Career Planning: 2017's Best Guide

Happy New Year! Getting a new job is one of the most popular New Year's resolutions for 2017.

To help you get the career you want, I've got a great list of resources to supercharge your career including:

▪ Resume 
▪ Cover letter 
▪ Career plan 
▪ Interview skills 
▪ Networking abilities
▪ Negotiation prowess

Let's fulfill your career dreams in 2017!

Yours,

Lewis C. Lin

Don't know what to do with your career?

Then build a career plan.

To-do List

▪ Fill out this career plan template

Don't know which companies to target?

Then hitch your career to a company with plenty of growth.

To-do List

▪ Check out this list of companies that are growing 50% year-over-year, before they go IPO.

Having problems getting interviews?

Then upgrade your resume and cover letter.

To-do List

▪ Get inspired with this resume sample from the Kellogg School of Management
▪ Migrate your existing resume to this new resume template
▪ Use this resume bullet format
▪ Get inspired by these action verbs
▪ Ignore the debate on whether hiring managers read cover letters. Use thiscover letter template. It'll make an impression and take you just five minutes.

Trouble getting internal employees to refer you?

Then build you network. The most effective way to network your way to a job is an informational interview.

To-do List

▪ Read this Harvard Business Review article on informational interviews
▪ Build out your targets, using this networking template based on Steve Dalton's 2-Hour Job Search
▪ Save time and get responses by using this 5 Point Informational Interview Template, also from Dalton

No trouble getting interviews, but no offers?

Brush up your interviewing skills. Interviewers love stories. Storytelling works for Pixar, and it'll work at your interview.

To-do List

▪ Brainstorm at least 20 anticipated interview questions.
▪ Put together your interview stories, using the interview stories template.

Collecting offers, but not getting what you're worth?

Negotiate.

To-do List

▪ Negotiation can be super easy. Just use these 31+ killer salary negotiation scripts.

Photo credit: Comedy Central

Black Friday Sale: 30% off Lewis C. Lin Books

Get 30% off Lewis C. Lin Books

If you've been waiting to get either one of my new books, today would be a great day to do so. Get 30% off one at Barnes and Noble's website:

PM Interview Questions: Over 160 Problems and Solutions for Product Management Interview Questions

Case Interview Questions for Tech Companies: 155 Real Interview Questions and Answers

To get the savings, use promo code: BNBFRIDAY16. Ends November 27, 2016 at 11:59pm Pacific Time. Paperback only. Promo code can only be used on one book.

Wishing you the best this holiday season,

Lewis C. Lin

PS And yes, you can apply the coupon toward my four other books too!

Lewis C. Lin's 10-School Tour 2016

LEWIS' FALL TOUR 
My fall workshop tour is underway, and I'm thrilled to lead students through marketing and product management best practices.

You'll find the schools, locations, and dates at the end of this email.

If you're a student, please say hello and introduce yourself. I'd love to meet you in-person!

GOOD NEWS...2X 
Last week, Google officially endorsed my product management (PM) interview frameworks & techniques, including the CIRCLES Method™, for prospective Google PM candidates. Woo hoo!

Also, my book sales have exceeded expectations, partly due to Google's announcement. I'm particularly pleased with the sales of my two newest books: PM Interview Questions and Case Interview Questions for Tech Companies.

Thanks for reading, and I'm grateful for your support!

See you soon,

Lewis C. Lin

--

TOUR SCHEDULE 
Jul 24 UC Berkeley Haas MBA Berkeley, CA
Sep 23 Texas A&M University Mays Business School College Station, TX
Sep 24 University of Texas Austin McCombs School of Business Austin, TX
Oct 1 Univ. of Washington Foster Seattle, WA
Oct 21 Cornell University Johnson Ithaca, NY
Oct 28 Columbia Business School New York, NY
Oct 29 Rice University Jones Graduate School of Business Houston, TX
Nov 5 UC Irvine Paul Merage School of Business Irvine, CA
Nov 30 Duke's Fuqua School of Business Durham, NC
Jan 12 Stanford GSB MBA Stanford, CA

Case Interview Questions for Tech Companies: Announcing a New Release from Lewis C. Lin

Thank you for making my recent book, PM Interview Questions, the #1 new release in Amazon's job interviewing category.

It's an honor to be considered in the same breath as Martin Yate's legendary job hunting book Knock 'em Dead 2017.

