👀 LinkedIn SOAR: Application to Offer – iykyk

Utah, Statistics, and San Francisco

Could you give us a short intro about yourself and your background?

I’m Niel Christensen. I’m a part of Linkedin’s SOAR program, which is their entry rotational level program for business strategy. SOAR is kind of a funny acronym — it stands for strategy, operations, analytics rotational program.

Before that, I went to Brigham Young University. I studied statistics and did internships in about everything (haha), because I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do. And by the time I was interviewing for SOAR, I was pretty set on that being what I wanted.

Outside of work, I love writing novels, reading about history, and getting swole ;) 

An inside look into SOAR responsibilities

In 3 words, could you tell us what you do as a Linkedin SOAR Analyst?

Strategy — As an analyst, you work in the business operations organization. Your job is to think about the strategy of the company the next quarter, 1 year, or even 5 years out. When you do interviews for consulting or other strategy jobs you’ll do a strategy case, structure things out, and have recommendations — that’s literally what we do in our job, which is pretty cool.

Analytics — We're probably the most analytical people outside of data science. Within Biz Ops itself we're not always doing analytics, but sometimes you'll find yourself doing SQL, crunching numbers, and visualizing data. It’s a lot of thinking about what numbers mean, pulling out insights, and thinking about why numbers are going up and down. Very analytical thinking.

Relationships — SOAR analyst find themselves in a pretty cross-functional role. Since you work with data, you have to influence a lot of people.

The Program: 2 Years, 4 Rotations

For those who are unfamiliar, how is the program structured and run?

Rotations + Lengths It’s set up as 2 year program. You have 4 rotations that are each 6 months long. The idea is after you graduate the program, you’ll be able to join a team permanently in business ops or other analytical teams.

Team Matching Process The 1st rotation is pretty random. They will just place you a team. But, I will say, they usually pick teams that are able to bring on someone new and has the capacity to mentor. They also focus on choosing really empathetic managers.

For the 2nd rotation, you can put a preference, but it's also generally chosen for you. The 3rd and 4th rotations are where the analyst will go out and try to find what team they’d like to join. So it becomes more preferential in the second half of the program.

Types of SOAR Analysts:You can choose to be on two different kinds of teams: Product Strategy and GTM Strategy. 

• Product Strategy — If you’re on a product team, you’ll be working with product managers. It may include figuring out what types of things you’re going to build and could potentially be across any of LinkedIn’s products — the feed, LinkedIn Premium, LinkedIn Learning, hiring and recruiter tools, etc.

• Go-to-Market Strategy — The marketing side is focused on helping with go-to-market strategy. You’ll be working more with sales leaders and marketing leaders for similar products as the product strategy function. 

Why SOAR is a unique program

As a senior in college (or new grad), what attracted you to the program initially?

I knew I wanted to work in tech and possibly the Bay Area. I also knew I wanted to be analytical, since I enjoyed the strategy work I’ve been doing in my internships. So this program actually fit all the criteria of what I was looking for.

SOAR is more attainable than you think

Is there anything the program landing page doesn't tell us about the SOAR program?

My perception before I started was that a lot of people who do these programs are like — super genius and out of this world. And there are a lot of really smart people in the program, but they’re actually also very approachable. I was intimidated before I started, but I realized it’s actually not as intimidating as I thought.

There’s a lot of alumni that are 5 or 7 years out from where I am doing really interesting things. And I think I was comparing myself to them before I started the role. I asked myself, “Wow, am I really gonna get there?”. But after being in the program for 1.5 years, I could see if you kept working for a couple more years, it’s actually not that unattainable to get to the different places in careers some of these program alumni have. 

How to stand out to LinkedIn

What do you think made you stand out as an applicant and is there a recruitment strategy that nobody is doing right now, but should be?

First of all, most interviews nowadays have rubrics. And so, at the end of the day, even if you’re really interesting or have unique projects, that may not make up for mediocre interview performance. So I made a list of all the behavioral questions that could be asked and wrote down all the answers I would say. Some people like to just wing it, but for me, I like to prepare a little bit so my answers are more eloquent.

Having intellectual curiosity is always important and if you have your own projects, you can signal that on your resume. But like I said, I think being unique would actually help you more with job interviews that are not these structured entry-level programs. You can show your personality more and that can be weighted better. Whereas, these programs can receive up to 10,000 applicants, so they need to have a much more numeric process to deciding on applicants. 

"Exit opportunities in Product, VC, Entrepreneurship, Data Science"

After being in this program, who do you think would benefit the most from this program and who wouldn’t?

I believe most people would benefit to a certain degree because working at a well-known tech company will allow you to get that first check mark on your experience, thus opening a lot of doors. There are also tons of exit opportunities into product, venture capital, entrepreneurship, and data science. 

The program might not be good for you if you’re already very certain you want to go into a specific function that isn’t business operations. For example, if you’re in tech and want to do marketing, product, or data science specifically, then it might be better to just recruit directly for that role to start off with. 

"Careers are very fluid"

What’s your next play after graduating from this program and how has this program impacted his 5-10 year career plan?

I don't know yet. So, we'll see. I think staying at LinkedIn is a good path. I will kind of explore what that looks like and what teams are available for me to join. Could be fun to try and start a company before I'm too old or join a smaller company, but I'm not sure. I'm not going to do that just yet.

This program has definitely impacted my 5-10 year career plan. I went into SOAR with a narrower view with where I’d want to go. But, being in SF and the program made me realize careers are very fluid and changes as you go. It broaden what I thought was possible especially since you get touch on a lot of different areas. For example, what would be like working more with a product team vs. sales and marketing team? Would I want to work on SaaS, edTech, etc. 

Are you pursuing anything outside of your 9-5?

I like to write novels! Recently, released a book in the past couple of months that is now a best seller on Amazon. Writing is something I plan on continuing to do this for the rest of my life to some extent.

I also have some other ideas, but like I said, haven’t committed to anything. I am still optimizing for my main career, but in my free time I like to progress with my other ideas. Overall though, I’m pretty happy doing what I’m doing right now.