Charlotte Ward: 0:12
Hello and welcome to episode three hundred and fifteen of the Customer Support Leaders Podcast. I'm Charlotte Ward. Today, welcome Cynthia Ng to talk about changing careers in and out of support. Today I'd like to welcome Cynthia Ing. Cynthia, it's lovely to see you again. It's been an absolute age since we spoke at all, never mind on the podcast. So thank you for joining me for a chat today. We're going to talk about transferable skills in and out of support. But first, seeing as it's been such a long time, would you reintroduce yourself for everyone?
Cynthia Ng: 0:55
Yes. Thank you, Charlotte, for having me on the podcast. It definitely has been a while.
Cynthia Ng: 1:02
I don't know if I ever, you know, mentioned in my original introduction, but one of the reasons why I wanted to talk about, you know, changing careers is that I have changed careers a number of times. I started as a secondary school teacher. I guess in the US you would call that high school teacher. Then I went to become a technology librarian, uh, became a manager while I was working uh in that, you know, sector. And then when I moved, uh I moved to Vancouver Island after that and really didn't want to do the commute that would have been required regardless of, you know, which uh library system I worked in. And so went looking for a remote job uh and thought about you know transferable skills and and ended up looking in customer support. So that's how I ended up in customer support in the first place, was really thinking about transferable skills from you know being a a technology uh librarian and manager.
Charlotte Ward: 2:10
That's awesome. And and you've been in uh support for quite a number of years as well, right? How long all told since you made the leap from techno, I must ask you what a technology library is in a minute as well. I'm very curious now, but but how long since you made the leap into support?
Cynthia Ng: 2:29
So it was eight years ago that I um, you know, went looking, a little over eight years ago, since I went looking for a uh, you know, a remote uh role in customer support. I
Cynthia Ng: 2:44
was actually in customer support at GitLab for five and a half years. Um and so I worked my way up when I joined GitLab, and GitLab is a very technology-oriented company for people who don't know. They provide a DevOps platform, so it's for developers uh for the most part. That's the focus, you know, for people developing and uh deploying software is the focus. And so when I joined, I I knew conceptually what some of the stuff was, but had never, you know, actually hands-on, um, you know, done projects and things like CICD or uh containerization, like you're talking Docker and Kubernetes. I didn't know how to, I didn't know Ruby on Rails, which is what the whole thing is written in, and like there was so much I had to learn. So I started at the equivalent of a junior um and then worked my way up, uh, went to intermediate staff support, uh, uh senior then staff. So I spent five and a half years doing customer support, and I actually um went over to what we called strategy and operations. Um, so I was working in office of the CEO, and then it was a mix of program and project management and uh doing operations and any other miscellaneous stuff that uh our CEO or our chief of staff to CEO wanted. So even things like follow-up on customer calls, doing research for uh features that our customers were asking about, you know, all all sorts of all sorts of things. Um so I did that um a year in office of CEO, and I did a year and a half in office of um uh C CPO, so product. And then uh and then ultimately I got laid off. So I'm actually in transition right now.
Charlotte Ward: 4:38
Wow. Um I mean that's quite a career just at GitLab, but um uh before that, quite a quite a range of different skills, different roles. We're gonna be talking about the skills that you brought in to support and it and took out of support into those other roles and where you move next. But but I I need to know
Charlotte Ward: 4:58
what is a technology library?
Cynthia Ng: 5:01
Basically it's it's a librarian role but focused on technology. So um typically a librarian uh, you know, works typically works in a library, although it might be um might be a public library like you might think of, might be academic, so a university or college library. But we also um anything that doesn't kind of fit in one of those two categories, we actually call it special libraries, which is kind of a miscellaneous category. So you can think of like um um a media, uh like a TV station or a radio station, they might have a library to hold all of their recordings and stuff like that. And um they, you know, uh a lot of research institutions, but that are not, you know, uh an academic institution might might have a librarian. A lot of librarians also go work at like galleries or museums, archives. Um, there are archivists, but there are also often um, say like special collections, rare books uh librarians. Um, so technology librarian is basically someone who works in a library role but is focused on technology, and that might include kind of more hands-on being a system administrator, um, but may also um or do like development. I did a lot of web development when I was in my role. Um, partly depends on the skills that the person has and their experience. And then, but a lot of it is kind of more managing and deciding, making decisions on how technology is managed, often working with like an IT department and then um, you know, making decisions on things like um even placement of technology. So I was involved with like a with a renovation, and part of it was deciding, okay, how are we going to um place the technology within the space um post as part of the renovation? So maybe it really is like anything related to technology typically. Um, of course, in larger institutions, it might be kind of more specialized, like you might have one more for like web, uh, you know, websites, web administration, that sort of thing. Um, and one more, and and one that is more for like the the systems back end side of things. But in smaller organizations, you're gonna be doing all of all of that, anything technology related.
