From IT Support to AWS TAM: Dalien Ahiekpor’s Career Journey | Ep028

In Episode 28 of Career Downloads, Manuel Martinez interviews Dalien Ahiekpor, Senior Technical Account Manager at AWS, who shares his transformation from tech-curious teenager to cloud professional. Learn how winning a PC at a summer tech camp sparked Dalien’s interest in technology, why he chose computer science despite early struggles with programming, and how he navigated from network engineering to his current role.

Dalien reveals the six-month job search that tested his persistence, his unconventional approach to landing his dream position, and the profound impact mentorship had on his career trajectory. He offers practical interview advice for standing out among candidates and emphasizes taking ownership of your career path.

Whether you’re looking to break into tech, transition to cloud computing, or find effective mentors, this conversation provides actionable strategies from someone who’s successfully navigated the journey.

#CareerDownloads #CloudComputing #AWSCareers #TechMentorship

Manuel: Welcome everyone. My name is Manuel Martinez and this is another episode of Career Downloads where each episode I basically hit the refresh button, bring on a different guest to learn about their background, their experiences, to really uncover any actionable advice that they’ve used to manage their career that you can go ahead and implement and use as you’re managing your own career. So for today’s episode, I have with me a co-worker. His name is Dalien Ahiekpor and we work together. We looked at his background. He’s very passionate about mentorship and also like early career growth. So I thought he would be a great person to kind of bring on and I won’t dive too much deeper and I’ll let him kind of explain a lot of that for us. So with that, welcome Dalien.

Dalien: Hey folks, thanks so much for having me.

Manuel: No problem. I appreciate you coming on and, you know, being open to sharing your experiences for others and, you know, you know, helping somebody out who could probably find value in this.

Dalien: Absolutely.

Manuel: So if you don’t mind to start off, kind of tell me what your current role is and just a brief summary of, you know, what are some of your roles and responsibilities for kind of what you do in that role?

Dalien: Sure. So as Manuel alluded to in the beginning of the call, I’m a senior technical account manager at AWS. We’re colleagues. I’ve been working at AWS for a few years now in various roles. As mentioned, most commonly or most recently, the senior technical account manager role are commonly referred to as TAM. As a TAM, we’re really responsible for, we’re seen as the customer advocate on the account team. So we’re an extension of enterprise support where we really quarterback a lot of the operational concerns that a customer might have, any issues they have with services, escalations, helping them understand a strategic initiative for their company and how we can help with that. That’s what we do here at AWS Enterprise Support.

Manuel: So now, if you wouldn’t mind kind of telling me a little bit about some of your background and, you know, kind of where you grew up and eventually what kind of led you into, you know, wanting to pursue technology?

Dalien: Yeah, absolutely. So I grew up in Toledo, Ohio, Northwest Ohio area, not too far from Detroit, if you’re familiar. Born and raised there. Went to college there as well, University of Toledo. Go Rockets. And I got into tech. That’s a very, that’s a good question as, you know, when I was growing up, one of the most profound conversations I remember having relatively young, probably a freshman in high school. I remember a conversation I had with my father and my parents both graduated. They’re, you know, graduate college graduates. They actually met in college and I was probably around that age, probably, you know, it was expected to go to college coming from the family. But I didn’t really have a defined destination or what I was going to be going for. And so my father went for business. I was kind of defaulting towards that as a lot of college majors do. But understanding, and from a conversation I had with my father, he mentioned that, you know, I went to school for business and it did me well, but especially where he went into entrepreneurship, college was, you know, you don’t need a degree to be an entrepreneur. So if you’re going to pay for college and to do something like that, get something that we can specialize in. So he didn’t necessarily direct me towards technology or computer science, but he mentioned being a specialist, getting something that you can specialize in a particular field. So that conversation kind of resonated with me as I still remember it today, quite vividly. And later on through my hight school career, as I was getting educated, I, my mom signed me up, you know, as good mothers do, you know, push you towards things and support you on your way. And she signed me up for a tech summer camp. I think it was my junior year of high school. You know, I didn’t want to necessarily go, but you know, they said there’d be fun things to do. And, you know, mom was pushing me towards it. So I agreed. And actually the first day we went into that camp, it was, we were building, you know, gaming PCs. So it was my first hands-on experience with computers and technology. And, uh, through that initiative, actually we raffled off the computers that we worked on and lo and behold, I actually won the raffle. Uh, so I was able to get, come home with a nice build, which was my first own personal computer, which I cherished for many years. Still have it. It doesn’t necessarily get any use today, but it’s kind of sitting in the closet. Uh, but, uh, definitely a cherished heirloom. Uh, maybe I’ll pass it down to my kids one day. They’ll see it as a dinosaur. But, uh, uh, that was definitely something that intrigued me as going through that bootcamp kind of got me interested in tech and then getting in the computer, setting it up, understanding the different components, file explorer, going through file paths. Um, yeah, it really intrigued me and, you know, kind of got me prepped into, uh, computer science. Once I had to pick a, declare a major, it was kind of the de facto, I was doing a lot of computer stuff, gotten to gaming a little bit, uh, in high school and college. So it was just kind of the natural progression was interested in it. So I’m like, Hey, I’ll just make it a potential career.

Manuel: And with that, so as you’re kind of, you know, you get introduced to it, I’m assuming it was pretty, you know, I remember the first time I built a PC, right. And it was kind of like, Oh, you have something tangible that you put together, you work. Um, you know, it starts to work and you’re also, you know, mentioned you’re digging around and file explorer. So it sounds like you were very curious, at least at that point. And is that something that you had like a natural curiosity to kind of learn more about things? Or is it really like, this is so new and interesting that, okay, maybe I want to dig into it a little bit deeper?

