From: Date: March 9, 2021 Subject: HTC News: Is it Spring Break Yet...
HTC News: Is It Spring Break Yet...
Hi First_Name, we hope you had a wonderful weekend! Let's ignore the fact that we're coming up on almost a year in quarantine, and focus on the fact that Spring Break is coming up soon!
While we all work on our Spring Break bods, let's dive into the ever-changing tech world!
John has a point...
Fresh New Jobs For You
Please check out the following useful links for upcoming internships and full-time roles!
3/16, How to Plan for the Future by Former Apple PM: Product Management today is the hot trend that everyone wants to be a part of. And there's lots that you can learn from established professionals. So when you're starting out your Product Management career, how should you go about it? What are the key tools you need to consider?
3/20, Navigating the Tech World With Women of Color in Tech: Join us for a virtual event where we will be joined by an amazing panel that will speak about their journeys being women of color in tech, their specialties and much more! All are welcomed and encouraged to attend! Register at girlsdreamcode.org/events.
3/25, Facebook Marketing with Michele Ngueyep: In this session, Michèle will share how to create campaigns that have specific goals: advertising objectives and how to create ads within those campaigns to help you reach those objectives. She'll cover how to start reaching your ideal customers, how to set up your campaigns, construct effective messages, and how to convert your audience into paying customers across a Family of apps. Michèle shares how to optimize your budget to help you get more value out of your marketing dollars.
Never a dull moment!
(And yes we're 10 months away from Christmas but is there really ever a wrong time for the Grinch...)
Brain Power
Podcast of the Week: Zoom Dating - Fighting Zoom fatigue, major Microsoft hack, ending 3rd party cookies, Dorsey's NFT: The title says it all! Don't miss out on this week's tech happenings with this podcast. Book of the Week: Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love: How do today’s most successful tech companiesÔÇòAmazon, Google, Facebook, Netflix, TeslaÔÇòdesign, develop, and deploy the products that have earned the love of literally billions of people around the world? Perhaps surprisingly, they do it very differently than the vast majority of tech companies. In INSPIRED, technology product management thought leader Marty Cagan provides readers with a master class in how to structure and staff a vibrant and successful product organization, and how to discover and deliver technology products that your customers will loveÔÇòand that will work for your business. Career Tip of the Week: Recruiting, academics, social lives, and so much more can become overhwhelming. If this resonates with you, check out 5 Brilliant Ways to Take Your Stress Down a Notch.
1. What did your day to day look like as a Client Success Manager at Yelp?
For some context, my department at Yelp worked with restaurants who signed up for SaaS products that Yelp had acquired in 2014 and 2016, which they dubbed Yelp Reservations and Yelp Waitlist (rebranded from the original names of SeatMe and NoWait). If you've ever booked a reservation on Yelp, you've probably used the product!
I oversaw three teams, two focused on customer service and were directly managed by two other managers who reported to me. They would field calls from clients ranging from broken iPads, to shoddy WiFi connections, to bug reporting and troubleshooting the software. They were very smart people who had to have great translation, investigation skills, and most importantly patience, because busy restaurant owners aren't always cool, calm and collected when having technical difficulties.
My third team was a client retention team that experimented with promotions that could be offered to prevent customer churn. This team was great because it allowed us to make changes to the value the organization brought to clients. If a client called in because the product didn't do something they wanted, we would work with the client to figure out what the missing feature was, and either offer them a product that was a better fit, or gather that feedback to present to the product management team. We rigorously tracked which solutions had the best rate of saving clients and used that data to make recommendations to sales and product management.
2. What are some of your favorite moments as well as biggest challenges you experienced in your role?
As a manager, some of my favorite moments were watching employees progress and get promoted, or learn new skills and then teach them to teammates. Watching people grow in to their roles, become more confident and carve out specializations for themselves based on what they're interested in is one of the best parts about being a manager in any role.
Working in customer success for a restaurant focused product, one major highlight was getting to know some really cool restaurant owners, especially when you could visit the restaurant in person and learn about the owner, why they're passionate about the food they cook and how much they care about their diner experience. The challenge in that is that restaurant owners are super busy people, and so you'd get calls from a flustered owner or floor staff member who didn't always have a lot of patience. On the whole though, it was a great job that taught me a lot about communication (and patience).
3. How is Yelp's company culture?
Yelp's culture is highly dependent on what department you work in. Sales at Yelp is known to be highly demanding and competitive, and while I worked in that department right out of college for a year and a half, it wasn't my cup of tea. Moving over to account management/customer success was a much better culture fit, filled with teammates who wanted to connect with businesses to build long term relationships. For those interested in Product Management, they had a very similar solutions-oriented and customer-centric mentality.
4. Any advice you have for students who are pivoting into tech, or into Yelp specifically?
For anyone interested in Yelp or tech, I think that passion/fit for the space is one of the most important parts to show in the interview. Tech companies are very intentional about their values and mission statement, so if you're interested in Yelp for example, you would want to show why you are passionate about helping restaurants or small local businesses.
5. What do you like to do in your spare time?
I think a lot of people know this already, but for those who don't, I'm a huge huge (almost obsessive) sci-fi/fantasy story fan. Whether it's Star Wars, Game of Thrones, the MCU or anything by Brandon Sanderson, I think half of my free time is spent listening to audiobooks or watching movies/tv from those IPs.
I'm also a huge (American) football fan, I mostly watch professional vs. college, but I'll catch every Cal game no matter how heartbreaking. Until the season starts, you can catch me watching draft film for whoever may fall to the Niners at the 12th pick and rewatching highlights from the 2019 Super Bowl run.
