Bhavish Gummadi’s 

PM Recruiting Guide 
 

A set of learnings from doing dozens of mocks, interviewing with top 

tech companies & landing a full-time Google APM offer.   

Table of Contents 
Table of Contents 

Introduction 

New Grad & Internship Programs 

Resume 

Getting your foot in the door 

Selling your story 

Networking 

Take-Home Assignment 

Interview preparation 
Reading 
Starting up 
In the interview pipeline 
Reach 
Mock Interviews 

Thank you! 

Introduction 
I’m Bhavish and I’m a senior at the University of Michigan. After a 
compilation of experiences in software, product, startups & consulting, I 
realized that product was the best way to start my career. I obsessively 
recruited for the PM internships, doing 140+ (highly excessive) mock 
interviews, networking with dozens of individuals, and reading hundreds of 
pages of resources. ​Most importantly,​ there was a lot of lost confidence, 
tears, and frustration from rejection. I’m grateful & lucky that the hard work 
came to fruition - landing an internship with the Google APM program. Next 
summer, I’m happy to say I’ll be returning as a full-time APM at Google.  
 

I made this document to compile my thoughts and learnings on PM 

recruiting and how to optimize your time for an offer. I hope the effort ​I’ve 
invested over the past year will​ ​help you land your dream role. 

Before we get started, I’d like to emphasize one thing: ​this is my 
perception of the PM recruiting based on the experiences I’ve had.​ This 
document is not a silver bullet, and I’ve seen individuals land top PM 
positions without the learnings in this document. This document will not get 
you a PM offer nor is it an exhaustive list of insights, rather, it ​will give 
you key learnings derived from hundreds of hours of successfully preparing for 
PM recruiting.   

New Grad & Internship Programs 

Resume 
In this section, I’ll share some key insights to ace a resume screen. 

1. Have experiences driven by passion 

Show you care about problems and solving them with your mind and soul. 
Start your own company, write passionate Medium articles, start a 
student organization, have a fun side project, whatever it is, ​put your 
soul into it.   

2. Have a quantifiable impact 

For any experience, make sure you can quantitatively demonstrate your 
impact. Even if you didn’t track metrics at the time of the experience, 
try to retrospectively track the success of your project with metrics.   

3. Tell a skimmable story 

Your bullet points or summaries should be easily skimmable and visually 

guide your reader. A successful resume will be able to tell a clear 
story for each experience (and potentially an overall story) in a 30 
second skim of the resume.  

A great way to test your resume is by ​handing your resume to a friend 

for 30 seconds and asking them to ​list the top 5 things​ they’ve learned 
 

about you. This serves as a proxy for how a recruiter will learn from 
your resume. 

Getting your foot in the door 

The value of your resume is a function of both its quality and how many 
people actually read it. Firms are typically overwhelmed by applicants and 
will take shortcuts to filter candidates. Simply applying online could lead to 
an ignored resume. You need to have a series of other threads to pull on in 
order to make sure the firm is legitimately looking at your application. 
Here’s some ways to try to get eyes on your resume: 

● Applying early 
● Referral 
● Email or LinkedIn message the recruiter 
● Career fair 

Selling your story  

A strong story can help you at ​career fairs, emailing recruiters, 
networking, interviews and being memorable. ​A storyline & relentless outreach 
can significantly augment your likelihood to​ get your foot in the door. 
Storytelling is a critical component of PMing, and telling your own story is a 
critical part of recruiting.  

After doing mock interviews with dozens of other candidates, I found 

that one way I crisply differentiated my story was with ​specificity and 
passion.  

I encourage everyone, regardless of your career and ambitions, to 

introspect and understand​ how the critical moments of your life have ​led you 
to this professional path.​ Most importantly, this will help drive your work 
ethic, passion and ​further your understanding of yourself. ​Ask yourself 
questions like: 

● What have I liked and disliked about previous experiences? 

● What do I want to be known for? 
● Why do certain topics bore you and other topics drive your 
interest? 
 

● What moments of your life have been the most formative for your 
professional outlook? 

After you’ve understood yourself and why you belong in this role, plan 
how to ​tell this story effectively in any context.​ You’ll stand out as a 
passionate, thoughtful individual in a pool of people just trying to pursue a 
lucrative career.  

Networking 
Networking for PM positions and big tech firms will be useful for two 
reasons: 

1. Company specific knowledge  

Every company has its own theory & scoping for PM roles. Learn which 
skills and qualities you should highlight in a resume, take-home 
assignment or interview for this specific firm.  

2. If you’ve built a strong connection - mock interviews & interviewing 

tips 

Some individuals at your target companies may actually mock interview 

you if they are allowed to. More likely, they’ll provide you with some 
key tips and tricks from their interviewing experience. Only ask about 
potential mock interviews after you’ve built a solid connection with the 
individual. 

