You read the job description twice.
The responsibilities, you can do all of that. You have done most of it already, in one form or another. Then you get to the requirements, and there are two or three sitting there that you do not have. A degree. A certification. Five years in a thing you have only done for two. So you close the tab, and you tell yourself you will look again when you are closer.
Here is the quiet lie underneath that. You think you are being realistic. What you are actually doing is saving someone else the trouble of deciding.
This week on the From a Woman to a Leader podcast, I sat down with Shoshana Kordova, a three time founding product marketer who spent more than a decade as a journalist before she moved into high tech marketing. No computer science degree. No product experience. She now runs her own consultancy, Peel Product Marketing, working with B2B tech startups on their website messaging and executive thought leadership.
But that is not really what we talked about. We talked about the specific, unglamorous things she did to get in, and what she says out loud when someone in an interview asks her whether she is technical.
Below are the insights from our conversation, with my own experience and concrete steps you can take this week.
1. The Responsibilities Tell You More Than the Requirements Do
Shoshana was looking at content marketing jobs on LinkedIn when she started noticing product marketing roles. She read down the list of what the job actually involved, and she could do it. Then she hit the requirements.
“And then you get to the requirements and it’s like, needs product experience or a STEM background. And then I was kind of thinking, well, I don’t have those qualifications, but I know that I could take on these responsibilities. So I applied anyway, and that’s kind of how I became a product marketer.”
Shoshana on applying for the role she was not qualified for
Here’s what I see again and again. Women read the requirements section first and the responsibilities second, and the requirements do the deciding. But requirements are written by someone describing the person they imagine, often copied from an old posting nobody has revisited. The responsibilities describe the actual job. Those are two different documents living in the same post.
How to apply this: Take the one role or opportunity you have been circling. Read only the responsibilities section. Decide from that alone whether you could do the work. Then, and only then, look at the requirements, and treat them as preferences rather than a gate.
2. The Worst Outcome Is Not Rejection, It Is Silence
I said something almost throwaway in the conversation, that the worst they can do is ignore you. Shoshana agreed, and then made it sharper.
“The worst is ignoring. It’s much worse than saying no. I’d rather someone says no and then you know, okay, I can cross them off my list. So the worst is they can ignore me. What do I have to lose?”
This one matters more than it looks. Most women I coach are not actually afraid of being rejected. They are afraid of being embarrassed, of someone thinking they overreached. But nobody is sitting in a room thinking about your application. The realistic worst case is that nothing happens at all, and nothing happening is exactly what you already have.
How to apply this: Write down, in one sentence, what you think will happen if you put yourself forward and it does not work. Then read it back. Almost every time, the sentence describes a feeling, not an outcome.
3. Follow Up, Because Almost Nobody Does
Shoshana’s application did not go through HR. She found the VP Marketing on LinkedIn and messaged her directly, about a week after applying. The message was short.
“I usually just have a really short, really brief description of my background and just to say that I applied like a week ago and I was wondering if you had a chance to look at the application, something like that. Just something that’s asking a question, so if they engage then there’s something for them to answer.”
The VP replied at 11pm that same night.
I will be honest with you here. I have been in tech since 1996, I was a Director of Engineering, and I have never once done this. I applied, I usually tried to go through someone I knew, and then I moved on. It genuinely had not occurred to me. That is how rare this is, and that is exactly why it works.
The LinkedIn message that got a reply at 11pm
How to apply this: For anything you have put forward in the last two weeks, an application, a proposal, a request for a meeting, set a calendar reminder for one week out with the person’s name on it. Write four sentences: who you are, what you sent, when you sent it, and one question they can answer.
4. Two Follow-Ups, a Week Apart, Three If You Have a Reason
The obvious next question is where the line is, and Shoshana has a clear answer.
“I wouldn’t do more than that. I think that’s when you start being a noodge instead of a go-getter.”
Her cadence is two follow-ups, about a week apart, with a third only when there is a real reason to think the message was missed, like August when everyone is away. And the tone matters as much as the count.
