Getting started…on your Tech or Product Management CBS CMC Journey (2024)

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CBS ’14. NYU ’06. CBS Career Coach since Aug 2017. Product Owner & Leader with 15+ years of work experience leading teams to strategize Product roadmaps for B2C and B2B products while prioritizing and measuring KPIs, developing A/B experiments, and acquiring & engaging existing users. LinkedIn. Twitter.

The goal of this doc is to help you find a steady approach to your job search during your first few months as you onboard at CBS. You will hear it from everyone — you’re about to drink from a firehose. And it’s true.

But despite all this foreshadowing of the onslaught of data ahead of you, there isn’t a lot of materials to prepare you for what’s about to happen.

Because I’ve been speaking with a few students every week for the last 4 years, I noticed today that I’m sharing the same advice over and over again, which means it’s time for another article. This one is going to be a little more specific to the Columbia Business School experience, so if you aren’t currently in the program, you may not find this as useful. If you’re a prospective student and want to chat, find me on LinkedIn (link above). Current students, you can find me on COIN (powered by VMock).

I’m going to provide most of the generic advice upfront, so there may be some useful tidbits for other students as well — feel free to share in whatever way makes sense.

Let’s get the assumptions out of the way up-front.

1. You are a 1st year at CBS in your first semester.

2. You are planning to work at company post graduation (ie not an entrepreneur).

WELCOME TO CBS! You’re about to experience some of the most memorable two years of your life. A key part of your experience will be focused on your job search.

No matter where you are in your journey, you should be mindful of the amazing resources at the CMC that can help you turbocharge your job search and save HOURS of time.

Career Management Center (CMC)

CMC Advisors

CMC Coaches

CMC Fellows

Resumes

Interview Prep

The CMC is the single best resource for your job search at CBS. You likely won’t appreciate or understand the incredible resources you have until years later when you no longer have them, but if this doc does its job, you will.

Anytime you have a question about your career search, the CMC should be your first step in that process.

One thing that applies to CMC Advisors, Career Coaches, and Career Fellows is:

1. There is no limit to the number of sessions you can schedule. The entire CMC team is here to help you succeed in your job search. There are no limits to the amount of help they will provide, so do not be anxious if you need to schedule a second, third, fourth, or whatever meeting. In most situations, you’ll do a handful of sessions with a few people at a time in a few different cycles. The CMC team member will keep track of the sessions if you need additional help with something, and if you’re scheduling a lot of meetings, they’ll probably coordinate with another member on the team to make sure you get everything you need. I’ve seen this team rally extremely fast to make sure students have the support they need (I’m sure I was that student at some point), so don’t be shy.

The CMC Advisors are employees of CBS who are solely dedicated to helping you succeed in your job search. This is their singular focus, and they will move mountains to help you be successful.

You are essentially forced to engage with them before you start your first semester, so I don’t have to remind / encourage you to do reach out to them. These are really great people, so be excited to have them in your corner.

Keep these things in mind when you think of the CMC Advisors.

1. The CMC Advisors should be your first stop to ask the majority of career questions. These are the people who talk to the recruiters BEFORE and AFTER you do your interviews. They are aware of basically everything behind-the-scenes when it comes to recruiting and when they don’t know something, they can always point you to someone who does know. When you get an offer, they are the ones who know the history of what salaries / offers were made / accepted last year and which companies are most likely to negotiate. Seriously, there is a TON of valuable info here.
2. The CMC Advisors can only help you when you ask for help. They aren’t mind readers, and they’re incredibly busy helping the students who do seek their help. See #1 for all the value they provide. They are also networking with recruiters behind the scenes, making sure that all the On-Campus Recruiting goes smoothly, and that all of those snafus that happen during interviews (because they do) get addressed. REMEMBER: It is YOUR job to go to them.
3. You should treat the CMC Advisors similar to how you treat recruiters, and network with them so that they know you and can be the most value to you. Part of the reason I’m a Career Coach is because I spent so much time just saying hi to the CMC Advisors. I stopped by the office (when it was possible) basically every day before I left for the day — just to say hi. I’d schedule COIN meetings with different ones to get resume feedback (I’ll go off on this more further, but I probably had 20+ touch points with the CMC on my resume) or discuss upcoming recruiting events / pitches / career strategy. The entire office knew me, and if I ever had something I needed, there were always two or three friendly faces who could make sure it happened. Become friends with these advisors. After all, they may help you negotiate a dream salary to complement your dream job.

The CMC Career Coaches are industry professionals who provide expert knowledge to assist students as you’re navigating the decisions of which specific companies and roles are the right fit.

