I'm trying to switch from consulting to product management. Is it possible to make the switch directly or would I need to go to business school? Are any FAANG companies keen on PMs with a consulting background? Are there any courses or books that could help me make the switch? I've been seeinga lot of ads Product School for instance. Is that a better value substitute for business school? Sorry for the question overload lol. Thanks in advance for your help 🙂

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I went from Bain to Facebook PM without business school so I can take a shot at these questions. Let's go one by one: Is it possible to make the switch directly or would I need to go to business school? It's definitely possible to go directly to product management from consulting, especially if you worked on technology projects where you shaped product decisions. Some companies like Amazon and Apple do prefer MBA pms but that's not the norm in the industry. Are any FAANG companies keen on PMs with a consulting background? Of FAANG, Facebook probably takes the most consultants but I'd recommend you don't limit yourself to just applying to FAANG. There's a lot of other great companies that value the consultant skillset in their pms. Some that come to mind are Tiktok, LinkedIn and Twitter. Are there any courses or books that could help me make the switch? The classic books to start with are Cracking the PM Interview and Decode and Conquer. These are almost a decade old but the basics haven't really changed all that much. I think the resource I found the most helpful was the Product Alliance courses. They essentially have a really good breakdown of rewrite your resume to appeal to product recruiters if you don't have formal product management experience & title. Their tips and resume template boosted by application to interview rate substantially. Their interview courses are also excellent. It's senior pms mock interviewing other senior pms and then showing you how to turn 8/10 responses into 10/10 responses. Given a panel of PMs are rating and grading these responses, you uncover the subtitles of good vs perfect answers. I have yet to see any other resource that does this well. I don't think if have ever been able to pass the Facebook interview without their courses. I've heard of Product School for instance. Is that a better value substitute for business school? Product School is definitely not worth the money imo. I don't know a single company that would actually value seeing you've been through Product School on your resume. Product School is essentially a very expensive networking opportunity but now that it's virtual, you don't really even get the networking part. You are much better off buying LinkedIn premium and hitting up people who went from McKinsey to a tech company you are interested in. Business school is another option, but really that only helps if you really want to work at Amazon. You are better off joining a startup as product manager and then switching to FAANG than going to B School imo assuming you aren't able to join FAANG directly. Another option I've seen consultants take at Facebook is join as a Product Strategiest or Market Stragiest and then internally transfer to product management. Hope that helps. Let me know if you'd like to chat and discuss further :)