HOW TO LAND A STRATEGY ROLE IN TECH

Comprehensive strategies for entering the tech-business operations field.

In these pages, Google strategy and operations manager Yan seeks to demystify the world of business operations (or “BizOps”) and lay out some insights and practical advice for readers wanting to pursue a career in it. She draws on her own extensive experience working at Google and consulting for such companies as Facebook and Groupon while walking readers through every stage of the career process. These include the initial job interview, navigating office politics, and getting the most out of one’s various teams. By far, she puts the greatest emphasis on crucial first impressions; every aspect of the interview process is dissected, with varied advice on how to gain an edge. For example, she effectively stresses the importance of doing detailed research on the company beforehand: “You should go into the interview having some perspective on the company’s competitive advantage,” she writes. “Does it come from customers having a higher willingness to pay? Does it come from a lower product cost compared to other competitors?” Yan’s tips are enthusiastic and sensible throughout, but readers may find it questionable when she suggests that job applicants search the social media of their interviewers for personal tidbits, which interviewers may find unappealingly intrusive: “If your interviewer just graduated from Harvard Business School and mentions that in his introduction, feel free to ask him his thoughts on how useful his MBA is in his current role!” Other pieces of advice feel reductive and obvious (“Focus on what you did and the outcomes of your actions”). Still, there’s plenty genuinely useful information here.

A readable and experience-driven, if slightly uneven, guide to entering the world of business operations.