1. The CMC Career Coaches are industry experts with deep experience in the interview experience of a given industry or role. While the CMC Advisors specialize in industries where they interface with the recruiters, the Coaches have years of industry knowledge, most are alums who went through similar experiences, and most are hiring managers themselves.
2. The CMC Career Coaches have varying schedules and if you seek them out, you’ll likely get a response. The CMC Career Coaches are busy, and we aren’t constantly logged into the CBS network or on-campus. So we don’t always keep our availability up-to-date on VMock (plus it’s a new tool this year, so the switching cost probably also causes a little challenge). The CMC publishes info about the Coaches. If you don’t see time for a Coach, seek them out. Ask them when they’re free. If it’s only a Sat or Sun (because sometimes work is intense), be thankful that they spared time away from their family to chat. But know that we’re here to help and if we don’t have time in scheduled in the platform, there’s a 50/50 chance that it was because our schedule is not consistent from week-to-week and adding custom times each week in VMock is a pain, but we have open spots. You just have to ask us.
3. Engage with the Career Coaches in your industry in your first semester. No one is going to schedule an appointment for you with a Career Coach. When you meet with an advisor, they’ll likely recommend a Coach that they think would be a good fit for you. Find a time to meet with them or send an email if there are no times. The information you can learn in some of these conversations will completely change your entire job search. Before you even schedule time with me, you can go to a Google Doc I’ve prepared only for CBS students where I link to a few articles (this one will be added) plus reference some helpful books. Eventually, I’ll write so much of this down that you won’t have to speak with me to get the value of the conversation. But I can’t even tell you the number of students who, in the Fall semester, realize how much time they’ve saved just from a single conversation. Conversely, the students who only reach out in the Spring quickly realize that if they had spent just 30 min chatting with a Coach in the Fall, they’d be lightyears ahead of where they are. Reach out to your Coach ASAP.

The CMC Career Fellows are 2nd year students who interned at highly recruited companies and who showed high engagement with the CMC during their recruiting process.

1. The CMC Career Fellows are your classmates who know how the CMC works and can be your guide. You are a first year. They are second years. No one is closer to your experience than they are. They went through the most recent version of the interview at the company you’re targeting and got the internship. They may even know the recruiters you’re applying and can give you helpful tips on how to prepare. They know the CMC Advisors and Coaches who were most helpful. Don’t ignore the value of the Career Fellows.
2. There is usually at least one CMC Career Fellow who worked at your target company — find them. The Career Fellows are the most recent successful applicants to your target company. Absorb their knowledge. Learn about the culture of the company. The role. The team. Have them review your resume. Do interview prep. Each of these experiences will be tailored to the company you’re applying. The inside knowledge here (plus with your clubs) is a huge advantage.

These are some tips to make your resume pop.

1. Emphasize everything in your resume that is related to the role / industry you’re applying for. I give this advice often to students who are transitioning from some other industry to Product Management. I give an overview of the general responsibilities for the role, and then we discuss their experiences that are related. Sometimes they’re already on you’re resume and they need to be moved higher or reworded or rewritten. Sometimes it’s such a small thing you did that you didn’t add it to your resume. The thing is that if you worked in, say, Finance and now you’re trying to translate to Product Management, we don’t really care that you did some complex bond strategy. But if you lead a team of data analysts who put an automated model together so that you could monitor performance daily and then choose when to execute a strategy that you pitched to the executive team, then we have something to talk about because you’ve shown leadership skills managing a team of technical talent to build a product while exhibiting high-level communication skills. The point is that you want to make sure that the person reviewing your resume can see that you’ve done the work, you just had a different title when you did it.
2. Key words matter. I get it. Buzzwords seem cliche. However, they’re also likely to be used as filters for any Optical Character Recognition (another type of OCR) meaning that if you have SQL and Python experience because you worked on a side project but you don’t have it mentioned anywhere on your resume (including your skills section), then you may not even be invited to interview because there is no example that you have any technical aptitude on your resume. This also relates to job titles and responsibilities. For example, aspiring PMs would want to include ‘Engineer’ and ‘Designer’ in the context that they lead a team or pod to build something — even if you weren’t the PM at the company and only worked on the one feature. Any specific tools that you used such as Google Analytics, MixPanel, Snowflake, and others should be called out explicitly. There are times to be humble and non-specific. This is not that time.
3. Ask everyone for feedback. When I was a student, I went to the CMC table every few lunches where someone would sit and look at your resume. I scheduled 3 or 4 meetings a week with Advisors / Coaches / Fellows just to hammer our specific points. Each time, I went into the conversation with a general purpose. I knew what I wanted feedback on, and sometimes it would be on technical points of how to emphasize something and other times it was on grammar and formatting after a big rewrite. Some advisors are incredibly sharp-eyed when it comes to some areas of your resume and others will be better suited for others. So be intentional, but don’t be shy. Get feedback from everyone.

Your resume gets you in the door. Your interview is what seals your fate. Preparing for the specific type of interview you’re going to encounter is a critical part of your success. You already hear this everywhere, and it’s true: Each role in each industry has a different interview structure, even if it’s minor.

These are the things to keep in mind with your interview prep.

1. Consult with a CMC Advisor / Coach / Fellow first, but start early. There isn’t any student I’ve met who lamented starting their interview prep too early. In general, you once your resume is in good shape, start on the interview prep. It could be as simple as reading a book or two that was recommended, but the good news is that you can get advice from a CMC Advisor, Coach, or Fellow on where to begin if you don’t already know. The earlier you ask, the earlier you’ll have the information.
2. Make sure you understand your role / industries interview style. Banking and Consulting are completely different beasts than Tech. But within Tech the Product Management and Product Marketing Management interviews are different as are Strategy and Operations. It is important that you understand the interview styles that you’re about to encounter. The Advisors, Coaches, and Fellows will be incredibly helpful here. For instance, when I speak with students, we explicitly talk about the different things you’ll encounter in your Google vs Amazon vs Microsoft vs Apple vs Facebook interviews and how you would prep for each. You’d be surprised by the nuance here, so it’s helpful to ask.

There’s a lot more to talk about with regards to taking full advantage of the Career Management Center during your time at Columbia Business School, but this should be a good starting point.

I’d love to hear feedback on how to make this better or any updates that should be made, so please let me know.