In the last episode of season 2, Bec and Annie discuss the skill of negotiation. Bec has a strong belief that everything in life is about negotiation, and this is one of her favourite skills to practice. Annie tends to rush negotiations, and push for outcomes, something which is a development area.

Bec talks through how she prepares for negotiations, so that she feels confident and calm in her position. She outlines how firm but fair is often the best approach to negotiations - as in the majority of cases you’re negotiating with people who you will work with again. Annie talks girl math - how to get to an hourly rate which does not undervalue yourself.

This episode covers:

• What makes a ‘good negotiation’
• The importance of knowing when to walk away
• Playing a few steps ahead
• Accidentally negotiating well
• Not rushing negotiations
• How it’s easier to negotiate on behalf of other people, and that you can ask for help
• When to have a break in a negotiation

Enjoying this content? Please rate and subscribe on your preferred platform, and let us know what you think! [email protected]

Recommendations from this episode:

• Venture Deals, Feld and Mendelson. A good book for if you are preparing to raise money for a business. 
• Accelerate Law. Annie's Lawyer Simon who is amazing for startups. 

This week’s episode is a risky experiment. Bec and Annie decided to put their chat to the test - by interviewing two people they’ve recently managed about what they’re really like. Annie interviews Francesca Ward, who Bec is currently managing. Francesca has done not one but two jobs with Bec - so knows her like the back of her hand. Bec has a chat with Dani Conlon, who was part of the team which Annie managed most recently. Dani doesn’t hold back - highlighting that Annie’s a ‘horse girl’…

We’ve learned a lot about each other through this conversation. We hope you find it as fun as we found recording it.

Enjoying this content? Please rate and subscribe on your preferred platform, and let us know what you think! [email protected]

In this week’s episode, Annie speaks to Clare Mullen. Clare is the Chief People Officer at the health-tech startup Scan.com. She works across the UK and the US to build that team. Annie and Bec decided, having an expert in interviewing on the show, we should probably focus on how to get a job from the perspective of someone who has really seen it all… over 20,000 interviews.

Listen in to hear a discussion about:

• The top 3 most common problems you see in first interviews from the hirers perspective (and how to avoid them)
• Tips for an amazing first interview from a hirer’s perspective
• What candidates should be trying to find out from their future employer, as they progress through interview rounds
• How to standout in interviews, in a good way
• How Clare approached building her own career, including being a freelancer and then going into a full time role
• Tips for starting freelancing

Enjoying this content? Please rate and subscribe on your preferred platform, and let us know what you think! [email protected]

In this week’s episode Bec and Annie talk through self development, and how they’ve both approached building their careers. Whilst Bec has taken a very structured and deliberate approach to building her career, Annie’s career moves have been more opportunistic and often led by passion and gut instinct. Bec has a 3 year life plan, that helps her focus in on her progression and goals. They discuss the merits of both different approaches.

Listen to this episode to hear more about:

• Resources we recommend to think about career progression and structure
• The roles we’ve both learned the most in
• How coaching has supported us both at different times
• The difference between coaching and mentoring
• Top 5 tips for career building

Enjoying this content? Please rate and subscribe on your preferred platform, and let us know what you think! [email protected]

Recommendations from this episode:

• Designing Your Life, Burnett and Evans

This weeks episode is all about coaching. Both Annie and Bec have benefitted from coaching at different points in their career. They’ve also spoken about coaching at various points across season 1 and 2 of the Career Coven. In this weeks episode Bec speaks to Annie’s former coach - Seb Agertoft.

This episode is for people who are either thinking about getting a coach or are interested in becoming a coach. By the way - Annie highly recommends working with Seb (the best coach she’s worked with in terms of outcomes).

