Tech transition series— from Customer Support to Product Management.
People find their calling in life at different times, some are fortunate to know from an early age whilst others often explore before stumbling into a career they’re passionate about.
If you’re searching for yours, take inspiration from someone who made the successful transition from Customer Support Executive to Senior Product Manager;
Rebecca Cooper, Senior Product Manager @ Safety Culture — Providing a platform to do digital inspections on web and mobile
As a Product Manager my job is to speak with customers as well as look at data to find out what problems our customers have and work out how we can solve them. It’s all about connecting parts of the business to successfully ideate on how we can solve their problems, build the feature or product and release it to our customers. While continually iterating as we learn more from our customers.
What is your background?
At university I studied a Bachelor of Business in Hotel Management. I did this because I had no idea what I wanted to do with my career. 10 years later, I was still working in hotels in both Australia and Canada but I still had no idea what I really wanted to do.
When I moved home from Canada I put my foot down and said no more, I need to find something other than hotels and I was lucky enough to get a job at a tech company who were specifically looking for people to work in their Customer Support team who had a Hotel Management background. (Serendipitous I know!)
How did you discover Product Management?
Whilst working at Ansarada as a Customer Support Executive, I got to see what our Product Team did and interact with our Product Managers. Before joining Ansarada I had no idea what a Product Manager was or did!
What is it about Product Management that made you want to take the leap?
I really liked the way Product Managers were involved in everything within the business. When I was working in Customer Support, people would call up with problems with the software or feedback on how we could improve and I wasn’t really able to help them any further than address their concern and pass along their feedback. As a Product Manager you get to actually address these issues and have to opportunity to fix them. I really like that.
You also get to learn a lot more about how a business operates, what are the things that make a business successful, where are we falling short and what can we do to fix it. You become really involved in every aspect of the business from Engineering, Customer Support, Sales, Marketing, Finance all the way through to the Executive Team. It’s awesome because the role is just so varied.
How did you begin your transition? What did you find helpful?
Luckily, at the time I had a manager who believed in me and was willing to help me on my journey to transition from Customer Support to Product. Once I told him what I wanted to do, he set aside time for me to focus on Product Management skills. He also worked with the Head of Product to open opportunities up for me to be as involved as possible with the Product Team. I was very fortunate to have such an incredible support network around me to help me thrive.
Along with this support, I did a lot to open the opportunity for myself too. I found gaps on where my current role/team and the Product Team could be working better together and I filled them. I put my hand up and took charge of a product release that was causing some major issues for customers and put myself forward as the contact on the Support Team which allowed me to work closely with the Product Team. After enjoying this so much, I asked to be involved in every Product Team meeting I could be, to be involved in releases, writing release notes, just basically doing anything I could to get exposure.
I also signed myself up to do a Product Management course at General Assembly on Saturdays for 10 weeks. It was brilliant because I met other people in the industry who I still keep in touch with now. And then of course, I attended lots of meetups, read books and listened to podcasts (See below for my list of favourites). Anything I could get my hands on I absorbed.
I always joke that I must have been extremely annoying to the Product Managers and Head of Product at Ansarada because everywhere they turned, I was there asking to be involved. Asking for recommendations and advice.
Books;
Inspired — How to create tech products customers love by Marty Cagan
Product Leadership by Richard Banfield, Martin Eriksson & Nate Walkingshaw
The Lean Product Playbook by Dan Olsen
Badass — Making Users Awesome by Kathy Sierra
Product Roadmaps relaunched by C. Todd Lombardo, Bruce McCarthy, Evan Ryan, Michael Connors
Escaping the build trap by Melissa Perri
Podcasts: Inside Intercom, This is Product Management
Meetups: Product Women, Product Talks, Product Tank
What challenges did you have to overcome?
Imposter syndrome I would say would be the biggest thing. I still have it today. It’s daunting making big decisions that could impact our company’s reputation, bottom line, customer happiness etc. As a Product Manager people look to you for solutions to all kinds of problems and there are many days that I think I’m not the right woman for the job. This feeling doesn’t seem to go away either. From the day I started as a Junior Product Manager to the day I was promoted to Senior Product Manager, there hasn’t been a day I haven’t felt imposter syndrome. But I think it’s normal. Everyday I’m learning and figuring things out. We all are and I think it’s important to remember that.
Having made a successful move into Tech what advice would you give others considering a career change?
Do it. Working in Tech is amazing. We are solving real world problems and we’re helping people. You don’t get to do that everywhere. Product Management means you really get to make an impact too.
Make sure you find a company that you believe in. It makes a huge difference when you get to come to work every day and really believe in the problem you are solving.
Be tenacious. If you want it, go for it. It can be hard to get a start in Tech if you haven’t got any experience so I recommend if you’re really keen, find a way in that may not be exactly what you want to do but try to find a great company that supports moving departments.
Product Management seems to be one of the hottest jobs in tech right now, unfortunately a lot of companies aren’t that keen on hiring people who haven’t done the job before. It’s tricky but persist because it’s worth it!
Want to follow in Rebecca’s footsteps? Don’t delay, explore General Assembly and Brainmates to get on the right path!
