I got the word that I was ‘being affected by the downsize’ in early May, 2009.  I immediately jumped into a full time job search within HP.  I spent 6 solid weeks applying, sending emails, interviewing and stalking old managers for help.  But it didn’t go anywhere.  Had I been willing to move to the Bay Area, I probably would have found a job at HP.  But that’s not something I could do. 

By early July, I knew HP wasn’t going to pan out for me.  I had had some interviews with one other company external to HP and those were continuing, but I hadn’t done a lot of networking or looking outside of HP, so it was time to shift gears.  However, since we had a big trip to the desert southwest planned – I decided to take most of July off and pick up the job search in August. 

We had a wonderful time.

Grand Canyon

Santa Fe

Points in between

In addition to the southwest trip, we went to Tahoe a few times, we went to Pismo Beach and Santa Barbara, and visited our favorite place in the world – Lakes Basin north of Truckee.  It was a great time.

But then I got to work.  I took advantage of all the services of Lee Hecht Harrison – the awesome outplacement firm/service that HP provided.  I took PMP courses online for free, I joined a job search ‘support group’, I worked on my resume, my summary, my cover letters, my list of target companies.  And I networked like crazy.  Here’s what I did:

1) Contact everyone I could track down that I knew here in the area and tried to have a face to face meeting

2) I used LinkedIn like crazy.  I could use it from the ‘Company A has a posting do I know anyone there” point of view.  I could use it from the “I want to work at Company B – do I know anyone or does anyone I know know someone there.”  Or I could use it from the “where do my friends’ friends work?  Are there any cool opportunities there?”  People in LinkedIn – sometimes total strangers – were all VERY helpful.  The key is to be able to tell them specifically how they can help.  More on that below.  I also signed up for JobAngels and other groups relevant to my background where jobs were often posted.

3) I stayed in touch with people who had tried to help.  As the months wore on, I reconnected and check back in with people periodically.

You can’t just ask people if they know of any jobs – most people don’t.  What you need to is ask people if they know any one in your target companies, if they know any other companies you should look at, and if you have found an opportunity – ask people if they have any contacts that might help you.  Help comes from odd places.  I had one great job opportunity come from a friend at my gym.  Church was a good source of ideas too.  My sister’s neighbors were helpful.  I mean, you have to tell every man, woman, child, dog – whoever you come in contact with that you are looking for a job.

But many people don’t understand what I do or what I would be looking for – so you really need to have your ‘elevator statement’ down – a quick blurb to explain to people what you do. 

At the end of the day, I calculate:

I talked to over 20 people face-to-face

I talked to 15 recruiters

I networked with over 200 people – email, LinkedIn, Facebook and twitter

I had close to 20 interviews

At the end of the day, one contact with a supplier that I hired at HP led to a job.  A contact in June, led to a possibility in August, which led to an interview in October, which led to an offer on Christmas Eve, which led to a late January start date.

I need to keep writing.  I enjoy it and it has served me well.  Once I start my job, I’ll write another post.  Maybe by then I’ll decide the fate of my blogging future.

Godspeed to all.

- They don’t have time:  When it became apparent that we needed to moderate the online user forums for my products, no manager was willing to provide resources to do it.  So unhappy, verbal, know-it-all users (customers) filled in and began answering questions for other users.  We didn’t have time or resources to correct statements or police bad-mouthing.  This led to the jobs of the sales people, pre-sales consultants, and marketing people being that much harder.

- They don’t have ‘approval’.  Most large companies closely guard their brand and corporate voice.  The process of getting customer facing blogs approved is generally arduous and arbitrary (hmm…that sounds like the title of a future post).  In my situation, we continued to rely on the old methods of reaching customers – through sales teams.  Sales teams that were overwhelmed, under-trained, and apathetic.

- They don’t see enterprise customers as consumers of social media.  This, I believe is a huge misconception.  As products became more complex and companies outsourced tech support to developing countries, enterprise customers have had no choice but to surf the web for solutions to their problems.  They are using blogs and forums primarily, but are also drifting into Twitter. 

