Top tips from women in the industry and the 30% job description rule
Last month Women in RPA hosted the first session in a new sub-series of Empower Hour, “Landing your Dream Job in Intelligent Automation”.
In this interactive session with Daryn Edgar, Elisa Lengler, Elizabeth Ajayi and our very own Co-Founder Sophie Rawlins, the panel dived into careers in RPA, shared their own experience, gave advice and answered questions and drilling down into where a career in IA can take you & what skills you might need.
Our favorite quotes from the panel:
Daryn Edgar on her 30% job description rule
When I'm putting myself forward for a role, I'm going to go for it if I hit 30% of what's on the job description. Because with whatever experience I have, in the journey for applying for that role, I will learn something. I'll learn something about what I need to get this role in the future and what I need to accomplish to move forward. And so it's never a loss. There's never a downside to putting yourself forward.
Elisa Lengler on her all female team and how to recruit women
At Natura we have an all-female team. For leaders out there who are trying to assemble a team, before going searching in the market, I would say look inside your company and maybe there are some women there that you can invest a little bit on training and they can develop. Just like we assembled our team at Natura, we just invested on training and they became our developers.
Elizabeth Ajayi on how she got started in intelligent automation
When I started off in intelligent automation, it was in a business analyst role. I started off learning from process experts. I observed them, took notes, mapped out the processes and also get into the weeds of what they do, so the keystrokes and the clicks. And so, I spent over a year working on processes and training up. And I really, really enjoyed doing this, because I love interacting with people. I love solving problems, and this gave me lots of opportunities to do that, but then I got really, really curious about the technical delivery. I was like, "Oh my dear, this is so exciting."
We also took the opportunity to ask the audience what myths that are out there might stop women from pursuing a career in intelligent automation. The audience sent in these responses:
- You have to be super technical
- You have to have a computer science degree to be successful
- Coders are needed
- Male-dominant
- Women are less technically minded
- It's a man's world
- Nothing all humans can be equal
- Technology is for boys
- Bad stock photography and images of stereotypical people in these roles
Despite the prevalence of these myths, the audience did believe that the most important skill to get into the industry was not technical skills. We asked them to rank the skills you think are most important in getting started in IA and these are the results:
- Change/project management skills
- Continuous improvement skills
- Operational skills
- Highly technical skills
A big thank you to our panelists for sharing their insights. For more on this series please tune in on September 10th to hear from the panel live on how to recruit, and be recruited in intelligent automation.
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