Show Your Value & Get Hired: The CDO Headhunter's Playbook

All right. Hi everyone. Good morning, or I guess good evening. It's probably not good afternoon for anyone dialing in. Hey Julia, how are you?

Hey, good morning. I'm really good, thanks. How are you, Nick?

Very good, very good. Uh, right. I see some people are already leaving comments saying where they're dialing in from. Mix of Spain, Netherlands, and the UK. Awesome. What I'm going to do is I'll just quickly do a kind of— for the first time. We've been running these LinkedIn Lives that are aimed at data product managers and other people working on that business-facing and technical-facing sort of roles. We've had a few more sessions already. This is number 4 or 5, depending on how you count. Just quickly spotlighting the ones we've done already around thinking about UX design, when building data and AI products, building influence without authority, driving adoption, and estimating ROI. Actually, off the back of that last one, I want to comment that what we talked about last week, for those that joined, is how do I quantify the financial value of the projects that I'm doing, either before we get started or afterwards? And it was very much focused on building a business case, getting formal buy-in, getting budget for different projects, and ultimately being able to get credit for that work. What we didn't focus on was the slightly more selfish aspect of that, which is how do I leverage this to get a better performance review, to get the promotion I've been gunning for, or maybe it's to get another role in an external company. And we just lost Julia, but that's fine because actually there's a bit I want to get all of you to input on, which is before we formally get started, take a second, fill in this— or not fill in, go to this Slido poll and let us know why you're here. And a big reason why we're doing these interactively is because we want it ultimately to be a session tailored for people joining in, not just a podcast recording that we're filming with more stress and lower sound and video quality. So scan the QR code or go to slide.do and type in the code on your screen. I'm also going to put the link in the chat. And yeah, tell us, tell us why you're here. And in a second, I'll pass to Julia to introduce herself. And then after that, you— we can see the results and see why have people dialed in today to hear from you. So yeah, without further ado, Julia, hello. And why don't you tell us a little bit about who you are?

Thanks so much, Nick. And hey, everybody, thanks for joining us this morning. Good morning. So I'm Julia and I'm a headhunter and management consultant turned career coach. I specialize in career acceleration and executive development, and I work with individuals, but also with corporates and the organizations that are investing in people. And I help give individuals everything they need to land and succeed in their jobs. And why Nick's kindly invited me today is because I've been through a lot of different places that, you know, a lot of you have been before. So I started and spent a lot of time in building a data and analytics business for the Boston Consulting Group. And that's where I learned a lot about the foundational requirements, but also the skills and leadership capabilities needed to make data and analytics happen. And ultimately, we grew that business to $100 million and scaled it to, you know, a large organization that today is part of BCGX. And then after that, I worked as a headhunter at one of the world's best headhunting firms called Spencer Stuart. And I got to sit on the other side working with CEOs and executive teams and hearing what they want from data leaders, data product managers, chief product officers, and, you know, all of that important C-suite talent role and their direct reports. So today, Nick's kindly invited me to kind of help build a bit more of a career focus for people. And I think it's a great time, right? End of November, early December, start to think about you and your own career. career development. So thanks for having me on.

It's a pleasure to have you here. Actually, one thing I wanted to mention earlier and I forgot is that I don't know if you even know this, but Julia is kind of the reason why I entered a career in data in the first place. Like, that was absolutely not what I was going for at university. And then she came to Imperial, did this talk about big data. And I found it super cool. And it's not that in that moment I was like, okay, I need to work in data. But then when I got a job offer and it was for an analytics startup, that talk was very much at the back of my head where I was like, oh, this is, you know, this is one of the big trends. It's growing in popularity. This is a, you know, a good place to get started. And then we met again 10 years later.

It's so nice, Nick, and it was really great to reconnect after all of that time. Yes, it's fantastic to get to work with Imperial, and they have an amazing program. And we're just lucky in the UK, there are loads of fantastic analytics programs where people can get the foundational skills that didn't exist when we started a data and analytics business, you know, 10+ years ago. So, and I, you know, what I think we're seeing now is that career path, which back then was still emerging, kind of continues to emerge and change in more And that's part of what makes the space exciting, but also what makes it perhaps more challenging and that individuals need to be more proactive compared to potentially taking a track into the chief financial officer where, you know, there are a certain number of specific kind of roles and exposure you need to get like FP&A or accounting and budgeting or tax or, you know, understanding kind of shareholder analysis. that path is a bit more of a well-trodden path. What we've got in this data product management, data and analytics broader space is there isn't one linear career path. Career paths are inherently very squiggly. So you can start anywhere and kind of end up anywhere, actually. It's about being intentional about your career. But it'd be great to see why some of the people joined today, because I think we could take this conversation in any way that that works for everybody who joined.

Oh yeah. And we're— we've got a diversity of motivations to join, but there is a clear winner, which is, I'm actively job hunting and need to improve how I present myself.

Okay, great.

So, I mean, obviously a very big topic, so we're not just gonna go straight for it. I wanna focus the conversation a little bit off the back of what we were talking about and and link it also to the sessions we had last week. So if I'm a data product manager or someone in that kind of management, kind of junior leadership type role in a data or other technology team, and let's say I'm doing a— I've done a decent enough job at being able to deliver value for my organization, and I want to skip through the Okay, how do I target the right companies? How do I get— make it past the kind of CV screen round? Or at least I feel like we're better off skipping those and going straight to, let's say I'm in the first interview. But before I ask you that question, tell me, does it make sense for us to skip ahead in that sense?