Charlotte Ward: 7:27
Super interesting. I wondered if you were just kind of filing away floppy disks or something out there. I guess there's probably a call for that as well, right? Somewhere on the planet. But but yeah, okay. Wow, that that sounds super interesting and varied if you're talking about the physical location of devices and things like that potentially as well, are really very droll. Um, and then the leap into support. So um we're talking then about maybe some of the skills that you personally kind of uh uh honed and called upon to find that job in support, how how you kind of developed at the other end to to transfer into those other roles you talked about and what that might that might look like going forward in your career, but like not just specific to you. I know you've got a ton of transferable scores, but but like let's talk a little bit meta about how you how you recognize them, how you talk about them, what they actually are for a start. I mean, and then how you how you um market them to whatever the role is, whether it's coming into or going out of support. I I I think that's a that's a fascinating kind of arc that I'm sure you're gonna take me on here. But
Charlotte Ward: 8:38
but first of all, um let's talk broadly about what transferable skills are and the kinds of things we might be looking at. And I'm gonna take a leap and say it's probably not your um your Ruby on Rails.
Cynthia Ng: 8:53
And I mean, I would say that a lot of the transferable skills, I mean, Ruby on Rails can be in the sense that, like, especially in support, one of the expectations might be that you can at least read code, even if you're not a developer or an engineer. That, you know, there are a lot of roles where you're not expected to write bug fixes, but that you should be able to kind of at least read code, sort of understand it. And really, if you know one programming language and you understand the fundamentals of programming, that it will often help you read almost almost any language. Not all of them are great at you know, picking up easily, but you it like you should be able to pick it up relatively easily. Um, and some languages are obviously more similar to each other than others. Um, and so some companies will ask, like, especially for support, again, where you're not actually writing code, um, even if you don't know, you know, one language that okay, you could know one of these four or five different languages that are kind of similar. Um, so it it could very much, you know, reading being able to read one programming language can definitely be a transferable skill for others. Um, and certainly any other kind of um, you know, technology, you know, knowing like if you know how to use Excel, for example, you know how to use Google Sheets, right? Like they're one is basically built to be kind of a copy of the other, right? And similar to a lot of the other Google Suite um, like slides or doc, you know, they're very similar, obviously, to other word processing um or you know, presentation software. So I I think, you know, in terms of technology and and that sort of thing, uh, there's a lot of similarities. And as long as it's similar, you could say, like, hey, I know this is this is not exactly the same, but I know this. So like if if a company were to ask for kind of like the more analytical, you know, things like spreadsheet um knowledge, you know, instead of just saying, oh, I know Excel, for example, you could say, hey, I know it's spreadsheets, and then, you know, use Excel as an example. Uh, and I think that's that's a really good one. But I think soft skills is kind of the area where um we we really want to look at you know transferable skills. And if if someone is in any position, any kind of role where you're not just necessarily customer facing, which of course, you know, is is going to be directly transferable to support, but even in roles where you just you you have to work with other people, and which you know is almost every uh every role. So, you know, things like collaboration, you know, team uh if if you're in a role where you might be leading a team, so team building, that sort of thing, obviously they're you know, all of that, all of that is transferable and communications, right? Being able to talk to people, write, um, you know, regardless of what most roles these days will include communications of some sort, um, both in writing and and you know, talking uh to people. So I think, you know, it's really about thinking about okay, what are the things that I do that are transferable that could apply to support? And, you know, even if it's not like uh what we think of as a customer, if you work in a role where you are kind of answering other people's questions and helping them, assisting them in some way. Um, you know, so for example, a lot of internal organizations will have like an IT team, right? So you're you're not helping the the customer or the client or whoever, you know, is is coming to your organization. You're helping people internally, but you are providing support. It's just internal facing, right? And so I think any of there are so many things, and especially the the soft skills. I think any good manager knows that the soft skills are much harder to teach than the the so-called hard skills, the more technical stuff.
