Finding it difficult to land product interviews? Here’s how you can apply strategically and efficiently
If you are looking for your first product management job right out of school, the entire process can be overwhelming and a difficult one to crack. You have to juggle between a lot of priorities right from applying, networking, preparing for interviews, and what not. Even though there are 1000s of roles that open up from time to time, the competition for those roles is equally tough. You have to tirelessly work your way up to crack each stage and finally sign an offer. The first step to this entire journey is applying and landing interviews. Given the competition, no matter how skilled you are or what your background is, the odds are always against you. As a fresher, to make the odds work in your favor you have to play the volume game and be super efficient and strategic about the application process.
In my journey of applying to over 500 places and landing a product role, I’ve had a fair share of learning on how you can make the entire application process more effective and work in your favor.
#1 Widen the top of your funnel
Your interest to work with a company and interview with them should not define whether you should be applying for them or not. Apply to roles that are even remotely relevant to your skills and background. Applying to a role does not mean that you have to join the company.
Each application and subsequent rejection/progress is a chance for you to learn and improve your resume and interviewing skills.
It takes time to polish your resume and how you present yourself and that cannot happen unless you test the waters. You need to be at your best when the right opportunity presents!
#2 Divide and conquer
You need to create a right mix of where you make a cold application vs where you use a referral.
Referrals definitely increase your chances of interviewing with a company but getting them can be a slow and hard process. You also need to keep making cold applications to ensure that you are applying at enough places to makes the odds work in your favor. My recommendation is to create a list of top 20 companies where you’d like to work and actively look for referrals for them. Beyond that, apply without referrals unless you know you can easily get a referral. Volume of applications you make is important!
In this article you can read about how you can successfully find referrals and land job interviews.
#3 Maintain customized copies of your resume
Each role and job description has different requirements and often denoted by different titles for e.g. if you are applying for product management roles, you’d come across job opening such as — PM, Platform; PM, Growth; PM, Monetization; PM, Analytics etc. It is recommended that you apply to such roles with different version of your resume where certain parts of your experience are given more precedence over others.
Every time you make a customized version of your resume, create a new copy and save it separately.
It is common that you’ll come across similar roles multiple times but not at once. At that time it is important that you have different versions of your resume ready to use and not have to edit your same resume again and again.
#4 Build time in your calendar to apply
Applying for jobs should not be an ad-hoc activity where you are applying whenever you find time (which you never will). You need to dedicate time and energy for applications.
Block some time on your calendar to make sure that you are applying consistently.
This could be right before you sleep or at a time when you feel the most unproductive and cannot get any focus work done. Use your down time for applying.
#5 Apply as soon as a role goes live
Subscribe to LinkedIn notification for when a new set of roles go live in the area that you are looking for.
The sooner you apply, the higher the chances of you landing the interview.
The recruiters actively reach out to candidates who apply earlier and only move onto the next set of applications once they see candidates not moving forward from the first set of applications.
#6 De-prioritize Workday applications
Whenever you encounter a Workday application, just make a note of the application and move forward! Prioritize applying to all the places that are not using Workday as their hiring solution.
Greenhouse and Lever applications should be on top of your list.
They are super straight forward to apply and takes about 1–2 minutes to complete those applications. Workday’s application UX is so bad that applying on Workday in the middle everything is demotivating, distracting, and breaks your rhythm to keep applying. Schedule separate times, maybe once in a week, to complete all the Workday applications in one go.
#7 X years of experience required! Don’t worry its just a number
When I used to apply for product management roles, (almost!) every role would ask for minimum 5 years of product experience, even the entry level ones. Over the period of time I learnt that even the companies and the hiring managers themselves do not know what type of candidate they are looking for.
Do not pass on a role just because you did not fit this criteria. Just apply as you’ve got nothing to lose.
Even once you land interviews, do not stop applying. You never know how things play out. At any point you do not want your hiring pipeline to not have upcoming interviews. It is better to say no to interviews in the future rather than not have any and build a pipeline from scratch.
Happy Interviewing!
Are there any tips that have enabled you apply effectively and land interviews? Feel free to share it here with the wider audience :)