Great. Nick, you froze for me. I don't know if that's the case for everybody else. But listen, you know, let's— firstly, I'd like to start by acknowledging everybody's pain. You know, if you are out of a job and actively looking for a job because you are out of a job, that is a tough place to be in. The market has been pretty bleak. You know, I've been a headhunter in recruiting senior people for a lot of my career. And, you know, the last couple of years have been some of the most challenging times, I think, of what I have seen, you know, at any other stage. But the great news is that I think we're turning a corner. You know, I work with people every day who are either actively looking because they're out of a role or proactively making a decision to make a pivot, or even just working on their executive presence and their, you know, everyday positioning within their organization, but keeping an eye on what might be potentially outside. So building their internal and also external presence. And what I've seen in the last 6 weeks is that things are getting better. So, you know, some of my clients who before weren't getting any offers, at the moment we've got a negotiation call later today about how do you manage a decision across 3 offers. That's not a conversation I've been having recently because there just hasn't been that many offers. So I will say, listen, it's a painful place to be in, and I think maintaining the motivation and the focus on a regular basis But I just wanna give you some hope. I'm definitely seeing the market change, and in the last 6 weeks things have been better. And as a headhunter, I will tell you right now, it's not typical that it's late November that things are better. Normally it's kind of mid-January, early February where you start to see things picking up. So the market isn't following sort of what we— what headhunters would say is typical trends perhaps at the moment. Mm-hmm. But per— because there's been a lot of hiring freezes and actually, as everybody knows, a lot of layoffs. Perhaps some of those freezing periods are thawing and organizations are recognizing they need to make, you know, important talent decisions. So all that to say, you know, there are tactics that you can use when you apply for jobs. And it's definitely— I offer a program called Reboot. And when I work with my clients, we go through some of those, what I like to call dark arts tactics. And we can talk about a couple today. But you know, dark arts tactics about what people can do when they're applying for a job, say on LinkedIn. But it's a pretty soul-destroying process applying for jobs on LinkedIn. So I think you're right, a much better focus of— for people is to think about how do they present themselves? Perhaps great, they've got a first-round interview. But actually, everybody's got a network. So how do you present yourself and your network in a kind of value-based way that resonates or is memorable? And how do you turn what is a generic networking conversation into something that sparks value, ideally for the person you're talking to, and best-case scenario for you, where it comes back to you in a kind of virtuous way with a potential conversation about a job? What do you think, Nick? Is that— would that

be a great place to go? I really like that. And it's a, it's a good thing to kind of reinforce to people that Presenting yourself and thinking about how you come across is not just something that happens during the formal stage, you know, when you're in the interview room. It's, yeah, it's all the steps before and with other people.

You're right. You know, and actually, we underestimate as humans, because we're interacting with other humans almost every day, we underestimate how we present ourselves. So what is presenting yourself? Presenting yourself is what I call your pitch. And your pitch is, how are you gonna succinctly, you know, communicate your value in a short amount of time to the people who matter and leave them with an important thing to say about you, ideally to other people? So how I like to work with people to help them think about this is actually to start with, what do you want someone to say about you when you're no longer in the room and in front of them? So, if you start with that end in mind of, like, okay, after that chat, what would you say? You're gonna go for a coffee networking coffee meeting. After that conversation, what do you want that person to be able to say about you after you've left the room? And once the meeting is over, and if you're not clear on what that 1 sentence is, that's where you need to start. Because actually, we're all very busy and Also, people are spending time because they want to help you, but if you don't help them help you by succinctly being able to communicate, like, what it is you do, why you're cool or excellent or very interesting, and what it is you want in one sentence, um, the, the message will get muddied and the person will fumble the football, to use an American terminology as we're about to enter Thanksgiving tomorrow.

You

know, and so, you know, how do you do it, Nick? What do you— when you think about like who you're going to be meeting and presenting yourself, because I know you're always thinking about how to get the value, where do you— how do you usually think about presenting yourself?

I mean, I want to say badly, but to give a more serious answer, You know, if it's a, let's say someone more commercial, more senior, me going on and on about technical concepts is not gonna be the winning ticket. And that's gonna be true for any conversation, not just in the, you know, how do I wanna brand and position myself? I think now that I'm self-employed, I'm having to kind of rediscover how to do that cuz it's no longer as easy as, oh, I'm a data product manager at this company. This is my product. This is what I do, which is very straightforward. And so I'm playing around with different like metaphors and slightly crude ways of describing it. Like one I've been using recently is I help data people not think like data people and be more commercial instead. That's had mixed results so far, but basically I want them to get that exactly like you say, what is the, not even a full sentence, like the tagline And then we can expand on what it actually means, but give them an anchor to remember it by. And one thing I noticed with some people is they go straight into the detail, the long paragraphs, instead of giving, you know, what's the title of the book? What's, what's that anchor that we can lean back on? Because if you're giving your paragraph after paragraph and the other person zones out, gets confused, doesn't know a term, then you're gonna lose them completely.

