Part 3. “Everyone has a Plan Until They Get Punched in the Mouth.” -Mike Tyson
I. Rewriting the Narrative
The first step was to rewrite my narrative. The story I was trying to tell recruiters and hiring managers had to make sense. Upon reflection, this story needed to address two main questions:
- Why do you want to leave clinical dentistry?
- What value can you add to the team/organization?
Question #1 was relatively straightforward and I had that covered (for a refresher read here). Question #2 was a bit harder to answer and even harder to prove. Essentially, it was a polite way of asking: “Why in the world should we hire you, someone without any prior experience?”
Initially, I tried to approach this question by listing the transferable skills I had developed as a dentist that could be applied as a product manager. While this was a great starting point, it didn’t actually get me anywhere. At the end of the day, these were just words, and I lacked a way to prove them.
Borrowing from the concept of Tell-Show-Do in pediatric dentistry, I was doing a lot of “telling” without actually “showing” or “doing”.
However, to gain the experience I needed to “show and do”, I needed experience. I needed the chicken or the egg to get started, but there weren’t a lot of opportunities out there willing to just hand you either one.
II. Making My Own Experience**
While it’s common advice for aspiring PMs to “build a product”, I didn’t really know exactly how to go about it in an effective and efficient way. While I could have taken the fully DIY approach (conducting needfinding on my own, hiring a developer on Fiverr, conducting usability testing on the MVP, etc.), I was also working as an associate, teaching, and completing an online MBA, so I had limited bandwidth.
After researching and evaluating my options, I decided to join Co.Lab and eventually, Hack for LA. During my time at Co.Lab, I was able to work as a PM with a team of two developers and a designer. In just eight weeks, we were able to build an MVP for our product: Olive Branch!
Similarly, at Hack for LA, I was able to “show and do” the work of a PM while making improvements to our Volunteer Relationship Management System (VRMS).
**I also took a couple of different Product 101 courses on Udemy and a Interaction Design course on Coursera that I highly recommend, but they were largely theoretical and academic in nature**
Stay tuned for Part 3.5 — No Love for the DDS/DMD !
