From scrimper to scrum master: My journey into tech

Hi, I’m Kelly and I’m co-founder of Verve Women.

As part of running our new venture, I focus on writing content for the blog and coaching, mentoring and supporting women to develop their careers in the tech industry.

I have worked in tech consulting for just under three years and led and delivered projects for some incredible clients across a range of industries. I manage a team of consultants and have won a number of awards such as Rising Star, Consultant of the Year and Project of the Year, as well as earning eight technical certifications.

But it wasn’t always like this. After 5 years in sales and marketing, I pivoted my career into the tech industry in 2019 by capitalising on my transferable skills and studying in my spare time. 

This post describes my road to get to where I am today, and some things I’ve learned along the way. Maybe you will see parallels with your own path, or maybe it will give you ideas of how to carve your own way into tech. Either way, Verve is here to support you achieve your goals.

Bibliophile of ‘The Toon’

I studied English at Newcastle University, mainly because I was a major bookworm, had a really inspiring English teacher at college (as many people do), and didn’t know what else to do. This was the last year of degrees tripling in price to over £9,000 annually and before apprenticeships outside of tradesperson fields were virtually unheard of, so as someone who happened to be academically strong (aka a bit of a geek), this seemed the next logical step following sixth form. Despite earning A’s in Maths in Science as well as English, I took the latter forward to A level and degree, echoing a sentiment expressed by a female pre-university student quoted in PwC’s Women in Tech report:

“I chose not to pick a science-based subject as I feel that is not my strong point. Although I did well at science when doing my GCSEs, I acknowledged that it becomes increasingly difficult at A-Level, which is why I chose other subjects.”

— Female Pre-University student

A lot of women may go down the arts route at college or uni because that’s the ‘default’ for our gender, or maybe they were put off from STEM subjects by the lack of female role models. I had male friends that were doing computer science degrees, but as they involved coding and I knew nothing about code, I had no idea that a career in tech would ever be an option for me when I graduated.

Project managing a gap year

At a loss of where to go and what to do after graduating in the midst of not only my own indecision, austerity measures in the UK following the global financial crisis, and a bad breakup, I did what many young people do during a gap year: go on a trip to South East Asia.

Cramming 15 countries into 18 months of travel enabled me to flex my ‘Queen of planning’ skills, where I created a strict itinerary for each place so I saw all the ‘must-see’ sights in the time allocated before my next onward flight, but spent the minimum amount of my savings (there were a lot of shared dorms and eating at hawker markets).

Looking back, this was a perfect foreshadowing of my future role as a project manager: managing the timeline, budget and scope of the trip, and maximising value for my poor friends that I was hustling onto the 5am bus to Chiang Mai so that we could squeeze another sight into an already packed itinerary.

Moral of the story: don’t underestimate your transferable skills, no matter how insignificant they may seem to you at the time.

Taking the lead on a school project or on your sports team is an important role and one that can - and should - be talked about in your job interview if you don’t yet have the hands on work experience. What’s important is to convey how your role and that experience would be transferable into the potential future job.

Sales Shark Force

During my stint abroad, I built a healthy bank of resilience in sales as a fundraiser for Australian not-for-profits on the streets of Brisbane, particularly when angry, bare footed Australian men shouted at me to ‘get a real job’.

I had also raised a record breaking amount of money for charity using my powers of persuasion, so when I returned to the UK in 2015 to start working in London, this was my rationale for choice in career: I liked media. I was good at sales.

Hey, I can do media sales!

My first job was as account manager in a fashion and celebrity digital media company, so my company was awash with savvy, stylish and strong saleswomen to serve as role models. My second job was in aerospace and defence media, so I soon realised this was quite the opposite.

The aerospace and defence industry, intrinsically linked to the engineering industry (the ‘E’ in STEM), has one of the largest gender gaps there is (13:2 in the proportion of university students that were surveyed for the PwC report).

Not only is there a gender gap, but I also experienced rife gender bias. Being told the men I’m pitching to “would prefer me to present my product demos in heels” was not the worst comment I heard during my years in the industry. If only our article ‘How to #BreakTheBias and combat workplace gender bias’ had existed back then 😉.

Nevertheless, it was during this tenure that I took part in a project to implement a technology called Salesforce, a tool I used to manage information on my customers and deals.

And that’s where my journey into tech really began…

Trailblazer Mission

Working on the client side of a technology project gave me insights into the ways of working in the tech industry, and also how it didn’t seem to entail half of the technical babble I was expecting.

It crossed my mind: “Wait a minute, I could do this. And I could probably do this even better than the consulting company we hired to do it.”

At that point I was a woman on a mission, aggressively pursuing a new career in Salesforce consulting.

Two major components of my new master plan were as follows:

1. Network, network, network - I messaged every Salesforce consultant I could on Linkedin. I went for many ‘informal coffee chats’ to get tips, tricks and referrals. I attended a well known industry conference in London to approach people directly. In other words, I was completely relentless (a valuable skill I picked up in sales).

2. Close your skills gaps - Identify your skills gaps for the role and how can this be minimised to make sure you are an attractive candidate. For me, my weak spot was my technical knowledge. I knew sales processes and had been ‘the client’ therefore could think like ‘the client’ and relate to their needs, which was hugely valuable as a consultant, plus I had commercial awareness, but I had no idea how to build automations, or how to write a user story.

To ensure this wasn’t a blocker to my applications, I didn’t formally apply for a role until I had earned my Salesforce Administrator certification (ADM201). This demonstrated to hiring managers that I had baseline technical knowledge of Salesforce on paper, alongside all of the ‘soft’ skills that are so important to tech consulting.

Climbing the ladder Smashing the ceiling

Once I’d landed my role as a consultant, as they say, the rest is history. For the following two years, I had the steepest learning curve of my life: within a month I was managing projects, within six months I was leading larger scale implementations, and a year later I was promoted to Senior Consultant and Manager, meaning I now line managed a team of consultants and was responsible for their career development.

Tech consulting superpowers

My transition into tech was hands down the best career decision I’d ever made. Not only have I learned a bunch of skills that I would never had the chance to do in sales, but I have pushed my career beyond anything I could have achieved if I’d stayed in that role, and met some incredible people along the way. 

And what’s next for me? Well, subscribe below and you’ll find out very soon…