“You just really briefly remind them who you are and ask them a question that they need to respond to. So you’re giving them an easy way to reply.”
This is where women get stuck in the opposite direction. The fear of being “too much” usually stops the first follow-up, not the fourth. Almost nobody I coach is at risk of being a noodge. Most of them send one message and read the silence as an answer.
How to apply this: Decide your number before you send anything. Two follow-ups, one week apart. Put both in the calendar the day you apply, so the decision is already made and you are not renegotiating it with yourself on the day.
5. Answer With What You Can Do, Not What You Can’t
Shoshana got asked the same question over and over in interviews. Are you technical? Do you think of yourself as technical?
“I did always wonder to what extent they were asking men that question with the same background as me, because I’m a woman, I’m an orthodox Jew, I don’t fit this classic stereotype of the Tel Aviv startup archetype. And there is always that niggling question in the back of your mind. Why are they asking me that?”
She never turns it into a confrontation. She answers it.
“I say that I try to respond with what I can do rather than what I can’t. So I respond, well, look, I don’t have a computer science background, but I’ve gone into this startup and that startup and the other startup, in three totally different industries. And I’ve learned the product and become the voice of the company within a few months. I’ve done that before and I can do that again.”
How Shoshana answers “are you technical?”
Look at the structure of that answer. One short sentence naming the gap, then three concrete pieces of evidence, then a claim about the future that the evidence has already earned. No apology, no defensiveness, no explaining why the question is unfair. And here is the thing that should tell you the question is not really about qualifications: Shoshana mentors a woman with a computer science degree and a career of R&D roles, and she gets asked it too.
How to apply this: Write your version of that answer now, before you need it. One sentence naming what you do not have. Three specific things you have done. One sentence saying you can do it again. Say it out loud until it stops sounding like a defence.
6. Find the Overlap, Even When the Job Titles Look Nothing Alike
The reframe that landed hardest for me was that Shoshana did not treat journalism as a gap to explain away. She treated it as the qualification.
“Often you don’t know anything about the story until you start reporting it. As you report the story, as you do your research, as you talk to people, that’s how you learn the story. That’s how you become enough of an expert to write about it.”
Her first startup was in commercial real estate finance, a field she knew nothing about, and they hired her precisely because they wanted someone who could turn raw data into a story.
“And finding the areas of overlap, if you imagine a Venn diagram, I’m always trying to make the intersecting circles as big as possible.”
Sound familiar? Most women I work with do the opposite. They shrink the circles. They describe their own experience in the narrowest possible terms, because claiming the overlap feels like overclaiming. It isn’t. It is the actual work of positioning yourself, and if you do not do it, the person reading your profile will do it for you, badly.
How to apply this: Draw two circles. On the left, everything you have actually done, including the parts that are not in your job title. On the right, the role you want. Write down three overlaps that are not obvious from your title alone. Those three are your interview answers.
7. The Part-Time Arrangement That Quietly Cost Her
This is the part of the conversation I keep thinking about. Shoshana had a part time role in high tech, which is famously hard to find, and she was glad to have it. Then came her first review cycle.
Her manager put her forward for the highest raise the company was giving. She got the lowest one. The reason was that she was part time.
“I looked around the company and at first it was interesting to me. I thought it was good that there were other part-time people there, and then I realized that almost all of them were women.”
“And actually I had kind of mommy-tracked myself without even knowing it.”
“I had kind of mommy-tracked myself without even knowing it”
Notice that nobody in this story is a villain. Her manager fought for her. There was no policy written to hold women back. The line was drawn at part time versus full time, and the impact landed almost entirely on women, which is how most of it works now. It is rarely someone deciding you are worth less. It is a rule that looks neutral until you count who it lands on.
And she did not let it stand. She argued the case, her manager could not move it, so she went to the CEO directly. She got the raise.