Dalien: Yeah, well, so I guess it’s kind of a little bit of both. So it was kind of, it kind of stemmed from an understanding of, you know, once I got this computer, what can I do with it? I didn’t have my own personal computer. We had like a laptop, uh, uh, you know, cheap laptop that we had in the house. It was the family computer, but it wasn’t running anything, you know, other than RuneScape couldn’t really run any, uh, big games on it. So once I got this computer, um, it was just like, okay, what can I do with this? What’s, what’s capable? What kind of programs can I get without, uh, implicating myself? You know, I may have to get, uh, very creative in terms of how to get some of these games and different softwares. Uh, so it kind of got me interested in like, okay, how do I use this machine to the best of my abilities, right? I got to build with nothing on it other than windows. How do I actually turn this into something that I’m going to use regularly, um, in for school, for recreation? How am I going to leverage this machine that I was fortunate enough to win? So that kind of got me just interested in, all right, what’s capable? What can I do? What’s available? How do I set these things up? Cause then once you start running into issues, you know, I didn’t necessarily have a place to go to get things fixed or I didn’t have money to pay for someone to come help me fix my stuff. So a lot of YouTube, a lot of grinding and, you know, through trial and error, I was able to, you know, come up with something that was like, oh, this is actually pretty interesting and how it works.

Manuel: So then now you get into college and, you know, you declare, you know, computer science major, were the classes that you took, do you think that they kind of helped continue to build that informational, you know, database or knowledge base that you had and, you know, kind of continue to move forward? Or was it like, you know, all right, this is cool. This is interesting. It’s helping me kind of understand, but I still really don’t know what I’m going to kind of do with it.

Dalien: Yeah. So I’ll say it was kind of rough. My first couple of years in computer science, almost like deterred me from going into it as a full-time career. A lot of my early classes in the computer science field were on programming, you know, different languages. You’re learning some of the more basic languages. I had an assembly class that, so to this day, I don’t know how I passed, but a lot of different, different capabilities that I was not familiar with or comfortable with. So early on in my career or in my college days, it was, it almost made me pursue something else because I didn’t like the programming elements, right? So a lot of my classes, computer sciences, focused around coding, development, yeah, writing, writing code. And I knew pretty early on that that was not something I wanted to pursue full -time, which kind of led me into, I did have a couple classes that really stuck out to me, such as a networking class where we kind of learned how to set up Cisco devices and create a network. How does networking work? And which, you know, led me into my path out of college into network engineering and such. So yeah, it was a big step back once I actually got into the engineering classes, the workload, a lot of long nights, a lot of headaches, but ultimately was able to find a path from that that really spoke to me and where I saw my career going. And that computer science degree, so I’m assuming that’s what you ended up majoring in.

Dalien: I did. I did finish with that. But knowing that I wasn’t going to pursue software development as a career, but other elements of computer science, such as networking, which was what I landed on.

Manuel: And that’s interesting because I actually, similar to you, I got introduced to computers and I was like, hey, I’m going to do for a computer science major. And I actually, probably after my first year, maybe starting into my sophomore year, I actually pivoted and went to MIS or Management Information Systems because I was like, nope, programming, coding, that’s definitely not for me. I just didn’t have the interest, but I liked kind of the management of it and understanding. I had to take the networking classes. I had to take, you know, database class. So there was a lot of like, hey, I want to learn a little bit about everything and be able to kind of manage that. So then now you go through, you get out of college, and I’m curious if you had a similar experience to me and a couple other people I’ve had on that have gone the college route. You graduate, and what was it like trying to land that first IT job?

Dalien: Yeah, it was, as a lot of people find out, it’s, you know, how do you build experience without, you know, how do you get that first job with no experience? Even entry-level jobs want, you might see the memes or such where they’re like, entry-level job, two years of experience required. It’s like, that’s a conundrum to deal with. So early on, I, you know, as I was preparing for graduation, my last semester, I did start, you know, loosely applying, preparing. We had a job fair at UT that I went to and didn’t get any hits. So, you know, started as we got closer to graduation. You know, you start to get the panics. You’re hearing some of your classmates, oh, I got an offer here, got an offer there. They’re getting full-time employment, and I didn’t have any offers, no prospects in the beginning. Had a few interviews that went decently, but didn’t land any positions. But ultimately, actually, one of my adjunct professors, he had a small managed service provider business, MSP, that he was talking about in class. So I remember I approached him one day and was just like, hey, just want to see if you had any opportunities. What’s it look like, you know, to get employment? And from that conversation, I was able to land an interview. So definitely didn’t want to pass up that opportunity. Took the interview, you know, I guess talking to him about, he was actually one of my professors for my networking class. So letting him know that he’s the one that kind of got me interested in this topic and something that I wanted to pursue. Definitely was a plus, probably helped out getting the job, but that really helped, you know, give me the confidence to go into the interview and ultimately land the offer right before graduating. So, you know, I started, graduated in December and then started right in January at the position. So just, I think I signed the offer letter they sent over sometime like in December. So it was right after. So timing worked out. So divine intervention.

Manuel: And I’m assuming similar, like in that role, you know, it’s the first one you’ve picked up basically a lot of book knowledge and how quickly and how much knowledge, like hands-on actual practical information do you think you gathered within that first, you know, I’m going to say that first year?

Dalien: So much, right? Like, luckily I’d say one of the big benefits of, you know, this was a smaller company and the, one of the big benefits of working at a smaller company is they give you a lot of responsibilities that you might not have. Like if you come into an Amazon, right? Like your role is very scoped. They’re not going to let you mess around with the, you know, write lines and set up configurations for their networking equipment. That’s all very structured. So this company really allowed me a lot of hands-on trial and error experience with guardrails, right? I did have some help. If I ran into something, I at least had someone I could go to who’s more senior than me, who could potentially direct me in the right direction. And that was extremely helpful in terms of like getting the topics, getting, building that confidence, right? Because when you get there and you’re nervous to make any changes, you might have an idea of what’s going on, but you’re afraid you’re going to do something that you can’t back out of. You’re going to make it worse, right? So working at this company really gave me a lot of responsibility that I definitely embraced to really get that hands-on experience, which ultimately led me to get my CCNA at that job, the Cisco Certified Network Associate Certification, which was my first tech certification. And, you know, I got that mainly based off of just the experience I was getting from that company and they really helped me through that process.

