Fall semester in the Tech MBA program comes with new classes and friends, endless fun club activities, and everybody’s favorite… recruiting season. Tech is different than more traditional business school paths like consulting and banking, in that the timeline of recruiting varies based on the companies you are targeting. If you are targeting medium-sized companies or startups, they usually can’t predict headcount too far in advance and do just-in-time recruiting that will happen during the spring semester. But if you are targeting Big Tech companies like Amazon, Microsoft or Google, then you will likely be applying and interviewing during the fall semester.
But preparation for interviews happens long before that, in fact, it will happen before you even step on campus. A few weeks before starting school in May, you’ll need to submit your resume to the Office of Career Development (OCD), who will go over it with a fine-toothed comb and provide feedback. Then over the summer, OCD conducts a number of helpful job search related workshops. Once the fall semester begins, you’ll start preparing in earnest for interviews.
Earlier this semester, the Stern Technology Association invited Lewis Lin to campus for a full day workshop on tech interviewing. If you aren’t familiar with Lewis Lin, he literally has written the book on interviewing for product jobs at big tech companies. It’s never too early to start preparing for interviews, so if you’re searching for reading recommendations, take a look at his books. The first half of the workshop focused on the types of roles that tech companies are looking to fill. The second half of the day went even more in-depth on product management, with lots of practice problems covered that you might receive during an actual interview.
While this workshop provided a solid foundation, there is no substitute for good old repetitive practice. To prepare even more, I partnered up with a few fellow Tech MBA classmates who were also recruiting this fall, and we spent hours lobbing practice questions at each other and providing feedback on answers. The Stern Technology Association provides guides on each company, so we were able to use that to tailor the practice problems based on the next interview. The last few weeks I have had multiple interviews at big tech companies, and all of this practice proved invaluable. The format (phone/virtual/in-person) and questions will change depending on the company, but with the right practice, you will feel confident in any interview situation.