PSU to Product Management- AMA with Ranjan Choudhary

Ranjan Choudhary is a Group product manager at Evalueserve, which is a leading consulting company for data analytics and AI driven decision making for fortune 500 companies. At Evalueserve, Ranjan owns a platform product in the environment, sustainability and governance domain which is used by global supply chain companies to reduce their carbon footprint.

Before joining Evalueserve, he spent a few years in product at Gartner and business analytics at Next education, an Edtech company based out of Hyderabad. He had a humble beginning, having completed his Bachelor's in a small town of Bhilwara from MLV engineering college. Even after his undergrad, he kept chasing his dreams, having worked for the coveted PSU BHEL as a design engineer. He then pursued his MBA from IIM Bangalore. Let's hear from Ranjan himself on his journey from the world of PSU to the PM universe.

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An icebreaker question commonly received from the PM aspirants-what should a product manager do in the initial 90 days after joining a company?

For a new Product Manager it’s really important to be curious and learn as much as you can in the first 90 days, like you should read about the product you will be working on, have 1:1 with tech, design and all related teams. Be open and ask as many questions as you can in these 90 days…that will serve you in the long run.

First 90 Days prepare you for the long run. So, instead of trying to look like an expert and have everything in control, spend this time in being curious and learning as much as possible.

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How does a B2B and B2C interview process vary? Can you elaborate what type of interview questions one can expect from B2B PM roles and how to prepare for B2B interview?

It mainly varies because there is a difference between the persona of end users and number of users. B2B roles are generally mature and the software moves at a slower pace than that of B2C products.

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The job market right now is extremely frizzy, what do you suggest is the best way to reach out to recruiters and make a case that brings you a revert? Competition and hype for product is unexplainable right now as you know, can you give your suggestions?

Try to apply to your strengths, read the JD thoroughly ,think how much you align to the role or how you can position your fitment. Apply only after assessing your chance. Then reach out to recruiters or people in the company with a compelling reason to hire or refer you. Move to sniper strategy from shotgun.

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Can you give advice for transition from Project Manager to Product Manager. What kind of skills should one learn and how to convince the companies to give a chance when one lacks commercial experience as Product Manager, but has plenty of experience as a Project Manager?

You can start with working with product managers in building client facing presentations, help them in calculating impact. Also while managing projects, move your communications from timeline to impact and dollar value; This will help you in getting internal movement to product.

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What are the skills & tools aspiring PMs should learn & have in their resume? Can you also suggest a few resources to learn the PM tools in the best form.

The best way to customize your learning is to check a few JDs or apply to PM roles. Then see where you specifically lag, do not learn everything but learn what you need.

For eg., if you are applying for a growth role then learn product led growth but if you are applying for tech PM role then learn technology. Keep iterating with this approach and in 2-3 months you will be in a great position.

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Can you advise how tech focused should PMs be when dealing with B2B platform products?

A few products are too technical, like the backend of AWS or azure. But for rest you need to understand simple things, no need of hardcore tech. You should just know what is the best experience for the user. In the case of B2B think, like a b2b2c , and think of the end user, for example outlook is sold as b2b but in the end it is used by individuals like us.

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While the initial few years of a PM work experience gives us the understanding and tools to work as a PM, can you advise what and how to build up skills to climb-up to more senior roles?

Try to set a target, for eg. SPM or principal PM or Group PM. Then build your learning roadmap accordingly. The biggest impact you can create is if you can show ownership in your current role. For anything that you are doing, all your stakeholders should know it is owned by you and once you deliver it then everybody should know you have delivered on your part. This will get you noticed and will help you grow. Hoot your horn, highlight your achievements, don’t shy away and wait for others to notice.

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Can you share on how to identify whether the company is having a great learning environment & promotes healthy competition?

Let me tell you a secret, use fishbowl or blind app, which are anonymous apps where people from corporates post realities of the company.

You can also check Glassdoor, but those reviews can be altered. Another way to see is how people react when you mention the company name. If you get an image that this is an awesome company then it definitely is but if the image is of meh company then it most likely is a meh company. Just think would you work for google or Infosys, you would have your answer.

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As you have transitioned from BHEL to Product Manager that is completely a different domain altogether. How difficult was it for you to get into Product Management and what difficulties you faced during your initial days as product manager?

I made the transition with help of MBA. I did my MBA from IIM-B and then moved to the PM role. Overall such a transition is easier now, you have to make  plan of 2-3 years , you can start taking product assignments in current org, build something outside of current work or get certifications. After learning product management for about a few months to a year, you can start applying to product roles and then taking up a junior roles to move up to product. Once you have mastered the product skills then you can grow.

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Can you advise on how someone from a non tech background should proceed to learning tech?

Couple of points: 

• You do not need to know a-lot of tech to be a PM.
• Start with CS50 course, its available free on youtube.

It's 4-5 hours of course but it will remove all the fear from tech, post that you can move to searching specific queries on the internet, read books like “tech simplified “

Once you invest 1 month in learning tech, your whole fear will go away.
Finally, follow tech blogs of famous companies like Netflix tech blog, which will make you fall in love with tech and you will be amazed to see how advanced the technologies are becoming.

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How has your experience and learnings been so far in finding a balance between 'Contentment as a true PM vs Deliver what the leadership wants'. I accept your answer may be biased if you're all in for one over the other, which is completely fine.

Great question. The way to solve this dilemma is to become data driven and impact driven. There will always be a proverbial HIPPO in the room, but if all your decisions have been driven by an impact and if you want to deny a feature, then everyone will listen to you. In case you have to build something just because leadership asked, if you communicate in advance that there is no supporting evidence that this feature will work, then you will not feel any pressure on yourself. Try to get more wins from your decisions and then you will earn the right to deny people their random feature requests.

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Can you provide guiding steps for an APM in a media tech company looking to transition into Fintech?

Generally speaking, try to focus on the transferrable skills in your resume and interview. Your stakeholder management, communication, story writing, agile skills etc., are directly useful in all domains. Also learn about the finance domain and narrow down your focus. Within finance there are multiple sectors such as banking, stock market, crypto, BNPL. Decide what you want to work on. The narrower focus you have the better you will perform in the interviews.

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Can you suggest a few reads if one wants to deep-dive after reading books like “covered tech simplified”?

• On LinkedIn you can follow Arslan Ahmad, Zeeshan Syed, Alex Xu. You can read bytebytego newsletter , and read designing data intensive applications.
• you can read tech blogs of companies, as I mentioned earlier.
• One thing you can do to really understand tech concepts is to try to explain it to others in simple terms, which will help you understand the concept yourself. Hope you have covered CS50, if not then start with that CS50-2018, which I highly recommend.

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Prior to your PM career, I see you worked in a non PM role post MBA. Could you share a few insights for our audience on specifically how you were able to bridge the gap?

I started as a business analyst but then I quickly observed that as a PM you can scale your impact. I was working on sales and collection data as an analyst but then I got the opportunity to build a collections module on internal CRM, an opportunity I took and since then I have not looked back from PM roles.

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For users who moved to a PM role via internal transfer but unable to get past the product interviews, would a coach or a supportive approach help to improve my interviewing/product skills?

I can speak to you personally. But overall a coach will help you in identifying your strengths and weaknesses. The assessment part is very important, so that you can get help tailored to your needs. Generic learning will not help as much as you think. You can also practice your interviews with peers, and take feedback from coach on your interviews.

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