 winter is coming. Coinbase just announced they were laid off 18% of the employees. And Microsoft said they were laid off 1% of employees and some departments go into slow hiring. Meta, Netflix, Apple and all those big tech companies announced that they were street hiring or slow hiring. Including Palaton, they announced they would lay off 2800 employees in total. So these kind of hiring freeze and layoff impact the job market significantly. And for example, some people reject the big tech companies such as Google and decide to join cool companies like Tesla and Tesla decided to rescind their offers due to the latest hiring freeze and layoffs. And then this candidate has to start from scratch again. I know this is a very stressful moment for all of us and emotionally and also physically it's very frustrating. However, believe me there is a way to quickly identify those opportunities and even if companies are freeze hiring or laying off people. All you need to do is know where to find those opportunities and then capture them very precisely. I had personally gone through two recessions or economical downturn. The first one is in 2008 recession. The second one is the beginning of the pandemic that was in April 2020. During these challenging times, most companies laid off their employees of freeze hiring and all of a sudden like 95% of jobs in the market are taken. It's gone like overnight. What makes it even more challenging is that if you're like me on H1B and during that time, even American couldn't find a job, how would international professionals like us being able to land a job? However, I was able to get all of those two economic downturns and recessions much faster and accelerate my career. At the beginning of the pandemic, I was able to land four offers. Results came from the direct product offers and some offers also increased my salary by 40%. In this video, I'm going to share with you the recession proof strategy I had personally used during the past two economic downturns so that you're able to quickly land your dream job offer and continue to accelerate your career. And everything I share with you can be used for non-product management positions as well. So there we'll make sure to take a lot of notes and share this video with everybody who is looking for a job. Hi, this is Dr. Nancy Lee, the founder of Product Manager Accelerator from PMAccelerator.io. I help people transition from worker B to product manager and business leader. If you want to learn the most effective way to become product manager and business leader, you should subscribe to the channel and hit the bell button so that you can notify every time I post a new video every Wednesday. If you like any of the content today, please make sure to hit the like button and share this video so that we're able to impact more people's lives together. First of all, I want to assure you that there's still lots of opportunities and out there, even if at this moment when I film these videos, lots of big tech companies announce free-tiring. For example, just last week, our students already received an offer from Meta and even if Meta recently announced free-tiring or slow-hiring. And within PM Accelerator, we have lots of students every single week learning job offers from Meta, Amazon, Binance, Classic Card, all those hot companies. So I want to use the right strategy to achieve the same result as well. Now, let me share with you how six strategies that helped me and my students learn multiple job offers during the recession. Step number one, soul searching. To be very vulnerable with you guys, it is very stressful, uncomfortable, and getting rejected. And especially knowing the fact that you may stuck in your current role for very long time if you are not able to plan a new job in the coming a few years. So first of all, I want you guys to start to have the right lines and ask you this very honest question. We know that there are potentially some even worse recession coming up. Do you feel comfortable staying in your current role? Or in another word, are you stuck in your current role for another two years? So let's say if you decide not to get a job right now, which is totally fine and lots of people should stay in the current job because there's not many openings anyway. But what if we hit the true recession and then you're not able to find a new job for another two years just because during the recession there won't be any job openings out there? Are you happy in your current role and feel okay to do the same thing for another two years? My answer was no. That was April 2020. I asked myself this very sincere question. Would I feel comfortable staying in Verizon for another two years? The answer was no. Because at the time, I've been a group of manager in Verizon for four years. If I stay in Verizon for another two years, it'll be six years in total. And I would be very old doing the same thing. But I do love the company. I got promoted twice within Verizon. I really love my leadership. Just that I hit the girls plateau, I felt like I was ready to do more and become a director. That's why I made a very bold decision. So I decided to apply for director jobs and out there even if in April 2020, almost all the companies said they're free hiring and no more opportunities out there. But I was so glad I made a very bold decision because the past two years I have significantly accelerated my career, not only become a director product, I was also able to start my own coaching company as well, which is PM Exceditor. So therefore, I want all of you guys to have a soul searching moment with yourself. Would you feel comfortable staying in your current role for another two years if you decide not to look for a job right now? If the answer is no, I need to do something, please see the second step. Step number two is to identify the cash cow business. Cash cow business means that a lot of companies do not depend on the investor's money. They already find product market fit and their customers really love their product. And lots of you guys will like, well, maybe it's so hard to find cash cow businesses. Let me give you some specific examples. Even in the same industry, there are cash cow businesses. There's also some heavy cost businesses. Let's say in crypto space, even if everybody said, well, nobody should touch crypto space right now because Bitcoin, Ethereum, everything is half the price. They are also laying off lots of people such as Coinbase, which is true. But let me give you two different companies as an example. One is Coinbase. The other one is Falcon X. They are competitors of each other. Coinbase announced laying off 18% of the employees. And Falcon X actually just raised another funding round and with evaluation of $8 billion. And they also already made an offer to one of my students. And she's getting paid over half a million dollars at Falcon X. Why the huge differences between two competitors within the same industry? Let me give you analysis from the management perspective because their business model and customer segmentations are significantly different from each other. Coinbase, their major customer segmentations are normal people like us. 80% of the revenue actually come from people like us buying $10,000, $2,000, maybe a few hundred dollars, Ethereum and Bitcoin. That's why they bring a very big superbowl commercial to try normal people like us. But Falcon X on the other hand, they target high-end customers. Those are crypto whales. They already made millions and billions of money during the crypto market. So their goal is either buy more crypto when the Ethereum is half the price or they'll go into sales down as a profit. So each of the transactions they buy and sell crypto is in millions of dollars. And therefore, when recession hit, normal people like us stopped buying Bitcoin and crypto just because we're very scared of the market. 