Client Case Study
Prashanth Sharma
Senior Product Manager at Salesforce
Before & After
Prashanth was confident from past job searches that were relatively easy, but found himself stuck and unable to progress past the first or second round of interviews, realizing he had blind spots he couldn't identify on his own.
Prashanth developed confidence in his ability to present himself in a structured, compelling way and recognized the value of professional support, ultimately persisting through a lengthy 18-month search to land two roles.
Prashanth's LinkedIn profile and resume were not well-aligned with a strong product management narrative, and recruiter outreach was limited as a result.
After working with IGS coaches, his LinkedIn profile was updated to reflect his 'Tell Me About Yourself' stories and his resume was strengthened, leading to increased inbound recruiter outreach.
Prashanth was relying primarily on job board applications and generic outreach without a structured referral strategy, which yielded limited results.
He leveraged his personal network and the IGS alumni network systematically, using referrals to get his resume directly to hiring managers, which led to both of his new roles.
Prashanth lacked a structured approach to presenting himself and his work, struggling to bridge from written experience to compelling verbal and visual formats like presentations and case studies.
He developed a reusable presentation framework and worked with interview coaches to prepare for behavioral, case study, and panel interviews, using one core presentation as a template at least five or six times across different interview formats.
Prashanth initially relied on generic outplacement services from his layoff package, which were not tailored to product management, and expected the same approach that had worked in easier past job markets to work again.
He adopted a structured, PM-specific job search strategy emphasizing referrals, targeted networking, and leveraging the IGS community and alumni network, which directly produced both of his job offers.
Prashanth did not mention having a structured approach to compensation negotiation prior to the program.
He worked with dedicated compensation coaches through the IGS program as part of the overall job search process, gaining support for negotiation at the offer stage.
“Understanding PM recruitment nuances differentiates this program from generic job search offerings”
— Prashanth Sharma, Senior Product Manager at Salesforce
Prashanth Sharma's Story
My journey into product management took the typical route — software engineering at Qualcomm and Ericsson, then transitioning through technical marketing into platform product management at Teradata for about eight years. When my role was eliminated in a large reorg, I tried to go it alone. In previous job searches I'd been fairly successful, but this time I wasn't making progress beyond the first or second round of interviews. That's when I realized this market was quite different.
The IJS program is specifically for product managers. The placement programs in my layoff package were generic for all kinds of roles. Understanding the nuances of how a PM recruitment process works and being able to support through each specific phase — that's what differentiates IJS.
My first aha moment was the structured approach to building a Tell Me About Yourself — refocusing from everything I've done to a concise introduction highlighting my most valuable recent accomplishments, with conversation openers that direct toward my strongest stories. The second was how the coaches helped me prepare presentations for case studies and panel interviews.
The large network of students and alumni was something I leveraged to connect with people whose companies had opportunities matching my profile. Both my roles came through personal connections and referrals.
The program is professional help from actual product managers, a support community for retaining your sanity through rejections, a group of interview and resume coaches, product design workshops, and compensation negotiation help.
If Prashanth's story sounds familiar…
Apply to work with the Intentional Job Search program.
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