Manuel: And is that something they encouraged or did they make you aware of like, hey, these are certifications or did you kind of discover this on your own and say, hey, how can I, I guess I wonder what led you to that? Was it, this is going to help set me apart. This is going to help, you know, force me to study, you know, everybody that goes through and tries to achieve a certification has a different goal or a different reason for why they’re doing it. So I’m just curious.

Dalien: Yeah. So I was, I found out about the Cisco Certified Network Associate during college. And so during the interview, I actually mentioned that that was something that I was pursuing. I maybe just began studying. So since I mentioned it during the interview, I was kind of compelled to then pursue it once I got into the role as a, you know, that’s kind of one of like, oh, you’re looking, you’re interested in networking. We’re going to get you there. So they’re very supportive, you know, help provided me the training that I was, that I needed to get the certification. They paid for the certification. So that’s very helpful, right? Especially some of the smaller companies, you might not get the salaries that the larger companies offer, but if they offer, if they’re willing to pour into you to upskill you, I mean, it’s willing to take a hit and pay now to really develop those skills and better yourself and invest in yourself now. So it’ll pay in dividends in the future.

Manuel: And now, so we’ve go through, you’re obviously picking up hands-on experience. You’re putting, you know, these certifications, you know, it’s almost compelled to do it. Is that something that you decided to continue doing? So like CCNA, was it like okay, Hey, I have this one cert or kind of what did you decide that you wanted to kind of do next to progress your career? Like, did you have an end goal in mind now that you’ve been working to say, okay, my, you know, my next step is to either get more certifications, gain more knowledge. I’m trying to make the jump to, from an MSP to, you know, maybe something where my scope is a little bit more limited and I’m just a network admin, or eventually I want to be a network engineer or a network architect. Kind of what was it that kind of shaped what you thought you wanted to do?

Dalien: Yeah. And as we all know, right, we might have this vision of what we want, but how the cards are played out and how things happen and the opportunities that arise. Once you start down that path, it can change how you progress. So initially, you know, I was going to go for my CCNA, CCNP. I didn’t necessarily think I was going to go for CCIE, but at least get the professional level cert as networking seemed to be the field that I wanted to, you know, continue my career in. But after getting the CCNA, working at that company for a little while, um, I ended up pivoting into another network engineer role, which I then COVID hit, uh, as we all remember the good old COVID days. And that kind of threw a wrench in everyone’s plans, which ultimately kind of made me reconsider my options. Um, my current company, I was doing a lot of VMware and backup setup. So I was looking at a VMware certification, uh, Veeam backups was the solution we were looking, uh, we were using. So I was looking at even some of their certifications. So I was looking at some of the other sysadmin related certifications, um, just to kind of round out, you know, my different career paths and different options that I could have. But before I could get any of those, uh, ended up pivoting over to Amazon, uh, as an IT support engineer. So I was, you know, kind of certifications kind of took a backseat to just having opportunities and pursuing those career paths that came, that presented themselves to me. And, you know, once in Amazon, it was, I love my role as an IT support engineer, worked with some great people, really helped develop me. But at Amazon, it was kind of more apparent that the cloud was the path forward. Right. So, um, I started, you know, kind of turned away from networking and pursuing more traditional IT paths and turn towards the cloud. So, which lands me today.

Manuel: So, and I’m going to jump back a little bit. So as you’re kind of going through, you know, you mentioned COVID hit, did you kind of, were you going out searching and saying, okay, what kind of other roles like, oh, Hey, here’s this Amazon, um, position. Let me go through and apply. Did someone tell you about it? Just, I’m curious what got you there and, you know, kind of what the process was that you went through to ultimately, again, land that job. And the reason I bring this up is a lot of times myself included, you see, or you hear about these big name companies, right? And again, I’m not saying that everybody has to work at an Amazon or a Google. Um, sometimes people might think like I could never work there, right? Like a fortune 500 company, a fortune 100, whatever it might be. Just, I’m curious how you landed there because I, you know, sounds like early on in your career, you were able to kind of get into that type of position. Whereas I focused more on not small companies, but like, you know, I’m from Vegas. So it was a lot of, um, casino and gaming, right? So these aren’t small entities, but they’re not on Amazon. So I’m just curious what eventually got you there. What pointed you in that direction?

Dalien: Sure. Yeah. So, well, after my first position out of college and I moved on to the second company, that’s where I was at when, you know, we started getting the lockdowns and COVID. So you’re in your house a lot of the time. And in that, uh, that second role, I was a network engineer, but I did a lot of onsite work. So I’d go to companies, I’d be like the face. So it was a customer facing role, which kind of lended me well towards getting into the TAM position. But with that, obviously being onsite, that was very limited during COVID. So I had a lot of free time, right? So I was still employed, never was laid off, fortunately, but it allowed me a lot of free time to search around. And, you know, I’m just at home looking and, uh, it was, Amazon was really in the phase of rolling out their fulfillment center, their warehouses throughout the nation. And just so happened, you know, in the news, they were talking about one coming to Toledo or Rossford, a suburb of Toledo and sounded interesting. I’m like, Oh, I’m sure they’re probably going to need some type of IT tech roles there. So, uh, I saw an opportunity pop up on Indeed and thought, why not apply? And just took a chance. I was, I enjoyed my job where I was at, but I just saw an opportunity and just had some downtime. So I was applied and ended up getting an interview and ended up turning that into an offer. And it wasn’t necessarily in the cards. I wasn’t like focused on, I need to get to, uh, a FANG company. I need to get to a, you know, fortune 100, 500, any type of company. I was just looking for a job and an opportunity presented itself and I made sure to take advantage of that. And, um, yeah, landed an interview and got the job.