Charlotte Ward: 13:08
Yeah, yeah. And the the the tricky thing with soft skills, of course, is that they sound soft when you just write down very broad strokes on a resume or CV, like, you know, I'm a good communicator. What what does that really mean? You know, I mean, or or like, and I guess the the trick when it comes to talking about soft skills is making them feel like hard skills, like things that actually like have an outcome where you can influence the the the person that you are and the way that you do things beyond handle a spreadsheet is actually has a material effect on the people around you, the outcomes of the things that you're working on, um your delivery generally, the the you know, the way people respond to you and so on, how much influence you have. And and I think my my take on that is that uh a lot of people have those soft skills and are very clearly and evidently good communicators, or you know, you can write a good email, I can have a good conversation, but that stuff's really hard to put on a resume. And so I think I think the the trick is somehow in in making it feel concrete, right?
Cynthia Ng: 14:27
Yeah, and this gets a little bit into kind of career development resume writing, but I think the the key is to um that that more and more people are looking for, like you say, kind of the results-oriented. So what was the outcome? What was the impact of the work that you've done? So, you know, I mentioned before, you know, instead of just saying like, hey, I led a team, well, what did you lead the team to do? What was just give even one example of uh success, right? So it's like, hey, I you know, I led the team to, I don't know, maybe um, you know, if you want to take something more support focused, you could say some, you know, it could be something like um, you know, you you led the the team um to decrease the time to resolution by X amount um or X percent by uh you know implementing or writing um more macros for repeated uh you know questions and answers, right? Or improve the you you updated the documentation or you know, stuff like that. And um, you know, improving any kind of documentation, again, whether you're in support or not, is a great way to you know show that you have uh you have writing skills, right? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that and that could be both either that could either be internal documentation or external facing documentation as well. So like, you know, and it so it doesn't have to be like official documentation, it could just be any kind of you know guidance that you have in writing uh for a team or an organization or whatever it is. So I I think it's it's about expressing like what did you do with that skill, right? Um and even things like, you know, oh we we can say, you know, that if you work with other departments, you know, while you were in your role, um, that you have cross-functional collaboration, but but what were you doing? Why were you doing it? Like what did that result in?
Charlotte Ward: 16:54
I think I think that's a really that's a really good example actually, because I think exactly what you said, like sometimes you can almost reverse engineer it as well. Like even just recognizing the transferable skills you have is hard. Um, because you we can be a bit focused on, well, I implemented that system, or I reduced resolution time, or you know, I got that customer I calmed that customer down, or whatever the thing is. Um it's hard to flip outcomes almost into transferable skills so that you can then apply the narrative in a different way as well. And that includes the internal narrative you have, because I think you can kind of get stuck on a hamster wheel day to day sometimes in support, where you're running this, you know, the same, you're you're you're living on muscle memory almost without realizing it. You know, you're you're you don't realize you're actually just great at handling hot customers, for instance. And so you just you do it every day, and then suddenly when you're required to find another job, or uh compelled to kind of apply for that promotion and you like or or uh figuring out what your next move might be, even if it's two or three years down the line and what you think you might need to develop, it's like you may actually be more skilled than you even recognize because you just haven't named the things yet. And so almost reverse engineering them the other way is so when I when I when we sort of started on this idea of like making them concrete, the reverse is also true, right? You you know what it is you do every day potentially, but identifying those as transferable skills is equally challenging.