NEWS FLASH: I just published a NEW book.

It's called Case Interview Questions for Tech Companies.

I'm ready to tell you about it. Scroll down!

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Why did you release this new book? 
Over the last couple of years, I visited US business schools, teaching interview skills to students who wanted to switch careers into the tech industry.

Students asked, How do I prepare for: 
* Marketing management interviews at Dell? 
* Supply chain interviews at Apple? 
* Vendor management interviews at Amazon? 
* Corporate strategy interviews at Microsoft? 
* Partner and business development interviews at Google?

Together, we uncovered a gap in preparing candidates for those types of roles. And like PM interviews, all of these roles have tough case interview questions, just in a different domain.

So in response, Case Interview Questions for Tech is that case interview prep book tech industry candidates have been waiting for.

What are case questions? 
Case questions are interview questions based on hypothetical business scenarios. Here are case question examples, which are featured in the new book (along with sample answers):

Marketing 
* Create a marketing campaign for Microsoft Office 365. 
* Write a media statement to respond to Uber mischaracterizations voiced in a taxi leader’s newspaper op-ed.

Operations 
* What’s the bottleneck for an Amazon Robot Picker? And what is the capacity of the assembly line, in units per hour? 
* Amazon ships 200 orders per second. Amazon’s data science team discovered that the average number of orders waiting to be shipped was 20,650. How long did the average Amazon order wait to be shipped?

Finance 
* What should Apple consider before implementing a shop-in-shop store inside Best Buy? 
* If you projected a $500M expense and the variance came in at $1M, what are some of the explanations for why that is happening? Be prepared to give more than three scenarios.

Business Development 
* A car dealer partner wants to stop doing business with Uber. What should you do? 
* How would you identify university faculty to source content for an online university?

Strategy 
* If you could open a Google retail store anywhere, where would it be and why?
* Give your analysis of several recent acquisitions that Google has made.

Analytics 
* What top metrics would you track for the Tinder online dating app? 
* If 1,000 people opened the Uber app during one hour, how many cars do you need?

What's in the book? And how is it different from PM Interview Questions? 
Case Interview Questions for Tech provides 155 practice questions and answers to help you conquer case questions at tech industry interviews.

Think of Case Interview Questions for Tech as broadly covering case interview questions for a variety of business-oriented roles in the tech industry, whereasPM Interview Questions focuses only on PM case questions. But we have included a healthy dose of new PM case questions and sample answers in this book too!

Who should get this book? 
This book is particularly ideal for folks who are:

▪ NEW TO TECH...and looking to transition in
▪ IN TECH ALREADY BUT NON-BUSINESS SIDE...and looking to transition to business-side
▪ IN TECH ALREADY AND ON THE BUSINESS-SIDE...and planning to upgrade into a dream job and need to brush up on case interview skills first

Did you write the book in two weeks? 
I wish!

My contributing author, Teng, and I have been working on both books for the last 12 months.

We wanted to launch both books at the same time, but many of you told us, "Don't stall. We need the books ASAP for our interviews."

So we've released the books as soon as we could.

Is it available in digital format? 
It is available in PDF format. This is perfect for folks who can't wait for Amazon to deliver it or if Amazon won't ship the book to their home country.

Are you planning to launch a third book in 2016? 
No. I've got Halloween plans to think about. 🎃

Enjoy the new book and best of luck with the fall 🍂 recruiting season,

Lewis C. Lin

Lewis C. Lin's New Book Now Available – PM Interview Questions: Over 160 Problems and Solutions for Product Management Interview Questions

I'm thrilled to announce that my new book, PM Interview Questions, is now available on Amazon.

If you're looking for product management (PM) practice questions, this 317 page resource has over 160 PM interview questions with sample answers. It features real questions from the following companies:

▪ Google
▪ Facebook
▪ Amazon
▪ Uber
▪ Dropbox
▪ Microsoft
▪ And More

Many of you have read the PM interview frameworks revealed in Cracking the PM Interview as well as Decode and Conquer, including the CIRCLES™, AARM™ and DIGS™ Methods. PM Interview Questions is the perfect complement to both books. With this new book, you'll see what the best PM interview responses look and feel like.

Here's what early readers have said:

What an excellent resource! I've already attempted the questions.

Thanks to this book, I snagged an Amazon Technical Product Manager role at Amazon. You have no idea how grateful I am!