How to apply this: Before your next review, not during it, ask how your working arrangement is treated in compensation decisions. Flexible hours, part time, compressed weeks, remote. Ask the question while it is still a question, rather than finding out from a number.
About Shoshana Kordova
Shoshana Kordova is a three time founding product marketer with 20 years of marketing and journalism experience. She runs Peel Product Marketing, a consultancy that works with B2B tech startups to refresh their website messaging and executive thought leadership, building the Funnel Before the Funnel so the right buyers and investors can find them, before the next round. She also hosts the 1 Marketing Play podletter, interviewing B2B tech marketing leaders and breaking down successful marketing plays, straight from the CMO’s mouth.
Connect with Shoshana:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shoshana-kordova/
- 1 Marketing Play: https://shoshanakordova.substack.com/
What I Took From This Conversation
Everything Shoshana did was small. Read the responsibilities before the requirements. Send one message a week after applying. Answer the hard question with three facts instead of an apology. Ask what your arrangement costs you before someone tells you.
None of it required more confidence. That is the part I want you to sit with, because most advice for women in tech is really advice about feeling differently, and feeling differently is not something you can do on a Tuesday afternoon. These are things you can do while still feeling exactly as unqualified as you feel right now.
The version of this that stays with me is her line about answering with what she can do rather than what she can’t. That is not a mindset. That is a sentence you write down and practise.
I go deeper on my own take in this week’s solo episode, where I talk about why counting the boxes you do not tick is a habit, not an assessment. [SOLO EPISODE LINK]
You Don’t Have to Figure This Out Alone
If you are reading this and thinking, I know there is something I have been quietly disqualifying myself from, but I do not know how to make the case for myself, I want you to know you do not have to work that out by yourself. I work with women in tech leadership who are navigating exactly this, the promotion they have not asked for, the role they are not applying for, the conversation about their own value that they keep postponing.
Book a promotion strategy call, and we’ll figure out your next move together.
Where to Start This Week
Read the responsibilities, not the requirements. Pick one role or opportunity you have been circling and decide from what the job actually involves.
Put the follow-up in your calendar the day you apply. Two reminders, one week apart. Decide the number now so you are not negotiating with yourself later.
Write your three-sentence answer to the hard question. What you do not have, three things you have done, and the fact that you can do it again.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you break into tech without a technical background? You break into tech without a technical background by applying for roles based on what the job actually requires you to do, not the listed qualifications, and by following up directly with the hiring manager. Shoshana Kordova moved from journalism into content marketing, then into product marketing, with no computer science degree and no product experience. The path that worked was reading the responsibilities section of the job description, deciding she could do the work, applying anyway, and then messaging the VP Marketing on LinkedIn about a week later.
Should you apply for a job if you don’t meet all the requirements? Yes, you should apply if you can do the responsibilities, even when you do not meet every listed requirement. Requirements in a job posting are often aspirational or copied from an older version of the role, while the responsibilities describe the actual work. The realistic worst outcome is that nobody replies, which leaves you exactly where you started.
How do you follow up after applying for a job? Message the hiring manager directly about a week after you apply, with a brief description of your background, a note that you applied, and one question they can easily answer. Shoshana Kordova found the VP Marketing on LinkedIn and sent a short message asking whether they had a chance to look at her application. She got a reply at 11pm that night and went on to get the job.
How many times should you follow up on a job application? Follow up twice, about a week apart, with a third only if you have a specific reason to think your message was missed. Shoshana Kordova’s rule is that beyond three you stop being a go-getter and start being a nuisance. The bigger risk for most people is not sending the first follow-up at all.
What should you say when an interviewer asks if you are technical? Answer with what you can do rather than what you cannot. Name the gap in one sentence, give three concrete examples of work you have delivered, and state that you can do it again. Shoshana Kordova’s version is that she does not have a computer science background, but she has gone into three startups in three different industries, learned each product and become the voice of the company within a few months.
