Do any alumni of one of your former jobs work there? by integrating with Salesforce data platform (, ) and build a roadmap to grow engagement by 20% (. Example question: Youre the PM for Facebook Dating. STAR is fine for interviews but is bad advice for resumes. Rather than give you high-level guidance on each interview, Ill share my advice and link you to more detailed guides, videos and resources to go deep on specific areas. Associate product manager salaries can vary dramatically based on physical location, industry, and the maturity of the company. Whats something you have built or created outside of work? Dont wait until applications open to start preparing. Alignment with job criteria: Just as your resume aims to qualify you for every part of the job description, recruiters may look to confirm that you meet the job requirements on the phone screen. Meta's interview process is known to be highly competitive, given its prominent position in the tech ecosystem. This may have been overkill, but I knew that getting an interview meant I was a serious contender for one of the roles. Examples include. Dont assume that you dont belong in this industry because of your background, skin colour, location or native language. Prioritize based on explicit is explicitly defining the criteria that you will make your decision on. Im a computer science student at USC and interned as a PM at Walmart this summer. Preparing early is what sets strong candidates apart. This is key for understanding the rubric youre being evaluated by, what great answers look like and strategies for answering PM questions. Solved: It baffles me how Meta App Manager just randomly starts consuming nm data. Something notable about product recruiting at Meta compared to other tech giants such as Google and Microsoft is that Meta doesnt require its PMs to come from a technical background. youve secured a referral and/or you have incredible experience). Unlock a 23-minute video on how to perfectly answer the most common Facebook PM execution questions. This is because there are often two levels of results: the outcome of your action and the impact of this outcome. Heres a sample video featuring RPM alum Stephen Song: Many of the people I know who received Meta RPM offers have completed the Flagship Meta PM Interview Course. Create brainstorm situations for yourself and push yourself to identify all of the potential. Product Manager, Meta's in-house incubator (Past Yelp, Yahoo, FindAWay). Increase your chances of an interview by using percentages and numbers in your resume's bullet points. Our Associate Product Manager will work with the Product Manager to deliver the best product experience to our end users. In this situation, just search Product Managers at the company youre looking for on LinkedIn. When Raina started looking for opportunities to work in product full time as a recent graduate. - Learn a simplified version of project management to determine how to effectively drive progress amongst several stakeholders. Product Sense: This interview will test if you can turn a big ambiguous problem space into a great product. Dont disqualify yourself because you feel like you dont belong in this program or tech in general. What instructions should I keep in mind while taking the Associate Product Management Test? It depends greatly on how the product organization is structured. - a great crash course on how strategy is created for products, - learn how to choose the right metrics using analytical thinking, This is where hard skills come in. Here's how to get into an associate product manager program at a tech company. When I first started in product management, I had no idea what associate product managers were, and how they fit into the broader career trajectory for PMs. If you want more advice on building hard skills, I wrote a guide on this exact topic. Heres a sample video: How did you recommend preparing for PM interviews such as Facebooks analytical thinking and product sense rounds? With this course, you can take luck out of the equation for getting your dream PM job at Meta! But that's not all. They determine your fit for the role based on your resume and opening messages. On a resume, they are a great way to fill in your skills gap. Key idea: The right experience is in alignment with the PM job requirements. The best way to do this is to look for buckets of mutually-exclusive-collectively-exhaustive (MECE) options. If youve read the full guide, youll now be better equipped to: Build all the skills you need to get a PM interview, Have a killer resume that will get you noticed, Crush the interviews and land a job offer (or two, or three). Product Alliance's courses feel like a collaboration between Harvard & HBO. One interview will evaluate your product sense, while the other will test your execution skills. Facebook Product Sense Interview (free): A helpful and comprehensive guide! Meta's mission is to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together. But if you feel like you could benefit from improving your communication, Id pick up a free month of LinkedIn Learning and take one of the following courses, Communicating with Confidence (free trial), Communication for Product Managers (free trial). This comes down to concretely defining priorities and goals. I made a Resume Kit with all of the templates, advanced strategies and resources I wish I had when applying for product roles. Copyright 2022 Product HQ, All Rights Reserved. Use this to highlight soft skills and hard skills (more details in Part 2). Ive attached my resume. Key question of the interview: How do you take an ambiguous problem space and turn it into a creative solution? In practice, though, successful candidates often have experience in strategy, analytics, data, design, engineering, consulting or finance. : People are incentivized to refer strong candidates. These are small projects that you can