👀 Indeed APM: Application to Offer – iykyk

UMich, Walgreens, & Data Science

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

Hi, I'm Kelly Schweitzer! I’m a 23-year-old living in San Francisco who’s part of Indeed's APM cohort graduating in 2024. I grew up in East Lansing, Michigan, and attended the University of Michigan for both my undergraduate degree and a one-year master's program. I originally started College trying to be a designer, and I pursued my undergraduate degree in UX design at the School of Information, which has a unique concentration in UX design.

During my sophomore year I had a voice UX internship at Walgreens, where I became more interested in the cross-functional aspects of design, including making business and engineering decisions, and I also got introduced to product management.

As a designer, I definitely felt like an underdog while applying for APM roles. Regardless, I applied for Google's APM Intern program during my junior year (during Covid) and got in. While I didn’t receive a return offer, I still learned a ton about working for big tech companies and what product management entails. From there, I realized I still loved product management, and decided to get my Master’s Degree in Data Science to strengthen my knowledge of big data and landed a role in the APM program at Indeed.

Program Structure & Indeed University

For those who are unfamiliar, how is the program structured and run?

For sure! So for my Cohort there were around a dozen people, and people were distributed in offices around the U.S. The total cohort is two years, with two one year rotations where you rotate products.

I also started my first quarter with a program called Indeed University, which is a really fun training program for new grads. It’s essentially where you’re placed into teams including a PM, a couple engineers, and sometimes a designer, and you come up with a project. It’s kind of like an incubator, and you come up with an MVP to launch and test. It was a great experience in September, and we got to spend basically an entire month in their Austin headquarters, which was really fun.

In terms of promotions, you can be promoted at any time once you perform at the “PM level”, based on the standards that they set for those performance guidelines.

Community & Tokyo Office

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

We definitely have really good mentorship. There’s a pretty strong APM community within Indeed even though there haven’t been that many cohorts, and the internal network contains a lot of really smart & kind go-getters. Everyone’s really willing to help each other out, and there’s a lot of people to reach out to for help.

Indeed also offers a really cool opportunity to do your second rotation from the Tokyo office, which would be super cool! I’ve had my eye on it, since it’s also one of the things that caught my attention before joining the program.

Weaknesses → Strengths

What do you think made you stand out as an applicant during the application process?

Honestly, I definitely felt like I was an underdog coming into the interviews from a design background, but in hindsight I think it also gave me a unique strength. I feel like understanding design really helped me crush the design questions by answering questions with design frameworks and structures in mind. I think with engineering, a lot of people talk a lot about processes and the components that go into building things, which are all very important, but understanding design can help add depth to your answers. I also really focused on storytelling in my answers.

Interview Process

Could you describe the interview process?

So there was one screener interview, followed by a one on one, and then a panel and confirmation interview. You also have to complete a written test before interviewing, but luckily there’s no homework between the interviews.

Following the panel interview I think I also had an interview with each of the panelists, but I don't know if they did that for everybody. To be honest, I’m still not entirely sure if there’s one set structure for all the interviews, or if the interview structures get slightly altered depending on the candidate. The questions were a mix of analytical and creative questions, but it definitely erred on the side of analytical and data oriented questions.

Salary Expectations & Progression

5.What is the average starting salary for program participants and what does the salary progression look like once you’ve graduated from the program?

It differs by region, but in San Francisco I started at 121k with a 15k sign on bonus, as well as a 5k relocation. We also had around 45k of shares that were vested over four years.

I think it goes down to around 100k in Austin, and actually, one of my friends who was also in the Bay Area negotiated up to around 130k.

I also recently got adjusted up to 125k as a merit increase, since when we do evaluations during our promotion cycle you can get a raise if you demonstrate progress towards the next level. That’s also a really cool perk.

Japan, Startups, & APM

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

Ideally, I'd really like to go to Japan in a year and live there for a couple years. I'm not sure if that's gonna be completely possible, but doing it through Indeed would be super cool and I think it’d provide a ton of personal growth for me! So that's kind of my main goal for right now.

After I graduate from the program, I would really like to have a startup era. One of the things that being a PM has taught me is the power of having a variety of skills, knowing a lot of different things from design engineering data to business strategy while working on your weaknesses every day. I think being in a startup is the perfect place to grow in that way, since it gives you the chance to wear a lot of hats in a high-pressure, sink or swim environment. While I don’t necessarily consider myself a business person, I’d love to try that out for my own growth!

This program has also definitely changed the trajectory of my career. End of the day, having a program like this on your resume is really helpful just to get your foot in the door, even though it might not always be fair and based partly on luck. It’s given me a bunch opportunities to network and grow, and I’m excited to see where exactly I head next!