👀 Atlassian APM: Application to Offer – iykyk

Combining a CS and Business Background

Hi there 👋 — Who are you and what’s your background?

Hi! I’m Tiffany and I’m an Associate Product Manager at Atlassian.

I’m in my first year of the rotation and currently based out of the San Francisco office. I’m born and raised in the Bay Area and went to UC Berkeley where I studied computer science, data science and entrepreneurship. Throughout university, I was involved in the extracurricular community - PBL, a business organization where I dabbled in consulting, and Codeology, a tech club where I explored my interests in tech + design.I tried several career paths in software engineering, strategy consulting and product design before discovering product management. PM grabbed my attention as it was a perfect intersection between my interests in tech, business and design. I had a couple PM internship opportunities in tech at a B2B company and a B2C company that helped solidify my interest in this field and encouraged me to continue in the same field post grad!Outside of the 9-5, I recently moved to San Francisco and have enjoyed exploring everything the city has to offer. I’ve been having a blast going to farmers’ markets, pilates and finding every hidden foodie gem in SF!

Rotations and Accessible Mentorship

How is the program structured, for those that are unfamiliar?

The Atlassian APM program is aimed to give you a breadth and depth of experience - it’s a two year rotational program with 1 year-long rotations.

There’s a rotational matching process and you can do your rotations in the same product, but exploring multiple products is encouraged. I’m currently on my first rotation within the Confluence Creation, and other U.S. APMs in my cohort are across Confluence, Trello, and Atlassian beta products.

Another perk of the Atlassian APM program is the amount of support that you get in it. As an APM, I have multiple people within my team and across my product that will ensure that I’m setup for success: a mentor (usually another PM on your team, or a sister team), an APM buddy (a previous APM), and a manager (another PM across your team + others).

Aside from the formal roles that are assigned to APMs, everyone is super welcoming and supportive of each other - we live and breathe by our company values like Play, as a Team and Open company, no bullsh*t.

Supported APM Learning and Growth

Is there anything the landing page doesn't tell us about the APM program?

Our community at Atlassian is able to uplift and support APMs beyond their day to day work. APMs receive a variety of product craft development opportunities - from specific APM onboarding weeks to sessions with execs and industry leaders to communication workshops.

Recently, all the APMs in my cohort recently finished up a Reforge course on introductory product management as part of our first year in the program. The community here really encourages each other to learn and grow outside of our daily responsibilities.

Acing an Atlassian APM Interview

What do you think made you stand out as an applicant and is there a recruitment strategy that nobody is doing right now, but should be?

Atlassian places a strong emphasis on its company values throughout the recruitment and interview process.

The values are below:

• Open company, no bullsh*t

• Play, as a team

• Be the change you seek

• Don’t **** the customer

• Build with heart and balance

From your own background, it would be helpful to speak to any experiences that exemplify these values.

Another important aspect of the interview process is to be true to yourself and try to remember that an interview is a flowing conversation. I’ve found in my experience that many people, including myself, tend to over prepare the factual, intellectual parts of an interview, but fail to prepare enough for the emotional and human parts.

It is so, so important to show up like you mean it and come to an interview with a proper mindset where you can naturally be relaxed, excited and attentive with your interviewer. So, stop your prep 10 minutes before the interview, and use that time to fire yourself up for that interview.

Note from Joseph:

To help you kickstart your interview prep process, the Product Alliance team shared the most common behavioral question asked at Atlassian:

Tell me about a time when a team didn't work together well. How did you handle it? What would you do differently if you encountered a similar situation now?

Another most common product design question Atlassian asks:

Tell me about an overrated tech product. Why don't you think it's that good? What could it do to improve?

The Product Alliance team polls their customers to see which questions they’ve gotten during their Atlassian PM interviews. If you want to see the other 50+ most-asked questions, you will find it in the Product Alliance’s Specific Company Deep Dives course.

As part of their Full Library Access Pass, which includes all their 9 courses, you will see all the strategies to ace any PM interview questions and sample 10/10 answers, taught by calibrated product interviewers.

For the iykyk readers, we were able to secure a discount for this Full Library Access Pass! Use code [JKC1-LD23J-PA50] to get $50 off!

Exploring Other Types of PM

What’s your next play after graduating from this program and how has this program impacted your 5-10 year career plan?

My half year in this program so far has opened my eyes to the multitude of different roles within product management. I am especially eager to continue to explore different roles like growth PMs, technical PMs, etc. to see what roles suits me best.

For my second rotation, I hope to continue to explore other Atlassian products and to grow my depth and breadth of PM experience!