One of the most lucrative careers an MBA student can get into? Product management. Especially if you’re a GEM (general engineering male!) or an engineer, product management is a career path open to you. WIth opportunities to work in Google, Facebook, Netflix, etc and other such new age ecommerce companies or startups, there’s a lot you can do to get into this career. But first, baby steps. How do you start? What are the key skills you need to get into a PM role? What kind of internships should you aim for? Samarth Ladia, IIM C student, PM intern at Media.net Ex Fractal as well as the VP of Industrial Relations & Outreach for the Product Management & Technology Club at IIM C shares key insights and answers these questions for you! Read on to find out Samarth’s story!
Excerpts from our conversation with Samarth:
1. Tell us about yourself.
My name is Samarth Ladia. I’m a Computer Science Engineer from V.E.S. Institute of Technology, Mumbai University. I graduated from the same in 2017, post which I worked for 22 months at Fractal (Mumbai) as a Data Analyst (Consultant). While working there, I took CAT 2018 and joined IIM Calcutta’s MBA program last year.
For the summer internship process, I prepared for the Product Management and Marketing sectors a bit more so than others and landed an internship at Media.net as a PM Intern in Mumbai. I did a 2-month (virtual) internship there in the months of April and May, 2020.
2. Is product management taught in b-schools? Or Are any b-school subjects directly helpful in understanding product management?
Product Management is a massively evolving industry. In the Indian context, although it’s done taking its final shape and form, it’s rapidly on the rise, especially with most companies gradually shifting towards tech. In this massively evolving scenario, it’s difficult to have a single management course to teach it all. B-Schools in India are still adapting to this change and continually trying to evolve their MIS based courses to include Product!
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3. Why this interest in product management?
I’ve been a tech person my entire life, with my undergrad and work experience, so this comes as a natural progression for me. While I decided to move away from core hands-on technology-based roles by deciding to pursue an MBA, I still wish to remain rooted in technology and what better way than to become a PM and actually influence (and hopefully improve) the processes I’ve been a part of earlier! I’ve also had the fortune of finding such wonderful people guiding and mentoring me at different points in my career.
4. Is product management something only engineers can get into? Or what is the correlation between product management and engineering?
Product Management is an open field which requires a unique combination of skillsets. The prime most of which are Communication and Personal Leadership. Extremely good levels of these are required in all the stakeholder management that the PM role entails. Apart from that, a PM must be good at at least 3 out the following 4: Technology, Data, Problem Solving and Design! The reason I say this is that there are lots of career trajectories that enable one to master any 3 of these, engineering never being a necessity. I have personally worked with non-engineering PMs. The only correlation between PM and engineering is that there too many engineers who apply for the role as opposed to those of other backgrounds. But that too is changing.
5. Tell us about your Product Management & Technology club at IIM C.
The Product Management & Technology Club of IIM Calcutta, or PMTech as we call it, was a much-needed force towards developing a stronger PM culture at Joka. The club came in at a time when the number of PM roles being offered was rapidly increasing. I have heard that for earlier batches, PM roles were mainly via the Lateral Placement process, that too, far and few. But with the last few batches, the number of roles offered across Summers, Laterals and Finals has been tremendous! The club was a result of the initiative taken up by a few of my seniors last year, adding a small group of us then first-years into their ranks. Since then we’ve grown leaps and bounds with multiple events like webinars, workshops, case competitions and live projects being rolled out and many more in the pipeline. We’ve even been involved with the respective clubs of IIMs A, B and L to run a collaborative set of webinars and events for the students from all 4 campuses which was extremely critical to developing a PM culture at the topmost level. At PMTech Club IIMC, we’ve envisioned to position IIMC as one of the top PM hubs of the country. We’ve even been curating quality content for PM enthusiasts and have even bigger goals.
6. What are the general skills you think an ideal PM possesses?
A PM, while not necessarily a technologist, must be a technology enthusiast. They should be aware of the happenings of the industry and must actively participate in those conversations. They should be willing to embrace technology at all touchpoints and be willing to constantly evolve and learn. Besides these, as I mentioned earlier, Communication, Personal Leadership, Data, Design and Problem Solving skills are must-haves.
7. Tell us about your experience working as a product manager at Media.net.
PM Intern at Media.net was a wonderful experience in terms of the learning and the freedom given to choose your own path. My mentor and manager always let me decide how I do my work and set my own pace of completing the tasks. While the problem statement for the product I worked on was obviously specific, I was encouraged to define its scope as per my understanding. My mentor was there to guide me at all stages, often nudging me in the right direction and pulling me back from the wrong ones once I realised that I had gone down one. Of course, there were the few common drawbacks that come with any new virtual role that all of my batchmates, unfortunately, had to face, but the level of engagement at Media.net from the get-go was absolutely terrific. Working in AdTech (Advertising Technology) was truly the perfect match for me given my interest in both PM and marketing. The AdTech learning curve, while steep, is very relevant in today’s world and thus ended up being fun and enriching.
8. Anything students can do before summer placements start, in order to get into a PM role?
There are a lot of resources available for getting into a PM role. You have multiple famous books in the market like “Decode and Conquer”, “Cracking the PM Interview”, “Hooked”, etc. There are also many good YouTube channels like Exponent, The Product School, etc. and podcasts like the Product Podcast. Twitter is perhaps the best source to engage with all the brilliant PMs out there who keep posting such high level of content based on their corporate careers or their entrepreneurial journeys. But in general, there isn’t a specific set of activities that you can just pick up to get into a PM role, it’s more of an innate love for technology and a result of the set of skills you pick up over the years.
9. What are the key functions product managers work on? Is domain based specialization a must for aspiring product managers?
There is no one domain that a PM must specialise in. You have to have the knowledge of almost everything, right from ideating the product, planning the design and engineering, setting milestones, marketing the product, compiling its finances, etc. and coordinating with all the various stakeholders in charge of these.
10. What key aspects do you think should be mentioned in an aspiring PM's CV?
Your encounters with technology, be it in any field and how good of a problem solver you are two things you must absolutely try to highlight. No matter how small, any product, update, release, design, strategy or planning you’ve been a part of, all of these points help you get noticed as a potential PM.
11. Which (if any) competitions should one participate in to gain PM experience?
Participate in all PM-related case competitions, especially the ones that the top companies come up with. You end up learning the most by working on such cases. They also help you get closer to converting the companies of your dreams. Also, keep an eye out for the events that are going to be launched under the collaborative banner of IIMs A, B, C and L.
12. What are the most interesting domains to work in as a PM?
There are many interesting domains out there to explore. To name a few, FinTech has always been one of the top domains for a PM. These days, there is a huge rise in EduTech and HealthTech (or MedTech) platforms coming up which are a great space for PMs to work in with new ML and deep learning algorithms being developed. Having personally worked with, and loved, Analytics based and AdTech, I’d definitely vouch for them as well.
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