Applying product thinking to personal development: How to leverage your diverse background & skills to get a product job for the first time

When I first started my mentorship as part of the News Product Alliance's Mentor Network program, I couldn't even imagine where this path would lead me.

As a mentee, I embarked on an inspiring professional growth challenge to land my first product role in the European digital media industry as a migrant woman from the Global South. After six months of work, I'm proud to share how I deepened my understanding of news product strategy.

In partnership with my mentor Luciana Cardoso , I developed a product mindset by identifying and leveraging my skills and celebrating my diverse background. I implemented an effective "thinking less, making more" strategy to take actionable steps towards my professional growth.

I looked back on my life experience to understand the underlying motivations behind my decisions. I did deep personal research to identify which skills, traits, and abilities I have grown and need to continue improving. I started to think seriously about my career path to better understand, with an intersectional lens, why it has been so difficult for me to land a sustainable job as a Latin American migrant in Spain.?

Through this process, I gained clarity on which aspects of my career path I have control over and which ones I need to let go of. I was committed to creating an action plan that would help me identify the best practices, methodologies, and skills necessary to secure an early product role in media.

As a migrant journalist, I was especially focused on creating and strengthening an independent role that could add value to the media landscape, where inclusive and diverse narratives produced by migrants are misrepresented and underrepresented.?

While I have been knocking on countless doors to find job opportunities in the media industry, my experience in this mentorship has provided me with a valuable opportunity to improve my knowledge of product thinking. I have gained a deeper understanding of how to track tasks and goals with a roadmap and measure success through objectives and key results (OKRs).

Guided by the NPA's mission of supporting product thinkers in creating sustainable, innovative, and ethical media outlets, with a particular focus on diversifying news leadership, I worked closely with Luciana to define the following goals:

1. Create an online portfolio to position my personal brand in the journalism and product industry, making it easier to share my professional value proposition with colleagues, employers, and clients.
2. Conduct stronger audience research to ideate and test a prototype, laying the foundation for developing a minimum viable product (MVP).

Besides learning agile methodologies and sprints focused on a product approach, I could follow a roadmap to create three artifacts that I'm really proud to show you:

• A professional portfolio. Although it's currently in Spanish, an English version is in the making.

• A survey as part of audience research for a product test in Spain.

• An interactive online session at the NPA Summit 2023 to explore and co-create ways to restart our careers in the intersection of journalism and product thinking with diverse and inclusive perspectives.

A product is never finished, so this journey continues. I will keep working on gathering insights to create and test a product. The most important lesson of this mentorship process is that it's not enough to translate your skills into a product approach; it's better to show how you can put these skills into practice by creating and iterating your own product. It's essential to showcase our achievements through goals, objectives, and results.?

Furthermore, there are other important insights that have been eye-opening for us:

• Every action and decision made is meaningful if we always think consciously about its results and impacts.

• A diversity, equity, and inclusivity lens could shine a light to restore trust in media. This intersectional perspective also opens spaces and opportunities for everyone who has been excluded from the industry because of their diverse backgrounds, identities, and experiences. If we can really boost a diverse and inclusive journalism industry, we would have the opportunity to challenge stereotypes and overcome oppressions and vulnerabilities by celebrating our unique qualities and perspectives and creating narratives, products, and services that truly meet the needs of our audiences.

• Our skills are ours forever! It's time to showcase our journey, regardless of the companies we've worked for or collaborated with.

• A mentorship process is not about having someone who shows us exactly what to do. It's about working together with an expert who can offer a diverse perspective of our own processes, and provide proper advice that helps us identify our true inspirations and desires. As Luciana said, a mentoring process is a key to bring answers to the table about how we can show ourselves self-confident. "How can we better showcase our skills during an interview, during our job-seeking journey?".

• Start a conversation with the hiring managers of the position you are interested in. Find out more about this opportunity and never stop asking questions.

Celebrating our skills implies speaking out loud about them. It's a good way to showcase our experience and connect with others who are facing similar challenges, such as trying to secure a sustainable and meaningful job at the intersection of product and journalism.

These words are a celebration of a great mentorship journey. It's a tribute to our diverse backgrounds, a moment of reflection on our next steps. A time to consider how difficult it can be to talk about our accomplishments and impacts, but how urgent it is to embrace what we're going through, what we're currently working on, and what we hope to achieve.

It's important to have a better understanding of ourselves and our strengths in order to better understand our audiences. As product professionals, we're always iterating to achieve better outcomes. Are you willing to leverage your diverse background, skills, and knowledge to secure a job you've never had before, but one in which you can definitely thrive? What are your next steps for securing a product role?

You're invited to check out my portfolio to learn more about my work. I welcome any comments and advice to make it even better ?? ?https://margfoa.com/

So proud of our mentorship accomplishments! You're also invited to subscribe to a newsletter beta and complete a survey that will provide insights into our motivations, needs, and challenges related to digital information research: https://simbiosis.substack.com/?

?? The survey is focused on Spanish speakers. If you don't live in Spain but know someone who does and might be interested in helping with my research, please feel free to share the survey. I would be very grateful! Thank you in advance.