Thanks to all of you for your support. One last thing, before you go, check out one of the most anticipated sections from the new book: the 30-day Google PM interview study guide.

Enjoy the rest of your summer and crush those interviews,

Lewis C. Lin

4 articles you missed, 1 exclusive invitation and 1 special annoucement from Lewis C. Lin

Welcome to the latest edition of my newsletter. I've got some outstanding news! My new book, PM Interview Questions: Over 160 Problems and Solutions for Product Management Interview Questions, is almost ready for publication and general release.

This is, by far, the most anticipated book I've ever written. Here are some of the emails I've received in the last couple of weeks:

Is there a chance that I can get the book earlier, for a higher price? Will you consider it?

I'm planning to tackle the Facebook product growth manager role. I would like to get an early copy of your book. I am happy to send payment through Paypal or other ways, thank you.

I've got a Google interview coming up in late August. Can I buy an early copy before then?

A select few had a chance to see an early release. Here's what one had to say:

Thanks to this book, I snagged an Amazon Technical Product Manager role at Amazon. You have no idea how grateful I am!

As a special bonus to my readers, to celebrate PM Interview Workbook's imminent release, I'd like to invite you to an exclusive PM Interview Practice group that I created.

Once you're in the group, you can find other PMs who want to: 
* Find practice partners
* Share PM job hunt advice

To get an invite, just enter your email address and follow the signup instructions.

So stay tuned for the book's release. And finally, scroll down for some amazing career-related articles that you don't want to miss.

Enjoy the rest of your summer and stay cool,

Lewis C. Lin

Product Management

Good Product Manager, Bad Product Manager 
The bad PM gives excuses, lacks directions, focuses on competitor features, and doesn’t value discipline. The good PM takes responsibility, leads through example, targets market share, and delivers weekly status reports. 
Which PM do you want to be?

Career Knowledge and / or Interview Prep

2016 Tech Trends to Read Before Your next Job Interview 
If you’re sending Snapchat selfies through Siri, shopping for personalized deals on Amazon, and cruising around in your automated Tesla, congratulations: you represent the future of the Internet. Social media advertising, speech recognition, e-commerce, big data, and the car computing evolution will drive the next wave of growth in tech, according to the KPCB 2016 Internet Trends report. Remember these trends and you’ll be golden when answering that dreaded PM interview question: “Is our industry ripe for disruption?” China alone also represents 37% of total GDP growth in 2015, so don’t forget to learn Mandarin too!

Marketing

Dead Simple Way to Build Your Marketing Plan 
Dealing with a poor marketing effort? Whether it's a hypothetical question on the interview or on the job, get marketing going again with Jon Westenberg's brainstorming canvas. Organize your thoughts, find your target audience, and introduce your product to people who actually want it. Westenberg, as he puts it, makes it f#?!ing easy.

Negotiation

Which hostage negotiation skills do you use in your everyday life and how? 
The strategy for a successful hostage situation and salary negotiation are pretty much the same: ask for details, make reasonable concessions, and slowly break their morale. Read invaluable negotiation advice from Chris Voss, a former FBI hostage negotiator.

💪 You're Invited: Lewis C. Lin's Exclusive Mock Interview Group

You've got to train if you want to win the interview.

The best candidates train by doing LOTS of mock interviews, with peers. Here's what one candidate, Florian, had to say:

Thanks to my extensive preparations with approximately 70 mock interviews, I received offers from McKinsey and Bain.

To help you find mock interview partners, I've created a special interview practice Slack group.

Signups are limited to the first 100 before Tuesday, July 19 at 11:59 pm Pacific Time zone.

Don't delay. Grab your spot now. Click the link above to get your invite.

Yours,

Lewis C. Lin

[Equal Pay Day '16] Don't Miss Tuesday's Salary Negotiation Webinar

Tuesday is Equal Pay Day, and I'll be presenting a negotiation webinar called Five Minutes to a Higher Salary, based on my Amazon.com bestselling salary negotiation book.

At the webinar, you'll learn how to get what you deserve, including a special salary negotiation script to get what you want in less than 5 minutes.  

Special Bonus  

All attendees will receive a FREE copy of my negotiation book.  

Webinar Registration Details

If you've thought about getting more, register for Tuesday's webinar to get started.  

Yours,  

Lewis C. Lin

Photo Credit: Philo Nordlund