Contributor: Shivani Tripathi (Foster, ‘22)
Prasanna Ramachandran (Foster, ‘21) chose Foster for her MBA because of its collaborative and supportive community. She strategized her internship recruitment preparation early on and used the practical experience from her first year at Foster to succeed in her internship. In this interview, Prasanna shares her experience as an MBA PM intern at Intuit and her advice for upcoming MBA interns.
Shivani: Tell us about your pre-MBA background and why you chose UW Foster
Before my MBA, I worked in the financial services industry as a software developer before launching into consulting with EY. I am constantly on the lookout for new challenges in my career and moving into consulting was very rewarding for me as I got to leverage my tech background to solve varied business problems for my clients. I was helping my clients launch new lines of business and product offerings in the banking and insurance industries. However, I was looking to transition from consulting into tech product management as I wanted more end-to-end ownership of products as opposed to the contract-based model in consulting. Looking to make a career change and wanting to explore my leadership capabilities, I decided to pursue an MBA full-time. I chose Foster for its location (love PNW having lived here for 5 years now!) and its reputation in the tech industry. As I interacted with the current students and the professors during the admission process, I realized how collaborative and supportive the community was at Foster and that solidified the decision for me to leave a full-time career to pursue my Foster MBA.
Shivani: What motivated you to join Intuit as a Product Manager intern?
Getting to interview with Intuit was very exciting for me as I have admired (as a user) Intuit’s products TurboTax and Mint for their deep customer focus and excellence in product design. Having worked only on B2B products in the past, this was a terrific opportunity for me to solve problems that had the potential to impact millions of taxpayers in the country.
I was also blown away by their candidate experience right from recruiter screening through offer acceptance. I was given a product case to work on and present my recommendations during the interview. I loved that process as it not only allowed me to exhibit my customer obsession and problem-solving skills but also helped me learn about their products on a deeper level – which is important as your passion and enthusiasm come through during the presentation. I had a very positive interview experience and felt valued throughout the whole process. I also got the opportunity (right before covid hit) to meet the team in San Diego where I was inspired by the drive and passion the PMs had for the work that they were doing in TurboTax which motivated me to join Intuit for the summer internship.
Shivani: How did the first-year MBA experience help you during the internship?
All of the core classes such as finance, econ and marketing helped establish a solid foundation that I could build on to interact knowledgeably and coordinate with different stakeholders during my internship. Stats class was very helpful in interpreting and understanding the nuances of the analysis that the analytics team delivered to me which helped me make conscious product decisions. Consumer Insights class was especially helpful for me to perform customer research and analysis which was a huge part of my internship, considering that I was working on a new product idea from scratch that involved identifying customer problems and even before that, identifying who the target customers were. Also, practical experiences such as applied strategy projects, radical collaborations and case competitions that involve collaborating in diverse teams within a short period of time to produce results, had prepared me well for the rigour of an internship experience where you have to make a sizeable impact within a span of just 12 weeks.
Shivani: How did you prepare for the internship recruitment process?
I started by getting my resume and cover letters reviewed with our career management coaches and second years to ensure that I conveyed the impact of my past experience in a concise and uncomplicated manner.
For the interview prep, I started by getting myself familiarized with the different PM interview question formats by reading the PM interview books by Lewis Lin and Gayle Laakmann. I would highly recommend both books as a great starting point to get the ball rolling in your interview prep. Once I familiarized myself with the question types, I took the time to think through various product strategy questions in the context of products and companies that I was interested in – which was a very focused and narrow list for me. Since the PM interview process can be quite different for different companies, this focused approach helped me spend my energy thinking about products and areas that I was interested in. For behavioural style questions, I leveraged our career management resources and coaches. I also practised with several second years from diverse backgrounds to make sure that my answers landed right with them.
I was also very intentional about scheduling my interviews with different companies at least a few days apart, giving myself enough time to reflect on the experience and apply those learnings to the next one. This might not always be possible, but I did this wherever I had the leverage to schedule time in advance.
Shivani: Walk us through your day at Intuit as a PM intern
At Intuit I was working on a new product idea of creating a year-round relationship with TurboTax customers. My day-to-day involved talking to the customers, as I worked on identifying the target customers and the problem areas that we should go after as well as working with the UX design and customer research team to build and iterate prototypes that we tested with the customers. I was also simultaneously working with the engineering team to assess the feasibility of our approaches given that what we were doing was completely new and had dependencies running across the platform teams at TurboTax. As part of customer research, I worked with different marketing teams to build a launch plan for email and SEO campaigns to test our value props. I was also heavily dependent on the analytics team to get access to the right data for my research on narrowing down the target customers. As part of defining the value prop, I worked closely with the tax specialists to get their inputs and I also got an opportunity to get inputs from the behavioural economist Dan Ariely which was one of the most productive sessions during my internship. Simultaneously, I was also thinking about the big picture strategy for the product and connecting with PMs from other groups to define how what we were doing would tie in with their product’s strategy in the future.
I also incidentally got the opportunity to lead two TurboTax mobile app releases, as the PM leading that effort went on his paternity leave. This was a very operational role in contrast to what I described before. My-day-day here mainly involved daily standups and backlog grooming sessions with the engineering teams, working with the analytics team to define metrics for the A/B tests, collaborating with other PMs on feature dependencies and connecting with the customer service team where I would get inputs for customer feedback that should factor into our backlog. Overall, it was a very rewarding experience where I got the opportunity to work on defining the roadmap for a new growth area as well as to work on the operational side of a well-oiled machine which was the TT mobile team.
Shivani: What were some key challenges in interning virtually?
The main challenge was, as anyone would say, not being able to grab a team member on the go for a quick question or clarification. Given that my role with TurboTax mobile team was quite operational, it was a challenge for me to collaborate with PMs from different teams and to be in the loop on all the communications. It was also not ideal that I couldn’t meet my team in a more relaxed setting outside of work which is a crucial aspect in building relationships, since it just wasn’t the same in a virtual event. Having said that, I was able to connect with my team over zoom cooking sessions and happy hour events which helped me forge those bonds. Being virtual also gave us the opportunity to connect with the leadership team at Intuit over small group sessions which otherwise could have been a challenge given their availability constraints.
Shivani: What’s your advice to the 2021 MBA PM summer interns?
Don’t be afraid to let your passion shine through during your final presentations – this can be a total game changer!