I think that's spot on, you know, and I love your idea of an anchor or a title of a book. That's a great way to think about it. What's the book title for you after that coffee chat? And what do you want, you know, that person to communicate about you to somebody else? So important way to convert coffee conversations into potential job opportunities is one, succinctly communicating your new unique value to somebody else. And making it clear, like, what job is it that would be helpful? So just imagine the person's going to go away, search their internal portal for a job. Are you going to leave them with absolute clarity about what that job could be? And listen, that's really tough in this space, right? Because it could be data, it could be product, it could be analytics, it could be AI, it could be data and analytics, it could be chief, it could be VP, it could be SVP, it could be, right, manager level. So you, you know, everybody on this call has almost like a much harder job in doing a lot of those things. So start first with what do you know? What, how are you unique? What do you do? And it could be— and think Hollywood movie version. I do this with everybody I work with, right? I know that maybe people aren't going to the cinema anywhere near as much as they used to, but thinking about the trailer of the movie is still really important, right? And so what's the like trailer version of what you're gonna say? Mm-hmm. And how do you summarize all of that up into an exciting way that gets the person to want to hear more about you? So start with, hey, I'm a data product manager, you know, and, but actually that can be quite complicated about what that means, or find some engaging way. Or Nick, I loved your story today. Hey, actually I got into data and analytics because Julia came and had a conversation. I bet you people will remember that today, right? That really gave a very personal story about you. And connected it really well into this conversation for today. And so if, you know, start by thinking, what do you want somebody to remember about you? What do you want them to tell others? Then how do I make it unique and interesting? Because words like leverage, drive, transformation, change, value, even, you know, those, I'm afraid, are such generic words now that they're not that memorable. So like, turn up as a human. who is going to say something interesting. And then think about the person who you're talking to. So are they in this space? So listen, if you're talking to a chief product officer or talking to a chief data and analytics officer, they get what you do and you're in a privileged space. But perhaps you're talking to a friend who works at a company that you'd quite like to work at, but they're in, I don't know, finance, to use my earlier analogy, or maybe they're in HR somewhere or— Perhaps nowhere near what you do, and actually your job is much harder in that you got to keep it simple. What is it you do? What could they look up for you? And the you know important thing I work with people on beyond that: what's the sort of book title of what you want someone to remember about you is your ask. You'll be amazed how much people don't prepare what their ask is. And in a coffee chat, you want your ask to be listen. It's really tough to apply for jobs online at the moment. You know, if I see something, could I ask 2 things? One, like, could you look on the portal for this, this, or this title and let me know if there's anything on there? And 2, if I see a job come up, you know, would you mind submitting my CV or resume, you know, on the portal? Because actually I have a much better chance of getting looked at. Now, those 2 things alone are very clear asks where a person can decide if they're going to say yes or no. And you're not asking them to endorse the quality of your work or even recommend you. You're just asking for something very straightforward, like looking on their portal or submitting a CV.

I really like that. And I want to go back to the first bit about the kind of memorable way of describing yourself and ask, would you recommend also explaining that in terms of what you're not? So that, you know, I am— I don't know, I'm a data product manager. What I cannot do is the architecture, you know, that I'm not technical, or I've got lots of experience in B2B, none in B2C. Again, 'cause for me, I feel like at least the way I think about it is it helps to understand what traits you positively identify by, but also what's the blank space that you've not mentioned, not because you wanted to keep it brief, but because that is actively who you are not. And that might be, I'm a, I know I'm a good project manager, but I don't like people management. So I'm more oriented towards individual contributor roles or whatever, whatever else it might be for someone. Or do you think that almost sounds negative?

Yeah.

And it's not good.

It's a really good question. I think as an individual, as you're nearly 70% of people joining today are actively looking for a job. Where I would say it's great to think about what you're not is when you're thinking about what jobs you're actually going to apply for. What are you not? By the way, what are you not interested in? What are you not energized by? You know, what are not your superpowers? Think about detractors and also think about attractors like industry, sector, spaces, jobs, conversations that give you energy and joy. In that coffee chat context, maybe I would stay with the positives of what are you good at? How should they think about you? Because, listen, our brains are preconditioned to remember the negative more than remember the positive. So, since our brains are already preconditioned to remember the negative, I perhaps don't want to give the person some negative to hold on to. But reinforce those things of what you are looking for, because what you want them to do is take away the specific actions of whatever you deem right. Maybe looking up on the portal or submitting your CV isn't what you're asking for. Maybe you're asking for an introduction to someone in the, in the data organization who, or someone in the product organization. That's a bigger ask, you know, and so it's, it's important for you to communicate how you deliver value if that's something you are going to ask for. But absolutely, people are willing to do that. So I would stick with, yeah, what are you great at? What are you looking for? How can they help you?

