Presentation to Kellogg Tech Club with Dan Lindquist about career switching and breaking into Product Management. TLDR; - Hone your story about why PM - Frame your past experiences from the lens of a PM - Build a basic technical understanding. Its like if you are going to live in China, you should learn a few phrases of Chinese - Focus on getting your foot in the door and the PM title, less on the first project or company. Tech moves fast and you might not even be on the same team in a year.

1. Breaking into Product Management
December 6th, 2018

3. Agenda
• Intros
• The Basics
• Framing Experiences
• Time at Kellogg
• Finding Your First Role
• Interview Prep
• Q&A

4. Eric Chang 2013 MMM

5. Dan Lindquist 2012 MMM

6. The Basics
• Know what a PM does
• Resources: Quora, Medium articles,
coffee chats, Product school podcast, etc
• Skills
• Leadership
• Prioritization
• Strategy
• Selling ideas
• Project management
• User experience
• Basic technical understanding
• What is your story? Why Product?

7. Framing Experiences
• Highlight experiences through lens of PM skills
• Omit experiences that don’t apply
• Anchor on new Kellogg experiences
Don’t talk about the nuts and bolts, talk about your skills, project, and your impact

8. At Kellogg
• Go all in, ruthlessly prioritize classes and time
• Get out of theoretical and get project experience
• Launch side project (eg, basic Alexa app)
• Build basic technical foundation
• Treehouse classes, Coursera, etc
• Leverage Kellogg network

9. Finding Your First Role
• Be open: Prioritize PM title over company and project
• Be flexible: Just in time recruiting
• Know what you are getting into
• Startups less likely to hold your hand but may have flex in role
responsibilities
• Large companies have more formal role definition and scope
• Switching to PM track after getting hired
• Can target marketing / strategy roles first to get into tech
• Large companies often have formal ladder transfer process

10. Interview Prep
• Read up on company, tech trends
• Stratechery (Kellogg Alumnus!), Google News, Seeking Alpha,
Techcrunch, Crunchbase
• Make your story unique on why that company
• Look at Glassdoor for questions
• Study product design frameworks (e.g. CIRCLES)
• Practice out loud, using whiteboard
• If possible, schedule your top companies last to get practice

11. Q&A