Spotlight your TRUE self

Yes, the job market is tough and when >100 of candidates apply for one position only about 10-15% of them get shortlisted to the first round of job interviews.

How do you get among this small share of people with your job application? How should your CV and cover letter look like to attract enough attention to the recruiter or hiring manager so that he/she really feels a desire to get to know you better?

In this episode I am explaining the following steps to you to create a high-quality non-average application:

If you are looking for a job in the Corporate world or want to take the next step in your career, I would be happy to support you in your skilful self-presentation and showing your true, authentic self to a company! Therefore, this podcast is based on three pillars:

• Self-confidence & self-esteem

• Managing your emotions

• Concrete communication techniques based on NLP

And in each episode, you will hear about one of them. – Subscribe to not miss any important points!

If you don’t want to miss the coming episodes – then following me on LinkedIn (Michaela Kettner) or Instagram (@michaela.kettner.fi).

Keywords: Skilful self-presentation, Successful career, fulfilling career, important for career, successful in my job, self-confidence, job search, job application, finding work, looking for a job, writing a CV, writing a cover letter, creating an application video, getting short-listed, getting hired, get invited to job interview

Have you ever dated someone that ended up in a relationship? I hope we all have! – And hey, this means that you know also how to land a job. Because searching for a job is like dating!

Many people who are desperately searching work have the feeling that the whole recruitment process is a big mysterious black box full of tricky technical challenges to overcome so that the own job application gets considered.

What is often forgotten: the hiring manager who has a position open in his team and wants to hire a new talent is also just a human being – who is looking for the perfect match for his/her team!

I am a hiring manager myself and have hired two additional colleagues to my team during 2024. Seeing the recruitment process from this side brought me valuable insights what is attractive for a hiring manager or recruiter – and what are the common mistakes that people make that are distractive.

I am sharing in this episode practical tips how you can make your job search more successful by thinking about the funny analogy from the dating world!

If you are looking for a job in the Corporate world or want to take the next step in your career, I would be happy to support you in your skilful self-presentation and showing your true, authentic self to a company! Therefore, this podcast is based on three pillars:

• Self-confidence & self-esteem

• Managing your emotions

• Concrete communication techniques based on NLP

And in each episode, you will hear about one of them. – Subscribe to not miss any important points!

If you don’t want to miss the coming episodes – then following me on LinkedIn (Michaela Kettner) or Instagram (@michaela.kettner.fi).

Keywords: Skilful self-presentation, Successful career, fulfilling career, important for career, successful in my job, self-confidence, job search, looking for a job, getting hired, applying for a job, writing a job application, need to find work, select the right job ads and vacancies, finding open positions

“All my life I had been chasing success, but here I was – with 38 – and had no idea when I will ever work again.”

This episode is the second part of the interview with Tomi Kaukinen, a Finnish start-up entrepreneur who shares in a very open and personal way how he experienced a burn-out in 2017, after his company successfully expanded from Finland over Spain to Asia.

In 2018 he started talking about this dark period of his life in public – when burn-out and depression in the working world were still a taboo topic.

Nowadays he shares both – his experience in creating a successful start-up and his insights from overcoming the burn-out – with young founders and entrepreneurs under his mission “Licence to fail”. (https://licenceto.fail/)

In plus of that, he is creating educational and entertaining content – and very recently produced and published a documentary about the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, that you can watch for free on youtube (“Nietzsche in Sils Maria”).

If you have ever needed an inspirational impulse to think about the meaning of your life – this documentary is my absolute personal recommendation for you!

If you want to connect directly with Tomi, you can find him on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomikaukinen/

And if you are looking for a job in the Corporate world or want to take the next step in your career, I would be happy to support you in your skilful self-presentation and showing your true, authentic self to a company! Therefore, this podcast is based on three pillars:

• Self-confidence & self-esteem

• Managing your emotions

• Concrete communication techniques based on NLP

And in each episode, you will hear about one of them. – Subscribe to not miss any important points!

If you don’t want to miss the coming episodes – then following me on LinkedIn (Michaela Kettner) or Instagram (@michaela.kettner.fi).

Keywords: Skilful self-presentation, Successful career, fulfilling career, important for career, successful in my job, self-confidence, entrepreneur, founding a start-up, burn-out, depression, high-functioning depression, personal crisis, existential crisis, meaning of life, Friedrich Nietzsche, philosophy

From a cleaner to an elite scholar, from investment banking to the colorful start-up world, from Finland over Spain to Asia. And finally into a burn-out.

I had the honor to interview Tomi Kaukinen, who is a successful serial entrepreneur and one of the most-wanted keynote speakers in the Finnish business sector.