I really like that. And if it looks like I'm on a different screen, well, it's because I am. I have the comments here open on my iPad, and I wanted to quickly mention to everyone that I know, especially if you're looking for a job but you currently have a job, you may not want your questions to, to myself and Julia to show up on your LinkedIn. So I'm just putting a link to the YouTube version of this livestream. It's the same thing broadcasted twice, uh, because we'd love to get your questions as well, right? Like, I can ask all the questions I want to ask Julia, um, and talk about the topics I want to talk about, but we're doing this live to make it also about you. So I've just put the link in the comments, but we can keep going. I wanted to ask one more sort of, I guess, tactical question about this idea of reaching out to your network, asking them about things like, hey, are you— is there anything in your jobs portal or something like that? Which is, should you avoid questions that you can get the answer yourself? Like, is your company hiring any people of this job title? If that's something that's public information, or is it still useful in the sense that it's an easier and lighter ask than, oh, hey, I saw you're hiring for this role in another department, the one that the person I know is in. Can you refer me?

Yeah.

How do you, how do you, how do you balance those 2? Because for me, sometimes when someone asks me a question where I'm like, you could have spent 5 seconds to get the answer. It feels a little bit either disrespectful or like this person's not properly— Great.

And again, for me, it digitized a bit, and that might be my end. So just apologies. Again, another great, really great question. I think what you want is someone to have a conversation, right? If you're gonna start the chat by being like, oh, and listen, who's your CEO? I think you're right. Like, it's not a good idea to ask such a basic question that you should have done your research. And now we all have access to, at least for the moment, whilst nobody's figured out yet how to monetize it properly, we all have access to like Gemini and, you know, ChatGPT and free tools for those who haven't yet paid subscription. Like, use, use those tools to help you look smart. It takes you 20 seconds before a conversation, and you can go in armed pretty quickly. But asking, uh, and even things like, tell me what the culture is like, I would say is, in my view, a little bit of a lazy question. Ask more pointed questions of, so tell me, what does it feel like to walk the halls? Or how do decisions get made around here? Or You know, do things get celebrated? So, for instance, you know, in some organizations, celebration is important, right? We launched this product, we made this thing happen, or actually this thing didn't go well and we've learned from it. Those are, in many ways, all celebrations. In other businesses, there is no time for celebration. You do one thing, you do the next thing, you do the next thing after it. And, and that, by the way, is completely fine for people working there. And it's important to figure out Is that the kind of place you want to spend your time? We spend a lot of time at work. You want to make sure it's the right place for you. So being clear about what are 3 to 5 good questions that you would maybe want to ask over coffee, and some of those should be about figuring out whether it's a good place for you. And some of those should be about demonstrating that you know what it is you're talking about and that you would be sort of— People like to hire people like them, which I know is Not all goodness, but if you're thinking about a coffee meeting, you want a nice fluid chat with the person that you meet with, and you want to make them feel good about how they're spending their time and to feel good about you, that you would be the kind of person that they would like working with. And like doesn't mean you think exactly like them. Like could be you compliment them in a great way, or you bring a good thought-provoking perspective. So finding a Crafting, curating 3 to 5 important questions that you might wanna ask over the course of the coffee chat that leads them to better understanding what you do and how you deliver value and how they can help you are really 2 great outcomes for that kind of discussion.

I think that's such a good point, which is, yes, you're coming in to ask questions and ask your ask. But also it really matters how you're gonna be perceived and whether— because I mean, yeah, sometimes when you get referred for a job, that doesn't mean anything. It's not a full endorsement, but still the other person feels like they have to vaguely be comfortable saying we should hire this person to put you forward.

Yeah.

What, what, what do you see as kind of common I don't wanna say mistakes, but ways in which either your clients or other people you know get it wrong initially, either in terms of how they describe themselves or the kind of questions they go in and ask or how they come across more generally?

Yeah, that's a great question. It's pretty easy to get it wrong. One, I would start with, they haven't really thought about how they're gonna present themselves and they end on a 5-minute monologue talking about them. Without doing some upfront thinking of, you know, who am I talking to? How well do I know this person? What is the— what outcome do I want to achieve from this conversation? Like basically treating the coffee chat like you would treat time with a CEO or an important executive within your organization. The second thing is, I think, not having a clear narrative for yourself. How do you introduce yourself? And are you doing that differently every time? Listen, I am a big data nerd when it comes to this sort of stuff. And actually, I think it's great to do what I call ABC testing. So with my clients, we do ABC testing, not just A/B testing, but ABC testing. And you might have several different ways you want to introduce yourself because let's face it, as a data product manager, you might lean in lots of different directions and you might feel a little bit uncomfortable just talking about yourself in one way. So instead of muddying every conversation by trying to explain all the nuances of you in every chat, test it by like, try, try a vanilla version with one person, try, you know, or try a more B2B version with one person, a more B2C version with the next person, and try something else and bring all the elements of you and what you think is important to emphasize, but maybe nuance them in different conversations and then use the data, which is feedback, through smiles, agreement, you know, positive next steps that you want to see to iterate and refine your own narrative. Instead of making the narrative up every single time and thinking, oh, that kind of went well, or, oh, that conversation didn't go so well, you know, use your job and your training for your— on your own self and use that to kind of say, okay, well, how am I going to talk about myself? What are the objectives I want out of this meeting? So I think people who kind of make it up every single time they go along isn't great. I think also what I've seen in interviewing, from interviewing hundreds, if not thousands of people over time, is people who just start out by talking about, well, I started my career here and I did this and I did that. And they put all of the cognitive load on the listener. And that's lazy. I think you want— that you have to curate your own conversation and build your own narrative, and you need to do that through preparation. And the people who get it the best— and I'm talking a more either conversation with a headhunter or slightly more formal, but actually have a bit of formula on how I work with my clients and we get these narratives right. And in the coffee, you know, in a formalized interview process, I think it's important to say, listen, my career— and then the people who do it the best, what I've seen is they say chapters. So if you've got 15+ years of experience, you can do this pretty easily and just be thoughtful about the experience you've had and be like, well, the first chapter is like this. The second chapter, I did that. The third chapter, which should usually be your current chapter, is kind of what you're doing now. And then you don't need to be— say so many details. You can be guided by that individual. Listen, I'm happy to kind of dig in anywhere that's most relevant or See what they say. They might just pause. Pausing is also important. They might say, "Oh, that's so interesting! That second chapter you did da da da da da. I did this thing too." And then you build rapport, and the conversation flows naturally. And that's great. But the people I think who get it wrong, you know, make up their introduction about themselves every time, try and include every single detail about what they've done, and then go into some sort of like. CV, let me tell you about myself, from starting from where I went to school.

