Collaborate on Sample Consulting Invoice for Product Management with Ease Using airSlate SignNow

Sample consulting invoice for Product Management

She's successfully transitioned from consultant to a product manager within eight months during the pandemic. So let's learn how exactly she made it happen. Hey guys. This is Dr. Nancy Li, director of product. I help people transition from worker bee to product manager and business leader. To learn the most effective way to become a product manager. You should subscribe to the channel and turn on the bell button so that you'll be notified every time when upload a new video every Monday. Today, we had pleasure to invite Crystal to teach us how she transitioned from a consultant into a product manager. And why she made those transition. Crystal, do you want to introduce yourself? Yeah, sure. Hi everyone. My name is Crystal. I'm a new product manager at Intuit. I actually transitioned from consulting to product management, not too long ago, and I'm also an H1B visa holder. So throughout my whole journey of pivoting landing offer and negotiating an offer, I watched a lot of Nancy's videos that were super helpful. I highly recommend all her videos, but especially the series of negotiation, I think is a very important skill. Not only when you were negotiating on offer, but everything in life, you can keep using that negotiation skills to get the best benefits for yourself. Great. Crystal, let me ask you the first question. Why you want to transition from a consultant into a product manager? Yeah. So I think two main reasons for me, the first one is I want more decision making power, less focus on, you know, implementing someone else's vision. So like one thing that I noticed about consulting is it's no longer, like people used to think about, you know, MBB management consultants are always bringing the latest and the greatest, but if you think about the world today and nobody's doing it, like everyone is doing it for the first time with all these technology advancement and all the new business model, the value of a consultant is very limited in terms of providing, you know, best practices or past experience. So a lot of times you're kind of implementing someone else, stream someone else being maybe a product manager of a company. Well, who's your clients, right? So for me, product manager, I already like this is week three of my journey of being a product manager. I'm already making a lot more decisions than I used to make, and I just have that ownership feels great. The second reason I think is I want to transition into a more technical professional with business acumen and then being a consultant. I'm more still focusing on the business side without really into learning and going into those technical skills. Awesome. Yeah. Which was also one of the reasons myself become a product manager and also the decision-making power as we discussed. So when you transition from a consultant to a product managers, what do you think is the best practice, best advice you can offer to my audience? Yeah. The first one is being patient, I guess it's definitely not an easy transition. Especially for someone who are not looking for like an entry-level product manager job, it's really difficult when you don't have that prior experience. So be patient is key. You really want to find something that's a great fit for you.The second one is designing a roadmap. So similar to how you design a roadmap for a product, you look at yourself as a product and design a roadmap, right? That's it. If my end goal is I want to become a product manager for, I don't know, a social media app, but then today I'm a finance or technology consultant. You just have to think about how many steps in between do you have to go through to get to that end goal? So don't think about getting straight to the end goal, but think about, Oh, maybe first I get into product management for a B to C company, and then the next step will be maybe go to a social media company. And then the third step is, you know, being the product manager for that specific product or feature or team for a specific company. So then if you have a roadmap for yourself, you can take yourself one step at a time instead of just navigating and getting a bunch of rejections and don't know where to go. So that's kind of my approach to, um, is to really evaluate myself, setting up a roadmap for myself and then go for the next step and then next step further later. Yeah. Awesome. Would you mind to tell us how you design your path to Intuit as an example, is it by accident? I know you also got multiple product manager offers yourself. Yeah. Well, what's the stepping stones did you do to get here? Yeah. So a little background. I was a consultant focusing on finance. So I know my industry is agnostic. However, my function is in finance. Eventually I want to become a product manager for a tech product. I want to be more like B2B or like enterprise serving side. So my stepping stone, I was thinking I can become a product manager for like an enterprise, like finance users. So more focusing on the backend, you know, finance infrastructure or data, enterprise systems. And then maybe I go from there to like a non-finance role still within product management and then eventually go to like a B2B company becoming a product manager for their software or system. So that's kinda my I guess three step process. The reason why I chose into it, it's a lot of reason, other reasons, but the main thing is it really fits into my career trajectory. And my current role is no longer focusing on finance, but it's focusing on legal compliance and also robotic automation. So that kind of gave me a jump that I can skip over the first step, which is becoming a product manager for finance products. I can go directly into my second step, which is going into a non-finance. And I think that's really important to complete a whole picture for myself because I already have a ton of experience just focusing on finance, but now if I can make my first job into something that's not finance related, then I'm opening myself up for more opportunities. Very exciting and engaging for all of us. Let me ask you one final question. What's your entire timeline to getting ready and interview and get offer? Yeah, the actual interview process. I will say it's probably like eight months, eight to nine months. But that also includes the COVID 19. I was actually already interviewing with Intuit in March, I think, but they, their job got canceled because of Covid. And I also have some visa issues. So then I have a few months that I couldn't really do anything until l get my H1B or whatever sorted out. So it's definitely longer than most people, but that's going back to my first point. You know, I had time where I was so desperate that I just really feel like I could take anything as I as a product manager title, but I'm glad that I didn't do that. And I had a patience to land at these perfect position that I really enjoy and is a great fit for me. But yeah, eight month, but I will say the actual experience of me realizing that I want to go into product, preparing myself taking classes. And even while I was still a consultant looking for projects where it's as close to product manager role as possible. So I can like have these stories to tell during my interview, like that's a, you know, you have a longer process, probably like a year or year and a half that I'm consciously planning my next step, unconsciously doing things to prepare myself. This awesome. Crystal, I like how you make the product roadmap for your career to get where you are. And I think it's a very important like advice to most of the audience today was because everybody wants... I want to get in Google tomorrow say it's less than 1% Okay, so let's figure out, for example, how would you build a product portfolio as a consultant? You have great opportunity to choose what product or project you want to join. That's relevant to the next step, become a product manager. So I made a video about product portfolio going to put up there and you guys should check it out. And I do like now, now later on you directly to go into interview because you already prepare yourself doing some kind of project. Now you land the offer, but I also really appreciate being very authentic because lots of us had issues during our H1B visa during the pandemic and since has slowed down a lot as well. And thank you very much for sharing everything with us today. Yeah. Thanks Nancy. Great to be here. Great. One last thing. How would the audience get in touch with you if they have any questions? Yeah. I would say the first channel is LinkedIn. So look me up in LinkedIn and let me know if there's anything I can help or if you just want to bounce ideas off and then you can also follow my Instagram. I think that's the most used social media that I have right now. Awesome. Thank you very much for joining us today. Thanks, See you Crystal, bye.