Contributor: Shivani Tripathi (Foster, ‘22)
Prithvi Shankar Ramesh (Foster, ‘21) came to the Foster MBA Program because of its location advantage and small class cohort among other factors. During his first year, Prithvi leveraged the resources from his school’s career management and tech club and landed a Product Management internship at Cisco. During this interview, Prithvi shared his experience as an MBA PM intern at Cisco.
Shivani: Tell us about your pre-MBA background and why you chose UW Foster?
Before my MBA, I was a technical architect in the enterprise ERP and CRM space working with Infosys. During my work in the US, I got acquainted with product leaders who had a similar technical engineering undergrad and an MBA grad degree. My interactions with these leaders motivated me to get my MBA and I wanted a school that helped me network with the top product companies. I choose UW Foster because of several reasons: Location advantage (hidden gem from the pacific northwest), alumni connections in top product companies, small class cohort, and finally because my geeky brother works in Seattle.
Shivani: What motivated you to join Cisco as a Product Manager intern?
I was looking for core technology roles in cloud computing and I was particularly impressed by Cisco’s pivot from a pure hardware company to a software, security, and services model. During my networking session with Foster’s alumnus, Gautham Ravi, we discussed at length the company’s software product for the data centre, and the exciting work happening within the cloud and compute group. I was convinced of the learning and growth opportunities within this group and decided to start my product management journey with the team.
Shivani: How did the first-year MBA experience help you during the internship?
I used a lot of core MBA concepts from Finance, Econ, and marketing during my internship. One elective that stood out was Consumer Insights which helped me use a structured framework for my research mechanism. Consumer Insights trained me in the art of interviewing, surveying, and using statistical methods to validate hypotheses based on the survey data. I used a lot of consumer insights concepts to evaluate customer willingness to adopt new licensing models. Finally, Econ helped me with the concepts surrounding technology platforms.
Shivani: How did you prepare for the internship recruitment process?
I leveraged the help of my career management team for mock interviews. For product management case interviews, I used the Gayle Laakmann and Lewis Linn books. Our tech club does a wonderful job with the casing book that gives all the information needed about the interview format at the coveted tech companies. I think the often-understated component to interview success is practice and with enough practice, anyone has a chance to excel at the toughest interviews. My roommate and I were both targeting Product management and we helped each other improve our stories and casing. Finally, my seniors helped a lot with structuring our behavioural stories and
Shivani: Walk us through your day at Cisco as a PM intern?
I worked with the Intersight product management team that is a part of Cisco’s cloud and compute group. I worked on cutting-edge technologies that help Cisco in its hybrid/multi-cloud strategy. I had the opportunity to play a general product manager streamlining our licensing model and a stretch assignment as a platform product manager. My work involved collaborating with other product managers within our organization, engineering, and UX team to understand their concerns about the platform. I would also work with my sales counterparts to understand our customers’ pain points and then debrief with my manager. I was blessed to have an extremely friendly team who were always willing to go the extra mile to help an incoming intern.
Shivani: What were some key challenges in interning virtually?
The class of 2021 was the first to experience the virtual internships so there were always the first-time setup problems ranging from logistics to providing a worthwhile internship experience and I must say the leaders at Cisco outdid their part. An internship is an opportunity to visit the company office and get a hang of the company culture and I must admit that those aspects were not optimal given the virtual nature of the internship. There is the whole human interaction component and team brainstorming sessions that produce innovation and it is impossible to recreate 100% with a virtual environment.
Shivani: What’s your advice to the 2021 MBA PM summer interns?
From my personal experience, I think companies want MBAs to come in and offer fresh insight into their business. Some of the top skills that companies look for are the usage of structured frameworks to solve problems, the attitude to learn, and the ability to collaborate with other teams within the organization. Start with understanding your internship project, establish the project scope early on, keep a working document for your final deliverables and ask for performance feedback from your managers/directors during the mid-internship check-ins. Also, try to connect with your managers before your internship starts. I was able to meet with my manager and senior director before my internship helping me do some pre-internship product research. I owe a part of my internship success to my manager, Jeff Foster.
Finally, try not to overthink the final offer and just go out there and enjoy solving problems.