Cynthia Ng: 18:36
Yeah,
Cynthia Ng: 18:37
so I think it's important to kind of do both, right? It's like, okay, like here here are the skills that, you know, like whether you're coming into support and you're like, okay, this is what support typically asks for, whether you're trying to, you know, take your support skills elsewhere. It's like, okay, what are the typical skills that, you know, this this other career or or area of work uh requires? And you know, at least in support, you know, it's pretty typical. You have um collaboration or even cross-functional collaboration specifically, you have things like prioritizing. Um, and it's interesting because multitasking is very common, but when we talk about it in support, we call it prioritization. We don't call it multi- multitasking, right? Um, and then things like you know, planning or you know, taking ownership and accountability or problem solving, um, especially like you know, real time if you're doing voice support um or under pressure, um, or things like being able to deal with conflict or de-escalate, right? So these are things that, you know, are very common across very uh uh a lot of different, you know, areas of work, um, you know, and careers. Uh, and it's just about using, I think, the vocabulary that we have. But yes, I think it's very important to both look at, okay, hey, what skills are are requested and and how do I communicate that that like I have those? And that depends on like, is it easier for you as a person to start with soft skills and then come out with kind of the outcomes or start with the outcomes? What are what are you most proud of in the last year or two years or whatever? Like what projects have you done? What um maybe in like especially if you're in support, it's like, hey, you you worked with product and engineering to you know convince them to um you know release a feature. Well, how did you do that? Um, maybe, maybe you pulled data, so it was helping to make data-driven decisions. Everyone loves that, you know, and and working cross-functionally. Um, and you know, like it's it's just like, yeah, like I I think you could do it either way, or even a mix of both, and it's really a matter of uh you as a person, which one is easier for you.
Charlotte Ward: 20:52
So what is the um articulating it is one thing. What is the um uh what compels us to develop
Charlotte Ward: 21:04
more? And I suppose it more soft skills. Uh soft well, and maybe maybe even this is a more specific question. It's not what compels us, but like how do we identify what we're missing for the next stage? Whether the next stage is a promotion or a change of role inside or outside the current organization, because a lot of these kind of transferable skills, I think I think it's fair to say probably a lot of them are softer skills because those are the most transferable. Um you know, outside of uh um specific softwares and things like that, which I think we can we can articulate broadly fairly well. And it's fairly obvious when we don't know how to drive a spreadsheet, we're probably not going to land an accountants role, things like that. So I probably need to go and learn about sheets. But the but the um but the Softer skills are the ones, first of all, to articulate, but maybe also to to be aware of our blind spots, right?
Cynthia Ng: 22:08
Yeah, and certainly like, you know, what we might call the hard skills, um, in terms of being not soft skills, um, are also more likely to have like courses for you to learn. If you want to learn on like a specific programming or piece of software or something, like, yeah, there's tons of courses out there online or, you know, uh in person if you prefer to probably teach that sort of thing in like a half day workshop or or you know, week or whatever it is. Um, I think soft skills is also kind of the harder ones to learn. Like you you could go listen to someone lecture about it, but actually applying it is the hard part, right? Um, so I think it's important that when you're looking at, like you say, whether it could be a promotion, it could be an internal transfer, it could be a job outside of the organization. Um, and I mean, hopefully your own organization, if you're looking at internal like promotion or whatever, that you have job descriptions that are at least internally available. So I will say, like personally, one of the things I actually looked at when looking at being promoted to the next level is look at the job description. Like, hey, first of all, what's the difference between say an intermediate and a senior? Um, so what are we, what are we looking at? What's different about it? Um, if you ask people within the organization, ask your manager, hey, what is how do you see the difference between intermediate senior? What are they doing different? So, for example, like, you know, where I was, the key was that an intermediate was very focused on their own work. And they they got their work done well, whatever it is, but they're mostly focused on their own work. So they're looking at tickets. It might not be tickets, it might even be things that aren't things like cross-functional uh, you know, work, like I mentioned, you know, working to try to get in a new feature that would help uh customers or fix a bug or whatever. But they're they're they're focused on their work. A senior is more focused on the team as a whole, so that means that they are mentoring others, they are being um more of a non-manager leader, as we might sometimes describe it. You would put more into, you know, developing training that would help others. You would, you know, it's just like you're you're less focused on yourself, more focused on how do I improve the team. Uh, and and that was kind of the key difference between an intermediate and a senior. But that wasn't my organization, right? Like every organization is going to be a little bit different. So definitely, you know, talk to your manager if you're talking about like, or or if you're talking about an internal transfer into another role. I mean, absolutely go talk to people in that other team or and the the hiring manager if you can, right? It's like, and I've
Cynthia Ng: 24:55
