👀 Washington Post PM Internship: Application to Offer – iykyk

Cornell, LinkedIn, and Moving from India 

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

Hi, I’m Jahnavi Shah! I'm a master's student at Cornell University, and I grew up in India where I did my undergrad in Computer Engineering at Pandit Deendayal Energy University. I also create content on LinkedIn, and have amassed over 25,000 followers and been a part of the first cohort for LinkedIn’s Creator Accelerator Program in India.

I’ve been interested in and studied product management for almost two or three years now, and have been applying to internships since the day I moved to the U.S. last year for grad school. It was also during that time when I found my current Product Management internship at ARC XP, which is the SAAS Software division of the Washington Post where I’ll be working on the Composer Team.

I’m super excited to be starting this internship in a few days!

Standing out through Networking 

What do you think made you stand out as an applicant for this internship?

I think one of the biggest things that helped was networking! To be honest, I’m not sure that I would have gotten an interview with the Washington Post if I hadn’t networked, and it was actually the hiring manager who forwarded my resume to the recruiter.

When I originally applied for the role, I reached out to a bunch of different product managers and employees at the Washington Post trying to set up coffee chats without much expectation, and luckily one of them replied back. It was during the call where I noticed she was taking notes, and when I asked for a referral she told me she was the hiring manager for the role. I learned they were already in the process of interviewing other potential candidates since I had applied two weeks after the job posting, but it was actually the day after this call where I had my HR interview screening.

Another thing that helped was being able to really tie in my past experiences to the job role. As I mentioned, this role was for the content team, and during my interviews I was mentioning my experiences as a content creator and tying them in with what Washington Post and Arc XP does.

Notion Job Tracking

Are there recruitment strategies that nobody is doing right now, but should be?

So last year from August to February, I applied to 133 internships. I've never applied to so many applications before, and to keep track of everything, I built a personal application tracker on Notion.

A strategy I followed was that for every company I applied to, I put them in two buckets.

1. Cold Applications

2. Networking Applications

The second bucket was for companies I was either really interested in, or companies where I felt I could really do well in the interview. For the second bucket, I would network with hiring managers, recruiters, and people actually working in that role through LinkedIn, and I actually ended up landing three or four interviews just from networking.

Interview Process and Rounds

Can you describe the interview process and what it looked like for your role?

For this internship, the process was as follows:

1. HR Interview: Basic screening questions and info about the internship and future interviews.

2. 30 Minute Interview w/PM at Arc XP: Resume walk through + behavioral questions

3. 2 Hour Product Case Interview: 1st hour — Receive a prompt and one hour to make a presentation w/all my findings. 2nd hour — 30 minutes for my presentation and 30 minutes of behavioral questions.

Future Plans

What’s your next play after this internship?

So during the internship, I plan to give my best effort and ideally want to convert the internship into a return offer!

For future plans, I have one more semester at Cornell left before I graduate, and I'll be looking for full time jobs starting January next year. I’m hoping to get into a full time role in product management, but the main goal right now is to put my best foot forward for this internship!

Bonus: LinkedIn Posting Advice

Bonus Question: As a content creator, do you have advice for fellow job seekers who want to start documenting their journey on LinkedIn?

Yes! So to give some background, when I first started on LinkedIn a few years ago, I actually had no idea what I was doing but I was very curious from seeing influencers talk about how students could use LinkedIn to grow their personal brand. That’s when I started posting for a year, and I slowly started seeing some of the benefits. I received opportunities to write articles for leading magazines in India, and even when applying for internships I would gain credibility from people seeing my profile.

Advice wise, I would say that while posting on LinkedIn can be really scary, it can be really beneficial for not just yourself but also for the people who get to see it. Even if you’ve built a small project, put it on LinkedIn because small steps are what lead to a great profile over time. While you might think that people don't see what you're putting out, in my experience I’ve had so many people tell me they’ve seen me on LinkedIn, and I think that personal branding on LinkedIn can be incredibly powerful.

Also, don’t get discouraged if the engagement when starting is really low. I think my first five posts had like three or four likes, and that comes with consistency. It’s important to value quality engagement and not just likes or shares, and I think LinkedIn is a great tool to do that!