Get a Job, Here's How

Having a multigenerational workforce is not a new thing. What's different now is that as of 2016 we now have five distinct generations in the workforce. People are working and living much later in their lives. There are more Americans over 85 in the workplace now than ever before.

My guest Lindsey Pollak and I discuss the impact on the office when you have that many generations working at the same time. Although generations are only one aspect of what people are, they impact how we work, communicate, experience the office among other things.

Managing in this new environment can be challenging and according to Lindsey "...it's not about doing it all the old way or all the new way. It's about the combinations of having a toolkit that combines the best of every era's different ways of working to find a diversity of styles in your management toolkit."

We discuss all the recent research about women leaving the workforce in large numbers in 2020 and the need for institutional and governmental solutions.

Lindsey talks about her new book Recalculating: Navigate Your Career Through the Changing World of Work. It's your personal GPS to succeeding today and into the future because Covid-19 has upended job hunting and career planning forever.  

We discuss Lindsey's predictions about what the workplace looks like after COVID-19 and how working from home impacts career advancement and opportunities. Here are a few tips:

1. Look at your culture and what is valued and think about how you can show your value.
2. Get more comfortable tooting your own horn
3. Personal branding is still very important
4. The relationship that matters most is your direct manager

There are many young people who are entering the workforce during this time that never experienced the traditional experience of working in an office and those starting their careers virtually.  "I think we have to really take time to mourn what we're losing as much as thinking about the future." - Lindsey

You can find Lindsey Pollak here:
https://lindseypollak.com/
Preorder her new book Recalulating here: https://lindseypollak.com/books/recalculating/

How to get started on your job search - bias toward action

Making the most of a networking event with Caitlin Hooks - the tips hold true even for virtual events -

Caitlin told us to 

• Step 1: Research thoroughly

• Step 2: Engage pointedly

• Step 3: Follow up strategically

Basically - figure out who’s going to be there and who you want to meet, show up early, be prepared, do some research so you know what you want to talk about with people, and then afterward follow up with people you met to solidify the connection and keep the relationship going. BTW, much of this advice still applies to virtual events. That was episode 2.

Episode 3 was all about Joining a job search group and my guest was my friend Ellen Dalbo. Did you know that people who took part in “job search work teams” got employed 20% faster than those using traditional methods? This is according to the book “Team Up!” by Orville Pierson. Churches run groups, there are MeetUps for every kind of interest and job field and if you’re local to the Raleigh area, join Back to Business. Back to Business – the growth of a community is a big goal of Back to Business, and we have been able to connect women returning to work after a career break with each other, and with employers.  Joining a job search group is a point reinforced by Dr. Dawn Graham in episode 33 who said that a job search is a social event and we should talk about what we’re looking for so others can help us. I love it when it all comes together like that!

And speaking of asking for help with your job search, this is a theme that Steve Dalton, author of The 2 Hour Job Search and I spent some time discussing. I love Steve’s take on why we have to get comfortable asking other people for help. The 2 Hour  

I asked Steve if The 2 Hour Job Search process still holds even in our covid-affected environment of 2020.

Preparing for an interview with Al Dea was episode #4. Al says that before you walk into an interview, you should Craft Your Story. You should take the insights you get from your research about what this company is looking for in candidates, and come up with the narrative that you want to tell about why you are the best person for the job. He even says to think of yourself as a product on amazon.com - and be ready to sell yourself as a solution that the company needs.

Jeremy Schifeling from Break into Tech describes the different tech roles - I love how he makes this so easy to digest and understand. Take a listen, this is masterful as he takes us through everything from business operations to Corporate development to Product management! 

Sometimes you need professional help to get your most important job-seeking assets in great shape. That’s when you’d call my friend Mir Garvy from Job Market Solutions - she’s an expert resume writer and LinkedIn profile writer. I called on Mir to take us through the process of working with a professional LinkedIn/resume writer in episode 7. Here’s Mir talking about how she helps clients develop a resume that will get past that Applicant Tracking System.

Mir came back for an encore in episode 10 to provide us with some great Linkedin tips. Here are my 2 favorite tips for LinkedIn: (1) Have a compelling opening statement for your About section and be sure it’s keyword optimized.  And (2) Tell the story behind your resume in your Linkedin profile and share a heartfelt reason why you do what you do. 

