It’s been a few years since I graduated from Business School and started my Product Management journey at Amazon. I often get questions from current MBA students on how they can make the most of their time at MBA if they aim to transition into Product Management. As I reflect on my experiences, I realize that while MBA is not necessary to be a PM, it provides an excellent environment to learn many crucial skills.

In this post, I will offer some advice for current MBA students on how they can best use time to first break into Product Management and then to succeed in the role.

These are two different things, so let’s talk about both.

How to land a Product Management job after MBA

1. Figure out if it is a good fit

While this might sound trivial, this is an important step. You should have a ballpark idea about the fit before starting the program or within the first few months. Start by reading about the role online or through popular books like ‘Inspired’ and ‘Cracking the PM interview’. Speak to Product Managers in your network to understand what they do. Or attend virtual events to get an idea of the day-to-day job of a PM. Product Management can sound glamorous from the outside, but it’s a hard job and you may not enjoy the work.

How do you figure out if you are a good fit?

Generally, if you like building things, have a curiosity about technology, and like to work with people, chances are that you will like Product Management. However, try to figure out both good and bad about these aspects of the job. Building things is not just about launching cool and slick apps. For starters, you would not be building anything. You are more like a Director of movie who brings everyone together. It requires you to be very detail-oriented and comfortable with doing small feature work early in your career. Similarly, curiosity for technology is not just futuristic imagination. It will require you to spend enormous time during and outside work learning about APIs, system design, and having detailed trade-off discussions with your engineering counterparts. And while working with people is an important part of any job, there’s a lot of energy-draining negotiation, conflict resolution, and disagreement that’s essential to what a PM does.

Think through all these issues for yourself and figure out if you still find the role attractive.

2. Decide early if you want to pursue it

Once you decide that you are a good fit, there is a tremendous advantage in focusing your attention on PM recruiting early on. Even if you are 60–70% sure, my advice is to drop other options like Consulting or Finance and go all-in into PM recruiting.

A lot of candidates decide specifically between Consulting and Product Management. I recruited for both and have some perspective to offer. Even though these roles have some similarities, they demand very different kinds of interview preparation and it’s hard to recruit for both together. Because of the way recruiting is structured in most Business Schools, Consulting companies visit campus earlier and offer a more structured recruiting process. That — along with the allure of good money and a shiny name on the resume — attracts a lot of candidates to commit to Consulting early on.

If you are on the fence between Consulting and Product Management, I would recommend resisting the temptation to recruit for Consulting and choose Product Management. In the short term, Consulting feels like a great option, especially because it is prestigious. But prestige alone won’t do you much good in a world that’s increasingly driven by technology. It’s better to be in the front seat of building the future as a PM in a tech company than advising the old guard that’s trying to catch up. In the longer term, you would learn many more tangible and soft skills as a PM since you take on a lot more ownership.

If you are still inclined towards Consulting, think hard about what you want to do after that. A few years in Consulting would not lend you any major advantage if you plan to recruit for PM roles later. Also, try to speak to alumni who have spent a year or two in Consulting and see where they are headed now. Many of them would eventually transition into PM, but at MBA-level roles. Consulting has many advantages, but if your eventual destination is building technology products, don’t take detours and recruit directly for PM.

3. Leverage Interview preparation to step into PM shoes

PM recruiting at Business School is more unstructured than Consulting or Banking roles. A few big tech employers would directly hire from campus, but a good chunk of companies will open their gates later. In any case, you should start interview preparation early.

Interview preps when done right can help you not only get the job but also start thinking like a PM. That will put you far ahead in a competitive job market where thousands of capable individuals are trying to break into PM.

One of the most effective ways to prepare for interviews is to form a group of 3–5 peers with who you can practice with. Even as you start practicing product cases and behavioral questions, try to live and breathe product management every day. If you have a PM or Tech Club on campus, enroll quickly to stay in touch with peers who have similar goals. Read about what’s happening in the technology industry at large. Tinker around with products you use every day, tear them down, and think how you would improve them. Use tools like ‘Exponent’ to master the art of solving product cases. The more you immerse yourself, the better you will do in your actual interviews.

Think about interview preparation as more than just recruiting. Done well, it will shape you into a PM even before you land your first interview.

4. Get hands-on experience to build a resume that gets you interviews

Product Management can only be learned through on-the-job training. You can do certifications and take relevant courses, but none of those things would make a difference in your recruiting.

What will make a difference is a Product Manager title on your resume. If you have been a PM before your MBA, congrats! You are in a great spot. If you don’t have past PM experience, a good way to get some of that is through a pre-MBA internship. If you have missed that boat, look out for projects in or outside your school where you can get some experience of building a product. For example, MIT Sloan has a course that ties up with local startups and matches students for short 3–4 weeks PM immersions.

Your main recruiting goal is to get a full-time Product Manager role after your MBA. So as far as an internship is concerned, you should aim to intern as a PM in any decent organization. If you are evaluating offers between a non-PM role in a recognized company vs a PM role in a no-name startup, go for the PM role as that will be much more useful. Once you have some kind of PM experience, you have ammunition to build a compelling resume as you take on full-time recruiting in the second year.

