Ben Mathew
Topics of Interest: Product Management, H-E-B, Texas CSB, Internships, Texas Product Engineering Organization, Mentors
As students look to apply to new positions, whether they may be as interns, organization members, or part-time workers, they must have confidence in themselves to succeed. Ben Mathew, a student in the Texas Honors Computer Science and Business Program, is an excellent example of this level of self-conviction. “I think I literally sent out over 100 applications,” said Mathew when asked about how he started working at H-E-B as a product management intern. As they say, “you have to be your biggest advocate,” and Ben Mathew certainly embodies this quote to a tee.
Ben Mathew is a sophomore student in the Texas CSB program, and he loves playing basketball and traveling in his free time. Ben is also a member of the Texas Product Engineering Team, and he says that the mentors he has met in this organization have truly offered him great advice as he looks to pursue his interests in product management.
Keep reading to find out more about Ben’s experiences in product management at H-E-B and hear some of his advice for success in the field!
Tell us about yourself. Who is Ben Mathew?
I’m from New Jersey, born and raised. I love playing basketball and ping pong, traveling, and eating. Professionally, I’m very interested in product. In high school, I worked on some apps and projects with teams like the Hackathon and Business Festival. I also leveraged LinkedIn to have hundreds of conversations with industry experts to expose my mind to tech. All that made me want to do CS and business in college, so I’m doing CSB now. My learnings from product professionals I met on LinkedIn combined with the mentorship I got from the Texas Product Engineering Organization helped me compete hard for a PM internship, and I’m super grateful for the opportunity to dive deep into eCommerce at H-E-B this past summer
How did you get your internship as a product manager at H-E-B? What did that process look like?
I was very aware that product management (PM) internships tend to look for juniors. Knowing that, I just had to send out applications everywhere. Eventually, I had enough confidence in myself that something would work out. It’s just a matter of playing the numbers game. I didn’t grow up around an H-E-B or anything, but my uncle lives in Austin. I’ve been in an H-E-B three or four times before, but other than that, it’s really just a brand that I remembered. I had known that most people in Texas love H-E-B and I distinctly remember thinking that it would be awesome to learn how H-E-B creates that loyalty through their digital products. When I heard that H-E-B was generally a pretty high-volume recruiter out of UT, I checked out the website, saw a role for a PM intern, and figured I’d apply.
What did some of your daily responsibilities look like?
I was interning on the digital team, H-E-B Digital. Digital handles all of the online experiences like the app for online shopping, fulfillment related to delivery and curbside, and so forth. The main question I was trying to answer was “Is there a better way that we can present items and content to see if we can increase customer spending?” For example, if you imagine looking up the term ice cream right now, you’ll see a product grid of various kinds of ice creams. I was experimenting with ranking these products based on different attributes, including brand size, general product popularity, margin, revenue, and so on. Maybe there’s a winning arrangement of products that will increase customer spending, and that was the overarching question. To actually do that day to day, I’d often discuss with designers and merchandisers about new ideas for ranking products, and then visualize these rankings in Figma (design software). I would then talk to engineers about the code and discuss how code needed to be changed to alter the rankings. I then went on to talk to people on the marketing team to make sure that by changing ranking, we weren’t going to breach any contractual marketing agreements.There was also a lot of statistics and data science work involved to prove that one way of ranking resulted in more customer spending than another way of ranking.
What are some of the skills that you learned in your position that will be applicable in the future?
My role was in experimentation using A/B testing. Because of this, I was doing a lot of stats. I think that was one thing I learned, just becoming more and more proficient in that level of statistics. I feel like I’ve seen it in school, you know, you do your word problems, but it’s very different when working with real customer data. Another thing I was able to do was be a translator. I could talk to an engineer and understand what they really cared about and what needed to be done. I could then turn around and talk to a designer, understand what’s important to them, and have that same conversation. And in the same way, I could do that for five or six different teams, which helped me understand the kind of multidisciplinary proficiency it takes to lead multiple teams. I think the third thing I learned was crisis management. There were some times when there were changes in the organization that put stops in my work or expedited some of my processes. There were other times when I personally made mistakes and needed to fix them quickly to make sure everything was okay with my work. So, I feel like those three are the major things I learned.
What was your favorite part of the internship?
I learn best through people and will make every effort to be in rooms with leaders I can learn from. Although the internship was remote, I was able to have one-on-one conversations with the Chief Digital Officer, Chief Operating Officer, Vice President of Product, Vice President of Systems Engineering, Senior Director of Customer Insights, and many more. I was very intentional about expanding my mind beyond my work and getting a full view of how a 115-year-old grocer is digitally transforming its products, fulfillment methods, technology systems, brand management, and customer service.
Do you have any advice for students who might be looking to follow a similar path as you in product management?
I think PM is definitely growing at UT from what I’ve seen. I’m not an expert, but I’ve been learning a lot from my own mentors. People will tell you PM is something that you should do down the line, but if you know that it’s something you want to do, I’d say just have conviction in that and go all out. I remember last year, I think I literally sent out over 100 applications, and one of them worked out. But that’s all you need, though. I’d recommend you have that level of conviction and just keep on going. Also, just find people who will talk to you and be very transparent about what recruiting is like and what you need to learn. I’m in TPEO, Texas Product Engineering Organization, and I’ve had some very transparent and honest conversations with some of the senior members. LinkedIn is also a fantastic place to find people at companies you find interesting or are alums from your school. These people have given me advice and coached me. These are all invaluable conversations that have helped me grow tremendously.