How To Break Into AI Product Management (& Why It Might KILL Regular PM Roles in 2025) - w/ Aman

tracking the PM interview I hated that book by the way can you help break down for us how AI PM specific roles are different from General product management referals are overrated highly overrated today everyone has a referal and I have spoken with recruiters also and I'm Nam p and in this episode featured not expert is Aman goyel Aman is an incoming AI product manager at the trade desk a role that is joining after completing his Masters and information systems from carnegi melan University I sent 3,000 connection requests and only wasn't actually excited I could only get 60 people on a coffee chat with me and get my resume reviewed with only 30 people how did you go about formatting SL tailoring your resume to reflect Best

SL tailoring your resume to reflect Best of Both Worlds that you have been a part of he has this entire Community where senior product managers in Microsoft are effectively doing mock interview with you so totally I sat in more than 200 mock interviews through my two semesters journey in this episode we explore the nuances of the AI product manager role the newest kid on the product manager block Aman shares some incredible resources on how to switch from a technical background to a career in product and then we focus specifically around the AI product manager role through aipm roles also have behavioral interviews everyone starts mock interviews once they get a email from the recruiter saying that hey you're shortlisted how would you explain

shortlisted how would you explain primary key in SQL to a 5-year-old there are all these links in my resource document in the description a good interview experience boils down to how comfortable you can make the interviewer free if you do not have any solid experience around machine learning or building model in keeping with that theme of learning from somebody that's just two steps ahead of us instead of an expert my goal is to shine a light on this new and upcoming field and how you can future proof Yourself by starting now this is the ready said do podcast and to support it subscribe on YouTube and all your favorite podcast apps there are some more links in the description for more effective ways to support me and now without any further Ado my friends

without any further Ado my friends here's Aman Welcome to The Ready Set d podcast where we learn from journeys of not experts who are just two steps ahead of us Aman welcome Hey thank you so much for inviting so glad to be talking to you um excited to jump off the deep end here a little bit and kind of put you on the spot if I'm being honest um and as is now tradition on the podcast I'd like to begin with what is your controversial opinion slh hot take around the aipm sphere of things when it comes to the it can be industry it can be Academia it can be career wise but what is your controversial take around this particular subject that we're going to

particular subject that we're going to be talking about I think it it might it might replace uh apms and PM in terms and all the junior PM roles according to my understanding because when I reflect what I what work I did back as a PM intern last year uh and what and because I speak to a lot of other PM interns and PMs a lot of the work can actually be done uh what I did in 12 weeks within one week using an AI agent so I feel oh wow the yeah I mean uh and that that uh those tools were not present back in May when I started my internship but now I

when I started my internship but now I think in the agent AI era it's being made possible but uh I feel when it comes to decisioning and when it comes to uh higher insights uh from director of product Senor product managers those will still be very valuable because those will be the people deciding the vision of the product but actually doing the grunt work like maybe uh you know making prds or aligning with software engineers and uh product designers I think we might not be very far away from that point when you know people when companies completely stop hiring for uh junior PM roles maybe uh similar to software uh but I initially thought PM would be more unstructured so more difficult replace but now I'm I'm I'm believing uh that lesser and lesser so I'm more optimistic in that uh the idea

I'm more optimistic in that uh the idea that it might replace initially uh all the junior rules so uh it's it's like a you know wake up call for all of us who are in this industry to uh upscale and try to be more creative and be more rless that's definitely a harder take than I was expecting first of all let me let me share that but no what you're saying makes sense it it makes total sense on the outset that is something thing that I have considered and you know has just just fundamentally it kind of makes sense to think that but the thing that caught my attention a little bit was what you said around even EPM roles being you know potentially replaced and by EPM I'm assuming you meant

by EPM I'm assuming you meant engineering product managers right to be clear yeah so can you share a little bit more light on that because that I felt like was at least for the moment at least momentarily you know safer compared to the others the Junior stuff for sure yeah that's probably already gone if you're being honest but wouldn't the engineering stuff be a little bit more trickier wouldn't you say uh yes so I think uh uh I think so my role uh at my company was around technical product management or engineering product management and it was a lot on working with the mlops team and working with the AI research team as well so I think what I found there was that there are things like you know uh like uh uh

like you know uh like uh uh communicating technical require requirements uh understanding the code base sometimes doing data analysis all these I think as the uh uh as a software agents uh like Google a Studios is doing a pretty good job then we have visual then we have different tools which are actually coming up I feel as that part gets more and more uh easy probably in a year or two it will be easy for the TPMS and the PPM in turns to be replaced because ultimately uh data analysis tasks you know uh building prototype I mean uh today as a PM you can also create a prototype instead of just waiting for a software engineer to come up with some version or maybe a product designer so maybe

maybe a product designer so maybe instead of a PM the team probably would prefer like uh like a virtual PM who has all these tools in their hands of you know creating mockups you know so maybe you might see some influence in the designing World already like how figma had launched last year so many features so slowly I think uh ultimately you want to reduce the communication bandwidth uh between different teams and PM essentially does that so uh probably with the increase in technical uh tools and all the air agents around that in one or two years I feel it might be uh more possible but yes in today's world it's not completely possible to replace like a very hard and quote technical pm of uh maybe uh a junior version also but in future