Can you move into product marketing without a STEM background? Yes, you can move into product marketing without a STEM background, and Shoshana Kordova has done it three times as a founding product marketer. Marketing is learnable in a way that regulated professions are not. The transferable skills that matter most are curiosity, the ability to learn an unfamiliar domain quickly, and translating technical concepts into language a customer understands.
Does working part time hurt your career? Working part time can quietly reduce your compensation even when your performance is strong, because many companies draw compensation lines at part time versus full time. Shoshana Kordova was recommended for the highest raise at her company and received the lowest one because her role was part time. When she looked at who else worked part time, almost all of them were women. She argued the case, escalated to the CEO, and got the raise.
Who is Shoshana Kordova? Shoshana Kordova is a three time founding product marketer and the founder of Peel Product Marketing, a consultancy working with B2B tech startups on website messaging and executive thought leadership. She spent more than a decade as a journalist before moving into high tech marketing, with no STEM background or product experience. She also hosts the 1 Marketing Play podletter, where she interviews B2B tech marketing leaders about one marketing play that worked.
Links
🎧 Listen to my conversation with Shoshana: Apply Anyway: How to Break Into Tech Without a Technical Background
📺 Watch on YouTube:
📝 Read the deeper, more personal version on Substack
Full Transcript
Full transcript of my conversation with Shoshana Kordova on the From a Woman to a Leader podcast. Lightly edited for readability. Filler words and false starts have been removed, wording otherwise unchanged.
Introduction
Limor Bergman Gross (0:14): Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of From a Woman to a Leader. I’m your host, Limor Bergman Gross, and my guest today is Shoshana Kordova. Shoshana spent more than a decade as a journalist before moving into high tech marketing. She has no STEM background and no product experience. And she’s now a three-time founding product marketer, and she runs her own consultancy, Peel Product Marketing. And in the episode today, Shoshana walks through exactly how she got in: applying for roles she wasn’t qualified for, following up when nobody replied, and how she answers the question she kept getting asked in the interview. Are you technical? She also tells us a story of a raise she had to take all the way to the CEO to get. So this episode is for any of you who ever read a job description, counted the boxes you don’t tick, and wondered whether you’re capable. This one is for you. So are you ready? Let’s dive right in.
How does a journalist become a marketer?
Limor Bergman Gross (1:38): Hi Shoshana, how are you?
Shoshana Kordova (1:40): Good, great to be here.
Limor Bergman Gross (1:43): Good to have you. It’s great having you here. And I want to start by asking you, because I think your journey is very interesting and bold. How did someone who is a journalist become a marketer? How does it work?
Shoshana Kordova (2:00): Unfortunately, more and more journalists are out of jobs. So we’re having more and more journalists having to find alternative career paths. And I think there’s a lot of transferable skills that journalists have. And possibly one of the most fundamental ones is curiosity. Because in order to do a good job at figuring out what the story is and telling it in a compelling way, you need to be curious. You need to ask a lot of questions. You need to find out the information. Then you need to put it together. And those are all skills that you need in high tech and marketing and many other jobs even.
Limor Bergman Gross (2:46): Yeah, that’s true actually, not just in marketing.
Content marketing as the bridge into tech
Shoshana Kordova (2:50): I started in content marketing when I switched because that was kind of the closest, right? It was writing and I had been writing for a long time. So it seemed like the easiest jump. And it was kind of the bridge for me, where I was leading the content marketing function at a startup for several years. And it became the bridge for me to jump into product marketing. It was much easier for me to do that after I had already worked at a startup for a few years and got a sense of what that was like.
Limor Bergman Gross (3:29): Yeah, but still a jump.
Shoshana Kordova (3:31): Still a jump!
Applying for a job when you don’t meet the requirements
Limor Bergman Gross (3:32): And someone who doesn’t come from this world, you don’t have a technical background. How was this move from content marketing to product marketing for you?
