How To Crack Your First US AI PM Internship (With No Prior PM Experience, Purdue MEM POV) - w/ Aryan

This Purdue MEM student applied to a job posting that was already closed and still landed the AIPM role. The founder Sanjayi had sort of just put a job posting on LinkedIn. By the time I reached there, it was already closed. So I was like, "Yeah, sure, why not?" I might just message him and ask him, like, "Is this it open? I used to look for everything. I'm just happy to learn." A few weeks later, Sanjay just responded, "Yeah, so tell me about yourself." And then we had a quick chat.

Aryan went from data engineering at Shell to an AIPM role at an agentic AI startup in the US through Purdue's MEM program within a few months of starting his course. I get to work on marketing. I get to work on sales. I get to work on printing the product. I get to talk to customers. I get to do many things that I wouldn't get to do in a big company. Cold applications do work. A lot of people say that it doesn't work, but they do work.

It's definitely reaching out to EMs, reaching out to founders of startups. That is something that I did a lot. The biggest signal that you're applying to the right role for that your plan is making sense when you can just come up with the one resume that you can use to apply everywhere. Subscribe on YouTube and Spotify or anywhere you get your podcast for weekly episodes. Let's dive in. Aryan, welcome. Hello. Thank you for having me, Navan. Great to be here.

Pleasure to have you. Tell me about the Purdue MEM to PM pipeline. The more it's going to go online nowadays, it's seeming more and more like a really hot topic. I find so many students going down that route. Is that something you had in mind when you applied for MEM or is that something that just kind of fell into your lap as a product manager? Definitely, I was looking to transition into more product management. From all the research I did, Purdue was one of the best places that I could see.

I know that there are a lot of people. I know you are yourself alumni as well. I spoke to a lot of other alumni that are also in the product management field now who went to Purdue and everybody said the same thing, the pipeline and the support that you get. From people at Purdue is something that is really helpful. I think that that is like one of the big things that may exploit you so successful in creating such good product managers.

Good point. When you were doing that research, and I actually generally don't know, this is not like putting you on the spot, but you probably have product management specific degrees as well in the US. I'm assuming for masters. Why not do one of those and why do an MEM instead? What's the upside to that? Yeah, I think one of the big upsides to the MEM degree is having that technical background also that you can rely on.

The main selling point for MEM is you can have your functional experience or management experience along with the technical or the engineering side. That was the big thing for me. I didn't want to lose the technical side that I have. My background is in computer science and technology, and I wanted to stick to that. I wanted to have that background, but also build on my functional and more management skills. That was the main reason.

That made sense. For the listeners, are you able to quickly give a snapshot of your career? You said you obviously had a bachelor's in computer science. After that, I know you were working at Shell with the product line there, but do you mind just painting a quick picture for our audience here? As you said, I offer my undergrad. I started working at Shell initially as more of a data engineer, systems engineer role, more of the technical development side, where I was working on building pipelines and data structures for a power price prediction, forecasting models.

And then later on, I sort of just, like I sort of learned that what my true interest is more towards the product management, towards building products and not so much on the development side. So I actually got a really nice opportunity to become the product manager or the same product that I was working on. So that was sort of really easy and like, it just helped me grow because I already knew the product, I knew what was happening, I knew what things needed to be done.

So it sort of seemed like the perfect sort of stepping stone for me to move into product management. And as I was doing that, I sort of learned what I needed to learn more sort of. And yeah, I just saw that this is like the perfect time, I guess, for me to sort of try to explore, grow out of my comfort zone. And yeah, come to the US come to where do you learn more about the product management side? How many years were you at Shell before you moved out? How was the Shell for just under two years?

Okay, same as me, actually. So yeah, I was also at PWC for exactly that time, which you will find that gets tricky when you're trying to apply for full time and you never know whether to you count that as one or two. And then you started at Purdue in fall of 2025, is that right? Got it. Talk us through your first semester there, what was it like? And maybe even can you also share just like, I know the applications now are extremely competitive.

