“I decided to really just flex my brain in a different way,” said Jess. “ I recognised in myself that I’m not just a person who wants to run financial models and I’m not just a person who wants to make pitch decks.”
Jess is one of the speakers we invited to She Made It — a new event series designed to help women take control of their career destinies.
Covering topics including career change, workplace wellbeing and more, each event brings together women who are experts in their field with those looking to own their work life.
On July 3rd, our first session was Land your dream job: How we tried, failed and triumphed with the following speakers:
- Jessica Sapick — Google Product Marketing Manager and founder of highbrow eyewear
- Charlotte Zhao — codebar Director and founder of ALA Learning
- Becks Hookham — Makers Careers coach with 6 years experience in the education, tech and medical fields.
Here are some of our notes on what they had to say.
Personal growth means leaving your comfort zone.
Jess reflected on her transition from finance to fashion to Google.
“I wasn’t ready to make the financial or time investment in going back to school and studying something totally different,” she said. While she was working as a venture capital analyst, she found herself relaxing after work through designing her own line of handmade upcycled eyewear.
How did she find herself at New York Fashion Week? “I learned and gathered the skills that I needed to be more legitimate than just a person tinkering around with in my own bedroom. It wasn’t something that just happened overnight.”
“I had to become the sort of person that I never thought I could be — a PR and sales person and a marketer. I had to put myself out there to everyone under the sun: music, video producers, fashion labels, stylists. I had to work on harnessing my own energy, my own power, my own passion and turning it into something.” It was through that experience that she gained the marketing skills that got her into an entry-level role at Google — she rose to becoming a Product Marketing Manager.
Often you find great jobs through word-of-mouth.
Charlotte shared how she went from working at Bloomberg as a Relationship Manager before transitioning to Financial Software Developer. “Truly, it wasn’t a clear path. There were tons of doubts along the way,” she says.
“I got these leads to potential jobs through personal contacts,” she said, sharing how referral schemes were a key part of her progression. Even though we’re living in a tech-focused society, she found that a lot of jobs are still not posted online.
“You’ve got to hear it from someone. And it’s to your advantage that most companies, especially the big ones, have these referral schemes — it’s a win win situation, right? You get a clearer route into the company, and your referrer gets a bonus.”
She said if you were looking for a job in a particular industry, the best thing is to ask anyone you know if they can refer you, as it saves you jumping through a lot of hoops that come with the traditional CV-based paths.
You create your future self (instead of finding it).
Our careers coach Becks talked about how the mistake we often make with career change is thinking that it happens through introspection. While some of it might involve journaling and looking inside yourself, waiting for the lightbulb moment, she said that doing comes first, knowing comes second.
“Your future isn’t inside yourself. It is out here. You might be sitting next to inspiration right now. Rather than looking into our past, it’s important to start speaking to our future and testing all the options out there in a systematic way.”
She said, to make a career change, part of it involves “getting your journals out and asking yourselves questions” — these include:
- What do I want to do?
- Who do I admire?
- What careers do I want to find out more about?
- If I had five lives, what would they be?
She said it’s crucial to start to experiment with these things. To experience them so that we have some data to reflect on when it comes to making our transition.
