Having a degree is no longer a requirement for getting a job in technology – and it shouldn’t be holding you back!
There are thousands of roles that don’t ask for a technical degree, but might require to broaden your view of ‘traditional’ tech jobs.
With over 15 years of leadership experience, Carol Howley, Exclaimer’s Chief Marketing Officer, discusses how women looking to get into tech roles should expand their horizons beyond ‘traditional’ roles like coding and engineering.
Carol draws on her experiences leading teams at Canonical and SkyScanner, as well as working with NoCodeLab to support organisations looking to use low or no-code solutions on their websites. Carol’s experience in the technology industry and as a woman in tech demonstrate the ‘non-traditional’ roles available to women looking to get into tech careers.
hello everyone thank you for tuning in I’m Katie Bateman the content director at chican code having a degree is no
longer a requirement for getting a job in technology so not having one shouldn’t be holding you back there are
thousands of roles but don’t ask for a technical degree but it might require you to broaden your view or traditional
Tech roles now with over 15 years of leadership experience the fabulous Carol
Howley Chief marketing officer of exclaimer is joining me today to discuss how we mean looking to get into Tech
should expand their Horizons Beyond traditional roles like coding and Engineering welcome Carol
hi thank you very much and I’m really pleased to be here today thank you for joining us can we start off with a
little bit of uh background about yourself yeah of course um so I’m I work in marketing obviously
I’m the chief marketing officer exclaimer and for me I really got into marketing and I suppose technology in a
sense by accident it’s probably the best accidental career choice I made and definitely one that I’ve absolutely loved which is always really good
um I went into marketing via data and research I suppose I started off in Best Western Hotels following done doing a
huge amount of kind of research and data crunching when I was at University to fund my degree and and ended up working
for Best Western then got into we started at that time it was quite a while ago because I’m a little bit older
and but we started at that time kind of going through all of the first email Journeys and looking at how to intelligently talk to people and I just
found it fascinating as a way to kind of plan out what your marketing could be what you say to people how you convert
them through a journey and that kind of started my career into you know really loving the data side but really enjoying
the psychology behind marketing so for me it was kind of a really interesting trip into into marketing a little bit by
accident and then ended up very quickly heading into the tech industry through sky scanner where I actually learned how
you know how the tech industry worked and how to become you know a part of that and not just be involved in marketing so I think you know it’s such
a an exciting area and there’s so many different roles across the whole business that you can go into at any
level and I think huge amount of flexibility which is amazing for for women and for people who have things on
in their life that maybe don’t have as much time to commit to roles to I love that you referred to that there is
accidental um but it was the best best move that you ever made and you touched upon it a
little bit there about some of the benefits of of being working in Tech but what do you think so special about a
career in technology um I think for me it’s it’s just such an exciting industry there’s so much change
so much has happened in the past sort of you know five to ten years within the industry there’s so many different areas
you know everything moves around in marketing for example the things we were doing six months ago probably don’t work
anymore there’s not necessarily a degree that you can do and I would argue that my degree in marketing probably is
almost irrelevant to what I’m doing right now but what I’ve learned on the job the courses that I’ve been involved in what I’ve learned from other people
seeing what other people at other companies are doing and learning from them and applying things as well and
reading has been a massive kind of Lego for me in terms of where I’ve been going and what I’ve been planning so you know
I absolutely love the industry there’s so many intelligent bright people and there’s so much to kind of do and learn from all the time that I just find it a
fascinating area to be working in yeah that’s so interesting and so accurate as well that things we worked on six months
ago probably don’t work anymore and that’s yeah how fast things move in Tech and why you said it’s you know such an
interesting place to be because you’re Forever Learning but in terms of you know what what you you studied then I
mean what sort of roles can you have in Tech if if you don’t have a tech focused degree you know you mentioned with the
pace there how how do you keep up and what sort of roles would be good for you if you don’t have a degree yeah
absolutely and I think um in a lot of companies there’s obviously different routes that you can go into I think the
same as any business there’s so many roles you can go and anything from sort of HR Administration through to kind of
you know developer operations party assessment UI ux growth you know almost
everything is is kind of a possible option as I said I did actually business administration and marketing and within
