Making the most of every learning opportunity

Hi, I'm Jennifer from EntryLevel. EntryLevel helps you learn and get experience so you can get hired. Today I'm joined by Hauwa, one of EntryLevel's Previous students. Hauwa has been learning and developing her skills for over for six months and received a product management certificate with us a few months ago. Unfortunately, we ran into some technical difficulties while recording this interview, and we lost a few minutes of this interview. At the beginning, I'll summarize what we talked about and then we can jump right into the rest of the interview. So first we introduced ourselves. Hauwa is calling in from Nigeria, and she talked a little bit about her experience with Entry Level. I was surprised to hear that she thought the program would be easy, like a YouTube video that you would just watch. However, Hauwa told me she liked that EntryLevel programs actually had real world examples she could practice and work on. She said she definitely felt job ready at the end of the program. And this made me really happy because it's why we exist. We want to help you feel confident in your skills by the end of our programs. So, jumping into the questions, I want to learn about your story. You had dived into a little bit about your learning journey, and I want to learn more about what the whole process was like for you, beginning, middle and end. Do you want to tell us a little bit about that?

The product management course? There's a strike going on in my country. I’m in a higher institution. So, I have for the past six months, I haven't been at the university. It took that time and just to dive into the world of online courses. The first one I came across was the free digital marketing course, Google. I did that and then I went on to get under Course, a Nigerian organization teaching basics of scholarship were using Python programming for data. And I went and get Entry Level product management course. That’s the one I'm currently on, and that’s the last one I'm done with now. I haven't gotten any scholarships yet. I’ll take on more because I didn't want to get overwhelmed or commit to since that can't be able to follow through it. So, it's been amazing. I’ve learned a lot of things that I haven’t really learned in time in university because that’s how to sound pessimistic or anything. That’s how it is in this country. You’re really confined within those walls, and sometimes it just takes you to go out there and she open your mind to more possibilities. And then being in Nigeria, the network problem, like Mentioned when we wanted to start this meeting because I’ve had problems like this, I want to have meetings and then I don't get network everything just somehow but then, as in Nigerian, you just have to put through every way you find and just be creative with your time, creative with your experiences that you get. Yeah.

Thank you so much for sharing. I think that's a really good insight to be creative with your time. A lot of people have a lot of motivation, but they're not sure where to start. So I wonder, how did you find all these scholarships and resources?

I decided to take my LinkedIn serious this year. That’s how I found out about many resources I could actually learn with. And it's people like your organization, EntryLevel, giving people opportunities to actually explore roads that they don't really know about. And I got them through LinkedIn. LinkedIn is my number one place that I invest time in right now because I'm trying to build my LinkedIn profile to get more opportunities and just get experience, hands on experiences to help with my career journey.

That’s awesome. Do you have any advice for people who want to get more opportunities on LinkedIn?

Research on organizations that are currently helping with empowering lot of young people through different tech skills. It could be coding and non coding. Just follow organizations, follow the activities, be very sensitive towards certain things and just try and research Google research. Most of these things I know now, most of these opportunities I've come across.

Okay, that sounds awesome. I’m sure this will help our students a lot. So you mentioned a little bit about how EntryLevel was the last program you were taking. So I'm wondering what were you up to after you took our program?

Technically, I finished your program about two weeks ago. I got my certificate and I think this week Wednesday, last week Wednesday, I got the certificate and I was very excited and I gave a reference, which was really nice. It was actually very touch reference letter. So after this program management, I tried to further my because we learned the fundamentals. So I would probably go for the intermediate course management just to learn more and actually practice some of the methodologies. Like I actually know more about them.

That’s amazing. Happy to hear you liked the reference letter. One thing I think you just reminded me of is that we actually have a product management workbook for a job search. I don't know if you knew about that, but I just linked it in the chat for you and I’ll include it in the show notes as well. It basically walks you through how to get a job in product management, how to optimize your interview skills, your resume, things like that. So hopefully that will be helpful.

Thank you. I just saw the link. Thank you. I will check that for sure.

Of course. Yeah. So, one of my other questions for you today is what advice do you have for other students?

