In an industry as competitive and constantly evolving as technology, how can product managers execute on all their responsibilities while steadily growing their own skills? According to three such leaders at fast-growing, local tech companies, built-in professional development opportunities go a long way toward helping employees ladder up. But there’s no substitute for learning to see every project on your plate as both an objective to oversee and an opportunity to seize.
At Infillion, Senior Director of Product Management Amanda Conrad has a yield management project that will touch all areas of the business in her near future — which is exactly why she can’t wait to get started.
“I’m learning so much about how our business operates and able to see how the work I’m doing is not only impacting revenue but also improving my stakeholder’s work,” she said.
And at Laserfiche, every role is growth-oriented, thanks to a talent mobility program that allows existing employees to explore career opportunities in other departments. That’s been the experience of Technical Program Manager II Tesia Au, who’s spent more than seven years at the company since starting as a solutions engineer. “I feel that my career has come full circle,” she said.
Built In sat down with Conrad, Au and HiveWatch’s Senior Product Manager Chelsea Pattee to discuss developing their skills on the job, thriving in cultures that encourage professional development and getting excited about their upcoming projects.
A marketing and advertising automation platform, Infillion (formerly Gimbal) translates location data from the real world into targeting, measurement and insight products for customers. To move UpLift, its brand lift ad measurement metric, across the finish line, Amanda Conrad said her role as senior director of product management involved constantly communicating to keep all teams aligned.
How has working on UpLift helped you develop or hone your skills at Infillion?
Everything had to be considered — UX and UI, machine learning models, new APIs and services to our system, data infrastructure and go-to-market strategy. Each one of these areas was a mini-project in itself with different subject-matter experts, timelines and stakeholders. At the end of the day, I had to make sure the team was crystal-clear on the big picture, so that each small day-to-day decision was leading the team toward our end vision. I grew as a leader and manager during that project.
What growth opportunities exist at Infillion?
The product team is growing fast. Given the diverse set of products our team is responsible for, we envision new hires rotating through the three main product areas, to see where they might be a natural fit while also building skills across disciplines. Additionally, the company’s annual professional development stipend gives our product managers the opportunity to complete product management training and certification.
What’s an upcoming project you’re excited to work on?
Right now, I’m working on a yield management project, the goal of which is to improve efficiency, transparency and operational maturity throughout our business. I work on a wide array of diverse components: system workflow improvements, machine-learning forecasting models for our business, prediction algorithms and tuning delivery systems intended to boost our revenue.
To help businesses keep their premises secure from physical threats, HiveWatch’s software gathers data that helps security teams distinguish real risks from false alarms and respond more effectively. Such enterprise security solutions require a highly skilled team — and so Chelsea Pattee, senior product manager, took on the challenge of evolving and enhancing the company’s interview process.
How has modifying the interview process at HiveWatch helped you develop or hone your product management skills there?
As we started growing our team, I realized a typical rundown of a resume and getting candidates to answer a few questions was not enough to gauge their product skills. I needed to see how they think, collaborate and iterate on solutions to address potential pain points. I added a whiteboard working session to our process, which gave me much more visibility into a candidate’s team fit, capabilities and strengths and weaknesses.
Though it was not a traditional product project, modifying the interview process did help me grow my product management skills. It made me realize I possessed some of the core competencies that are relevant to a product manager, beyond some framework or formula someone could look up on YouTube and regurgitate.
What growth opportunities exist at HiveWatch?
Individuals can truly be drivers of their own careers here. The company supports professional growth in the form of continuous education, through conferences, certifications and courses. Product managers at HiveWatch are each responsible for a specific part of the product, allowing for a true sense of ownership. Even more, although each product pod has its own team, the product org functions as a collective whole. Since user journeys have touch points across the product and across various personas, there is overlapping work that requires close collaboration.
What’s an upcoming project you’re excited to work on?
The HiveWatch product itself is still in its infancy. While it’s already incredibly functional and currently providing measurable results for our customers, it still has a long way to go in terms of implementing all the innovative additional features and iterations that we have in mind. I’m excited to work on software that is not only changing the physical security industry but also helping people to streamline their work and companies to protect their people, assets and data. We have data-driven product development and product-led growth. Working at an early-stage product with a small but growing team means more individual opportunities for everyone and my voice being heard. I brought up an idea of partnering with another tech product. It was taken seriously and now is on the road to being implemented, so that’s going to be an exciting project to take on as well.
Laserfiche’s intelligent content management and business procession automation software solutions — which span enterprise content, records and document management — are trusted by more than 35,000 organizations around the world, which means interacting with customers is an essential part of the business. Working as a solutions architect in the company’s consulting department did plenty to prepare Tesia Au to hit the ground running as a technical program manager.
How have customer projects and interactions helped you develop or hone your product management skills at Laserfiche?
Before I became a technical program manager in development, I was a solutions architect in our consulting department. In that role, I worked with our customers to implement and develop unique solutions to solve business needs. Customer-oriented work helped me gain not just technical and project management skills but also empathy for our customers and understanding of what they really wanted out of our product.
All those customer projects and interactions helped me develop and hone skills that I found relevant when I transferred internally. As a technical program manager in development, I was able to use the skill sets that I developed from consulting for my first big project in development, which was defining and launching a new, long-awaited security feature in our process automation suite. That project helped me learn how to lead and work with cross-team engineering members as well as how to collaborate with other departments — like sales and marketing — to successfully launch a feature.
What growth opportunities exist at HiveWatch?
I became a technical program manager through one of the growth opportunities that Laserfiche offers. I was interested in becoming more actively involved in development to help shape what the product would become. Thanks to supportive managers and teammates, I was able to take the leap and transition into a new role.
My managers have always provided me with guidance and mentorship but have also allowed me to pursue projects of personal interest that stand to benefit the company. Besides the talent mobility program, Laserfiche offers platforms to continually learn about different technologies and soft skills, which helped in my role as a technical program manager. Growth opportunities also often exist when innovating and collaborating on new ideas with different teams; something that I find myself doing a lot in my current role.
What’s an upcoming project you’re excited to work on?
In my previous consulting professional experience, which involved working with our customers, I had always provided our development teams with feedback and updates that customers wanted to see within our product. Now, I am able to make those changes happen directly. The professional experience that I had as a solutions architect has pushed me to realize that I want to be able to directly champion the wants of our customers and use those to influence the product’s future. It has been fulfilling to make an idea into a developed product feature that will impact our users’ daily lives.