Shoshana Kordova (3:44): Part of it was being willing to take the chance to apply for a role even though I didn’t actually meet the qualifications. I was looking for other content marketing jobs and actually I didn’t really even know what product marketing was. And as I was looking on LinkedIn I started seeing these other types of marketing roles and I started reading the requirements and I’m looking, I can do that, I can do that, I can do that, in terms of what you would actually have to do, right, the responsibilities. And then you get to the requirements and it’s like, needs product experience or a STEM background. And then I was kind of thinking, well, I don’t have those qualifications, but I know that I could take on these responsibilities. So I applied anyway, and that’s kind of how I became a product marketer. Someone took the chance on me, and I would open the door.
Limor Bergman Gross (4:44): Yeah, first of all, kudos to you, for basically you said, okay, I can do this. I don’t have the requirements, but I don’t care. I’m going to apply anyway. That’s wonderful.
What’s the worst they can say?
Shoshana Kordova (4:58): But also I was looking at what was required in the actual work, right? Because at the end of the day, that’s more important. Can I do these things? And based on the job description, I didn’t really see a reason not to apply based on the responsibilities alone. So I figured, what’s the worst they can say, right?
Limor Bergman Gross (5:22): The worst, yeah, they can ignore you.
Shoshana Kordova (5:25): Yeah, it’s true. The worst is ignoring. It’s much worse than saying no. I’d rather someone says no and then you know, okay, I can cross them off my list. So the worst is they can ignore me. What do I have to lose?
Skipping HR and going straight to the hiring manager
Limor Bergman Gross (5:39): And they did reach out to you, which is commendable on them, because typically a lot of hiring managers, maybe there was no human who would even look at it and it would just be some machine that browses through and would not even consider, would not even reach out.
Shoshana Kordova (5:59): So one of the ways that I lucked out with this was that it actually didn’t go through HR, which I think HR tends to, a lot of times they’re more looking at basic keywords, basic requirements, because they may not be super familiar with each role and they’re relying on the hiring manager to tell them. In this case, I did what I always recommend when people ask me about breaking into high tech. And I have a lot of what I call micro mentoring conversations with people who ask me about that, and I kind of walk them through it. And what I tell them all, what I did myself, is I followed up. As the basics of it: I applied on this date, within a week I follow up. That’s just part of how I apply.
Limor Bergman Gross (6:49): With who do you follow up with? By the way, do you have like someone you can follow up with? Because a lot of times you don’t know.
Shoshana Kordova (6:56): A lot of times you’re guessing, but the good thing about being in marketing is that marketers are on LinkedIn. So it’s usually pretty easy to guess, okay, this is a role that’s in marketing. I see this is the VP Marketing. I’ll reach out to them. And that’s how I ended up getting the job. I reached out to the VP Marketing on LinkedIn. And again, they might ignore you. Okay. I can live with that, right?
What to write when you message a hiring manager on LinkedIn
Limor Bergman Gross (7:24): What did you say to them? When you reached out, what did you write?
Shoshana Kordova (7:28): I usually just have a really short, really brief description of my background and just to say that I applied like a week ago and I was wondering if you had a chance to look at the application, something like that. Just something that’s asking a question, so if they engage then there’s something for them to answer. And she looked at my resume and then wrote back to me and said, yeah, let’s talk. And I remember it was in the middle of it, it was like 11pm, and because I was working full time while applying, you do that in the edges of the day. I wasn’t expecting her to see it before the next day. She writes back, I’m like, 10 or 11pm. You wanna talk now? I was like, no, it’s okay if you can’t talk.
Limor Bergman Gross (8:12): I think based on what you said, Shoshana, it definitely puts you at the head of the pile, right? Because you are the one, or maybe the only one, that did that. Because most people, be honest, I never thought of doing that. I actually stopped looking for a job many years ago because I was poached all the time. But still, I never thought about doing that. I applied, usually tried to apply through someone I know, and then I just moved on. I never thought about reaching out proactively, which is great.