that you know I did end up sort of working within marketing and Tech but I very quickly went into kind of email
into Data analysis into kind of building websites building applications from that
I moved into Skyscanner and I was looking after the home page and I was looking after advertising and cross-sell which was something I’d never never done
before and never thought about doing as a career choice and within there I saw for the company there was a huge
opportunity for us to change our focus and to start to look at actually do we sell to developers do we start to kind
of look at our B2B business you know how do we kind of move that across and and then moved into things like project
management I worked on the launch of the first Alexa skill so I started working in natural language programming I didn’t
understand as much as the developers in it but you become very exposed and very able to do it and if you you know you
want to learn there’s courses available there’s the YouTube opportunity for learning you can go into kind of some
amazing marketing and also coding classes and also things like Chic and code can point you to so many resources
and opportunities and you can just start to kind of learn bring yourself up and I think that passion is just an incredible
sort of um a sort of way to get into the tech industry as well you know people can really quickly see that you’re
learning that you’re kind of working in the other areas so I guess I’ve kind of listed lots of areas but you know
marketing design program analytical Operational Support roles as well customer success change management
there’s so many areas that you could get into that I think if you just want to you know if you really want to there’s
opportunities to to do it I’m not saying it’s not competitive though I’m not saying it’s not challenging and I think
that’s always a lot of people have probably sat there saying well it’s fine to say that you know you’ve got the experience and it does go on experience
but I think having you know passion and a growth mentality and really demonstrating that work is a great way
to sort of get into the industry yeah and I mean you just listed off so many different roles there you know it’s just
when once you’re in the industry I think it’s so much easier isn’t it just to be aware of what is available I don’t know
about you though but when I was at University you wouldn’t know those sorts of things you know you wouldn’t know
those types of great roles that are available in any industry so it’s quite difficult isn’t it to I mean a lot of my
friends I remember at University were taking degrees that they had no idea what they were going to go on to do they
just kind of thought I need to go to university and and get a degree and I think that’s a lot of students have that
feeling um whereas you know the tech industry is quite open um to people with a broad range of of
degrees obviously um what if you don’t have a degree at all though what if you didn’t go to the
university is it is it still possible to get into the industry do you think I do think so yeah I mean there’s lots
of kind of training courses lots of um opportunities whether it’s sort of the you know you can obviously go to
colleges like there’s different diplomas there’s different courses there’s an amazing amount of boot camps and coding
opportunities and when I was working at Sky Center we had lots of people coming in through there was this kind of local
and supported Network where people could do these boot camp and training and almost like career switching courses as
well and there’s some amazing ones within there there’s lots of kind of other areas that you can go into you
know you can go online you can look at kind of volunteering courses you can look at kind of you know
um I’m just trying to think through I know in terms of web development ux UI data I think there’s some great boot
camps around those that are on lots of people I know in our team and I asked around sort of didn’t come from a direct
infrastructure you know development course they very much kind of ended up doing a number of things and gaining
experience and then moving across into different areas I know there’s lots of great Pathways that you can get into new
areas such as and when I was at canonical kubernetes was such a huge area that not as many people were as
experienced since there’s loads of courses around kind of training into that you know admin for kind of azure
there’s lots of courses provided by Microsoft for theirs so you know I mean that’s kind of a bit more um I guess
developer focused but there is kind of these huge range of boot camps I know a lot of people I often look out for
courses that I think are really great so we did a few put a few people through the reforge course when we’re in
um Skyscanner and often look out for that when people see these because I know what a great course is haven’t been involved in it myself you know there’s
so many different opportunities you could get involved in but it does kind of appreciate people having to do a
little bit of research and a little bit of work um marketing as well I’m also doing courses with cxl which I think are a
fantastic resource they’ve got hundreds of different courses they break up and you can do membership and also like the
growth tribe also for free one Salesforce HubSpot Google have fantastic training opportunities that you can get
involved in and lots of them are free and so you can kind of build up all those certifications on your on your
kind of profile that you can put in LinkedIn as well and there’s also apprenticeship roles so we do and we do
