August

So here's my progress for the month of August. I only met 6% of my target for emails and 12% of my target for informationals. My conversion rate is 20%. That is, if I email 100 people at least 20 people give me time for informationals. This is a good improvement over last month, where I only had a 10% conversion rate.

I didn't meet my target because I was busy preparing for interviews. I had a total of 7 interviews so far. I didn't hear back in 4 and waiting for the remaining 3. I learnt a lot from these interviews, especially the ones that I bombed. It was with companies I didn't care much about, so it's all good. Nevertheless, I did feel a bit down after doing poorly in them. Anyway, they have given me a good kick in the butt to prepare harder. I'm now strengthening my PM skills, behavioral answers and my business fundamentals. As far as the books I'm reading, I'm re-reading Cracking the PM interview and Case in Point. When I go on my walks, I think through answers to behavioral questions.

For thinking on the spot, I'm practicing casing with people online. I'm also going to enroll in a course called Fast Math to improve my public math skills.

On the personal front, I decided to stop drinking alone. I had my very last bottle of wine this weekend and don't plan to drink alone again, ever. Maybe an occasional glass socially, but never alone. I used to exercise before, I think I went to the gym for 30 mins everyday and walked for about 5K steps a day. Now I'm doing yoga for 30 mins a day (the stretching helps with relieving stress) and walk 5K steps a day. I live in a very nice apartment complex with a breathtaking view, so it's been awesome. I didn't realize I would enjoy being unemployed so much. Yay for summer!

July

I can't believe its been a year since I wrote this. I got hired back at my old company since I last wrote and got let go at the end of this June. Well technically, my last day will be at the end of August, since they have put the people who were let go on a leave of absence, so I will have 1 year of PM experience on paper. In all it has been an experience with good exposure to Marketing, Finance, Product roles and also to Senior Management especially the C-Suite.  I can't complain about being let go because the company has given severance for 10 weeks and they have given 2 months of leave of absence.  I have no hard feelings and look forward to the future.

So since the past 1 month I have been recruiting or trying to recruit. One of my colleagues who was let go had an idea for a startup which he looped me into and I have been working a bit for that. The first two weeks since I was let go, I worked a lot for the market research and have written stuff in a document format. So I didn't do much in terms of recruiting.

Since the last two weeks I have been reaching out to people and having conversations. Not as many as I would have liked to, since I've been reaching out to less than 50 per day, but now I am seeing some traction. Here's my status so far. As you can see, I've only met 8% of my target in both emails and informationals, with a 10% conversion rate. Of every 100 people I email, 10 people give time to speak. Will start working towards achieving the target from today.