How to Ace Your First PM Interview
9 techniques I used to get 6 job offers + 12 free PM certification courses
Hey, Paweł here. Welcome to the freemium edition of The Product Compass!
Every Saturday, I share actionable tips and resources for PMs.
Here’s what you might have missed:
Premium: 12 Laws of UX Every Product Professional Should Know
Premium: The Ultimate Validation Experiments Library (32)
Premium: The Product Frameworks Compendium (35)
Free: Jobs-to-be-Done Masterclass with Tony Ulwick and Sabeen Sattar
In today’s newsletter:
Certification Courses for Product Managers
🔒 How to Ace Your First PM Interview?
1. Certification Courses for Product Managers
As repeatedly proven by my resume A/B testing experiments, certificates do matter. The last results (ATS-verified and A/B-optimized resume template):
Top 12 free certification courses for PMs
All courses below are 100% free, including certificates:
ProductLed, Product-led Fundamentals
Pendowon'tduct Management Basics Certification
Pendo, Product-led Certification (100% discount in the URL)
Pendo, Product Analytics Certification (100% discount in the URL)
Pendo, AI for Product Management
Google, Generative AI learning path
Great Learning, Introduction to Design Thinking
Udacity, Rapid Prototyping
Udacity, Product Design
Udacity, App Monetization
Udacity, A/B Testing
I’m not affiliated with any of those companies, even though I received unique Pendo discount codes (“learnwithpawel”) only for our community.
Continuous Product Discovery Certified
Product Discovery is the most critical area for a Product Manager.
But it’s largely misunderstood.
Continuous Product Discovery Masterclass will allow you to:
Quickly discover and validate the best product ideas
Learn how to prioritize opportunities to maximize the outcomes
Know best practices and how to avoid common mistakes
Quickly identify hidden assumptions and plan experiments
Demonstrate your skills with digital, verifiable credentials
Premium subscribers can access the course and get certified for free here: https://www.productcompass.pm/p/cpdm
2. How to Ace Your First PM Interview
As mentioned in How to Land a PM Interview: A Step-by-Step Guide, during the second week of my job search, I got 13 interviews:
After 3 weeks, I got 4 job offers and had 10+ advanced processes, so I:
Stopped looking for a job.
Canceled all processes from other countries as I didn’t want to relocate.
Delined all processes from Polish companies as I wanted to work in English.
Rejected any offers that weren't fully remote.
After 4 weeks, I accepted an offer of Senior Product Manager at iDeals - the company with the best product culture I have ever experienced! 😊
In total, through the process, I got 6 job offers.
What did I learn?
Nailing the first interview in the hiring process is 50% of the success. That's where many candidates get rejected. But it's the easiest one to prepare for.
Let’s dive into 9 techniques I used in the recent weeks:
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