I really like how you framed it as putting the burden and the cognitive load on the other person, because as you said that, I immediately thought back to so many times where I had to like try really hard to pay attention to someone just telling me who they are and what they do. And I was like, is it because I'm really tired today or what's going on? It's no, it's because this person has given me this like huge passage where I have to decide which bits of information are relevant or not. And I, you know, it's funny you say it comes from people not having one prepared. I've also seen people with prepared intros that just always give that super long, lots of irrelevant fluff. And I'm like, what are you doing? Like, I've had colleagues do that in the past. So we'd go into different projects, meet different stakeholders, and it's always the same intro. And I'm like, If we're talking to someone in a senior role or junior role, someone in a technical role or a non-technical role, they probably need different levels of information and detail and abstraction. Like if they don't know what data science is, maybe don't go super deep into what that, you know, the different bits of data science you've done or whatever it might be.

Yeah.

I really like that.

I think you're right. You know, your preparation actually isn't just, I've written it all down and I'm gonna androgynously, you know, say what it is that I have prepared. I think also reading the room and the faces of the people you're talking to is also important, being able to dynamically pivot. The other thing that I think is actually really important, and I'd love your take on this, Nick, because you are talking to people all the time about how to get value from data, but it's just thinking about what metrics do you share and how do you share them? Basically, what are your proof points? How do you demonstrate you have value? So what kind of advice do you give to people when they're maybe trying to build a business case or get buy-in for an initiative they're launching? How should they talk about, you know, metrics or share metrics or proof points?

Yeah, it's a great question. And for me, it comes down to a couple of very simple things. The first is just like you should know your audience and what they care about. Similarly, like, What are the, not even metrics, but the objectives of a business? Are you working somewhere where the goal is to really cut down costs aggressively and reach profitability? Or is it, we're gonna throw money at the problem because we wanna grow? As a simple example, right? Yeah. So if I know which of those 2 businesses I'm interacting with, I know first of all, what are the metrics that should go into my business case that should be emphasized? that I should be optimizing for. And then very importantly, I can't submit a business case and say, oh, this will increase profitability. It's like, no, no, no. What are the cold hard numbers? And I give the same advice when I review people's CVs where I say, look, if you're not quantifying or at least trying to quantify the impact you're having, as the reader, it makes me think you probably don't know what the impact is or it wasn't very high. And especially if you're a product manager, part of your job is to know and quantify and maximize that impact. So it becomes super important that you know this. So yeah, pick the right number and then actually express it as a number. And as a number that maybe the last thing to mention is, is kind of contextualized. So maybe if you work for a gigantic corporation and you tell me you did something that saved $100,000, That could be super impressive, or it could be that you optimize something by 0.001%. So also expressing numbers in a way that's clear— what, why was this good? Uh, in some cases what that can look like, it— yeah, is maybe you're comparing yourself against peers, right? So super common for people in sales, for example, to go, you know, top of Top of my cohort, or I actually don't know what the right terminology is, I forgot. But you can say you did a good job either based on the absolute value of your impact or just by comparing against others.

Yeah, I think that's great. And the contextualizing point in particular, I think, you know, is so important because especially in data product management and a lot of other kind of functional skills like tech or data and analytics, you could be in a B2C business in an unregulated industry and apply for a job that is B2B2C in a highly regulated industry. And actually, the ways of operating and, you know, what a number means is very different in one place versus another. So contextualizing is essential. And saying, listen, you know, we drove 3% improvement, you know, over 3 weeks, you know, just as a benchmark, against a benchmark of driving 0% improvement, you know, over the last 3 years. And 3% improvement led to Y% uplift in revenue overall, and the CEO was able to do ABC. And what you do by that is you enable that person to then say, listen, actually, it's pretty impactful. Like, even the CEO took note about what, you know, what was happening. Now, I know that a lot of us in perhaps individual contributor roles or kind of early on in our career struggle to do that, but ask other people for help of like, okay, I'm working on this. Like, how does this connect to the bigger, broader agenda? Or how does this align with the strategy of what, you know, the CEO talked about on the last town hall? Or just ask the question, how does this connect? And then once they tell you the answer, use that for your own, you know, internal kind of promotion, just in terms of like selling your ideas and, and get— and getting advocacy for the things that you're working on. But use it externally too. Build a story archive of what you want to tell as great stories in an interview and write those metrics down. Now don't share any proprietary numbers, right? Percent digit you know, marketing spend on Google AdWords or things that people, you know, will not want you to share externally, but use percentages and, and show how and contextualize those percentages to make it meaningful and help people understand. Just in the way the news does, right? The news will talk about things like volume of something and then it'll say, oh, that's the equivalent to like 5 double-decker buses. And the minute you've gone from volume of something to 5 double-decker buses, it's like something you can visualize. And that really helps people say, wow, that's enormous, or, oh no, that's really quite small. And it helps people be interested. It brings back to that Hollywood movie sensationalizing point of like, oh wow, that's really big, or wow, that was really fast, or you did that with so few people, or that was really creative, or you broke through those governance barriers that otherwise could like slow something down. I think, you know, those things really help. I think using the numbers is very important and then contextualizing them, basically showing why people should care. Ultimately, that's what you're trying to do. Tell me something and then tell me why I should care about the thing that you're telling me.

