 Hi everyone and welcome to the webinar. My name is Isabelle Sharp and I'm the Senior Product Manager at Amazon Alexa Locating in Australia. Today I'm going to be talking about the process of transitioning into product management, touching on my own pathway into product and sharing a number of tips that I found useful in transition but also just more generally in my career. Your product management is an interesting career pathway because despite existing for decades it wasn't particularly well known until it really started to gain momentum in the years before the pandemic and then of course exploded during the pandemic to become one of the most in-demand jobs and as a result there really isn't a linear entry point in product management. There isn't a degree that you can complete and there isn't particularly the background that you need to have and while that may seem loose, ambiguous, broad, confusing it's actually incredibly advantageous for those that are trying to get into product because you're able to transition into an industry without a specific background and businesses aren't going to pigeonhole you into needing to come from a specific background. You have the power of shape your own experience into what you might be looking for and then draw out skills that you already have that you could apply to potential role and that leads me to my first point which is who are you, what's your story and what you bring to the table. My first job after I completed university eight years ago was at Coles one of Australia's biggest grocery retailers. I joined the graduate program where I completed four six-month-long rotations across loyalty, e-commerce, buying and trading and marketing and while the purpose of a graduate program is to try different areas of business to find your interest, the end goal is really to land a job and of course naturally you're competing against other graduates to do so. So despite not really finding my passion, I decided that I was going to go after a job in marketing but I was competing against other graduates who had spent two years in marketing and that stage I only had six months. I had a mentor Richard and I spoke to him about my dilemma and he gave me one of the best pieces of advice. Your CV is a story and an interview is your opportunity to tell that story. So rather than thinking about your CV as just a list of your past roles and experience, you want to think about it as a story and you're the protagonist, who are you, what are you good at, why are you good for this role and why are you the best candidate. You want to shape your CV to the role and highlight aspects of your career or skills that are going to interest the reader. So for example if you're like me and you came from a background in digital marketing and you got into a role and product, you want to prioritize communicating your strategic thinking, your communication skills, your ability to analyze and interpret data and problem solving over skills such as content creation. Your content creation design skills are still worth mentioning and they're still important in the role of product manager but they're more complementary rather than the anchor skills or the core skills that are really going to interest the reader or hiring manager. So I encourage you to write a comprehensive list of PM skills. So draw on job roles, on LinkedIn that you're interested in, articles on Google, resources on product school and essentially list out every single PM skill and then you want to work out what skills you've got and what might be blind spots for you. Align the skills you have with your experience and give these more weight on your CV. And while this might be time consuming and you might already think that you know who you are, it's an important exercise in being able to define your story and actually working out how you want to position yourself and how you want to communicate your story. I also can't stress enough the importance of reading a CV for each role you apply for. So spray and pray is not a good tactic and what I mean by that is that you never want to apply for 50 different jobs and sit back and pray that one of them pans out. Be strategic in what you apply for and focus on quality over quantity. And that brings me to my second tip, which is networking. Networking is integral to your success, not just in products but in any career. Options are powerful and networking creates options. You should always have a solid network of people around you that you can bounce ideas off and stay up to date on what's happening in the industry. I want to know, even if I'm not looking for a job, what companies are hiring. I want to know if I'm being fairly paid and if I was made redundant tomorrow, I want to have a network I can draw on for my next role. So be smart, put yourself out there and build a networking product. If you're looking to break into products and you don't have any specific experience, networking is your tool to tell your story ahead of the interview and don't be intimidated by it. It's a conversation. You'd be surprised by the number of senior people prepared to have a conversation. People, generally speaking, are prepared to help you. They just want to know you're serious and passionate and frankly, you're not going to waste their time. So going back to my original point on the job application process and focus on quality of the quantity, when I was looking for my current role at Amazon, I put together a list of five dream companies that I wanted to work at in my career. I wasn't looking for a role immediately. I was looking for the right role at a company where I could learn, grow, and somewhere where I could stay long-term. Amazon was the first company that I targeted and I searched for the head of product in Australia on LinkedIn. I sent her a private message asking if she could spend 30 minutes to talk to me about product at Amazon. Well, I was interested in the job. That wasn't the purpose of the conversation. It was information gathering. What does product look like at Amazon? What is the PM in Australia responsible for? And was Amazon and that type of role going to fulfill what I was looking for? And what that conversation did was that it put me in front of a hiring manager. So even if she didn't have a role opening or even if her team wasn't the right team for me, she knew who I was if one came up. If I put my best foot forward, she might be interested in hiring me, or she might recommend I chat to a colleague in a different area. So be smart and create opportunities for yourself. Create a list of the companies that you want to work at and start networking at them. Challenge yourself to an hour of networking a week. So that's two 30-minute conversations. And if you get one piece of advice or feedback from each conversation, then that's a win. LinkedIn is a really good networking tool and really useful. So get yourself a premium membership so that you get more access and that you can send more messages. But also don't limit yourself to LinkedIn. Think outside the box. There are product management groups that run seminars, so you could volunteer to help and then you could get to know the speakers. You also don't limit yourself to the country that you live in. There's plenty of product groups out there on LinkedIn that have Slack channels where you can go and you can network with other different product managers. People are going to be more likely to hire you if they know who you are. So get in front of them. My third and final tip is to trust your judgment, stay the course and don't be deterred. If a career in product management is what you're after, fight for it. A career change is never going to be easy and it requires you to put yourself out there. Think differently and have thick skin. Not everyone is going to hire you or believe in you, but you need to trust your instincts and need to back yourself. When I told my colleagues at Coles that I landed my first job in product management five years ago, the response that I got was, why would you want to work in product? It's so niche. And I had a vision that they didn't see and that's okay. As long as you can stick to your vision and you fight for your vision and you back yourself, you'll get there. Thank you everyone.