done that before. It's like, hey, I actually, you know, when I was looking at moving to strategy and operations, I actually went and did an internal um part-time internship with that team in order to better understand what are the gaps. And then, you know, as the people on the team, you know, spoke to me and I got to know them a bit better, worked with some of them a little bit, but even the ones that I didn't work with directly, you know, they got to know me a little bit more. And then, you know, I asked them, it's like, hey, from your perspective, what am I missing? Right. And so definitely like, you know, and if and if you're looking at something outside of your own organization, you know, uh it's gonna be a little harder maybe to find people, but at the same time, you could ask other people within your own organization. So if you want to break up to a certain area, as long as, you know, hopefully your organization has at least one person who works kind of in that area. So, like, uh, you know, it's very common, for example, for support folks to move in or uh or from technical writing, so more documentation. Also, very common um for people to move into or out of um product analyst or operations, right? So again, like hopefully you have people in your organization that are doing these roles already, even whether you're you might not be work looking internally if there's no opening, if there's no position open within the company, right? But then if you're looking at, you know, going elsewhere to do that role, like again, you can still ask people inside of the company for that. Um, and certainly if you're part of a community or something, you know, you're often going to find people who um, you know, might might know something about that role. You might have someone like me who's, you know, changed, changed a career a few times and and can talk a little bit about some of the others. Um, and I think that's that's kind of the important part is like, okay, just I mean, just look at the job description, whether it's other organizations or your own, like what what are you, how does it compare to yours? So like like what are the differences, right? Um, I think is a good way to kind of pull out those key things that you might have gaps in. Um, and then you can also reflect for yourself. It's like, hey, what what's on this list that I might be missing or might be weaker on, right? And and so thinking about um, you know, those skills. And then again, even talking to your manager, like you don't actually, you don't need to tell them that that's what you're planning. I mean, hopefully you you have a good enough relationship with your manager that you can talk to them about that. But even if you don't want to reveal that to your manager, you can certainly ask them, it's like, hey, I've been thinking and I think that I'm kind of weaker in these areas or less ex you could say I'm, you know, I'm I'm less experienced in in these areas, and I would really love the opportunity to develop those skills. So again, you know, going back to like um, you know, cross-functional collaborations like, okay, well, you know, you you might ask for um, you know, an opportunity or more opportunities to work with other departments in the company while still in the role and in in in ways that are still related to your role. So whether that's working on feature requests and bug fixes with product and engineering, it could be working on data stuff with like the data team, could be, you know, helping with some of the administration of of your ticketing system or whatever with operations. But you know, it's it's about talking to your manager about how do I like, you know, could could you help me provide these opportunities to me to develop those skills?
Charlotte Ward: 28:52
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I really like that. And um, what I particularly like is you reference the career matrix, you could you reference the levels, what it means to be a senior versus um uh entry level versus um uh you know, principal or staff or whatever the equivalent is. And I think if you do have access to any material like that internally for the leveling inside your own team, that's a really good um first step to understanding what your own progression looks like whether it's inside that team or not. Um so I uh and the reason um the reason that I like that is that um even if you aren't or even if you don't have access to the same leveling uh the job that you aspire to, you know, maybe it's it's a similar role in another organization, but you know, um it's uh uh maybe not a similar role, but like a similar level but slightly adjacent uh function or something. So you want to, you know, use this to make the leap from support product or or whatever. Like I think I think just looking at uh leveling matrices, career matrices, um does just put on paper for you something that you can aspire to. And even if you're not making the leap in one step to your point, you have a list to work from. Because even if the only reference point you have is the level above you, look at the transferable skills there, and that's a good a good grounding for whatever direction you're moving in next, whether it's up or diagonal or completely um sideways, right? Or or or out of the org. And the the reason that I really like using the career matrix is it doesn't take much of a a reasonable size of organization to have a reasonable reference point of a career matrix and a set of job descriptions, unless you really are in startup land where frankly it can be the Wild West. Um you've probably got something that you can hook some things onto, right? And then to your point, I mean it would be lovely to have a safe enough um relationship with your manager as to say, look, I want to move to product in the next year. And I think these are the gaps. Um, even if you don't have that, to your point, you can talk about in the context of your own progression inside your current team, and you're not going to fall far from where you want to be anyway, in terms of developing those skills. So you're really asking for opportunity. And I think that the existing career matrix is something that a lot of people don't make enough use of in their current roles, they don't refer to it often enough, they don't ref use it as a reference point from where they are now to where the next step is. And you you just gave such a good example as like the difference between somebody who's doing support and somebody who's a senior support engineer. I have exactly the same word in my own career matrix here, it's noplow, it's it's mentor. That's actually the difference. And uh it is exactly that. It's somebody who's doing their own work versus looking across the team and and helping others. And then there's a step above that, and then you know, then you're potentially getting into adjacent roles, they'll all have equivalent, equivalent job descriptions. It's not something that people use, it's a tool that you should referen reference regularly enough that you can have conversations with your manager about those opportunities you describe.