offer and support apprenticeship roles exclaimer but also across you know all the companies that I’ve worked in there’s been loads of apprenticeship
opportunities with people coming in quite junior level with you know not much experience not many kind of
qualifications necessarily but a real appetite to kind of try so that’s a great opportunity to look for and
there’s lots of sponsored apprenticeship programs through I think through colleges through the government and through schools as well yeah especially
those that are reconsidering their options and whether or not universities is very expensive
and very expensive option and whether or not you you go down a different path I
think it’s sometimes it’s that that confidence isn’t it I suppose if you uh
if you were to enter a workplace and you thought everybody else here is applied and they have a degree it’s it’s kind of
just feeling like I need that confidence to go forward and and to have that
qualification but you know as you mentioned it’s not it’s not necessarily the be-all and indoor if you have other
training you might understand things uh you know differently because you went
through a different training boot camps for uh um for example uh compared to somebody else I spoke to a lady the other day who
said to me um she worked in product and she said really it’s not about you know knowing
um all the technical details sometimes she said I just need to understand how things work and she said it’s my job not
to actually build them and know but just to understand and I suppose even in marketing that’s the same isn’t it you
know you’re not expected to do the coding or to actually make something tick but you do need to understand how
they work and and you wouldn’t necessarily need a computer science degree for that would you no definitely
not I think it’s just like I said that that almost like growth mentality I think is something that a lot of people
quote but it’s always with being willing and excited about learning exploring new technologies new tools at the pace of
the industry there is a bit of an expectation that because you’re in Tech you’ll be you know you’ll be ahead of
the game a little bit I think and I think there’s that sort of site Visionary but that only really comes from the the appetite to learn and I
think the passion for the industry and that’s often you know what I’d look for um in interviews and I know we’ll
probably talk about that a bit more later but when people are coming through you know you can just see when people are passionate and excited about
technology and excited by tools and you know can really sort of quote through some of the things that they’ve put
themselves out there and they’ve learned or they’ve had a go or you know they knew that a tour was coming in so they’ve actually just written some
videos or they’ve prepared some training modules and you know that sort of thing is is the best way because like you said
everything changes so fast you know we didn’t know what was coming in there’s some incredible new tools that we’re
sort of taking on board that focus on kind of conversion on your website that’s that wasn’t a big thing you know a while ago we looked at things like
optimizely and we did a b testing but we didn’t do a full level of like customized kind of experience for people
and there’s just some there’s always something new and exciting you can get involved in and you can learn and you
can try out and new ideas so I think that’s that for me is just the biggest kind of attractor for the industry but
also in people coming into it I think you know when I’m interviewing I don’t necessarily look at all the tick boxes of skills I look at what people are
excited by and what they demonstrate and how they talk about it yes that mindset
isn’t it when when we speak what particularly with developers on here and that the extra things that they’ve done
and that extra learning um it takes quite a lot for a person to you know think ahead like you said you
always have to stay ahead of the curbing technology um and it’s it’s not something that you feel should be uh that you do because of
a chore it’s something that they do because they clearly love it and they have a passion uh for that learning that
those extra things you know what else should our listeners be doing to to boost their CVS and we mentioned a few
great coding courses volunteering you’ve mentioned a few nice little things that you can do about making videos and and
adding things like that is there anything that you’ve seen yeah definitely so yeah the the kind of
courses the volunteering you know obviously it needs to be financially viable for people and I appreciate
volunteering isn’t all the time so and you’ve got to do what’s possible based on things but yeah there’s lots of
programs dedicated good for you know getting women into stem roles getting people to you know experience a
different network there’s loads of different networks like you know I’ve always looked at the chican code website
there’s things like women in Tech and diversity and Tech where you can look at different things that you can get involved in there’s often hackathons we
run some great hackathons with TechCrunch at Skyscanner and one of them was actually one at TechCrunch disrupt
by a 10 year old girl who admittedly did have a dad who was a developer but she was definitely pulling the strings and
telling him what to do and it was fantastic so um I think there’s lots of people who do
that who you know just do some projects I think we often look out for developers coming in that they’ve got their own