junior version also but in future definitely should be soon that makes sense yeah especially around deep research coming out now um I don't know if you've had the chance to play with that I've been looking forward to doing that I haven't yet but from what I'm seeing it's it's just completely cracked you know like it it we're not just even talking product managers here we're talking you know researchers we're talking basically any analyst role if you think about it pretty much which is such a wide umbrella already and it's here now like this is not even something which is in the future but we'll we'll save the Dooms daying a little bit towards the end I want to kind of jump next into just for our listeners can you provide a little bit of context around

provide a little bit of context around you know your experiences your journey a little bit maybe you can start with your bachelor's and then kind of how you weave through the years to get to the aipm role that you are currently working and what that was like sure yeah uh I think I started my journey as an undergrad uh in computer science from nit kurra in India uh and uh immediately I started uh feeling pretty uh fascinated by Ai and AI was not even really like a big thing in 2017 2018 it was more like a very fancy world of you know uh all those uh I don't know if you remember but open a was releasing all those uh playground videos of hide and

those uh playground videos of hide and seek and lot of the virtual and virtual uh uh you know uh environments being released that time and nothing actually in a a real person right it was also very gate kept in terms of the tech itself it it felt very inaccessible where you needed just the straight up at least minimum a master's deview to even be able to think about how would really that so yeah definitely agree but and that's where I actually uh uh thought because I think initially uh the companies were interested in only hiring like Master's level or PhD level research research uh even even without research even technical ml roles and uh uh and I think what I understood was that uh going very uh solid in ml research was something

uh solid in ml research was something which very less people were doing back then because everyone was very fascinated towards the STD jobs and they were honestly they were also the highest paying jobs back in that time uh so my my uh my University had only SD roles in the placements uh in India so I never sat for placements and I had to really like hold message or C mail my way to uh different research opportunities uh at triple it Hyderabad at uh Gigi melan University at Michigan University at later at Intel as well so uh so years went by and I think in in in in a year or two I started uh uh like for the

or two I started uh uh like for the initial first I did mostly University Research so I used to work in these Labs you know do like hardcore research on computer vision and deep learning and the most I think interesting project which I worked during my research time there was uh building this uh moral which could detect uh triple riding and helmet violations uh on Indian roles yeah so I think that that is that was a huge problem faced by the telengana government which is one of the state governments here in in India and uh three people or four people stacked together in a bike or in a two wheeler in India uh it was a problem which was never really uh uh solved completely

never really uh uh solved completely because it was very difficult for an AI model if you back then for an object detection model to detect so uh closely stacked bodies and in there could be even five or six so uh I worked on in know and some animals sometimes yeah exactly animals there's so many why wild possibilities to uh so we were for a year I worked there and I was able to actually get a paper and a patent out of it uh oh so that's awesome that's so that was initially and then I worked at Intel for almost a year before moving to the US uh so that was my journey before Masters and uh now through uh when I came to Masters right like when I got

came to Masters right like when I got accepted rather uh I already had some background of wayi research I already had been working in ml and I honestly found it a bit monotonous the entire process because it was ultimately you know Clean cleaning the data set training the model evaluating the model so there were at least three or four parts of the process which are repeated in either uh Intel or either bip Hyderabad or CMU or whever research I did so when I got accepted I start and uh I started thinking of what what different roles could I work where I could actually explore the entrepreneurial or the business side and not just be pigeon hole into the technical side and uh that's where I discover product management and the uh and uh I actually love talking to people

and uh I actually love talking to people and communicating so I thought that you know maybe this is a role which would actually help me do that and get paid for that so why not uh do that so uh that's when I started my quest to product management so just to clarify your master's degree was in what again sorry it sorry yeah it was in Information Systems management so it was more of a technical and a business degree and it was not play a complete technical degree like an mscs that was a conscious yeah interesting yeah and the reason I ask is um I studied uh Engineering Management which from what I understand is is like fairly analogous I don't know if you've had a different like it's yeah it's kind of the same uh concept at Le so yeah I mean that's

concept at Le so yeah I mean that's interesting and so I guess what I'm curious about next is you have all of this research background but then you realize that actually that's not as fun for you so you don't you know want to do that as much anymore and then you try to pivt a little bit more into somewhat of a more functional field it sounded like so now once you came came out of that master's degree what was your process or what was your experience around showcasing all of this on a piece of paper which is your resume right cuz all of that story that you just said makes perfect sense to me because you were able to narrate that to me now you can do that when you have a piece of

can do that when you have a piece of paper to represent you so how did you go about you know um formatting SL tailoring your resume to reflect the Best of Both Worlds that you had been a part of at some point or the other in the oh yeah I think that's a weird question so I think what I initially understood was uh I I spoke to before even making the decision of transitioning to product management at Intel itself uh just before two three months of joining Masters you know when I was in my notice period at Intel I was trying my best to actually speak to as many product managers across the globe at Intel right so just to understand what does a product manager do right