Cynthia Ng: 32:32
Yeah, and like I said, even if, you know, um even if it's not easily accessible, usually like um your manager will be able to get it, or you know, uh your your HR team will have a copy of of you know the the job description from previous postings. Um and again, like if if you know that there's uh a a similar role um elsewhere, you can certainly see like what and you can you can also just you know do kind of like a job search, like search a job board for for like uh roles that are similar to again, like you know, because if if we're talking about transferring into support or out of support into a different career or different area, then you know, the one of the easiest things to do is just search a job board for, you know, what other people have posted as you know, what is required for these roles. And not all of them will say that it's senior or not. Um, you can usually tell from like a number of years of experience in that particular role, um, whether it's more entry level or whether it's more um mid mid or you know, kind of uh like the kind of more senior levels. So like, you know, you look for something that it's like one to three years would probably be more entry level, you know, uh three to five, you're getting and five plus you're kind of getting into middle to senior, depending on on it. And then of course, you know, you see some of those seven plus ten plus years uh roles, and you're just like, okay, that that's definitely not not where I'm gonna be transferring into, right? So um, you know, keep an eye out for job descriptions, um, especially ones that either don't specifically specify or you know, specify like up to three, maybe five years, depending again on on the role. But it it can definitely like uh those job descriptions obviously are are what those organizations are looking for in those roles. So I think you know, just comparing that to your current role or roles that you've had, you know, in the past, then uh you again can pull out, hey, what what am I missing from that list? And you know, how how could I work towards that? And certainly there are some that, you know, just just think about it. Like it could be the same set of skills, but with a different name. Like I mentioned earlier, like multitasking versus prioritization, like the terms for certain things that are similar to what we actually do day to day, um, the terminology has changed over time, right? And and even like, you know, it was very common for people to write, you know, able to deal with conflict and stuff, but now it's more likely that you'll see things like being able to de-escalate, right? So the language has changed over time in general, I think. Um, so part of it is also being more aware of what uh employers and and organizations are using in terms of the vocabulary for the soft skills.
Charlotte Ward: 35:44
I couldn't agree more. I couldn't agree more, and practicing talking about them as well at every opportunity you get. So don't be afraid to apply for those roles or arrange for a coffee with somebody who is in the role that you aspire to. I mean, I mean, I must have been seeing that advice for the last 30 years, and I must admit I've probably only ever managed it twice. But but, you know, actually reaching out to the type of people who are in the type of role that you want to move into, whether that's in or out of support, you can talk to them about what the day-to-day is really like. Learn some of that language, learn um to draw the parallels between what they do and what you do is super, super helpful. I I completely agree. Um yeah, yeah. Um, thank you so much for um talking this over with me. I think there's some really concrete ideas in there, even if some of these skills don't feel quite so concrete half the time. Um uh a lot of a lot of resources that I hadn't really thought of until now that that we should all just go away and look up tomorrow, like a quick job search, a quick uh look at the the job description for our own role and the next and the and the level above it, right? I think I think all of that is just something to be very mindful of. Um and uh because these skills take time. They aren't a week's course, are they? So so being cognizant of your blind spots or where you ought to go and finding opportunities to develop and practice them, super important.
Cynthia Ng: 37:13
Yeah, for sure. Well, thank you again for having me on here once again.
Charlotte Ward: 37:18
No, it's been an absolute pleasure. We come back another time soon. Don't leave us along next time. And uh I know we've got lots to talk about. We we have a few on the on the list, I think, potential topics, so please come back. For sure.
Charlotte Ward: 37:34
That's it for today. Go to customersupportleaders.com forward slash three one five for the show notes, and I'll see you next time.
