You are techY podcast

Ellen: 00:03
You are listening to the you are techie podcast, episode number twenty-four.

Intro: 00:12
Welcome to the You are techY podcast where it’s all about growing in your techy-ness so you can find the tech job of your dreams and now your host technology learning coach, Ellen Twomey.

Ellen: 00:32
This podcast is sponsored by our all new course, What Tech job is Right For Me? Visit us at youaretechy.com/start to check out our new course and find what tech job is right for you!

Ellen: 00:49
You have a specialist treat today on the podcast, I’ll be interviewing two lovely ladies from The Mom Project. They connect talented women with a world-class employers that respect work in life integration. How cool is that Colleen Curtis joins us as the head of community and communications where she oversees community UX. We love that. In product strategy, service and events as well as serves as the public relations and social media lead. Colleen previously worked in marketing at knock.com and Yelp. Her coworkers have described her as she’s one of those people where you’re just in awe of her ability to execute on a million things at once. Literally a million. Colleen has an undergraduate and graduate degrees both in marketing from Loyola university and Northwestern university respectively. As an active mom of two boys ages six and one and a half. Colleen loves to travel and spend time walking with the only girl in her house, her dog.

Ellen: 01:56
The director of product management at the The Mom Project, Margot ensures that the members of the mom project are being connected with flexible, meaningful work. She connects the business with the product design and engineering teams to build the features that make this possible. Margot has spent the majority of her career in product serving as a senior product manager for grub hub and VP of product for higher allergy. Margot’s tenacity, patience, attention to detail, and ability to navigate. Complex technical decisions have been admired by her coworker. She’s a graduate of the university of Wisconsin medicine go badgers and the Chicago school of professional psychology. Margo enjoys talking about outer space with her three year old son, Levi in dabbles in making jewelry in her spare time. Colleen, Margo, welcome to the show.

Colleen: 02:49
Thank you so much.

Margot: 02:50
Yeah. Thank you for having us.

Ellen: 02:52
Okay. Let’s jump into the interview starting with a not super easy question, but if you could each a turn to tell us about your career journey and how motherhood played a role in your career decisions as to women in tech at a tech company.

Margot: 03:09
My career journey, I think, um, interestingly, I really truly never thought that I would be considering myself a technologist in any way, shape or form. It was kind of a joke amongst my family that I break technology within a five foot radius of me and I still do it today, but this is like always been the case. Like take me to a near a printer. It will take me to an elevator sign of a great technologist. Absolutely. Uh, so, uh, so I actually started out not knowing that I wanted to get into technology at all. I kind of fell into it, which I think is kind of a common path for product people.

Ellen: 03:57
For sure.

Margot: 03:57
Later on I think it’s becoming, more common for people to know starting out that they want to get into product management. But that was not a thing for me while I was in school. So I was always was just really interesting people actually started my career, uh, out of college selling makeup because I didn’t know what I wanted to do yet.

Margot: 04:21
Yeah. I suppose still have a hard time even in product, even though I’ve been in it for a long time, through most of my career, I still have a hard time identifying myself as know a techie…if you will. Uh, but yeah, really just learning. Mmm. Well the challenges associated with figuring out how to use technology to solve problems. Motherhood has been, I’d say, a big factor in my choice of company obviously. But, so I started to become just really passionate about workplaces and specifically respectful managers who can kind of understand the challenges associated with motherhood. And that’s kind of ultimately what led me to the people at The Mom Project.

Ellen: 05:10
Absolutely. What about you?

Colleen: 05:13
Yes. So I also came by way of technology as a 25 year old, no kids single. I joined Yelp as a remote community managers events and really sort this grassroots effort to build community. But for a tech company, that was before tech was a thing. Right. So my dad was horrified I was leaving my very stable job in real estate. I joined, I joined them in 2008. I was, I was very fortunate to have worked on the kind of infrastructure layer at Yelp and building community and stayed there for 10 years and had my first child at Yelp while out on assignment in London. Um, and so having my first baby in an organization that was relatively young, so the workforce was relatively young, so at the time didn’t have any paid leave. Um, my European colleagues were horrified that I was coming back to work after 12 weeks, much of which was unpaid. Umm. And so a real eye opening experience that only I’m going to be having a child in a company that was sort of going through adolescence, you know, as a, as a company, but also to be surrounded by European workforce that had a whole different, um, viewpoint on how mothers should be treated and, and I stayed at the company for another three years and they evolve their policies and their culture significantly. No one has to pump in a supply closet anymore like I did.

