I Went LIVE with Microsoft's Tina Eskridge: Tech Trends, Careers & More

I spoke at Canada’s largest virtual tech conference alongside the incredible Tina Eskridge, Senior Director, Marketing at Microsoft

An insight into our careers in tech and tactical trends to watch out for

On Saturday, July 18th, I had the pleasure of joining Canada’s largest tech conference for students - Canadian Undergraduate Technology Conference (CUTC) 2020 - as a speaker, alongside…Tina Eskridge! We chatted about our careers paths, journey into tech, the challenges we’ve faced as women minorities and got tactical on tech trends. Here is a minor recap to the kinds of questions we discussed and our thoughts.

How did you land in tech?

Kat: The year was 2006. Well, sort of. There was thing called Piczo.com for the pre-Myspace generation. If you were a kid or pre-teen at the time, social media sites weren’t really a thing but landing pages with basic HTML coding were. So, I jumped online and created my “about me” page with a famousactress.piczo.com domain and BOOM, I officially became a nerd. Joking.

While my friends left it at that, I became obsessed with web design, Adobe Photoshop, blogging and learning from the top "bloggers/influencers” at the time. Vejc.com was the mega blogger, and top influencers created beautiful landing pages with header images on Photoshop, provided tutorials on HTML/CSS, freebies (Adobe Photoshop photo templates), and affiliate links. They also incentivized their fan base by creating bi-weekly web design contests.

I got into it and went on to create my katgarciaonline.com website around 2009. While I didn’t end up as an Experience Designer (UX/UI), it’s what led me to love websites, e-commerce, branding, and digital marketing, content strategy, platforms and…tech.

What is an early career lesson you learned from?

Tina & Kat: Know your worth & when it’s time to move on.

Tina shared a great story of the time she was early in her career and remained loyal to her employer. The opportunities seemed to have stalled, as did the learning curve. She recalled seeing her starting class or cohort leave to take on new jobs, new opportunities and seek growth elsewhere, wishing she could have assessed the situation earlier on herself. It’s helpful to ask yourself every 6 months: “Am I happy? How am I doing? What do I bring to the table? What am I getting in return?”

“Know your worth and when it’s time to move on”

Tina’s response made me recall the time I didn’t get an internship in my first year of university. It was for a large personal care company. For a Fortune 100, I thought: “This is the perfect place for me. I’ve been a professional TV actress auditioning for their brands’ commercials and their competitors’ too!” Looking back, I was over-qualified. As I showed up with my business portfolio explaining my previous work in the entertainment industry, content marketing, YouTube channel with 5K subscribers and 1M+ views…they didn’t get it. After they asked me to come up with a commercial creative brief and script (what I had literally done for 10 years on the receiving end), the VP of HR told me she didn’t understand what my YouTube and content experience could ever have to do with Marketing.

Left to Right: Ravi Mehta from Facebook & Tinder, Kat Garcia from BCG Digital Ventures, Tina Eskridge from Microsoft, and Dave Rensin from Google

I knew my worth but it wasn’t easy to walk away from an opportunity I knew I was ahead of the game for. I ended up taking a break from my YouTube because businesses weren’t ready to take on “influencers” and it actually hurt my fanbase a fair bit - social platforms and their algorithms are about consistency anyway. In hindsight, I should have taken a break for myself but gotten back on the horse soon thereafter. Ready or not, companies will be disrupted and if you’re that disruptor, it doesn’t matter what your corporate experience is. Know your worth and own it!

What challenges or difficulties have you faced for being a woman? A minority?

Tina: Fortunately, Tina shared she hasn’t experienced challenges for being a woman. Of course, she recognized there are many problems still in existence today in the world of tech and beyond but her source of difficulties have stemmed from being black. She told us about a time she was speaking to a white male executive at her company and he asked her how she got the job. Naively thinking it was a standard question, went on to explain she had seen the job posting, and applied…

At CUTC, we all burst into laughter.

Unfortunately, he pressed her on the matter and questioned her position and how she got there. We discussed how best to answer people in those situations, and by the picture above, we concluded sometimes it’s best to answer the question as it is asked. Hence, “I saw the posting, I applied. I interviewed. I got the job. I’m here”. It’s also a matter of being over-prepared and answer with the facts that your job requires.

What are some tech trends or skill sets you think students should focus on?

Kat:

Market lens

There’s a lot happening and as we’ve seen from this year, it’s harder to predict than ever. Putting my growth hat on, it’s important think about top ranking apps and companies. If you do a quick search for most downloaded apps, you’ll soon realized they’re mostly video-based. TikTok, Messenger, Instagram, Zoom, Snapchat, YouTube, and Netflix are 7 of the 10 top apps in the last 365 days. Content platforms are some of the largest revenue generating companies today and as work and school has gone remote (or the world), it’s only set to increase. Questions regarding the influencer economy, mental health space, e-learning and more are tech trends to hone in on. Taking a market approach while leading with your passions will allow you to generate sparks of knowledge while guiding you to dig into untaped spaces while innovating there.

Source: App Annie 2020

User-lens

I mentioned on my Instagram, shortly after the conference how the influencer economy and women in tech have usually been disregarded from STEM and their active role in tech. Ultimately, women have found spaces to thrive in and while vapid or not, Instagram generated $20B in 2019 (a quarter of Facebook’s revenue). We all know IG’s greatest target demographic and status platform trends have been paved by women. Paying attention to users, their behaviours and how target groups consume and utilize technology will allow you to pick up what to learn and focus on. For instance, buzzwords like AI, ML, VR, and AR are thrown around, but how are they being used? How can they be used? AR is booming on Instagram. Influencers - primarily in Russia - are using shareable AR filters to gather more followers. It’s fascinating how tech can support brand growth.

Using 2 different lenses, I’ve helped explain:

Kat Garcia chats AR trends on Instagram (@katgarciaonline)

• Video-based products are trending

• Use video and content platforms to grow your brand

• Women and the influencer economy is still questionable but rakes in $20B…

• Augmented reality is trending as filters on Instagram

• Share-ability is crucial to brand growth

And there’s much more to where that came from!

What advice would you give your younger self, or to the 200 undergraduate students here today?

Tina: She sent us off beautifully. Sticking to her words of wisdom related to knowing your worth and leading with your curiosity, Tina helped conclude the conversation on a positive note.

Kat: Alluding to Tina’s point, if I had advice for students or my 20 year-old-self, it would be to enjoy. As hard as it was to hear others tell me “it’ll all be O.K.”, the cliches of life become hard-hitting realities as you get older. While it’s important to study, do well in school, build your passion projects, and similar, it is more important to learn how to harmonize your ambitions with enjoying your youth first. Your career is going to be a long one, if you’re blessed to live a healthy life. It’s not a sprint. We’re talking about 30 - 40 years working! So, relax. Your dreams will manifest themselves when and how they’re supposed to.