ideally do on a weekend that help you try a new tool, practise a new skill or perhaps earn some extra cash. Love podcasts or audiobooks? For starters, a product manager is tasked with leading a cross-functional team that develops or improves a product, while dictating its strategy, roadmap and features. Key idea: If you have gaps in your skillset, take a short course. In these instances, hiring an associate product manager makes sense from an output and a budgetary perspective. There are a handful of associate product manager programs out there: Metas Rotational Product Manager Program, Googles Associate Product Manager Program, LinkedIns Associate Product Manager Program, Atlassians Associate Product Manager Program. Bad bullet point: Managed various social media channels for a multinational firm by being proactive, hard-working and excellent at communication. User groups: do we focus on teens or adults? If you can practice one thing, Id prioritize your communication. Better bullet point: Led team of 3 (2 marketers, 1 engineer) to execute a referral program for a SaaS project, leading to $50,000 in new revenue and 120 new customers. Additionally, you can play around with the various filters available, such as industry, company size, experience level, and physical location. These PMs can analyze how you interview and provide tons of useful tips, tricks, and advice from the perspective of an actual interviewer. This is a long guide (25 pages!!) Once youve built a product, drive traffic, get users and respond to their feedback. This is where hard skills come in. Understanding the interviews: read and learn what the interviews look like. Instead, your list may include: Leadership: Led hockey team, led fundraising campaign at the food bank, led a team of marketers for a marketing campaign, Project management: managed tasks for an engineering project, organized freelance calendar, Strategy & Vision: build a go-to-market plan for Class 454, and established a charter for a volunteer group, Analytical Thinking: did a research project for undergraduate thesis, built financial models. "People don't know if product management is right for them until they try," Matthews said. You need to build the right experiences, make a killer resume and network to be a part of the 3%. Structures like these are very common parts of product management interviews. With an understanding of the interview structure and practice in breaking down problems, brainstorming and prioritization, youre ready to do mock interviews. The product development framework that every Meta PM is taught during PM Bootcamp for new hires at Meta is Understand, Identify, Execute which means: While this framework is taught once you join the company, the PM hiring committee at Meta is looking for candidates who intuitively use some variant of this framework already. Can someone with absolutely no tech background get hired as an RPM? What this means is that the PM role at Meta is much more product strategy orientated rather than technical project management focused. These programs, which generally last for a year to 21 months, can fast-track a budding career, while also providing a lucrative salary: Data from the career site Glassdoor suggests that Google pays its APM participants as much as $158,000, while Meta is said to pay as much as $139,000. It's meant to present you as a wholesome candidate by showcasing your relevant accomplishments and should be tailored specifically to the particular product manager / associate position you're applying to. Catalogue all of the experiences that you have related to these soft skills in a document. I was one of ~15 people to join Facebooks (now Metas) Rotational Product Manager program during the summer of 2019. Here are some great resources for interviews at Google like this: Google APM Interview Guide (free) a great resource with example questions, interview strategies and Google specific tips, PM Estimation Interview Guide (free): a good breakdown with strategies on doing execution interviews, Google PM Estimation Interview (free): a great mock that covers this question type. Key idea: Practice brainstorming for every possible axis ahead of time. ? 100%. There are also specific resources for several popular APM companies like Google, Meta, Uber and more. After these levels, it's Product Manager 1, 2, and 3 In Facebook/Meta, for instance, they refer to their entry-level PM position as RPM or Rotational Product Manager. ). Dont beat around the bush and please dont ask to pick your brain or a virtual coffee chat. Associate Product Manager Intern. Can you adjust your leadership style to adapt to the needs of different people? We're looking for Associate Product Managers (APMs) to help us manage delivery of features across Product, Design, Engineering, and Customer Success. Oops! is offering readers of this guide 1 free month to learn all the product, design and technical skills youre missing. We also bonded because all of us were equally smart, ambitious and had similar career goals. I didnt want to leave anything to chance. This is the third and arguably most challenging framework to master. Id love to interview for Facebooks RPM program, would you be open to referring me? They determine your fit for the role based on your resume and opening messages. Associate product manager responsibilities include many of the responsibilities that product managers have, such as: In some organizations, associate product managers do not directly work with any engineers for product development. As a bonus, I shared this project with a Research Scientist at Spotify and it helped me build a great relationship (while developing my skills). You may need to decide between. Practice a ton! (a site with awesome, free datasets). Bucket 1: Factors external to the company, Bucket 2: Factors internal to the company. Thank you, Will. I havent done them all, so Ill share my experience and link