That's it. I love the example you gave of, like, data governance hurdles, because there's a lot of things that may have been very challenging that someone on the other end might not fully appreciate.

Yeah.

And I want to ask a slightly— sorry, I want to ask a slightly—

I think in the comments.

Ah, yes, yes. So I hadn't seen the second one. Let's spotlight this one then. Is there a particular way you'd structure the book title given, as you mentioned, the skill set of a product manager is Pretty broad, meaning you can actually fit many roles even if the title is different.

Yep. So I have a little formula for how I'd like to structure the conversation, maybe not so much the book title. So if the book title is the one sentence or thing you want the person to remember about you, I mean, you're in the best place to be able to answer that. What I do with my clients is I help them pick the right sets of things to So perhaps that can be where getting some external advice is very helpful. So working with somebody who either knows you or, you know, instead of perhaps using a coffee chat with somebody in a similar role to you just to talk about different ideas about how you get a job, maybe a good one is, listen, I'm working on how I talk about myself. You know, do you mind if we spend a little bit of time today just like me telling you how I would ordinarily talk about myself? Talk about myself in a conversation, and can I get your feedback about whether this works or not? Be— again, being open, honest, and vulnerable about where you're trying to improve, and again, taking a data-driven way of doing it, which is asking for feedback and seeing what the numbers say, is a great way to go about it. But the most important thing you want to think about when you think about the book title is, does it fit to a sentence, and can you tell it to an 8-year-old, and would they broadly understand

I mean, I totally agree. I want to ask a slightly related question that kind of came up in my mind as you were giving that answer, which is, I think for a lot of data people and a lot of people in tech in general, we are not always the best at tooting our own horn and kind of not just identifying, oh, what's the number? How should I frame it? How should I contextualize it? What's the sentence that can actually be explained to an 8-year-old. But then how often and in what context do I share that? Because we've talked about networking coffee chats, but where do things like either posting on LinkedIn if you're looking externally or sharing, get more credibility within your current organization fit into this?

So You broke up. So summarize that one more time for me, Nick.

Sorry, I don't know what's wrong with my connection today. Basically, where else should someone try and promote themselves, toot their own horn, talk about these achievements?

Yeah, I think that's like, again, a really good question. So I have another thing that I do with my clients, and it's a program called Momentum where I help people already enroll kind of get maximize their impact in the role and also think about their external presence and how they build that picture. So having that narrative about how you talk your to talk about yourself is great because if you end up, I mean, the one everybody talks about is if you end up in this in the lift with the CEO or your boss's boss, what would you say? Right, and that one is always. You should say something about what you do and your role in such a way that they care. So linking it back to something that they, as that person, have said before. So maybe the CEO talking about strategy or a current objective that the business is working on, or an important transformational project that, you know, has C-suite attention. And then something impressive that they would want to then repeat to other people. Helping people look smart. is very helpful, right? So you want to help your boss. And I know this might sound a little bit political, but helping your boss look good helps you look good, right? Just thinking about others, what do they need and how can I help them achieve that? Rather than the place where a lot of us start, which is I'm working really hard on something and I want recognition for the thing I'm spending hours on. Especially in our roles in like data and analytics, sometimes the things you spend hours on are unfortunately not the things that people remember or care. But what they do care about is you built something that created an insight or understood a customer better or helped to sell a product more effectively. And talking about what you did in the context of that makes you very memorable. So finding a way to, you know, have your narrative and say something in such a way that it helps That other person look good and sharing the insight. So actually, in my formula, when I talk about coffee chats with other people, it's great if you have an insight that you find interesting that that person can also share with others. So one is talking about you in a way that they can talk about you in a smart way to other people. But another one is an interesting insight. So that's just think about how many times you've done that before, right? Like, oh, I was listening to the news the other day and I heard da da da da da, or I was. Talking to so-and-so and they said XYZ. Find some interesting insight so that you can also share that with the person. So thinking about that internally too, you know, if I get caught in the lift with someone or I walk into my boss's boss, what would be the thing that I would say to them in that moment? And thinking about it in advance, like once every couple of months, write it down. What would be that thing that you would say? Because it probably changes every couple of months. So working on that internally. And then externally, it's about— which was another really, you know, great part of your question, Nick. Externally, it's about, well, what do you— who's listening to you on your LinkedIn page? And who are you trying to market to, I think, is the first important question. And perhaps if you're very early on in your career, maybe you're just building your presence within your organization. And there you should be all about what I call drinking the organizational Kool-Aid, right? So like your LinkedIn banner should be the corporate banner. And how do you show that you're, you know, being part of the organization to the greatest extent possible? And then share great things that help that organization to look good. If you're later on in your career, perhaps you're establishing yourself amongst a peer group, or if you're even later in your career, perhaps you've already been established in your peer group. But actually, what you want to be on is the radar of other hiring managers. So perhaps at that stage, it's a CEO, or, you know, if you're a chief data and analytics officer, it could be a CEO, it could be a chief digital officer, it could be a chief product officer. We know that, you know, these things— chief operating officer— this is kind of evolving a lot at the moment. So be thoughtful about, you know, whose radar are you trying to get on, and therefore, what do you say as And share as part of that.

