Sumeet Maniar

Before I joined the Intentional Job Search program, my job search was ad hoc and scattershot — probably typical of most people, even with 25+ years of experience. I'd see a posting, respond, do a little networking. It was largely unstructured. My initial hesitation was: how is this going to help me at my experience level?

What pushed me over the edge was the structured content. Even though I've worked at larger orgs and been a CEO, I was like, 'Wow, I didn't know there were all these details.' Product management as an industry has become more formalized. One of the first aha moments was simplicity. Even at the executive level, less is more.

The other big shift was networking. At our level, there can be a little bit of ego or vulnerability — you don't want to tell everyone you're looking for a job. But when I tested it and just told people directly, they'd say, 'You should have just told me!'

For my role, I followed the program's LinkedIn process, found a business school connection at the company, and she immediately put me in touch with hiring managers through their internal Slack. It ended up being a 14-week interview process. I almost gave up because I ran out of ideas for what to say after so many interviews. But I stuck with it and landed a head of AI and data products role at a Series C company. If you give yourself ad hoc effort, the results are going to be ad hoc.