kind of profiles on different sites like you’ve got kind of GitHub or gitlab you know we’ve got people coming in they’ve
got their own portfolios online or even their own website things like even just starting to post regularly on LinkedIn I
think for us as marketers you need to be proactive you need to have a bit of a perspective on the industry and you know
start to talk about that and just kind of that level it’s not done overly well by so many many people so it’ll really
start to get you noticed and that’s a just a good way of getting in that habit I think of kind of being involved and
sharing things and reading things as well because obviously you want to give your perspective so that’s a sort of
really good a good area I think that we would be looking out for yeah it’s
interesting you to speak about projects and hackathons there we’re starting a series of hackathons this year at
Chicago because it’s something that we hear a lot and just just working on
projects with other people especially if you’re an undergrad or you’ve just graduated trying to you know not just be
noticed as you mentioned there’s a lot of competition but just to see what it’s like working as a team and to try and
experience what that is going to be like when you get in the workplace and obviously it’s something extra to to add
to your CV um but it’s again it’s taking it from if you did do a computer science degree
actually implementing that into a project and using it can be something very different in
um because as we mentioned we don’t we don’t always need that degree um but and you mentioned volunteering as
well which is which is great some companies they offer volunteering days don’t they I know you mentioned
obviously it’s not viable for everybody which is absolutely true which is why some companies are trying to offer
volunteering days aren’t they take a certain amount of time a year uh which
would be a very valuable especially in a company at that point so it’s a bit
better um about transferable skills uh are they
important to career in Tech I suppose there’s quite a few there isn’t it yeah definitely and I think in terms of what
you’re saying around kind of companies offering opportunities there’s a lot of companies you know you can go into a company that maybe isn’t you know 100 an
ideal role but it is in the tech industry necessarily and then look at how do you transfer across so in my team
we’ve always had people both at Skyscanner and canonical actually recently one of the girls I worked with has moved across into a full engineering
kind of role and they’ve taken that opportunity you know they started off in marketing for example but that’s where
their passion was so you know they’ve looked at opportunities to work with the developers to you know look at different
areas to kind of move across and I think every company will offer that you know maybe you don’t immediately get into the
exact role that sort of your your dream area but being involved in the industry enables you to kind of look at training
and you know almost every company I’ve been in it that has sort of been willing to facilitate opportunities for people
and to help them find the best use of their skills as they move through different things and so that’s also just
a slight kind of um side route but a really good way of do of doing that and once you are in that tech industry you’ve got that
experience but then you can start to kind of move to to where suits you in the best possible way and I love to kind
of say that I’ll always construct a job around a person and their schools rather than necessarily have a fixed role that
because every company is different and every team functions differently so I think that’s often a great opportunity
in terms of other transferable skills um it’s a really really boring basic but
knowing Excel and knowing some basic coding and how to run spreadsheets how to analyze data do some basic crunching
some really exciting vlookup formulas all that kind of basic stuff that you start to learn in school that you
actually don’t realize and you forget in five minutes if I haven’t done a formula in five minutes I have to sit there on Google and double check it and my team
will laugh at me because they do it more often and but it’s it’s really fundamental and it’s so helpful just to
have that ability to just kind of export some data look through Excel do a few charts work out what’s wrong with things
you know and having the time to do that’s brilliant I think um learning scrum and fundamentals
around kind of agile and project management and you know why things work and how you can kind of plan for that
project to come in is an amazing area I think I always look for people that have done scrum Master courses because
they’re also really good at kind of coordinating resources assessing kind of the projects you know how much goes into
it so that’s an amazing qualification to have I think um in terms of eight things
clear communication skills understanding the windows products as I said what you can do with the basics to kind of get
familiar with coding you know that’s an early starting to understanding things and as I said getting some of that
language is around you know we do work in Sprints even in marketing we use scrum in marketing where possible we try
and assess what’s working and what isn’t um as I mentioned the project Management’s enormous and I think sort
of effectively marketing probably becomes more of a change management activity than anything else that we’re