Manuel: And it’s something that’s come up in conversations that I’ve had with other people, right? Like outside of this podcast is it’s always easier to get another job when you have one, right? Cause you’re not, it sounds like, you know, you weren’t stressed like, Oh, I want to get this job. I have to try and land this. It’s more like, well, I’ll give it a try, see what happens. And, you know, it sounds like that confidence or maybe that naivety, right? One of those two kind of helped not make you, I’m going to assume not make you so nervous that like, I have to land this job. What? Cause it sounds like you, you haven’t had a ton of experience, right? So now again, it’s a larger company. So what did you do to kind of prepare for like interviewing? So it sounds like the first one, he was just talking to a, you know, like that adjunct professor, did that kind of experience help shape how you kind of move forward and interview, you know, and just interview and work towards landing a role in the fact that, Oh, okay. All I have to do is talk to somebody, explain, you know, what I’m interested in, what I have experience in, and the rest will kind of fall into line.

Dalien: Well, that experience definitely made me more comfortable. Like, Oh, wow. Like one conversation can open into a world of possibilities of potential opportunity. And to your point, I absolutely advocate, like if you’re don’t just quit a job, but don’t just leave a company, you definitely want to, uh, while you’re employed, start looking, right? Like even if you’re comfortable in a role, I’ve a big proponent of just seeing what’s, you know, what’s your value in the market? Like who knows what you, what opportunities could be out there that, and personally, I’ve always, even when I was looking for jobs, I was always satisfied with my role. I’ve, it was never like, you know, there was never like really workplace drama where I was like, Oh, I need to get out of this place. So I was, you know, just rage applying for whatever positions I was always happy with where I was at, but I knew that there was opportunities that I was unaware of. So that really just had me kind of start exploring my options. And that kind of was always something that, and that’s always something that I advocate to for too, as well. So if you’re in a position happy or not happy, you can always find opportunities, always another opportunity out there for you to explore that you may not be aware of. So, um, through that kind of, like I said, I was just, I was just bored. I was at home and I’m like, Hey, what’s out here. I’m just searching the web, watching YouTube videos. I’m like, Oh, let’s look on Indeed. And was able to find an opportunity and saw the interview and it was, why not apply? And like I said, that, that led to, Oh, I got to, I got to apply. I got to have a, got to update my, my resume. So update your resume. And then, Oh, who knows what? Everything kind of just fell into place as, as that happened.

Manuel: And now as you’re kind of going through this and you touched on something, right? Like updating your resume and, you know, and understanding these different conversations at any point, did you, did you have anybody else to kind of help bounce ideas off of or give guidance? So, you know, early on in my career, I had somebody that we kind of got into the IT field. We actually met in college and kind of would help bounce each other, bounce ideas off of each other. Like, Hey, I’m going to apply here. Like, can you look at my resume? Um, you know, YouTube probably wasn’t as prevalent, you know, it was there, but like there, it wasn’t that giant source of information to where I look, can look up, you know, how to write a successful resume, how to, you know, job interview tips. So it was a lot of talking to other people and specifically one or two that, you know, I had had probably a similar level of experience, similar, you know, um, situations to kind of go through and say, okay, Hey, I’m going to apply for this. You know, this is the type of role here’s, what do you think are questions that I would get to try and prepare? So just how did you go through? And is this all on your own that you’re just gathering all this information and, you know, just like you mentioned before trial and error on your own part?

Dalien: Yeah. So I’d say early on in my career, I did not have a mentor that was scoped at technology. I just frankly didn’t know a lot of people in the field. Um, didn’t have a lot of people I felt comfortable reaching out to, to get guidance on career path personally, but YouTube was a big helper for that, right? Like even if you’re unable to meet with someone, you can get great advice, especially if you’re hungry for it. If you want to get the, if you desire to understand something, there’s a world of knowledge out there at your fingertips. So I leveraged that and got tips. Hey, this is how you interview. This is what you do when you, this is how you prepare a resume. This is how you, when you get to the interview, how you show up, how you answer questions. So I didn’t have necessarily someone I could ask those questions to, but I just typed my questions into YouTube and lo and behold, something came up that, uh, was helpful and really helped give me early career guidance. Now, as I began to move throughout my career, uh, and particularly at Amazon, I was able to get in contact with some great mentors. We have some really good mentoring programs within Amazon. So I was able to reach out to individuals and, you know, foster relationship that was able to, to get me into, you know, that’s what kind of got me interested in cloud. Like when I got in as an IT support engineer, I didn’t know, I knew I wanted to go towards the cloud, but I didn’t know what exactly role I wanted to go towards or what position would fit based off my, my previous experiences, because I had no cloud, hands-on cloud experience. So, uh, seeking out a mentor who was able to kind of give me the roadmap and the blueprint of especially how to navigate Amazon and the vast amount of roles and opportunities that are out there. Uh, that was instrumental to my success. So, um, you know, like, and to a point, a point to that, like additional to that, I feel like the best mentors I had are the ones that I sought out rather than the ones that were like given to me. So like sometimes in roles, you’re given a mentor, Hey, you start this new position, here’s your mentor, you know, reach out to them with any questions. And they’re all helpful. They never, you know, never had like a super bad experience with the mentor, but the ones that were just a step above were the ones that I came to and was like, Hey, I have this problem or Hey, I recognize something that you did that I’d like to replicate or understand more of. And being humble enough to, you know, to humble yourself to, to ask for help was people that’s usually well received too. Right. So people received it well. And those are the people that I feel like went to bat for me, even more so than the ones that were just de facto, here you go. Here’s your mentee. Uh, were the ones that I really like went out and like started that relationship with.

Manuel: And as you’re going through now, so, you know, you’re at Amazon, you’re seeking out these mentors. What, um, what did they kind of help push you towards on the cloud? Right. So you’re doing this, you know, IT Support Specialist, what was kind of the next move and, you know, kind of how did you end up heading in that direction?

