How I became a product manager at Avito after 7 years of freelancing and entrepreneurship

I have never had a clear career path in my life: I graduated from a construction college, then a construction university, worked in SMM, developed an online style school. I always chose what was truly interesting to me. And now working as a product in Avito has become such a thing.

In this article I will tell you how I left the training business and started looking for a job in a large IT company. And how many years of self-improvement and independent study helped me become a product manager after entrepreneurship and without experience in IT.

DISCLAIMER: The article was written based on an interview with Daria Kolyukina – junior product manager at Avito.

I explained all the terms in the article as much as possible so that it wouldn’t be like this:

And before I start the story, let’s understand once and for all who a product manager is.

And there are different opinions here — *And then there are different opinions here*

A product manager is engaged in making the product better: surveying users, finding out what they like and don’t like, studying competitors and, based on this data, somehow changing the product.

Your grandmother, in a sense, is also a product. Let's say she bakes pies and wants her grandchildren to like them. To do this, the grandmother asks her grandchildren which pies they like best: with apples or with cabbage, large or small, sweet or not so sweet. Then she goes to her neighbor, who has the best pies in the whole area, and gets her recipes. As a result, it takes into account your wishes and competitors’ recipes and bakes the perfect pie. Grandma is the product manager of her pies.

Steve Jobs and Elon Musk are also essentially product managers. They were constantly looking for ways to make their product better: remove the buttons and replace it with a touch screen, make the iPhone thinner and faster, or add Autopilot to the Tesla and increase the battery capacity.

My startup: style school

Before getting a job as a product manager, I had a business with a friend of mine, she is a stylist. She worked like this: the client sent her his photos, she determined the type, and then gave recommendations on style. She had about 40 clients a month.

I came up with an idea on how to increase this number: create an online style school for women. Then there was Covid, and interest in online education increased.

We opened the business with our own savings and developed it using the income from our first clients. We advertised in Ungram, where we sold our main product – an online course on style.

The course helped women choose their clothing style based on their appearance in order to feel more confident and achieve goals in work and personal life. — *The course helped women choose their clothing style based on their appearance in order to feel more confident and achieve goals in work and personal life*.

I was involved in marketing and came up with strategies on how to develop the product. Then I was inspired by books about startups, about the product approach to business development – Lean startup, books by Marty Kagan.

“Success is not about offering this or that option; success is figuring out how to solve a customer problem.” Eric Rees. Business from scratch. Lean Startup.

I conducted surveys and interviews with clients, found out why they needed our course, what need it solved. I studied on my own – from books, videos on YouTube. Then I took the course “How to make a product” from Ivan Zamesin.

We implemented an extensive course based on my partner’s system. She identifies 12 types of appearance, and we had 12 branches of the course for them. Each type of appearance received materials that suited it. That's why I don't hesitate to call it a startup. There were definitely no such courses in our niche.

But our business could not grow any further. The online school was based on my partner’s method: she herself determined the type of appearance, sorted out photographs and clothes of clients, and then selected a style. Because of this, we could teach a maximum of 200 people per month. If we taught other stylists to work according to our methodology, we could train about 2,000 students.

Here we disagreed. The partner wanted to grow through a network of branches with live stylists. And I suggested using technology. For example, teach a neural network to determine the type of appearance from a photograph and automatically select clothes for this type. And the stylist would approve the final options. This would greatly speed up the process.

And in fact, I was not an equal partner, I only received a percentage. I did not have my own share in the business.

I thought about getting hired and working in a large IT company, learning from them from the inside. But usually product managers grow up within a corporation or come from a technology startup. It seemed that without experience in IT they wouldn’t hire me even as a novice product manager.

Crucial moment

The turning point happened in 2023, literally a turning point – I was injured while skiing, broke my hip, and underwent several surgeries.

*I spent 4 months on crutches, another six months with a cane, and I’m still recovering.*

I realized: I don’t want to put my life on hold anymore. I began to slowly study the market and looked at vacancies. I tried to understand my strengths: I have good expertise in fashion, in marketing, I know a lot about real estate, because I studied to be an architect. I decided: I will work my way into large Russian IT companies.

But I needed a fresh victory, a feeling of “I can do it, I can handle it.” A chance to test your ideas. And such a chance appeared.

Contest

While I was looking for somewhere to get a job, I came across a competition, the winners of which received a chance to find a job in large companies.

*The closest competition was from Avito. It was conducted by the Quarry Shop.*

I didn’t set a goal to get into Avito: Avito is considered a model in the grocery environment, there is a strict selection process, a senior from another company will receive a lower grade when hired. Even in my wildest dreams I never dreamed of this. I wanted to test my product knowledge and apply it to real problems. And also add a case to your portfolio – with my non-standard experience, this is important.

Almost 500 people signed up for the competition. The algorithm is as follows: registration, solving a case from the company, evaluating the work. After this, the final rating includes all 500 participants. The company considers the top 150 and then invites them for an interview. In total, the company needed 35 junior managers.

*This is the funnel of the competition.*

There were two tasks at the competition. The first is to develop Avito Delivery in order to significantly increase revenue. The second is to come up with other ways to increase Avito’s income.

