You found a career path and you’ve been on that journey, but you want to try something new. So how do you make the leap to tech?
It may be that the ‘dream job’ hasn’t lived up to your hopes, or that motherhood has changed your work expectations – it doesn’t matter what’s led you to this point. How can you use your transferable skills to excel in the world of tech and what can the world of tech offer to you?
To help us answer this and more, we’re joined by Becks Carrington, Head of Product at Sparkbox.
In the last year, Sparkbox has taken on four female career switchers, two of which are mums. Becks joins us to help empower more women to make the transition into tech roles and celebrate all that mums have to offer.
Today, we’ll be covering why companies need to invest and support mums, and what they can do to eliminate the motherhood penalty so many face.
hello everyone Thanks for tuning in again I am Kaye bitman the content director at Shang code and today we are
discussing making the leap into Tech whether your dream job hasn’t lived up to your hopes or that motherhood has
changed your work expectations it doesn’t matter What’s led you to this point how can you use your transferable
skills to excel in the world of tech and what can the world of tech offer you today we’ll be covering why companies
need to invest in support moms and what they need to do to eliminate the motherhood penalty so many face to
discuss this and more I’ve got the fabulous beex Carrington head of product at sparkbox with me today welcome beex
thank you so much for joining us hello thanks for having me thank you so much for coming on and um chatting about this
important topic of us today can we get started with a bit of background about yourself to set the scene please yeah
let’s do it so my background is actually retail um I actually started out by
doing a politics and economics degree at Bristol University um and when I did that most people in my
course were looking for job roles in like Finance or Banking and at 21 years
old I just thought getting a job at a bank sounded like the most boring thing in the world um I was quite creative so
I GNA say what you went straight for politics economics banking yeah um so I
was like I want to work somewhere other than a bank um and I started looking at other things that I could do with that skill set I loved clothes and fashion
when I was at University so I started looking into retailer jobs and and sort of thinking maybe I could work in
finance there but I stumbled across merchandising um and Merchandising in
retail fashion is essentially if you’re a merchandiser it’s a role that works with buyers and designers so designers
and buyers come up with product for retailers to sell and the merchandiser is essentially the person who’s got the
purse strings so I worked with the buyers on teams um we would have a
budget and what you have to do is the buyers and the designers show you all the product that they want to buy and as
a merchandiser you work with them to work out where’s the best place to sell it what the best stores to sell it in
and then when the product actually comes in the merchandisers tend to be the people who make the decisions about pricing and strategy and should we buy
more should we put it in sale that kind of thing so it was a great great career move for me in the sense that um I was
very creative but also from a sort of a mathematical background I started out as a graduate at Arcadia working for Dorth
Perkin um but the majority of my merchandising career was at new look where I worked my
way up to senior merchandiser um after that I had my first child and that’s why I sort of
pivoted my roles a little bit within retail so staying within the retail sector I went on to work sort of it’s
called Central planning planning which is essentially like um merchandising strategy it’s like linking up
merchandising um strategies with with sort of Financial and and what’s the best ways to make profit profit and
helping merchandisers make decisions that will help with margin uh then I managed the new look website during the
pandemic which was a crazy time W was insane yeah that was probably the first time I learned a bit more about you know
I could do the trade side but I learn a bit more about like the limitations you might have on the website or on the app
so you know it’s very all fair and well as a merchandiser to say oh I think we should put this product here there but
they couldn’t do some things within their system so that was an interesting really interesting for me also learned a
lot more about how the customer very different online because you have to bring traffic to the site rather than people walking in store um and then I
had my second child and I actually came back as head of pmo at new which was
managing all of the capital investment at New Look making sure projects were being completed on time within budget
overseeing what people were doing on the product Le areas um and I really enjoyed that because I started getting sort of
exposure to this the tech side of New Look which I hadn’t seen in the 12 years that had been there I um started getting
a bit more involved in understanding project Le developing um project Le um
delivery but also product Le delivery so I did some agile courses with like um
our app team and started showing quite an interest in that I thought it was quite interesting how those sort of things worked and while I was doing that