Dalien: Well, I’d say, start with what, you know, so cloud is in part, very similar to technologies of, uh, the past. So, you know, you still, still need networking in the cloud. You still need security, right? These are still roles that are really relevant. Maybe just tailoring that to the new tools and services available to you. So it was kind of like, okay, how do you transfer that networking knowledge that you built up? How do you move that to the cloud? So, um, I didn’t start with, um, you know, you know, networking was definitely helpful to give me the groundwork of like, Hey, this is how the cloud works. This is what’s going on here. And, uh, it got, as most people who are in a technical role, start with AWS certifications, got the Solutions Architect Associate, which kind of really solidified my understanding and how these technologies translate to ones that I’m have hands-on experience with. Although I can’t necessarily see them, you can’t see the switch, the, the mindset, the, the framework is still very similar, right? So, um, you know, having that traditional IT background didn’t necessarily, it wasn’t a one-for-one translation, but it gave me, you know, put me at least at a pretty good place to, to start those conversations and understand like, this is what I know. How do I translate it to these services and these different pieces that are now available in AWS?

Manuel: As you’re picking up this knowledge and understanding and, you know, kind of solidifying your information, what made you then kind of move into a different role and kind of, it sounded like your mentors kind of helped make you aware of the different types of positions or are you, again, similar to before, are you just taking the initiative on your own to kind of search additional roles within there to say, what sounds interesting? What do I think I would want to do kind of moving forward?

Dalien: So actually just by chance, my mentor, I, like I said, I didn’t know what a TAM was, but my mentor was a, a, a team lead for a TAM, a TAM team based out of Ohio. And so I knew he was based in Ohio. So I’m like, oh, this guy’s in AWS. He’s in Ohio. Sounds like someone I should reach out to. So I ended up reaching out to him and, you know, he kind of gave me, I knew I wanted to get like one of the couple of criterias that I had for when moving into the cloud is, all right, still want to be technical, right? I want to be customer facing because in my first role at Amazon, I wasn’t customer facing and my previous roles I was. So I definitely liked the customer interaction element, seeing like what you do and how that contributes to the success of a company is like just very satisfying. So those are some of my top requirements. I just wanted to be, and like not sales, right? I don’t want to necessarily be tied to numbers. It’s just more of like customer satisfaction, like how I can benefit my, my customers. So when I said that, he’s like, well, you reached out to the right guy, you know, by chance, because that’s exactly what TAMs are for, right? We’re here, the customer advocates, we’re the trusted advisor for our customers. So once I heard that, you know, I was essentially sold and that turned into, you know, dead set on how do I become this illustrious TAM role that now that, you know, that’s where my eyes were set. So, um, worked to, to get there. Like I just knew as soon as I had that conversation with him, a couple mentoring sessions in, it just knew that like everything I heard, that was something that I wanted to pursue. And I made sure to, to do just that.

Manuel: And as he’s giving you this, it sounds like he also gave you the blueprint. Was he helping you to figure out what skills you need to kind of hone in on? Like it’s one thing to say, okay, Hey, that sounds interesting. That’s what I want to do. But it sounds like he might’ve also provided a lot of that guidance as far as these are the types of skills you either need to have or to develop. Is that correct?

Dalien: Exactly. Right. So now that I knew what the role was, my next question was like, how do I, how do I get there? And that’s what I think a great mentor does is helps break down the barriers of what you’re trying, where you’re trying. You tell them, I don’t think a mentor should be telling you where you want to go, but they should listen to where you’re telling them you want to go and they should be helping you to get there. And that’s exactly what he did. So once I identified that, Hey, no, this sounds like a role that I’m absolutely looking to pursue, which led him to telling me, well, Hey, first get your solutions architect associate. If you know, you don’t have, cause my biggest gap was like, okay, well now how do I get there? I don’t have any cloud experience. How do I build that up? I don’t want to leave the company, but I’m not in a cloud role. Uh, so he’s like, well, Hey, get a certification to show that you’re committed to learning these technologies that you have some, some experience and that you can, that, you know, certifications of anything show, you know, they might not show that, you know, hands-on experience how to, you know, launch an EC2 or set up a website using AWS services, but they at least show a desire to learn, to acquire skills. And so after, so that’s what I did, got my certification and turn that into, um, after I got that was just preparing my resume, how to go, I translate some of these skills to something that makes sense, um, for the role that I’m looking for. How do I tailor my resume to show that I did have customer service experience, customer support, because when I was tailoring it for the IT support engineer role, customer support wasn’t necessarily something that was looked at, right? So you got to tailor your resume to the position you’re looking for. So, you know, kind of added those details back in. And then I started applying and didn’t hear back, right? Didn’t hear back sent, you know, I kind of made it, like I said, I was one thing, I think one of the things that I, that definitely was beneficial was once I have my eye on something, I wanted to pursue it. Right. So like I didn’t, I was sending emails to managers. I was looking on our internal job postings, seeing what opportunities were out there, applied to everything that was under the sun. I was willing to move, would have moved to South Africa for the, you know, I knew I wanted to get the TAM role. I was like, Hey, I’ll, I’ll move. I’ll do whatever I need to do to get to that role. Cause I know that’s where that’s going to be my, where my career will grow. And it wasn’t easy in the beginning. Didn’t hear back for over six months of just applying, applying, reaching out, setting up. Maybe I got a couple calls, but never got interviews for the first six months. Um, that was of course discouraging, but didn’t give up. Just kept posting away and kind of ties back into how I got my first job. Sometimes you have to get a little unconventional, right? So, you know, I’d see job postings and I’d apply, maybe send an email to the manager, but that didn’t seem to garner results. So I had to get a little, you know, creative. So, you know, start hitting them up on our messengers at work and, you know, maybe throw a invite on or a meeting on their calendars. Say placeholder would love to meet if you’re free, accept, if not, no worries. And some liked it, some didn’t, but, uh, through those interactions and reaching out, you know, this conversation, maybe this person would point me to this person. This wouldn’t lead anywhere, but another person would lead me to somewhere else or a program or something else. And really I had to piece those together. So what happened was I reached out to a manager of TAMs and he told me of another manager who was leading a program, reached out to that manager. I wasn’t necessarily a perfect fit for the program, uh, like scope, but I was like, Hey, I’ve been looking to get this TAM role. I’m committed. Like I’m willing to do what it takes. Just give me an opportunity. And, you know, we were able to set up a call from that through the call. He told me, Hey, I can definitely tell you’re committed to this role and you’ve been, you’ve been doing the steps to get there. So don’t even worry about the program. I’m going to see what I can do to get you an interview. And so that, that one person was able to help set me up. So after six months of reaching out with really no leads, nothing like that, one 15 minute conversation was able to change everything in an instant. And that manager reached out to another manager, that manager was able to open up, you know, move some things around where a position opened up. And lo and behold, one of the first managers I actually reached out to, reached out to me to interview for a role. So, uh, you know, who, you know, is definitely, uh, you know, it’s about who, you know, for sure. And how, who you’re willing to reach out to as well, like what opportunities and what, where are you able to put yourself in uncomfortable situations to get the results that you’re looking for? Right. Cause it wasn’t comfortable. I wasn’t like, Oh yeah. Like I just love reaching out and not hearing anything back. It was uncomfortable, but absolutely worth it in the end.

