How To Crack Your First US Internship (& Transition to Product Manager Roles) - w/ Maya edited signal transcript

This episode is about cracking your first US internship as an international student and then using that experience to move toward product, program, or project management roles. Naman introduces Maya Mishra, a master's student at Purdue University in Engineering Management who secured internship offers or callbacks from companies including Amazon, Tesla, Walmart, HP, ABB, and Unilever. The point of the conversation is not generic motivation. It is the actual timeline, resume strategy, application volume, interview prep, negotiation, and internship behavior that helped Maya move quickly after arriving in the United States.

Naman starts by asking what Maya expected the internship hunt to feel like before she left India, and how those expectations compared with reality after she actually arrived in the US. He frames the episode around the gap between what international students imagine and what the first semester really demands.

Maya says she prepared herself for the worst before joining Purdue in August 2023. In her mind, the internship hunt was going to be a horrible, mad rat race, ten times worse than what she had already experienced in India. That mental preparation helped her build stamina. The minute you land in the United States and start your first semester, she says, it hits you like a bullet train. There is not just school. There is banking, insurance, medical paperwork, housing, groceries, and the reality of moving countries completely on your own.

Maya gave herself roughly one week after arrival before she started applying. She spent that week sorting out immediate logistics and deciding what new information belonged on her resume. Then she got into the game. She had done a lot of groundwork before arriving in the US, so the first week was not a vacation; it was the final setup before the application sprint.

Naman asks what students can do before arriving in the United States. The obvious low-hanging fruit is the resume, but he wants Maya to explain the preemptive work beyond simply having a master's application resume ready.

Maya says the master's application resume is not the same resume you should use for corporate jobs. A university resume often highlights academics, social work, extracurriculars, and application-friendly experiences. A corporate internship resume has a different target audience. Her advice is to start from a blank page instead of trying to tweak the old resume. The blank page forces you to ask what a company, not a university, needs to see.

For a corporate audience, Maya would emphasize projects, work experience in India, on-campus work, teaching assistantships, research assistantships, and concrete role-relevant skills. She recommends leaving room for last-minute edits once you arrive, because you may pick up a project or campus role in the first week that belongs on the resume. The resume should be ready enough to apply quickly, but flexible enough to add new proof.

The second thing Maya says students can do before arriving is interview prep. Nobody is stopping you from preparing before the semester starts. She had already started working with the STAR structure before she reached the US, because once classes and logistics begin, there is less clean time to practice. Her point is simple: do not wait for the first interview call to learn how to tell your own stories.

On academics, Maya says the Indian mind is trained to focus on final exams, but the US system she experienced at Purdue relied much more on continuous assessment. There were assignments, quizzes, presentations, and deadlines that all added up to the final grade. The academic calendar was set in stone, which she liked because it created structure and made planning possible. If you want to travel, work, apply, and study, you need that calendar in your head early.

Maya says staying ahead matters in everything, not just internships. After she got her Purdue admit in February 2023 and finalized that Purdue was the school she wanted, she was already applying for an on-campus job the following week. That was four or five months before the course even started. She sees that as part of the same mindset: do research early, apply early, and avoid discovering the process only after everyone else is already in motion.

Naman asks whether Maya specifically looked for teaching assistant or research assistant positions, because past guests had said TA and RA roles can be especially valuable for international students if you start far enough in advance.

Maya explains that her project manager role on campus functioned like a teaching assistantship, but because it was tied to a corporate project, the internal title was project manager. She guided about 12 undergraduate and graduate students through a project, ran agile sprints, and acted as the liaison between the company and the students. It felt close to an internship because she was working with a corporate stakeholder, not only grading or helping with class logistics.

She also explains the practical benefits of TA and RA roles. In many cases, you become staff for a school, which can mean free insurance, tuition waivers, pay, and enough money to cover basic living expenses. Her own course did not waive tuition or classify the role exactly like a graduate assistantship, and she knew that upfront. But the experience still mattered because it gave her a corporate-style role on campus early.

Naman brings the conversation back to week one in the US. Maya has used up the one week she gave herself. Now it is time to get to work. He asks what the job-search blueprint looked like: how many applications, what kinds of roles, and what system she used.