to some great resources from. I used their resources when applying for jobs and enjoyed the active practice. : Your experiences dont matter once you get to the interview stage; its now all about performance. When Raina started looking for opportunities to work in product full time as a recent graduate, she found that most product-manager positions were for workers with more experience. Key question of the interview: Does this person meet the job requirements? Heres my general advice: your main focus needs to be on getting an interview. But its also the most important. With Product Alliance, I was able to ace multiple FAANG interview loops and land offers at Amazon as a Principal PM Manager and Google as a L6 PM on GCP. Meta is a company that is known for often asking interview questions that pertain to Meta products. They'll gather feedback from test groups, prioritize product benefits, and fine-tune the design until the results are picture-perfect. You can check it out here if youd like. Lets use my own experience as an example. This is the best course on the market for product veterans preparing for senior PM interviews. Heres one of those bullet points: Tumblr HackDay Led a team of 3 (2 engineers, 1 data scientist) to build a new Tumblr mobile interface for casual users; won 4th place across the entire company (40+ competing teams). At the end of the day, remember that you should keep two goals as your highest priorities as an associate product manager: As long as you achieve both goals you will naturally be given new opportunities! Metrics: do we focus on retention, engagement or monetization? Fill in the gaps with side projects. Ask for a referral: be direct and ask for a referral, not a coffee chat or a call. Start now specifically by learning the right skills, building an effective resume and getting referrals. Mock Interview from a Facebook PM (free): A former colleague did a great mock interview. The preparation for this role is very similar to the preparation youd need for a full product manager role. If you want to stay in touch, follow me on Twitter and/or LinkedIn! What are all the metrics we may want to track? The most important of these is the right resume as this is how youll be evaluated. It all depends on your background: Highlight all the technical skills you have. Meta hires approximately 200 PMs across their Menlo Park, San Francisco, Seattle, New York City, Boston, Tel Aviv and London offices however they receive north of 50,000 applications each year. However, if youre looking for more concrete numbers, you can check out Glassdoors salary calculator for associate product managers. If you are short on time or just looking for a summary of all the key company info ranging from company financials to the latest publicly known product strategy roadmap, Product Alliance provides all that and much more for all the top tech companies. : theres a big community for mock interviews on Rocketblocks -- but they also have coaches and experiences PMs you can interview with too! Facebooks Underrated Products and Big Bets: Dating, AR/VR, Watch, Shops, Unlock more premium Meta PM interview videos for free. This will make navigating the ambiguity much simpler. Having a small group of people allowed us to get to know everyone individually and have intimate conversations that were not performative. We are the Product Management Team. APM/RPM programs are no different. Programs vary by company, but the majority of them are created with a rotational program. This community thrived because anyone could reach out and you would be excited to speak with and learn from them. Remove filler or vague words (common culprits: various, managing, impact). : Phone screens are all about strong communication and how aligned you are with the job description. The key here is to define the criteria that you will use to make the decision and then measure your options against that criteria. After all, in product management, experience is the fastest way to learn. Key idea: Use RACR (results, action, context, results) to frame your experience bullet points. In contrast, the Leadership & Drive interview focuses on your past experiences and is meant to help assess if you can effectively lead and inspire a product team, deal with conflict, facilitate communication, etc. If you feel like you need this, dont disqualify yourself by not applying. Product Sense Rubric (paywall): The things that interviewers are looking for during product sense interviews. Each company has their own culture and way of building products. Is this program only for recent graduates? Key idea: Dont prepare for interviews until you are at least 80% sure that you will get an interview. Otherwise, skip ahead. Once APMs graduate from the program, they can get placed into a more permanent position at the company if there's an open role. That level of conviction leads to a pretty low offer rate so I highly recommend studying and practicing as much as possible! In other organizations, APMs join sprint rituals with the product manager that they are associated with. Check out. I learned a ton about computer science and featured this course prominently on my resume. You can spot the com.Meta.appmanager on your android by navigating to settings>apps>system app section. Here are some suggested tutorials: Programming Foundations: Real-World Examples - I did this course while I was in university! : This is the most critical part of the interviewing process. Being a great interviewee is useless if you dont get an interview! We need more diverse thoughts and people in our industry if we want to continue to change the world for the positive. I think a pretty big difference at Meta is you do 3 six month rotations instead. Complete a six-month evaluation process to gain feedback and develop a detailed action plan for what you need to accomplish in order to become a Product Manager. Getting your first product