Take-Home Assignment 
Many APM programs will have some sort of assignment that you will have a 
few days to complete. Here’s some steps can take to excel in this assignment: 

1. Be scrappy 

The prompt could be about any industry, with any number of users. Try to 
be scrappy with gathering data, identifying user needs, and potentially 
testing the feasibility of a solution.  

2. Be ambitious 
 

Set a high bar for your product vision. Find the data to back up your 
claims and show why a crazy idea might actually make sense.  

3. Be relevant 

Understand the tech environment and how your pitch or product is 
strategically relevant for your firm. A great PM will see their 
product’s long term vision, not just its short term benefits.  

4. Revise 

Pull on your network and any other resources to review your assignment. 
Try to find missing details, unconvincing arguments and whether or not 
people would actually find this useful. 

Interview preparation 

Reading 

This section outlines some key reading that really helped me throughout 
the process. ​More important than reading, ​is being able to​ rapidly utilize the 
knowledge you have ​and output the information when relevant in an interview. 
There are a lot of readings here, but ​you do not need to read everything to 
ace an interview.  

Starting up 

I’ll speak through ​some of the downsides​ of using these books later in the 
document. 

● Decode and Conquer​ (Use ​Lewis Lin’s Slack channel​ and build meaningful 
connections with mock partners!) 
● Cracking the PM Interview 
● The PM Interview​ ​(skim for what you find relevant) 
● Read and analyze the news!!​ - TechCrunch, The Verge, CNET, Hacker News 
are some great resources 
○ Some great newsletters are ​The Morning Brew, Accelerated 
○ Be sure to read news specific to your passions & expertise! 
● For fundamental tech knowledge - ​Swipe to Unlock​ is a great book to get 
up to speed.  
 

● Start obsessing over the details of products  

○ Ask ‘why did they do this?’ for every detail you experience in a 
product 

In the interview pipeline 

● CB Insights Strategy Teardowns​ on your specific company and their 

competitors 
● Seeking Alpha articles​ will have day-to-day updates on the activities of 
big tech companies. This information will be granular and data heavy 
which is great for interviews.  

Reach 

Most candidates will not go into the interview with this knowledge (I didn’t 
either!), but it’s great to read if you have time. 

[prioritized]  

1. Inspired 
2. The Lean Startup  
3. Hooked  
4. The Design of Everyday Things 

Mock Interviews 

Mock interviews are possibly ​the most important component of PM 

recruiting.​ Big tech companies rely heavily on interview ability and practice 
will help you perfect interviews. With that being said, I’ve seen candidates 
with < 5 mock interviews receive an offer.  

The most important part of mock interviews is ​viscously seeking feedback 

and trying to ​break out of any conventions.​ So make sure you go into each mock 
with a clear understanding of what you are going to do differently.  

Here’s an inexhaustive list of insights I gained from doing over 140+ mock 
interviews: 

1. Break free from frameworks by experimentation 

Frameworks outlined in PM prep books are great for nailing the basics & 
understanding the fundamentals of PM Interviews. Unfortunately, ​these 
 

frameworks will not help you stand out. ​Keep trying to find new ways to 
tackle the same problems and show nuanced insight. You can think of your 
interview as components (brainstorming needs, solutions, etc...) and 
experiment within each of these components.  

2. Don’t just practice ‘Design X’ or ‘Improve Y’ 

These are very common PM questions, and you will likely see them in an 
interview for any big tech company. This is however a very small portion 
of the questions you could receive. I encourage you to think of product 
generation as a funnel: 

Product design questions fall into the middle of this funnel, but often 
do not tackle the specificity nor the ambiguity​ of the other levels of 
the funnel. It is important to practice questions at all ranges of this 
product funnel in order to successfully interview. 

It is strategically beneficial to first master product design questions, 

and then shift into strategy, execution, estimation and the various 
levels of the funnel. ​Mentally prepare to rapidly generate new 
frameworks to adapt to new problems.  

3. Be principled rather than rehearsed 

 

Interviewers can ask you anything - and it is important to identify how 

to execute any question so you can still perform well. I’ve outlined 
each of these principles as well as how you can achieve them in an 
interview. Here’s the ​check boxes you want to nail​ in interviews (in no 
particular order): 

a. Structure 

Goal:​ Break down problems into distinct pieces and have a clear 
path for how you will solve a problem.  

How to do it:​ ​Frameworks from PM prep books are an easy way to add 
structure to your response, but because questions will be unique 
and random, ​be ready to build new frameworks on the fly. 
Additionally, before you start brainstorming or rambling, think of 
2 or 3 areas you want to cover. Short-hand names for categories 
will keep communication concise and clear. If you can think of 
these areas in a mutually-exclusive but collectively-exhaustive 
(MECE) format, that’s even better.  

b. User Focus 

Goal:​ ​Focus on how to build the best solution for the user. A 
great interviewer will sympathize well enough to ​identify some 
nuanced insight about the user. ​Once you identify that nuance, 
make sure your interviewer is following the depth of your 
thinking. If you can teach your interviewer something new about 
the user, they will be impressed.  