managing how we get from where we are now to where we want to be and you know what do we need to do what indicators
will tell us we’re on the right track how do we kind of size those projects what do we do short and what do we do long term and you’re kind of assessing
that balance so an awful lot really of sort of change and project management I think is a massive area
um and I guess for me as you move up learning kind of people and and Leadership skills I think the nerd
mentality is is great and there’s an awful lot of people who as you say you know really really amazingly qualif like
good at their job and so brilliant but actually all awful lot of work is talking with people it’s managing teams
it’s liaising it’s understanding you know how to take a balance when people disagree it’s understanding how to
manage differing opinions to end up with the right result understanding that projects are going to fail a lot of the
time and being able to assess you know why is it failed what could we do better how do we improve and being able to
demonstrate that’s a massive opportunity for for people and you can do that from anything you know even projects with
friends or school projects but it’s actually that awareness of sitting back and thinking you know how how do we do
this better and how do we kind of improve for the future so being able to demonstrate that you know doesn’t
necessarily have to be an in-work example but that’s a great area as well yeah and all things that you can’t learn
from a computer science degree your or any degree you know there is
that baptism of fire isn’t there when you leave University and you go into your first role and whether it’s related
to what you studied or not and you suddenly realize what the workplace is like what it’s like working with a team
as you said even things you know to do with failure and things don’t always go
right and you you know how how to to deal with that and um how to deal with
colleagues that maybe some awkward colleagues they don’t give you a real book on that you know do they you know
definitely not is how to deal with everybody in the workplace
the problem with that though is you know I know a lot of companies now are taking
off of their job advertisements aren’t they that they they don’t require a degree or they’ve even lowered
um you know it used to be sort of a first and then a two one some are not even asking for degrees at all and I
think it just it really turns people off doesn’t it I think women in particular we’ve all heard several times about
women if they don’t meet a lot of the criteria of of the job description they
won’t go for it and especially if it’s there’s a degree you know you would just quickly rule that out when you just
think no I’m not even not even gonna apply for that no absolutely and I think it can be
really intimidating and for some people especially if you don’t have a degree I think you know uh to be fair I didn’t
actually want to do a degree my parents forced me another time I ended caved I probably
wouldn’t have done now but you know I’ve ended up where I am but yeah I think you know people who haven’t been through
that route do you feel maybe a bit of kind of you know oh well I can’t do it because I haven’t got that degree without necessarily knowing that
actually probably what they’ve got is as good if not better bringing that experience and that work life you know
balance and that ability to deal with people and having manage people and you know maybe even balanced budgets a bit
better in that sense you know all of that is such an incredible amount of kind of I guess you know I think that’s
the hardest thing I know you often forget when you sit back and you prepare for interviews I think gives you a
really good opportunity to actually sort of go through the things that you’ve done that you’ve probably just passed over and glossed over and start to think
well actually what did I you know what did I input into that and you know how did I start to build that together and
it gives you a really good view of actually you know what your skills are and that’s something that I always try and encourage people in my team to do is
to keep a running track or make a Trello Board of you know these are the projects I’ve worked on this is what I did this
the results were so they’re they’re over feeling kind of you know what did I contribute or coming to the end of year
for review it’s great to have those examples available but it also helps you as I say in your career to kind of say
well yeah actually you know I did this or I project managed this but this didn’t go as well and it can help you
highlight opportunities for your own development too yeah well that’s actually a great idea just making some
sort of record of of the things that you do throughout the year and and how they went and even mentioning there even if
they didn’t go well still incredibly interesting because I wanted to ask you about uh interview tips do you have any
interview tips should you share those things you know the even the failures no
absolutely I think definitely and um I think one basically lots of people that if you’re competing lots of people
have started building out portfolios of their work and you know especially creative roles people will showcase
their skills I think you know I know our Dev team I asked them what they look for and they say that they love seeing CVS
that have got a public GitHub link that you know kind of talking about things that they do outside of work in relation
to coding as well how they kind of you know do other things it looks really good if you can contribute to open