Where the follow-up habit came from
Shoshana Kordova (8:44): It actually started before I got into journalism. I was considering becoming a lawyer, and I was pretty sure I wanted to be a journalist and not a lawyer, but I thought, before I go to law school and then you’re committed and then you have debt and whatever, I said, let me actually work as a paralegal, which is not so common in Israel. I was still living in the US at the time. And I worked for a year as a paralegal. And that was, every time we sent out a message to a client, we had to put in the calendar, make sure to follow up within a certain time frame. And that’s where I learned it. And I used that when I, as a journalist, when I would pitch story ideas to editors, I would always have them in my calendar. And then I started using it when I switched to high tech and was looking for jobs. It had become second nature, that messaging someone once is not enough. You have to follow up, and it doesn’t mean, because we’re all overloaded, just because someone hasn’t replied to you, it doesn’t necessarily mean anything. You might be reading something into it, but it could just be that they didn’t see your message. And so following up, I saw often when I was pitching stories to editors that I wanted to write as a freelance journalist, often I’d get responses on the first or second follow up and not on the initial query. And so I just kept doing that, kept up that practice.
Limor Bergman Gross (10:19): Yeah, because you differentiate yourself and you become one of very few, or maybe the only one who does that. So you just put a reminder in your calendar, follow up with so-and-so.
How many follow-ups is too many?
Limor Bergman Gross (10:31): How much is too much, following up?
Shoshana Kordova (10:33): I usually would follow up twice. And maybe if it was a place I was really interested in, or thought I was a really good fit, or maybe it was a really bad time, one of the follow ups was, I thought there was a good reason they might not have seen it, maybe August and everyone’s away, something like that, then maybe a third. I wouldn’t do more than that. I think that’s when you start being a noodge instead of a go-getter. And I think also, you also have to just be human and polite about it, right? Don’t be in your face. You’re not trying to be in your face. You just really briefly remind them who you are and ask them a question that they need to respond to. So you’re giving them an easy way to reply.
Limor Bergman Gross (11:24): And how often would you say, based on your experience, what would be the time difference between, I sent an email and then I want to send a follow-up? Where’s the sweet spot?
Shoshana Kordova (11:38): I would usually set my follow-ups for about a week after. If it was something I was really interested in, or the job had been open for a while and I was nervous that they were going to close the role or something, then I might send it a little earlier, but usually about a week in between. That gives them time to respond.
Limor Bergman Gross (11:56): I learned a lot already. I can implement that. To be honest, I think today with AI probably you can automate some of it.
Shoshana Kordova (12:11): You can, you can, but I think you want to be a little bit wary about that, because you don’t want it to read like spam, right?
Facing the elephant in the room in the interview
Limor Bergman Gross (12:23): And you want to be personable, you want to be you, right, not a script. What else I wanted to ask you. So you reached out proactively to the VP of Marketing, she replied that night, and you’re talking. How was the interview? How did you face the elephant in the room? I don’t have a tech background. I’m a journalist. How did you approach that?
Shoshana Kordova (12:55): So actually, I think there’s a big misconception among a lot of people in tech that you need to already have worked in tech in order to get the job, right? And one of the ways I lucked out is that the VP Marketing was also a writer. She’s written multiple books. And then she’s a marketer, right? So she is actually a very firm believer that you can learn marketing. It’s not this super high barrier to entry. It’s not like you haven’t gone to med school, so obviously you can’t operate on those patients, right? It’s something that’s learnable.
“Are you technical?” and who gets asked it
Limor Bergman Gross (13:41): Fantastic. But I want to challenge you. Let’s say a woman that listens to us in a similar situation is being interviewed and someone does challenge her in the interview. What is your recommendation? How would you respond if someone challenged you? Hey, Shoshana, how do you think you’re going to handle this? Because you never worked in tech, you don’t come from a STEM background. You’re a writer.
Shoshana Kordova (14:08): I was challenged many times when looking for a job. I would say one of the questions I got most often was, are you technical? Do you think of yourself as technical? And I did always wonder to what extent they were asking men that question with the same background as me, because I’m a woman, I’m an orthodox Jew, I don’t fit this classic stereotype of the Tel Aviv startup archetype. And there is always that niggling question in the back of your mind. Why are they asking me that? What made them ask that question?