Enterprise customers, while complex and labyrinthine, are still a group of people acting individually.  Technology and service marketers and customer service teams need to create a strong social media presence for a variety of audiences and purposes in order to be taken seriously.

http://holykaw.alltop.com/twueless-how-fortune-100-companies-suck-at-tw

Phew!  Well that’s only the 1/2 of it.  You also have to have your strategy story ready in a slide set or briefing paper – because your customers are going to ask you about how this release fits in to the overall strategy for the product.  The product roadmap is a little like reading tea leaves, as you never really know if all the various pieces are going to fall into place as planned.  But you need to have goals, right!

I’m going to change the title in my heading now.  Woohoo!

#1 – Which is more important getting it out on time or getting it out bug free.

#2 - Whether or not uses cases have been properly documented.  This gets tedious when you are talking about changing the name of a field or something.  On the other hand, I’ve also had IT point out that if we give the customer ‘feature X’ then ‘feature D’ will work differently.  It’s best to have a good working relationship between IT and product marketing.

#3 – Whether that problem the customer is having is because their environment is ‘jacked’ or because the software has a bug.  Let me tell you – this generally results in a lot of people getting involved in a technology version of ‘he said/she said’.  Generally, I ask my friendly tech support people to try to reproduce the issue on a clean system.  This usually ends the debate.

#4 – Whether a product feature is important or not.  Marketing generally spends a great deal of time vetting features before introducing them to the development team.  Features may be submitted by customers, by sales or vertical market teams, by channel partners, by tech support or by other development teams who have some dependency on the products.  It’s marketing’s job to decide which of these requests are compelling and create a differentiator for the product.  Often marketing will go to great lengths to show the relevance and importance of a feature (or even a new product altogether), only to have IT say “eh - customers don’t really want that.” 

#5 – What the future of the product line holds.  Again, this is an area with a strong relationship between IT and marketing is critical.  Marketing brings to the table industry trends – competition, technology, etc.  IT brings to the table the core technology expertise and the wherewithal to understand what’s coming next that customers will likely want to adopt.  The challenge is to be cutting edge without leaving slow-to-change enterprise customers in the dust.

Sacramento has long been a ‘sleepy little town’ when it comes to the business and technology scene.  But a young dynamic social media evangelist, Alejandro Reyes, has been increasing the collective community knowledge on social media marketing.  Looking for a social media networking group to get involved with, I ran across Alejandro through Meetup.com.  (Yes, MeetUp is more than politics!)  Alejandro’s energy and excitement ensured that I got involved and stayed involved in the local social media ‘brain trust.’

So far I have started this blog, began tweeting in earnest – mostly watching for interesting employment trends and the occasional “not tweeted 20 times’ job opportunity, and I created a Facebook Fan page for a non-profit I am associated with.  I’ve also squeezed every ounce out of LinkedIn – connecting with friends of friends, keeping my network apprised of my job search progress, and making sure my ‘brand Amy’ is easy to understand.

At the same time, I’m studying for my Project Management Professional Certification (PMP).  I’ll blog more on that closer to test date, but I am a busy lady!  And I’m energized because I’m learning new stuff EVERY SINGLE DAY (including weekends and holidays.)

When I got my MBA at Santa Clara University, there was a big emphasis on leadership.  Yes, we were learning calculus, statistics, organizational theory, financial models for the management of corporate capital and the like.  But the foundation upon which much of this was presented was from the point of view of creating leaders.  One book that was recommended to us broke the leadership story into twelve or thirteen chapters.  A few of them speak to me:

Envisioning the Future: I do this in business – product and project management – every day.  I know where I want to end up.  I can see it very clearly – I can see the outcomes, the benefits, the happy customers, the glowing press reviews.  But sometimes the people I am trying to lead can’t see past the first hill.  People get so hung up about hills they have to climb, rivers they have to cross and difficult customers they have to talk to – they don’t spend any time talking about the end result.  This is something I do all the time.  It’s the way I get people on board when a project is just starting or when we have to change direction for a better outcome. 