Ellen: 06:50
Been there. I’ve been there. Yeah.

Colleen: 06:53
So I left Yelp, um, the end of 2016 and moved back to the US, I had joined the mom project. Uh, I had been referred to it by an acquaintance just to pick up consulting gigs cause I then found out I was pregnant with my second. Um, so I joined them on project was matched to their director of marketing. Thought okay I mean I’m eight months pregnant at the time. I might as well throw my hat in days later, had an offer and started I think a week later. So I feel really fortunate to be able to build a community in a platform for moms that go through the same evolution as we did because we ultimately feel like, Mmm, you shouldn’t have to choose between work and family but also that, we can you know, build this product and this platform that allows people to thrive in both of those places.

Ellen: 07:41
Yes. So that is fantastic. Such a great story. Um, I’ll start off by telling both of you, reminded you how you are so techie. You’re both so techie no matter what you are in the code. And, um, and then Colleen I want to follow up with you that um, I can’t tell you, I’m like getting emotional. How important your story of getting hired at eight months pregnant is. I hear this again and again in, in and around our community that well, you know, I need to wait, what if, but I know I’m not my, you know, I’m not my best self and I certainly like I had my first kid, I went back to work and I was like devastated. She didn’t sleep for a year, which I thought was bad until I had my, but I wasn’t the same person and my employer was fine with that but I wasn’t and I just thought I wasn’t enough, wasn’t enough, wasn’t enough. And I hear this all the time about like, well, if I have another one, I have to wait. If I want to have another baby and nobody who wants, I literally heard this again, again, who wants someone who’s eight months pregnant? And apparently the answer is the mom project because there are companies out there, I keep telling them, I yes, there are people who will look at you and reject you and say no. Yes. But then there are other people who are like, bring it on. You know?

Colleen: 09:02
Yeah. I mean my personal opinion is you should own what your story is that you are the whole package regardless of your pregnancy status or your child’s status. Right. Right. Doorstep of the right company. And if you are being rejected because of any of those factors, you literally don’t want them. I did not want to work somewhere that can’t take me eight months pregnant. Like I know what I can deliver. You don’t want that. Better to find out upfront.

Ellen: 09:35
I know. It’s almost like a good screen. Walk in…see what happens. If they are like whoa, then you’re like not for me, you know? Okay. So because we have such, because you are so techie, I’d love to dive in and get what I love is like the day to day telling people like, um, don’t you know, I’m sure it’s amazing. You worked in an amazing company everything is rosy, but just tell us what you do on a daily basis. I am sure everyday is not the same, but like what are some things that you do frequently? Margot, do you want to start?

Margot: 10:08
Sure. So I truly do struggle with the question on a day to day basis, what do you do so much any given day? Let’s take yesterday for example, meeting with stakeholders and people in the business to make sure we as a product team are prioritizing the most important things according to them and also sharing and being transparent about what’s being worked on on this side so that there isn’t a lot of basically a lot of context sharing. So in some ways I’ve bridged the gap I think in the middle of the Venn diagram, if you will, between what’s happening on product design and engineering and the rest of the business. And so it’s making sure that both sides have all the information that they need to be able to operate the most effectively.

Margot: 11:05
So that kind of thing. It’s sitting in design meetings and looking over some of the awesome work that our design team is doing. I’m working with an engineer on solving a tough technical problem that we can’t quit. You know we didn’t think we were going to, we thought we were going to be able to do some build a feature this way. Turns out we can’t. And so what’s the best like compromise or what’s the best kind of, Mmm, it is sitting in a room with the team, trying to figure out how best to move the needle on a certain metric that we know is really important. So a lot of collaborating, lot of working together, a lot of context sharing. I would say.

Ellen: 11:47
That’s, I like that actually. I think diplomat is positive. A lot of times the way I hear product, either product manager or head of product is described as like, you’re the no person. You just have to tell everybody no, no, you can’t have those. No that.

Margot: 12:01
Well, I definitely see that as one of the challenges of the job strategic product person you are singularly focused on some very specific goals, and that means kind of like, getting everything out of the way. Yes. What I’ve learned over time is that the more context you can share with people, the less batting you have to do because then everybody will be aligned to those those goals.

Ellen: 12:37
Nice. Nice. I love it. The fact that you, yeah, the fact that you, I mean that is the key, right, in product to stay focused on the essential. So I think that’s, um, I think you get that title too.