role I then came across the company sparkbox who were advertising on a on a retail website um sparkbox is a startup
company where a tech startup that make apps to help merchandisers make better
decisions they essentially tools we use AI to make sales forecasts and then we
make apps to help merchandises for things like the best most profitable ways to put product into sale or the
best product you should Reby back or to help them plan their assortments things like that and when I saw the the company
I just really thought that is the sort of tool that would make a huge difference in merchandising and as someone who’ been in that industry a
long time I felt like that’s something I’m interested in moving into so I applied for the role even though I
hadn’t worked in Tech before and I sort of said you know I’ve got a lot of skills I know the end user
really well um and now I’ve been at spot boox for a year so I’ve been leading the product area and you know I do things
that are very comfortable and like very much like my old role so I run the road maps and make sure priorities aligned
which would be the sort of things I would have done in my previous roles and then the other thing that I’ve done is I’ve learned lots of new things so a lot
of my role is about um app development and design and making sure we’re in the
right direction with all that and in the year I’ve been there we’ve designed developed two brand new apps along with
lots of new features for our current ones and it’s been great because I just love learning and developing my skills
um I’ve really loved learning the app design side thinking about ux and UI so um it just feels like my creative side’s
back and I don’t know it’s it’s been really nice for me because I just feel like it’s a whole new sort of string to my career yeah I I mean your journey it
sounds like you kind of um touched upon Tech within new look they kind of gave
you the freedom to to you know touch upon learn new things and and kind of
start to to look into the world of tech and then you kind of naturally progressed um more into to the uh to the
tech industry did you did you think that at the time when you were in retail did you think you know what one day I could
say a work in the tech industry or did you just not really put the two together at the time no I’m not sure I would have
put them together yeah I’m not sure I would have I think I think Tech maybe I
would have at age 21 when we talked about Finance maybe I would have reacted in Tech in the same way because I would
have thought oh God it’s like coding and development and that’s not what I’m interested in but then obviously as I
mentioned I went through my career learning more and more about like uh companies investing in Tech and apps and
and things like that and obviously this you know I’ve been in the industry um I’ve been working for 16 17 years now
and you know apps obviously the way that that’s developed and become so much a bigger thing in retail and every other
industry you know it’s much more at the Forefront and as I mentioned I’ve been getting more involved in that so I think
it was a gradual thing for me and wasn’t necessarily something I’ve been think thinking about for years but after doing
definitely the Ecom role and the pmo role I realized there could be a lot of scope for some exciting careers within
the tech industry yeah um and as I mentioned obviously sparkbox because I was very interested in the company
that’s why I kind of ended up making that side step but one thing I do know about me is what gives me kicks in my
career and at work is learning new things and developing new skills and I think for me that t in a step into Tech
at the time that I did it it was a time when I really wanted to see something different I’ve been at my previous company a really long time and I was
ready to learn new things you know yeah and you have to keep up with the tech industry it just moves so fast and and
and that leads us um in into our discussion today because um there is you know obviously there there has been a
discussion um on this podcast before about uh when ladies step away from the tech industry sometimes because and
they’re becoming a parent or it might even be you know to to care for loved ones coming back sometimes can be
difficult because the tech sector has moved so fast um but the tech sector has so many wonderful benefits for um women
um and I wanted to ask you a little bit about that why do you think the tech sector is such a good sector for women and more specifically for mons yeah well
I think I think it is worth knowing I didn’t move into Tech because I was a mom I moved into spark box because when
I saw that role being advertised I just thought the product looks so exciting and useful
and when I interviewed I thought it’d be a great learning curve for me but also that I could benefit the company and add
skills to the company however what was incredibly refreshing about sparkbox was
they were very supportive of the fact that I needed flexibility with child care um and they accepted my request for
working four days a week which um obviously for me because sparkbox could do that that really motivated me to take
the job yeah and I think and to stay and and to be loyal and stay and you know
probably try a lot harder than any other job yeah I mean this is I think this is the ideal for working mothers like as a
mom you should be able to work in any role that you have the skills for in any sector that you have expertise in
