Coach Me If You Can - Marion Kamoike-Bouguet
💖 The purpose of The Allyance is to help both companies and candidates: companies wanting to reach excellence in hiring and candidates wanting to find the perfect companies.
🤩 Once upon a time, Marion Kamoike-Bouguet and Caroline Chavier (The Allyance CEO) went for a drink. Marion and Caroline both lived in Japan and followed each other on Twitter…. They had a lot to talk about! Marion moved back to Paris after 9 years in Tokyo,
Recently, after an entrepreneurial experience, Marion was looking for a job and was coached by Caroline!
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🔗 COACH ME IF YOU CAN N°2 - MARION KAMOIKE-BOUGUET
Let’s meet Marion and understand how she landed a job at Strapi thanks to The Allyance!
Who are you? Tell us everything!
💻 My name is Marion Kamoike-Bouguet, I am a 35-year-old developer. In 2008, I graduated from Epitech: despite the focus on security, I switched to the web due to my preferences for design and visual problematics. In 2009, I decided to leave France to live for a while in Japan. I ended up living there for 9 years! After three work experiences in Japan, I came back to Paris. After such a long time living and working abroad, the cultural shock was real. I joined a start-up, worked as an entrepreneur for a while.
Today, I am an Engineering Manager at Strapi, a French open source headless CMS start-up. I finally have found the job I was looking for, 2 months ago thanks to The Allyance!
How did you hear about The Allyance?
😀 I met Caroline 2 years ago during a Paris WIMLDS meetup. She was giving a talk about personalization in engineering recruitment, which I found quite refreshing! Her approach was human-oriented. I loved it! Then, we had a drink and found out about our common interests but did not stay that much in contact afterwards. Coincidentally, when she launched The Allyance, I was looking for a job! I thought: “why not have her as a coach”?
How did you collaborate with The Allyance?
👉 Before working with Caroline, I had been working with another coach for 2 months. He gave me ideas, challenged me but I was still unsure of what I wanted to target. That’s when I turned to Caroline. I knew she could help me find my dream job in Paris. After the first 30 minutes together, I felt something “clicking” and decided to follow several 1:1 coaching sessions with her.
How did the coaching sessions happen?
👍 Each session had its own topic: career building, choice between Product and Tech…etc. She asked me about my choices, my priorities and helped me clarify my vision. We also had more “classical” coaching sessions such as interview simulations, feedback on my CV, profile-testing…etc. Every session was part of a schedule and came with an e-mail and personalized action points at the end.
What did you want to achieve?
🎯 My goal was to find a job that would fit me in a short period of time. From A to Z, it only took me 2 months! For sure, I was willing to challenge myself to get the position I was looking for. It was not an easy task because I was selective: the companies had to meet my (quite high) requirements! Indeed, I wanted to join a human-friendly and intellectually-challenging environment.
🎳 As I was aiming at a manager position, I knew it was a cardinal point to align my values with my next company’s ones, especially in terms of diversity and inclusion. Why you might wonder? When you are a manager, you kind of become one of the faces of the company. That is why I absolutely wanted to work in a company I believed in! I found Strapi!
What actions did you implement following the coaching sessions?
🚀 To be honest, everything went fast! I got recruited after my 3rd interview! Hence, I don’t remember having implemented a lot of things! Let me think… Obviously, I initiated practical actions like changing my CV, adapting my technical pitch for interviews.
Then, for less practical changes, I got more confident about my profile and found out what I could bring to the French start-up ecosystem. I am so grateful that Caroline helped me adjust all of these things. We could say she kind of improved my long-time work on myself.
What are the key things you learnt?
💡 Having a long-term vision is the key when targeting a role: one cannot tick every box at once! Building a career is a long-time construction. Some objectives can be left for later, and a career can be divided in several steps towards the bigger objective. That completely changed my perspective of time!
What made the coaching sessions with Caroline Chavier unique according to you?
🎀 Their efficiency! The high-speed ping-pong conversations were exactly what I was looking for. It totally matched my personality! Caroline has an amazing knowledge of the tech industry: the roles, skills and companies’ culture. At the same time, she exactly knew how to adapt her knowledge to my personal situation.
Caroline is not like any other coach: she’s always optimistic, but also a great support (even a bit of a cheerleader at times! 😝). I was delighted to keep Caroline updated about my different interview processes to remain optimistic and positive. Plus, she always kept her words: she was doing everything she told me she would.
💌 Here is an example of messages sent by Caroline to Marion! Can you feel the “cheerleader” energy?
What’s your point of view about Diversity & Inclusion?
🙌 Of course, it may depend from one company to another, but in my opinion, the current diversity situation in the tech sector is not ideal. In my case, I never worked in a company that gave me a hard time because I am a woman. Fortunately, Strapi is aware of diversity issues and sees the necessity of widening the scope in recruitment in order to achieve equity among its teams. Sadly, in tech, whether it’s about education, equality of chances in recruitment, discrimination at work, women still suffer without being vocal about it.
Change has to come from both sides and I have seen it happening since about 10 years: feminist tech schools are opening, consciousness is rising within companies… I am so glad to see that tech is finally coming back to women, as they were the first ones coding and launching rockets!
How do you describe yourself? A Diversity Advocate? An ally?
That’s such a difficult question… I can only be my authentic self. Though they do interest me a lot, I am not familiar with all those terms. My view is that facts are stronger than words. The chances I give as a manager are self-explanatory. Yet, if I had to use these words, I would say I consider myself as a diversity advocate.
📌 Actually, what led me to management is my will to see more and more women in tech and lead positions. Still, this advocate position can be uncomfortable because I do not want to speak for everyone. I just want to face my own fears and show that even with their special features, one can change things and lead others towards that change.
Would you recommend The Allyance to engineers looking for a job?
🎈 Yes of course, and I already do! I am really happy to have worked with The Allyance. In a way, this amazing collaboration with Caroline is still going on today. I feel lucky to have stumbled upon Caroline! I can honestly say that I would never have wanted to be coached again if it was not with her. She really believes in what she does!
Is there anything special you want to share?
For a final word, I would say that even if developers are highly demanded right now, it is utterly important to stay humble. It may not last forever…!
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A few words from Caroline, The Allyance CEO:
“Marion is a woman I could be friends with. She is open-minded, dedicated and curious. We both lived in Japan and I remember feeling connected to her as soon as we met. When she reached out to me in July, she did not know if she wanted to explore Product management positions, CTO or Engineering Manager ones. I challenged her, put her in touch with different people in my network while we were preparing her to interview. I wanted her to understand on her own what was best for her. And, she blew me away: she was fast to learn and committed during our coaching sessions. I am happy that her and Strapi crossed paths: it will be an awesome collaboration I am sure!”
✔️ Want more?
➡️ If you are interested in knowing more about The Allyance Coaching Offer and the prices, feel free to read this complete piece on the matter! You can also get in touch with The Allyance / Caroline Chavier and book a free conversation here, at the bottom of the page: https://www.theallyance.one/ or contact us contact@theallyance.one
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
✒️ Léa C, The Allyance Contributor: “I joined The Allyance 1,5 year after Caroline and I met at a ionnalee’s concert! I am a freelance translator and content writer (French, English, Spanish and German). I also work as an administrative employee in the health and data science sector. So, I am not far from Caroline’s core topic! I am very active as a volunteer in social and environmental NGOs, where I always try to put intersectionality at the center of actions because I am convinced that every cause is linked to one another. It is readily apparent that Caroline and I share a lot of common interests, which is why we as friends decided to work together!”