Webinar Recap: Owning Your Story with Poly Sancho

[jasminecole]

Your career path doesn’t have to be perfectly linear to be valuable.

In Owning Your Story: Real Skills for Real Career Growth, Poly Sancho explored how the experiences we collect across different roles, industries, and stages of life can become some of our strongest career assets when we know how to recognize and communicate them.

Whether you joined us live or want to revisit the conversation, you can catch up below.

🖥 Watch the recording here

Presentation is attached to this post.

Keep learning with ServiceNow University

• Create an Elevator Pitch for the ServiceNow Ecosystem
• Craft an Impactful Resume and Cover Letter
• Explore a ServiceNow Career Journey

Explore Poly’s Supplemental Resource

• Owning Your Story Handbook

🎤 A FEW MORE QUESTIONS FOR POLY:

We didn’t get to every question during the live session, so Poly was kind enough to follow up with additional responses afterward.

• Question: I was a ServiceNow consultant for 4 years from 2018 to 2022.  I'm looking to return to the SN ecosystem but I'm finding it challenging because  recruiters seem to prioritize recent, hands-on platform experience. How can I best position my previous ServiceNow experience and transferable skills to overcome that hurdle and get my foot back in the door? Thank you
  
  • FROM POLY: Your four years of ServiceNow consulting experience are still highly relevant. The challenge is not that your experience has disappeared. It is showing employers that you understand today’s platform and can contribute without a long ramp-up.

    I would position yourself as an experienced ServiceNow consultant refreshing her platform currency, not as someone starting over. Be specific about the implementations you supported, the problems you solved, the stakeholders you advised, and the outcomes you delivered. Then add recent evidence: complete learning aligned to your target role, refresh your certifications where appropriate, build something in a personal developer instance, and document that work as a short case study or demonstration.

    For example, instead of saying, “I worked as a ServiceNow consultant from 2018 to 2022,” say:

    “I bring four years of ServiceNow consulting experience across implementation, client discovery, and delivery. I am now refreshing that foundation through current platform learning and hands-on work focused on [specific product or role].” You can take and add ServiceNow University career paths to your resume showing you know the drill and refreshed knowledge.

    Finally, do not rely only on online applications. Reconnect with former customers, partners, colleagues, and implementation leaders. A warm introduction that validates your previous work can help overcome a recruiter’s concern about recency much more effectively than another application.

    Your previous experience is not the weakness. The goal is to pair it with visible, current evidence.

• Question: I have more than 10 years of exp in IT and ServiceNow, but I am getting ready to reinvent myself. As a woman in Tech and as a BPC, I've had several comments about me not being technical. I've decided I want to change that and I want to persue a more technical role.
  
  • FROM POLY: First, having more than ten years of experience in IT and ServiceNow means you are not beginning from zero. You are choosing to deepen a different part of an already substantial foundation.

    I would not build your plan around disproving someone else’s label. Start by defining what technical means for the role you actually want. It could mean platform administration, development, implementation, integration, architecture, data, or technical product ownership. Those paths require different skills.

    Once you choose the target, complete a simple gap assessment:

    What does the target role require?

    Which of those capabilities do I already demonstrate?

    Which two or three skills need stronger evidence?

    What can I build, configure, troubleshoot, or explain to demonstrate them?

    Then create proof. That could be an application built in a personal developer instance, a workflow you configured, a scripted solution, an integration concept, or a technical case study. Be prepared to explain the requirement, your design decisions, what went wrong, and how you resolved it. That is much stronger than simply saying you want to become more technical.

    You also do not need to abandon your business process knowledge. The professionals who can connect business requirements to platform design are extremely valuable. Your reinvention can be:

    “I am building deeper technical capability on top of ten years of IT, ServiceNow, and business process experience.”

    That is an expansion of your professional identity, not a rejection of everything you have already accomplished.

• Question: ServiceNow has a great "RiseUp Program" for those who are new to the ecosystem and coming from non-traditional backgrounds. I wish there was support and alternate pathways and options for returners or those who have some background and certifications but aren't able to make inroads into the system. The community is full of recommendations (which unfortunately are just generic and available across the board) or are known to many. With the days of ghosting, 1:many applications and AI-driven hiring, there are many complaints across Linkedin and other platforms of how Senior or experienced ServiceNow professionals are also getting filtered out. Any plans from ServiceNow to address such issues and provide better pathways?
  
  • FROM POLY: I think that is a valid and important challenge. Experienced professionals and returners can fall into a difficult middle: they are not new enough for an entry-level pathway, but a gap in recent hands-on experience can cause them to be screened out of roles for which they otherwise bring meaningful experience.

    I cannot speak on behalf of ServiceNow about future programs or make a commitment that a dedicated returner pathway is planned. What I can share is that RiseUp is focused on expanding access to technology, knowledge, and opportunity, while ServiceNow University provides broader role-based learning and Career Journeys for people at different levels of experience. Some RiseUp cohorts have also been designed specifically for professionals returning after a career break, although eligibility and availability vary by program and region.

    That does not fully resolve the issue you raised. Learning and certifications alone do not guarantee that an experienced professional will make it through automated screening or get an opportunity to demonstrate their abilities.

    In the current environment, experienced returners should focus on three things:

    Current evidence: Recent hands-on work, a portfolio, a demonstration, or a clearly documented case study.

    Precise positioning: A résumé and LinkedIn profile aligned to one target ServiceNow role rather than a broad list of everything previously done.

    Ecosystem relationships: Former colleagues, customers, partners, community leaders, and hiring managers who can validate the person’s experience beyond an automated application.

Thanks again to Poly for joining us and to everyone who contributed to the conversation!

Owning Your Story with Poly Sancho - Webinar Deck .pptx