You should be resilient on what you want. If you want something and you want to get it and you know it's going to make a positive change in your life, you should try and work hard towards achieving your goal, basically, and be very concise with time. Lots of things might be taking up your time at the moment, but you can make up time for that goal that new that you set for yourself.

Do you have any tips for how to make that time? Like do people have to quit things or stay up late? What did you do?

For me, I stayed up and I did a lot of planning and I stick to it because it's very easy to deviate or procrastinate on a lot of things. Covering the procrastination is more important. Like you should make plans on your calendar and stick to them. Maybe set alarms and just try just being more organized.

Okay, that makes a lot of sense. I think what helps me sometimes too is basically saying my goals and what I hope to accomplish out loud and sharing them everywhere. So, if I don't do it, then I basically get shamed. It’s kind of a bad way to make sure I accomplish something, but it works for me.

Being lost critic of yourself too. Waste your time. Yeah.

Oh, sorry, what did you say?

No, I just want to sometimes being the one to put yourself in check and not having been your own accountability partner works.

That's something that I still have to learn, I think because I always procrastinate. I’ll sign up for so many courses and get was so excited but then because I signed up for too many opportunities, it becomes overwhelming. So what you said earlier about only signing up for one at a time and not overwhelming yourself really was something I needed to hear. The other thing that I wanted to ask about was networking. So I think this might be one of my last questions because you mentioned LinkedIn finding opportunities. But if you haven't used LinkedIn before and you don’t really know who to follow, who to connect with, how would you recommend getting started?

Well, getting started on LinkedIn is perfect. It’s actually quite easy if you have a particular image you're interested in, you could like mine, Search for jobs and then the company does jobs where I searched for the people that work there and the people in their network because they'll definitely have similar experiences and similar jobs. And I've also met quite a lot of amazing people choose using that little thing alone, just staying in my niche. It’s very easy to deviate and you see other things you're interested in. But building connections on your niche is very important if you're looking to get a job or LinkedIn. That’s a very good point and I think there are groups on LinkedIn as well that you can join. So you just have to search them up. They actually grew up. I talked to quite a few myself. Yeah.

How useful do you think they were versus just connecting with people and like leaving notes in the connection request?

You said I didn't get quite a question.

Yes. I was wondering what do you think is the most helpful? Like joining the LinkedIn groups or connecting with people? Where should people spend their time on connecting with people?

You could join those groups and then especially groups that have people in it. You might not really get your voice heard, but connecting with people, putting in a good note about Connection request actually tell those people what you want to learn. If you want to learn if you feel the be great addition to your connection, just tell them what exactly you're looking for and haven't gotten any of my turn down. I connect more with you personally. Having personal connections is yesteryear, that's a really good point. I’ve heard a lot of other people say as well because it's about personal connections and building that community. So I think networking doesn't have to be that scary. It’s really just building connections and meeting new cool people, people like you.

So that's a good transition into talking about your LinkedIn. I’m wondering, are you open to having people contact you and asking some questions on LinkedIn? Can people request a connection on LinkedIn with you?

I’m pretty open to people contacting me. Even they are more than welcome to pursue connection with them. I'm there. I’m quite active. I’m very active, so I get emails of connections I'm ready to answer. I forgot some questions even from the post that I made because I was just calling. I had people ask me questions on how they go about stuff and help. My only two weeks from what I knew.

Thank you so much. I’m sure many people will appreciate that. So if you want to connect with her, well, please make sure to leave a connection note. I think that you will have higher chances of being accepted and feel free to ask any questions. I believe Hauwa constantly posts on LinkedIn with new opportunities and updates about your journey. So people can just follow and stay connected through your LinkedIn feed, right?

Yes.

Perfect. Thank you so much. So that brings us to the end of this call. Thank you so much for sharing your story with us. I loved hearing about all your tips and advice. I’m definitely going to apply some of that to my life. I think I need to add all my deadlines to my calendar. So I will be linking on the show notes so you can check the link there. You can also visit entrylevel.net to check out our available programs, including the product management program. That Hauwa took. So that's entrylevel.net. So thank you so much everyone, for listening and thank you Hauwa, for all your wonderful advice.

Thank you, Jennifer.

Okay, perfect.

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