How did I find my first internship in Product Management? How did I start? What did I do during the internship? What have I learned? How can you start in this field? How can you find an internship? and more…

Let me explain how I started :) Observing that I can gain more experience in the startup ecosystem, I applied to about 6 startups that I determined in my mind by doing a lot of research. I briefly explained why I applied to their startup by e-mail, what I aimed for in my career. I added my resume to the end of my mail. As a result, Segmentify was also among the returned startups. Thus, my journey with Segmentify started with my belief that I could take this step correctly in Segmentify by targeting a career in Product Management.

First of all, I would like to concisely talk about what Segmentify is and what it does.

My manager Tayfur Yılmaz was an excellent mentor & manager. Before starting my summer internship, Tayfur helped me to start my internship more prepared by giving me small tasks. I was able to complete the tasks with the help of the courses I have already completed in the field of product management and the content I read. So before coming to Segmentify; I had the opportunity to get to know Segmentify, its competitors, products and technologies.Throughout my internship, he helped me a lot. He always supported me to be better, to try harder and to push my limits. So, I started to get to know the startup and the products by participating in Daily Product Meetings that took place with the participation of the CEO from the first week. In the meantime, I received a lot of training on our products and in the second week I started to make analyzes to get to know Segmentify’s products better and have a product-mind. After a week, I found myself presenting my analysis to the Product Team. I realized that I would learn a lot from the second week and take huge responsibilities.

In the meantime, we achieved a perfect harmony with other interns and my internship started to be enjoyable as well as informative.

At the end of my summer internship with full of Python, product/competitor analysis and training, I decided to do my long term internship in Segmentify and I got feedback from Segmentify in this direction. Thus, as a Product Specialist, my long-term internship adventure started.

With my new internship period, my responsibilities have increased and although I fully support the Product team. All of the feature requests, improvements and bugs about the products from our Customer Success team, which operates the customer integration process, have started to work on me. This responsibility made me both more motivated and confronted with the fear of making mistakes. I will not deny that I had difficulties in the first stage. Because I was aware that it is difficult for a person to exceed his capacity and learn new things without adversity. But I was sure that I would start to overcome the difficulties and perseverance of being out of my comfort-zone.

At the end of the 6-month period, I became a completely different İrem. I also made mistakes in this process, but these mistakes were seen as steps of personal development both by the company and my manager. I was never left unanswered when I asked questions by all the employees, this always motivated me and showed me how right it was to make my internship at Segmentify.

Kudos to the lovely Segmentify Team! ❤

Doing my internship in Segmentify did not only enable me understand better and take part in the field of Product Management. It also supported my personal development very much. I would like to share a few experiences I have drawn with you:

In the early days of my internship, I would often consult with my manager before deciding and taking a step because of my fear of making mistake . But I realized that I should not be afraid of making mistakes or decisions towards the end of my internship. I saw that it is not possible to be successful without making a mistake :)

E-commerce… A brand new industry. My previous internships had no connection with e-commerce. New concepts that I heard in the first day of my internship… Points I couldn’t catch in the Daily Product Meetings … “What am I going to do? Why can’t I understand what is being said?” I asked myself these questions at the beginning. I tried not to lower my motivation. I started taking notes of all the concepts, words I heard but didn’t know. After working hours, I started to research these words and concepts. Thus, during my internship process, I learned many new concepts and started to understand exactly the language of the sector.

As far as I have observed in my environment, mandatory internship is generally considered as a necessity of the school. I think that this point of view should be left aside when looking for an internship and when an internship is started. Internship is a great opportunity to get to know your field and business life. It should not be tried to fill only working hours. I think that we should focus on what can be learned from this internship as much as possible. With this point of view, you will enjoy more when you start looking for an internship and you will not understand how the hours pass.

Feel free to ask questions about unfamiliar topics. Take notes of what you learned. Even if you don’t remember when you come across that topic in the future, you can look at your notes.

It is very difficult to list what I learned as a product management intern one by one, but I would like to share my knowledge and experiences for students who want to progress in this field.

There are many resources in the field of Product Management. Read and save especially those who are very experienced and good in the field of product management share their experiences on medium or youtube. Listening as much as possible and applying the correct points in the product management system of your company, will enable you to see the mistakes and learn much more permanently.

I think it is easier to find an internship in the field of Product Management than in the past, but it is still difficult today. Especially when applying to companies, you should show that you have a little experience in this field and you want to professionalize in this field.

I think it is a disadvantage to start an internship without research, without researching the product management area, the company, the company’s products, competitors, the market and the technologies it uses. This can cause you to have even more difficulties and waste time, because being on the company’s product team requires knowing the company’s structure, content, products, strategies.

Especially try to share (with great precision) what you did during your internship. I think it is very important to show what you have done in this field and to announce your progress. You can write articles on Medium, shoot vlogs, create floods on Twitter or post actively on Linkedin. There are many channels where you can introduce yourself and your work, try to seize opportunities.

Especially in companies, product teams are fed by many teams. Therefore, try to meet and socialize with all the teams. Listen to the comments and problems about the products and try to find solutions together. In this way, you will be fed from many different points of view. This allows you to make more accurate decisions.

I shared my internship process and my experiences. I hope you enjoyed it. You can easily contact me via social networks if there is any question you are wondering about.

See you in my next post!

İrem Çilingir