what does a product manager do right what are the day-to-day functionalities because uh this is a huge decision actually if you see going from ml engineer to product manager it's it's it's very very different and yeah the market is very uh bad here in us so you don't want to go after the wrong thing and later realize that you want to take a U-turn so and what year was this sorry what year was this so yeah it was 2023 so just before I started my master in August I was doing a lot of research on product management that um on March April so 3 4 months before uh going to the us to understand you know whether

the us to understand you know whether it's even for me or or it's just uh one of those uh things where I just want to do something else because I hate or I feel bored of my current space in m u it's funny that while you're doing that probably after getting your admission already that part it's interesting to me yeah yeah I got admitted in like March and then I and I was like I don't want to do the same thing again uh right but uh how how do you know what the new thing is by talking to the people who are already excelling in that so that's what I ex did I did a lot of projects as

what I ex did I did a lot of projects as well during that time to understand you know if I was a product manager this is how I would uh break down a product like Instagram this is how I would break down a product like Uber or whatever it was right and then I was fully short by June or July uh so it took me three four months months that I have to go to product management now the question then was how to cater that because my past three four years work has been completely technical EXA all the like each and every word in my resume is they are technical it has Matrix like accuracy and you know it has nothing about revenue and nothing about

nothing about revenue and nothing about adoption engagement daily I us design ux yeah exactly and I have never I had never even spoken to a product climate because I had worked in four research teams are Intel and uh all the labs right so in so I I I was just we were just a bunch of research scientists working together and no communication with product manager uh during my work right so uh but with all the interaction I had had and with all the homework I did uh I understood that I I understood a little bit what does a PM's mindset look like so what I thought was I took my current resume you know all the technical job and everything and each and every for each and every line or each and every experience I started

each and every experience I started thinking what if I gave this to my product manager what would how would this work help my product manager right what Matrix of the product would it move or shift for my product manager for example it uh at Intel I worked on the open wio Library which is an open source library and it's widely used around the world uh and uh I have pushed the model of object detection to that with a very high accuracy so I thought that if I gave this to my product manager right what would it look like it would probably be that uh you know the uh uh that more and more Engineers are adopting to this new library more and more res scientists are using this uh in their new products right so I started

their new products right so I started adding Matrix around it right and and basically I became aipm in my head uh and before I actually became one and that's how I really transitioned my resume right I read a lot of job descriptions of product management understood what are the keywords what are the Matrix right and I tried to find a perfect manage between my past experience and my uh required experience that's a really helpful call out one quick question on that when you said product Matrix for some of us that aren't exactly sure what that entails can you please share what that is exactly like what are things in the product Matrix sure yeah uh so there are like around six phages of any product uh and for example adoption is one phase right I okay so all the adoption

right I okay so all the adoption engagement uh retention Revenue referral right so uh and then maintenance right probably the last one is just where you maintain it kind of perpetually forever or am I making yeah I think so a lot of products like Instagram they measure it by engagement like daily active usage monthly usage so they try to understand how their engagement has gone up or uh is it the same or not so those are like some of the matrics there uh around product for each phase I would say uh so for example in adoption it is more about signups and logins uh and people who exited after coming to the login page so all these Matrix around the product are probably uh all the Matrix which are

probably uh all the Matrix which are there on the job description as well okay interesting so you you shared how you went about the resume fixing now I'm next curious about because you came from a technical background and were you know all of this was new to you how did you go about with the actual upskilling so were you doing like online courses and certifications and uh or maybe you were relying on CMU with the in Mis course how did you actually learn these skills that you identified off of the job descriptions Etc that you went sure I think uh I uh I think I worked extremely hard before coming to the US uh because I because I had actually spoken to a lot of seniors uh within my batch and they

of seniors uh within my batch and they all told me that it's that only two or three of the entire batch of 200 people to 50 people are getting internships and product management uh so you have to be that good to actually uh you know or that prepared rather to actually get not just get interviews but crack interviews no I think what I did was I joined this uh Fellowship in India called the next leap fellowship and uh it was a 12 uh 12 de Fellowship I think if I'm not wrong and in that I was actually constantly uh connected with a lot of the product leaders and they kind of uh had this uh weekly assignments so for example I mentioned the product teer Downs right

mentioned the product teer Downs right so every week uh I used to do a product teer down on one of products uh like uh Uber or it could be uh Amazon or XYZ any product then we used to also have uh mock interview preps right so uh mentors every week used to uh explain us what the different kinds of interviews look like in product management how to a them etc etc right so so when you say a product tear down sorry can you go over what that tear down looks like what exactly are you tearing down when you when you do that sure sure so for uh you you you so in order to tear down like a