source projects you know anything that you do that’s obviously free and the ability to kind of um input that any kind of passion
project that you do you know it’s fine to do the work and get paid for it but it’s also what you do in your free time
that kind of shows passion I think the things as well and be able to bring that out in interviews is really good and
there’s lots of kind of courses where you can mop up mock up things like campaigns or a website you can use canva
for example to mock up things to kind of show people what it be um one basic thing that’s really boring
do you research on the company there’s always going to be someone who’ll ask you a really tricky question that’s something to do with you know what do
you would you what’s your view I always ask people you know what’s your assessment of our you know our approach
to demand gen and that will have taken them to have actually built and you know built a view and I love to ask people about you know what’s the most relevant
campaign example that they’ve done recently you know what they did how they went through it from ideation through to
the results you know all of that side of things so people you know interviews are getting better and better at asking
questions but also you know they are looking for that opportunity to give you a chance to demonstrate your experience
you just have to prepare and go through so I’d always prepare you know think of
you can Google lots of practice questions I’ve happily send some practice questions if it’s helpful that I would ask people
um and just kind of practice your your answers I always go through you know what’s my biggest failure and like you
know what was the situation what was the task what’s the example how did I how do I do it what did I learn from it you
know what’s the kind of an example of a project that failed you’re like you know what failed why did it fail what did you
learn how do you improve should you have done this better or that better and starting to kind of just think through those examples helps you kind of come
with a really prepared role and I’m not saying kind of over prepare and have everything scripted but I think just
knowing those examples off by heart because you can even transfer them over if you know you’ve got six or seven
Great examples you can use them as an example of failure an example of success a project that was delayed a way of
working with people people differently so all those questions come up all the time um
trying to think if there’s anything else um yeah I think that’s the main things and
just the real examples of what you did and you know be confident saying you know I did this and it drove these
results or you know I was really proud of this and and give it that sense and also I guess demonstrate Comfort working
with people in teams like examples of leading teams how you related to people you know it’s often lovely to kind of
give examples of how you supported other people and brought them on as well um so I think that’s the they’re the
main things they’re going to cook off the top of my head yeah and and the word that it is is describes it perfectly
demonstrate just demonstrate what you’re good at or what happened or you know trying to even with the failures like
you said you know just turning them into a positive um instead of you know sharing your
failure and saying well this is what happened I fell out with everybody through my entire team under the bus because it was their fault and leaving
the company as long as it’s turned into a positive as you said it’s you know just just
sharing those things because I think when you’re interviewing somebody you know the reality is every day doesn’t go
smoothly at work and sometimes things happen and it’s just how you as you said
demonstrate how you deal with those um mixed in obviously with all of the other positive things that that you’re doing
um do you use any resources that you think you know could help people get ahead in
Tech you mentioned some great Tech courses already but are there any networks or podcasts or books
yeah so um podcast wise I love there’s loads around marketing obviously I kind of
follow more marketing ones I suppose than developer based ones they’re probably not the best person on that but lots in terms of like marketing
um there’s a lady who is the CMO of drift called Trish Gelman who does a fantastic podcast around kind of running
marketing teams there’s the the one that’s run by Chris Walker who’s
um quite a famous kind of LinkedIn demand generation person his podcast fantastic the cognizant team do a really
great podcast that I really enjoy listening to um actually I think there’s one called
pivot which I really really enjoy which is a bit more kind of generalist Tech and Leadership so anything around Tech
marketing you know Revenue marketing sort of sales sales LED Revenue Generation all of that side of things I
find really interesting and fascinating um I think you can just learn a huge amount
from kind of going through some of those those kind of Industries and looking at kind of communities there’s a great
Community called demand curve there’s one that I’m a member of I think you have to be a CMO but it’s CMO coffee Club where people share ideas Pavilions
an incredible Network that we sign all our marketing teams up to where they get to learn a huge amount and there’s one
called marketing and then mops professionals which is really great sort of Technical and marketing operations
people that I also follow um so to be honest a lot to make it and I’m always encouraging my team to kind