Maya arrived a week before orientation and was extremely jet-lagged through it. Spending time with family was the priority at first, and she assumed jet lag was just a hoax she would somehow survive. She was wrong. Around September 1, she started applying. Her curriculum allowed internships in spring, summer, and fall, and because spring 2024 was less than six months away, she did not wait for the traditional summer cycle.

Her strategy was to apply to anything relevant regardless of when it started. She did not say, 'I only want spring,' and pause summer or fall. Many major companies open summer internships very far in advance, so she applied across spring, summer, and fall whenever the role was interesting and possible. She did not have the luxury of one perfect starting point.

Maya says flexibility mattered because the job market was bad. She had a career path in mind, but she was humble enough to say, 'Let me apply to anything and everything that interests me.' She does not mean students should abandon what they want. She means they should not restrict themselves so tightly that a bad market punishes them before they even get a conversation.

LinkedIn was her source of truth, but not where she usually applied. If she saw Microsoft or another company posting many internships, she would go to that company's career site, filter for internships, and apply there. She treated LinkedIn like a database showing which companies were actively hiring. Easy Apply was reserved for moments when she did not have a laptop, like sitting on a shuttle, grabbing lunch, or standing in a line.

Maya remembers standing in the queue at Purdue's Industrial Roundtable career fair and still doing Easy Apply applications on her phone while waiting to meet companies. Her attitude was basically: you do what you have to do. If a phone tap was the only application she could do in that exact moment, she did it, even though she did not know whether Easy Apply was working.

She also searched LinkedIn posts with phrases like 'we are hiring,' then filtered by recent posts so she could remove old clutter. If someone posted a Workday link or a company opening, she would use that to find the real application page. Her role filters were broad: product management, program management, project management, logistics, operations, supply chain, product marketing, and sales if the experience connected to what she had done before.

Maya has a counterintuitive take on trackers: she does not think they are efficient for everyone. If a company wants you, she says, they will email or call. What mattered more to her was not missing recruiter calls. She says students receive scam calls, but recruiters also call directly, so do not ignore every unknown number. She had close moments where picking up the phone made a real difference.

When Naman pushes for numbers, Maya says she was applying almost whenever she was not in class. She did company-by-company sweeps: finish Microsoft one day, finish Tesla the next, then move through every relevant internship position at another company. For Tesla alone, she applied to about 30 internship positions. For many companies, she saw 20 to 25 relevant internship openings and applied to all of them.

Naman points out that this is much more intense than what many students do. His own peers were often aware that they needed internships, but the urgency came much later. He asks where Maya's intensity came from: peers, mentors, coaching, or something internal.

Maya says Naman will not like the answer: she is very critical of herself. She did not give herself much room to breathe. The pressure was intense. What kept her grounded was calling friends and family back home for a few minutes and reconnecting with her old life. Beyond that, she set a rigid target: get all three internships within the semester, no matter what it takes, even if it means staying up until 2 or 3 a.m. while managing studies.

She saw some peers start late and others stay rigid about wanting only one exact role. She does not blame them; it is good to be passionate about what you want. But the market forced people to bend. Some eventually said, 'At this point, I'll take whatever comes my way.' Others stayed back on campus in spring, held out, and found better summer internships because they refused to settle. Maya's point is not that one path is always right. It depends on your priorities, but you need to understand the timeline early.

Maya gives her background to explain the transition. She had lived across eight Indian states, which made her adaptable to change, and worked in three different cities. For undergrad, she studied electronics and communication engineering at St. Joseph's, affiliated with Anna University in Chennai, from 2016 to 2020. In her final semester, she interned at ValueLabs as a software engineer, working on UI/UX-oriented front-end products.

When COVID hit in 2020, students were sent home and there was uncertainty about full-time offers. ValueLabs gave her a full-time offer before graduation, and she stayed until the end of the year. Then she started asking what tools would let her work more cross-functionally. SAP stood out, and she looked at companies using SAP heavily. Caterpillar and Ford were top choices, and she found her way to Caterpillar as a technical consultant on the SAP customer relationship module.

At Caterpillar, Maya worked as a technical consultant, got promoted after a year, and stayed for roughly two more years. She says she had the best set of mentors and supervisors there, and that support helped her realize that a master's degree was the next step. The experience gave her both technical credibility and cross-functional exposure before she moved to Purdue.

Naman asks how Maya landed a product manager position when her past roles were not explicitly product management. Many people treat PM as a dream role and build their whole profile around it, so he wants to know how she framed software engineering, SAP, and consulting experience for product roles.

