This led to my first Product Management Interview

Product Management is a highly competitive field, with a typical PM to developer ratio between 1:6 to 1:20. This means every opening gets flooded with qualified applicants. Standing out without any solid Product Experience requires more than just checking the boxes. My strategy was to lean into my UI/UX strengths alongside my product thinking. Instead of submitting a standard feature breakdown or product specs for my recruitment assignment, I went the extra mile by including full-fledged designs to communicate the user journey and product experience visually.

This effort made all the difference. The submission I’m sharing here helped me stand out. While I see a lot of improvements in this today, this was enough to get called up to an interview for an entry-level role as an Associate Product Manager.

PresentationDesigns
Mobile phone displaying product UI design
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Spreadsheet for PMs

Here’s a sample spreadsheet to track engineering tasks. In real-world scenarios, you’ll likely use more robust tools like Jira or ClickUp for task management. So, you don’t need to rely on spreadsheets like this to stay organized. That said, the real value of this sheet lies in the formulas and visualizations I’ve embedded. I’ve included some of the most commonly used formulas for data wrangling and visualizations. The tracking tool itself is just a gimmick. Use this as a reference to practice, investigate, and master these functions.

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PRD Sample

Crafting Product Requirement Document a.k.a PRD is one of the most important tasks of a Product Manager. Here is a sample of a PRD document.