management job is hard. These are the skills that youve likely developed from past jobs, school or life experience. Metas 10 Year Product Roadmap and Strategy, The Secret Playbook for Mastering the Meta Execution Interview, How Meta PM Interviews Differ From The Rest Of FAANG. Instead, by heading to a startup and demonstrating impact there, you may wind up learning a lot more and positioning yourself better. Being a great interviewee is useless if you dont get an interview! What do you build next? These programs are transformative -- both for your personal learning and your socioeconomic standing. These programs target new graduates or people with little product experience to train them. Daily active usage of Facebook Dating dropped 25% overnight. The only way to do them well is to practice (the recommended resource has tons of drills to do this). Associate product manager: , , , , , . When an organization is mature enough, itll start focusing on how to capture talent early on. The program is meant for relatively early career stage PMs. They should also show they have the skills to solve confusing problems and get a group of people motivated to complete their tasks. Why is this better? Example question: how many Google Maps users are in New York City? Note these down and aim to fill them in with projects (more on this below). How to become a Product Manager from a Developer, How to Turbo Charge Your Next 360 Review Cycle, 10 Crucial B2B PIM Challenges That Need Your Attention Right Away. This is why product management continues to grow in influence and popularity. The skills necessary to succeed as a product manager include soft skills and hard skills. Thus Meta PMs are able to build strong relationships across engineering, design, data science, UX research, content strategy, legal and more to drive impact. Common mistakes I see: They dont personalize their message to the person they reach out to, They have spelling or grammar mistakes in their message (shocking, I know), If they do, their resume is not strong and does not highlight relevant experiences, They do not explain why they are perfect for the role. Imagine you are testing a new algorithm match suggestions you show in Facebook Dating. Use the education section to highlight the points from your degree that are most relevant to the role. The trick is that people feel that they cant demonstrate product management skills without having a previous role in the product. How to write a Associate Product Manager resume experience section. Ive seen product analysts, engineers, designers, product marketing managers, and even customer support managers become full-time product managers. However, seeing exactly what a perfect answer looks like, from body language to whiteboarding structure and everything in between is an absolute gamechanger. Figma Essential Training: The Basics - Figma is the premier design tool for UX designers. This is a great and helpful post. Initial phone screen with a recruiter. : Each program has various forms of mentorship. I always enjoyed conducting this interview -- its much more creative and interesting than some of the others! While good PMs are able to analyze problems from this lens, great PMs can bring all their cross-functional peers along the journey as well and help them collectively understand the problem, identify the right solution, and perfectly execute that solution. Trust me when I say they blow Cracking the PM Interview and Decode and Conquer out of the water. When I first started in product management, I had no idea what associate product managers were, and how they fit into the broader career trajectory for PMs. In our Flagship Meta PM Interview course, youll start off by learning Metas strategy between now and 2030 for the core app, Instagram, Whatsapp, and more. Ideally, youll have experience in all three. Highest ROI Resource: LinkedIn Learning, Execution / Metrics (Facebook, Lyft, Google), Product Sense / Product Design (Facebook, LinkedIn, Lyft, Uber, Google). Opens the Fishbowl by Glassdoor site in a new window. I did this exact process with a dataset from Spotify to answer a research question. for great examples of doing constructive app critiques. Each of them has the potential to change the trajectory of your personal and professional life. In other cases, organizations may find that their existing PMs dont have enough bandwidth, but that filling an additional product management role is overkill. is an excellent resource to practice key frameworks for product interviews. People are incentivized to refer strong candidates. Yes, the result is twice on purpose. Tell me about a time when you didn't have the resources to get something done but got it done anyway. after 2 years or after 3 years. do I need to code)? Key idea: People are incentivized to refer strong candidates. Once youve built a product, drive traffic, get users and respond to their feedback. Dont include filler words, vague statements or fancy visuals. Lets focus first on soft skills. Having watched some of their videos myself, I was blown away by the quality of their answers (and I am not just saying that because I am friends with some of the instructors). To help you out, here are some areas that might fit into these categories: Engineering: coding, systems design, APIs, scripts, building programs, Design: wireframes, interface design, prototyping, graphic design, user research, Data: SQL, statistical analysis, experimentation, survey design, data collection. While well get into how to frame this on your resume in a future section, its important to map out all of your experiences that map to one of these attributes. They can also be involved with the marketing, forecasting, profit and losses of the product. I think a pretty big difference at Meta is you do 3 six month rotations instead. Focus all your time on getting the right experiences, making the perfect resume and getting referrals