you you so in order to tear down like a product like Instagram or Uber there's like number of products within Uber right for for example there is the rider side there is the driver side you know that different products Within These uh product for example Instagram has stories which is completely different product from the normal posts read is a completely different product right right now within that you try to choose one small segment or one small feature for example example if you want to tear down just the onboarding of uber users you know so what does the entire onboarding process of Uber app looks like right so what do you do is then you go to the Uber app you know you uh you try to sign in as a fresh user right and you try to

in as a fresh user right and you try to uh effectively understand how they are trying to reduce friction for you or maybe increase friction for you to Ure that only the most relevant users are joining and then you try to uh uh understand what are the Matrix around you know signing up what are the matrics around adoption activation right as we briefly mentioned before so so you try to capture this entire experience of one of one segment and that is and you and you create in form of a deck uh right now if you create it you don't have to keep it on a laptop right you have to post it on LinkedIn and tag Uber or maybe T research uh companies right and uh it's not every day but uh there are

uh it's not every day but uh there are cases where sometimes if uh any person from them team notices it you could actually get a golden ticket uh and maybe an interview or maybe a coffee chat with some of their uh product leaders right so the idea is to not just that's cool yeah yeah like the idea is not just to work or study but the IDE is to also showcase it so that they know that you are working on it right I think that's one of the biggest takeaways from this journey as well wow awesome so you mentioned you were doing uh with that cohort you were doing product tear Downs you you also said that you were doing mock interviews I guess I'm trying to kind of put myself in your shoes here I

kind of put myself in your shoes here I have some technical background trying to break into product maybe you read uh what is that book sorry I'm blanking on the name but I know the book cracking the PM in there you go okay there you go so you've read that yeah so you've read that and you've done like your kind of basic groundwork kind of fundamental skill building here any other call outs that come to mind maybe any resources that you leverage that were specially helpful any YouTube channels or anything else uh another controversial uh thing which I want to just say is that I hated that book by the way reading the Ping to I I started reading it and uh it was very theoretical honestly for a beginner

very theoretical honestly for a beginner like me and I was more interested to do to practice than just read so I I personally couldn't complete that book but yeah I think uh apart from that I think I read a lot of Articles uh for example a lot of articles by uh you know uh by VC has a lot of articles in entrepreneurship then apart from that uh I also read a lot of these uh articles on uh so Paul raham the founder of icds his own website right and there there a lot of uh articles around product management mental models uh a16z has uh articles around product Market fit as

articles around product Market fit as well so I I read these buch of Articles and uh actually uh the good thing is that I have actually comp compiled uh a number of them on document so I would love how uh share it uh yeah I can in the show notes yeah so that anybody can access that's wonderful thanks for doing that appr yeah so I think uh if uh if you just see my screen there a lot of these you know articles about uh models first examples so uh I think just reading about them helps you get into the mindset of a product manager because you want to become a product manager in your head much before you actually do uh on the on the job uh description or the

on the on the job uh description or the role any tips in terms of best practices on how to do that or coffee chats yeah yeah I think uh the one of the things you definitely want to understand is that uh the hiring managers are normally people who are director of products senior product managers right all these top product leaders so uh so you definitely want to approach them but also do not forget that uh there are a lot of these apms and PM ons and PM tws who are actually easier to approach and they are more likely to give you their 15 minutes or 20 minutes uh right because they are the also ones who are more active on LinkedIn rather than uh like a 45 50 year old product leader who already has

year old product leader who already has so many things on his plate that he might not even check his LinkedIn DMs I think initially don't try to just go and DM the C of Netflix or you know the CP of Netflix to just get on cof just try to uh uh take the uh take all the uh you know balls which I easy to grab up across the tree and just try to DM and uh message all the people around you who you think could be your Alum nice could be all these people working in these uh good companies and the way you do is you firstly try to keep a keep your message very short I think uh I am uh I I I get

very short I think uh I am uh I I I get messaged a lot and one of the main problems behind that uh that I do not reply to probably is also because the messages itself is so long and honestly in today's world you do not have the time and attention span also maybe to read that and sit across so uh yeah so just it should be I think effectively on three lines at the first line should be like a brief intro about yourself you know that I'm currently maybe pursuing Masters in XYZ uh and maybe the second line should be more about what's what uh about what uh how you stand out right for for me it was I have previously worked as an engineer Intel and other companies right and the third line probably should be like a call to action or maybe something

like a call to action or maybe something which establishes a connection for example I really admire uh the uh the products made at Uber blah blah blah and I would love to get on a 20 minute coffee chat with you uh as and learn from your experience so I think keeping it in very short and sweed uh uh and trying to message as many people as possible because that's the game right it's not it's not customization it's actually the scale so if you I remember I messaged I uh sent 3,000 connection requests and only thousand actually accepted and only and I could only get uh 60 people uh on a coffee chat with me and I could re get my resume reviewed with only 30 people out of the 60 people

with only 30 people out of the 60 people and I then ended up changing my resume 15 times and that's how I started Landing interviews so the number from like 1% yeah 1 person conion rate to to resume review that I think the more notable um statistic there for me is that you had a 33% connection request accepting uh rate I feel like that's pretty good man um like just from my experience one and three is pretty solid I think those are all very actionable very helpful tips um with that stage set now I think we're ready to jump into the meat and bones of the matter uh which is that first of all how is aipm different from General PM stuff so that's what we've been talking about this whole time