How to do it:​ For Product Design questions, you can achieve this 
by stepping through the ​user journey in very low level detail.​ If 
there are multiple users, identify them. Stepping through the ​user 
journey in very low level detail​ will help you identify nuances 
and interesting pain points.  

For all other question types, try to think about the user’s 
perspective before every step. You should vet any decision you 
make in an interview with how it will ​impact the user’s 
experience, their perceptions,​ and how it ​fits into their larger 
goals. 
 

c. Creativity 

Goal:​ ​A really cool idea can make you look like a visionary. A 
great candidate will always think of multiple creative solutions 
and then prioritize down to one.   

How to do it:​ ​Creativity frameworks​ like SCAMPER will help you 

rapidly generate ideas. Always think of a diverse set of ideas to 
tackle a problem before settling on a single approach.  

d. Technical Ability 

Goal:​ ​Some companies like Google will have specific technical 

interviews or coding challenges prior to phone screens, but the 
bulk of PM roles will not have specific technical interviews. 
You’ll have to inject your technical knowledge into product 
problems. A great candidate will be able to easily discuss 
technical considerations. The best candidates will teach their 
interviewer some new technical concepts.   

How to do it:​ Take every opportunity to demonstrate your technical 

knowledge and include technical jargon. Some great places to 
demonstrate your technical abilities is during ​discussing 
feasibility, brainstorming & long term strategy.​ Be as specific as 
possible when you mention technical knowledge.  

Reading tech news and doing side projects will put you at the top 
here.  

e. Prioritization 

Goal:​ Always show why you’re picking one option over another.  

How to do it:​ A great way to do this is to set some crisp 

prioritization criteria. ​Some books will endorse using matrices & 
point systems, but these will typically slow you down. A 
combination of ​quick filtration & more point systems will be the 
quickest and clearest.  

f. Analytics 
 

Goal:​ This will not be relevant for all interview questions, but 
when presented the opportunity, show that you are data oriented. 
This doesn’t mean that you qualify all your decisions with “well 
if I had more data”. Rather, this means that you very ​specifically 
identify the data​ that you need to define success.  

How to do it:​ You’ll want to do 3 things 

1. Understand your top-line goals (like DAU, revenue etc...) 

early in the interview.  
2. Identify very specific metrics for your feature or product 
3. Feel free to modify the product or UX to gather information 
(like a feedback form) 

You can achieve specificity by stepping through each step of the 

user journey and identifying the most critical components to your 
objectives. Then determine which metrics would be critical for 
those specific components of the user journey.  

After defining success metrics, try to mention what success 

actually looks like for a particular metric. So for example, if 
you are tracking some clickthrough rate, what percentage do you 
think should be considered ‘success’?  

An excellent answer here would relate top line metrics like 

revenue and tie them to granular metrics. For example, what level 
of engagement is required to monetize a user? 

g. Strategic Insights 

Goal:​ You want to maintain focus on users throughout your 

interview, but you also want to maintain a focus on your business 
objectives. You should understand the business objective early in 
your interview - this is a great place to ​inject your industry & 
company knowledge. ​A great interviewer will always be thinking 
about how product ​decisions interact with business objectives, the 
wider industry, regulators and infrastructure.    

How to do it:​ You want to keep your business goals relevant when 
prioritizing and building a roadmap. Show that you are thoughtful 
about industries and have an educated hypothesis about the future. 
 

This demonstrates your long term thinking, as well as your 

abilities to see opportunities. Reading the news is once again 
critical here! 

For product design questions, try to build your features into a 

long term vision. You can do this by breaking down your solutions 
into strategic versions, the culmination of these versions will be 
your long term vision.  

4. Understand what the interviewer wants 

Interview questions can be very unique and confusing. It is important 

that you are aligned with your interviewer's expectations. Are they 
asking you about design? a strategic decision? A single feature? how you 
would communicate with stakeholders? It could be any of the above. ​Take 
some time to understand the direction of the question. 

Additionally, questions will lack context. PMs need to make the best 
decisions based on evidence, and if you try to proceed in an interview 
without context, you will be on a fast track to failure. ​Either assume & 
state a context or ask your interviewer for context.  

Thank you! 
I hope this document was helpful to you. If you have any questions, and would 
like to see them answered, feel free to reach out to me on ​LinkedIn​. You’re on 
a difficult road - success will take immense grit - and I wish you ​luck in 
your journey to becoming a great Product Manager and changing the world 
forever.