For those of you who missed it, I recently finished My First Chapter at Microsoft as a Sales Operations Program Manager in Canada. Since I took on a role for someone who was going on maternity leave, I always knew that I had to keep my eye on what’s next.

In this blog post and the next, I will be sharing what my job hunting experience was like during a very interesting time in the world… with some tips and tricks that I learned along the way!

Making Time for Professional Development

Since my predecessor planned for a 12 month maternity leave, I started keeping an eye out for new opportunities despite being in role for only a few months. Of course, my onboarding and current role came first—I made sure that I learned quickly so that I could deliver impact sooner rather than later.

My first order of business was to make time for professional development. This meant investing a lot of overtime in the first few months to learn the ins and outs of my role and responsibilities. Once I got a hang of things, I looked for opportunities to automate and optimize. This resulted in a lot of time savings when it came to reporting, which was a big chunk of my role. The time I saved from manual reporting was then fed into new projects that gave me visibility and exposure to other managers and teams.

Expanding My Network & Perspective

With remote work in full swing, I decided to make good use of my lunch hours by setting up virtual coffee chats with people all around the company. On average, I met with 5-10 people per week to learn about their roles, teams, and career paths. Through these conversations, I started reflecting on my own goals and interests. Over time, these reflections evolved into statements on my Career Walking Deck and Career Development Plan(s).

Along the way, I found great mentors and coaches who were willing to lean in and invest in my growth and development. Sometimes, they shared opportunities that helped me build new skillsets. Other times, they connected me with people in their network who could elaborate on the good, bad, and the ugly of their jobs.

Finding What Gives Me Energy

Passion was a common theme from many of my career conversations. People told me to figure out what gives me energy, and do more of it. Bottom line: you spend way too much time at work to do something that you don’t enjoy. Surprisingly, this self discovery piece was a lot harder than I thought. But after some time, it came down to 3 buckets:

• storytelling
• building connections
• and taking ownership

Now what?

When I realized that I was passionate about storytelling, I felt a bit stumped… Immediately, I thought of an author or film maker. But, how did storytelling fit into the corporate world?

Fortunately, I had the wisdom of dozens to guide me through my convoluted thoughts. I broke down the concept of storytelling into 3 parts: creating relevant content, captivating an audience, and sharing my learnings.

I then repeated this process with building connections, which broke down into meeting new people, supporting others, and learning from them.

Then again with taking ownership: leading projects and initiatives, planning and organizing, and winning in a team environment.

Being a visual person, I put all of these elements into a venn diagram (see below) which I included in the later versions of my Career Walking Deck.

This simple venn diagram took hours of reflection, reiteration, and reaffirmation. However, this became an asset that helped me vet which job postings to apply for. And more importantly, it’s what I use to answer the interview question that every hiring manager asks me… Why do you want this job?

Read part 2 here.

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