we've been talking about this whole time right now can you help break down for us how AI PM specific roles are different from General product management yeah well I think uh when I uh came into this world of product management I notice that there different kind of product management right product managers rather so firstly it's the uh uh business product managers like who are completely uh more into the business thing they don't they don't really focus on the technical side of things and those are the roles for which uh you will get the least amount of sponsorship because as an immigrant you are somehow expected to be technical in this country and perhaps uh yeah and perhaps in the future as

uh yeah and perhaps in the future as well it's uh better to be on that side uh so moving to the technical side right now when uh back in 2 3 when I started uh Chad gbt was just launched like 6 months so feary 2 October and November Chad GP is launched and uh 2023 March or April I started my journey into product management uh effectively by you know understanding and reading so what I so there were not really there were not many a product manager roles or air product managers that time uh it was more uh technical product managers right people who actually uh probably uh deal with the devops te today they deal with mlops the people who used to uh deal more with ensuring that you know uh uh that the engagement

that you know uh uh that the engagement on the product is constant and going high uh whereas today they're dealing more on working with the AI scientist and ensuring that the models actually are more accurate so there has been a drastic change over these two years right so uh I think uh one so uh So within technical product product management also I think there is a layer of uh non- aipn and Technical product managers and AI product managers right uh the non non AI product like technical product managers are the ones as I described they do not work with uh eii Engineers or AI researchers they just work with the software Engineers right uh and they do not deal with AI products uh and I feel uh in 2025 that uh has

uh and I feel uh in 2025 that uh has already gone much reduced a lot uh and E product managers and requirement is much much higher right uh now coming to AI product management right it's uh what I have noticed is that uh a lot of people have been constantly asking me about how to get into air product management without having any EI experience and unfortunately if you do not have technically experience or if you do not uh uh have you know any uh solid experience around machine learning or building models it's very difficult to get into AI product management because it uh because it straight uh requires you to work with AI research scientists and if you yourself do not have any experience over it it might be very difficult for

over it it might be very difficult for you to understand the EI scientist side because uh a lot of these a lot of AI is actually research as well so takes a lot of time it takes different uh layers within the model there are different Matrix for uh the for an AI product as opposed to a common software product so uh the so the idea of U having some technical knowledge having some of your own projects even if you haven't worked previously as an engineer actually helps a lot to get into that world of AI product management so I guess the thing that's now throwing me a little bit is what if so you you had like full-blown work experience when it came to this

work experience when it came to this stuff what if somebody doesn't have that but instead has maybe in their you know passive time has done a few courses has built us has built some projects around machine learning um is kind of a self-learned person that has kind of taught themselves machine learning while also coming from let's just say like a computer science background Etc I guess my question is can you supplement the lack of work experience directly in machine learning with just selftaught expertise in machine learning I think uh uh definitely because I think for most part uh I was I I I was a self taught em engineer because none of my professors ever really like took oh yeah that's yeah you were with Labs directly yeah exactly so I I actually uh reached out

exactly so I I actually uh reached out to them myself but I think uh if you're uh an undergrad for example that I get a lot of messages from them as well where I'm an undergrad and uh I want to get get into AI product management right my one my suggestion to them is that you know I really appreciate that you do want to get into that but before you jump into that right it's much better to uh you know uh do some projects as you mentioned right if you have self Tau yourself to some have done projects it's best to actually take some uh internships or take some uh industry based projects there are a lot of courses in US universities where they where they are like Capstone courses

where they are like Capstone courses with the can so if you have if you do them I think uh uh and have built a strong technical background that now has a much bigger Edge for you than just uh uh you know uh some GitHub projects because at the end of the day it's all about competition and when you compete with uh someone who has one or two years of experience uh parallely you should be able to show some uh solid uh stuff and solid evidence that you yourself have worked and by Honestly by just working on some uh projects uh online it it's not a very great way to stay ahead of

not a very great way to stay ahead of the curve if you want to work as an A so I think AI the work experience always helps a lot but yeah it's definitely not uh 100% necessary you can always do these internships co-ops and projects which are which are largely available in uh us and now even starting to be available in India mhm I see well I mean I feel like that will come as kind of a you know bad news do maybe a lot of our listeners here but I appreciate you saying it as it is does uh do aipm roles also have behavioral interviews actually can you just walk us through your experience with the whole job

experience with the whole job application process itself when you were applying after your Masters what was that like and what was some of the biggest learnings that came from yeah I think uh one of the uh uh one of the biggest highlights was to was that uh if anyone is watching it like you or if they haven't reach to us and they've probably gotten an admit already this year right the idea is to start before going to the UFL master so start before even day one of Masters because I think a lot of uh problems I see around when I Mentor students today is that they are very very late for example uh I started mock interviews much before coming to the US and I uh started refining my resume also before that uh right so that just helped you help me like give a lot

