From Psychologist to Googler

Mike Jones once said "back then they don't want me, now I'm hot they all on me."

Well, they are not 'all on me' but suffice it to say people I never really spoke to have now suddenly started to contact me from different fields. The biggest question (and the most obvious one) that everyone asks right off the bat :

So how did you get from being in the psychology field to not only being at Google, but doing business development for Android?

Often times those questions came with both disbelief and hope - hope that they themselves could make the transition and disbelief that with my background on paper I'm where I am.

'Til this day, I'm still living an imposter syndrome, a syndrome where I constantly feel inadequate, undeserving, and doubted by my colleagues of whether I can deliver. Perhaps that's also the reason behind the drive for me to always feel like I must work twice, three times harder than everyone, double check everything, make sure I'm delivering, I know what I'm talking about, and that I maintain awesome relationships with those I work with.

However, the reality is my colleagues at Google are beyond amazing. They are intrigued by my background but their judgement of my work is not tainted by it. They understand people at Google come from all different walks of life but as long as you can deliver and you know your stuff and you're what they call it, "Googley" then whatever. Go forth and excel.

What is a shame is that society is not there yet. I can guarantee that I will still not be able to get a job somewhere else doing what I do because ANY recruiter will take one glance at my LinkedIn profile or my resume and go...urm...no thanks. The disparity between my last psychology position and my first position at Google is like the Grand Canyon. "How did she even swing that? She has no XX years of relevant experience, no MBA or shiny expensive degree from a name brand university, nor tenure or stint at another brand name company." Instead of truly digging into a person's capability at their current role, society is still heavily dependent on your paper pedigree as the sole indicator of future success.

And for full disclosure, it wasn't that I wasn't qualified for one of those brand name schools. I didn't attend for the pure simple reason that I just could not afford it and I was an international student, which severely limited my financing options. I just couldn't do that to my parents. So think about that next time you judge someone based on their alma mater. Or recruit solely based on institutional affiliation.

You want to know how I got to where I am? Here's what I did:

1. I networked. I reached out proactively.
2. I was truthful, realistic, and humble to myself and to whomever would give me a chance.
3. I worked my ass off. I volunteered to do anything and everything outside of the prescribed scope of my job when help was needed and made sure I delivered. Big, small, doesn't matter.
4. I listened and asked questions. Tons of questions. I'm married to an Engineer so the basics I've learned from him but I always wanted to know end-to-end what the product was trying to achieve and stashed up knowledge. Nothing was "none of my business".
5. I made genuine friendships. It takes a humble attitude to approach everyone with a "You're definitely smarter and more knowledgeable than me" attitude but I genuinely cared and loved it. I have made some amazing friendships with some of the most influential and intelligent people on this earth because of it. I treated everyone's time as more valuable than mine when working together. And people remember.

One may think that this is quite an extreme approach but I wanted to start all over. I had no technical or business background, and definitely no shiny degree from an Ivy to back me up. I had me and my brain and confidence that I am up to the challenge.

I can't speak to any other company willing to take the risk that my hiring manager at Google did. Sometimes I still look at my LinkedIn profile wondering if I should just remove everything because I don't want people to negatively judge me because of my random hodgepodge of a resume. But then I think, hey I'm here at one of the best companies in the world, doing deals affecting the epicenter of the global mobile market. So deal with it.

I'm sad that the job world has prescribed this preconceived expectation of a person's abilities based on words on a piece of paper. I'm forever grateful for the individuals that took a chance on me and thought progressively of how to measure a person's future success. This is how one succeeds in life. This is how I got to where I am.