Manuel: Taking that risk, right. In, in doing something different. And I wonder if, like you said, it was one of the first managers that you had reached out to that actually interviewed you him probably knowing that, okay, let’s say over, I don’t know what the time span is, but even if it’s a couple months, right. This guy reached out to me, he continued. So I’m sure like in the back of his mind, at least I would think that that kind of played a role as well. Like, well, wait a minute. He tried reaching out to me. It didn’t work. And he’s going around, you know, just being persistent, taking risks and doing things different. I think is extremely important for people to know and understand that, again, there’s no one way to get a role, right? Like sure. Everybody can go through and apply, but what can you do different to either set yourself apart or again, really show that persistence of like, this is really what I want to do. And I’m going to prove it to you, not just by, okay, Hey, I sent this one email. It didn’t work. I really want this. And kind of, like you said, you got uncomfortable and said, all right, you know what? I’m going to stop. This isn’t for me that consistent, you know, reach out to different people because over time, I’m sure it makes it easier to be comfortable in those uncomfortable situations. Um, so you go through, you interview, I’m assuming you kind of land the role and what eventually, um, did you think of once you’re in that position, are there additional skills that you had to kind of develop now in this TAM role?

Dalien: Yeah. So, you know, I guess going to the interview, like I knew once, you know, after I was reaching out for all this time, once I got an interview, there was no way I was going to let it slip through my fingers. So like I said, I was preparing for six months. So yeah, once I did get the interview, I was able to, uh, one and done get, get the offer accepted. And that was definitely such a relief, right? Like the longer it takes you to get something, the more rewarding it is in the end, right? Like if I would’ve got it right away, I’d be like, Oh, that’s easy. Like, you know, yeah. What do you mean? Like I can do this. So it definitely made it more rewarding in the long run. Um, but in terms of when I got into the role, luckily through, and I feel like this is, I’m the outlier in this circumstance, since I did have a mentor who kind of gave me the understanding of this is what a TAM does. This is what they, what’s their, you know, this is the role of a technical account manager. This is their responsibilities. I believe I was well equipped once I did get the position to really, you know, start off on a good foot. I knew that there’s a lot of customer presentation stuff. Like we, we do a lot of stuff for the customers. We’re trying to add value. We’re trying to be their strategic. How do we provide them value through enterprise support and offerings that we have. So I felt pretty well equipped stepping into the role just because of, you know, the, the conversations that I had with my mentor that was also spanning this six months of, you know, my frustration of not being able to, to get the job. So that was super helpful. Um, which I felt like set me up for success. Um, so yeah, I mean, I knew very well and it was just really like now taking what I know theoretically and turning it into something like, how do I live that out? How do I, you know, like, it’s one thing to know how a service works, but how do I actually use it to make something that’s useful to me? So it was a lot of trial and error. Uh, the technical account manager role is very ambiguous in a lot of ways. And what one customer needs were very customer obsessed and we work backwards from what our customer needs. So what this customer needs is very different from what that customer needs and understanding how do I fit in? How do I provide value to these different customers in the way that they want value, right? Like I can have a cost optimization thing that one customer loves the other ones doesn’t want to hear about it, right? Like we already took care of the low hanging fruit or prioritize this, whatever their priorities are in understanding like, okay, although this, this could be good for them, hearing, listening to them and taking that into consideration in terms of how I conversate with them, how I present things to them, uh, was invaluable in the long run. So like understanding if you listen, people often tell you what they want, right? Like you just have to really ask questions that show that you’re intrigued, that you want to help, that you are willing to learn and to provide value how they want, you know, how they expect, uh, your role and, you know, your position to do.

Manuel: You and I have had conversations outside of, of this, right? And I know that we’ve kind of reached the point where, you know, you’re, you’re kind of in the role that you’re in now. Now in our conversations, we’ve mentioned that mentorship is important to you and it’s something that you have kind of a passion for. And it sounds like now kind of hearing your story, it’s because of the impact that a mentor had on you. Is there anything around that, that you would kind of add to that experience? Like, like if somebody else is going through and saying, Hey, go through and seek out these mentors or, you know, what should I look for in a mentor as I’m kind of going through just anything that you think that would be relevant around that area?

