How to Launch Your Career in High Tech Product Management
Interview with Kenton Kivestu, CEO of RocketBlocks [Show Summary] Kenton Kivestu is CEO of RocketBlocks, a firm that provides tools to help you prepare for and nail your Product Manager interviews at high tech firms. In today’s episode, he and Linda discuss the unique challenges of breaking into a product management career in high tech, and how to overcome them. He provides the inside scoop on big name companies like Amazon and Google. Kenton Kivestu describes the role of a product manager, and offers insight on how to break into this exciting field [Show Notes] I’d like to welcome back to AST Kenton Kivestu, who was previously a guest on Admissions Straight Talk in episode 188 a little over two years ago. Kenton graduated from UVA with a BA in economics and history in 2006. Upon graduating he joined Google in product development and worked there for 3 years until he moved to Hanover New Hampshire to attend the Tuck School of Business and earn his MBA. He interned at BCG, but returned to mobile product development when he graduated from Tuck in 2011, working in product management at both Zynga and Flurry following his MBA. For the last several years, he has been full-time CEO of RocketBlocks, which has helped applicants land consulting jobs and has expanded into prepping applicants for product management positions. Since our last interview focused on landing a consulting job, this show is going to focus on product management positions in high tech. What are the key qualifications in terms of work experience and personal qualities that high tech companies are looking for in PM candidates? [2:32] Candidates for a PM role tend to run the gamut – could be someone with a computer science degree straight out of undergrad, or an English major coming into the role. Ultimately when you look at what tech companies like Google, Amazon, or Facebook want from a PM, they tend to look at the same set of skills. They want to know that people have a good product sense, and passion and excitement for a product. You need to be excited about what a product looks and feels like, and that you can think about deeply. Some level of tech fluency is important as well since you are working day in and day out with tech people - you need to be able to communicate effectively with them. Some firms like to hire people already with a tech background, but a lot of companies have realized that just because someone has a great tech background doesn’t necessarily mean they will be a great PM. You just need to be able to communicate effectively with software engineers. The third thing is similar to what a lot of companies are looking for. They want people who have strong leadership skills and know how to lead a team, and who can collaborate. You had a degree in history. How did you prepare for this role? Did you take classes? [5:52] The Project Manager role has really come into being in the last 20 years. If you did a study of job titles, a small amount would have been PM before then, but now there are thousands of PMs at places like Amazon or Google. I didn’t even know what a PM was until just before my 4th year at UVA - I found out about it from some friends. The job sounded incredible, and what I learned was that to get that job you needed to have a computer science degree. I was bummed that I couldn’t do that with the time remaining, but I wondered if there was another way to make the transition. I had a friend at UVA whose older sister was an early PM at Google. She said if you don’t have a CS degree it’s a nonstarter. However, she encouraged me to join another team and get my foot in the door at Google. So I looked at some other teams that hired people without CS degrees. I joined an operations-focused team and then transitioned. What was so exciting about the product management role to you? [8:32] I think product management was really appealing because it felt like it had a really good mix of skill sets that you could apply and be able to se...