Answering with what you can do, not what you can’t
Shoshana Kordova (15:01): I say that I try to respond with what I can do rather than what I can’t. So I respond, well, look, I don’t have a computer science background, but I’ve gone into this startup and that startup and the other startup, in three totally different industries. And I’ve learned the product and become the voice of the company within a few months. So I’m able to go in and learn the industry and understand the product and translate those technical concepts into something that the customer can understand. I’ve done that before and I can do that again. And either they’ll accept that or they won’t, right?
Limor Bergman Gross (15:39): I love that. And I don’t know about men versus women. It could be. I’m sure there are a lot of biases, especially as you said, you’re also orthodox. So I’m sure that there are biases. But on the other hand, we never know that. A man writer could have been asked the same question also.
Shoshana Kordova (16:00): Like I said, I have this thing, it’s called Pick My Brain, right? Because a lot of times people know that I switched from journalism to high tech and they want to know how to do it, and, can I please pick your brain? And I’m always happy to talk to people. So I actually started this kind of scheduling link for micro mentoring sessions, people can sign up and pick my brain. And one of the people who I was speaking to a while ago, she was extremely experienced, had a very strong technical background. And she said, we hadn’t been talking about this question, and she said that she would go into interviews and people would say, but are you technical? I couldn’t imagine saying that to someone, having seen her resume and all the R&D roles that she’s held and her computer science background. And even though she did have all those criteria and all those check boxes were filled, she was still getting that question. So yeah, it makes you wonder a little bit more, right?
What if you have no tech background at all?
Limor Bergman Gross (17:07): For sure. And I’m challenging you again. Let’s say you are interviewing, but you did not work in tech before. You came straight from journalism. You cannot say I’ve worked in a startup. What would you say if they ask you, hey, are you technical? What makes you think you can do this job?
Shoshana Kordova (17:26): So I would say that another one of the transferable skills that I got from journalism, in addition to curiosity, is when you get an assignment for an article, often you don’t know anything about the story until you start reporting it. As you report the story, as you do your research, as you talk to people, as you go to the relevant locations, that’s how you learn the story. That’s how you become enough of an expert to write about it. So I had this mindset that, so what? I don’t know about this industry before. I’ll learn about it, right? You learn about it by doing it. You go in and you learn. To me, it didn’t seem to be a blocker. And I was fortunate that I encountered people who had a similar outlook. My first startup, right, where I was coming straight from journalism, it was in the field of commercial real estate finance. I did not know anything about commercial real estate finance, but they were actually looking for someone who had a journalist mentality and would be able to take the raw data and turn it into a story. Because they were working with big data and they had a lot of data about commercial real estate and they wanted to be able to tell stories around that. And who better to do that than a journalist?
Limor Bergman Gross (18:52): Once you said it, Shoshana, it got me thinking that, obviously you convinced me, right? Also you kind of took that angle of actually being a journalist is an advantage for this role, not a disadvantage. So it’s like the opposite of what you may think.
Finding the overlap between your past experience and the role you want
Shoshana Kordova (19:11): Yes. And this is what I recommend to people when they’re looking for a role, especially a role that they haven’t done before, is to always look at what they’ve already done, at their past experience and their passions and interests, and find the places where there’s overlap with the kind of role that they’re looking for. And it might not be overlap like I had the same job title, right? That’s obvious and you maybe don’t need to look too hard. And sometimes it’s overlap like, I worked in education and now I’m looking for a role in learning and development. So how can I emphasize that my work in education has readied me for this role in learning and development in high tech, right? And finding the areas of overlap, if you imagine a Venn diagram, I’m always trying to make the intersecting circles as big as possible.
The part-time job, the lowest raise, and mommy-tracking herself
Limor Bergman Gross (20:07): For sure. And tell us a little bit about on the job challenging moments you had with biases or whatever that you had to face, if you’re willing to share something and enlighten us.
