My name is Maria and I’m a second year MBA at Ross. I graduated from The George Washington University, where I was on the Division 1 Sailing Team. I started my career in technology consulting at Deloitte in Washington, D.C., where I had pursued roles in Data Analytics, Product Management, and Process Robotics Implementation. I was always interested in Big Tech and pushing the edge of what is possible in innovation and technology.
You interned at Google in a product management capacity this past summer. Without giving away any trade secrets, could you tell us a little bit about what your work entailed and what the culture was like?
This summer, I worked as a Product Consultant of the User & Products Insights team at Google. The impact of my role was to help users build trust in the Google brand and products. I developed requirements to measure trust sentiment in user experiences, helped product teams evaluate their current state of user trust, designed customer journeys and identified where product teams can apply insights to increase user trust in their products. Complex stuff, but fascinating as trust in tech has been declining!
I had an incredible internship experience. I was fortunate to be in Mountain View and have visited the GooglePlex a handful of times. I got a sense of Google’s strong culture of collaboration, diversity, challenging the status quo, innovation and support. As a double minority and a creative thinker, I was in my element! I took a very ambiguous project and shaped the scope to fill in a huge company gap and was supported throughout my internship journey!
What was the most challenging aspect of your internship at Google this past summer? What did your experience teach you about the role Product Managers play at such large and influential tech companies?
My biggest challenge this summer was working with knowledge and research gaps. I learned that for anything I conceptualized or presented, I needed to back my work with research or data to prove my findings and points. Trust is a relatively new and complex topic across tech companies, and product managers can’t deploy product enhancements if the business case isn’t driven by facts, information, and data. This summer, I encountered a number of roadblocks throughout my internship due to a lack of research, data and information to prove that customer journeys, personas, facts and user experiences are accurate, trustworthy, and worth pursuing.
With the gift of retrospection, what would you go back and tell Fall A MBA1 Maria about the tech recruiting process?
Follow through on what you came to business school for. Create your own path and stay true to what you really want to get out of the experience. It’s so easy to have “FOMO” and apply for roles that you aren’t excited about or don’t have interest in. For me, I wanted to work in product, experience Big Tech organizations and explore the fitness tech industry. I found myself applying to consulting roles or early stage startups and that was not something I was truly passionate about. I had a lot of support from MBA2s and am happy to chat with anyone who wants to learn more.
What classes, clubs, or action-based learning opportunities have you taken advantage of on campus that you believe set you up for success in tech recruiting?
Professor Sriram’s New Product & Innovation Management (MKT 625) and Puneet Manchanda’s Digital Marketing (MKT 642) are both excellent courses to prepare you for recruiting in Tech and for a career in PM! I’m a member of Design+Business, Tech Club, and FitX. These clubs are constantly posting action-based learning opportunities and other educational experiences outside of classes. I worked on an action-based learning project as part of FitX. I led user research of consumer fitness and lifestyle brands for FitLab, a startup that recently received Series A funding. I pursued this opportunity to learn user and market trends and explore the intersection of fitness and technology, an industry focus I’ve been passionate about learning and potentially pursuing full-time.
There’s a lot of uncertainty around tech jobs and internships in the current economic climate. Do you have any networking tips that have helped you navigate ambiguity or uncertainty at tech companies?
First, I recommend having your resume good-to-go as early as possible. As you’re networking and attending coffee chats, you’ll find it incredibly useful to have your resume finalized early. Resume drops can also happen at any moment and you want to be ready as soon as that drop occurs. Last year, for example, Google and other Big Tech companies had launched their applications about a month earlier than in previous years. I applied to Google within a day or two of the application drop and I think that’s what helped me stay ahead. Second, I recommend creating a list of companies you’d like to recruit for, finding Ross or Michigan Alumni from these companies on LinkedIn, and keeping an excel spreadsheet with these companies and contacts for tracking. Third, I recommend creating a short blurb introducing yourself, your MBA candidacy, your career interests, and your aspirations for a job within an industry or at a company, and use this intro blurb to introduce yourself on LinkedIn. Start networking early! It can be awkward but it works! Fourth, I recommend networking with current MBA 2s, learning about their internship experiences and seeing if they know any previous MBA students who work in your desired industry. Recent MBA grads can pass down some recruiting tips and tricks and will likely put in referrals! So leverage the current MBA2s and use their network of previous MBA grads as you go through your recruiting journey.