 It is extremely stressful if you only have one month left to land your next parliamentary job and you're on a work visa. If you cannot land a job you're gonna get kicked out of the country and it's also going through recessions very competitive since they're getting nuts and crazy. What would you do in this situation? Today I'd love to introduce you to our guest speaker who went through the entire stressful job hunting process in a limited time but she was able to make it happen and I believe all of you guys can do it as well. Hey guys, this is Dr. Nancy Lee, a director of product and featured in Forbes. I've helped 100 people land their dream PM job offer in fan companies and unicorn startup and continue to get promoted as a product leader. If you're interested in product management course, please go to pmxarcher.io to learn more. To learn the most effective way to become a product manager, please subscribe to our channel, hit the like button so we notify every time we turn on a new video every Tuesday. Today we have a special guest, Pei Yun. I'm very very excited to have her because she went through the same challenges as majority of my audience who has limited time to land a job or people going through a very competitive market during recessions or someone who has recently laid off really needs to get job as soon as possible or someone like immigrant like us who is on like work visa. We need a job ASAP because the work visa only had limited time for you to land a job before you get kicked out of the country. Things are getting very like crazy nowadays. But Pei Yun had made it happen so very excited to have her to join us share her advice with all of you guys. Hi Pei Yun, how are you? Hi Nancy, very happy to be here. Awesome, awesome. Thank you for joining us. Great. So can you quickly introduce yourself? Where are you from? Where you live? Like quick introduction. All right, so hello everyone. My name is Pei Yun. I originally come from China but now I based in Germany. In terms of my experience, I would say I've doubled in several different fields. I've been in project management, sales, product in a mix of internships and professional experience. I've also successfully transitioned from a supply chain industry to a completely different industry which is a renewable energy. So currently I'm working in my dream company as a product manager in the largest solar panel inverter in Germany. This is beautiful. Okay, so Pei Yun, let's do this. Given you are in Germany, tell me what's going on in Germany, the entire recession economy overview. What's the job market look like in Germany right now? Yes, I think job market in Germany is definitely like it's like keep like getting very tight tightened up and the job is like very competitive to get and the people are worried about the recession. So it's like generally very stressful like if you are looking for a new job and you are definitely gonna compete with many people. I see, cool. So now tell us your story, where you get started and what are your challenges, many your PM job and also how do you conquer those challenges. I want to hear the whole story because you have like crazy like magical story. So please tell us what's going on. Yeah, so basically for my situations, so by the end of last year, I sort of like decided to quit my previous job because of I let you try a different industry. And I sort of like had my eyes on product management for so long and I also like learn about two things about how the things being done. So I decided that I want to quit my job and go for the job hunting. But by the time I wasn't super aware that it's going to be that competitive, but I went through like hard job hunting process like two months. It definitely had a lot of challenges. I see. And now you already lend a job offer, right? So total you spend like three months lending your next job offer. So you start job hunting in January, that's when you quit your original job. You change industry and you didn't know was very competitive, but you quit your job. And you only have like three months to lend your next job in Germany. This sounds crazy. How exactly you made it happen? Yes, Nancy, that's very, very true. This is a very stressful situation because the first I know I'm under super like a time pressure to look for a job within the limited time. Second, I feeling that the market is very competitive. So by the time of the second month of my job hunting in February, I applied for hundreds of jobs. I only got a few interviews. And by the end of the February, I only had like two like, you know, the interviews left. And I still haven't got like, you know, offer yet. So I know that this is something that I really like rethink my process. How should I do better? Because I know I only have like two or three months to get a job. On top of everything, I also feel like mentally, like emotionally, not very well because of what the rejection because of the time pressure. So that was the point that I really think like deep, deep side down, like what can I do to really get myself out of this? Yeah, actually, what you said very resonate to me. When I look for my very first job during the 2008 recession, it was crazy as well. I literally heard myself just thinking about, oh, I'm not having offers and walking on street and trip myself. And then the next day, I went to an interview on crutches because the day before I heard myself just like out of nowhere, just because thinking about how stressful the situation is and an impact. The performance of the interview because I heard myself, but later on, I still learned a job offer through the interview when I went to interview on crutches. But I understand how you felt. It's like not having offers is a fact. But how you perceive the situation on the high stress, not having offers is actually impacting people's day to day life outside of the job hunting journey as well. This is, I think this common mental health issues lots of people are facing right now. But thank you for being vulnerable and share with us. And now, so let's do this. So you mentioned within two months, you only have a two job opportunity left, you still have no offers, like freaking stress out. And you decided to change your strategy. So what did you change? What exactly happened? Yeah, so that was a very challenging point because what I've already left is not really like a matching with my expectations. I'm still thinking about what you got, you know, my dream job, you know. So then I first, so what I've done is two things like first, not working. The second is to repackage your experience to really understand what is your perfect match so you can be more strategically go on the job hunting. I see. And you also mentioned that you also changed your industry. And now can you share us specifically how you use networking strategies to start to give you more opportunities. So I assume in the past, you only apply for jobs online, just do massive application online. Am I right? Yes, yes, yes, I will say that is what like most people including me that I do. So originally, especially in the first month of my job hunting that I apply online, like hundreds of jobs, but after like, like, you know, few rejections and the trials that I find is simply applying online, doesn't work because of the market is very competitive. And because of the recording process, it's likely to be longer because of the recession. So if you really want to, you know, get a response or answers, you know, quick, you need to utilize to network with the people within, for example, within the company that you want to join. And then you start to change the networking strategies. Can you use a real life example? How exactly use a networking strategy actually to lend a job given at the time you only have like less than a month left. So tell us how exactly you