So if you have any advice for any applicants for MEM, which there are thousands of those now. So I do think that would be helpful since you're on the topic anyway. Yeah. So, like I said, I went through a lot of research. I spoke to a lot of people who are in MEM programs across the country and the sort of general feedback or sort of. Yeah, feedback that I got was what MEM programs are look for is having some sort of leadership quality or something that you can sort of portray. That isn't apart from your like technical aspect.

So everybody knows your engineers who are going to be applying to MEM. But they also want to see some sort of leadership or some sort of management thing that you've done before that you can talk about. And I think having that or sort of learning about that as soon as you can is something that is really helpful. Even if you're not looking to apply for any of them, I think just in general is really helpful to learn about and grow your leadership side as well.

So I think that is one of the big sort of things that tell anybody who reaches out to me for advice. But yeah, about also about my first semester at Purdue. It was very different coming from India and coming from my life there. Coming to Purdue, Vesla Feit, as you know, is a very small place, not a lot of happening. But I think the sort of people and our cohort was really tight. And that also helped a lot. We were very helpful with one another.

We helped each other pick out courses and all of our courses were also really interesting. So I think overall it was a pretty good experience. The big thing obviously was people looking for internships and that was just the sort of overwhelming. Most of the time was spent just looking for internships. And we will obviously deep dive on that in just a second here. I am curious to just share notes here really is what I'm doing.

But in my first semester I took at least three courses that were just not what I had in mind when I signed up for them. Ended up dropping all three and just had to scamper in the very end of that first week when you can still make changes in your registration. To just pick something. So I'm just curious, did you have a similar experience? Obviously this is completely to out me as a dummy. I was the problem. I definitely did not do anywhere as close just research in terms of what I should have.

But I'm just curious if you or any of your peers are still doing that. Is this still a thing that happens? No, no, I completely agree. I did like no research in taking out my courses. I just saw the title as like, yeah, that sounds interesting. And then I did at this went for the first few classes and I realized, okay, this is not what I thought it was going to be. But then as you know, we also have courses like experiential learning courses and project make courses which you have to be selected for.

And actually got selected for one of the corporate consulting courses. So because of that, I had to sort of decide if I should drop a course and take this instead or what do I do in this situation. And because I already had I think four courses picked out at that time when I got selected for this. I didn't want to drop any of my other courses because they all sounded interesting to me. So I decided to just take a fifth one and then just do all of them. Yeah, but turned out to be maybe not the best decision. But I mean, I guess it's fine. Yeah.

Things have a way of working out. I am curious for folks that run into this problem, right? You're not sure how many credits to take or how to, you know, plan out your next two years or whatever. Do you have any like framework slash, you know, it's like a speed dial button of help that you can go to? Well, Eric and Karen and the other team are really good with that. I'm just curious for folks that are struggling any future students that are going to join that watch this.

What is a good source of like just a good starting point for queries like this and in terms of deciding stuff like this. Yeah, I think the first your first product contact should obviously be probably Karen. She is she knows about every course that there is. And if you have a water in certain interested in, she can give you the best recommendations. Other than that, I think talking to senior is talking to alumni is who've taken courses before results or something that can help a lot.

So I think just don't make the mistakes that your seniors made is the best thing that you can do. Yeah. And I think to add to that really just plan ahead, right? I mean, I feel like a lot of what we're talking about can like if there's a two word band aid solution magic silver bullet. It's just, you know, don't leave it until the day you're in class to figure out what the thing is about just plan ahead. It's one of those things that's obviously easier said than done, but I do agree. Shout out to Karen.

She is truly quoted help many a dozen students graduate when they want to. So, so yeah, I mean, yeah, Karen's great. Jumping levels to a IPM stuff, right? Tell me, is that something that you were seeking out specifically or is that something that just came up in the horizon and you were like, okay, that looks cool. Let me shoot my shot. How was your approach to a IPM when you first learned about the concept and how did you approach it from that point?

Yeah, so I wouldn't say it was something that I was necessarily seeking out. But I was always interested in the AI sort of industry and technology. What I worked in in Shell was also a forecasting prediction modeling. So I had some sort of that a little bit of that background. But obviously, yes, the next big thing. So having sort of that experience, I think really helped me get land land this road as well. It is obviously something that I am truly like interested in.

