Tuesday, June 15, 2004
Presenting on career advancement techniques
This morning (and quite early in the morning I might add) I spoke to a small group of folks at the monthly Product Mgmt. Round Table sponsored by the Business Marketing Association (BMA.)
My topic was personal really...how I advanced in a technical field, despite my lack of engineering degree or background.
But given that the group was more than 50% populated with marketeers who were originally engineers, I made some slight adjustments.
We discussed developing both technical and "soft" skills, such as public speaking, time and project mgmt. etc. And we discussed mentoring and having multiple mentors to serve multiple purposes. And we talked a lot about networking, how to develop and maintain a healthy, fruitful network. Lastly, we actually discussed life/work balance and decision-making. I know so many people who are miserable where they are, but trap themselves with the decisions they make.
It was a lively, interactive discussion, aided by a 2nd speaker who represented the recruiter perspective.
The BMA holds these round tables the 3rd Tuesday of every month at the Scott's Seafood in Palo Alto at 7:30 am (now you see what I mean about early.)
My topic was personal really...how I advanced in a technical field, despite my lack of engineering degree or background.
But given that the group was more than 50% populated with marketeers who were originally engineers, I made some slight adjustments.
We discussed developing both technical and "soft" skills, such as public speaking, time and project mgmt. etc. And we discussed mentoring and having multiple mentors to serve multiple purposes. And we talked a lot about networking, how to develop and maintain a healthy, fruitful network. Lastly, we actually discussed life/work balance and decision-making. I know so many people who are miserable where they are, but trap themselves with the decisions they make.
It was a lively, interactive discussion, aided by a 2nd speaker who represented the recruiter perspective.
The BMA holds these round tables the 3rd Tuesday of every month at the Scott's Seafood in Palo Alto at 7:30 am (now you see what I mean about early.)
// posted by ElisaC @ 7:32 PM 
