when we think of big tech we often picture an army of software engineers and as much as they're great
at creating a product there's still a whole other side to big tech which is the business side think
of the sales people the financial analysts the marketers and so on they also play a fundamental
role in monetizing and growing the business when looking at google's career side for example they
obviously have an engineering and a tech team but they also have a large number of non-technical
roles like business strategy sales or finance what's up everyone it's kenji here and in this
video i thought i'd explain five jobs in the tech industry for business students so realistically
as a business student you're probably not gonna work as a software engineer or a data scientist
but there are still plenty of jobs in the tech industry that are for business backgrounds
and when i say business backgrounds i mean more generically not just business students but also
those with coursework that overlaps like economics marketing or management as well so the five that
i've picked are account management product marketing business strategy sales and finance
and i'll primarily be focusing on the first few years of a career so say zero to four years in i
am aware that there are many other business roles in the tech industry so if this video does well
i will consider making a part two so make sure you hit that like and that subscribe down below
the first role is account management and it's usually in the form of an account manager or
an account executive this is in charge of the day-to-day management of a customer account
typically you're given a portfolio of customers so a group of them depending on their size or
their regions where they're located for example if you're an account manager at google in france
this could be helping customers that want to advertise on google search engine in french so
they rank higher in their searches and when i say customers these are usually not individuals but
rather businesses and in your role as an account manager you'd be helping them by providing some
recommendations to them meeting with them making sure they're satisfied and lastly helping them out
if they need anything it's quite a generalist role where depending on the customer's needs
some of the tasks you might be doing range from explaining a product pitching a new feature or
acting as customer service when a problem arises so depending on the situation you could be a
salesperson you could be a tech specialist or even just customer support now if you do enjoy
interacting with people and learning while on the job this could be the right kind of role for you
as for the skills for this kind of a role communication is probably most important
as you spend most of your day talking with customers via email or actually meeting with them
alongside negotiation and being organized as you often have multiple things going on at
the same time next up is product marketing and for some reason when people think of marketing
they think of those that maybe are not so good with numbers but they still like business so they
settle for marketing but that's not necessarily the case especially in big tech companies
as a marketer you will have a lot of analytical work and statistics and other things like that
in short product marketing is about bringing the product to the market and creating demand
for it that usually includes being the voice of the product so having a good storyline
making sure that both sales and customers understand what the product is all about
and lastly driving demand for it the tasks for this kind of a role include conducting
market research so really getting to know what the customer wants as well as what the competition is
currently offering crafting a product message so really putting into words what the product
actually does and what kind of problems it can solve and lastly monitoring the success of a
marketing campaign through kpis like what could be conversion rates customer satisfaction or views
regarding the skills for this kind of a role collaboration is one of the key ones as you're
constantly talking with the sales the engineering and the product teams and it can also help to have
a management consulting background where you can understand the problem identify it and try to find
solutions now this role usually requires a couple years of work experience whether that be at a
management consultancy like i mentioned or as part of a marketing team that said there are big tech
companies out there that do hire product marketers fresh out of college so just after graduation
the next role is business strategy and as you can tell business strategy sounds quite vague
and the reason for that is that it's more of an internal consultant type of role where you get
a bit of a generalist view and from there you give recommendations to specific teams like the
marketing team or the finance team for instance now among the big positives of this kind of a role
is that you gain exposure to a ton of different teams so you get to see different areas of the
company at the same time you get to interact with the senior leadership and lastly you can have a
big impact on the company if you do things right that said among the negatives here is that you
don't actually execute it yourself instead you just recommend meaning that you're not really a
specialist in anything so if you feel like you're not really sure what you want to do but you like
business and you like tech this could be the right type of role for you and that is quite interesting
and at the same time it doesn't close any doors among the tasks that you can expect to be doing
are thinking of monetization strategies for a particular product analyzing a potential expansion
into a new market like say a new geography and presenting insights to senior management team when
it comes to the skills for this kind of a role presentations will probably be your best friend
as you're primarily just recommending things alongside analysis to back your findings with
data and strategy to pick the right path for the company next up there's sales and that's usually
in the form of a sales representative now for some reason when people think of sales they think of
somebody that's just knocking door-to-door trying to sell you a defective product hello would you
be interested in buying a brand new vacuum cleaner leave i don't want to buy anything
that's obviously not the case in fact sales is hugely important to any business
after all even if you have the best product in the world if you're not able to sell it you're sooner
or later you're going to go bankrupt so overall being a good salesman is a hugely valuable skill
regardless of what industry you're in it's probably one of these jobs that will always
be there some of today's billionaires like mark cuban got their start through tech sales and
they've been very vocal about how useful being a good salesperson has been for them mark cuban
even wrote a book which somewhat touches on the topic and it's called how to win at the sport
of business as you can see it's actually quite a short read if you're interested i'll leave
it in the description as for the skills for this kind of a role it's mainly soft skills so things
like being confident being trustworthy and communicating well can go a long way
the last one is finance and there's actually a wide range of roles in finance from accounting
to compliance to just financial analysis but the one we'll be looking at is a financial analyst
which is usually part of the financial planning and analysis group they're usually responsible
for things like analyzing financial statements trying to predict the future performance of
the company and making sure the budgets are all aligned some of the tasks that you can expect as
a financial analyst include forecasting business scenarios so what would happen to our financials
if we had another lockdown what about if we merged with another company how about if in the
election this person won or that person won other tasks include tracking performance metrics so how
close were we to hitting our revenue targets for instance and another common one is allocating the
budgets so how much of the total budget should you allocate to the marketing team what about the
recruitment team and really trying to maximize their output given a set of resources which is
just their budget now a finance role does have a bit of a repetitive nature in that every quarter
you're expected to do similar tasks the same thing goes every year so every year you might
have a budget and you might revaluate it every quarter for example some of the key skills for
this kind of a role include spreadsheets or excel which are going to be your best friend
alongside finance and accounting which are obviously essential for financial analysts
hit that like button if you want a part two and this is basically the video that i wish i had
when i was looking at a career in big tech and i didn't really know what each job entailed so
i hope it was helpful to you that's all for this one and i'll catch you in the next one