Glassdoor is a good source for company ratings and in E8 I talked to my niece Ellen Dunn who was an Account Executive there about how to make the most of Glassdoor in your job search. Ellen’s best tips: Use Glassdoor to prep for interviews because people share on that site the interview questions they were asked. Also, use Glassdoor to make sure you know your worth when you are negotiating an offer. If you’re going to convince someone to give you more money, you’ll need good data to back up your claim,  and you can get that on Glassdoor. 

Now, in addition to negotiating, one thing you simply must be able to do as a job-seeker is talk about your strengths in a confident manner. So I spent some time with Damien Zikakis, a career coach based in Michigan, to talk about the StrengthsFinder assessment. Damien shared in episode 9 that we can make greater strides in our self-development when we focus our resources on developing our stronger talents into strengths as compared to focusing on fixing weaknesses or trying to develop lesser talents.  If you’re interviewing for a job, Damien says that your ability to describe your Strengths and how you capitalize on them, both individually and as part of a team, will set you apart from other candidates. And that just might be the edge you need in an interview. So take the CliftonStrengths assessment and then lean into your strengths.

Companies have been putting more effort into hiring more diverse teams, and I wanted to understand how this works for candidates. Danielle Pavlil, a Sr. Diversity & Inclusion Manager at SAS, and I spoke in episode 11 about leveraging uniqueness in your job search. I loved that title, which Danielle suggested. I also loved some of the information she shared which helped me understand the importance of being a voice for others to ensure that people with diverse gifts are recognized and appreciated in the workplace.

In episode 12 I spoke with a technical recruiter named Dina Schweitschal about succeeding at technical interviews. Technical interviews aren’t something that every job seeker will encounter, but if you’re interviewing for a position as a software developer, you will definitely be put through a technical interview. Dina shared that candidates should be asking questions during a technical interview, rather than pretending they know everything. And for job seekers in general, you might be interested to know that only 5 or 10 % of people bother to write thank you notes after an interview and only about 15% write a cover letter. And, guess what? She actually reads cover letters and that can set a candidate apart if it’s done well. Now that’s info you can use in your job search right now. We talk with Dina about some ideas about writing thank you notes.

If you’re returning to work after taking time off to stay home with kids, here are a few gems specifically for you:

If you’re deciding if you should take the first job that comes along as you return to work, here are a few things to consider from episode 6. First, it depends on your motivation, so take stock of what’s compelling you to rejoin the workforce. Second, since every big choice we make involves a trade-off, be really clear about the trade-off involved in taking the job so you can make a good decision about if it’s the right job for you. Consider the positives and the negatives. And third, decide if this job might be the stepping stone to get you to your ultimate career goal, and if so, take it!

In episode 13, my guest was coach Farnoosh Brock. Farnoosh is so smart and if you’re not following her on LinkedIn, I suggest you do so that you can benefit from all the great content about career success that she is sharing. Farnoosh and I talked about determining where the right place might be for you to re-enter the workforce if you haven’t had a paying job in a while. She gave a tip that has really stayed with me: in addition to taking an inventory of what you are good at, you have to consider if those particular skills you possess are skills you a...

Jamie is the daughter of legendary basketball coach Jim Valvano and she’s got a fantastic story to share. Jamie has wonderful insight to share about adapting her dad’s practice of clearly defining a mission for their life and then going after it. She gets personal about identifying what her unique gifts are and deciding on a path for her life that put those gifts to good work. It wasn’t easy, either - Jamie has faced her own battle with cancer, been through a divorce and is the mother of a child with special needs. 

I was so inspired by her journey and loved the honesty and candor she puts into telling her own story. I can practically guarantee that after you listen to this episode you’ll grab your own notecard and put an amazing vision for your life down in writing. And once it’s written down, it will be hard to stop you from achieving all that you are destined to achieve!

Find Jamie Valvano at JamieValvano.com

Don’t miss her TedX Talk: What I Learned About Leaving A Legacy

Sarah Green Carmichael is an editor with Bloomberg Opinion and a former executive editor at Harvard Business Review, where she hosted the HBR Ideacast. She recently wrote a piece in Bloomberg titled “Covid-19 Explodes the Myth That Women Opt Out” and she presents a compelling case for her conclusion that “When women leave the workforce, they’re not exercising their options — they’ve run out of them.”

