I've been at McKinsey for a few years now and think it's time to make a switch. One of the paths I'm most interested in is product management.

How similar are product management interviews to consulting interviews? Are their any Victor Cheng consulting interview prep videos equivalents for the PM interview world?

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I’m making the same move right now- interviewing with multiple companies for PM with no technical background. Feel free to DM for advice. Lewis Lin is the Victor Cheng of PM

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How was the BCG experience?

I joined Facebook from Bain so I'm happy to share a bit about my interview experience. I think product interviews are more open ended and subjective in terms of response vs consulting interviews however there are commonalities. At Facebook, there's three interview rounds: execution, product sense and leadership/drive (behavioral). Execution interviews are most similar to consulting cases where you might be asked to try to diagnose what's causing a problem like a dropping metric. Product sense is much more open ended with a focus on creating world class user experiences for a given user need.

In terms of prepping for making the switch to product, I read the classics like Cracking the PM Interview and Decode and Conquer. Those were helpful as I'm new to product however definitely stale. The most helpful resource I found was the Product Alliance video course series. The have a general interview course which is like 15 hours as well as company specific deep dive content with stuff like the questions you are most likely to get asked at the top 20 or so companies. They had really helpful study sheets for all the companies I was interviewing at (Facebook, Amazon, and Twitter.) I'd say Product Alliance videos are probably the closest product equivalent to Victor Cheng for consulting

likehelpful

Sure, feel free to DM me :)

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Can you MBBs just wait like 2 more months before you start applying. Need to give the rest of us starting our PM search a chance 😂

likefunnysmart

Lines back there —>

likefunnysmart

When I was at MSFT, I hired lots of PMs. If it were someone without prior experience (which was rare), we looked for certain skill sets like problem-solving, quantitative analysis, storytelling, and general comms skills (written mostly, but also need to present to all types of audiences). Having now been a McKinsey a few years, I can say that most of the BAs and Ascs I have encountered would make great PMs... as long as you are excited about the market / product / industry you are jumping into. Two soft skills I always required were work ethic and passion. I always felt I can teach smart people the basic blocking and tackling of PM, but cannot teach these two mandatory traits.

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Joined McKinsey as a Sr Expert after running many product teams at b2b and b2c companies. Was tired of always looking at problems through a vendor’s lens and liked the idea of solving hard data and IoT problems for big clients without being attached to one solution stack (eg AWS, Azure or Google). Happy to chat with you if you’re interested. DM me.

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Plenty of roles for all of us! I’ve found it to actually be much much easier than I expected- I heard it’s almost impossible but there are actually a lot of companies looking for consulting backgrounds

likehelpful

Which companies bro/sis?

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Swipe to Unlock might be helpful, if you haven’t read it.

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OP- Can you comment on how did you tailor your Consulting resume for a Product role?

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I recently went from B4 to Facebook PM. The interview process was intense, but there are so many resources out there. In addition to the helpful post above, I'd say do practice rounds. Once you get the hang of the 3 interview types, join the Lewis Lin slack group and do as many mocks as you can handle, I think I did 25+. Be mindful that there are people preparing months for these jobs and there is a huge range in skill level, etc. Some people will be very junior, others will stand you up and it's annoying. But eventually, you'll find a small group of people (I found 3-4) with whom you can do repeat mocks. And you can also supplement with a paid coach for polish eg. Igotanoffer

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Why are you leaving McKinsey? And why Product Management?

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Good luck!

Why does a PM role at FAANG seem like the most popular on here? Is it the pay? Long term career prospects? From my research you can make more in consulting

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Ahh thank you for that I see the path and the temptation. I specialize in insurance finance so I’ll always be on the cost center side of things if I exit consulting

Great now everyone wants to be a PM 🤷

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