mothers don’t want their work choices to be dictated because of company rules and lack of flexibility but unfortunately as
mothers we sometimes do need that flexibility because we’ve got to pick up kids or because we’ve got to be working from home certain days what I do think
about tech companies is more generally than other Industries they tend to embrace the kind of hybrid and flexible
working um culture more than other Industries and I think the reason that they do that is because I think that
happened more preco than with other Industries so where a lot of Industries
maybe have a bit of hybrid and work from home now is because they were thrown into it in coid but I don’t think that
was the case with tech my um my husband’s a developer and has worked in tech for years and he always add you
know some degree of flexibility some degree of working from home so I do think for mothers that that want to get
into tech industry you’re more likely to get that package than you are in other companies although I’m sure there’s
exceptions to the rule everywhere but what I would love is that’s not the only driver for you to go into Tech like my
vision for all Ms whatever IND industry is in that you should be able to do what you want to do in your career without
being restricted by having children essentially yes I it’s interesting to hear you say your husbands a developer
and I had another lady on here similar story and we had uh two ladies on a live
webinar recently husbands were developers and that that is how they transitioned into Tech because as you
said they saw sometimes the the benefits of working in Tech flexible working and it it’s like they kind of looked at what
their husband’s day are like and they’re thinking actually that would work very well for me yeah um and and also we
touched upon a little bit about um this just the benefits of you know when when you hire a working mom as you said you
if you give somebody that flexibility like yourself he was very grateful of having the four days and you know just
understanding that you’re a parent and you know you have different priorities um and you need sometimes need that
flexibility you instantly think I’m I’m going to be more loyal I’m going to stay here um and uh you know I’m going to
work incredibly hard there are lots of benefits aren’t there to to hiring working moms what are some of those
benefits um well firstly I think this this question itself what the benefits
like hiring working Ms like again I think I sort of said it in my last question but for me I just really really
hope my six-year-old daughter by the time that she’s in the Work World we’re not asking that question because
obviously you wouldn’t say the same about working fathers but yeah I agree I think at this point in time there is a
de discrimination against working mothers and also women of childbearing Ages it’s not just people that have
children I just think a lot of the time women they’re mid to late early 30s you
know 20s you know we are getting a discrimination there’s a bias that potentially they’re going to have a baby
and having a baby if you’ve had a baby that you therefore might have other commitment so you’re less commit
committed to work and I think that is unfortunately like a bias that happens in hiring but for me what the dream
would be is that if companies stopped thinking about the negatives of working mothers and more thought about um the
positives uh so rather than just thinking about someone who needs to work flexible hours maybe thinking about what
extra skills does a working mom have that maybe other people might not have
so for me when you have kids um I just feel like your whole world turns on its
head so you know like suddenly you have this tiny little being that you have to look after and it’s just like a
full-time job and it’s Relentless and you’re not sleeping and it’s just I mean your whole life changes everything thing
that you knew your Independence you’re suddenly caring for this beautiful thing you love but it’s so so so hard and I
think that mothers that go through that they’re high you know it’s such a huge change in your life those people you
know you’ve got those skills where you’re highly adaptable to change you know yeah I think there’s lots of other
transferable skills you pick up while being a mother so if you you have K Kids
young kids you’ve got a lot of resilience you know I mentioned sleepless night trying to keep your child alive in the first few months I
had to summon up like all the strength I had and I think that you also have a lot
of skills in organization and time management when you’re a mother so when you’ve got a tiny baby it’s like
actually you have to be the most organized person in the world to get out for a doctor’s appointment at 9:00 am I mean that is a huge achievement but
actually when you have older kids like now I’ve got one in school and one in nursery and the juggle of trying to make
sure I get to work work on time they get to work on time everyone is sped everyone has their clothes washed I also
do a really good job at work if I you know that’s all those things to actually do that whole juggle you have to be
really organized you have to be really good at time management you have to be really efficient with your time I think
moms in general tend to be quite independent we’re strong we’re resourceful um I think especially when
you’ve got older kids you have to work on your communication and your negotiation skills with my toddler I