Maya says no matter what sector you enter, you need to focus on transferable skills. Just because she was not formally a product manager does not mean her work had no product overlap. At ValueLabs, she worked with UI/UX and front-end product experiences. Product managers need to understand those trends. At Caterpillar, SAP touched many modules, which required cross-collaboration. She also worked with requirements, business cases, and automation teams. Those are product-management-adjacent skills if you tell the story clearly.

Her phrase is that she is an accidental PM. People in industry told her many product managers are accidental PMs. They were not always set on that path from day one. Instead, their traits, projects, and cross-functional skills collectively fit the role. For Maya, the key was plotting a narrative: here is what I did before, here is the transferable skill, and here is how that maps to what this product or program role needs.

Maya ranked product, program, and project management at the same top level for herself. Project management was trickier unless it was in a software context, because project roles can be tied to construction or other industries where she did not have domain expertise. Her second tier was supply chain, operations, and logistics because SAP and her Caterpillar experience connected to those areas, especially reverse logistics. Her third tier included product marketing and sales, because she saw overlap between product, sales, and marketing.

Naman assumes Maya probably used different resumes for those layers. Maya says she did not. This surprises him because students are usually told to tailor every resume heavily for every position.

Maya had one resume during the internship hunt. She tried customizing for different roles, but it created confusion and she sometimes submitted the wrong draft. That slowed her down and interfered with the volume she needed. For full-time roles, after collecting more US experience, she thinks two resumes may make sense: one more tech-focused and one more operations, hardware, or process-focused. But during the internship sprint, one resume helped her move faster.

In interviews, Maya kept drawing parallels from her past work to the job responsibilities. She would give exact examples of what she had done, identify the transferable skill, and map that skill to something the interviewer listed in the role. The interviewer could then see that even if she had not held the exact title, she had done comparable work and could do it again.

Naman asks Maya to walk through the Tesla interview process, including how many rounds there were and what kinds of questions came up.

Maya's first internship was with Tesla in Palo Alto, California, as an engineering program manager, or EPM, on the vehicle hardware team. She says Tesla internship interviews often have one round, sometimes two, based on what she saw from friends. In her case, she had about five rounds because the team was high-rigor and demanding.

The first Tesla round was a recruiter screen: basic background questions and checks on whether her experience mapped to the role. The next rounds mixed behavioral and technical evaluation rather than separating them cleanly. They were not asking her to name car parts or explain hardware details. They were trying to understand how she thought, whether she could map past experiences to a hardware program environment, and whether she had the maturity for the role.

One major Tesla round was a 40 to 45 minute presentation. Maya had to pick two professional experiences she was proud of and present them. She says the presentation was not only about the projects; it tested whether she could convey things clearly to senior leadership. As a PM or EPM, you often have to present to leaders, defend decisions, and answer follow-up questions under pressure.

For technical-style follow-ups, Tesla asked about things like key process indicators: what determined the success of the project, what she measured, and whether she had really thought through the work. The question behind the question was, 'So what?' Could she go deeper, explain why the work mattered, and handle something unexpected without freezing?

The final Tesla round was about maturity and confidentiality. Because Tesla works with high-IP, high-information projects, the company wanted to know whether she was mature enough to keep her mouth shut where required and not leak sensitive information. That was part of the assessment before the final offer.

Naman asks Maya about negotiations: whether students should negotiate, whether it is risky, and what negotiation means beyond salary.

Maya says people think negotiation means salary first, but it can include location, start date, end date, and internship term. She had to do a lot of that. Her ABB internship was originally supposed to be a summer role, but she already had summer plans. After the interview went well and she sensed the team liked her, she told them she would really like to work with them if they could wait until fall.

Her advice is to negotiate at the right moment. If she had raised the issue only with a recruiter at the beginning, the recruiter might have said they were looking only for summer and moved on. Instead, she waited until the end of the interview conversation, once the team had enough reason to want her. Then she made the timing clear before they made their decision. The company was flexible and willing to accommodate her for fall.

Maya also negotiated start timing and location. For ABB, she asked whether she could start earlier so she could finish earlier in December and travel back home. The company was understanding. For location, she had options and asked to be closer to where her business function would be so she could network and get the most from the internship. She chose Houston, and ABB said yes.