just helped you help me like give a lot of Head Start because honestly uh you you know I know that once you come to the US it's there like the entire core structure is so different the entire environment is so different it takes a while to settle now right but overall I think uh uh obviously we spoke about resume review right right uh I think networking is something which is often spoken a lot about right it's like it's uh but it still is ambiguous right because there are so many there tons of ways to do networking right and I think uh broadly from my experience I think there are two versions of networking uh which you can do one is uh one is V networking by warm networking what I mean is uh uh if you have time uh you

mean is uh uh if you have time uh you know for example if it's a three or four semester course and if you still have two semesters before you start your internship that means you have some more time than people who have a one year course right where you have to immediately do an internship as soon as you uh you know start your MERS and uh and get uh started on that Journey uh if you are in the former scenario uh inviting people for coffee chats right helping build that warm connection between you so whenever the Whenever there is an later you know so that it's easy to get a referal from them it's easier to uh you know what if they the

easier to uh you know what if they the hiring manager it's easier to get an interview directly with them so that is the war version which everyone kind of knows honestly it's not really a big deal then there is a cold version of networking uh and in that uh the only one we are aware of is referrals uh now another contribution take is referals are overrated highly overrated I personally out of 16 interviews only received one interview due to referal and the problem is that today everyone has a referal and I have spoken with recruiters also and the recruiters are also agreeing to the fact that because everyone or mostly everyone has a referral right it's very uh it's not something which helps you stand out of the edge unless and until the referal is coming from a very senior person or the

coming from a very senior person or the referal is coming from hiring manager so uh uh a lot of times when I have waited uh for someone to refer me and during that time the posting has already been shut or closed so I think the idea is to not wait for referrals right try to apply ASAP now in in C networking people mostly only know referrals 99% people do not know something called post application networking right what is post application networking for example I applied to Uber as for a product management internship now I haven't gotten a referral I have just kind of cold application right straight out cold application uh but I also want to get my application noticed so the best way is

application noticed so the best way is to try to reach out to the recruiter try to reach to the hiring manager right and try to just uh uh right in the same three line format uh right of why uh you think you are a fit and and ending with a line of you know would it be possible if you could review my resume or application right now uh the I landed my dream Ro because of such a mail being sent to my recuiter oh so that was actually a game changer uh for me and I'm also I'm doing this mentorship cohort uh this year and I'm seeing that it's it's acting as a game changer for my students as well so

game changer for my students as well so post application networking is is the biggest weapon you can use uh in networking because it's not always possible to get a referal right uh but it's definitely possible to send an email send a message to the person in power to review your resume right uh I know people from Apple I know other people who have gotten interviews just because of this so this is one thing uh in networking I would highly suggest moving to mock interviews right now yeah mock interviews is is people do networking right so everyone has a reset some people do networking but none of them actually do mock interviews before getting the interview right so everyone starts mock interviews once they get a email from the recruiter saying that hey you're shock listed but the problem in

you're shock listed but the problem in that is you get maximum one or two weeks to prepare uh for the interview and yeah probably not even that usually exactly uh so and and the problem is the more you delay the more uh Advantage you're giving to your competitors because the earlier you interview uh you know it's better for them it's better for you actually uh uh so I think uh what I started uh was I started Mo interviewing before much before I came to the US and in total I completed around 105 mock interviews by the end of my journey across those two semesters and wow and that actually uh helped me complete transform my technical mindset to more technical product mindset right now

technical product mindset right now that's 105 all introduced one way so I took 105 Mark interviews and I gave 105 Mark interviews so totally I sat in more than 200 Mark interviews through my uh two semesters uh Journey so took about a year right uh now uh whenever I used to get an interview I used to be already be prepared up to a very good level and I had too few more marks to be very customized to that company's position right that company's style of interviewing uh and that is something which is lacking a lot and in and I do not blame the students but the enti interview structure of product management is so so unstructured and Scattered uh right and it is not really

Scattered uh right and it is not really well informed so I have actually created uh uh a lot of these resour those documents and just for this podcast have created one or two documents which actually haven't even released publicly oh let's so enough to to share with you guys and I think uh the biggest weapon I I would say is practice and people then ask how do you practice how do you find people how do you find those 100 200 people I think there is this one Community which can be game changing which is called Lewis l community uh and uh he is also uh a person who was the best seller for product manager so he has this book called decode and Conquer which is uh parallel to the crapping the PM interview uh so he has this entire

interview uh so he has this entire Community where senior product managers in Microsoft are effectively doing mock interview with you uh uh and uh and that's a great Advantage right you're not just Mo intering you're networking with such a senior person yeah right so I think what was his name can you spell out his name for anybody that's just listening and isn't watching yeah sure I'll just actually uh show it yeah if you uh see see Lyn I see gotcha yeah and uh and he has all these channels so if you see you know all these people are uh requesting for example uh banii has Google APM interview next week right and uh similarly there are so many people you know this person has a mock interview for PMR T-Mobile right uh so I I mean

