Ryan is a senior product manager at Disney Streaming. Ryan shares his experiences of being laid off from a product role at Zola during the global pandemic and how he bounced back to land a senior product role with Disney within 4 weeks. The has been extremely difficult for people across the world and we hope that this episode will be helpful to anyone looking for a new role during this period.

Episode Transcription

2:15 - Background information leading up to layoffs

8:51 - Urgency to getting a new job

11:25 - Actions after  lay off

14:42 - Networking + Mock interviews

21:40 - Dealing with interview fatigue + stress

23:27 - Dealing with rejections

27:00 - Disney interview process

32:09 - Learnings from recruiting during the pandemic

Anand, a technical product manager at Amazon, walks us through his experiences interviewing for product roles.

Episode Transcription

0:35 - Approach to applying to product roles for the first time

3:18 - What are the different types of PM interviews?

5:40 - What base knowledge does it take to answer PM interview questions?

7:27 - Did the Masters degree helped with product interviews?

9:39 - Thoughts on using product interview frameworks

16:19 - Are you happy now that you're a PM?

(Part 1 of 2) Anand is a Technical Product Manager at Amazon. Anand comes from a non-tech background in chemical engineering and went to work as a management consultant out of undergrad. Anand talks about how he ultimately used a technical masters degree to help him springboard into product management. He discusses some of his experiences as a management consultant as well as the trade offs between an MBA and a technical masters.

(Part 2, coming soon) Anand speaks to his experiences interviewing at different tech companies and provides detailed advice on how to approach the product management interview.

Eric is a Product Manager at SSENSE, where he works on the mobile shopping experience.

Eric has been interested in the role of product management without knowing about the role itself for many years before he became a product manager. He talks about how his experience through high school and college led him to learn about the product management role, and how he pivoted from his consulting role to become a product manager. 

Eric also touches on his experiences interviewing at big tech companies like Google and Facebook, and how he eventually ended up at SSENSE.