I only invested my maximum in the first task, because I only needed a case in my portfolio. True, I almost dropped out of the competition: I had little time (at the same time I was doing consulting), and this was the first time I had solved such a task. It seemed to me that others had more skills, and I was not good enough, I was afraid of disgracing myself. But in the end I pulled myself together.

I worked on the case for quite a long time, about 30 hours of pure time, although the organizers expected about 8.

I did this: I found out from users what was stopping them from buying with Avito Delivery. To do this, I conducted 15 interviews, 5 for each user group: C2C and B2C sellers and buyers. I was lucky: I wrote a request in my resources and the guys responded. It didn't take long to find respondents.

*I collected all the barriers in a table, assessed them by frequency of mention, and supported them with quotes. She offered a solution for every problem.*

Then I studied my competitors, looked at how they solved similar problems, and noticed that I could use:

*I took Russian marketplaces and foreign message boards*

I put it all together and wrote down hypotheses that will help develop delivery:

My hypotheses for improving Avito Delivery. The second one has the highest priority. I proposed dividing goods into two groups: with and without delivery. This way, people will more often choose delivery and buy more.

She described in detail the plan for how to test this idea, what the risks might be, and what we do in case of success and failure.

Work evaluation

After the decision stage, the evaluation of the work began. It went like this: after uploading their solutions, each participant receives 10 anonymous works of other competitors for each task for evaluation. That is, if there are two tasks in the competition, then you will see 20 other people’s works, but I only solved one, so I scored 10.

The task is to sort 10 works from best to worst. I spent about 2–3 hours on it. Evaluating other people's work affects your own scores. If you evaluate honestly, putting strong works up in the rating and weak ones down, this also increases the assessment of your own work. And if you evaluate randomly or deliberately underestimate good work, the scores are reduced.

It was interesting to evaluate, and it was easy to proofread other guys, because I myself devoted a lot of time to the task. I compared their ideas with mine, noting strengths and weaknesses. I wrote a detailed commentary for each work with its pros and cons. It’s useful to write such comments, as you learn to formulate thoughts and explain. A necessary skill for me as a product manager.

While I was reading the works of others, I was learning myself: I realized that it was a shame that I had not included diagrams and graphs in my work – it’s so clear! I myself am more accustomed to tables and text outputs, but now I will definitely add data visualization.

*This work took first place, all data is visualized as much as possible*

There were also works that were openly done using ChatGPT:

*It is more difficult for such participants to give quality assessment and feedback.*

In general, evaluating other people's work is a developing and useful process. The main thing is that the works themselves are done with soul, so that there is something to catch on and something to discuss. And hackwork or thoughtless generation of texts, of course, is not at all interesting to read.

results

My only work on the first task took 11th place, and in the overall standings I ended up in 82nd position due to missing the second task.

*I didn’t expect to be in the top 150 participants at all; I just wanted to really assess my level.*

I bet on the first task, and it turned out strong. If I had completed two tasks, I would have been ranked even higher and my chances would have increased.

I still didn’t believe that I could really get into Avito. After all, this is a top company; they require experience in development. Therefore, I noted the case on my resume and continued to look for a job.

Almost all hiring managers asked about my case for Avito. They were interested in how I got into their competition and what I offered. The very fact that I solved a problem for such a well-known company and ended up in the top already spoke about my skills.

So I definitely advise you to go to the Career Workshop, solve cases, stretch your brain. Employers really appreciate this.

How I received the offer

I continued to apply for vacancies, but top IT companies like Yandex and Ozon did not invite me to interviews – I did not meet the requirements. Basically, I was called to work in online education as an extension of my experience.

At this time I was consulting for businesses. I had an income, and there was no urgent need to go to work so as not to die of hunger. I could afford to choose.

While I was choosing, HR Avito wrote to me: two teams want to meet me. One was related to CRM, and the other was related to fashion. I was shocked. They wrote to me later than the other guys who solved the case. Therefore, I didn’t really count on the offer.

At the interview, they didn’t ask me about my experience as an entrepreneur, but rather tested my knowledge in the product field. I was lucky that I didn't have to dive deep into technical development. They needed someone who is strong in research and analysis. This is exactly what I can do.

I talked to the teams and waited for a decision. HR wrote that another team wants to talk to me; it is related to real estate. It was the day before flying on vacation to Thailand, I was busy with pre-vacation matters and did not have time to prepare. But experience and preparation for the first interviews helped. I spontaneously spoke with the manager, solved the case during the interview and received an offer from the real estate team, which I ultimately accepted.

*The offer was offered when I was already on vacation.*

And it turned out even better than I wanted! For the first time, I spoke with a team that is more involved in internal processes and helping other departments. And in the end I ended up in the direction that is responsible for real estate services.

In Avito, such directions are called “verticals”. They make different parts of the application that we use. For example, everything related to real estate, cars or services.

It's been three weeks since I've been working for the company. This job is exactly what I was looking for, and even better. I'm happy. My dream – to work on something big and meaningful – has come true!

If you also want to test your skills and get a chance to find a job in a top IT company, follow the competitions in telegram channel Career Workshop. They publish announcements of new competitions and reviews of tasks from experts – this helps to better prepare for solving real cases.