Dalien: Uh, so there’s a few ways we can take this. So, I mean, definitely finding a mentor that has maybe some shared experiences. I don’t think you, you don’t have to necessarily follow the same path as them throughout their career because it’s going to be a hard time finding a mentor if that’s the case, but at least someone who’s maybe shared some similar experiences with, maybe you’re in the same networking group, or maybe they had a similar background or you’re once at a same company, having some type of alignment to your mentor, uh, is helpful, right? So you can bond with them on a level, right? Like it’s not just a lot of my mentors. It wasn’t just like a transactional, like, Hey, I’m trying to, I want you to help me get this role. Like, this is why I’m here for. It was more of like, Hey, like I’m looking for growth. There’s things that you’ve done and being humble. Like there’s things that you’ve done that I appreciate and that like, I would love to replicate and understand like how you, you got there. So like showing admiration for what they’ve done because people work their whole life. They’re spending all this time in their career and developing skills. It feels good to have someone admire the work that you put in. So that’s number one. Like if you can show, like humble yourself and show admiration for something that your mentor has done, that’ll absolutely help you, you know, land a mentor, especially ones that are high in demand. So that was super helpful. Uh, like I said, sharing some type of experience or even early on, if you can carve out some time to potentially find some shared experiences, maybe ask them about their hobbies. Don’t just like, definitely. I mean, I know you have a fixed amount of time, but taking it beyond that to understand who you’re talking to rather than just what they are in their accomplishments is, will go a long way in terms of fostering a relationship that transcends just mentorship, right? Uh, so finding ways to bond with your mentor beyond just, Hey, this is the goal I want to achieve. How do I get there? If you can find other relate, like related topics that can help you both connect, your mentor will be way more engaged and just ready to, you know, help you out in any capacity. Uh, so that’s one, uh, yeah, don’t, you don’t have to necessarily align exactly with their background, but having some shared experience, like if you’re trying to be an SDM or a software development manager, uh, you know, you ask, you don’t want to ask the software developer engineer, who’s never been a manager, right? Like that’s, you definitely want to find someone who at least has had some understanding, like, you know, even though if they’re a higher engineer than you, have they actually had the role or the career that you’re looking to replicate in some degree? Like I said, it doesn’t have to be a one for one, but in some capacity, if you look back and like, Hey, that’d be actually a decent path or something that I’d like to pursue. That’s super helpful. Leveraging people you might know, like if you have another relationship with someone that could be super helpful. Like if it’s, you know, your friend’s dad or, uh, you know, distant relative, if there’s someone that you know from another, you have another relationship with them, but they also have shared experiences that will help you get to your career. Also very helpful. Uh, so yeah, those are a few definitely ways of like finding a way to really connect with your mentor beyond just trying to get something from that. If you’re just trying to extract information, I mean, you’ll probably still get a mentor, but it won’t be as, it won’t be as beneficial as it could be.

Manuel: Being genuine about kind of wanting to establish that relationship. And I think at that point, like you said, you’ll get information. You won’t necessarily get a mentor that will basically almost be invested in, in you and kind of helping you grow and progress. Um, you know, cause I liked the way that you mentioned, you know, having shared experiences, understanding like who this person is, not just, I’m trying to use you to get information to help and benefit me, which again, somebody who wants to be a mentor, sure. They’re going to give you that information, but if you can find a way to establish a genuine relationship or a genuine interest in that person, right? Cause a mentorship, it’s, it’s two ways. It’s not just, Hey, help me, help me, help me. It’s help me, but you know, let me take an interest in you. Let me ask you questions. And I think you’re right. It helps you understand not only where you think you want to get to, because I’ve also had that similar experience where having somebody in the networking role that, you know, gave me the opportunity to kind of shadow and do a lot more of that helped me realize that that’s not what I want to do. Like I genuinely did not enjoy it. Like now I understand networking, but I never wanted to be a networking person. I thought I did, but until I had that person that took an interest and like really showed me around at one of casinos and like we were going and doing a lot of stuff. And I was just like, this is not what I thought it was. And thank you. You know, I appreciate the time. And again, still kept that connection and that relationship, but eventually realized like, I need to go somewhere else.

Dalien: One last thing on the mentor-mentee relationship. As a mentee, the best way to get as much information and to get what you’re looking from the relationship is also to have ownership over that as well. So as a mentee, you shouldn’t come to the meeting and just expect your mentor to have the blueprint, like, Hey, this is how you’re going to get there. You should come prepared with questions, challenges that you’re currently having, different topics that you can talk about. Like, you know, how did, what’s the next step, right? Like you want to have, you want to be, you’re the owner of the meeting and you should really set the groundwork for what you’re trying to accomplish. Cause as a mentor, you know, I can have an idea of what could be helpful for you, but the things that you’re telling me that you’re struggling with will absolutely be beneficial in terms of how do I direct and answer and provide you information. So.

Manuel: So now you’ve kind of gone through, you’ve gotten these mentors, you’re in your current role, you’re starting to kind of continue your development. So what are you kind of doing now, or what is your kind of next step outside of, um, you know, I’m not saying that you want to leave and, you know, being a TAM, but maybe what are some of the skills or kind of what do you see yourself working towards now, you know, having these experiences?

Dalien: So as discussed through this conversation, obviously I’ve made a mention of how mentors have had such an impact on my life and on my career and my success. And so, you know, definitely do a lot of mentoring, but beyond that, I definitely want to make that my, my role. So management is probably the next place I see myself going. Um, really, I definitely take a vested interest in developing people being that, you know, servant leadership is something I believe in heavily. And how do I serve the people that report to me in a way that helps them, right? Like I, it’s not just like what they can do for me and commandeering them tasks. It’s how can I be a beacon of light? How can I direct my team towards where they see their career going? So helping people develop their careers, do things that they never thought were possible is such rewarding beyond even, you know, just a paycheck, right? Like that’s something that, uh, as I seen through mentorship, that’s, you know, something that I, as mentioned, did do a lot inside as well as outside of Amazon. So, uh, yeah, I definitely want to get towards making that more of a solidified path and get into management. So that’s definitely what I’m focused on.

Manuel: Nice. So it’s kind of helping you give, give purpose to kind of what you want to do in, you know, in your career. Is there any topic that we kind of haven’t covered that, you know, or any question that maybe I haven’t asked you that you think, you know, Manny, we didn’t discuss this, but I think this is something that I would like to, you know, talk about or, you know, provide people information about.