of learn more to read more I’ve got a huge range of books that have bother people about reading and in terms of
like new managers there’s an amazing one by a lady who was one of the first sort of her first experience of managing was
at Facebook called Julie zoo I think it’s called the making of a manager or something like that encourage my team to read things around
culture so like Daniel Coyle’s culture code is a great way of helping people understand actually the impact they have
when they come to work every day and how they relate to people and how they start to kind of facilitate that that great
team and that great Dynamic that that makes them happier at work as well and so enjoy I think you can never stop
learning and reading and expanding your knowledge and learning how to better manage people and better manage yourself
and skills again that are far beyond your degree and whatever it was that you
chose and that that again that that feeling of when you first become a manager and all the things that you need
to learn and uh thought that you knew until you start managing real people and they have opinions
exactly and then I joined a network called section four actually which do really good business
um courses and I really really enjoyed that last year I did one on um it’s kind of Builders kind of MBA
quality business education they did a really great brand strategy Sprint which was sponsored by a lady who
um I forgot the name I think it’s all birds the trainers and she talked through all the brand examples of how she did it which is a consumer brand but
actually I learned loads of stuff from looking at different ways to approach things and so I’m definitely a massive
Advocate as you can tell of like learning and I I mean I find it exciting so you know it’s easy for me but you
know just learning and always looking to experience and you know expand your skills is a great a great way of doing
things yeah yeah and to end today do you do you have any advice for graduates on
on newcomers to to the industry yeah I think we have to refer back to
like the learning but being able to kind of talk through you know I always one question I always ask is you know what’s
the the most recent thing you’ve read obviously I’m a passionate reader but you know it could be a Blog it could be a website it could be something that
you’ve learned or even something you know in in sort of a real life example that shows a passion for sort of
expanding your knowledge and doing more so I think being able to to point at things that you’ve learned or courses
that you’ve done or you know things that you found fascinating or you know even in the tech industry there’s so many
changes and different ways of businesses growing so that’s a great opportunity to kind of demonstrate your skills and you
know look at the news look at what’s happening in the world have a perspective on you know what’s impacting
in the industry one of the best um interviewees that I interviewed at canonical actually came on and she was
interviewing to be fair for her partner marketing position but she had an amazing perspective on like the changing
nature of like the cloud and how people move into the cloud and actually a great perspective around sustainability issues
with regards moving to the garden I just she was fascinating and she wasn’t the most experienced but just that passion
and that interest you know for me was just a huge a huge kind of positive for her and the other thing is around I
guess networking do your research into the communities ask other people what they do who they they talk to you know
the amount of resource I’ve got from the CMO Community Coffee club which is kind of
um a great network is just enormous you know you can go on there there’s people who will offer you advice they’ll tell
you things they’ll share the reading that they’ve got you know share perspectives of things they can do give you advice you know you can ask the sort
of mentors as well which is a great opportunity and I think another thing is sort of adopt mentors through your
career maybe don’t necessarily ask for mentorship because sometimes it feels like a a Time involvement for other
people but what I’ve done is kind of kept in contact with people that I’ve found you know really inspiring or that
I’ve done something that I feel really well and then you know you have the opportunity to sort of say to them you know actually how would you do this have
you considered this you know what’s your perspective on this challenge that I’ve got and you start to build up that amazing network of people that you can
sort of you know stand on their advice and experience whenever you need to which I found and for me was a really
really great thing to do and as I said I think just passion and interest just stands out a mile away yeah and just
having that that relationship where you can say shall we meet for a coffee or a chat instead of you know you’ve just met
somebody might not even be in person nowadays and you say would you like to be my mentor as you say it can you know
they might think oh can I actually commit to that but your right is actually building
um strong connections with people just naturally means that you have great people around you to to help you when
when you have a question um Carol I’m so sorry we’re out of time already thank you so much for for
chatting with me today it’s been an absolute pleasure no thank you very much and I hope it was helpful thank you and
thank you for everybody listening as always uh we hope to see you again next time