And one thing I'd add to that last point is also think, where, where else do these people hang out and how can I put myself in front of them? Not just wait for someone to get stuck in the lift with me. Like, are there meetups or events or other conferences that I can go to to meet that kind of persona? And similarly, like, one thing I found with posting on LinkedIn is You can really tailor the post to the audience. Like, not just what are the ideas I wanna share about, but also how do I word it? Like, do I talk about the problems you are facing in your projects, or is it the problems your teams are facing in their projects? That speaks to a different level of seniority.

Yes, I love that. And Nick, you raised such a good point about where are these people hanging out and where I meet them, right? Satya Nadella would talk about earlier on in his career how he would have, you know, 20-minute sessions once a week where you could just like book to go meet and talk to him in his office. And it wasn't one-to-one, it was a group thing. But still there would be like 10 slots and you could book a session and go talk for a little bit. You know, imagine if maybe someone in your organization is doing that. Or people talk about having open-door policies. Don't wait till there's a problem to go sit with somebody. Go book the time and go talk to somebody and make sure you've got your pitch prepared. You've got a good, exciting metric you're going to talk about and a good question you're going to ask them that's engaging about them to get that dialogue going. And especially in an environment where a lot of people are understandably enjoying working from home, make those in-office experiences so enhanced and so valuable by seeking these opportunities out. One of the best chief data and analytics officers, or one of the best people I saw kind of doing promotion in a certain kind of way, and he happened to be a chief data and analytics officer, was every Sunday he'd send his CEO a summary email. And his summary email would be those sorts of quotes that the CEO would want to say to his team, and maybe, you know, the board, when they were caught in the hallway. And so he was helping prepare his CEO in advance without the CEO even asking. Now, you don't have to have CEO access to do and take the lessons from this. If you're, if you work for someone and you, they ask for a weekly update, that, you know, that is what it is, but use them for the best that you possibly can. How do you turn that from a, like, activity list of here's what I've been doing this week into a value-led insight sheet of here's some amazing stuff that, you know, I've helped bring about at this point? And, you know, Nick, what could people do by using that sort of thing for gaining advocacy, maybe for a product or project that they're working on?

I mean, they can get that advocacy, but actually I wanna comment on the fact that if you're listening to this and you're thinking, I don't care about what I can do with my current CEO 'cause I've left that company, or because you're planning to leave, you can take this same exact advice and apply it to the one-to-many communication of places like LinkedIn or showing up at an event and basically talking to strangers. Which is how can you share something that's gonna be useful to them? It's not just something that, that's self-promotional for you. Like, I, I never understand when people only use LinkedIn to share. Well, I understand it, but I don't, um, to be like, I've earned a certificate, I got this promotion. It's like, okay, good for you, but this is not useful besides someone getting a life update. If you're gonna use LinkedIn, to get to your next job, it cannot be through posts that are just about what you are doing. There has to be some value exchange, but you can combine the two, right? It can be, here's what I learned from this one project. I'm giving you the takeaway that you can take and quote, you can apply to your work, or you can share it with others, make you look, you know, make the reader feel smarter. In the exact same way that Julia was talking about it in terms of make your boss look good. Like, and that's why for me, the, when I decided that, okay, I think in a few years from now I wanna go down the self-employment route, I knew LinkedIn was gonna have to be a big part of that. And so my LinkedIn posts turned into being mostly like, I wanna say educational, or at least the, the way I think about it is I share lessons that me from 2 years ago would've appreciated. Yeah. And it, and so far it's, it's, it's, worked quite well. So yeah, think, think about that principle of how can I make this valuable to my target audience in whatever context you are talking about. It's not, don't, don't just take the example as this advice only applies to this type of example.

Yeah, that's great. Nick, there are a couple other good comments and questions on LinkedIn.

Yes.

There's actually a previous one too. Do you wanna? Great.

Yes.

