Welcome back again to the main stage today for the career Summit Day of Women Tech Global Conference. My name is Margo Miller. I'm your host for today. And hey, if you were over in the sessions area just before this, I hope you caught some of those amazing speakers.We had CEO S we had the chief technologist of the New York Times who was just speaking there about leveling up your career in tech and we have many others still to come both in the session area and here. But for right now, we are going to welcome to the stage. Our next main stage speaker, Shannon Cassidy. Shannon is a civil engineer turned product manager and currently a senior product manager at split. Shannon. Welcome.

Hi. Thank you so much. I'm so happy to be here and represent split. Oh my

gosh, we're so happy to have you here. Um And today you're going to be talking to us about pivot into product specifically. And so I have a little more about you in, in my bio here and how you pivoted. But you had your professional career in construction, you pivoted into tech and then you discovered building software. So I think this is going to be a really insightful presentation, really understanding like how do you make that move and maybe learning from someone who's done it already.

So Shannon, I'll let you kick us off.

Great. Thank you so much. So, hi, everyone. Uh my name is Shannon Cassidy. Uh and maybe I can share my slides too. Uh Sweet. Um So I am a lot of things. I am a rock climber, a skier, a traveler, a plant mom and a pretty decent cook if I say so myself living in San Francisco for me variety is the spice of life. I am also a product manager currently working at split. I've previously worked at Autodesk and a series B start up. I've also been a civil engineer, construction project manager and customer success manager. I have had a lot of jobs. This photo on the left is me at one of my old offices before I pivoted into tech. I was a civil engineer and construction project manager for a number of years being very goal oriented. My first career goal was to get my civil engineering license which requires years of practice in the field and passing three licensing exams. I was all bought in on civil engineering as a career and I got my license. But after a year of hitting that milestone, I took a hard look at what was making me happy. I loved the collaborative aspects of construction and working with people to get what I designed to get built. But the culture wasn't a fit. So I took a hard look at what I could change. I'd always been really interested in technology.

My friends in tech were having a lot of fun at start ups. So I made the decision to switch and learned a lot on my path to get there, which is what I want to share with you all today in order to help kickstart or contribute to your own career journey. So shout out in the chat. If you're having had changed careers in the past or past or looking to explore something new in the future, I'd love to hear what everybody's after. Uh So my agenda, I'll tell you about jumpstarting a network in a new industry. Four approaches to transitioning into products specifically that you might consider and how I executed and landed a product role myself. Now first up starting a network, it is daunting in a new industry and I'm gonna share some tips when I first decided to switch industries, I didn't even know which role I wanted to target. Getting curious and talking to people turned out to be a very natural way to jumpstart my network, which would pay dividends later when I started looking for roles, even when I started looking for my second role.

So get curious and here's a few suggested approaches, you might want to try one or two of first start with your friends or your existing network. Even if they're not at a company that you want to work for or in a role that interests you just start asking those questions. If they aren't very knowledgeable about the role you're interested in. Can they introduce you to someone that is also start attending conferences, meetups, and groups. There are many free ones out there and are a great way to network with people in similar situations to yours. Asking that question of what brought you here can be a great icebreaker if you're unsure where to start. So here's your hint to answer that question and connect with folks in the chat. Can you answer what brought you here? Also feel free to drop your linkedin as well. You might be surprised to find mutual connections or interests, especially on this talk where you might be going through similar career transitions. For a more targeted approach, you might consider running specific searches and reaching out to people on linkedin. The increase of remote work has made many more individuals comfortable with networking remotely. So this is a great way to get in touch with people that you would not otherwise be able to get coffee with.

You can search for people at organizations or roles that you're interested in and drop them. A request to connect with a short curious message. Overall, I found that the biggest barrier to entry to meeting was to meet people and just putting myself out there, not everyone you will meet will be willing to talk. But if you keep reaching out and stay curious, there are plenty of folks interested in mentoring or willing to connect you with someone that is when you talk to someone, keep that curiosity, be careful of asking for favors right off the bat. Like a referral, you may ultimately want to work for their company. I totally get that. But what you can learn from them, uh What, but what can you learn from them about their company or about their role? This will be really useful when you start targeting those specific companies or roles and could help you in the interview process, you might be surprised what you find. So just continue to put yourself out there, several things will happen as you start to deepen your network that will help you in any transition, you'll get a lot more comfortable with the tech world or the role you're looking at and then can start to narrow down what field you want to get into or specific interests you have.

