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Meet Eoghan from our product team. He has been promoted not once but twice! during his two and a half years at Adzuna. His most recent promotion was in January when he took up the role of Product Manager. (Congratulations!)
Eoghan joined Adzuna back in September 2020 as Technical Account Manager, and in around a year, he took up the role of Technical Product Analyst. When he is off duty, you may find him at football stadiums rooting for Arsenal or at the gym preparing for marathons.
Let’s hear his thoughts on his journey with Adzuna so far!
Q: What is your role at Adzuna?
Eoghan: My role is quite multifaceted, mainly consisting of both operational and project management tasks. On the operational side, I’m responsible for assigning and managing work for the integration team. This includes handling requests for new functionality, troubleshooting any issues and offering my technical expertise when onboarding new clients.
Additionally, I work closely with our sales and international teams to identify new sources of high-quality job content, while maintaining our current content to the highest standard. I’m also responsible for driving improvements in the feed integration process by identifying and clearing bottlenecks to increase the team’s throughput.
In my project management role, I sit with our advertiser team and manage projects within the product team to help build new and maintain current features.
On top of these, since the product team is the interface between the tech team and the rest of the business, I get to collaborate with colleagues across different areas of the company. Our focus on improving our underlying data has a knock-on effect on other departments, such as data science and marketing.
Q: What are you currently working on?
E: I’m currently working on an exciting project where I’m trying to extract as much information as possible from a job ad. Since not every client is filling in all the information we request for a job ad – such as whether the job is remote, full-time or part-time, a permanent or contract role, what I do is make predictions based on the job title and job spec of the submitted job ad.
I’ve devoted a lot of my time analysing big sets of data and fine-tuning the prediction model. My goal is to get the most accurate results while covering as much of our ad inventory as possible.
Q: Why did you join Adzuna?
E: Having experience working in big corporations and also smaller businesses before Adzuna, I knew I wanted to work for an exciting company with start-up energy. Adzuna’s company values really appealed to me – less red tape, more autonomy in my role, and being able to be involved in projects that have a meaningful impact on the business and how we operate.
Q: What were your goals when you got promoted to Technical Product Analyst and were they met?
E: When I first got promoted last year, my goal was to get involved with more projects on our product roadmap and develop key product management skills. Both of these expectations were met – I’ve taken ownership of a couple of key projects, and I have been working with other product managers in the business so I was able to shadow and learn deeper about user testing & A/B testing.
Q: What does working in the product team feel like?
E: The team is highly collaborative and supportive. We started a new tradition several years ago, which is to go to the ProductCON event together every year. It’s a great day out and it’s interesting to hear insights from leaders in other industries.
Q: You’re currently on the social committee. Looking back, what’s your favourite Adzuna social event?
E: My favourite Adzuna moment has got to be our summer and winter weeks. They are always great weeks filled with a lot of action. There’s the serious bit – the “All-Hands meeting” where we discuss where the business is heading, but mostly the week is just filled with fun bits like barbecues, decorating ukuleles, and games. It’s also a great social opportunity to spend time with colleagues and build relationships outside of seeing people over a screen!
Another social event I love is going to watch a local cricket game after work in Wandsworth. A lovely summer’s evening, with beers, and good company!
Q: What’s your favourite Adzuna perk?
E: One of my favourite work perks has to be the flexible working policy (*we had this way before the pandemic). I live 45 mins away from the office and after a long commute, I just want to wind down. The last thing I want to do is to get up and go for a run or socialise with mates. So having this policy has been a huge benefit to my life outside of work!
Q: What tip would you give to anyone interested in joining the product team?
E: Do your research about the company and the industry we’re in! We work in a complex industry so if a candidate who has never worked in the programmatic advertising space manages to describe how everything works and how we operate as a business, that is really impressive!
From a product perspective, I particularly love hearing candidates’ thoughts on three things:
- What they love about our site
- What they don’t like about our site
- If they were given free creative licence and resources to build/improve something on our site, what would that be?
Although the last question might sound like one for user testing, it really helps us gain insight into what they’re looking for and what they’re into. User experience design is a very broad subject so this kind of creativity question helps us understand their priorities, for example, whether they care more about the visuals and structure of the site or they are more passionate about making data-driven improvements.
Q: How do you unwind from work?
E: I am a massive Arsenal fan, and have owned a season ticket for the past few years. That investment is finally paying off this year after being top of the table (fingers crossed!).
I am an avid runner, and last March I took on the London Landmarks Half Marathon for Movember.