have to negotiate the meat and vegetables you know yeah yeah with your partners like it is such a hard job both
of you navigating the world through working and being parents you know you have to get really good communication skills with your partner as well to be
able to do it so I think with this in mind I would just hope which when when companies are looking at hiring
moms they may maybe would ask some questions about that in the interview process you can look at someone’s CV and
you can see with their quality ified and they’ve got the right experience for a role but unless you ask the right qu
questions you might not know all these skills they’ve picked up that aren’t on their CV so if I was interviewing like
someone who’d come off Matt leave and was looking for a new job I’d actually ask the question what sort of skills
have you learned while you’ve been on maternity leag and I think companies would be pleasantly surprised by the sort of things that women have picked up
um I I’m pretty sure all companies if you ask the CEO what type of candidates
do you want applying for roles at your company they’d say you want someone with great organization they’d say they want
someone who’s resilient someone who’s adaptable to change and I think there’s a lot of working mothers that go above
and beyond in those kind of skills because they’ve had to CH like cope with such a huge part changing their life and
do such like you know two full-time jobs in some cases so um my my thing would be
to say to all companies maybe try and think what’s not in the CV for working withs and try and find out what skills
that they could be gaining from mothers I think there’s lots of positives definitely because most tech employers
they they tend to say it’s not all about the coding skills or the technical qualifications or whatever is that you
need to do your job a lot of them actually fall back on a lot of the soft skills that you just mentioned and how
important they are um to you know you might get a graduate that goes into a
role um who has the tech qualifications that needed but they don’t have all of
those life skills and those soft skills that come with you know just just life
basically as you said you might move into the role of being a parent and all the things that come with it I love the
fact that you mentioned time management um because uh I I had a lady on on this
podcast who um was a parent and she threw in something quite interesting she said that a lot of um companies seem to
think or teams seem to think if you’re working with working mothers for instance um their days might be quite
sporadic and they’ll they’ll need flexibility because lots of things might happen within that day and actually it’s
not because the way that you just described it is it’s a Juggle to get everybody out where they need to be on
time in the morning but actually you would prefer to keep a set routine and
not have change because it’s very hard to introduce change when you have you know small people that need to be in
places and you need to be in places so actually it’s it’s far you know it’s kind of you have your schedule and you
try to stick to that um and a lot of working mothers um tend to find it it’s
quite hard if you were to to jump ship and move to another company because your whole routine might change again whereas
you know is it is it yourself would you just prefer you know your day today try and keep it um as as um to go into plan
as possible yeah don’t know about that I mean like when I moved to spot box I
wasn’t too worried about like keeping my work like balance and routine but I do think it’s a real struggle for parents
the one thing that’s really hard from the time management point of view is that in some ways parents know exactly
where they need to be there and then and like you say um get kids into school and then you can work and you don’t actually
have that distraction um and for me I find that when I’m actually sitting down at work after a weekend it’s sometime I
mean I definitely didn’t feel this free having children it’s an excitement because it’s a bit of Independence it’s
a bit of time on my own it’s time for me to like um be myself a bit and you know
sort of do my thing so I think there’s that kind of relief obviously what’s hard from a time management point of
view um is that what you don’t know as a parent what is what might come next like
you don’t know whether your child mind is going to call in sick or whether there’s going to be a stomach bug at
Nursery or or something like that and that’s when it obviously gets hard with the juggle and I don’t know whether
people I think people aren’t very empathetic that but actually it’s a lot of personal pressure that sort of thing
that that mothers have to juggle so it is hard um yeah and as we spoke about
that before um you know you know when things are hard and you know when you’re on to a good company that understands
that and helps with um when you need that flexibility um because um according
to a recent Harvard study mothers were considered to be 12.1% less committed to
their jobs than non-mothers um what can we do to erase this
motherhood penalty do you think yeah it’s the sort of question you kind of want to swear in isn’t
it so firstly firstly I find this Statistics so depressing um but I do
think there’s probably a lot of reasons for unfortunately um misguided ones but I
can see where it comes from so firstly firstly I think I mentioned it already
but I do think parents under a lot of personal pressure so you’ve got to juggle pickups child sickness school
