I have a solid tech background in the telecom industry , however I have been constantly failing tech PM interviews (mostly at the HM screening ) I have had 4 interviews and have been rejected all of them Most of these interviews were primarily behavior and the examples I choose were all telecom related and how I handled it Never received any feedback , other than 1 HM who told me that big techs operate differently than traditional companies like AT&T . (Don’t know what I can do about that, other than switch , which I am trying to ) Companies interviewed - Twilio , Meta, GOOGL, Coinbase Can fellow blinders share what I need to work on ? I have 7-8 stories/ scenarios prepared STAR method and from what I have noticed, I used to speak fast , but by practice I have started slowing down, taking pauses in between and trying to communicate better What else would you recommend ? YoE - 7 TC - $190k
I came from telecom. The trick is telling your stories without getting in the weeds in the industry tech details. As soon as you do that their eyes will glaze over.
They will ask about feature prioritisation, negotiation with engineering etc and the list goes on. But, it is still a very subjective game out there. Keep trying.keep Preparing . That's all you can do and hope, you get that break
Lol this guy doesn't realize interviews don't happen in person anymore, esp. a behavioral
Your examples need to be easy to follow and avoid getting too deep into industry specifics. When interviewing at Meta for a PM role, my interviewers didn't have the first clue about my old industry. Instead of trying to wow them with industry knowledge I focused on translating what would be relevant i.e. meeting project deadlines, working with difficult peers, etc.
General recommendation, for ex. from amazon, would be to gain experience in the new field and then apply again.
Storytelling is key element in most PM roles as well as interviews. No matter what technology you've worked on, you need to adapt to your audience and able translate your challenges/accomplishments in the language they understand. Focus on transferable skills when you are trying to change industry. Hope you are not trying to change roles( eng-》PM) and industry at the same time, it's very difficult without proper preparations.
This could be helpful for you to just listen in and get some pointers: https://www.linkedin.com/events/workshop-whatgooglehiringmanage6896336719281475584/
Talks and speaking won't take you far in interviews. Prep up on leetcode and play the game. There's no substitute for leetcode nowadays that everyone seems to judge how well you perform based on leetcode alone.
I think OP is a pm candidate