Hey YouTube, what's up? My name is Amara Anibo and welcome to my channel. In today's video, we are talking about a topic that is near and dear to my heart and that is product management. I didn't understand or even find out about product management until about three, four years ago when I started interning at Microsoft.
I was a whole computer science major in college and didn't even know that PMing was a viable option. I am now a product manager at Microsoft for Mixed Reality and I wanted to make this video because I feel like product management is like a black box. So you know about it, you hear about it, you know it's there, but you don't really know what's inside.
You don't know really what it entails and I wanted to make this video to just create more clarity around the PM discipline but also give you extremely helpful tips to help you land your first product management role. This video is for anyone and everyone who's interested in product management. Whether you are a college student, you are early in your career, you are in the middle of your career trying to make a transition, all of these tips will be applicable to you. And while you're at it, do you go favor, don't be shy, come like, comment, subscribe, you know the drill.
Leave a comment down below if you want to see more PM content and I'll do my best to get to your suggestion and make that video. So with all that being said, let's get into the content. Before we get into tips to land your first PM role, I think it's really important to talk about what a PM is. And I often hear this phrase used to describe what a PM does.
Disclaimer, it's not my favorite. And the phrase goes something like this. The PM is the CEO of the...
I cringe. I cry. I cry inside because I don't think that that is the most comprehensive version of what a PM does. I think there's a better analogy to describe exactly what a PM does.
And the analogy that I like to use is that the PM is the conductor of the orchestra. So when you think of a conductor of an orchestra, it is their responsibility to communicate through gestures that are so transparent to the orchestra in order for the orchestra to play music to the audience. Let's take a step back, let's decipher, let's distill.
Okay so I'm gonna point out the correlation in this analogy of what a PM does and what a conductor does. So as a conductor it's your responsibility to look at the music from the composer. and then decipher and understand that music. Similar to what a PM does, it's the PM's job to understand customer signal, signal from the business and decipher that. The next part is that the conductor communicates to the orchestra the music they need to play through the gestures.
So let's take a step back and analyze that from the PM's perspective. These engineers and designers and other people you are working with are the musicians and it's your responsibility as a PM to communicate with them about the vision of the music that needs to be carried out and this is done through gestures. The conductor uses gestures that are so transparent that the orchestra understands how to play out that music and that final sound, that music is the product, the program, the project, whatever it is that you as a PM are spearheading and it's important to note that it's the PM is not the one making the music, but the PM is responsible for facilitating the process and making sure that the final product comes together.
So that is essentially what a PM does. Being a PM means different things depending on which company you go to. So there's product managers, there's project managers, there's program managers, and those can vary slightly or greatly depending on where you're at. But make sure when you're looking at PM roles that you understand. What type of PM you will be and what your responsibility is.
The next topic I want to get into is technical knowledge. Is it necessary? This is a question that I get a lot from people who are interested in becoming a PM and I'm going to answer with a scientist's favorite answer.
It depends. It depends on the type of PM role that you are going for. However, I will say this. It never hurts to have technical knowledge and as a PM because it's your job to understand customer and business signal you need to understand that through looking at the data and so what technical knowledge allows you to do is to pull from that data in order to validate your hypothesis and assumptions that you are making.
Another reason I would recommend to strengthen your technical knowledge is the fact that you will be working with engineers who are very technical and you want to be able to not only communicate to them your vision for the product but also be able to understand what it is that they need from you and maybe struggles that are going on with their current technologies and without technical knowledge it's really difficult to do that so i just don't think technical knowledge hurts in this case at all i would definitely recommend learning some python or sql to learn how to do some queries and be able to pull data when you need it. And it also will help you communicate effectively with your engineers. Now, let's get into the reason why you're here.
To get these tips on how to land your next PM role. I have received these tips from people who have worked in industry for years, from people at Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Venmo, a bunch of talented PMs, and these tips have served me so well and have helped me land other PM offers outside of Microsoft. So, let's get started with tip number one.
Tip number one. Build something. Anything. And the reason why you want to be able to do this is because as a PM, your role is to build something from the ground up. And you want to be able to identify a problem and solve for it.
And what better way to do that than by building your own product? Now, I'm not saying that you need to be the next Mark Zuckerberg, but I am saying that you need to think about a problem that you encounter on a daily basis or you just noticed within your life and you want to solve for it. This can be through the means of a digital product, a YouTube channel.
It could be a physical product. It can be an app. Whatever it is in your life, identify a problem and solve for it.