holidays you might have to juggle a lack of sleep all of those things you might have Childs with additional needs you
know you’ve got certain things you have to do um and due to this a lot of
parents will ask to maybe work less days in the week or have more flexible hours
or work from home some days um and on top of this I just mentioned it but you can’t predict when
you need to be off for you know for example your child care falls through yeah and I think that then these these
two factors for other employees may make the perception that parents aren’t as dedicated to their
job um which is actually sad because I think it’s actually that the parents under a lot of pressure not that they’re
necessarily not dedicated to their job um and also just on that note I mean single parents even more pressure like
amazing if you’re a single working parent juggling all that in my opinion
um I think the other one is if you’re someone who’s taken some leave some maternity leave or paternity leave and
you’re off for a year I think then then often allows PE other people to create the narrative that you may be less
committed because they can say well they weren’t here for this big project you know they didn’t recently contribute to that and I think that’s the tough thing
for working mothers so I think that’s why people would think working mothers are less committed um even though it’s
sad um so I think there’s things that we need to do I think there’s government level things organizational level things
and personal things that we all should do to try and you know eradicate this this thought because I don’t think
mothers are less dedicated than other employees um I think from a government
perspective uh the most obvious thing to do to help working parents would be to provide more financial support for early
years education and wraparound and holiday care yeah so the UK is terrible
I think we’ve got the highest early years costs in Europe which is awful I think yeah um you know I’ve had quite a
lot of my peers and friends not go back to work because financially they earn more they’ be better off at home yeah
which is I mean that just that’s another problem in itself how many great candidates are we losing from the job
market that never come back so that’s just a problem in itself um and then obviously there’s people that do come
back and you you know you’ve got to make some decisions about Financial pay um and then also the wraparound care and
School holiday care is very expensive so if you are a working parent you have to pay for that um in order to have good
child care so I think if the government helped with those costs that’s obviously going to take a lot of pressure off
working mothers um and it also might help dissipate some of the views that working mothers um hav got proper care
and aren’t dedicated enough hopefully um it was quite a big shock to me that the conservative budget this year did have
quite a lot about early year and and wrap around care I am skeptical whether logistically they’ll get it off the
ground but for me the premise of government’s investing in this is the most important thing that could help the
motherhood penalty like I feel so passionately this is something we need to be doing as a society um just
especially in early years as well such an important time of a child’s development um from an organizational
level point of view for me I think Company benefits for parttime flexible
and also maternity and paternity leave should be offered and encouraged for working Fathers as much as it is for
working mothers yeah so there’s that phrase that behind every great man is a
good woman um but in my view behind every great working parent is a great support bubble yeah and often that will
come in the form of your other your partner whe they be male or female um
and so what I would like is that if companies are encouraging men also to work flexibly and have um shorten hours
then it becomes the norm and it takes the bias of working mothers a lot more um it means that if you encourage
flexibility to all parents it means that no matter what sex we’ve all got sort of equal opportunities to to still develop
and work um and work with our careers and hopefully reduce the gender pay Gap
I actually don’t think this just applies to mothers and fathers as well yeah I think in general um flexible hours and part-time working
should be encouraged across the whole business and used by everyone you know we’re not in a world these days where
our lives are just work like there might be people who have other commitments outside work or they just want to finish
it early and do something different you know I want to encourage people to ask
for those make those flexible requests and for companies to give them to people because the more people work in a
different way and input in different to the usual n five the easier it is for us
working mothers to have less bias on our input on time and be considered as committed as everyone
else um you do think if you if you’re at the wrong company and you’re not getting
what you need you you will just jump ship and and you’re saying that it’s not just parents it’s it’s people who are
for instance caring for anybody um I was um caring for a parent I I needed to be
closer to home and the company that I was at um they required me to travel a lot internationally and it was just
something I just couldn’t do and I actually and there were wonderful company but I actually just ended up leaving to go you know I took a complete
