Charlotte Bella is a senior product manager at Booking.com.
Booking.com recently revealed plans to make Manchester its UK headquarters with a new Trips Business Unit, based at Manchester Goods Yard in Enterprise City.
She joined the Manchester office at Booking.com in 2019, initially starting out as a product manager.
Bella has previously worked as product manager at The Travel Chapter, where she worked on one of its flagship brands Holiday Cottages.
Here, she takes us on her career journey and tells us how she became a senior product manager at Booking.com.
How did you first get into your industry?
I started my career in the financial services industry almost 20 years ago and originally trained to be a financial advisor. However, during my exams I was offered a role to train colleagues on the tools and tech we used daily to capture customer data and model pensions and investment forecasts. It was at this point I became an IT Trainer and my career in tech began. Unfortunately, I was made redundant during the financial crisis (along with many other people).
I was left wondering where to take my career next and found a similar role at a shipbrokers, after a short while my director decided I would be the best person to run a project to create a new website. I owned and delivered the entire project minus the dev work, creating storyboards, content, researching and user testing, and leading the engineering team – and thus my fascination with web products was born. After discovering this passion, I realised I wanted to work somewhere where I could focus all my attention on building and improving digital web products so I worked within a few agencies in London to get some experience. I took a huge pay cut but it was totally worth it.
Then following a short stint working at an ecommerce start-up in Berlin I settled on a great role at a children’s cancer charity in Bristol. I was a Digital Project Manager, delivering and maintaining their new website, a peer to peer support app, live chat and many other products. During my time there, I started to research more about product roles and realised what I was doing was more suited to product than project management. I convinced my leadership that this was essentially the role I had been doing for the past two years and in 2017 I officially became a product owner!
What do you love about your job?
I’m an extremely curious person and I love to solve problems. In school I was the one always asking the questions, not because I didn’t understand but because I wanted to understand more deeply and get the bigger picture. I would take apart any toy, pen, small machine that I could and try to put it together again – with differing results (sorry to my parents). I’m also a people person, I thrive off helping others and understanding their likes and dislikes. I remember thinking a few years ago, when I was putting the case together to change my role from Project to Product, how amazing that my own personal attributes – the things that give me energy – can help me to do my job.
I get to work with some amazing inspirational people to create brilliant products that solve problems for our customers. The cherry on the cake is that it’s in the travel industry working on a product that I genuinely enjoy using every day for an organisation that really cares about its employees. How exciting is that?!
Who – or what – has inspired you in your career?
A few years ago I went to a talk about personal development, the theme was about how to get the richest learning experience every day without it feeling like an effort. One thing the speakers said that really stayed with me and I use this mantra every day is: “everyone around you is your mentor”.
I take my inspiration from the people around me, that’s usually the people I work with and my actual mentor (of course) but also my family and friends, the people I meet through some of the work I do with Women in Product and even my daughter. She has taught me to be more patient, listen better and inspired me to advocate more for a better future for young girls and women.
What are the biggest challenges about your job?
Working for such a large organisation and being intertwined with many product areas means that prioritisation, stakeholder management and influencing takes up a large chunk of my role – often with the outcome not being exactly what you wanted. Of course this can be disheartening but it’s a huge part of what the role is about. Luckily I work with great teams which makes this easier and where there are big dependencies we plan together well ahead of time to ensure that we are successful.
What skills have been the most crucial to you succeeding in your career so far?
Being a fast learner is key. The great thing about Product is you don’t have to stay in one business area or even in the same industry. I’ve worked in non-for-profit, lifestyle and the travel industries over the past few years and even whilst being at Booking.com I’ve moved from working in post-book on the Rental Cars product to pre-book on the Airport transfer product. The business model and the way we measure success is completely different between the two.
The best way to learn fast is to regularly meet with the colleagues and stakeholders that you will be interacting with regularly across the company, so you can get business insight and understand the intertwining strategies. But it’s also important to meet those who support the “behind the scenes” work, such as CS, Commercial and Finance so you can really understand the business problems and customer problems that could impact your strategy. If you can learn fast then you can make great decisions faster.
What was your first salary and what could someone getting into the industry expect to earn nowadays?
My first Product salary was £35k when I was working for a not-for-profit, around five years ago now. Moving into the ecommerce industry my salary of course jumped up considerably to £50k. A really good mid-weight Product Manager can expect to earn around £65k plus bonuses.
What education or training would be most useful for someone looking to follow your career path?
You have to be passionate about learning continuously no matter what level you are at. Whilst I was a project manager I did some basic training on delivering workshops and I took a week long Agile course. I have utilised YouTube and online Product Management courses as well as taking my learnings out to other crafts such as completing a certificate in Interaction Design and I’m currently on a data and experimentation learning path so I can truly be an expert in this area.
I also read and listen to a lot of books and podcasts. I take an hour’s walk at least once a week whilst listening to some product specific materials. Some of my favourites over the years have been; Inspire by Marty Cagan (a must if you want to know what Product is like), Start With Why by Simon Sinek, Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez and Rebel Ideas by Matthew Syed.
My favourite podcasts are Diary of a CEO, The Product Experience and This is Product Management. I think that having a mentor though has been the best way to learn about the role more.
You should find a mentor who is doing a role you aspire to. So if you’re more junior that could simply be a mid-weight PM or if you’re looking to be a director one day then reach out to directors internally or in your network and ensure you make the very most out of that relationship.
What advice would you have for someone looking to follow your path?
If you have listened to Inspire by Marty Cagan you might be put off a little by Product Management. But take some of his more extreme points with a pinch of salt. Product is hard, it can be time consuming and there is sometimes a lottery to be won with the people you work with. However, largely my experience in product has been wonderful.
Each role I’ve had I’ve made a point of constantly checking: am I learning enough; am I pushing myself enough and most importantly; am I working for a company that aligns to my values? For example, at the charity I realised I wasn’t getting enough tech experience so I moved to an organisation that could support those needs. However, I quickly realised our goals and values were not aligned so I researched companies where I could get the tech experience but also be somewhere that I felt I belonged (and which is why I’m at Booking.com today!).
After two years here I realised I wasn’t challenged as much as I needed to feel enjoyment in the role, so I made an internal move. You have to recognise that constant growth is crucial to your success and this then shows in the products you deliver with your teams. If you don’t think you need to grow, then you’re in the wrong job. So spend some time thinking about your own personal goals and what you want out of your role and the company you work for.
It’s important then that in each role or company you work at you re-evaluate regularly and make sure that you’re still fulfilling those goals and requirements. If you’re not, think about how you might be able to fulfil that goal, is it by changing your approach, learning something new or simply moving on?