So I always look at them always looking out for for a IPM roles or AI roles just in general. So let's take it to when you were starting to apply, right? So obviously the first step is obviously your resume. So talk me through. So, you know, just again to air my own dirty laundry. The resume I showed up to the US with is just straight embarrassing. Like I would not be caught dead with that. And to say that it changed from, you know, it had a complete makeover would still be an understatement.

Same for you and just in terms of actionable things students can do, which I know there are a lot of resources out there already. But from your POV, what were some things that you did to really get to your get your resume to the exact point where you were like, okay, this might not be perfect, but this is good enough for me to start applying. How can students start to do that as efficiently as possible? Yeah, yeah, I completely agree. I think I just recently saw the resume that I used to apply to Purdue. And it was so bad. I just got a quick look at it. Yeah, I can relate.

But I think one thing that really helped was actually at Purdue during our first orientation orientation week, Katie actually went through an entire session about building a resume about what actually helps. Because she has that recruiter experience. Yeah. Yeah. She knows what recruiters look for. I think that that session sort of really helped frame what is and is not required or actually helps what doesn't help as much.

And I think after that, I sort of went through and and just completed my resume, I did actually sort of impactful points and things that can actually help you. But I think the big thing is everybody who talked to anybody you asked for to review your resume will give you different feedback. So it is sort of like a tournament situation. It is a lot of luck. But I think one thing that I do personally is every few weeks, I just go through it again and review it and just see where I can improve what changes I can make.

So it is sort of like a continuous process. It's not a one and done thing. It's something that you need to always walk on. Yeah, Katie has been on the show and yeah, I agree. She is just literally a wealth wealth of resume knowledge. Everybody has that one resume advice that for whatever reason just really sticks to them. I know what mine is. Do you have something maybe from that presentation that she did or just something that you came up with later by yourself.

Just your one liner resume thing that you just you know that stays top of mind for you. Yeah, I think the big thing I think for me is having a sort of really impactful or hard hitting summary that you can have with your resume, especially for career fairs or any networking events you go for. Like at the top, you mean right at the beginning. Yeah, something that can sell yourself in just one line, one or two lines. I think that is something that is really important and can help a lot.

Yeah, I think that's underrated. I feel like not a lot of people say that. And to your point, it just depends on who you asked, right, which that's a constant theme that even my show runs into all the time. And I just tell all of my guests in all of my shows and all of my episodes and such that the biggest and most important trait in life is actually to know what advice to reject. Right, because most advice is really just used lottery tickets right it worked for you great, but that's not going to work for anyone else it's context dependent there's like 10 other things that depend on that.

So really it boils down to knowing when to apply the advice that you know that suits you for me, I like to take it one level of abstraction deeper to have it mostly be correct. So my like big resume one liner thing is do each of your bullet points in your work experience answers the question. Right, it's like super dumb or whatever, but you're building a dashboard you did blah blah blah. So what, right, if it doesn't very obviously answer the so what which is what you said with impact if they are literally the same thing.

Yeah, but for me, this is just something that kind of really flipped a switch in my head. And then that was the moment I remember where okay now we're starting to play this game like I understand the rules now. So that's really interesting that you say that in terms of the continuous improvement stuff. So then talk me through the applications where you just spamming on LinkedIn where you networking where you getting referrals what was your strategy.

Yeah, so I think the big thing that I was mostly doing was sort of just called applying whenever possible. I honestly did go through all of the career fairs and events networking events that we had there but you did those help at all. Personally, I don't think so, maybe it's just a new thing I don't think I'm very good. So I've just called interaction type of person just go and talk up like walk up to someone and just talk to them.

But I know it did work for some people I know people that got interviews I know people that have landed a co-ops internships directly through the career fairs. So it is something that that definitely does work, but you obviously need to have that skill or hone that skill to be able to network and talk to people. So for me personally, like I said networking through LinkedIn I did do reaching out to people reaching out to founders called applying obviously getting referrals wherever possible.

I think this does help but what I did see the most was or that helped me the most was probably LinkedIn reach out just talking to people just asking for advice. I don't think going to someone and I just say hey I want an internship can you help me I don't think that's what networking or reaching out really is just sort of going up to them and saying, hey, I think what you've been doing is really cool. I want to learn more.