um change in in career Direction just so I could be at a company where I could
just not you know have that that craziness of of a of a career and I’ve
got to be here and I’ve got to be there just at that moment in time just needed to have my job do my ninet to-5 be close
to home be close to the hospital if I needed to get there and that was it but if companies don’t put things in place
they they’re not going to retain those you know those moms or whoever it is that needs you know some kind of
flexibility um at that point and the company I went to were wonderful when when it came to flexibility I just you
don’t you don’t tend to to stick it out do you if if a company isn’t doing something to help you um put something
in place you just tend you just tend to go don’t you yeah and we all go through tougher times in our life as well I’d
like to see the norm that you can maybe you know ask it all all people are now
um allowed to ask for flexible working as part of the law now but whether companies are actually ad Dearing to it
is what I would like to encourage because I think that’s what will help working mothers um I think that that you know we
all go through times in our lives where maybe work isn’t isn’t always the thing that you’re most the most important
thing in your life like you might have illness or you might have like you say caring for someone and then children
sometimes as well um and I think that if companies were a bit more fluid and a bit more flexible in general with
everyone not just working parents it would reduce the bias on working parents um I think modern day life has a lot
more um sort of pressures that we can now accept of there and um if companies
started encouraging flexible working work from anywhere um hybrid working I
know it doesn’t work for every job like I do know there’s some jobs that it doesn’t work for but the ones where it does if we can encourage that like I
think that’s how companies could sort of help with this narrative around working parents individuals that work for these
companies there is a bit of a culture change as well like I just think we all need to be a bit more empathetic to our
colleagues and and in this case it’s working mothers I’m talking about but it’s not just working mothers it’s everyone that comes from leadership as
well yeah totally I so when I started working out I definitely would have been
guilty as a as a young 21y old or twoy old of maybe thinking that someone who
left at four wasn’t putting in as many hours of me and then you could make that kind of narrative that they’re less
committed and in the past I think I would have done that I can see people doing it I can hear I can hear the
conversations but now I’m actually a working moment I know that this isn’t always the case it may be with some
people but it isn’t with me like when I pre pandemic I had to go into work five
days a week and I had to pick up my daughter so I had to leave at 4:30 every day because I knew I had a hard stop at
4:30 I worked really hard I made sure I got all my tasks done I was much more efficient like maybe didn’t have those
kind of water cooler chats or um take my lunch break because I knew I had to get everything done before that 4:30 hard
stop because I had to go and get my daughter um I think that really the thing that we need to do in order to
have this mindset reset is stop thinking about judging people on the time they
put in and whether they’re leaving at 4:30 and actually judging employee on are they doing the tasks they need to do
of a good quality so judging by output rather than input is something that I think we should do across the board no
matter what but if we can do it a bit more with working mothers maybe as individuals we can shift that bias we
have to someone working you know four days a week and then when you shift that
bias a bit it’ll also so filter up at an organizational level as well so you almost need like us all to do that like
from my point of view I just wish people would understand that there the women that are coming back to work you’ve got
a huge financial pressure like I went back earning 20% less than I did before but still probably doing five days
working four and you’re you’re also going back you’re going back with this
personal pressure you might be sad to leave your children or you might have all these other things like no sleep juggle all the things I mentioned and
actually you could ask that the women that are coming back are actually more committed to their careers and their jobs because their own development
because they’re coming back to that massive drive to even though there’s all these pressures I just if we could just
reset that mindset a little bit more on a working mother um being more more
committed in some ways then it just might change the dial I just for me definitely even the um the working week
you just said there um about you know working four days I instead of five and that’s something and and another
attitude that is starting to change because you’re right you’re probably doing five days in four days and you just do things more efficiently and that
is a you know trial that has been um rolled out across um several companies across Europe recently because they did
find that a 4- day week people are more productive so it’s just moving away from
that attitude of well you must be doing less because you’re working less yeah I
just think whether you work three days four days five days whatever work the time that people are working