for PMR T-Mobile right uh so I I mean just see right I'm P experience xobi uh right I mean just the kind of I was people who are here to practice and network with right uh those that is the same this free this feel like it should not be free exactly completely free like completely free uh just requires your time and efforts uh yeah uh and I mean this guy is AE principal PM with eight plus experience and he's interviewing at Amazon now wouldn't you like to you know just get an opportunity to just chat with him and talk about his experience and he's allowing you to Mo interview him interestingly a lot of people I actually met uh you know I of I I we kind of became friends and they're all in great companies like met our Tik Tok

in great companies like met our Tik Tok because we all practice uh our way out each other to get a role so uh amazing Community uh the best resource out there for product managers and definitely uh it's there in my deck as well there are there are the YouTube channels on uh uh for example exponent is a great YouTube channel which you can feel love before going into that so there all these links in my resource documents so probably in the description n will hopefully be sharing then then can access absolutely yeah absolutely man that's that's such a great call out I will say I had a very brief brush with a TPM rule at Google back in the day which I completely bombed no surprises um didn't even know

bombed no surprises um didn't even know where to start preparing my entire preparation was just watching like YouTube videos for a week which feels just you know not very smart in hindsight but I remember a question that I was asked that I would love to get your like if we can do like a very quick semi brief mini mock interview here and it still stumps me because there's so many different ways to answer this and I feel like you would be a good one to ask but the question really was as simple as how would you explain um primary key in sequel to a 5-year-old like that was the question but my whole point of bringing this up was to you know just give a

this up was to you know just give a flavor to anybody listening that you you can prepare so much and you know like just endlessly and this is just such a abulous and such and that's what makes it so exciting and so interesting right like you just have to think in ways that you have never thought of before I'm sure even with your preparation of you know as you said like almost more than 200 mock interviews maybe for the job that you have currently you in that interview you were asked something that you had never I'm sure that happened right and so I think that's the point you were trying to make is that the more you increase your practice surface area the higher your chances of being able to come up with something tangible that you can say at one of these so that definitely Rings true for sure yeah

definitely Rings true for sure yeah because because once you do like 50 Mark interviews uh on the 51st or uh on the 52nd now you already have a very good enough Corpus so now next time whenever you ask the question be it in behavioral especially where you can be asked literally anything in anything like any kind of question or be it product design be it execution be it any kind of interview your your brain automatically start making connections between the first 50 interviews and they'll try to cook something up which which often will be the right answer uh because I personally as you rightly uh guess there uh in my final uh so I had totally four interviews with my for for my current role and that was for the internship actually that was not even for full-time

actually that was not even for full-time Ro because they converted me uh and for an internship having four interviews is much more rare because for an internship it's mostly two interviews two and and as you mentioned the first of Behavioral uh right uh and in uh behavioral uh now the thing about behavioral is right if the if the recruiter has very few seats for the next interview she will Grill you as hard as possible so it will not be Cakewalk but if there are a lot of openings even after that she will likely pass you so it's yeah it's not one of those interviews to take lightly right I think I underestimated uh behavioral and overestimated uh product design because

overestimated uh product design because I used to just practice initially 50 moths for product design and then I got n read interview and then I got other companies and they were all behavioral for some reason and then I actually changed my strategy did uh a lot of Behavioral right and uh that's how it helped me uh my second round was more product design focal which was a quick 30 minute round where uh I was I was uh interviewed by director of product and she asked very randomly how do you design a product and give examples and there she kind of uh gr me about the examples I gave and uh they were looking for a technical and uh data Le AI product uh person so she talked she asked me a lot of questions on communicating technical requirements to the engineers

the engineers etc etc and because it was a 30 minute interview you had to move quick because normally the interviews in product design of 45 minutes in meta and a lot of these companies but a 30 minute interview is very tricky because uh you want to meet the interviews expectation also not you don't want to waste much time at at the same possible time and yeah my my third interview was more like a resume round but on a p experience round which was pretty good but my fourth interview was with the actual hiring manager and that was like fullon entrepreneurial where they were actually were asking me to create a competitor LinkedIn he was uh asking me to he actually gave me a random Pride like a product backlog list to me and asked me to prioritize it

to me and asked me to prioritize it right so it was like very very Hands-On and nothing I had literally nothing I not practiced any of these questions before even those 200 uh plus mock in inter so uh but yeah I think definitely it did help in here that's so interesting I want to quickly double click on the uh product design thing that you mentioned so what exactly is so can you go over exactly maybe like a template question that one can expect around that what exactly are you designing designing yeah uh I think there are two kinds of product design questions which you can expect one is a design and alarm talk for blind type of question which is basically we uh design anything from scratch you know design an design a language learning app uh as a Facebook so this is more like design from scratch

so this is more like design from scratch then the second type of interview question is improve Instagram improve slack improve uh Instagram so there either it's design or either it's improve uh the third question which is also asked sometimes is uh talking about your favorite product so uh that I yeah yeah and that is something which is also product design and people just uh sometimes take it very lightly it's not about uh uh you know that app is just having cool uiux you have to actually go in depth and talk a lot more from product design uh uh specifically uh you know I think that's where uh that third type of question could be either be taken as a behavioral sentin or or either could be taken as a design so these are the two or three types of

