Priya Monga: Business Lead, Facebook App
What led you to your initial interest in your role at Facebook?
My initial interest in Facebook and the tech industry came from my older brother and sister. Around the time that I was graduating, my brother was a Product Manager at Facebook and my sister was an Account Executive at LinkedIn. I got to live a bit vicariously through them, see the type of work they were doing and the types of people and challenges they were exposed to and I found it super interesting. But my journey to get to Facebook a bit of a windy path.
Companies like LinkedIn and Facebook (and even smaller tech companies) were not formally recruiting from Ivey. I had just worked so hard to get into Ivey and I felt like I should be reaping the “benefits” of the Ivey brand name and degree and recruit through Ivey’s formal programs. I don't know if any of you can relate - but I think that in your first year at Ivey, it can sort of feel like you need to quickly decide what box you should fit in. Are you going to be the marketer? The consultant? The accountant? The investment banker? When I saw the paths that my siblings had taken and then I saw what was in front of me at Ivey and the paths my classmates were taking, I found it tough to wrap my head around what I should do.
So after HBA1, I actually decided that Marketing would be a good fit for me and I wanted to give the CPG industry a shot. You could say, I felt like that was “the box” that Ivey had set me up well for. I became the VP of sponsorship for the Ivey Marketing Club, I went to every single CPG recruiting event and was thrilled when I got selected for a summer internship at Unilever in Trade Marketing. This internship was so critical for my development because it taught me what I didn’t want in my career. Don’t get me wrong – Unilever is a brilliant company with even more brilliant people but being at Uniliver really showed me that I love managing fast-paced and dynamic projects. I was working on marketing launch strategies for deodorant and haircare that had been in development for over 10 years before it was ready be in the hands of consumers. This is very tough and important work, but not the right pace for how I operate.
I didn’t get a return offer at Unilever, and when I realised that I wasn’t really that disappointed, I decided to break out of the “marketing box” and try looking for companies outside of Ivey’s formal recruiting. Recruiting through Ivey had really stressed me out because I often found I was comparing myself to my classmates rather than focusing on my own journey and motivations. So, I tried to relieve a bit of the pressure and decided to stop trying to “network” and to start trying to build a community of people around me who could help me navigate my path and land somewhere that felt was a good fit for my motivations and skills. One conversation led to another, that led to another and one day I found myself talking to a former Facebook/ Instagram executive in Singapore. Our conversation was fascinating, and I think it was really the catalyst for why I worked so hard to get a role at Facebook. It was simple, he asked me to tell him the life I wanted to craft for myself – everything from the small details like what did I want to wear to work every day, what type of relationship did I want to have with my boss and colleagues, how much money did I want etc. From there – we worked backwards and started crossing out a ton of companies and industries that simply just wouldn’t fit into the life I wanted to craft for myself. I had never thought that this was the way I’d figure out my first job out of school. At the time I was so young, and it just felt very unrealistic as a new grad, to think that you could craft your life in the way you want to. I had this attitude and this perspective that I should be grateful for any job I can get since this is my first job and a company hiring me is doing me a favor. While this perspective isn’t completely inaccurate, it’s an attitude that was definitely guiding me down a path that wouldn’t make me happy and what’s the point of that? He taught me that there was a different between being “entitled” versus being “intentional”. I can honestly say that this conversation lit the fire in my belly to do whatever it would take to land a first job that felt like it would put me on the right path to craft the life and career that I wanted.
How have you practice resilience in your work?
Resilience is a muscle and it’s something that I’ve been practicing and strengthening throughout my career so far and will continue to do so.
Resilience is a muscle and just like any other muscle in your body, there are many ways that you can train it. For me, I strengthen this muscle by putting myself in situations, environments and roles that really stretch me. I believe that resilience is about how fast and effectively you can pick yourself back up after you’ve fallen down or made a mistake. In the last 5.5 years, I’ve been on 3 one-way flights to Singapore, Toronto and San Francisco to start new roles. I’ve worked in sales, I’ve worked as the chief of staff to a senior executive and I’m now moving into product management. Given all of this change, you can imagine that I’ve had plenty of opportunities to make mistakes, to fail, to feel like I’m not good enough for the roles I’m in – but with each, I’ve gotten better and faster at picking myself back up.
On the other hand, something that I’ve learned recently is that I need to focus on practicing and strengthening my confidence alongside my resilience. It’s interesting how we can beat ourselves up for the smallest things we’ve failed at, yet we don’t celebrate the smallest things we’ve won. Something I’ve been trying to do recently to practice “self-confidence” is to create micro wins for myself, to ensure that I’m celebrating the progress that I’m making not just the milestones. It took me almost 9 months into my chief of staff role (my current job) and a promotion to start recognizing myself and the work I was doing. But when I reflect back now, even just getting on the plane to San Francisco was a win worth celebrating. Getting through the first month of my job in a new country, with a brand-new team, was a win. My bar for what I deem is a “success” is far too high, while my bar for “failure” is a far too low – recognizing this is something that has helped me a lot as a practice resilience (and self-care).
What has been your greatest learning in your career so far, and one thing that you wish you could tell your past HBA self?
I wish I could have told my past HBA self to spend more time deeply understanding my strengths rather than channeling so much time and energy on all of the skills that my peers had, that I didn’t. Ivey was a great experience for me, but in some ways, it messed with my head. I felt like it was easy for me to look around my classroom and see all of these super smart people that had skills that I didn't. When I started at Facebook, I quickly fell into the same mindset. Despite getting a few promotions early on, I often found myself looking around at my colleagues and thinking about all of the things that they were better than me at – in fact, after each promotion I vividly remember thinking to myself, “I wonder when my managers will realize that I’m not as strong as my peers”.