Graduated from the Stockholm School of Economics, he quit is well-paid job in an investment bank after 6 years to found his own business. He has managed to build up a start-up that connected him with nobody less than the famous Spanish football club Real Madrid. But the hard work and the hunger for success left their traces.

This episode is the first part of the (very long, but definitely not boring!) interview with Tomi, in which he shares

The second part of the interview will come out as episode #81, which will especially touch on the topic of burn-out.

Feel free to connect directly with Tomi on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomikaukinen/

And if you are looking for a job in the Corporate world or want to take the next step in your career, I would be happy to support you in your skillful self-presentation and showing your true, authentic self to a company! Therefore, this podcast is based on three pillars:

• Self-confidence & self-esteem

• Managing your emotions

• Concrete communication techniques based on NLP

And in each episode, you will hear about one of them. – Subscribe to not miss any important points!

If you don’t want to miss the coming episodes – then following me on LinkedIn (Michaela Kettner) or Instagram (@michaela.kettner.fi).

Keywords: Skilful self-presentation, Successful career, fulfilling career, important for career, successful in my job, self-confidence, entrepreneur, founding a start-up, quitting my job, get an investor, burn-out

Networking is not to get 100 business cards on an event.

Networking is not to connect with people randomly on LinkedIn.

Networking also does not mean to pitch something to potential clients.

Networking means knowing yourself well enough so that you can share with the world what you have to offer. It means to share our story in a vulnerable way. And synergies will grow out of that.

So how do you achieve that? How do you not just connect with people who share your interests but then also follow up with them to nurture this connection?

This is what you will learn in this episode which is the second part of the interview with Joppe Quaedvlieg about the topic of ‘networking’.

If you have not listened to the first part, please start with that (episode #78)!

To find more about Joppe’s upcoming events, services and offers, check out his website: https://www.artiqula.com/

If you are looking for a job or want to take the next step in your career, I would be happy to support you in your skilful self-presentation and showing your true, authentic self to a company! Therefore, this podcast is based on three pillars:

• Self-confidence & self-esteem

• Managing your emotions

• Concrete communication techniques based on NLP

And in each episode, you will hear about one of them. – Subscribe to not miss any important points!

If you don’t want to miss the coming episodes – then following me on LinkedIn (Michaela Kettner) or Instagram (@michaela.kettner.fi).

Keywords: Skilful self-presentation, Successful career, fulfilling career, important for career, successful in my job, self-confidence, network, networking, communication, vulnerability, skills, strength, LinkedIn, Slush, networking events, contacts, finding a job

Everyone knows that networking is important to find your next job and to build up your career. But most of the people don’t know how networking works in a good way.

Why do you want to network? What is your intention to grow your network and connect with certain people?

This podcast episode is the first part of me interviewing Joppe Quaedvlieg (or during the first minutes he is more interview me 😊) and we are clarifying

If you want to learn more about Joppe, his concept of descriptive communication and how to be an empathetic leader, check out the previous episodes that we have recorded together:

#60 What do you want? And how to find that out via ‘Descriptive Communication’

#61 Can you learn empathy? And why good leadership is not possible without

If you are looking for a job or want to take the next step in your career, I would be happy to support you in your skilful self-presentation and showing your true, authentic self to a company! Therefore, this podcast is based on three pillars:

• Self-confidence & self-esteem

• Managing your emotions

• Concrete communication techniques based on NLP

And in each episode, you will hear about one of them. – Subscribe to not miss any important points!

If you don’t want to miss the coming episodes – then following me on LinkedIn (Michaela Kettner) or Instagram (@michaela.kettner.fi).

Keywords: Skillful self-presentation, Successful career, fulfilling career, important for career, successful in my job, self-confidence, network, networking, communication, skills, strength, LinkedIn, networking events, contacts, finding a job

It is important to recognize the point in time when you have to let something go. That can be a job position that you were hoping to get but you were rejected last minute, or you were dating someone which did not work out in the end. In both situations, you have invested a lot of time and energy – and now your mind stays busy with thinking about what went wrong or what you could have done better?

The problem is: As long as your mind is busy with this old stuff, you don’t have space in your life to attract something even better!

Therefore: It is important to make a clear cut and decide to let the old stuff go.

And now many people say: You have to write down all your thoughts about this on a sheet of paper – and then make a fire and burn it!

I always wondered: Isn’t there a safer method to let something go then making a fire in my flat???

Yes, there is! In this episode I introduce you a super simple, but equally efficient practical method to let your thoughts go.

