Hi! Who are you and what career transition did you go through? 

I’m Anna. I made the transition from strategy consulting to product management at Capital One!

Why did you want to make the move to product?

As a consultant, you're providing a lot of advice, but you don't get to actually take action on it. Consulting wasn’t the right fit for me because there's a lack of feeling like my work was making an impact. 

I also wanted more stability. As a strategy consultant, you basically have to change your project and team every four months. I wanted to feel like I was a subject matter expert at something and also be able to work with the same people that I really enjoy.

How did you make it happen? 

I was pretty lucky within corporate strategy where we actually have rotation. Instead of doing a project within corporate strategy, you can go on rotation to do business analysts or being a product manager.

So I decided to try and do something within the subscription management space to launch out this cancel feature within the Capital One mobile app.

I ended up liking it a lot. But during that time there was also a lot of headcount scrutiny. So while the team wanted me to stay on and they didn't have a headcount to keep me on. 

So while having conversations with my manager about my interest in moving to PM, I was also just applying internally within the company for open PM roles.

I had an HR recruiter that I was connected to help me guide that process.  There was an internal workday where only internal job postings were posted there. I also joined the product hiring channel, where people will post different openings 

And I would just reach out to each hiring manager on those job postings to say:

“Hey, saw this. I'm really interested in learning more. Can I put some time on your calendar to discuss more about this with you?” 

And I think that actually really helped me get the current role that I'm in.

Having that conversation with that hiring manager helped me learn: Oh, this is the leader that I want to work with. 

What helped the most was having a lot of coffee chats with leaders to figure out what open PM roles are even out there before they were even listed publicly 

How did you have good conversations with your manager about internal transitions?

That rotation was the first step of trying a new job family and seeing whether or not it's a good fit. And during that time, I was also just honest with my manager: “Hey, this is how I'm feeling about product management and what it means for my future.”

That planted the seed at least of I'm considering this as my future path and I don't want to stay in corporate strategy for the long term.

Those conversations are always a little difficult to have but if you have a good relationship or rapport with your manager, I don't think you should be afraid to have those conversations.

It's not coming from a place of “I don't want to be here”, but “I'm trying to find the next step that fits me the best”. I think as long as you're phrasing it in that manner, usually people are open to having those conversations.

But I would also keep the culture of your group in mind because I do want to say in that group, it was normal for people to go on rotations and look at other internal opportunities.

But it might be different depending on your company and your company culture. 

What were some of the resources that you used in order to transition to PM? 

Once I figured out what the interview process looked like at Capital One by talking to other PMs, I used decode and conquer by Lewis Lin. I feel like that helped me a lot.

And then, the most helpful thing is doing mock interviews with people ideally leveraging Lewis Lin's community 

And then also if you have good relationships with the PMs at your company, try asking to do mock interviews with them.