Colleen: 12:52
Yeah, I’ll, I’ll go really quickly on that. My day to day, it’s also a little hard to pin down, but I have been singularly focused on community, um but there’s still so much technology that sits on obviously community product development is a huge focus for us. And we’re ultimately looking what are the problems we can solve for our users that includes, um, you know, they’re researched and like really understanding the paining points that we can build features that actually get picked up by the people that we want to serve, right? And so, um, but even if we look at customer service, it’s with my group as well. There’s just a lot of technology components to that in a way, right? So, you know, you have all different kinds of people coming into customer service flow. Right now we’re looking at do we need a different piece of technology stacks sit and be able to adequately deliver this high level of service to our moms. And then the media and public relations piece for me is like the fun part and that gets to be like the branding piece and less technology there but ultimately giving up brand and a voice and a personality to a technology product. Um, that is easier one to do then some of the other ones but being able to adequately speak to two sides of the marketplace and a voice that is really relatable. It’s interesting. It’s been really fun thing to work on.

Ellen: 14:26
Absolutely. So, uh, this one is one of like, this is one of the most popular questions I asked, but it’s tricky. So you might want to, you might want to think about it more, but what are your two favorite secret weapon questions to ask when you’re interviewing? So a lot of our community there interviewing and they’re like, okay, well I need to know, you know, the answer to everything. But I want them to focus on like answering the best questions. And so our guests come up with some really good ones. Do you guys have any two good questions? I do have thoughts on this?

Margot: 15:00
I do have thoughts on this and only because I’m really passionate about the topic of interviewing. But um I do have, I’d say two things. Well, the first is a question that I actually, I have to give credit to Zappos and Tony Shay for coming up with this one. Um, and you know, they’re all about like company culture and everything there. And so they like to hire for people who are a little bit weird and they have some interesting questions, but I really love the question. What would, what would you say is the biggest misconception about you? Reason being you get a lot of knowledge about how self-aware somebody is. And to me that EQ really like emotional intelligence, kind of self awareness. It’s really one of the biggest things that I think make people successful in a product role where you’re having to just, I understand the deal with so many different kinds of people that know where you’re coming from and in a lot of different situations. So, um, so I get some really interesting answers to that. On top of that, I would say my biggest thing that I look for when I’m interviewing, so I’ll ask the question, what questions do you have for me? And I think I learned the most about somebody by the questions they ask. The more thoughtful questions you have, the more likely you are to get past that interview in general.

Colleen: 16:28
Totally, the metadata on that.

Margot: 16:31
I want to know is somebody curious about my role, they put some thought into the company that they put some thought into the challenges.

Ellen: 16:41
Yeah, I agree. I totally agree with that.

colleen: 16:44
Okay. If you could start any start-up? What would it be? Right. And and why? And you really start to see you know maybe they don’t want to be a founder of a company that has a whole other bend to it, but have you thought about it and like what does that idea sound like and how kind of can you like articulate your vision on something because ultimately a lot of the work we do is taking something from scratch to being able to connect the dots and build it. What question do you wish that I had asked you that I didn’t ask?

Ellen: 17:15
Oh, good one.

Colleen: 17:15
Basically be like what I really want to tell you about how was like how I built this thing? It’s just like what you want me to build um, or whatever it is. Right? And so you’re ultimately giving them that? I sometimes actually do that via email after the interview to give them time to like reiterate their interests in the job.

Colleen: 17:42
Oh, I wish you had asked me about lay it out a little bit. My big philosophy, I’ve tried to put people at ease because I want to see what they’re really like and not just what their sales front looks like.

Ellen: 17:56
Yeah.

Colleen: 17:57
Ultimately you feel comfortable. Um, they give you more information about who they really are and how they’ll actually be in your organization. I know when they feel formal and pent up, the downside of that is you’ll hire well who will sell you on themselves and not necessarily the best person for the job.

Ellen: 18:14
I love those. Super, super interesting. And so like some I’ve heard and some I haven’t, I think that’s going to be really helpful so we’ll, we’ll be sure to share those. Okay. What do you, this one’s like, you already touched on this a little bit, but like what do you like best about your job and what’s the biggest challenge?

Margot: 18:32
I would say it’s very hard for me to pinpoint the one thing I like best if I had to. So for me it’s always, it’s cheesy and sometimes they don’t believe people when they say this, but the people, so for me it is truly working with, um, a team that I think really puts people first. Um, and working with a team that kind of values collaboration, that values its other team members. That to me is like the most fun part about it. And the quality of any kind of work environment that I would look for in the future or just people who are supportive and interested in collaborating and working together very well. Yeah, I’d say that’s my favorite part.

Colleen: 19:21
What’s your least least favorite?