85% of Coinbase revenue is going to get hit dramatically. That's why they start to announce 18% layoffs. On the other hand, Falcon X because they target at high-end customers. And those high-end customers, they already have lots of wealth. So they're less likely to directly stop doing anything about crypto. In contrast, those big wealth probably is going to buy more because a point is half the price right now. Therefore, how Falcon X is able to make the product manager offers and pays my student over half a million dollars. And their service even higher than thing companies such as Google and Meta. Even within the same company, let me help identify the cash cow department. For example, within Amazon Web Services, within Amazon, there are many different product Amazon ramp. But some department within Amazon, they grow in significantly. Some of my students also learn to offer within certain department within Amazon. And their department that continues to grow. And they also told us that and those department will double and triple their size in the upcoming three years. So therefore those department will continue to grow. However, within Amazon, there's some other department they announce free hiring just because they are not the cash cow business within Amazon. So I want you guys to identify those cash cow businesses and cash cow department within different companies and they're still hiring and having lots of people. As I'm filming this video, Amazon's still hiring over 2,000 product managers and Google's still hiring over 200 product managers and Meta's still hiring more than like 400 product managers as we're speaking. So therefore, there's lots of opportunities out there. Let's make sure you use the best strategy Lendos offers. Do you know any cash cow business that's still hiring lots of people? Please make sure to comment in the description of this video so that we can share the news and everybody needs to talk to these companies. Number three, you need to learn how to use networking strategies to plan multiple interviews, especially during a recession. Majority of the rows are filled through referrals and people you know. Especially when there are very few jobs and out there and all of a sudden there's so many candidates because lots of people laid off during the pandemic. So networking is the most effective way to get a resume in front of the hiring managers. For example, when I was looking for direct product offers in April 2020, I was able to identify many opportunities that's not even listed on the website. And lots of opportunities for example, like big tech companies, they don't want to tell them that, hey, I'm hiring product managers in the AI space or ABCD space. They don't want to announce that we want to hire product managers in the AI space or like crypto space on the public internet. Which means in two years or so, you're going to launch another crypto or blockchain related product. Actually it's giving away the strategies, a complete advantage of this company. So therefore, lots of opportunities are not public available on the internet. In this case, they frequently use head counter to find the right target. And actually lots of our students receive those opportunities through head counters and also recruiters contact our students through inbound lead as well. You can learn more regarding how to use LinkedIn strategies and lots of recruiters inbound lead from my student Thomas in this latest interview I just had with him. Step number four is apply in bulk and take massive action. What do I mean by applying in bulk? It's very straightforward. Instead of applying for two jobs and three jobs, maybe 10 jobs each time, what I want you to do is sit in front of a computer and over one weekend apply for 31 jobs and using a networking strategies and using a catered product manager resume. Okay. So my student was able to get nine interviews out of 31 applications plus networking strategies, which is 29% of success using this applying in bulk strategy. So I want you guys to make it happen as well. Of course, besides networking, you need to have the important resume template. So you should go to this website and download your catered product manager template, which has been used by over 7,000 managers out there. Make sure you have your catered product manager resume ready. Step number five is build a product portfolio to highlight your strengths. Product portfolio is a very new concept in the product management space but works extremely well. What is a product portfolio? A product portfolio is a demonstration of your past work and to show that you have product management skills from end to end perspective. And product portfolio should also demonstrate your achievement, your impact to the business to customers so that using the product portfolio, you're able to stand out from all the competitions. I have a specific video talking about how exactly to use product portfolio to learn interviews and a product manager interview. You should watch this video right now. I will also link it in the description of this video. Step number six is get constructive feedback through mock interviews. Now let me emphasize here is constructive feedback. I personally believe that it's not a numbers game. It is a quality game. Now, instead of going out to do like 40 or 30 different kind of mock interviews, I want you to really master what the right way to show customer empathy, what the right way to identify the success metrics of product. And then after you master the best methodology and then you do mock interview with someone who's better than you, who is able to provide you constructive feedback. That's the most efficient way for you to grow and learn your next dream PM job offer. And on top of that, you also should use the latest interview questions database to practice with upcoming interviews because it's likely the interview is going to ask the same questions again and again from the same pool of database. If you have upcoming interviews with fan companies, you can download this 50 fan companies interview questions database and use those for mock interviews. Those are latest live interview questions my student has received in this big tech companies. I want you to use them help you to that job offer as well. So you can go to this website and download this 50 questions database. So by now, are you determined to jump start your product management career or jump to a very senior level in different companies? If so, comment down below. I love to hear from you guys. If you like any of the tips I provide today, please make sure you hit the like button, subscribe and share this video with anybody who needs additional help. This is Dr. Nia Sidi. I'm going to see you next time. Bye.