This week, Product Faculty hosted Rahul Singh, Sr Product Supervisor at Amazon, for a particular #AskMeAnything session. Rahul provides a teaser for his upcoming webinar on the 90 day plan, and shares his perception on important abilities to have as a Senior PM and chief.

Meet Rahul

Rahul Singh is an Amazon Internet Companies Senior Product Supervisor who makes use of a customer-centric strategy to construct revolutionary options. He’s additionally an Advisory Board Member of the edu-tech startup Enhelion. Beforehand, Rahul was working at CapitalOne, creating digital instruments to assist his clients spend smarter. He began out as a PM for his or her on-line banking platform earlier than being promoted to Lead Product Supervisor for Internet Experiences.

How has your place modified between being a Product Supervisor and Sr. Product Supervisor?

Thanks for the query. Positions and their scope are fairly subjective. Startups would possibly provide you with a Precept PM position with scope a lot decrease in scope and impression than Senior PM at Amazon. Greater than titles, one ought to have a look at what scope and impression a place has to supply and preserve aiming to get increased scope in each successive position – so that you’re consistently studying and upping your sport.

How do I put together a robust basis for PM as an interview candidate?

Begin with understanding your product very well. Write down your success tales, failure tales, battle decision, stakeholder alignments, and different key areas of your Product and non-product expertise.

I’m doing a webinar as we speak for growing a complete (360 diploma) view of your product to be sure you know what that you must. All of this may cowl the behavioral facet of the interview (I may even cowl find out how to put together earlier than you begin the position, create a state of affairs, and set up your self as a beneficial workforce member).

Then make investments a while doing Product sense and execution case interviews, and relying on the necessity you would possibly want to have a look at system design interviews. Youtube has bought all of it for you.

What abilities do you take into account a very powerful, those that bought you the place you’re as a Sr. Product Supervisor?

Few abilities that helped me:

• With the ability to see the massive image (and in a position to articulate that in your imaginative and prescient)
• Being extraordinarily buyer obsessed and beginning with buyer first (actually in all eventualities)
• Constructing a complete understanding of the Product, your goal buyer, enterprise priorities, and your tech.
• Understanding your stakeholders and making certain they’re aligned along with your product targets.

I’m overlaying this in my webinar as we speak too. So search for that one.

How do you establish whether or not a function must be within the Free model or the Paid model?

Nice query. It is dependent upon what your aim is (driving adoption vs retention and so forth), and what stage of Product lifecycle you’re at, your price of operations, funding, and enterprise and aggressive causes.

Usually talking, if you’re fixing a really huge buyer downside that you’ve absolutely validated and are assured that you’re doing it like nobody else, then you can begin by doing a small take a look at and value your product and see how the purchasers reply.

What is an effective strategy to figuring out and aligning on a technique?

To have the ability to develop product technique – that you must have a 360 view of your clients, enterprise, product tech, gross sales, and operations.

One can not construct a imaginative and prescient with out understanding the shopper wants and market dynamics (tendencies and competitors). As a Senior PM+, one will probably be anticipated to be the grasp in that area to essentially assume by what the product ought to have the ability to do 5yrs from now to repeatedly keep forward of its buyer wants.

OKRs are very tactical – they work greatest when you’ve gotten a topline aim to begin with. Very first thing first – get the topline product targets nicely outlined, get the alignment throughout the enterprise and tech – after which use that to outline OKRs.

Take a look at subsequent: The Distinction: OKRs vs KPIs

Which scrum certification is most acknowledged?

I don’t assume that you must do any Scrum certification* as such. You’ll be able to simply have a look at any certification curriculum and go to youtube to observe movies on them. That’s all that you must do.

What are the highest 5 Amazon management rules (LPs) {that a} PM at Amazon has to deal with?

Usually in your 6-7 rounds of interview, most LPs get lined so it’s not essential to know that which LP is extra essential than the others. I’ve seen that some workforce values sure LPs greater than others. So you might also verify that with the recruiter.

What are the technical abilities one ought to work on growing to be a superb match for Amazon non-technical Product Supervisor roles?

Do just a few system design circumstances on Youtube and you’re going to get a good thought. It’s essential to know ideas like latency, lazy load, microservices, databases, caching, and cargo balancing. Hope this helps.

What’s your favourite product and why?

Ah! jogs my memory of my interview days. Haha. Yow will discover merchandise the place you’ve gotten loved their design, service, assist, and any options that you simply come again for to that product repeatedly.

What have been your experiences negotiating wage as an SPM and what recommendation would you give to a brand new grad?

You can begin with – Ranges.fyi. Attain out to your seniors or somebody in your community who works in the identical job operate in that firm.

One other nice useful resource: The Fast Information to Product Supervisor Salaries in 2022

Any last recommendation?

My largest piece of recommendation (whether or not you’re a PM or not—say as a Marketer or an engineer) is that if you’re engaged on a Product…

• Attempt to construct as a lot understanding of the product as attainable.
• Know who your goal buyer is,
• which group of consumers are most utilizing your product,
• and what ache factors are we fixing.
• Know the way the technique will get constructed—i.e. what parameters are thought of to construct the technique
• Attempt to see what impression the product options and new launches have on key enterprise metrics.

You’ll be able to accomplice with a PM in your workforce or Enterprise/Information analyst to get these numbers. For PMs, it’s key to totally perceive the product—buyer, enterprise, gross sales and ops, advertising and marketing, and expertise. Provided that you already know all of it, you’ll be able to carve out a well-thought-out technique in your product.