An Inside Look Into The Apple PM Internship
Breaking Down the Apple PM Interview
We had the opportunity to chat with various folks from the product community and wanted to share what life is like as an Apple PM intern. Read more to learn about the types of projects interns work on, how to land a role at Apple and much more!
What is the internship program like?
The Apple PM internship is a 12-week program. Each intern is paired with a manager and a dedicated mentor, along with an intern buddy who is usually someone who was previously an intern. Interns are embedded directly into there team, so they aren't working on a hypothetical side project. Instead, you're contributing to high visibility, high impact projects! Being a design-led company interns get to spend a lot of time alongside designers, engineers, and other cross-functional teams.
In terms of the types of projects interns are assiend to, they ranged from top-secret 0 to 1 features to more technical work like building APIs or back-end systems. Across the board, interns are encouraged to think deeply about how Apple products are built, what makes them delightful, and how to bring great ideas to life. Having strong product taste and being able to collaborate across disciplines are key traits that make interns successful here.
What is the salary and where are interns located?
Intern compensation is competitive, with an base salary of around $160,000, plus stock grants worth approximately $50,000 and a sign-on bonus. However, this can vary depending on the team and location as higher priority teams often have bigger budgets allocated. While many interns are based in Cupterino, others work from offices in cities like New York City.
How does hiring work?
Unlike many companies, Apple's internship hiring is team-specific which means teams often reach out directly to prospective interns so building genuine relationships early on can make a huge difference. We reccomend reaching out to previous interns or seeing which teams and managers were making LinkedIn posts about hiring last summer. Feel free to reach out to Brian for more tips.
When you're selected, you're typically being brought in to solve a real problem for that team, and your interview process may reflect the specific needs and products of the group. Apple has hosted PM interns on teams like Apple Music, Apple Ads, Apple Pay, and Algorithmic Bias. There are also EPM roles available for software, covering areas like Siri, tvOS, visionOS, and hardware in the Vision Products Group.
What kinds of questions are asked?
Interviews tend to focus on product sense, strategy, and analytics. Some teams focus on asking Apple specific questions in the interview while others stick to general PM questions. Expect to be asked how you think about designing products, defining success metrics, factoring in design trade-offs, and high level strategy. Additionally, knowing the team's space and being able to speak to their product and the Apple ecosystem as a whole will give you a major edge.
Check out Product Mock, to see questions previously asked in the recruitment process and the teams that were hiring.
Any final advice?
If you're preparing to apply, make a habit of thinking about products every day and how they're built, what could be better, and what makes them magical. As a design led organization, Apple cares very heavily about this and tests specifically for "product taste".
Thanks for making it to the end of the post. I hope you found some useful insights to help you land your dream PM internship. If this guide was helpful or if you just want to connect, feel free to add me on LinkedIn and mention that you came from Product Mock. Always happy to chat!