3 Skills for Product Management + T-Mobile Hack?!?! + Internships -- Berkeley Product Press
Issue: #07
Hey Bears,
No Product Review this week. However, we did want to share 3 essential skills needed to break into the Product Management field. We hope you enjoy, and make sure to take a look at our job board for exciting opportunities! Plus, we've got more 🔥Hot🔥ProductNews!
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Terms of the week: Fintech, MoSCoW Method, User Story
🔥Hottest🔥 Product News!
1. Reddit announced that it plans to raise a $700M Series F round at a valuation of over $10B. News of the round, to be led by Fidelity Management & Research and other existing investors, comes after the company hit a $6.4B valuation in February, earlier this year. As of January, Reddit had more than 52 million daily active users and over 100,000 communities. Check out 🐻UC Berkeley's Reddit page!🐻
2. Latin America was in the startup 🚨spotlight🚨 as it continues to become the latest hotspot🔥 for VC funding. ArgentineFintech App Ualá, allows users to conduct financial transactions, such as, transferring 💰money and making payments and purchases, both in Argentina and abroad. The startup announced that it has raised $350M in their Series D round at a valuation of $2.45B.
3. 👾Hackers👾 continue to haunt 👻 the tech industry as T-Mobile becomes the latest victim of their frenzy. T-Mobile announces that it is investigating an "underground forum," claiming to have data related to more than 100 million T-Mobile customers in the U.S. and is selling access to part of the information for roughly $277,000.
Product Management Skillset
POV: You're trying to break into product management with the little amount of experience that you have on your profile. You butter🍿 up your resume with complex vocabulary, trying to sound like you've been in this industry for years and are capable of building amazing products. You add passion projects to beautify your expertise and even add appealing statistics to your work hoping that it showcases your brilliance. You add 20 different skills to your resume, thinking that this will convince the employer; It doesn't.
To break into product management, one must understand what a product manager does. Yes, everyone knows that they build products but no one knows how they come to the realization that this was a problem in the first place? They don't know the steps that the Product Manager takes to scale their product. They don't know what a product manager must be aware of and take into consideration when working with their team. We Do! We will provide you with 3 Product management skills that you can apply to your experiences and even your personal life to get a taste of the product management lifestyle in its true form.
1. Prioritization: Building a product is difficult and the reality is that not everything will get done — priorities shift, resources are reallocated, funding is scarce. As PM's its your job to make sure that your team is working on the important tasks first. That might sound simple, but when stakeholders and customers start providing feedback, expecting changes that can affect the timeline, & exceed cost limits, its up to you to prioritize whose opinion you will hold important and whose you will take into consideration with a grain of salt. The right prioritization framework will help you answer questions such as: Are we working on the highest business value item? Are we delivering the necessary value to customers? Can we get this product to the market? There are different product frameworks that have been created throughout the years to advise a product manager. Our favorite framework is the MoSCoW method, but there are many more that you can choose from when working on projects. Here is a complete list!
2. Estimation: Aspiring Product Managers are often asked estimation questions by interviewers to test their capability of reaching a solution toward a problem, but more importantly, the way they do it. Estimation is important because it enables the PM (and the entire team) to figure out which stories to prioritize for the iteration and whether these stories can be feasibly completed within the span of that iteration. One of the most effective ways to approach estimation is to estimate the relative effort and not the absolute effort of the story. To answer questions like "How much oil is consumed in the U.S. per year?" you must memorize basic facts that can help you bound your answer and provide relevancy. Here is a list of facts that can assist you in interviews.
3. Product Research: In order to build a successful product, a Product Manager must be fully invested in the idea of the product itself. Product Research is the validation behind a product idea to understand if the idea will be successful or not. It's a part of the product development process that helps identify customer needs and if your idea can meet market demand. A lot of Product Managers tend to use Facebook's 3 Question Approach: A. What people problem are we trying to solve? B. How do we know this is a real problem? C. How will we know if this problem is solved? As you learn more about the product market, its solution, its competition, its target customer, you start making sense of the information and it becomes easier to answer those vital questions towards a product's success.
We hope you enjoyed reading about these skills and learned about their importance. We recommend implementing these skills in your experiences, professionally & personally!
Product Management Internship @ Colgate: Colgate is a global leading consumer products company with a reach in over 200 countries. Colgate's products are primarily focused on Oral Care, Personal Care, Home Care, and Pet Nutrition. The intern will help manage Colgate’s Direct to Consumer (DTC) eCommerce products by collaborating with a senior Product Manager and evolving the product roadmap. If this opportunity sounds interesting, click the link above to apply!
Product Management Internship @ Cisco: Cisco is the world leader in internet networking. Cisco's networking solutions connect people, computing devices, and computer networks, allowing people to access or transfer information without regard to differences in time, place, or type of computer system. Cisco's PM intern will be driving projects with market analysis and product definition while utilizing product management skillsets and methodologies. If this opportunity sounds interesting, click the link above to apply!
Product Marketing Internship @ Warner Media: WarnerMedia is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate that covers a powerful portfolio of iconic entertainment, news, and sports brands. Turner Sports is the team that delivers sports broadcasts to the WarnerMedia networks like TBS, TNT, and truTV. The intern will focus on identifying best-in-class solutions from acquisition, retention, feedback, and testing, and will assist with the implementation of these capabilities into WarnerMedia's B/R digital ecosphere. If this opportunity sounds interesting, click the link above to apply!
If you're interested in advertising a role, please reach out to us via email.
Omair Khan is the founder of Berkeley Product Press. Our team focuses on helping students learn and grow about Product domain. If you would like to become a writer for Berkeley Product Press please reach out to us!
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