Margot: 19:21
Least favorite. Ok, least favorite.

Ellen: 19:24
Biggest challenge. Biggest challenge. It’s a better way to say it than least favorite.

Margot: 19:30
I would say…for a, let’s see we’ve already talked about like some of the challenges and saying no, of course it is hard and you do have to be kind of the person who to say no, um to everybody. Uh, not necessarily everybody, but a lot of people. And I think one of the things that, uh, not so much the saying no maybe that is the hard part, but just keeping everybody, including, um, the rest of the company on task and focused on what the main goals are. So specifically when you’re in kind of a, a startup, a rapidly growing or fast changing company, it’s, you want to be, you need to be reactive to the market and so you need to be able to kind of pivot and be flexible. So it’s like maintaining that balance of flexibility where you’re meeting your users and market needs, but also maintaining focus. That is a really big challenge.

Ellen: 20:35
Great. That’s awesome. Yeah, I can see how that could be a really big challenge. Well, I have one final question for you. And it’s, um, you know, this, this podcast is all about bringing women to technology and carrying them through, but really opening up women and especially moms eyes to the fact that they are techy, that they can do it. And so I just would love to know if there’s a mom staying at home or there’s a woman in a nontechnical field and she’s thinking about making this transition into, into technical work. And, um, you know, as we talked about like some broad definition of technology, it’s all related product work. What advice do you have for her in that transition?

Margot: 21:23
Yeah. So I guess a couple things I would say there’s like the part about what you want to be doing is there’s so much look right, like, like we talked about the definition is so broad and so there are so many kinds of different things within tech that you could be doing. And so first kind of looking at the kinds of things that you’ve enjoyed doing in the past and if they kind of you know I guess oriented towards the investigative side of things versus maybe the creative side of things versus maybe that um you know, puzzle building and problem solving that side of things. And so kind of figuring out where maybe you fall as a first step. Uh, cause I do think that there’s, there’s something that would appeal to probably everybody within tech it’s just figuring out where you identify as one and then, and then the other is just, you know, drawing on your experience as a, as a parent honestly, I think it’s something that, you know, for me, I do every day, you know, thinking about what makes me good at my job. It’s the multitasking, it’s the um the ability to read other people. Right. And the um thinking about how the skills that you do have so what skills you want and then what skills you do have kind of blending.

Colleen: 22:50
Yeah. That’s great advice. After you sort of done that assessment and you really got clear about what areas do you feel like you can best translate your prior skills, your current skills, what it takes to succeed in that specific role, building a network, getting informational interviews, like going out and like doing all of that discovery process because it’s really is like a new thing for a lot of people, right? And particularly if you’ve been out of the workforce and you’re coming back, you know, there’s a lot that happens, right? And while you’re building up your negotiation, the skills to a very high degree. Um..

Ellen: 23:35
Yes.

Colleen: 23:36
And like not giving any room about why someone would not take a chance on as a technologist as a parent returning to the workforce. And a lot of those things can be shown through this ambition around taking the product management course, like doing the things that you can control, right. And I think whats great about that. It’s great on paper and then they see it and it doesn’t become a blocker for you. It’s great for your confidence, right? You are out there and every connection is confidence and everything you put yourself out there and do is confidence and then your bringing that into an interview. And you’re out infront of the objection. Right. Cause I think sometimes when we, we come in with like we joke, it’s like the monkey on your back and you’re just like, you’re just waiting for them to be like, why? Why did you leave the workforce? And you’re just like here’s why me not here’s why not me. Which is the question you’re asking because it’s the way I am taking it. Here’s why you are going to benefit from hiring me and why I’m the right person for this job. Right. And then not getting discouraged like the job search, as much as we all can disrupt it, there are times you’re just delivered to the wrong doorstep and that you need a different doorstep. Right. It doesn’t mean anything, it’s literally like you are the whole package. You just need to find the right place to be delivered to and like you keep going through that without becoming demoralized about your potential as a future candidate, as a person at that company.

Ellen: 25:07
That is fantastic advice. Colleen, Margot, thank you so much for being on the podcast today. So much wisdom being shared today and I know our audience is gonna just to love everything you had to talk about so thank you very much.

Colleen: 25:07
Thank you for having us.

Ellen: 25:10
Hey, if you enjoyed listening to this podcast, you have to sign up for the You are techY email list. Imagine being in the tech job of your dreams. Join me to get the strategies, training and never ending support to get hired. Sign up at youaretechy.com that’s Y-O-U-A-R-E-T-E-C-H-Y dot com. I’ll see you next time.