Sarah cites 3 factors that conspire to make it difficult for women to remain in the workforce after having children: inflexible workplaces, the reality that women shoulder more of the burden of taking care of running the house and raising the kids and bad public policy. 

Data released in the McKinsey Women in the Workplace 2020 report shows that in August and September of 2020, more than a million people dropped out of the workforce, and 80% of them were women. Furthermore, 1 in 4 employed women and 1 in 3 mothers are thinking about quitting or downshifting their work hours. 

The long-term implications of this trend are alarming. Less diverse teams, fewer women’s voices setting corporate policy, and a diminished pipeline of women for promotion to executive-level roles. 

Join Sarah and I as we explore the data, share our own personal experiences with work and talk through solutions that could help make the workplace a more female-friendly environment. 

Find Sarah Green Carmichael here:

Covid-19 Explodes the Myth That Women Opt Out on Bloomberg

More articles by Sarah Green Carmichael

On LinkedIn

On Twitter @skgreen

As Dawn says, “Switchers are the future of work.” Meaning, everyone making a career or job change of any kind is switching things up in their career and will benefit from the ideas Dawn shares. As the job market trends away from traditional roles, job seekers need to be even more creative in the way they market themselves to future employers. 

Dr. Dawn and I talked about some of the specific strategies she recommends in her book for career switchers, particularly those returning to work after a career break. Join us as talk through: 

• Spotlighting transferable skills (tip: “soft skills aren’t soft anymore”)
• Having a Plan A that is very specific and focused (check out Dr. Dawn’s Bullseye Brainstorming Worksheet on pgs 68-69 of Switchers - it’s amazing!)
• Making a stepping stone switch (a very effective strategy for career relaunchers in particular)

Dr. Dawn also shares what she sees as the benefits of our current Covid situation to career switchers. This crisis has forced change on the job market and she sees some opportunity for career switchers in all of that change. 

As Dr. Dawn says, “clarity comes through action.” So if you’ve been thinking about making a career switch, pick up a copy of Switchers and listen to this episode of the Get A Job, Here’s How! podcast to get your action plan in gear.

Here’s where you can find Dr. Dawn Graham:

Her website: https://www.drdawnoncareers.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drdawngraham/

Twitter: @DrDawnGraham

Dawn’s TEDx Talk is a must-watch for career switchers: Your Next Job Is One Conversation Away

We discuss the issues Black working moms are facing and she introduces me to the idea of “ambient belonging”. Listen up! You’ll learn a thing or two, just as I did!

Christine Michel Carter is the Associate Editor for ModernMom, a Senior Contributor to ForbesWomen and her work has been featured in Time and Parents magazines. Big brands seek her out for her insights into how to talk to moms effectively in their advertising and how to hire and retain moms. 

You can find Christine on her website at https://christinemichelcarter.com/

After first approaching his job search using more traditional methods like applying online to job postings, Austin Belcak discovered this simply isn’t effective. Now he coaches job seekers through his company Cultivated Culture on leveraging unconventional strategies to get a job even if you don’t have connections or traditional experience. Hint: It does not involve applying online! 

Find out what a “Value Validation Project” is and why it will truly distinguish you as a candidate who can add value to an organization. Also, learn why Austin’s strategy works beautifully during COVID times when we’re not meeting people face-to-face. 

Be sure to check out Austin’s website and the amazing free tools he provides for job-seekers at https://cultivatedculture.com/

And Follow Austin Belcak on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/abelcak/

Tip: Austin posts daily on LinkedIn and his posts are always incredibly insightful and helpful. 

Amanda shares some creative ideas developed through her experience as a Certified Professional Career Coach and a Certified Professional Resume Writer. Amanda is also the resident career expert for TopResume and previously served as the media spokesperson at Ladders where she provided guidance for professionals looking to improve their careers. 

Amanda believes that job seeking is a sales and marketing exercise. You are the product, so being able to articulate what your brand stands for is critical. We also talk about some of the crowdsourced spreadsheets that have been created and circulated as people generously help each other out in this difficult job market. 

In this episode, we dig into the importance of building online rapport as you expand your network of personal and professional connections. Also, use your social media to spread the word about what you’re great at and focus on the value you have to offer.

Don’t miss Amanda’s advice on the “Power of 3” - using job boards, recruiters and your personal network to uncover job leads - because relying on just one of these is not enough to bring you success in your job search. 