for as long as they’re getting their tasks and doing their job role within their time that’s what we should be judging them on it should all be about
output output and not input anymore we also all know you have times where you’re productive and times where you’re
not productive so I don’t I don’t think there’s any person in the working world that has days where they’re always at
their top top ability and days where they’re like and then there’ll be some days where they’re absolutely above and
beyond their top ability it’s it’s it’s not a um it’s not always consistent is
it you know people people perform at different levels on different days and I think that’s the same with the output
and input thing it’s it’s just more about are you doing your job are you getting everything you need to get done are you excelling at your job things
like that definitely and and we’ve spoken a little bit about soft skills um earlier and uh soft skills um when when
you’ve uh taken time off for instance for maternity leave and the new um transferable skills that you would learn
there um what about soft transferable skills that are important for a career in the tech sector do you think um so I
think in the tech sector um the skills that are really important are I think
what I’ve noticed about the industry is that it’s much more agile and fast moving than other Industries so I think
the people that tend to do well are those that can adapt to the PACE and then can adapt to change um so I think if you’re someone who enjoys that and
fastpac then Tech’s a good industry for you I think Tech Industries are often looking forward um um so people that do
well in Tech are good at problem solving they’re also innovators so I work in
product and I scope out the app some features um I’m there like my role is
there to try and solve problems for those working in retail so I know that my skills that I developed while as a
merchandiser in problem solving are really essential for that um I also
think if you go into product or the a tech side product side then you need to be someone who’s sort of user obsessed
in my mind um so you’re always thinking about the user in every decision you make you don’t want to be asking your
Dev teams to do work on something that’s just a waste of time and not going to add value to your product it should
always be like is this going to make the quality of my product better and why am I doing it um when I worked on fashion
every decision you make is about the customer you should be customer obsessed so like moving into product I felt like
user obsessions the new one for me like what is the ux and the UI and why is that the best decision we can make um I
also think if you’re moving into a tech business that’s a smaller business or a startup um I think what I’ve noticed in
sparkbox is that you need to be quite resourceful and proactive so you know
startups things move very fast and your priorities might change because you’re looking at new clients or New
Opportunities so you need to be someone that can that can move with that so you need to be quite ProActive at changing
your priorities and also the reason I said res forceful as in smaller businesses you might not be able to ask
people questions all the time or have your hand held you need to be someone who’s a doer and just gets on with it um
which is me to a te so I’ve loved that um that’s how you succeed in that smaller startup environment I think yeah
sometimes just pitching in because there’s nobody else to do it so you learn something new um just to fill that
Gap until you know your team grows um it’s it’s it’s always good fun and how can you stand out from the crowd as a
transitioner do you think it’s hard isn’t it sometimes if you don’t look like you have the experience how do you
stand out from everybody else yeah I think for me I I think the best way to
stand out from a crowd um in in an interview anyway is by being really
passionate and I would have applied this as people implying uh applying internally to me in retail roles but I
think it really helps if you’re a transitioner so when I applied for sparkbox I knew I was moving into a new
industry and it was a role I hadn’t done before but what I did feel confident is that I was an expert on the end user of
the product and I was really passionate about making that product so I mentioned
that a lot in my interview and um I think that if you are a transitioner and you’re moving into tech make sure you do
a lot of research on what you’re building and that you really understand that brand because you might not have
all the tech skills but you can have some of the user um the user knowledge and also just also the external um you
know looking at it from outside is always a good thing as well so really as a transitioner really study that brand
that you’re’ into interviewing for and make sure you’re incredibly passionate about what they’re doing especially as
startups yes because it is it is very hard as you said just ensuring that you
look incredibly passionate or you’ve done some things you know even outside of your day job um we we love to see to
see that here people that are you know working with Community networks or people that are you know say they’re um
passionate about women in technology and they might be working with volunteering groups or things like that there are lots of ways to stand out and look
passionate um about a career that you might be transitioning into but you know don’t necessarily have the work
