Immersive Career Growth & Development

Tell us about your recent promotion or role change. 

In July of 2023 I moved into the role of product manager after having previously worked as a senior human resource business partner for four years with Immersive. I also held  other HR roles for eight years prior to joining the business. In my role as HRBP at Immersive, I worked closely with our technical teams: delivery, product, engineering and the cyber team. I became very interested in their ways of working and the transparency and accountability that they encouraged. I expressed an interest in learning more about what a role in the product team might look like, both to the head of that team and my manager at the time, and they were both incredibly supportive of me exploring this avenue to see if it would be a good fit for me and the existing delivery team. I undertook the Scrum Master qualification and my manager on the people team was incredibly supportive of me developing my project management skills (which I had a natural affinity for) and implementing working processes such as elements of Scrum in the people teams’ workflow, which are traditionally used in technical teams.

What will this new role or skill let you do? 

With my Scrum master qualification, my manager’s support has allowed me to transition more easily into a product management role, focusing on elements of product operations, whilst developing product management-specific skills by learning from more senior team members and coaches in the business. I've continued to develop my product management skills over the last 18 months, getting more involved with our customer-facing teams to understand customer pain points and how our product can be improved to solve them and add value for customers. 

Relationship-building across the business was a critical part of my role as an HRBP and so set me up well for this element of my new role, as I was able to leverage existing relationships and trust that I had built over the years in my previous role. I’ve spent much of the last 18 months getting to know the product at a granular level, taking on product management responsibility for our BAU team to increase my understanding in as many areas as possible and dedicating time to completing labs on the platform to experience it as a user. This has culminated in delivering my first customer-facing feature: an uplift of our Crisis Sim product’s UI.

How would you describe the culture of internal mobility and upskilling?  

I have had nothing but support when it came to my desire to upskill in areas and subjects that I found particularly interesting and that were naturally suited to my skills, and again nothing but support when that progressed into a desire to change roles within the business. Throughout the process, I felt I was able to be open with my manager at the time and felt that they genuinely wanted me to stay in the business because they saw the impact I could have in my new role. Being on the people team and supporting others in the business through their own role changes was incredibly helpful. I knew it to be completely true that Immersive was supportive of internal mobility and keeping talented individuals in the business regardless of what role they might be in.