so these are the two or three types of Tru design interviews and all the all of them have actually the same template uh which uh I have also mentioned in my decks and it is also pretty uh pretty similarly answered actually that's really helpful and then really last The Last Thing Before I Let You Go here in terms of Behavioral interviews the my understanding of it is that the best way to prepare while also not looking like a complete robot is to have like you know mini bullets for various situations all ready and compiled and then based on whatever you get kind of picking and choosing as components the little bullets that you had to then combine them and come up with you know whatever was asked so like you would have one or two bullets for difficult times or

two bullets for difficult times or difficult situations with your past experience one or two bullets for dealing with a you know a non-communicative boss maybe one or two bullets for when you um did something that you shouldn't have and had to learn learning and then say when you're asked what was the time when you know blah blah blah and then you're able to okay I have that that that so let's mesh A and R together to give you the answer first of all is that something you heard and second of all what do you feel about that approach and if you don't feel it strongly what is an approach that you read yeah I think uh similar to that I think where uh you would have heard of the star concept right if start forat

the star concept right if start forat yeah waai task action result yeah perfect perfect so I you effectively create those bullets or those stories much before uh uh beforehand now the problem is that for technical folks who are transitioning to product uh management it's not uh really uh it's not really easy uh to have very product like stories right because you have worked as an ml engineer for an entire career so far and uh you obviously your stories will be very technical right so apart from the resume spinning off which we talked earlier in our conversation this is another very important spilling of where you where you need to sell to the recruiter or the hiring manager that whatever work you did was not just helping the engineering or the AI uh uh Team it was actually impacting the product uh team as well in your company

product uh team as well in your company uh for example if you actually uh created this AI model for summarizing J tickets you know just a small example how how did that ultimately help improve the product manager efficiency right so you have to become product uh product manager within those star questions as well and that's what I you have to unlock creativity there because that's what I did even though I was an AI engineer intel if I would have communicated those stories uh during my interviews I would have most likely not gotten through it because because my mindset then would have still being in the technical side when now it required to be more in the technical and business side business so I think that's where the Star Stories as you mentioned are very very important uh to do uh and to

very very important uh to do uh and to be able to actually be prepared for those 30 40 questions uh is very difficult uh uh sounds difficult but at very helpful and the problem with these is you get you can get n number of questions right it's ex some of 10 would be so so difficult uh that it will be even after doing mock interviews you won't have an answer to them so it's better to practice a lot uh one final takeaway or trick which I would like to just mention in your platform is that try to read the body language of the uh of the interviewer because that is very critical because what happens is that you have you have coming with 100 mock interviews 200 mock interviews you know uh you don't want to be a machine after

uh you don't want to be a machine after that you don't want to be Cher from three dats you want to be very smart you want to understand from that Expressions that face expressions try to understand whether they prefer shorter answers or longer answers right that in the first couple of questions you'll get a sense you know if their mouth is opening a lot initially when you're speaking that means they they they expect shorter answers if they are not they're actually happy with the longer answers you're currently at giving and then try to adapt because that is a very uh very that is a trick which is required to Ace because every interviewer is different some and you have to quickly adapt

some and you have to quickly adapt whether you like it that's a wonderful call out and it's funny you you mention that because I have in the just in a little Silo here been working on a just a solo cast episode where it'll just be me me and I'll be talking about how to interview really which is I know it sounds very meta cuz what does that mean you know what do you mean how to interview but basically what you're going over is was one of my core pillars where it is at the end of the day and something which is very easy to forget especially due to the pressure and the circumstances that that other person is nervous too cuz think about it of course you're nervous you want the job but this is not something that's a cakewalk for

is not something that's a cakewalk for the other person either so a lot of times a good interview experience boils down to how comfortable you can make the interviewer feel this has been so much fun man yeah it's I really want to thank you for taking the time today for you know not really not just today for talking to us about this stuff but I know you're so active on LinkedIn and yeah so really honestly anybody listening I'm assuming if you got till here you're interested in this stuff go follow Aman he will add value to your LinkedIn feed every single day I can vouch for that and and yeah um really appreciate you taking that time thanks so much man this was such a blast yeah thank you so much for inviting I think you are doing a great job I wish you all

you are doing a great job I wish you all the best for your uh future podcast and happy to you do another part uh in this if possible yeah man absolutely that brings us to the end of that episode with Amon I hope you enjoyed as much as I did and are starting to prepare for your next AI product manager role if you are interested in this field if you would like to support me the easiest way to do that is by subscribing to me on YouTube yoube and leaving me up to a FIV star rating on Spotify or your favorite podcast apps if you go out and tell all of your friends about what an incredible podcast this is that also goes a long

podcast this is that also goes a long way in addition to commenting below any feedback or guest suggestions that you may have for me catch you all in the next one new episodes every Wednesday