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My coaching style is structured and honest. In the same spirit, I want to be clear about what I can help you with, and what I’m not great at.

I specialize in “how to get the job you want”, more than “what job do you want”. If you have a goal, I can help you achieve it. If you’re still deciding between very different career fields, I can certainly point you in some useful directions, but it’s not my area of focus and I wouldn’t propose we work 1:1 together until you figure that out.

NOTE: I am presently not offering any services or conversations, so if you reach out I probably won’t respond for a while. I’m preparing for the birth of our first child and will be taking some time off. Thanks for understanding!

I offer services in four areas:

Free initial consultation, with possible 1:1 coaching proposal afterwards

NOTE: I am presently not offering any services or conversations, so if you reach out I probably won’t respond for a while. I’m preparing for the birth of our first child and will be taking some time off. Thanks for understanding!

I’m happy to talk to almost anyone involved in a job search for twenty minutes, free of charge. During our time together I’ll learn more about what you’re looking for, explain the ways we could work together in the future, and try to give you enough useful advice to give you a preview of the impact we could make by working together. Another way of seeing the impact is looking at the testimonials of former 1:1 coachees.

There are two things I ask before we have an exploratory conversation:

  • To help me prepare, please fill out this form with a little about your job search and how to get in touch with you. This information lets me be helpful to you, instead of asking basic questions during our call time.
  • To make sure you’re at the right point for me to help, please forward me proof you’ve applied to a job in the recent past. This could be a rejection notice from an employer, an interview scheduling email, a “we have received your application” email, or something else. You can send that to coaching@[this domain name].
    • If we speak when you’re thinking about applying, but haven’t actually started yet, I’ve found those conversations aren’t very useful to either of us. I’ll basically just be encouraging you to start applying and get some data, and you’ll be asking me if you’re ready to apply yet. You’ll feel a bit more secure in applying afterwards, but it’s not very impactful. So go send in one application and then we can talk!

If it seems like we’d be a fit for 1:1 job search coaching, I’ll send you a proposal after our conversation. I work very intensely with up to four clients at a time, and as of February 3, 2018 have two active 1:1 clients and two open spots.

Mock interviewing – $149/session

Between 2009-2018, I had a 70%+ first round interview to offer conversion rate, including offers for Google and OkCupid product management, BCG consulting, and enterprise sales. My approach to interview practice is to have a pre-defined list of which skills are most important to develop in which order, quickly diagnose where on that skill ladder you are, and then focus our time on improving the next most important skill. Here are some testimonials from happy mock interviewees.

A mock interview session includes:

  • a pre-interview questionnaire to decide what you want to work on, which is linked below
  • pre-interview sharing of a rubric of which skills we’ll work on in which order
  • 45 minutes of interviewing together, with feedback after every question so that you can improve over the course of the session
  • sharing a written assessment and video recording of the full session afterwards

If you’re interested in a mock interview, please fill out this form and I’ll be in touch with some more details.

Building your best stories + creating a resume – $499

I strongly believe that getting resume changes from someone that doesn’t know your background very well usually results in a cosmetic facelift but low impact on your applications’ success. It can take your resume from terrible to OK, but not from OK to great. And I don’t sell services that are only “OK”.

The problem with most resume creation services is that resumes are fundamentally about telling your story. Thus, someone who doesn’t know your story very well would not be able to produce a great resume on your behalf.

So, if you’re already set on how you present yourself and your stories, and you’re purely looking to improve resume wording and formatting, I’d encourage you to seek out someone else for resume creation. You can get great formatting improvements at a much lower price point.

If instead you’d like to figure out what the most effective stories are, that’s what I aim to do. The most important effect of this is that you’ll be telling these stories throughout your interview, as your best examples of why you have certain qualities that these jobs care about. Additionally, we’ll produce a resume that naturally leads the reader to ask questions which give you the chance to tell those impactful stories.

Here’s the process:

  • We have a live conversation to explore exactly what your career goals are
  • Based on your input and my research, we figure out which qualities are most important to secure jobs that relate to your career goals
  • I give you a series of detailed exercises to examine and write down the most important stories from your past jobs and experiences. You complete them.
  • Via my editing and another live conversation, I refine the structure, level of detail, and emphasis of those stories. You’ll use those stories verbally, as you answer interview questions, and in writing within the resume
  • Once we have great stories, I’ll then build a resume that causes employers to ask you questions leading to the very best stories that you have
  • Finally, we’ll speak once more for any final edits or questions on how to use the resume effectively

I also happily improve the resumes of my coaching clients, since I learn their backstories as part of my 1:1 coaching process.

Finally, please note that I produce resumes for humans to read. My goal is to tell a great story on your behalf, not get the exact right keywords for an ATS tracking system, because if you’re applying to jobs correctly you should rarely if ever apply without a personal referral that skips the automated screening step. If your main goal is to clear automated ATS application filters rather than have a human reader react positively, I’m not the best person to work with.

If you’re interested in speaking together about your stories and resume, you can contact me (coaching@[this domain name]) to set up a time to talk.

(For companies) hiring your first product managers

I’ve spent years focused on product management recruiting at tech companies, so I’ve seen the interview questions, cases, and recruiting processes of dozens of leading tech companies. Additionally, I worked as the interim recruiter at a fast-growing company in my past and conducted hundreds of interviews from the employer side of the table.

If you represent a company that’s transitioning from the founding team running product into hiring your first few product managers, I could be useful to you in:

  • Defining the criteria you should use to select your first product manager
  • Setting up a quick, fair recruiting process to find candidates that would be a great fit for your company while also convincing those candidates it would be a great idea to come work with you
  • Sourcing product manager candidates to participate in your interviews
  • Training your team on how to run an effective interview and debrief well afterwards
  • Suggesting specific steps to take once that hire is on-boarded to effectively begin the transition of power and duties from the founding team to the PM

If you’re interested in speaking together, you can contact me (coaching@[this domain name]) to learn more about hiring your first product manager.

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