For example, I hadn't known that there were many specialties for product managers until I, until I started talking to a variety of them from B to B to B to C to mobile to platform. And so many more, I personally found that my experience in construction in a totally different industry was a big turn off for recruiters too. Immediately off the bat, you might find the same thing if you're a completely different industry from tech. But after I got comfortable with this space through all of the conversations I was having, it became a lot easier to tell my story and to get people to start to look past my resume. And last networking is also essentially doing just that getting your resume past a recruiter and in the front of a hiring manager, when I first started looking at tech roles, I figured, or I'm just gonna start applying everywhere to things that look interesting. It was actually a big mistake. It was time consuming, never got any calls from those cold applications. And after talking to a couple of recruiters, I found a big theme. It was hard for anyone to translate my construction focused resume into how I would make a great product manager in tech. And to be totally fair, why would they product is a competitive field?

And it's hard to risk your reputation as a recruiter on someone you don't know that doesn't have experience that directly translates. So I started to shape my approach to networking around that problem. But ultimately, how can I get product experience with no product experience?

So I started talking to product managers that had switched from non tech industries into product and ultimately learned four key ways to break in that. I'm gonna share with you first up, the big one, go to business school in business school, you can learn helpful business frameworks, case studies and get exposure to many problems you may have eventually faced as a product manager. Generally, it can make you understand the various ways that businesses work and you might be able to take some product related classes. Another one of the main reasons is your network, the individuals you meet in business school have possibly been working at large companies.

You might also be interested in working at. They may be starting a business or these folks might know people that fall into either either of those categories. A certain programs can help you get internships. During my tenure at auto desk, one of my interns was getting their MB A this past winter. They called to let me know that auto desk had extended them an offer for a senior product manager role like straight from business school, no previous like full time product experience.

This internship got them a senior product manager role, super proud moment as their manager. And ultimately though for business school, there's some costs and it there there's other cons so it can be time consuming and extremely expensive, think $100,000 sometimes or even more.

Ultimately, one of the reasons why this path wasn't for me. The next piece of advice I had gotten was to start a business, maybe a crash course version of going to business school. But if you have an entrepreneurial mindset, you can learn how to run a business, build a product and get exposure to a huge network. Of course, it can be very risky. But even if you don't end up creating the next airbnb, you'll naturally have gained lots of experience directly related to products and can be a very attractive candidate to potential employers. Next, another strategy I found and some people have been really successful at is just apply to as many product roles as you can go shape up your resume to the best of your ability and study and do mock interviews and network your way in or apply to as many product roles as you can.

Eventually, you may be able to find a company that is a good fit for your experience and willing to take a chance on you as a product manager. This path can be difficult since many companies will not hire product managers without product or related experience, but it's not heard of. It's not unheard of, especially at early stage start ups where they're looking for someone who's ambitious with the entrepreneurial mindset.

I even talked to a friend just last night that it made the jump from civil engineering to tag herself. She landed a PM role at Amazon. It's totally realistic with some of these approaches. But then finally, there's the path that I took start out in a role adjacent to product that better fits your experience and make a case for your transition as you gain exposure to product. There are few roles that are really great for this. The first role would be to get an associate PM position that uh these roles kind of take on your uh PM that takes on work with a senior product manager. However, these roles can be highly, highly competitive. So you may consider opening up your search for roles in customer success or support, which you can get tons of exposure to the product team, the end user and experience the product itself. Ultimately, I chose customer success as my pathway into product. The picture here is me on my first customer visit as a customer success manager in the construction tech industry. I will dig deeper on the strategy of pivoting through an adjacent role. Now with my own story, and I'm gonna go back to when I had just left construction and was starting my tech network. So a fresh start, I approached the job hunt full time with ambition.

I had set out with the idea that I could just cold applied to roles. I think it's generally known you can apply to roles where you do not meet every single one of the qualifications and still get the job. So when I looked at job openings for product roles, I thought I meet many of these required skills they have because product tools have ambiguous qualifications, project management. I had that experience working with cross functional stakeholders, check entrepreneurial spirit.

Yes, I thought my soft skills might be enough to get me past the requirement of 1 to 3 years of product experience. These Rs were asking for, but I wasn't finding success when I was applying. What I didn't realize was that my resume, no matter how I worded, it couldn't tell the story of how my construction experience would make me a great product manager. It was because I truly did not have the right experience yet. So I started looking for roles that would meet my minimum qualifications. A role in tech where I would take less than a 10% pay cut where I'd gain experience relevant to product and where it could be an asset with the experience I had right away. So this role turned out to be a customer success role at a series B start up in the construction space. A company called RBI. If you're one of my previous coworkers, please say hi in the chat. I know there's one or two of you here today. So because of my experience in the industry, RBIs was surveying, I knew that I would be an asset right away. I had learned from my research that working as a customer success manager would get me exposure to the product team and the opportunity to collaborate with them on some projects. Then my pragmatic reason, my salary didn't take a drastic hit with the role I can't go unnoticed.