Dalien: Well, we kind of glanced over it through the conversation, but interviews are an integral part of getting hired, right? Like you can have on paper that you can have the best resume, you can have all the skills, but if you can’t show up to the interview and demonstrate the knowledge that you have, you know, it’s all for naught. You won’t get the role, right? Cause that’s, that’s how they determine who gets the role is the interview process. So interviewing is a skill that I think everyone should develop. Everyone should get comfortable in terms of how do they best represent themselves. There’s so many helpful resources out there to help you, you know, optimize your resume to get the interview. But once you get the interview, I do a lot of interviewing as well. And so I see where people may have not come prepared, although their, their resume looks great and they look like the perfect candidate. If they can’t perform in the interview, I can’t confidently give them the role. So developing your interview style, understanding, you know, what environment and how to answer the questions, like what you, what you’re best suited for is something I encourage everyone to at least spend a little bit of time to, to develop those skills and, uh, take that seriously because there’s, you won’t get a, especially, you know, positions that are in high in demand. There’s someone out there who interviews better than you. So they’re often, even if they’re less qualified, they’re, they’re often the ones that are going to get the positions that you’re looking for.

Manuel: And a lot of that, so the skills that you’re talking about is more being able to articulate, um, kind of the skills that you bring, or, you know, if they’re asking you about a problem, being able to answer their question. Um, I don’t want to always say concise, like you don’t want to give a short answer, but you know, we’ve, we had a conversation about this recently is, you know, making sure that the answer that you’re giving answers their question, but maybe also just provide a little bit of context around it, or even sharing a story around it. Just something that helps not only understand that, okay, hey, I know the technical answer to this, but here’s how I have applied that finding ways to also make yourself memorable. Right. I, I, I know I shared the story with you is I’ve had a couple interviews where they’ve asked for, they give you a range like, Hey, we’re going to be interviewing this week. Um, it’s not often, right? Like all roles don’t do it, but where they’ll tell you, like, this is the interview week that we’re doing it. Here’s the slots available. And I’ve asked for what’s the first available or what’s the last available. The reason I do that is I want to kind of differentiate myself and either kind of try and set the bar early. If I’m the first one, try to find a way to make myself memorable. People are usually in the middle, you kind of get washed out, but be the first or the last. I prefer to be the last because again, I’m what they’re going to end on. So just kind of doing things like that. So is there anything, um, that you kind of want to add as far as what you should do to kind of help set yourself apart in an interview?

Dalien: Well, firstly, that tip that you shared was new to me in terms of asking the first and last slot and then trying to pick one of those. So that was, that was some game that I picked up from our conversation, which is, which is a really good one. I won’t reveal all my secrets, but one of the ones, as you kind of mentioned there is when you get asked the question, you know, you can answer it technically correct and that’s great. You get the check mark, but if you can transcend answering it just technically correct and make a connection with the interviewer, right? Because in most cases, if you’re going to a technical interview, someone technical is interviewing you, right? So they have done some of the things like they should at least know, I hope they know the technologies and such that they’re asking you about. So if you can maybe branch off and tell a story, you know, not super long, don’t ask, don’t go into your whole past, but if you can give like a concise story or even just a little sentence on terms of showing that you have practical experience with this. So you can have all the book knowledge, you can know all the technology, you can know what an EC2 instance is, but if you don’t talk about, oh, when I forgot to turn off the auto scaling group and I ran up a bill, right? Like, oh, okay. You know, there’s things like that where you can kind of just briefly talk about it in an beyond just the question they ask. So, hey, if you know what EC2 is, sure, you can talk about how it’s computing the cloud and blah, blah, blah, all the technical definitions. But if you can talk about how maybe in a lab you did something cool with an EC2 instance and make a connection that maybe your interviewer maybe has had a similar experience, like, oh, yeah, that’s actually one of the first projects I did with EC2 was making it a website or whatever, whatever different experiences you might have, giving that additional little extra information will set you apart from other candidates, right? Because if I just answer it technically, 10 other candidates did, all right, how do I choose? But if this person made a lasting impression, and especially if they’re the first or the last slot, then, you know, it’s definitely going to be, it’s going to increase your odds of potentially getting that offer extended to you.

Manuel: And I think another thing that, and I only thought of it because you mentioned, like, if you get somebody very technical, also understanding who are you interviewing with, right? And being able to give that same answer in two or three different ways. Like, if I’ve got the, you know, the engineer or the admin that I’m interviewing with, right? Because sometimes that might be, like, in certain roles where you have multiple interviews, like, that might be the person that’s asking you the technical questions. I have to be able to explain and give that answer. It could be a manager or a director and being able to speak at that level. Like, hey, do you know what an EC2 instance is? You may not want to go into detail into how it works, but understand maybe at a director level or manager, like, yes, I know. And here’s how we’ve used it. And this is how it’s helped my business or how it’s, you know, I did this project and here’s the benefit for the group, right? Understanding the different personas that you could be interviewing with. So, I think this has been a fantastic conversation that we’ve had, you know, a continuation from what we had talked about yesterday and, you know, prior to this. Is there anything else that maybe you kind of want to bring up before we, you know, wrap this up? You know, it sounds like communication, you know, interviewing skills. There’s a lot of different things that people can take out of this to say, this is beneficial, this is going to help me, or, you know, just anything else that maybe we haven’t talked about.

Dalien: The last piece of advice I’ll leave the audience with is you own your career and don’t let anyone put you in a box. Your career is for you to navigate, to traverse, to excel. So, whatever you set your sights on, don’t let anyone else tell you that’s not possible, right? It’s taking ownership of your career and the roles that you hold and the skills that you have, it will lead you to places where you never thought were possible, which brings us here today, right? So, thank you so much for having me and, yeah, it was an honor.

Manuel: I appreciate it and, yeah, definitely I would agree, right? I mean, we do the same roles, but obviously our paths to get there were very different. You know, taking ownership and, you know, just really, if there’s something that you want, and that’s probably one of the takeaways that I’ll get is, you know, having that persistence and if you really want something, you’re going to continue to find a way to achieve it. So, with that, thank you everybody for kind of tuning in and listening and I know the set looks a little bit different. We, I reached out to Dalien because we were in location on a, for a training program. So, kind of set this up remotely and, you know, live from, well, probably not live, but we’re coming from, you know, Austin, Texas. So, outside of the Vegas area. So, thank you and, like always, plug in and download the knowledge.