After Product Issue #4

Ever thought about moving into Product Recruitment? Well, we’ve gone and found out what it’s like from someone who’s done just that 👇

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So how did you get into Product Management in the first place?

So, if we’re talking about squiggly careers, my whole career has been squiggly. I originally wanted to be the next David Attenborough - I studied animal behaviour, zoology, evolutionary biology at Edinburgh University and even spent 3 months in the Madagascar rainforest as a research assistant.

As I was thinking about whether to do a PhD (for which I’d need to be able to spend 2 years in a tent in the rainforest), I decided I probably didn’t want to go back. Longdrop latrines lose their appeal remarkably quickly.

I came back and ended up getting a job at Taylor & Francis in London, where I worked on scientific and technical books. I stayed in that industry for a while, working my way up at Elsevier, which was the largest science and medical publisher at the time in the world. I became Commissioning Editor on a medical textbook website, and as content moved online, was promoted to Product Manager.

And I thought, “What new hell is this?” But it was exactly the same - instead of working with printers, we were working with coders. Instead of working with text designers, we were working with UX. So I fell into Product because of that.

You then had a number of Product roles at Elsevier, Janes, IHS, BioMed Central, Springer Science and Business Media (now Springer Nature), Medidata, Wood Mackenzie, and LandTech. What prompted the move into Recruitment?

The company I was working at went through a redundancy process. After that I felt burnt out, bruised - I probably still am.

I was speaking to Blair West, a recruitment agency in Newcastle, about a senior Product role and I realised that I had no appetite to go back into it. In my previous role, I’d been really building out the team rapidly and doing a lot of hiring and I’d loved it.

I love Product, I enjoy working with people. So, I thought, “Why not try working with Product people?”. And Blair West had a great Product-y approach to recruitment that I felt I could get behind.

Can you expand on what you mean by feeling ‘burnt’ by Product?

It's a great, rewarding job. It's highly collaborative. It's creative. You can build great stuff and change the world.

It's also intensely political. And that is intellectually and emotionally taxing. And in a startup, when you have a founder-CEO - they're the first product person. Plus, I can be a bit blunt and direct at times - I don't play poker because everything I'm thinking is always all over my face! Even if I don't say anything, it's very apparent what I'm thinking.

I had a great conversation with someone the other day who reminded me that in earlier-stage startups, you’re often hired to do, not think. Execute on the CEO’s vision - and that can be tricky to navigate.

How are you enjoying recruitment?

Well, I’ve only been doing it for a few months. I'm still getting under the hood of it really and figuring it out.

It's tough to go into Recruitment in these market conditions - there's a lot of people out there, a lot of roles, and investment's light. Clients are saving money on recruitment fees. At Blair West, we take time to partner and consult with clients and understand what their business goals are.

Often they come to us saying they want a certain type of role, and we advise they maybe need something different. We’ll work with them and identify what it is they need, not just what they think they want. That’s a very Product-y approach.

A lot of my time is spent talking to job seekers, reviewing CVs, providing advice, building relationships - and then matchmaking when it’s appropriate.

It’s not the hardest job in the world, but it’s competitive, very fast paced and the market is tough out there, as I’ve said.

Do you think your Product roles set you up well for it?

Yeah, absolutely. I’ve had a lot of feedback saying it’s very rare that you talk to a recruiter who actually knows what Product is - somebody who’s done the job. I know that as a candidate, for example, sometimes I would talk to a recruiter and they’d start talking about “project management”(!) - even quite recently.

I’m long-in-the-tooth enough in Product, such that I don’t do that. I’m going to give honest, authentic advice about what the Product role is and the hard times that you might face. But also the good times that you’ll have.

What do you like/dislike about the recruiter role?

And that includes the full range of Product people (business analysts, product owners, managers, user researchers and designers, as well as Engineers from time to time).

On the flip side, recruitment is very process-driven. There’s a recipe to it, so there’s sometimes a lack of opportunity to add in innovation and creativity. I’m not building a thing that will solve a problem - I’m putting a person in place that will solve the problem, and I won’t be around to see how that person performs. So that long-term view is missing.

How are you finding the sales aspect of recruitment? It’s not typically a skill we have to train that hard in Product.

I’m still on that journey so I couldn’t really give too much advice on it. It’s quite a change to have to promote yourself as the product and build a personal brand. Particularly as an introvert - that can be very uncomfortable. But I think it’s good to be uncomfortable and force yourself to learn and grow.

In Product, we don’t have to deal with rejection in quite the same way as you do in Recruitment. We do have to deal with conflict quite a lot, but conflict isn’t something I’ve encountered so far in Recruitment.

What’s next for you?

I’m still very early on here, but I can possibly imagine a world in which I eventually move into consulting - wherein I can design and advise on product organisations and then actually go and build it for clients.

Would you go back into Product Management?

Maybe. I do miss it. But I’m not sure I want to go back into Product leadership.

I miss being part of a team sport, as it were - I’m in the technology team here, but we’ve each got our own areas and we work mostly on our own. I miss seeing the impact you can have and the energy you get when you ship great software and motivate your team.

But Product leadership is a lot of politics. And you’re pretty removed from that fun stuff that I’ve just mentioned.

What would you say to those thinking of making a switch out of Product?

I think Product is the hardest job in technology - you’ve got to be a bit technical, good with people, political, financial, and all the rest.

Because of that, it’s highly transferable and it can take you anywhere you like. You just need to reframe what your product is, really. The Product mindset sets you up solidly for whatever direction you want to go in.

What would you recommend for those specifically interested in Recruitment?

Do what you know. If you’re a UX designer wanting to get into Recruitment, start by recruiting for UX.

It’s always a benefit if you’ve done some hiring previously, but hiring internally and externally are very different things. 

Externally, you don’t know as well who is going to be the right fit, so your job is to make sure you understand the client fully and then you need to get enough high-quality candidates in the funnel. Hiring internally, your job is to choose for yourself, and you can move faster without having to coordinate with clients.

That’s all for now, folks.

Thanks again to Duncan for sharing his story with us.

Got a particular industry/role you want to find out more about? Hit reply and let us know :)