did it. Yeah, yeah. So that all starts with first, I deep dive in my experience. So I kind of like know what is my targeted company, what is my target position. So I go for those, for example, I go out the linking, I look for companies and I found a specific company that is really matches with my expectations. And then I go through like their job photos and I see there are a lot of like openings. So from also from my experience, that is a good sign because if the company is keep hiring, which means they are financially sound. So that also important factor I need to consider. Awesome. That's very smart. Yeah. Thank you. So for this specific company that I found I'm really interesting about the open roles, but I don't want to like go through the recruiting process because that would take like much longer than I thought and my situation couldn't allow that. So what I specifically did is I go through the people page of this company. And I literally will go through all the product managers, you know, people because I want to connect with them to, you know, to hear about their like job advice, because there are a lot of like open roles. And I just simply want to learn like how does it really like, you know, working for this company. And another thing is I also want to understand if it's possible to get a referral to the hiring manager for the role I'm interested. So I usually I reach out, I send over the friend request to several people. And luckily there's one person responding to me. And later on it turns out she was the hiring manager for the role that I'm interested. So that's how I'm able to connect with her in the first place. And all the things starts from there. Awesome. And you mentioned that your interview whole interview process only takes like two weeks, right? After you talk to the hiring manager. Yes. This is this is very fast. Okay. So did she do you still need to talk to recruiters once you connect with the hiring manager? And how they make the process so quickly within two weeks before your work visa expires? Oh, yes. Yeah, that was a very good second, like a two weeks, I wouldn't say. So actually, we had like three rounds of interviews. The first two rounds are just really kind of like official interviews, checking my skills, HR owning show up in the last round just to confer some legal questions. But by the time that I feel quite positive because of the previous interviews, I had a good positive feedback. So that's how you land a job offer within two weeks. That was in your month three, right before your visa is about to expire. Congratulations. This is a crazy, very inspiring story. And you also mentioned that you change industry. So tell us more, how does the industry shift actually help you or benefit you through the job hunting process? Is it difficult to change industry during very competitive industry? Yes, that's very true that I changed from a small dollar to a larger companies and in different industries. But what I can to realize is product management is so it's a very universal profession that is basically kind of adapt to all the industries. I see. So that's why in your interview, you basically highlight those transferable skills to into a new industry instead of talking about what is differences between small startup and complete different industry, right? Yeah, yeah. Awesome. Yes. And now let's pay me congratulations. That's how you actually made it happen in a very short amount of time. Very stressful. Tell us in the entire process, as you begin to keep on getting rejected and change your job hunting strategy, eventually land a job quickly before your visa expired, what's the most important shift that actually pushed you to the next level? Yeah, that is a very good question. I had a lot of thoughts into that. I think the turning point for me after like all the rejection and stress going on, that I'm able to really like a super focus on my strategy is because I really changed my mindset how I perceive this profession. By that I mean, I start practicing and thinking like a product manager, which can come into different parts until thinking like for that manager, how you would like position a product, how you can do like go to market strategy, what does it mean to be customer centric? So all of that is all about the responsibility of a product manager. But just because I'm able to think like that, that really helps me to strategically prepare for my interviews and rethink my experience in the product related perspectives. This is great. Cool. And now in terms of you change how you think as a product manager, I do, I do believe this one the greatest advice for everybody, especially we are going through very competitive space. I suggest everybody really behave and learn how to be a product manager compared with hey, let me just say fake and tell you make it, let me pass the interview. The differences between knowing how to do the job can very easy be told during an interview. If you don't know how exactly to sing like product manager, and it's very hard for you to pass the interview as well. I'm glad you shipped it. And then actually, I believe that's one of the reasons you learned the job was in two weeks. Now the interview just landed. That's amazing. Awesome. Now, Pey, let me ask you this question. What advice would you give to other people who want to start their product management career? Yeah, so I would say if you are studying in this field, the first step is to, for me, is to repackage my positive experience. I would say Dr. Nessie's product accelerator program really helps me to rethink my experience in a product related way. Secondly, is to be able to connecting with like many people in a community to really implement the learning from the product management. And that really helps if you could find to find projects or start your own portfolios. So you can actually execute a long issue learned as actually done in the PMA program. This is great. So let's talk about product portfolio for people who doesn't know what is product portfolio and should watch this video right here and learn about how to use product portfolio with different kind of free tools about product portfolio. You guys should definitely study and learn it. Paying actually inside of inside program actually we have many many like 20 different kind of product portfolios and actually yours is one of the best I've ever seen. This is like this is amazing and I believe that helps you immensely to like lend your next job. So did you show your portfolio to the hiring manager during the interview? Yes, definitely. Even from the first meetings we got to like talk about my portfolio. It's not only because my positive experience is very relatable to the road itself, but because I'm able to start the project to build my my product from scratch. From that way you can demonstrate your very strong experience in the product management. This is beautiful. This is amazing. Congrats. Congrats. Thank you. Thank you for sharing all of us. This is so exciting. Okay. Hey guys, go to the link in the description. We have different kind of free product portfolio tools and also project you can start working on and you definitely need to use this advanced strategy to learn your next job fast. Awesome. So thank you for sharing with us Pei Yun and congratulations and also good luck in your new job. This is very very exciting. Absolutely and thank you for having me and I'm glad to be all of help. Awesome. Okay, great. Cool. All right. Hey guys, if you found this extremely useful, please make sure to hit the like button. Share this video with any aspiring product managers, especially we really need to use those amazing free advice so that everybody is able to lend their next job faster and destruct in a city from P.M. Accelerator.io. I'm gonna see you next time. See you guys. Bye.