And these are mostly a IPMs or just PMs in places where you wanted to be and not recruiters or you also reaching out to recruiters. Reaching out to recruiters as well I think reaching out to recruiters is a little bit more difficult because they get probably thousands of LinkedIn messages emails a day so I don't really think that that helps as much unless you're really lucky that they already already know you but definitely reaching out to PMs reaching out to founders of startups. That is something that I did a lot.

Got it and then what was the first breakthrough like did you interview in other places outside of where you are currently or how what was that timeline like for you. Yeah, I did give a few interviews that most of my interviews that I got were through called applications so that is the like a big thing I. The only the place where I currently work right now is I got through reaching out to them directly on LinkedIn so oh wow okay yeah.

Cold applications do work a lot of people say that it doesn't work unless you get a referral it like it doesn't matter but they do work I think most people get their land they're all still cold applications so they definitely do work. And were these mostly I'm assuming these were not easy apply right like you were going on to work day or wherever to actually fill out the entire form is that right and did you look at any tools or any automations for that or were you just doing it the old Yeah, so I did download some some extensions which I do have I think I use simplify which is sort of just a it just fills in all of the farms for you.

Pretty simple but even they sort of hit or miss they don't always work as well. So yeah, so I always like you always have to make sure you go through them after it fills it just to make sure that I think but yeah. And then what for your interviews like where they mostly into what you're doing for pms or only a ipms and you know just walk me through a couple experiences please. Yeah so I did interview mostly for product or program roles.

And they were sort of I think overall overwhelmingly they were mostly like behavioral or situational sort of interviews, they'd ask you sort of just behavior questions about yourself about situations or put you in a certain situation you might be in and just ask you about what you would do in this situation or how would you how you would react. I think most interviews were were in sort of this sort of format. There were some technical questions like about the technology or about the industry, but they were very basic not not to in depth no coding anything.

And did you have separate resumes for your product and program rules or were you using the same one. You might have separate resumes initially but then as time went on I sort of like merged both of them together and I think right now I only have one that I use. Why can you talk through the rationale behind doing that why did you do that. I think for me it was I so I went through my like program and product resume and I saw that they were already pretty similar and a product and program sort of the roles they focus on different things.

And what companies look for is a little different, but I sort of saw that I could put both of them into one resume which I'm not sure if that's the correct thing to do or the best best way to go about it. But this is just what I saw that I could probably have both of them in one. And I think another big thing is obviously tailoring your resume to the roles, but at least to the big roles that you're really interested in the big companies that you're really interested in.

You can be asked with their job description tailor your resume to those roles. And I think that that definitely does help. Yeah, I think it's something you stumbled across, but it's actually the biggest signal that you're applying to the right rules or that your plan is making sense. When you can just come up with the one resume that you can use to apply everywhere. And I say this because for most people, like in, you know, today's market, especially when it's so bad. The problem isn't necessarily that it is bad, right? Like all of those things are true.

The problem is a lot of people apply to a lot of roles that they think they would be good at, right? Except if they're not unfortunately and be their resume definitely does not support their claim. So when somebody just has one resume that they can truly stand behind, what that implies is that that resume covers completely everything that person stands for, which then if they use that to apply to roles. Again, you can assume that it's probably the rules that they would be the most suited for.

And that is what I've seen succeed overwhelmingly. I myself had a similar experience. Actually, I just ended up with one resume by the end of my entire thing, which obviously I'm fossil now. And that's irrelevant because of the time difference. But it is, I think, one of those maxims that turns out to be true irrespective of time or error or whatever. So it is really interesting to see you kind of land there organically.

But I just because you seemed unsure. Yeah, I'm happy to report that that is to be. That's great. I guess I just stumbled in here. Great. So, yeah, talk me through your workflow interview process, right? Because that's obviously where you are currently that's your AIPM role. Would love to hear any differences that you got from your usual PM bid product or program rules versus specifically the AIPM role that you're at currently.

