An Aspiring PM Journey | Seed Guest Series
What does college look like for an aspiring PM?
Welcome to the first Seed Guest Series Newsletter! We’ll be introducing you to some incredible people and their stories as students and professionals so that you can get a peek at how they’ve developed their careers and what they’ve learned along the way.
Today, we’ll be introducing you to Seed co-founder Amerison Shrestha, a junior at UT Austin and an aspiring Product Manager!
Can you tell us a bit about yourself and what got you interested in product management?
Hi! I'm Amer and I’m currently a junior Management Information Systems major at UT-Austin. I became interested in tech and product simultaneously after my first product management internship at MailChimp. I’ve always loved to create and break things growing up, so when I learned about product management during my freshman year, I saw it as a good medium for me to do this in the future.
So far, I've finished up 4 internships (3 of them tech) in the past two years. This year, I've recruited for 14 different tech/banking/consulting companies (Microsoft, Intuit, BoA, Bain, Salesforce, etc). Out of the 14, I got 7 offers. Last year, I recruited for 70 companies and only got 1 offer. Needless to say, I took that shit!
I've made a fair share of mistakes but I've learned a lot and I want to share these things through Seed and this newsletter!
One heads up, though. Everything below is based on MY perspective. It's only ONE perspective and there are thousands more. If you find value in it, then that’s great, but take my or any career advice with a grain of salt.
What recruiting advice did you adopt that worked for you when you first started?
The people I've found to be most helpful are those who are EXTREMELY familiar with the process. Usually, it was someone who's recruited for that company/position in the past 8-12 months (a fellow student). These people are HIDDEN gems. And they're easy to find on LinkedIn/Slack Groups. Recruiters from the company who hire for the position you want were also helpful, although they're harder to reach outside of company recruiting events. Hiring managers were also great, but they’re even harder to reach than recruiters.
Is there any advice you didn’t take?
I don’t take recruiting advice from people who are out-of-touch with the process. Mentors and professors are great for general career advice, but their recruiting strategies tend to be outdated. I also don’t take recruiting advice from my school's career services. Based on my experiences, all their recommendations have been things I can find on a pamphlet at Half-Price Books, so yeah, not very helpful.
What is your time management strategy and recommendations?
This might be a bit controversial for some, but ditching any care about my grades or GPA worked pretty well. It’s given me more time to work on meaningful side-projects or take-up internships. And in tech, recruiters don't even care about grades. They take a chance on you based on the kind of experience you've had in the past and how well you perform in your interviews. It's hard to leave that grades-first mentality because that's all you’ve had to worry about for the past 10 years. But the faster you abandon that mentality, the more you'll accomplish because it’ll shift your priorities to things that actually matter.
Any advice for students that are just beginning their journey in tech?
Be part of the tech industry community as soon as possible. You want to be around people that can give you referrals, help you out with interviews, and help you negotiate after you get offers. I'd recommend using Slack channels to do this. Just Google "Tech Slack Channels". Then, join every single one of them and take advantage of them. LinkedIn used to be the place for all this magic, but nowadays EVERYONE uses LinkedIn and that makes it harder to stand out. Career Slack Groups are also the new trend (at least for now). Not everyone knows about them, but they’re really active communities willing to help.
Resources of the Week
Email Tracker: Amer’s Rec: Make sure you to follow up with recruiters; an email tracker helps a lot with this
Application Tracker - Amer’s Rec: Here’s a simple application tracker to get you started
GGV NextGen Fellowship - A fellowship program by GGV Capital for rising college juniors and seniors
Thanks for reading this week’s newsletter! Check out our Substack page for more newsletters. Past articles include:
Also, visit our Resource page to explore a curated list of interesting articles, communities, and book recommendations!