My name is Gilbert, and I'm a talent outreach specialist here at Google.

Talent can mean many things; it

can mean folks that have never envisioned themselves at Google. And so part of our team's remit is to
identify talent that Google or other companies may not necessarily reach out to, or consider for roles in
the past and helping them navigate the interview process. That could also mean candidates that are
already interested or have expressed interest in opportunities at Google in the past, and engaging them
to support them through the interview process today. At Google you have to wear the program and
project management hat, regardless of what role you're in. And that's definitely been the case for me.
So in my role I've had to practice skills such as: communicating to stakeholders, managing a budget,
managing a project timeline in many different projects within my role. An example of this could be
organizing events for university students that come to Google's campus. And hear from guest speakers
about the projects we work on, the roles and their career journeys. And so as you can imagine this can
be a complex project. My first job out of college was completely unrelated to what I'm doing now. I was
an assistant manager at a big box retailer. And so a lot of the skills that I actually learned in that role
have translated to support me in my role and allowed me to have success. So some of these skills are
being able to talk to and have difficult conversations, being able to manage a budget, managing
resources, and managing your time. These are especially important in the retail setting. I started
applying a lot of these project management frameworks or practices, even into the smallest projects.
Maybe it's related to my goals for the next three months, setting up project plan based around that,
right? I was the only stakeholder, I was the only one reviewing this documentation. But the practice of
being able to do this really helped me so that when I had to do it for a project at Google with multiple
stakeholders, with multiple timelines, competing priorities. It was already second nature to me, because
I even applied it just in my day to day. So I think one of the biggest support that I had as far as working
through imposter syndrome, or lack of confidence as I stepped into a lot of these skills is really just
practice. And you can practice it in many different ways, in your personal life, in your professional life,
and anything in between. So that was really important for me as I've gone through this journey of up-
skilling as a program and project manager. I'd say that by joining this course and stepping into this,
you're already taking the first step. And I think that's just as important, right? Not letting fear, or fear of
failure get in the way of new opportunities for you. And the second piece is don't be afraid to ask for
help. I think that folks are generally willing to help and support you. So the biggest thing that you can do
is reach out, and not be afraid to ask questions. Not be afraid to do an informational interview, to ask for
resume tips, to ask for advice from people that are maybe already in the role that you're hoping to step
into, or in the field that you're looking to work in. Just reach out to them, ask them questions. I think
people like to connect with folks that are intuitive, that are curious and are just eager to learn. And so if
you can leverage those two pieces, I think that you're going to have success in whatever you do.