This will give you great experience to talk about in your interviews. And it will also help you to understand your pitfalls and blind spots when you are making products and be able to improve on those weaknesses and turn them into your strengths. Tip number two. Be more critical of the products that you use daily.
I'm talking about your toothbrush, to the pillow you sleep on, to the cup that you drink out of, everything. You want to start analyzing and being more critical of the products around you. You need to ask yourself, what makes this a good product?
What makes this a bad product? How can this product be improved? If I were to use this product with different materials, what would it look like? You want to just start asking yourself so many questions about products because... As a PM, it is your job to take assumptions and validate those assumptions, right?
But you only start with assumptions by questioning those things. By learning how to question the things around you, it'll make you understand what goes into a good product. Why do I love my Apple Watch so much?
Why do I love Apple Pay? Why can't I stop listening to Spotify? You want to understand those things really well, why you love certain products, or even why you make... Dislike certain products. Whatever it is, you want to have a strong opinion about the products that you have around you.
I promise you that this skill will help you in PM interviews because it will help you not only analyze these products, but also be critical of them enough to know how to improve them. The last and final tip is to learn how to communicate and distill information concisely. Y'all, this is a hard one.
I'm not going to lie. I struggle with this one. a lot of times and I'm still learning how to do this but the reason why this is so important is because as a PM you are communicating with a lot of different stakeholders and you want to make sure that you're doing so concisely.
As a PM your number one job is to create clarity and it's really difficult to create clarity when you're rambling on at length about something that can be explained concisely. The best way to practice this skill is to listen to audiobooks, podcasts, YouTube videos. whatever form of media you prefer, and create a one minute summary of it. Distill that information into one minute and try to get it as concise as possible.
You want to just start practicing how to communicate information concisely and get straight to the point. I hope those tips were super helpful and I know they're going to help you land your next PM role, but this video would not be complete if I did not give you resources that will also help you prepare for your interviews. I want to talk about some resources that helped me land my PM role at Microsoft and get other PM offers. So let's talk about number one.
That is PM books. There are some great books out there about the PM discipline. I want to recommend two of them. Number one being Cracking the PM Interview. This is like a holy grail.
Like those cracking the whatever type of books, holy grail in the tech industry. And it really goes through the methods that you should use in. your PM interviews and how to answer certain types of questions.
I think it's really helpful. Another book that I would totally recommend that I'm reading right now is called The Sacred Seven and it's great because it talks about the seven metrics that a PM should use to make good product decisions. And the reason why I love this book is because it uses a lot of case studies. I think oftentimes when people are preparing for PM interviews they overlook case studies but case studies are so important because they help you provide evidence to your point.
So do not overlook case studies. Definitely check out those two books if you are interested in reading and learning more about the PM discipline. The next resource I would recommend is LinkedIn. LinkedIn is your best friend. It's your homie.
Y'all are tight. Like y'all are like this. Y'all are like this during this process because LinkedIn helps so much with career networking. And if you don't have a LinkedIn, I'm gonna need you to pause this video, pause the video.
Open a tab, open a tab and go make a LinkedIn account because LinkedIn is so helpful with networking for career opportunities. And if you want to learn more about the PM discipline, what better way than to connect with other PMs? You can even cold message people and say, Hey, you know, I'm really interested in your career. I would love to learn more. Can I set up a 30 minute coffee chat for us and really get to learn more about the PM discipline through actually hearing about it from someone.
in the industry. So I would definitely recommend utilize LinkedIn, utilize your LinkedIn network, and just, it's your homie. I'm telling you, like, I'm telling you this, you and LinkedIn, you, LinkedIn, this, that's what it should be. The third and final resource that I believe everyone should check out are events and webinars online.
These are so helpful. I know, for example, there's this organization called The Product School, and they put on some online webinars and events, and they have people who are PMs across the industry actually come in and talk about their experience. And as I said before, it's similar to LinkedIn in a way that you are learning about a PM's experience straight from the mouth and experience.
of the PM themselves and what better way to learn than the person who is doing it, right? So I think events and webinars are super helpful. You can sign up for them.
They're usually free. There's also some great videos on YouTube that walk through the PM interview process, the question loops, and I would also highly, highly recommend those. So with all of that being said, with all of that information out there, do with it as you wish. Go!
Go on, go get your PM job, go secure the bag. That's what we're here for. I am so glad that you watched this video.
Thanks for sticking all the way through. I really appreciate your support. Reading the comments literally makes my day.
And don't forget to, you know, subscribe if you want to see more content. I'll see you in the next video. Bye.