I went to a wonderful panel event with the theme “Yes, I’m Ready. Getting Women to Believe in Their Own Career Preparedness.”, hosted by Leap.ai. Below are notes from this event & answers from these great female leaders.

How to decide where to go for your career

• Be open and follow your heart
• Do you feel you can learn something new?
• Do you really admire the person you will work for?

What is a good boss?

• Have trust in you
• Respect you
• Tough trainers
• Combo of mentorship & sponsorship
• Have a clear purpose
• Lead the team

What is a great hire?

• Focus and know what they want
• Passionate about being better, have the drive, great attitude
• If it’s an engineer, collaboration, communication, problem solving skills are essential

Growth comes with chaos

• Expect chaos when you grow
• Stay clear goal and step by step, don’t just execute

Life and work balance

• Check in with yourself to give yourself time to do things outside of work
• Have a great partner that supports you

Higher academic degrees

• Having a degree can be helpful for whoever values it
• You may meet great people who you nature deep relationships

What are things that help you advance your career.

• Diagnosis for a problems is essential.
• Willing to do things others are not willing to do. But there are a lot of low hanging fruits.
• Take time (e.g. maternity leave) to reassess yourself and look for the next level.

Resources to help you with career

• Don’t wait too long to get a mentor.
  • Ask someone to be your mentor. But it may need some chemistry between you.
• Books
  • Creativity inc.
  • The Confidence Code
  • Women In Tech
  • Biography to learn from great people, e.g. Justice Ginsberg, The rainbow comes and Goes by Anderson Cooper

Things to hold you back from career & how to get away from them

• Be spectacularly good and make people shocked about your ability
• Be the change you want to see, don’t expect things to change or others to take actions for you
• Ask why people do bad things to you that way, what they assume

How to cultivate your team

• Goal setting is important
  • What roles you are in
  • Skills you want to learn
• Create a safe environment for your team to grow

Don’t apologize for things you don’t know or things are not your thing (e.g. football). It’s fine that they’re not your thing.