well another time.


Context for the topic and content


There are about 1,770,000,000 results on Google for the phrase “how to get a Product Manager job”, so no doubt there are several resources out there. While struggling to find my first PM job back in 2016, I experimented and build job hunt frameworks that I tested in the real-world. I had the opportunity to share the learnings with 50+ PM aspirants and collate feedback on the intersection of the tips that helped and the tips that were novel. I’m sharing these tips via a talk about the job hunt for finding your first Product Management role.


Expected takeaways from the talk


Main Takeaways:

  • Treating the PM job search process as a marketing funnel helps provides an organized approach to chaos and reduces the feeling of uncertainty

  • Optimizing each part of the funnel keeping conversion and return on effort in mind helps focus on the levers you can control

  • In the application phase, prioritizing your search with a ranked list of companies and champions, optimizing your applications to have a high volume, and obtaining referrals from champions in favored companies.

  • In the interviewing phase, building a relationship over chats by researching the person, showing your value addition to the company, and practicing to show organized innovation in case questions in interviews.

I built a word cloud based on my slides and speaker notes and this is what I found:


Illustration of a flag contains expected takeaways from the talk

What is the content?


I’ve described the PM job hunt as a process (think of a marketing funnel). I’ve shared a few tips to improve each part of the job hunt. Here are the steps in the process I’ve shared tips for:

Image of steps in the process

  1. List of target companies

  2. People (a.k.a Champions) list

  3. Outreach to potential champions in target companies

  4. Informational interviews

  5. Resume, cover letter

  6. Job post Search

  7. Request referral

  8. Recruiter interviews, behavioral interview Q preparations

  9. Case interview Q preparations

  10. Preparations about the company and on the interviewers

  11. Functional (PM) interview Q preparations

How does the talk fit with my articles?


Each slide I will present is significantly summarized to the “what” for the sake of brevity. I have kept aside the “why” and “how”. The “why” and the “how” on each topic would help anyone searching for another PM job (including PM aspirants) connect the dots between my suggestion and their situation. So, I might expand each section of the presentation into its own article in 2021.


My articles for 2021 would not just be about job hunt… Upcoming articles will have some lifehacks and continue to highlight Product Management learnings such as understanding customer behaviors, identifying KPIs, or developing skills on the job.


How to sign up for the talk?


banner contains Harshal Patil photo, twilio logo, Product school logo, webinar and getting your first PM job in 2021 by senior twilio PM written on it

One can register for the talk on Product School’s Eventbrite here


Have feedback on the talk?


Just reply to this email and I’ll consider your suggestions to amend the talk to make it most valuable to the audience.


During the talk, I will share a Slido for questions from the audience.


Post-talk details


You can see see the recording of the talk, slides, speaker notes, etc. here.

Originally published at https://harshalpatil.substack.com on Jan 1, 2021

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