How BizOps Can Accelerate Your Career

Over the last few decades, BizOps roles have exploded.

Using data to improve decision making and maximize revenue is nothing new. But having a dedicated business operations team is.

BizOps teams analyzing product outcomes, marketing strategies, and even customer support tickets are becoming increasingly common at the world’s best and brightest tech companies.

From small scrappy startups to Google and Meta, BizOps teams are helping companies see the forest from the trees with all of the data and information they have available.

BizOps roles cross the divide between engineering, management, marketing, product, and more to help companies operate more efficiently and drive growth.

As a BizOps professional, your career growth opportunities are nearly limitless.

You can shape the direction of a company, work with team members in nearly every department, and get a unique perspective on the inner workings of a successful product launch all in the same role.

BizOps can be a great stepping stone into a new role depending on your interests and goals.

BizOps as a Jumping-Off Point

The best part about a BizOps role is that there isn’t any one skillset or background that will guarantee success.

A strong BizOps team often has team members with diverse sets of skills and backgrounds.

Having a diverse team helps a company see business problems from all angles rather than a narrow perspective of a single team or employee working on the project.

To succeed as an analyst or in a BizOps role, spend time developing relationships with as many cross-functional teams as you can.

Work on a variety of projects to familiarize yourself with how the business operates day to day.

From here, you’ll get to learn what aspects you enjoy and which direction you’d like to move your career.

It’s not uncommon for someone to graduate from university with, let’s say, a liberal arts degree, then work their way into a consulting gig.

From there, they may leave consulting to work full-time at a startup and jump between customer support, product marketing, and data teams over a two or three-year period.

Projects may include working with the product team to minimize the negative impacts of an app redesign on existing users or helping the growth team decide which regional offices to put new hires in.

If you have a passion for business and optimizing systems, it’s easy to see how a transition into BizOps makes sense.

Even if your background isn’t with a business degree, you can transfer communication, analytical, and organizational skills into a storied career at most major tech companies.

Want to know what types of questions you will have to answer during a BizOps interview?  Read Ace the BizOps Interview (+Top Questions and Answers)

The transition from BizOps to other Roles

BizOps is a gateway to many other tech fields. You’ll likely spend your entire first year or two learning with the BizOps team you join.

For instance, one of your first tasks may be to grow the revenue for a key product in the company’s shop.

You’ll have to create relationships with marketing, product, sales, and operations to understand what makes the product so popular.

You’ll work to understand user personas and how the pricing of the product affects consumer behavior.

The sales team may need help to understand which personas have untapped potential and which markets are oversaturated.

If you enjoyed the part of the process where you got to know the sales team, you could spend your next few months working on more sales projects.

One of the best parts of a BizOps role is that you can be like a chameleon—morphing and changing to address the most critical needs of a business.

By working with the sales team through a business operations capacity, you open yourself up to other projects or full-time roles they may be hiring for.

After two or three years of jumping around a company, you may find one team that resonates with you the most.

You get enormous visibility into how a company thinks from the top down. How each team sets priorities can help you see how a business is growing and preparing for the future. You’ll get to ask for feedback from different managers and cross-functional teammates.

No matter which career path you take, the fundamentals of that job will likely lie in BizOps. You’ll have experience analyzing data sets, working with large teams, developing business strategies, and plenty of other soft skills to help you succeed in the future.

If you’re the type of person who’s continually curious about solving problems, looking at the 30,000-foot view, BizOps might just be the perfect career for you.