The Commons Digest (01/29/2022)

The COmmons Insider Newsletter

Welcome to the latest issue of The Commons digest!

This is our bi-weekly round-up of community news, relevant content and anything that can help us level up together.

As always, reach out if you have any feedback or if you’d like anything featured in here.

Now onto the update 👇

Question we’re pondering 💭

Last week one of our community members asked whether it's ok to change your job title on LinkedIn or your resume to better reflect your role and help make it clearer to hiring managers why you're a good fit for their team.

It's a great question in that a discrepancy between your job title and what you actually do is a problem many business professionals face in their job search. As functions evolve and companies become more creative with their titling, this problem is only going to become more common.

We had a lively discussion about this in the Skillful Slack community that might be helpful:

  1. It's a calculated risk, but so long as you're careful not to misrepresent your job, changing your title can make sense if you want to clarify what it is you do. It's especially helpful if you're trying to pivot from one industry to another that has entirely different titling for similar roles.
  2. The revised title should be truthful. You should absolutely avoid making your role seem more senior than it is (e.g. changing your title from "Manager" to "Senior Manager") or stretching the scope of your role.
  3. Where possible, ask permission from founders or HR of your company to adapt your title.
  4. Where relevant, proactively explain to the recruiter or hiring manager of a prospective new role that your formal title is different from what you actually do, and provide examples.
  5. One of the best pieces of advice is to be creative with formatting. A Sr. Marketing Manager who is mostly doing BizOps? Try Sr. Marketing Manager (Operations & Strategy).

Have you grappled with this dilemma before? What worked for you? What was less ideal? We'd love to hear how you've thought about this!

Member Spotlight 💡

Today we're featuring Cheryl Lau. Cheryl is an alum our Strategy + Operations Sprint, a former corporate strategist and now a member of the Operations Strategy team at Curology.

Cheryl has been an active member of our community for over a year now and is someone we point to when Skillfulers ask about breaking into tech from internal management consulting roles. Cheryl spent several years in corporate strategy at Deutsche Bank before joining Curology, where she works on projects in areas like growth, product marketing, cost optimization and retention and acquisition.

She has a lot of advice on how to optimize your job search which you should absolutely check out if you are thinking about making a move into tech. You can read more about her journey here.

Apply Early for March Sprints 🚀

This past week we kicked off our January Sprints: Strategy + Operations, Product Strategy and Strategic Finance. These are the largest cohorts of each Sprint to date and our newly-admitted Skillfulers are already deep into the programs and community. If you missed the opportunity to join the January Sprints, you can apply early to our March Sprints below. Early applicants can save over $100 if they're accepted to a Sprint and it's also the best way to secure your spot (all of our January Sprints filled up before we could finish reviewing applications).

Apply Now - Strategy + Operations

Apply Now - Product Strategy

Apply Now - Strategic Finance

Events @ Skillful 🗓

  • Saturday January 22nd: We kicked off the January cohort of our Strategy + Operations Sprint!
  • Tuesday January 25th
    We joined forces with Monday Girl for a panel on career changes, specifically how to find and evaluate new opportunities, build connections and set yourself up for success 💫 Big thank you to our amazing panelists Rachel Wong, Himani Nagrath, Ana Lopez and Julie-Anne Mendoza. We also had the cohort kickoff + first meetings for our Strategic Finance and Product Strategy Sprints

#community-wins 🥇

We celebrated some hiring announcements!
  • Tony Akhigbe joined Neo Financial as an Insights Analyst, where he'll be driving Strategy & Operations insights with data
  • Michele Yuen has joined Scale Platform as Director of Business Operations
  • Ashok Sivamohan recently joined Instacart in San Francisco to work in Strategic Finance

Please be sure to reach out on Slack with a word or two of congratulations!

One (community) thing

We often invite Skillful alumni to our cohort kickoff events in order to help our newest Skillfulers learn how to make the most of their experience. It's also a great way to deepen bonds between community members across different cohorts.

Here's Armish Sehar and Eddie Wu, two amazing grads of our Strategy + Operations Sprint, sharing their tips and experience with the latest cohort. Thank you both for taking the time to help others make the most of their experience - after all, that's what this community is all about 🙏

That’s all for this issue ✌️

If you’d like to access more news and content before the next update, you can hop on over to Slack.

P.S. please give us a follow on Instagram - we’re bringing the community directly to your feed :) See anything your friend might find interesting? Feel free to forward this issue! This community grows stronger and more valuable to everyone in it the more smart people - i.e. folks like you - learn about Skillful. Sign-up to receive all things Skillful right here.

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Skillful is now The Commons.
We’re more than just skills training. We're the place where high achievers come to fulfill their career potential. We combine education, mentorship and community to empower the next generation of ambitious professionals to achieve their career goals.
The time to build the education institution of the future is now. And we're doing it.

Careers are catalyzed through skills-training, mentorship and a supportive network. At The Commons, we're delivering those critical career elements together through learning experiences that are social, mentorship-based and community-first.

Join to learn and stay for the community.