Yeah. So the way that I sort of found this was the founder, Sanjay, he had sort of just put a job posting on LinkedIn. And by the time I already, by the time I reached there, it was already closed. So I was like, yeah, sure, why not? I might just like just message him and ask him, like, is this still open? I used to looking for anything. I was happy to learn. And then I went through, I did a lot of research about workflow and what they do, what they're about, basically.

And a few weeks later, Sanjay just responded, yeah, so tell me about yourself. And then we had a quick chat. And for a workflow specifically, they are a company that makes a genetic AI workflows sort of built on service now. So Sanjay uses, he is someone who is very experienced. He's been at service now previously for a very long time, sort of helped build service now as a company. And then he just left, he started up this company to help other companies improve their genetic AI workflows and their processes. So he decided to start this company to sort of help that.

So what he was really looking for was people who had service now experience previously, because it is a platform that is kind of tricky to learn if you are not aware. So, yeah, we have service now at my job as well. So there's a few things that are coming to mind, but I should probably keep them to myself. I just say that not the biggest fan, but I did learn recently that service now is valued at a billion plus dollars, which that just stopped me in my tracks.

I'm just like, anyway, it's not to go off on a whole tangent, but sorry, please continue. Yeah, no, I think I know how you feel. I used service now at Shell 2 and I think we had a pretty similar experience there. But that thing that you did helped me at least land this role because I had the experience working with service now, working on service now there. And, yeah, so, so here, Sanjay was mainly looking for people who had that product management and service now experience.

And I started on you a little bit. I didn't do direct development or work with service now, but more mainly from like an admin side is something like things that I've used. So the interviews were pretty simple. He mainly just talked about behavioral questions, like what you're looking for. He was sort of very open the things. He just wanted to know what you are here for what you want to learn. And because it is an internship. So he wanted to just work with us, like work with the interns.

Hold on about what you wanted what you were looking for. So I guess the interview wasn't very, wasn't like a very traditional interview. It was just a conversation more like yeah. So I think there's a lot of people that have that are just skeptical around the whole startup side of things when you at least when you're an international student. Some of it at least is justified. Right. And what I'm hinting at is just that a lot of startups don't really have the machinery in place to get like your, I don't know, you know, your OPT, well, sorry, CPT credentials or whatnot. Right. And they don't really have the overhead and all of that.

It's also just really not the most secure. Obviously, this is not true across the board, but you know, it is, it is a, you never know a factor. Yeah. So talk me through any reservations you had, if, if any, around a whole startup and did you bring up the topic of CPT and such in the beginning or how, how was all of your, I guess not fun. I'm bureaucratic side of the house. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, everything you said that definitely went through my, my head and it was something to definitely think about.

But I think having that startup experience is also a completely different side. After working at a big company like Shell coming to coming back to a startup is, is this very different and the things that you learned here, the things that you get to work on is is very different. Like, I get to work on marketing. I get to work on sales. I get to work on printing the product. I get to talk to customers. I get to do many things that I wouldn't get to do in a big company.

So I thought that having this experience would also definitely help me in the long run, at least, if not right now. So that was the main sort of selling point that I, I told myself, at least that this was worth it to give a shot at least. Yeah. And then talking about CPT or PT, I think. So workflow has a lot of interns already. They've been interns working there. So Sanjay was familiar with the process and he, he got everything done. No problem. Yeah.

Nice. Nice. And I'm assuming you just, like, you just had to bring it up. And he was like, yeah, that's no problem. We can do that. And you just went from there. Is that right? Yep. Pretty much. He just asked how long you are able to do it for and what it was, that thing going for them that you can do it for the whole year. So he was very happy about that as well. So there was no sort of time limit or only the summer or only, only after the first semester, you can do it after the first year, you can do it.

First year, you can do it. Yeah. So are you still incoming or have you already started the position? Are you already working? Yes. I've already started working since Jan. Jan. Okay. Great. Would love to hear your, I guess, first month in, what was maybe a couple of weeks in, what was it like? Obviously your first time in corporate America. Any notes on things that got you off guard that you wish somebody had warned you about, you know, just looking for an, and maybe even if you could touch on just a day in the life, what that looks like.

