MTS: Hiring and Mentoring Product Analysts and Product Managers

by | Jun 13, 2023

Situation

The company: At MTS, the leading telecom company with 88 million users and a large digital ecosystem, I was a part of the MyMTS team.

The product portfolio:

MyMTS (30+ million MAU) is a self-service app. It was the #1 mobile app and #30 among all Russian apps (by AppStore ranking in 2018). MyMTS app is accompanied by the self-service websites: mts.ru and lk.mts.ru (10+ million MAU).

I managed a portfolio of these 3 B2C web and mobile products within the “Loyalty, ads, and targeted communications” vertical.

Context:

  • I noticed that sometimes my boss had no time for guiding the newcomers (Product Managers and Product Analysts). I volunteered to help with their adaptation.
  • Once the internship program was launched across the company, I decided to use it as a chance to get help with my tasks from an intern and to gain hiring, candidate interviewing skills, delegation skills, and mentoring skills.

I already have been a mentor at my university for the students who wanted to become PMs, so I decided that hiring an intern will be a great additional experience for me in the mentoring, coaching, and leadership field.

Task

I decided to:

  • Guide the newcomers to the Product Team,
  • To hire a Product Analyst Intern.

The key metrics that I was targeting were:

  • The positive feedback from the newcomers, their fast and easy adaptation, increasing the chance of them passing the probation period.
  • Hiring a Product Analyst Intern within 1-2 months.

Action

  • I offered my help to all the newcomers (2 Product Analysts, 1 Product Manager). All of them were happy about that.
  • I created a job profile for the new Product Analyst Intern role, collaborated with the recruiter, processed more than 15 resumes, carried out several interviews, prepared and checked a home assignment, hired an intern, and have been managing and mentoring her from that time.
  • My manager asked me to mentor and manage one more Product Analyst intern, so I had been mentoring 2 interns after that.

Results

  • Mentoring the newcomers:
    • All of them passed their probation period and gave me positive feedback.
  • The internship program:
    • The intern that I hired had passed her probation period.
    • The other intern is still working at that company.

Period

2018-2020