Strengthen Others:  The sub-title on this chapter is “Sharing Power and Information.”  I had a boss – one of the greatest bosses I had – who often told his staff “My job is to work myself out of a job.”  In other words, if I train, coach and mentor you people right – then you can do my job and the company can get rid of me.  I thought that was the most amazing attitude.  While I have learned – both through education and on the job training – that information is power, I have always felt that you gain more power by sharing more information.  I’ve often marveled at people who hoard information in an effort to make themselves seem more powerful.  But the best leaders give their power away!  When I work on a team or manage a group of people, I keep this in mind and I encourage people to step forward and get involved in the leadership or management aspects of a project. 

My non-profit friends need someone to guide them to the future.  I’m fortunate – I can guide myself to my own future.

So let’s pretend I’m a product.  I have many competitors with experience in cradle to grave product management, product and brand marketing, business analysis, program management, project management, direct marketing, marketing communications, competitive analysis, sales support, sales training, marketing strategy development, product pricing and positioning, global team management, market research design and execution – for example.  And there are probably plenty of people who have created detail business plans, who have written project charters, who have prepared complex return on investment analyses, who have written 60+ page RFPs, who have created gi-normous business requirements documents by combining features from 2 existing systems, from user requests and input, from technology advances, and from competitive analysis, and who have written dozens of use cases for their friends in engineering/development/IT.  And I would even guess there are lots of people who, like me, have managed complex multi-region programs with sub-projects and numerous team members, who have managed dashboards, and project schedules, and created presentations and status reports for senior management.

And there are probably people who have worked on printer software drivers, workflow tools, document management applications, who have implemented procurement systems and content management systems, who have managed publishing platform software, who have worked on medical books and software, and who have turned static, written content into electronically navigable software or touch screen applications.  Oh, I bet there’s all kinds of people out there.

But how many people have a track record characterized by relationship building, by demonstrating top notch influencing skills, who successfully gained sponsorship on unpopular projects by building trust and showing benefits?  How many people truly feel the customer and the sales team are the most important voice in a new product development cycle?  How many people have managers say things like “when I want something done – I give it to Amy”?  How many people actually LIKE presenting in front of hundreds of people?  How many people can write blogs like this?

How many Amy Evans’ are there?  Wait, don’t answer that.  How many Amy L. Evans’ of Roseville CA who have all these skills are there?  ZERO!  Just me.

When you work in product or program management you spend a good deal of time justifying the projects you are working on.  I have introduced new ideas to upper management that vary in scale and purpose.  Here’s a sampling:

• Proposal to create software products based on traditional medical books (approved – executed)
• Business case to create a ‘new media’ spin off for an enterprise software company (rejected – thank goodness)
• Proposal to redesign an employee website with over 50,000 users to improve usability (approved – executed)
• Proposal to purchase an enterprise content management system to streamline catalog content (rejected – no money)
• Proposal to reduce print suppliers by 80% in order to gain pricing/economy of scale benefits (approved – executed)
• Business case to purchase, rebrand and market an encrypted hard-drive for security conscious customers (approved – partially executed – stalled due to recession)

What I learned that the college-age Amy didn’t know is that there needs to be a significant ROI in order for executives to approve funding for any program.  And you need to demonstrate how you will measure success.  You need to demonstrate what steps you will take to achieve success.  And like any good project or program manager, you need to talk about what risks are out there, what assumptions you are making, and what experts or research you worked with to create the business case or proposal.

I have always enjoyed working on programs from start to finish.  I enjoy building that business case, tweaking it, presenting it, tweaking it again…  Well I’m going to get off topic.  But starting new programs is a lot of fun. 

I’ve also gotten to work on proposals for customers, where it is not only important to talk about how your product or service will provide them a return on their investment – but also to talk about how it can create a greater value for them.  Your software may be purchased because it can help save money, but maybe it will also increase customer or employee retention.  Maybe it will generate buzz about the customer with their competitors.  It’s a great feeling to really solve a customer’s problem and add some other, less tangible value.

So, if I’d known all this back then, the asking for money question would have gone something like this: “Dad, if you give me $50 more this month, I will be able to attend a cultural event which will broaden my horizons – thus providing an even greater value to the educational experience you are providing me.”