until then. (paywall): The things that interviewers are looking for during product sense interviews. : Just as your resume aims to qualify you for every part of the job description, recruiters may look to confirm that you meet the job requirements on the phone screen. If you need more help on your experience bullet points, I added 40+ strong examples from PM resumes Ive seen to the, Led a team of 3 (2 engineers, 1 data scientist) to build a new Tumblr mobile interface for casual users; won 4th place across the entire company (40+ competing teams). (free): two friends of mine wrote a great guide for Execution interviews. If an experience isnt relevant, take it off your resume. Theres a reason Meta named its program RPM rather than APM. Id personally check out tutorials on NoCodeMba. When brainstorming during an interview, youll remember some of the best ones. Please, I was one of ~15 people to join Facebooks (now Metas), during the summer of 2019. "One of the compliments I got when recruiting for my next job was, 'Wow, for someone who has been a product manager for a couple of years, you are able to grasp problems and thrive in ambiguity quickly," Raina said. Dont beat around the bush and please dont ask to pick your brain or a virtual coffee chat. Analyzing the Research Data: The Associate Product Manager analyzes the collected market metrics and synthesizes the market research data to define the new product features. Note that just because an associate product manager program is famous or prestigious doesnt mean that its the best fit for you! First-class Associate Product Managers are industry experts who identify new product features that provide businesses with a competitive edge. : Behavioral interviews are 50% strong communication. As an intern for an Associate Product Manager rather than a more senior PM, you'll basically do the same work and get the same experience, but with a little less impact. : breaking down ambiguous problems into actionable pieces, : creatively think of many options given an ambiguous prompt, : choose the best option amongst a series of reasonable ones. : If you have gaps in your skillset, take a short course. The product manager may also manage the team working on the product. There are tons of drills, technical skill reviews and product sense exercises to choose from at a reasonable price. Your experiences dont matter once you get to the interview stage; its now all about performance. If youre at the interview stage, investing in the right resources will have a large impact on your likelihood of landing the job. What pain points do these user groups have? Claim your free month here. Here's what to expect going in. Tim Matthews, a lead product manager at Meta, recommends joining meetups around product management like ProductTank and Silicon Valley Product Group so people can talk to working product managers and learn more about their job. The program is looking for people with the skills to be successful (eg. If youre looking to learn more via video, then watch below. I made this kit because Ive seen firsthand how a strong resume can change lives. , or result, action, context and result. But its harder to claim that you have a hard skill like design, analytics or programming. Heres an example using a strong PM bullet point. ) Associate Product Manager programs are entry-level jobs for people looking to start their careers in product management. These conversations were. As an APM, one of your primary responsibilities will be to conduct market research. High-Stakes Communication - Spend an hour improving one of the most important skills of your career - communicating effectively. "I was not sure what I concretely wanted to do every day.". Analytical Thinking: This interview will put you in the shoes of a Facebook PM and force you to evaluate different trade-offs, figure out the right metric to track, remove roadblocks for your team etc. Strong opening messages contain four things: A personal connection: include a message to endear the connection to you. Its uncanny how many of these questions I got asked during my actual interviews. I spent years refining the art of creating good experience bullet points. The exception is if you are confident youll get an interview (e.g. If you dont have experienced PMs in your network who can extensively mock interview you, I think the next best thing, or perhaps even better, is watching senior PMs from top companies be mock interviewed and then evaluated by other senior PMs to break down exactly what a 10/10 answer looks like. A sentence on your strong background: use one sentence to communicate why youre a good fit for the job. We are looking for an experienced Associate Product Manager to participate in the creation of new products and features, from the idea stage to launch. (free): A helpful and comprehensive guide! more enlightening than fireside chats in front of 1000s of people. Growth for Uber Eats, Launching Google Payments in Brazil, Creator Monetization for LinkedIn, AR filters for Instagram Stories, Machine Learning for Google Search. A lot of companies have Associate Product Manager (APM) programs for new grad PMs out of undergrad. Here are a handful of other resources that dive into what associate product managers do: Now that we have this understanding of APM responsibilities, lets shed some light on why the associate product manager role even exists in the first place. What people are saying about Meta. How is Metas RPM Program different from APM programs? If you want some help building the right skills or experiences, Id highly recommend claiming a free month of LinkedIn Learning (usually $26/month). At Facebook, we would have a manager for the entire 18 months, a mentor, small-group mentorship and alumni support. In a few hours, you can build a Tinder clone or an upvote site like Product Hunt without coding.

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