I work in a Marketing role in MS and now want to transition to a Sr Product Manager role in Amazon. I have an top tier MBA and a few years of experience under my belt at MS. Questions - 1) How realistic is the transition? Considering I will be competing with a talent pool that already has PM experience. I was a management consultant and banker so have mostly service experience. 2) Is online is best/ fastest way to apply or do referrals work faster? 3) How long of a wait before you hear back from the recruiter? How long does the entire interview process take?
With a top tier MBA you definitely can. However you'd be in the same boat as other post MBA SPMs at Amazon. Why not try to move to PM at Microsoft
Thanks Hitachi, I do have an offer to move to PM internally, but from what I have learned from chatting with my friends here at MS, they all have recommended I move to Amazon since they are currently not getting full ownership in their current roles here as PMs. If Amazon doesn’t work out I may eventually do that though.
This isn't true at all. What groups ate they in? There are plenty of "single threaded owner" /product roles
It’s a realistic expectation, especially with the consulting and IB experience, but as was mentioned, you’ll still be in the mix of Amazon’s pool. You’d be looking at an L6 role, which is what everyone from brand-new MBAs to professionals with smaller company or non-tech experience come in with. Some MS people come in at L7, but usually they have +10yrs there. The functions would be very similar to Microsoft. Also, as was asked, what’s wrong with staying at MS? If you want to do a referral, which can be faster, wait til after January 1. It’s still not a guarantee. The process can take a couple months but they try to move much faster. For me it was about 8 weeks and they continually apologized for that.
Thanks Middlewest! MS is a great place I agree, I just want to get diverse experience while I am still at relatively low level in my career and constantly challenge myself. Though MS has many opportunities, I currently am more intrigued my the product manager role in Amazon so want to try that :)
Careful what you wish for ;-) Amazon is a very mixed bag. Some awesome teams, and some absolutely terrible ones. What are you working on at MS?
I don’t see how you would get the job as SPM if you have no PM experience. You should be ok going as PM and get promoted if you really deliver and do well.
SPM at Amazon is same as PM everywhere else.