So, this individual is asking about, listen, of course, ideally, we would quantify the impact of everything we have done, but maybe we weren't in a place where it was possible. And so, what could we do? Does that sound like a good characterization? Yes. We couldn't have done it otherwise without it. But listen, what can you do? Some things you can do when maybe you don't have the data, that, you know, to be able to quantify something in the way that you would ideally like. Let's start with perhaps you left the organization. And now you're at a point where you don't have that data. Well, what I do with my clients is we work on their network. So meeting people for coffee who are still at that company and asking what the impact was. So even if you left the business, if you started something, and this kind of relates to the, to the second question as well. You know, if you've started something, um, and you've left, uh, but you— and you weren't able to quantify it at the time that you were there, perhaps they've quantified it now. And, and take that win. Just say, listen, I put in place the early foundations for something that ultimately delivered X, and you're able to then quantify it because ultimately it delivered something and you played an important part of that. Um, and if you're working on If you're working on something that, you know, before wasn't able to measure and then was able to measure because of something you put in place, talk about how game-changing it's been to be for that organization to be able to measure. You know, before we weren't and we weren't prioritizing our efforts and we weren't seeing the impact and now we are. And by the way, we're able to do more interesting projects and get more interesting work and win better clients or customers as a result.

I wanna add one more comment, which is to the last part of the question, saying I've tried asking the business and their response was whatever. It is not as simple as I'm just gonna ask the business. Sometimes it is if they've already done the quantification, but a lot of the time it is a team effort. You need to lead the business to understand, 'cause if it's a measurement problem, it's basically a data problem. Yeah. For me, it's something I learned the hard way after a few times of being used to, oh, someone else in the business knows the impact, I can just take the number. Being in some— no one. And I would ask my stakeholders like, hey, what's the ultimate impact of this? And they'd go, oh, the impact is X operational metric. I'm like, no, but how do we convert that to dollars? And they're like, oh, it's impossible. Because they never have to do that as part of their jobs, right? Like that, um, to the— I can't see, it says LinkedIn user, but whoever asked this question, uh, I'd urge you to go to the webinars from last week where we talk about this in more detail. It's such an important part of, for me, the product manager's toolkit, being able to work with the business to guide them to that. It's not just quantification, by the way. It's not just I've delivered impact. Now let's translate that into euros, pounds, or dollars. If you don't know how to do that, there's a good chance what you're building is not delivering impact because you've not had that conversation with stakeholders to align to the, to the bottom line impact that you wanna, you wanna drive. Which I know is not helpful if you're like, but I've done the project already. But think about it for the next one too.

Yeah, that's great. And I think, listen, that whole idea of just sitting with someone and saying, listen, I get that you can't, but let's, you know, how could we start? The concept of, you know, not making someone feel uncomfortable because they don't know how to quantify it, but kind of co-owning that and saying, listen, okay, you know, how could we measure it? Let's imagine we wanted to, you know, how could we measure it? Would it be this? Would it be that? Proactively going with ideas, doing some thinking in advance, you know, not getting to, oh, I don't, I don't know the answer and just going to ask them for the solution, but actually thinking ahead of saying, okay, what if they say they don't know? How could I, what would be the next step for me in this conversation? What might I be able to propose? Because you'd be amazed sometimes that whole blameless, you know, blameless kind of exploration of, oh, okay, that's interesting. So you. you say you can't quantify it, like, do you look at it in terms— could you look at it in terms of this, or what drives that, or what do you measure? Figuring out what they do measure might get you closer to an answer for the thing that you're trying to solve.

I think we have just about time for one last question, so I'll put Gordon's question up here. If my work is Had been a lot of smaller impacts across teams and stakeholders that are difficult to contextualize and visualize on their own. Do you have any advice on how to build a more effective narrative holistically?

Yeah, that's a great question, Jordan. First, I would— or Gordon— I would just encourage you to think about that chapters way of talking about your experience. And then can you build a narrative of those projects within that particular chapter? And perhaps the big headline message for you is just you've worked on that sort of thing in a number of different places. So maybe it's monetizing a data product and kind of seeing it from 0 to 1, or maybe it's going from 1 to 100 and you're talking more about the scaling and the sort of, you know, different capabilities you need to put in place to be able to scale. Have a think about what were you doing, what were some of those enablers or small impact impacts that you were doing, and is there a way to describe it in that, you know, in the phase type way I was talking about before? That's one. 2 is taking the bigger win of what you were working on. So if your piece was just, in your words, you know, not mine, smaller impacts across teams and maybe stakeholders, what were those teams and stakeholders trying to do, and can you take the bigger win as part of that? So it's sort of like the other side of the quantification problem or the impact description problem, which is saying, listen, perhaps it's not you, but perhaps you didn't do something on— you did some small aspect, but actually, can you claim the win or being associated with the win of the bigger project that got delivered?

I really like that. All right, we are 1 minute over time, so I'm afraid we'll have to cut it here. But Julia, thank you so much for making the time, and to everyone who joined for your questions. I know people are a bit more shy about this one because it's slightly more of a thing you don't want to broadcast that you're, you're thinking about maybe, but I hope everyone found this useful. Thank you. Uh, oh, before I forget, I'm just gonna quickly spotlight not this bit, but this bit. Our next webinar is on December 11th with Andrew Jones that I think I saw in the comments earlier. Uh, very different conversation. We're going to talk about driving data quality and what is a data contract and how it can help unlock that.

Great.

Um, so hopefully see you there. Julia, thanks again for coming.

Thank you.

Have a great day, everyone.

You too. Bye.