Account Manager

Our client offers a unique blend of services that combine many years of international high-tech PR and marketing experience with a solid understanding of today’s evolving business and communications landscape. They are looking to hire another account manager to drive and manage some of the agency’s key clients.

In this role the person would be responsible for managing four to five accounts at one time in addition to a staff of peers.  This person should have solid agency experience and be skilled at media relations (strategy and pitching), analyst relations, client relations, writing, and social media skills.

This is an opportunity to expand your experience and work with clients based in Europe and in the US. Our client designs intelligent and innovative campaigns to educate and influence the target audiences that really matter to their clients’ businesses. They thoroughly research key influencers, whether media, analysts, investors, regulators, employees, bloggers or industry luminaries; they apply their industry expertise and creativity to define the most compelling messages possible; and, they carefully select the most effective mediums and tactics through which to deploy them.

VP Product Management

Job Description

As VP Product Management (reporting to EVP Marketing, Products and BD), you will manage our company’s current and future products. This extends from increasing the sales and profitability of existing product to developing new products for the company. You will define, and work with Engineering to build products from existing ideas, and help to develop new ideas based on your industry experience and your contact with customers and prospects. You will work with the field organization to prioritize ideas and requirements and articulate a product plan to the company. You will work with Product Marketing to deliver these products to the field organization and communicate the product plan to them.
You must possess a unique blend of business and technical savvy; a big-picture vision, and the drive to make that vision a reality. You must be skilled and enjoy spending time in the market to understand customer problems, to identify growth opportunities and find innovative solutions for the broader market.

You must be able to communicate with all areas of the company. You will work with all parts of company to continuously manage and communicate requirements and priorities. You will work with an engineering counterpart to define product release requirements. You will work with a product management forum comprising all parts of company to review plans and drive support for the product plan you manage. You will work with Product Marketing to define the go-to-market strategy, helping them understand the product positioning, key benefits, and target customer. You will also support Product Marketing in their role as the internal and external evangelist for the product offering, frequently working with key customers and sales and occasionally with the sales channel and industry influencers. You will work with field organization (Sales and GCS) to launch product offerings and releases to the field.

Key Responsibilities

• Analyzing customer needs, market developments and the competitive landscape
• Formulating the product strategy
• Managing the entire product life cycle from strategic planning to tactical activities
• Specifying market requirements for current and future products by conducting market research supported by on-going visits to customers and non-customers.
• Driving a solution set across teams (primarily Engineering, and Product Marketing) through market requirements, product requirement “contracts”, review of matching Functional Specifications produced by engineering, release plans and positioning.
• Developing and implementing a company-wide go-to-market plan, working with all departments to execute
• Tracking the progress of delivery and launching releases and new products to the company.
• Analyzing potential partner relationships for the product together with Business Development and driving product requirement to enable such partnerships as part of the product lifecycle.

Requirements

• 7+ years of software product management experience. Experience in managing a team of product managers.
• Startup experience, dynamic environment, preferably in a distributed multi geography company
• Product marketing experience is a plus.
• Technical background in prior roles and a hands-on understanding of complex operational IT environments.
• Knowledgeable in systems and applications management solutions.
• Computer Science or Engineering degree or work experiences a strong plus.
• This position requires travel to customer and non-customer sites in North America and Europe and to the Engineering center in Israel (25%).

What does it mean to be a recruiter?

People have been encouraging me to write a blog for some time, and I kept thinking, “What do I have to share?” People know what recruiting is. Then today, I literally ran into my idea for this first posting.

It was a typical Friday morning for me. I was on my way to work and running errands before I went to the office. I was coming out of the bank and ran into my eleventh grade Math teacher ( who I have not seen in five or seven years). He is a powerful looking man, with the strongest hands I ever have seen. He taught me Calculus. In life, when you think back, there are certain people that are influencers or great teachers that help you along the way. To me, Mr. Meyers was one of those great people. He was an excellent teacher, understood his trade very well, always pushed his students to their highest potential (we always had homework) and believed you could do what you set your mind to.

Math did not come easily to me. I really had to work on passing the state test at the end of the year. Through Mr. Meyers’ coaching (and I think I gave him a few grey hairs), I was able to pass the exam and overcome a huge hurdle.

After running into him, it hit me. What I do as a recruiter is coach clients and candidates on the recruitment process.

Recruiters help the candidate by educating them on the hiring process, what the company does, and how this will help their overall career. Many candidates today think too short-tem about how much more money they could make or what their new title will be. They frequently do not think far enough into the future and how this potential job will help them achieve their overall career goals.

Recruiters help their clients by educating them on not only the value of candidates’ skills, but also their ability to fit into the company culture. On the client side, I educate the client on the market, what trends I am seeing, what the candidates are saying and what the market will bear from a compensation perspective. But, most of all, I educate them on the best candidate for the job.

Our company just brought on two new folks: a Junior Recruiter and a Researcher. I forgot how much fun it is to teach new people about what we to do and how it feels at the end of the day when we make a successful match between a candidate and a client.

That is the best part of being a teacher or a coach . . . when you see people that you care about achieving the success they deserve.