Your resume is not a chronological listing of your work experiences. It’s a flexible canvas to create your narrative. Give a lot more emphasis to your PM-related experiences, even if they are far are few. I remember a senior at Business School who spent all her career (6+years) in Government and then did a 2-month PM internship at a startup. But that 2-month internship occupied 50% space in her resume. She talked about every small thing she did in her 8-week internship in a lot of detail, while only highlighting a handful of key projects from her entire 6 years of work experience.

Try to get as many hands-on PM experiences as possible in whatsoever small doses, either through side projects or internships, and then prioritize them to craft a winning resume. A resume that shows that you have done work as a PM will get you a lot more interview invites.

Through these strategies, and with some luck, you will likely land a good PM role. It may or may not be in your dream company, but you would have placed your foot in the door. It’ll be a lot easier from here to move into a company you like.

How to build skills in MBA to be a successful PM

In parallel to your recruiting efforts, you should focus on acquiring skills in your MBA that will make you a successful PM later. MBA won’t magically make you a strong PM, but if you are intentional about how you spend your time, you will do well in your job and rise the career ladder quickly.

Here is some advice from my experience on how to prepare yourself for success on the job:

5. Make most of your classes

The MBA classes are quite informative and even entertaining, but you would not learn a great deal about Product Management there. And while it’s important to cover the basics of accounting, corporate finance, strategy, and marketing, I would suggest picking classes that pique your curiosity over optimizing to master Product Management (courses won’t help you with that). You would likely work with large datasets in future, so take advantage of data analytics courses that most schools offer these days. And if your Business School is part of a larger university, I would recommend taking an introductory class on Programming or Machine Learning to build some technical chops, especially if you don’t have a STEM background.

While the classroom education won’t offer you the most relevant content, it will give you ample opportunities to learn two valuable skills: 1) Presenting your point of view in meetings, and 2) Written communication.

Presenting your point of view in meetings: In about 50–80% of your classes, you will learn through the case method. Even though it’s a lot of work, the case method prepares you well for the job ahead. I would urge you to actively take part in case discussions, especially if doing so is out of your comfort zone. In your MBA, you may get away without much participation. But once you start work, you will be part of dozens of meetings each week, from small team chats to critical leadership updates. You will be cold-called, asked to take a stance, defend your argument, influence others, and do much more. The case method helps you build that muscle. The more you practice, the more comfortable you will become in advocating your point of view. After a while, you would become better at asking the right questions, seeking meaningful data, and solving problems in a high-stress environment. Since PMs lead through influence, this critical skill can make your job that much easier or difficult.

Master written communication: Business School assignments require you to write a lot. This is an excellent opportunity to hone your writing. As a PM, you will need to excel in both verbal and written communication. Concise, to-the-point, persuasive writing is a powerful weapon in your arsenal for influencing stakeholders. In companies like Amazon and Stripe, there is a strong writing culture that many other Product teams are now adopting. Whether it’s writing a proposal, a PRD, marketing blog post, or a status update email, good writing will propel you ahead.

Remember that in Business School, the stakes are not too high and it’s easy to get away by submitting mediocre assignments, especially if you don’t care about grades or when there are hundred other things to do. But push yourself to learn to write well even when no one is closely evaluating. The investment in learning to write well will yield rich dividends later.

6. Take on more leadership roles

During my MBA, I held many leadership roles in clubs and conferences. But if I were to do my MBA again, I would seek even more challenging leadership opportunities. Building software is a team sport. As a PM, you would be working in teams where you have no authority, but total responsibility for the success or failure of the product. You will need to influence people, negotiate with them, keep them accountable, and nudge them in the right direction to deliver results. All this feels very similar to the leadership activities you do in Business School. The challenges you face in hosting an event or organizing a study tour are all people challenges.

You have a great opportunity during your MBA to hone your people management skills. Even if the activities have nothing to do with building tech products, the nature of people challenges remains the same. The bigger obstacles you overcome, the more confident you will feel about tackling actual challenges when you inevitably face them at work.

7. Build a professional network for decades

One of the advantages of deciding early to recruit for PM is that you send a strong signal to your peers about your career interests. You are building your brand at every moment during your MBA. Over time, your friends will come to associate you with all things tech and PM. There is a lot of serendipity in Business School, and when people recognize you for something, many opportunities will find you in pleasantly unexpected ways.

Business School is an incredible place to forge many strong connections for life. Most of your peers would be very successful in their careers and will hold important positions in all kinds of companies. They will open doors for you as you rise in your career. Make efforts to be an active alumnus. And whenever possible, help others achieve their goals. It will come back to you in ways you didn’t imagine.

In Summary

Successful Product leaders come from all backgrounds. Many don’t have MBA as it’s not necessary. On the other hand, Business School provides a lot of resources to launch and accelerate your PM career. It won’t happen by itself, but if you are proactive about it, you can turn your MBA into a solid long-term investment.