After almost seven years of building up my agile acumen at Cars.com, I decided that it was time to close that season of my career, and I began researching and planning my next career challenge. I outlined three key pillars that were very important to me and my ability to truly enjoy going to work every day:
- Customer Centric Vision – Having the ability to know WHY what we do matters to customers, and matching values and alignment to priorities.
- Clear Agile Direction – Finding a company who is moving the agile ball further down the line.
- Fun and Innovative Culture - Life is too short and if you are going to work hard, it makes it much easier to find the joy in your job if you have fun doing it.
These were the most important traits I was seeking in part because they were the things that made me love being at Cars.com. I plugged into my network, had some interviews (and one offer that didn’t work out), and continued my quest to not settle until I found a career that valued these same traits. Then, just when I thought that finding my career “match.com” was out of reach, I found an opening for a Chicago-based Product Specialist that turned out to be the perfect blend of vision, direction and fun.
Luckily for me, it was also at a place I knew very well, VersionOne. After a few interviews and a relatively painless courtship, I accepted the position and can report that so far it has been a jackpot payoff. Since my start at VersionOne, I have validated or learned seven key things that I believe you can also learn from, no matter where you work:
- The customer is king (or queen); however, not everyone is a customer – If the slipper doesn’t fit, you can’t force it!
- Community is very important – Sometimes a company does things because it’s for the greater good.
- You can’t fake culture – If you’ve got a great culture, you’ve got it. Hang onto it.
- Agile is a mindset, not a methodology – Like culture, the question is not “Are you Agile?” but rather, “How Agile are you?”
- Cold beer, anyone? A cold beverage and a game of pool after work is still a great way to end the day. When they say “Work Hard, Play Hard,” believe them!
- Valuable training is essential - Among the many other benefits, new-hire training as a group bonds people together and to the company.
- VersionOne is a great place to be because of the people, agile project management products and services to help companies achieve agile success, as well as VersionOne’s commitment to the agile community at large.
Going into my Product Specialist position I tried hard to find red flags, indicators that would give me some warning or reason to pause. At the end of the day, every flag I saw was Pantone 216. It’s my new lucky number!
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