Shoshana Kordova (20:24): I would say, I think in one of my roles, it was part time. And for me, this was a huge advantage, because I was still writing articles as a freelance journalist. And I wanted time to be able to work on those articles, also had young kids, and to be able to have a part time job in high tech, that’s something that a lot of people would love to have and can’t find. And I was able to get that. So for me I was like, this is amazing. And then along came the first time since I was there that they were having a review and raises and all of that. And my direct manager, who had hired me, recommended me for the highest percentage of raises that they were giving out, and he told me that. And then I got the lowest percentage. And I found out that it was because it was part-time. And I looked around the company and at first it was interesting to me. I thought it was good that there were other part-time people there, and then I realized that almost all of them were women who wanted to use the time to also be with their kids after school and that kind of thing. And so even if the intent was not discriminatory, the impact of drawing that line at part-time versus full-time, when you look at who was affected by that, the impact was felt almost entirely by women. And so all of a sudden I realized that, here I thought this was so amazing that I got this part-time job. And actually I had kind of mommy-tracked myself without even knowing it.
Limor Bergman Gross (22:15): But interesting, it’s not just about the women side. Obviously you’re all women doing this part time, but you’re all penalized for working part time, as if, if you do your part time job and you’re excelling and you’re doing a wonderful job, you don’t deserve as much as someone who is doing a full time job.
Taking the raise all the way to the CEO
Shoshana Kordova (22:37): I actually argued exactly that, and I did get the raise. I did get the raise. I spoke to my hiring manager and he made an effort, and when that didn’t pan out, I spoke to the CEO directly and had a conversation with him, and I did eventually get the raise. So that was my argument basically.
From employee to business owner
Limor Bergman Gross (23:02): Definitely. What’s been the most challenging for you moving from an employee to a business owner?
Shoshana Kordova (23:11): I guess always finding, it’s a little bit like, I’m always helping other companies position themselves within the landscape, right? And working with CEOs to express their thoughts and thought leadership. But now I have to be the cobbler with no shoes, right? I also have to do that for myself, right? So that’s always harder. Wait, but how am I positioning myself? There’s actually kind of a joke among other solopreneurs that you need a positioning expert for the positioning experts, because it’s so hard. There’s a phrase, it’s hard to see the label from inside the jar, you know?
Limor Bergman Gross (23:56): Yeah, or the cobblers walk barefoot, right, there’s another one.
Shoshana Kordova (24:02): The cobbler’s children go barefoot. So yeah, so I guess maybe that, right? Because somehow it’s so easy when it’s someone else’s company, I’m like, of course, here’s what you have to do. But when it’s my own company, it’s like, what? Experiment and try different things that maybe I wouldn’t necessarily do with a client, because I really don’t know what’s going to happen. But I’m willing to just go through a lot of trial and error and just try it out and see. And so that’s kind of fun for me. So it’s a little bit of both.
Where to find Shoshana Kordova
Limor Bergman Gross (24:36): And before we end today, where can our listeners find you?
Shoshana Kordova (24:43): Oh, I’m on LinkedIn way too much. So Shoshana Kordova with a K. That’s I think the best place to reach me. And also my podletter, as I call it. I can’t believe I almost forgot to talk about that. It’s basically a podcast and a newsletter. It’s called One Marketing Play and it’s available at Shoshana Kordova’s Substack. So that’s where I interview marketing leaders for B2B tech about one marketing play that was successful for them. So what was the problem? What was the solution? What was the outcome? And I think what’s been fun for me is being able to draw that line from journalism to content marketing to product marketing to podcasting. All along, I’m looking at the same thing, right? I’m looking at, how do I get the intel directly from the source.
Limor Bergman Gross (25:34): Incredible. I’ll put the links there and thank you so much Shoshana. It was a pleasure.
Shoshana Kordova (25:42): Thank you for having me.