Now, how did I make the transition though? From customer success and product. How are we doing this full pivot? Well, first, I let everyone know very early that I was interested in product, which helped in a number of ways. My manager was keen to get me in front of as many customers as possible. Familiar with the problems that customers were facing in their pain points and on small projects that could help the product team. Next, I found every way to make my construction experience useful to the product team. I spent years in the construction field. And so I was able to be a subject matter expert for the product manager and designers that I was working near. They had a quick question about process or needed help understanding what a user meant by a comment that was very, very construction oriented. I was one of their go to people. One quick note on this point originally, when I was looking for a product role, there was a product executive I had met that told me my construction experience would be a hindrance to becoming a PM for construction products. The reason that my experience would bias me into thinking of solutions right away for a subset of the construction industry that I had worked with versus digging into problems that applied to a broader audience.

What I eventually learned from this advice is that I should be aware of my past experiences, but they can be a huge asset in understanding customer pain. Points. The next big thing I did was do something to better the product that wasn't asked of me. Go beyond my role. I built a simple prototype that the product team eventually baked into our offering. This was my proof that I could hear the customers problems and create functionality to solve them. If you don't have extra time in your day, don't worry about it. But hackathons can be a great way to get both your time and a developer's time. If you've got a good idea and want to work on one of these special projects. So my full pivot into product, it took a year and a half, three months finding a role in tech one year as a customer success manager and three more months working as a CS M taking on product projects before I went full time as A PM. There is some luck with timing. I can't ignore the product team needed some help as I was taking on small projects, but it wouldn't have happened without my preparation along the way. It was difficult and there are people that seated me to doubt, but I remain determined and I'm so glad that I did. I've broken into product and I'm so happy that it did. It's better fit for my personality.

And what ended up happening is that my industry experience accelerated my career. I spent a little over a year at that start up as A PM before I landed a huge opportunity as a senior product manager at Autodesk working on their construction tools. I was shocked that auto desk would entertain me as a candidate for a senior role after just a year in product. But my industry expertise ended up being one of the top reasons they chose me over many others with much more product experience at Autodesk. My manager set me up with success by helping me really sharpen my product skills to a point where I felt like it was time to complete my pivot and leave the construction industry completely. So now I work at split. If you've heard of them, I think of a couple other talks have mentioned them. They're a feature flag and experimentation company. As a senior product manager here, I work on growth and initiatives to overhaul our U I something completely different from my civil engineering days.

But ultimately, a role where I still leverage my experience in customer success. So here are the last bits of advice I want you to carry with you first. Getting your first product role is the hardest part, but you will the work you put in now in building a network will pay dividends far into the future. Once you get your first role, always keep eyes open for more ways to do product management or be strategic P MS are expected to add value to the overall business on top of the features they're producing. So how can you do this in your own role. Next. Always continue learning how to leverage your experience. Uh Previous experience may feel like uncertain at times of what you're doing. But remember that you have a base to work with from all of your previous work experience, you have a lot of tools in your tool kit and last find your differentiators and lean in P MS are supposed to be good at many things. But we're also in a position to leverage other people that are great at their jobs. For example, I don't have a design or engineering background, but I'm really good at talking to customers collaborating and understanding bigger strategic things.

So I lean on my teammates with the design and engineering parts to uh lean in where I'm not as strong, so I can lean in where I'm stronger. Is there an opportunity for you to do the same? So as a wrap up, I wanna ask folks to pay it forward. Have you gotten help in your career? How have you, how can you pass that information back to the next person and make it easier for them? These are values I keep and one of the main reasons I've loved being invited to talk to you all today. So please connect with me on linkedin and I hope I look forward to seeing your own career progress. Thank you.

Thanks so much Shannon for joining us here today. That was a great presentation. Thanks. So much. We have lots of people in the chat just saying, hey, you're like, what a wonderful journey, what a wonderful transition and really resonating with what you're saying. Um And we have um we have so many people, I think that are on this call day, especially today being the Career Summit Day that are probably themselves starting to consider some of these transitions and where they can take either taking their tech skills into product and project management or maybe vice versa.

So, um do you have a, a moment in your journey, Shannon that really like stood out the most to you? Like when you were really making that decision to change over?

Yeah, it was really, I think it was really intimidating at first to completely take what I had, you know, really build a lot of, you know, experience and it was a huge risk to switch industries. But I remember talking to um somebody in tech that was just really encouraging. I had a lot of naysayers at first that were like product experience. This is gonna be a bad background, even some friends. And I had uh one person in Texas thought if you're smart, you're gonna be able to go do it. And I think building that confidence over talking to people in your network can really go a long ways to encouraging you to go and do that pivot and take that risk. And uh I still have my license. I can go back to civil engineering. They're, they're hiring.

There you go. Yes, they certainly are as well. Right. So,

that's why I love that.

Right. Exactly. Everyone split. She's staying where she is. Calm down, everyone. No, that's so great chat. And thanks again for sharing your story here today.

Yeah. Thank you.