Are you a product leader about to run an intern program or thinking about hosting an intern? Here’s what I’ve learned about successful PM intern programs after managing, successfully converting, and mentoring interns at both Google and Peloton. Of specific note, setting interns up for success is not exactly the same as managing full-time PMs due to large differences in experience, intern motivations, and the extremely short internship time period. (Are you a soon-to-be intern? Some friends and I also wrote here about advice for you and what to look for a internship.)
The Why (for Interns and Intern Hosts)
First, let’s consider what PM interns are often looking for:
- Learn “Do I want to be a PM?”
- Learn “Do I want to work at this company/team?”
- Learn leadership, product management, and general corporate skills for their resume/future experiences
- Receive a return offer for full-time employment
- Make a lot of money at a prestigious, challenging tech job
- Make new friends and have fun, potentially in a new location
Next, let’s consider: what are you looking for? That is, what’s success for the internship and how do you even know if you should host an intern? Legitimate, strong reasons to host an intern include:
- You have existing PMs on your team who are interested in people management and/or mentorship, but aren’t yet ready for a full time PM.
- You are looking for future full time (A)PMs for your org, and your intern program is part of that recruiting funnel. (In this case, try very hard to make sure the return-to-full-time headcount is guaranteed, or set expectations up front about the risk. Your intern might be turning down other offers with more guaranteed full-time-career opportunities.)
- On a personal level, perhaps your organization has the capacity to support interns and you would like to give more people an opportunity to experience product management.
But if the reason is “you want a temporary additional full-time contributor” – this is a red flag. It’s definitely possible for strong interns to contribute like a full-time PM during their summer (👀 my former interns). But heading into an internship with this type of expectation is a set-up for failure. Your intern(s) will be evaluated against unfair standards and be asked to spend their time in ways that likely won’t help them accomplish some of their broader learning goals (see above). Specifically, interns usually expect to spend chunks of time on “non-short-term-productive” time that is nonetheless valuable time:
- Learning about PM and the company by listening to talks, attending company social times, and meeting full-time colleagues and other interns
- Answering a product strategy question in a newer area, which is usually longer term and doesn’t contribute to immediate launches or impact.
It doesn’t set you up for success either. You’d be getting “more hands on deck” in a pretty high-risk way (compared to investing in another actual FTE, a contractor, or finding bandwidth in other ways). Specific risk factors include:
- Internships are very short, with lots of ramp up and down time on either end. It’d be hard to ask even an experienced PM to come in, be super high impact for 10-12 weeks, and leave. And paradoxically, the more effective they are, the larger the scope they own – and the more disruptive to the team their departure can be.
- Due to internship interview panels being shorter and evaluation criteria (rightfully) being based on potential rather than demonstrated experience in the role, you generally have less signal at the moment of hiring that they will deliver results equal to an FTE. The short time period also means you don’t have the luxury of lots of time to coach them on meaningful skill gaps.
Ok – so let’s say you’re running an intern(s) program with the right expectations and goals. What are potential considerations for project choice, support structures, and timeline/milestone expectations?
The How: Setting Up Intern Projects
How to choose projects
To give the intern exposure to as much of the PM role as possible (to reach everybody’s goals!), I always try to select three separate projects, which start at different points during the internship:
- Execution skills project. The intern should dive in on a workstream with completed or mostly completed Product Requirements Document (PRD). They’ll learn how to run meetings with Engineers, TPMs, and Designers on an inflight workstream; unblock the team; gather required approvals; and go through pre-launch activities (like dogfooding, acceptance testing, Ramp Up/Launch schedule, and preparing internal and external launch comms).
- Product definition / vision project. The intern should be expected to create a written artifact (usually a PRD) outlining a new feature. They should collaborate with the team to create it. Depending on their experience, they could be asked to come up with their own feature to define (harder) or could be told the feature to define (easier). It’s usually most natural for the feature to be defined to be related to the feature being launched in the execution skills project.
- Strategic vision project. The usual artifact is a strategy document (like Amazon’s famous 6-page memos) or a strategy proposal deck. Your intern will get to demonstrate their market research, analytical, and strategic skills in a more ambiguous, greenfield space. This is often the hardest of the three projects, because it is the most ambiguous
It’s best if the three projects are somewhat related to each other, to help reduce separate ramp-up time. The key to selecting workstreams for these are:
- Selecting a problem that is complex enough for the condensed time period, but not too complex enough to understand and execute on
- Build and demonstrate the right PM skills (for their future career, for conversion evaluation, and for the intern to understand if they look product)
- Has fewest dependencies possible (e.g. not dependent on the intern successfully pitching the VP in another part of the company, or not dependent on risky new research technology that might launch in 3 months or 3 years)
Sample Timeline
The typical PM internship is 10-12 weeks. If your company can afford it, longer is often better to accomplish both sides’ goals: you’ll get more time to work together and evaluate each other. A sample (“ideal”) timeline might look like:
- Before the internship: Sort out access (to dashboards, docs, and internal company systems) and equipment beforehand, so your 3 months together can be maximized
- Week 1: Onboarding and Intro 1:1s
- Week 2: Begin driving the Execution project
- Week 3: Start drafting the artifact for the Product Definition / Vision
- Week 5: Review of Product Definition PRD
- Week 6: Midpoint Checkin and Formal Bidirectional Feedback (regular informal feedback should be provided throughout)
- Week 8: Start strategy project
- Week 9: Launch the Execution project
- Week 10: Begin transition plans for workstreams that need to continue beyond the internship
- Week 12:
- End of Internship Presentation(s)
- End of Internship Bidirectional Feedback
- Goodbye Event, like a Happy Hour or Zoom Goodbye Party w/ Kudoboard
- Post-Internship
- Return offer evaluation and extension (for another internship or FTE)
The How: Overlapping Support Structures
Your interns will benefit from a robust support structure, to help decrease their anxiety and get things done more effectively. Examples of support structures include:
- A manager (maybe you, if you’re reading this article!): they provide support, “unblock” the intern, and articulate and evaluate success.
- A mentor who is likely a mid-career or senior PM, usually on the intern’s extended team. In case the intern feels too intimidated to ask their manager (a problem in its own right, but this happens), they can ask for help and advice from this experienced PM.
- A buddy who is an early career PM, commonly an Associate PM. Being “closer” in career to an intern, they may be going through more relatable challenges in their role while still having a bit more experience.
- A project team who knows what to expect: that an intern is coming, and that they have a role in helping onboard and teach them.
- The intern’s cohort: other interns (usually PM, but at a smaller company could be from other functions) with generally overlapping internship periods. This group can serve as a social support going through a similar experience together.
Not every intern needs support from all these support structures (especially varying on their personal experience – like if this is their first corporate or PM role) , but they might – and you want them to be able to find the help they need. Overlapping support structures also distributes the support load so each individual team member has a lighter load.
So, a PM intern or whole program (providing a lot of the above guidance to individual intern managers) can be a big boost for aspiring PM managers, your company’s PM pipeline, and aspiring PMs. But they’re easy to get wrong, especially with such a short time together. Embarking for the right reasons and with a thoughtful setup helps make it a win-win-win situation.