Naman points out that candidates often forget how much opportunity cost companies absorb during four or five interview rounds. Once you have proven yourself, the company has already spent time and money evaluating you, so they may be more willing to accommodate reasonable requests than applicants assume. The candidate does not have to approach every negotiation from a place of desperation.

Naman shifts to the internship experience itself. Maya has finished one internship, is in another, and has a third coming up. He asks what students should do in the first week or first few weeks to maximize learning and improve the odds of converting the experience into future opportunity.

Maya says her answer changed after actually working in the US. Before, she might have said the first week is for soaking in the culture and giving yourself time. But internships are short. A summer internship may be only 10 to 12 weeks, while spring and fall can be longer. At Tesla, there was no slow onboarding. It was extremely fast-paced, and she was immediately thrown into the project. Learning the culture and doing the work had to happen at the same time.

Walmart felt different. The first week was much more about welcoming interns, helping them settle in, and showing them where to find resources. But across company cultures, Maya says one thing is crucial: sit down with your manager in the first week and clearly lay out goals for the midpoint and the final evaluation.

The reason to set goals early is to remove ambiguity. Otherwise an intern can work very hard and still feel the manager is not satisfied, or feel they are not getting enough meaningful work. If you and the manager agree on goals early, then at the end you can say, 'These were the tasks, this is what I accomplished, and here is what remains.' Even if you finish three out of four goals, the evaluation is grounded in something concrete.

Maya says this advice came from a friend who sat their manager down and said, 'This is exactly what I perceive the goals to be. Do you agree?' Let the manager disagree and refine the goals. The important thing is not that the intern guesses perfectly; the important thing is creating a shared document of what success means before the internship disappears into vague effort.

She acknowledges that product and program roles can be hard to quantify. You may not be saving a precise number of hours or improving a process by an obvious percentage. But you can quantify the number of goals completed out of the number you committed to. If your manager is not proactive, Maya says the intern should put a meeting on the calendar with an agenda: we are going to set our goals.

Naman says that if he were a manager and a new intern proactively scheduled a goal-setting meeting with a clear agenda, that would be a huge positive signal. It shows the person cares and is not there simply to pass time.

For the final segment, Naman asks what Maya will carry into her full-time search. He wants to know whether the internship blueprint stays the same or whether full-time recruiting changes the game.

Maya thinks full-time search will look different because internship cycles are defined, while full-time jobs are rolling and dynamic. One job might need someone in 15 days, another in 90 days, another much later. Since she graduates in May 2025, she can test her resume early, but if she does not hear back, she cannot know whether the resume is weak or whether the graduation date is simply too far away.

Because she already has internships planned through May 2025, Maya can use the time to network without an immediate ask. She wants to meet people, understand what they do, and build relationships before she needs referrals. Her advice is not to stop at the first networking call. If you genuinely click with someone and they could become a mentor, set up a recurring 15-minute call. The calendar invite forces you to prepare an agenda, show up, and update them on your progress.

Maya gives an example from Amazon. She built a genuine connection with someone, and later that person reached out about an opening. Maya had to say she was not graduating until May 2025, but the person told her not to worry and said they would keep her in mind if something similar came up. That is the kind of relationship she wants before full-time applications begin.

Naman connects this to advice from Kati, another Ready Set Do guest, who said networking should not always be driven by instant gratification or a dangling referral. It is okay to build real connections before asking for anything.

Maya says she has always been focused on having mentors. One newer path she recommends is finding mentors among professors, especially professors who bring in industry projects. If you have been in their class, they already know you, and if you performed well, that relationship has a foundation. Professors can become practical mentors, not only academic contacts.

Through internships, Maya also reaches out to people for career-path advice and suggestions. But she warns that mentors can give conflicting advice. You need to filter what applies to you and what does not. It is completely fine to respect a mentor and still decide that a suggestion does not align with your situation.

Naman reflects that some of Maya's advice is counterintuitive. For example, many LinkedIn influencers would insist on several tailored resumes, but Maya used one resume during her internship sprint and it worked for her. The broader lesson is that advice is contextual. What matters is what you can actually execute.

Maya closes with the one thing she wants listeners to take away: stand up for yourself, and that includes being extremely critical of yourself. Only when you do that can you fetch the best results for yourself. Do not get too comfortable. Always be on your toes. Be proactive and stay on top of the timeline.