Here are links to the resources mentioned in this episode (with thanks to Amanda Augustine for cultivating this list!):

This article provides a list of crowdsourced resources, as well as job boards and apps that focus on remote jobs: https://www.topresume.com/career-advice/find-work-during-coronavirus

Some of my favorites are:

• Torch Capital spreadsheet (they actually recently moved it to a website)
• Upstream app-based community platform designed to help professionals give and receive help. You can download the app from the App Store.
• Ryan Robinson's Remote Job Websites Collection - 60 job boards in total
• Levels.fyi, which verifies the open positions with the company hiring

Receive a free resume review from TopResume here.

To find professional associations:

• Director of Associations: https://www.directoryofassociations.com/

To find a recruiter (without a Google search or without going through a job board/social media): 

• i-Recruit: https://www.i-recruit.com/recruiters-directory.php

To find networking events and job fairs:

• 10times: https://10times.com/ (also available as an app)
• Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.com/d/online/events/
• Meetup: https://www.meetup.com/
• Also, don’t forget to check with your alma mater’s alumni or career services teams. Many are hosting virtual events for alumni, including job-search specific events.

My guest is Vicki Bevenour, an executive career coach with expertise in personal branding, communicating with strength, leadership presence and negotiation. Coach Vicki is the President of the RDW Group and the author of “Unleashing Your Inner Leader: An Executive Coach Tells All”.  RDW stands for Results Derived From Within and represents Vicki’s belief that everyone has a powerful leader inside of them, which is also the premise of her book. 

Vicki talks about who should negotiate (hint: everybody!) and suggests that instead of interviewing, you are engaging in Business Evaluation Meetings when you meet with a potential employer. That evaluation works both ways - you are evaluating the company and they are evaluating you. Keep in mind that as you go through these meetings, you want to set yourself up for a successful negotiation. You can do this by having 20 success stories ready to share. 

Prepare your stories by thinking through (1) the challenge you faced, (2) the action you took, and (3) the result you achieved. These are your C-A-R stories! Use these on your resume and in your interviews / Business Evaluation Meetings. 

Negotiate when you have an offer - this is the moment when you have the power. In addition to negotiating salary, you can negotiate vacation time, your job title and level, benefits, bonus, tuition reimbursement, work from home days, cell phone reimbursement, training, and parking expenses. That’s a lot of things up for negotiation! So how do you go about it?

Know your numbers: Check salary.com, The Muse, and Glassdoor.com for salary data. Also, poll your network so you know the compensation structure in the industry. 

When you receive a job offer, don’t accept it on the spot! Ask for 48 hours to consider the offer, then get back to them within 24 hours to initiate a negotiation. Don’t negotiate over email! Use words such as “This is a great offer and I have 3 questions.” Then remind them of your accomplishments (your CAR stories) and ask for what you want. After that, stop talking. 

Vicki shares tons of great phrases you can use in a negotiation as well as some good book recommendations and statistics about women and negotiation.

You can find Vicki on LinkedIn and online at http://coachvickie.com/. Vicki’s book Unleashing Your Inner Leader: An Executive Coach Tells All is available on Amazon. 

Vicki’s book recommendations: 

Women Don’t Ask - The High Cost of Avoiding Negotiation and Positive Strategies for Change by Linda Babcock and Sarah Laschever

Ask For It: How Women Can Use the Power of Negotiation to Get What They Really Want

 by Linda Babcock and Sarah Laschever

Habit #1 is Be Proactive. Covey defines proactivity as “more than merely taking initiative. It means that as human beings, we are responsible for our own lives. Our behavior is a function of our decisions, not our conditions.” He goes on to say - and I love this - “proactive people carry their own weather with them. Whether it rains or shines makes no difference to them.”  

Applying habit #1 to your job search: 

First, there is the taking initiative part. Of course in your job search you must be proactive reaching out to people to ask for their help in your job search. Be proactive enough to ask twice for the requests that are important to you. 

As a job seeker, you also have to be able to tolerate rejection. But if you managed to “carry your own weather with you” throughout your job search, it would hurt less. 

Covey also talks about how proactive people handle mistakes. They “acknowledge it instantly, correct and learn from it”, thus turning a failure into a success. As a job seeker, have you ever made a mistake? Maybe you were in an interview and answered a question in a way that made you wish you could have your words back. After the interview, be proactive enough to do a debrief with yourself to evaluate how you performed in that interview. If you made mistakes, spend some time thinking about exactly how you’ll do it better next time. 

