Inside USC’s only product management club, ProductSC

Miland Gandhi was uncovered to products management for the initially time in the course of his sophomore 12 months when he took ICP 310: Planning for Person Knowledge. He shortly realized that past that singular Marshall course, there was no mention of the item management profession path on campus.

This altered at the beginning of 2022 with the founding of ProductSC. 

Gandhi joined the club through its inception, and it offered him with a group of students aspiring to develop into product managers. Now a senior majoring in enterprise administration, he serves as its president.

“In that class, I was lucky sufficient to stumble throughout products management, almost unintentionally,” Gandhi claimed. “I acquired lucky, and I really do not want other folks on campus to have to be as blessed to possibly discover a occupation path that they could love and truly take pleasure in carrying out. I’m seriously glad that in excess of the final calendar year and a half, I’ve been able to be element of a task that’s been able to thrust item administration to much more and more individuals on campus.”

Product or service administration is a job in most tech organizations that lies at the intersection involving organization, technological innovation and design and style. Product administrators guideline a product’s lifecycle, directing operations to convert uncooked products into finished goods on the market place. They also support in resolving shopper frustrations with a product or service and developing the most successful path to increase consumer knowledge. 

Gandhi recognizes the relevance of education and publicity when it will come to products administration on campus. Even though other company-related career paths, these types of as consulting and banking, have huge exposure on campus — from courses to student organizations — products management lacks the same level of popularity.

“I seriously do assume that there are a great deal of people today on campus who are intrigued [in product management] and they just need to have a small extra publicity and instruction into what the part definitely asks for,” Gandhi mentioned. “That’s precisely what ProductSC tries to do.” 

By way of a 10-week-extended introduction to product or service administration curriculum, ProductSC educates a cohort of 40 to 50 college students just about every semester.  The club has educated practically 200 students to date. Members interested in implementing for product or service management internships can also opt to acquire an interview preparing curriculum. 

Following completing the curriculum, pupils engage in a scenario competitors. Current and previous products supervisors provide as judges, and the winning group gets a prize.

 “It’s really fun…and a superior possibility to continue studying what item management is since by actually getting on the position of just one, students can understand what a product supervisor does much better,” said Gabriela Rosenfeld, ProductSC director of curriculum.

One hundred fifty pupils participated in last semester’s competitiveness. Teams consisted of 5 learners and a mentor that guides them via the pitching process. Rosenfeld, a sophomore majoring in company administration, appears to be like to rent out a much larger place to host a a great deal more substantial occasion this semester.

ProductSC also hosts visitor speaker gatherings that includes prime product or service management leaders and alumni from tech corporations these as Google, Microsoft, Money A person and Salesforce. These events give learners with perception into breaking into the solution management industry. 

This semester, ProductSC co-director of exterior affairs and junior majoring in laptop or computer science and business enterprise administration Alysha Kanjiyani launched an inclusivity exertion to make the speaker gatherings open up to all USC pupils as an alternative of only ProductSC associates.

“The general notion guiding product or service administration is pretty cutthroat for the reason that usually, not a whole lot of organizations use undergrad pupils,” Kanjiyani claimed. “I imagine our biggest accomplishment would be building an surroundings where by we aid every other in these a competitive industry.”