Breaking Into Product Management with Ryan Hill (APMList)

Path to PM is a series of interviews with product leaders about breaking into product management.

In this session, we interview Ryan Hill, founder of APMList, a job board for associate product managers.

Breaking into PM

1. Tell us about your current PM career.

I’m currently an APM at Oath, Yahoo's parent company. I work on various aspects of Yahoo.com and spend most of my time in the Sunnyvale office.

Occasionally, I work in San Francisco, but spending time with the larger team in the South Bay is usually more effective.

2. How did you break into product management?

Before getting into product management, I had a very interdisciplinary background. I’ve worked in marketing, UX design, software engineering, and consulting.

I also started a startup with a few friends with a small amount of traction (a few thousand in revenue) and later ran a nonprofit with roughly half a million a year in revenue.

This mix helped me transition into my first PM internship.

I had two PM internships before I landed my first full-time PM offer. This PM role was my first full-time job after graduating from undergrad at UC San Diego.

3. How many companies did you apply to? How many did you hear back from?

Straight out of college, I applied to about 15 companies for product roles.

I heard back from about 10 and made it through the final rounds at Facebook, LinkedIn, Yahoo, and a few smaller companies.

4. What was your most successful interview question?

That’s a good question – I’m unsure what my most successful interview question was.

I would say, in general, I get good feedback/results from interviews where I can:

• Get very specific about my product suggestions regarding the wireframe and technical implementation level.
• Talk about why I think this decision is a good move, especially compared to other choices I chose not to pursue.

You are generally in an excellent position if you can demonstrate that you are both obsessed with details and a strategic, high-level thinker.

5. What was the most challenging interview question you faced?

The most challenging questions I received actually ended up being behavioral questions.

When you are being interviewed by a director or a very senior product manager, they usually probe deeply and can sniff out BS or non-answers.

Questions like “What are your 5 biggest weaknesses?” get very challenging when your interviewer challenges your answers. It’s hard to know yourself that well.

It’s easy to make answers that sound good, but interviewers can pick those types of answers apart. I wish I had given myself a lot more self-reflection before I started interviewing.

It would have helped in many places.

6. How do you answer the “what’s your favorite product” question?

I often default to some physical products I own, such as my backpack or skateboard. Physical items seem rarely discussed nowadays, but are usually the clearest examples of understanding priorities and designing for specific user needs.

For many candidates, if you try talking about a common app or service in an interview, inevitably, instead of focusing on scoping the product to match a set of user needs, you can avoid important questions.

By assuming that AB tests can substitute for making a strategic decision, or by glossing over the details of how a feature works by saying machine learning will find the best post/song/video/content for every user type, you shrug off opportunities to demonstrate critical thought and instead give cop out answers that play into the iterative, customizable nature of software.

Focus on being opinionated and having good justification. Pick a product that forces you to make strategic product trade-offs to help some users and not others, and ruthlessly justify yourself. That shows real thought.

7. What advice would you give yourself if you started interviewing again?

I like a quote: “Practice doesn’t make perfect, only perfect practice makes perfect.”

If you try practicing PM interviews with people also looking for APM roles, you probably won’t be helping yourself much, if at all. M

any people might hinder your growth, because they don’t know how to ask meaningful questions and give you misleading feedback. After all, your answers didn’t match their skewed and inaccurate vision of what makes a “good answer.”

Seriously, so many people out there like to pretend they have perfect clarity on what makes a good product answer when judging others, but in reality they are failing their own PM interviews because they have absolutely no idea what makes a good product interview answer. Don’t get caught up in the noise of ignorant feedback.

Find a mentor as early on as you can.

Don’t be aggressive or annoying about it; realize that the smartest and most talented people usually have the least time. Look for people currently where you want to be in 2-3 years, and take them out for coffee. Learn from them. Don’t spend too much time listening to your peers who are confused just as much or more than you are – focus on advice from more experienced people and follow their footsteps.

8. What’s your favorite blog post, book, or website that you’d recommend to a current PM interviewee?

I actually made a website that includes this info: apmlist.com.

It has a list of resources I’d recommend PMs read, and I plan on adding more to it. I mainly made the APM List to have a list of available APM roles, so that’s another great reason to check it out.

One book on my list that some people have asked me about is The Design of Everyday Things.

It’s not traditionally considered a product management book and doesn’t have practice interview questions. That being said, Don Norman is the granddaddy of the design world, and his thoughts on human-centered design benefit a product manager’s toolkit.

From reading his book and being a student of his, I feel that I have a great formula for tackling product design questions (both in interviews and in real life).

9. Any last comments you’d like to mention?

Getting into product management, especially right out of college, is hard.

Across all companies that offer APM roles, I’d estimate that there are about 100 spots open every year. That number might actually be on the higher end. The odds are not in your favor.

When there are too many applicants for the number of spots available, companies often filter resumes by school, GPA, and other factors.

This can make it even harder for those who might be first-generation college students or part-time workers to stand up to sweeping generalizations that companies use to simplify their pipelines.

It’s unfortunate, but life is both competitive as hell and incredibly unfair. Take this into account when applying.

In an ideal world, lots of aspiring PMs could get the chance to try out product management. You probably have student debt and rent to pay in the real world. Please don’t bet your livelihood on winning the APM lottery.

I encourage anyone and everyone to apply for PM roles, but do so with realism. You don’t have to “break” into product management quickly. Many people slowly transition into a product role within a company, where they officially play a non-PM role because they demonstrate initiative and well-thought-out product direction.

If you get an APM offer, congrats! If you don’t, it’s not the end of the road. Keep trying and keep learning. “Luck is the crossroads of preparation and opportunity.” – Eventually, luck is bound to strike!

PM Interview Advice

Landing a product job requires more than just applying!

1. Create an excellent PM resume: Companies like Google receive over three million applications yearly. 80-90% of candidates never pass the resume screen. Ask friends, mentors, or our tech resume coaches to review your resume. Use our PM resume template if you need help getting started.
2. Prepare for interviews: The product management interview process will test your product sense, product design, product strategy, analytical and estimation skills, and behavioral fit with the company. Review the most frequently asked PM questions and answers.
3. Review the company: Each company has a unique mission, products, and approach to PM interviews. Spend time understanding how they envision their place in the world. How could you help them achieve that vision? 
4. Practice: Even the most knowledgeable candidates can feel nervous during the interview. You can practice with Exponent's free peer-to-peer and AI PM mock interview portal. Every day, PM candidates role-play in 1:1 mock interviews and give feedback.
5. Interview: All the preparation and hard work you've done have led up to this moment! It's time to turn on your camera and nail those PM interviews!