Habit #2:  Begin with the end in mind. 

Covey says “to begin with the end in mind means to start with a clear understanding of your destination. It means to know where you’re going so that you better understand where you are now and so that the steps you take are always in the right direction.” 

Covey further explains this concept by saying that “ all things are created twice”, meaning that there’s a mental or first creation and a physical or second creation to all things. 

One way to begin with the end in mind is to create a personal mission statement. So that’s your homework: craft your personal mission statement. 

Let’s apply habit #2 of “Begin with the end in mind” to your job search.

First, outline clear enough goals for your career that you know what kind of job you are looking for. You might think that applying for every job is a good strategy because it’s a numbers game and if you can get enough job applications out there, you’ll win the game and get a job. But you won’t. It’s not a numbers game. It’s a matching game. And those are 2 very different games. 

Second, apply the habit of beginning with the end in mind to your job search by visualising yourself successfully getting that job. Close your eyes and imagine what it would be like to get up in the morning and go to that job. You can also visualize success in an interview. 

Habit #3: Put first things first

Put another way, it tells us to organize around our priorities.  And Covey weaves these first 3 habits together masterfully by mentioning that “you can’t become principle-centered without first being aware of and developing your own proactive nature (habit #1). You can’t become principle-centered without a vision of and a focus on the unique contribution that is yours to make.”  

Covey says “if we don’t practice habit 2 (begin with the end in mind), if we don’t have a clear idea of what is important, of the results we deserve in our lives, we are easily diverted into responding to the urgent.” Amen to that. 

Planning can be hard to make time to do, because it’s not urgent. It’s one of those important but not urgent activities that you will have to be deliberate about carving out the time to make happen. Here’s the payoff: Covey says “I believe if you were to ask what lies in Quadrant 2 (those are the important but not urgent activities in the time management matrix) and cultivate your proactivity to go after it...your effectiveness would increase dramatically. 

Let’s relate habit 3 to your job search. 

If you’re applying the 7 habits to your job search, you will have a clear goal in mind of the job you want to get and you will prioritize your job search activities so you’ll remain focused on doing the important stuff. 

Planning your days and weeks can help you with the discipline to stick with the important activities and put first things first. Covey recommends setting weekly goals that are in line with the longer-term goals you laid out in your personal mission statement. 

Take time today to organize your next week. Write down your goals for the week and then build an action plan around them. Let that guide you to spend your job search time on high-value activities like connecting with people and having conversations that will help you uncover opportunities that you can get referrals for. Try it for a week and see if this makes a difference. I bet it will.

Habit #4 is think win/win

“Win /win is a frame of mind and heart that constantly seeks mutual benefit in all human interactions. Win/win agreements or solutions are mutually beneficial, mutually satisfying. With a win/win solutions, all parties feel good about the decision and feel committed to the action plan. Win-win sees life as a cooperative, no ta competitive arena...win/win is based on the paradigm that there is plenty for everybody, that one person’s success is not achieved at the expense or exclusion of the success of others.”  Covey’s words there.

Let’s apply this to your job search: 

If you’re in the negotiation stage for a new job. You’ll want to start off the conversation by saying “I am excited about this offer and I want to talk to you about the compensation, so that we can come to an agreement on the offer that we are both really happy with.” You are setting up a win/win if you start like that - both parties share the same goal. 

Habit #5 is Seek first to understand, then to be understood

Covey talks about “empathic listening” meaning listening with the intent to understand. If you do this correctly (and it’s not easy) it requires that you as a listener get inside another’s frame of reference, see the world the way they see the world and understand how they feel. Covey says “you are focused on receiving the deep communication of another human soul.” 

Let’s apply this one to job searching. 

Say you are in an interview talking to a hiring manager who is describing challenges facing her team. If you listen, really listen and she realizes that you really understand her challenges I promise she will be interested in you as a candidate. Covey wants you to rephrase the content and reflect the feeling back to her so she feels understood. Once you do that and confirm your understanding of the situation, you might be able to offer some solutions, some new ideas to solve those challenges. What a way to stand out as a candidate. 

Habit #6 is synergize

Synergy, Covey says, means that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The essence of synergy is to value differences - to respect them, to build on strengths, to compensate for weaknesses. Synergistic communication means your approach conversations with a sense of excitement and security and adventu...