Her Story
About Mary
I started a new job about a month ago at 1220, where I work in employer recruiting and candidate sourcing software. We partner with universities to help them capture data about student outcomes that they need to report to different agencies. On the employer side, they have access to all this information and partner with schools to attend job fairs and find candidates for entry-level positions and beyond. If alumni keep their profiles updated, employers can even find experienced candidates. Before this, I was a product manager for time and attendance software for small businesses like retail stores, design firms, and plumbers, where teams would log in and track their time for payroll. I also served as interim payroll product manager and managed a mobile app where employees could check their payroll and update personal information. My path here wasn't straightforward. I have an environmental science degree and thought I'd be out in the field doing research, but the pace wasn't right for me. I went to law school and completed two out of three years before realizing that wasn't for me either. Through a lot of serendipity, meeting the right people at the right time, and being honest about what I wanted, I found my way into product management. I work remotely now, which has been a great fit for my lifestyle.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Mary
01What do you attribute your success to?
I attribute my success to curiosity. I definitely didn't go to law school thinking I was going to quit, but I learned a lot and then asked myself, what do I do with what I've learned? I just kept talking to people until I found something that felt good, and it was like incremental improvements. I'd think, okay, this would be a good idea, let's try that. Then I'd evaluate what parts felt good and figure out what else feels good. I've done that in my career, with myself, and with my family. It's always about trying something, seeing what we like about it, and then doing it again. It's this curiosity about what do we want to do next and how do we do that. Let's go figure it out. When you look back, you're so much further than where you were in the direction you wanted to go, but I could never have sat seven years ago and said this is where I want to be. It goes back to just being open to going down whatever path and deviating a little bit to the left, a little bit to the right, until you end up where you want to go.
02What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
I think it's be open to experiences that you never thought you would like, because I didn't think that I would like working in an office. I thought it meant going into an office and sitting behind a desk every day, but I work remote, so that didn't end up being the case. There are so many different ways that careers can look, and there are so many things that school never prepared you for. You only really saw a very small amount of what business was when you were making all these life decisions at age 18, like what you're going to study. The doors are not open to you at age 18 to go and look and see what every career is, and career centers in high schools and colleges can't tell you what's going to exist in five years because the world is very dynamic. Product management, if it did exist, was a very niche field when I was in high school, and I don't even know what's going to exist in 10 years. I think it's be very open and have an idea because it gives you momentum of what your plan is, but don't get locked into it because you will have so many opportunities that you can say yes to if you're not completely locked in on this idea of a future that you haven't even lived yet.
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