This is something that you can apply immediately, no matter if you are at home or in a hotel.

All you need is a pen and a role of toilet paper. Do you guess already what I mean?!? 😊

I would be happy to support you in your skilful self-presentation and showing your true, authentic self to a company! Therefore, this podcast is based on three pillars:

• Self-confidence & self-esteem

• Managing your emotions

• Concrete communication techniques based on NLP

And in each episode, you will hear about one of them. – Subscribe to not miss any important points!

If you don’t want to miss the coming episodes – then following me on LinkedIn (Michaela Kettner) or Instagram (@michaela.kettner.fi).

Keywords: Skilful self-presentation, Successful career, fulfilling career, important for career, successful in my job, self-confidence, make a cut, let go of old thoughts, free your mind, deal with disappointments, rejected from a job, rejected from a dating partner, be open again, attract new possibilities

Are you afraid that your job application is not considered, because the company you are applying for is using an Applicant Tracking System (ATS)?

Do you fear this is a big black box, and finally your application gets rejected by an algorithm based on weird criteria while a human recruiter never took a look at it?

After you have shared many concerns like this with me, I have investigated this topic and found a great expert to share insights about ATS, especially combined with AI: In this podcast episode I am interviewing Markus Gerstler from Teamtailor, who are the leading company in the Nordics providing ATS.

From this interview you will learn:

You can also check the Teamtailor website to see more details how an ATS is used: https://www.teamtailor.com/en/applicant-tracking-system/

It is also worth following Markus on LinkedIn for interesting insights about ATS, HR, Sales and work life.

If you need support for your job application, I would be happy to support you in your skillful self-presentation and showing your true, authentic self to a company! Therefore, this podcast is based on three pillars:

• Self-confidence & self-esteem

• Managing your emotions

• Concrete communication techniques based on NLP

And in each episode, you will hear about one of them. – Subscribe to not miss any important points!

If you don’t want to miss the coming episodes – then following me on LinkedIn (Michaela Kettner) or Instagram (@michaela.kettner.fi).

What is your biggest challenge at the moment in your job search? Are you writing hundreds of applications but never make it to a job interview?

This podcast episode is the second part of the recording of the webinar ‘Recruiting Insights’ that I have given in June 2024 to share my insights as a hiring manager from a recruitment process I have done myself. There are many common mistakes that people make when applying for a job, that distract me as the hiring manager from shortlisting them.

In this episode you will learn about the concrete Do’s and Don’ts for your CV, cover letter and in your behaviour during the job application process to increase your chances to be invited to a job interview. For example

The episode also includes a Q&A with your most burning questions and you will also hear what help I can offer you to help you to land the job that you want.

The first part of the webinar recording was published as episode #74.

I would be happy to support you in your skilful self-presentation, so that you can have a successful and fulfilling career by being able to show your true, authentic self! Therefore, this podcast is based on three pillars:

• Self-confidence & self-esteem

• Managing your emotions

• Concrete communication techniques based on NLP

And in each episode, you will hear about one of them. – Subscribe to not miss any important points!

If you don’t want to miss the coming episodes – then following me on LinkedIn (Michaela Kettner) or Instagram (@michaela.kettner.fi).

Keywords: Skilful self-presentation, Successful career, fulfilling career, important for career, successful in my job, self-confidence, job application, important for CV, how to write a cover letter, job application video, AI in job application, how many job applications should I write

What is your biggest challenge at the moment in your job search? Are you writing hundreds of applications but never make it to a job interview?

This podcast episode is the recording of the webinar ‘Recruiting Insights’ that I have given in June 2024 to share my insights as a hiring manager from a recruitment process I have done myself. There are many common mistakes that people make when applying for a job, that distract me as the hiring manager from shortlisting them.

Hear in the first part of the webinar recording

The second part of the webinar recording with concrete Do’s and Don’ts for your CV, cover letter and in the application process in general will come out as episode #75.

I would be happy to support you in your skilful self-presentation, so that you can have a successful and fulfilling career by being able to show your true, authentic self! Therefore, this podcast is based on three pillars:

• Self-confidence & self-esteem

• Managing your emotions

• Concrete communication techniques based on NLP

And in each episode, you will hear about one of them. – Subscribe to not miss any important points!

If you don’t want to miss the coming episodes – then following me on LinkedIn (Michaela Kettner) or Instagram (@michaela.kettner.fi).

Keywords: Skilful self-presentation, Successful career, fulfilling career, important for career, successful in my job, self-confidence, important in CV, writing a cover letter, phone call with hiring manager, job interview, rejected job application, how to apply, understanding vacancy