My current boss has been really pivotal in helping me recognize how big of a problem this is and how this mindset will really get in my way as I progress in my career. In one of our early 1:1s, I came to her with a list of things that I felt I needed to improve on. In my head, I thought that this was a good way to show how self-aware I was and that I truly had a growth mindset. She very quickly that rather than spending so much time trying to focus on my weaknesses, I should actually invest that time in making sure I truly understand my strengths – the strengths her and others saw in me that for some reason I couldn’t internalize myself. From there, she asked me to think about the things getting in the way of my being even stronger – and this became my new list of things I decided to work on.
The greatest but hardest learning in my career so far has been that I need to be proud of my strengths. Over the years, I’ve acquired a bunch of interesting skills and through practice and experience, I’ve become stronger than I was 5.5 years ago when I graduated from Ivey. My actually strengths are probably the same that today as they were at Ivey, but it’s just that when I was at Ivey, I wasn’t proud of these strengths. I’m on the journey of learning how powerful it can be when you celebrate and harness your strengths.
Could you tell us a little bit about your most challenging day at work, as well as your best day at work so far?
Kind of building off the last answer, my best days at work are when I can end the day and feel like I was in my flow and harnessing my strengths. I’ve learned over the years that I’m much more of a generalist rather than a specialist and on days when I’m able to lean into this as a superpower, I feel really happy. A few weeks ago, I remember ending a day of work and being so proud of myself - I managed a huge headcount escalation with a number of VPs and directors, supported our executive comms team on a big internal initiative, helped a product team work through a difficult resourcing challenge, conducting two interviews as the primary hiring manager, had a great conversation with someone I had been mentoring, wrote an important internal memo for my boss in the span of 30 mins that went out to over five thousand people in our organization, worked with HR on kicking off an urgent leadership program, was a speaker at a virtual event… all between the hours of 9-5. More and more, I’m trying to not let these days pass me by without taking a minute to reflect on all that I’ve accomplished and be proud of myself.
On the flip side, my most challenging days are when I forget to lean into my strengths and more specifically, when I don’t delegate or ask for help. It’s really easy to take on the weight of an entire problem on your own or take on huge project and not bring the right people in for advice or feedback. It’s the worst feeling going to bed after a hard day and realizing that I could have been so much more effective if I had just brought in the right people to support me. It’s not that I think that I can do it all, because I absolutely cannot. But often I feel like I don't want to burden other people with my challenges or sometimes I don’t actually understand the problem enough myself to even know where I might need help. Whenever I have those days it's usually a good reminder that I should have taken a second to break down the problem at hand and understand it a bit better for jumping in and trying to solve it all myself. The best leaders are able to produce great output, not by doing things on their own, but by being at exceptional at bringing the right people along for the journey and tapping the right expertise – this is something I continue to work on.
Hearing about you not recruiting through Ivey, and having that label of an ‘Ivey student’ and its preconceptions taken away, what strategies or tips do you have in getting ready to present yourself and starting to build your brand as you’re networking?
When I was interviewing at Facebook Ireland, I remember my interviewer saying, “Ivey School of Business – never heard of it” and it made me super nervous because I had never interviewed with anyone who didn’t know about Ivey and its great reputation. But when you can’t leverage the Ivey name, you quickly realize that you need to leverage the incredibly unique skills that you learn at Ivey instead. Ivey teaches you how to show up and stand out. It teaches you how to prepare, how to have an opinion and build a strong position on real-world business challenges, how to work with people that are different than you, and so much more. These skills are huge differentiator when you enter into the workforce because so many people were not trained this way.
Before you head into an interview, my advice is to think deeply about the skills you’ve gained at Ivey. When you when you strip away the name of the school on your resume, what are the most important skills have you grained from all of the experiences at Ivey? For example – what did IFP actually teach you? You’re getting a crash course on how to work with people that you might not get along with, you’re learning how to scope a problem, set goals, and lead your team work towards a common vision. What did your DWA class teach you? For me personally, it taught me how to ask for help because I constantly found myself confused in that class. But it also taught me how to leverage data in order to make way better decisions which is actually a really critical skill for almost every single job. I could go on and on!
Do you have any parting advice for young female professionals?
The biggest piece of advice I’d give to female professionals, especially young professionals who are just gradating is to start forming your community of people that can be in your corner to support you. A lot of people think that once they get the job they want; they don’t need to “network” anymore, but actually the relationships you build with people when you’re not looking for a job can often be the most important throughout your career. When I started looking at networking as less of the thing that's going to get me a job and more like how to build a community around me, I found more doors opened up for me and I could start investing more in these relationships than just that one transaction.
When I was recruiting for Ivey, I met some incredible people. Whether or not they ended up giving me a job was one thing, but I wanted to keep these people in my network because they were super interesting, and I knew down the line I might be able to turn to them for advice. There was actually one woman I “networked” and now, 5 years later, she is one of my closest mentors and confidants. Anytime I’m in Toronto, I get a coffee with her. Anytime I’m in a crossroads in my career, I meet with her and I tried to get her advice and feedback on what I should be doing in a particular decision. She's been so important to me in my career, but I've never worked directly with her and she's never given me a job.
Your community is going to be just as important as the job you get out of school – so invest your time and effort into it. And on a similar note, remember to invest in others the same way that that you've hopefully been invested with an Ivey and beyond. Remember to be generous with your time and offer more than just the one transaction a student might be seeking. We always need more smart, talented, and generous women helping other women in every industry.