experience yet um we get that asked that question a lot um on our Live Events how
do I stand out if I don’t have the experience yet um it’s something that people are always always trying to
struggle with and be we’re almost out of time and I wanted to ask you one last question do you have any advice for our
listeners who are perhaps thinking about taking the leap into Tech yeah so I think I obviously work in
products that’s why I’ve got the best knowledge on on moving into that in from a tech point of view and I think there
always in my opinion there’s two Roots into product so you can either be someone who’s worked in Tech and then
gets really interested in the user experience size therefore moves more into product or you can be someone like
me who is someone who’s very passionate about the product or the user or a subject matter expert and you aren’t
necessarily someone with a lot of tech experience but you you you come in and you say well I know a lot about that
product and I can help you make it so the advice that I said about being passionate about the brand I think you
should also be really if you want to move into product and you not actually been in Tech before really try and
understand what are the businesses vision and goals and is does my skill set give something to that that they
maybe need even though I’m not someone in Tech so with me with spbu I knew that I knew a lot about merchandising and
therefore those skills could help them make those tools and products so I think you know if you want to move in make
sure you’re you’re um bigging up the things that you do know that perhaps the more tech people don’t know and I think
at the same time you know being saying the things that you want to learn so I’ve absolutely adored learning that the
app design part of it and I think I was quite looking forward to that creative side but when I came into the business I
knew that was something I needed to work on I did some courses for example on figma which like an app design course so
I think it’s also good you know when you’re moving as a transitioner to know the things you’re really confident at but know the things that you need to
work on more and address that as well um I think a lot of people think when you transition from one industry to another
you need to do further education like you need to go to university and or you know you need to
go do some extra courses and that might be right for some people but I don’t think it’s always the next Next Step so
I think like I said just you can look at a job spec and try and pick out the things within the job spec that you can
deliver and what you could deliver that’s more than the job spec as that candidate and then be aware of the
things that you haven’t necessarily gotten the skills you haven’t necessarily got and the other thing that I would just encourage people to do is
if you’re thinking about transitioning into tech try and get involved in any Tech projects in the companies you’re
already in I mentioned I was from retail and there was a lot of tech projects and going on around in the business and for
example as a merchandiser I was involved in some of our software implementation projects I think that gives you a really
good idea of understanding what it might be like to be in a a company that implements software so if you see
opportunities around the business to learn more then you should do that and you might understand more about tech and
decide if it’s the right career fit for you as well yeah yeah and and I love the fact you touch upon training there um as
well because you are right people think if I’m going to go off in a different career route I might have to take some extra um training or further education
um and or a boot camp even and all of those things they’re quite a commitment there you know a lot of commitment to
time and resources and if you are a working mom as well you think I’ve now got to fit in extra Learning and Development by the end you might think
actually that’s not the career for me anyway um so it is a lot to take on and as you said it’s it’s not always the
case when you are transitioning in a career um there are lots of ladies that have transitioned into Tech without
doing the the further education um part but just learning new skills as you said you learned figma and extra training in
the areas that you needed to learn um and um obviously you know it’s paying off for yourself um because you play to
your strengths and and uh and what you’re good at yeah like I didn’t think you know I’ve been learning stuff like a
very basic level things like SQL and some of the data stuff I didn’t think I’d be doing that in my career but it’s
good to learn new things and what I just want is that moms don’t feel like they have to be stationary in their career
you can evolve your CV after having children like just because you had a child doesn’t mean you’ve had like a
brain transplant if you’re someone that wanted to learn new things um I just hope there’s always the opportunities to
do that and I feel like my career like having that transition into a different industry allowed me to go and do that
after having children anyway yeah that is a lovely advice and a lovely point to
end it on Beck thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me today it’s been a pleasure having you on so thank you so much for sharing your
insights thank you and everybody listening as always thank you for joining us and we hope to see
you again next time
