How to break into

Product Management
Agenda

● About me
● Choosing Product Management as a career
● My Journey to Product Management
● Strategies to break into Product Management
● QnA
Who?

● Richa Pareek
● Mom, Daughter, Wife, Traveler, Writer, Speaker,
Theatre Artist, Photographer, Dog lover

● Product Manager at Google

● 13+ years of industry experience- Consulting, QA
and Testing, Program Management, Product
Management
● Fintech, Ads, SMB, Retail, Non Profit
Who?

● Richa Pareek
● Mom, daughter, wife, traveler, speaker, writer,
photographer, tinkerer, Theatre artist, Dog lover

● Product Manager at Google

● 13 years of industry experience- Consulting, Start

Ups, QA and Testing, Program Management, Product
Management

● Fintech, Ads, SMB, Retail, Non Profits

Product Management as a Career

● A combination of Technical and Soft

Skills
● Varied backgrounds-Engineering,
Program Management, Sales,
Marketing,Design
● Different types of Product
Managers- Technical, Growth,
Analytical, Consumer/Enterprise
● CUSTOMER FIRST!
Is Product Management for you?

Get
Introspect Understand Evaluate
Feedback

The 5 Why’s What and When? How am I

How? Opportunities doing?
and Constraints
Connect the Dots..
Strategize..Prepare...Succeed
● Strategic

○ Look back at your career and connect the dots

○ Build your story
○ Expand your network
○ Find mentors, earn sponsors
○ Take on more stretch projects

● Tactical

○ Start at your existing company/team- limit

variables to 2
○ Look at rotation programs, 20% PM
opportunities,non structured opportunities
○ Pick small projects and deliver on them
○ Talk to engineers and XFN partners
○ Audit your skills and work on the skills you are
missing Source: The T-shaped individual. Made popular by IDEO’s Tim Brown. Artwork by Zhiyong Li’s “Lost
Hometown”. Typeface: Luna by Amanda Leeson.
○ Find your hip pocket skill and build on it
○ Prepare- Interviews matter ...a LOT!
Resources

● Terrific books that provide an overview of the product manager role:

○ Inspired by Marty Cagan
○ Shipping Greatness by Chris Vander Mey
● Great books on customer interviews (terribly biased title unfortunately)
○ The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick
● PM Interview Preparation
○ Cracking the PM Interview
○ Decode and Conquer
○ Stellar Peers- a brilliant site for case questions and mock interviews
○ Harvard cs50- the basic course is free!
○ For scalability and system design/architecture recommend this Harvard video , this blog here, the blog
High Scalability, or Interview Cake
● So many valuable Podcasts, Medium blogs, articles on linkedin have the information you need