Specifically as an AIPM intern, I do think that those things have a lot of value. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I think my first month was pretty slow. We just went through, I was doing a lot of certifications and our service now certifications, which the company needed for their sort of platform and their partner requirement would service now. So it was a lot of scary certifications done, learning about the company, talking to people, they're talking to other product managers who've already been working there.

So it was a lot of just a lot of this. And then later on, as I got to work on my, on a project, actually, I started to learn about what the product does, how it works, what are we building, what is it, what is it sort of trying to solve. So the first month was just mainly this learning about the company, learning about the products, learning about what, what you're doing. And just like, can you share the tools that are any hard skills that you use, I know it's, it's, it's not the best question to ask you for AIPM site because that's impossible for anyone to answer.

But at least in your case, in your experience, what are some just, yeah, technical skills that one can start to pick up if they're trying to go down the AIPM route. Yeah, I think. So one of the biggest sort of skills, at least for building like a genetic workflows, at least for workflow, the main thing is prompting and being able to prompt your agents to do what it needs to do. Without, without messing up, because I think LLM's and just AI in general is still not very accurate in what you wanted to do unless you specifically tell it.

Yeah, do this. So being able to describe being able to give the context about things that you need to do is something that I've learned a lot more about about AI since I've started here. Yeah. And, and, sorry, go ahead. No, no, so I'm about the tools question you just asked. So, we use the service now mainly for everything. So, yeah, all of our project management, everything is done on service now. All the fire building is also done on service now. So we don't really use a lot of other external tools. Obviously, we use chat GPT, Gemini, all of these other apps as well.

Yeah, got it. And then as, so did they hire you for it like the 11 months or is it just more temporary for now? Are you still figuring out? Because I know some students at Purdue will do three different internships or co-ops just because you can. You have your four months, two months, then four months. So have you thought about that on what that looks like for you? Yeah, so they were very open. Like they said, if you want to do it for the whole year, you can do it for the whole year. That is fine. If you want to do it fully for the first four months and then see what happens after that, that's also fine.

So that is what I'm currently doing right now. Got it. What are you doing it for for spring? I see. And do you plan to graduate next year? Then I'm assuming, right? Probably next fall or summer? Yeah, probably again, I think that would depend on if I land full-time somewhere. Yeah. Yeah. And like the reason I ask is for that full-time, would you still be looking at AIPM stuff or something else? Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I think definitely looking at AIPM is the big thing that is what I'm interested in. That is what my background has been in. So that would be like the dreams that are new.

Nice. Final advice for Purdue students joining AIPM this fall, fall of 2026. If you had to tell them one thing, what would you pick? Okay. If that's hard, you can do too. That's fine. I think the big thing is don't worry about the courses which are doing too much. It matters to some extent. But like, honestly, that is something that you can learn. The courses which you can do are very interesting. If you don't get the course that you really want, it's fine. You can do something else that might be as just as interesting, if not better.

And you can always do the course again later. So I think I get a lot of people asking me questions about which course did you take? I would say it like give me feedback on this. But yeah, in the end, I think everything tends to work out. But yeah, I second that from my experience, I found that there's two types of students. One that are there at Purdue to learn. And the others that are there to really just for a ticket into the job market. Neither is wrong to each their own.

But I do think a lot of these discussions really boil down to just who you're talking to. I second you, I'm in your boat right there. And I do feel like, at least again, this is probably mostly on me. But most of the courses I did at Purdue really were just, you know, just just courses. Interactive design of cognitive software. I definitely butchered that. There's a course like that. If you ask me what I learned, I would have to dig really deep to come up with like one thing. Anyway, so again, totally on me.

I did not want to make it sound like, you know, it was like I was wrong or whatever. This is a tag on me. But it is what I chose. I did. It's after a point. It's kind of besides the point. It is that if that makes sense. So, but yeah, man, right there with you. So, yeah, I mean, really appreciate you taking the time. This has been so fun getting to know you and your experience. I'm sure you will continue to crush at whatever you're doing. And, you know, I wish you all the best for the rest of your internship.

And, you know, your full time endovers. Truly. Thank you so much for taking the time today, Ariane. No, no. Thank you so much, no man. Thank you for inviting me. I think it's been a great experience, great talking to you.