Chris Hsiao had always wanted to be a product manager since he graduated from college back in 2016. This involved some core experiences at Facebook before moving to the Microsoft Designer team in 2021. Hsiao shares insights and tips on how to get through the tiring, grueling process to Big Tech companies.
Starting His Journey
Since he was a young professional, Hsiao was excited to learn how a product could be taken from ideation to execution. The Microsoft gig that he landed in 2021 was huge for him. “I just really wanted to get this product manager role one day, and when I finally did, for the first six months, it just felt unreal to me,” said Hsiao, based in San Francisco, in an interview with Business Insider.
He was earlier a project manager at Facebook, so entering Microsoft was, to him, a “completely new stint.” Hsiao was one of those working on Microsoft Designer—a tool that aids creators in generating graphics. He left Microsoft to become an entrepreneur after two and a half years and said his career progression has been helped by the priority placed on growth as a core value. “I attribute many of my successes so far to having the courage to grow and be different from my past self,” Hsiao said. “Be different if you want different results. In that way, landing a new job role or starting a new business ends up just becoming a side effect of who you are.”
Preparing for Interviews
Hsiao believes that having Facebook on his résumé got him into considerations for other Big Tech companies like Microsoft while preparing for interviews. According to him, hiring managers are looking for prospective product managers who have the capability to talk to customers, understand what they’re looking for in a product, and then execute. “I felt like I lacked real-world experience in building a product from scratch and getting it into the hands of consumers, so I started an e-commerce business with my girlfriend in pandemic times called Made Space,” he said. Hsiao spoke about the startup—designing and selling merchandise online—in his Microsoft interviews.
The hiring process in both cases—be it Facebook or Microsoft—included multiple rounds of interviews, which constituted a mix of behavioral and situational questions. Types of questions that arose included, “If a peer on your team is performing badly, what would you do?” and “Can you describe a time where you overcame a challenge and, if you had three teams and stakeholders wanting different things, how do you complete your objective?” “They were testing me on how I would work with a team, my thinking in how I would overcome challenges and it seemed like they wanted to know how I would handle hypothetical scenarios,” said Hsiao.
Here’s the resume:
Chris Hsiao
LinkedIn • Mountain View, CA
SUMMARY
Skilled project manager and entrepreneur with a strong passion for solving user needs. Experienced with conducting user research, collaborating with cross-functional partners, building 0 to 1 products, and scaling new features to millions of users. Seeking a product management role.
EXPERIENCE
Facebook – Menlo Park, CA (June 2019 – Present)
Project Manager, Product Operations
- Led efforts to define high priority user needs as part of FB Shop Tab product roadmapping and helped unblock user adoption of Shoppable Content, driving +55M call to action clicks (+54% over 26M top-line goal)
- Collected feedback from user tests and collaborated with developers to create Profile Seller tooling suite that unlocked +50M commerce listings within the APAC market and increased overall platform inventory and transactions
- Restructured FB Marketplace seller policies with product leads by iterating through collected user feedback and quality baselines, resulting in shortened seller application review turnaround from 2 weeks to <72 hours and improving seller onboarding satisfaction
- Conducted experiments to rationalize and implement new top-line metric measurement for FB Jobs app and drive lowered product integrity risks, resulting in prevalence decrease by 5% across entire product platform
- Successfully trained and managed team of 5 quality analysts to execute across 4 product areas, achieving project goals each half
Madespace – Mountain View, CA (November 2020 – Present)
Co-Founder
- Own and operate a print-on-demand home goods brand primarily focused on desert modern themed designs and high quality decor
- Designed core ecommerce site and conducted A/B testing to improve areas of friction in user core site browsing experience
- Improved user flows for checkout through focus group testing, leading to first month conversion rate of >3% (industry avg ~2%)
- Developed launch campaigns through social media and word-of-mouth strategies, achieving first quarter sales goals of $100K+
Camera Modena – Mountain View, CA (September 2020 – Present)
Co-Founder
- Designed and built recommendation platform to provide photographers access to inspiration from peers and discount high quality gear
- Conducted A/B testing to determine optimal product layout, resulting in improved user experience and downstream conversion
- Created promotional campaigns to showcase platform offerings, driving user growth by +45% MoM and +20% user engagement MoM
ZS Associates – San Mateo, CA (July 2018 – April 2019)
Associate
- Engaged with firm’s second largest client account, deploying long range revenue forecasting for client’s largest product portfolio ($5bn+ revenue), influencing roadmap and product development prioritization
- Conducted multi-dimensional analyses for organizational design with strategy influencing a re-structuring affecting 1000+ employees
- Improved standard project tools through process redesign that cut overall model deployment time by two months (33% reduction)
Deallus Consulting – Los Angeles, CA (Apr 2017 – June 2018)
Associate
- Re-designed client’s customer facing product support program utilizing field-based primary research and customer interviews to collect 1100+ end-user data points, informing a program redesign and cutting program costs by 35% (+$100k annually)
- Led international client engagement within first 2 months of employment start, driving multiple (20+) informational interviews that informed client’s market positioning, content strategy, and product roadmap
EDUCATION
University of California, Los Angeles
Bachelor of Science (B.S) in Biology – Graduated: August 2016
Honors: UCLA Achievement Scholarship Recipient, Healthy Campus Grant Recipient, AED Honor Society Inductee
Thinkful
Software Engineer Bootcamp – Completed: July 2020
Notable Coursework: Asynchronous Web Application, Client Side Programming (React), Server Side Programming (Node/Postgres)
SKILLS
HTML5 | CSS3 | Javascript | jQuery | React.js | JSX | Git | Github | Figma | SQL | Tableau | Asana
Three Key Priorities
For every interview, Hsiao would practice questions that he thought could come up, creating a list. He also found an online test question repository that allowed users to go through practice questions and answers. “It was like reps — I did that over and over again,” he said. “I think your chance of being successful and landing a job will go up drastically if you hit these three priority areas: showing you are structured in your logic, that you can take in information and provide an insightful answer.”
This story was first published on businessinsider.com
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