This episode covers:

• Seb’s personal journey to coaching
• What coaching is
• How there are different styles of coaching
• The difference between coaching and mentoring

Enjoying this content? Please rate and subscribe on your preferred platform, and let us know what you think! [email protected]

https://www.sebagertoft.com/

In this week’s episode of the Career Coven Bec and Annie answer a series of questions from the listeners. They cover:

• Is there a dream job for everyone?
• How to balance finding your ‘dream job’ with working where you are now?
• Should we all be purpose driven in our jobs?
• How can you change culture in a highly political organisation?
• What to do when you’re managing engineers that don’t like to change their behaviour…

And much more….

Enjoying this content? Please rate and subscribe on your preferred platform, and let us know what you think! [email protected]

Recommendations from this episode:

• Designing Your Life, Burnett and Evans
• Sir Wobbles wombat rescue Instagram account
• 5 Dysfunctions of a team, Lencioni and Leffert

In this week’s episode, Annie speaks to Lizzi Amartey. Lizzi is the Head of People at the UK non-profit Founders Pledge. Lizzi has worked across the globe in HR, and is passion about how to build diversity into teams. Annie and Bec decided that given Lizzi’s incredible background, we should focus the chat on how to build diverse and high performing teams.

Listen in to hear a discussion about:

• Is there a ‘right’ construction of a team?
• What most often goes wrong when trying to build a team
• How to remove ‘bad apples’ from the team
• How to hold an organisation to account for diverse hiring
• Tips for hiring diversely
• How to ask about diversity in a job interview process

Enjoying this content? Please rate and subscribe on your preferred platform, and let us know what you think! [email protected]

Recommendations from this episode:

• Hire slow, fire fast
• CultureAmp - Empower Diverse Teams
• BambooHR- How to recruit a diverse team
• CIPD - inclusive employers

This week on the Career Coven, we talk about the process of being interviewed for a new job. It covers how to make a good first impression, how to develop a narrative around your own skills and whether or not to have notes in front of you during an interview. Bec shares her best and worst of interviews, and how she finds it easier to interview for jobs where your own experience is directly relevant. Annie share how candidates should also leave an interview with some value - it shouldn’t just feel like a one sided interrogation.

Our interviewing tips include:

• Trying to say something interesting in the first interview, not just perfectly articulating your CV
• Make sure the role is clear, or push for clarity on it
• Keeping things quite conversational can help it to feel less nerve-racking
• Trying to have more than one example of your key strengths, so you’re not just talking about the same examples over and over when interviewing (boring for you)
• Dress appropriately - even if it’s online
• Listen actively to the interviewer, and don’t just try to fit ‘your examples’ into the questions being asked

Enjoying this content? Please rate and subscribe on your preferred platform, and let us know what you think! [email protected]

In this week’s episode of the Career Coven, Bec interviews Alice Pelton who is the founder and CEO of the Lowdown. The Lowdown is a health platform - where women can research their health choices (used by over 2 million women per year). Alice and Bec have an honest conversation about what it’s really like being pregnant at work, and being a leader. Bec felt that there were lots of parts of becoming pregnant which were not explained to her at all, and both Bec and Annie feel that pregnancy at work is something that is not openly discussed. We want to give a voice to some of what people go through whilst pregnant.

Quote of the episode — “Women are fucking amazing actually.”

A trigger warning for this episode - we do cover the topic of miscarriage and ectopic pregnancy. We know that some people will find this content upsetting, so we wanted to be up front about that. But as so many women will experience pregnancy loss on the journey to parenthood, we wanted to keep this information in.

This episode covers:

• Getting pregnant whilst working
• The misinformation women are told about pregnancy
• Coping with the nausea
• How your hormones change in pregnancy, and  their impact on you
• The pressure to perform at your best, whilst pregnant
• The importance of naps
• How and when to tell people
• When you should go on mat leave
• Returning to work (don’t come back first week of Jan)
• How you prioritise better when you’re a parent
• Childcare once you’re coming back to work

And most importantly - how amazingly worth it the journey to being pregnant is. Alice provides a lot of tips about what she would do differently next time she was pregnant. Gold-dust!

Enjoying this content? Please rate and subscribe on your preferred platform, and let us know what you think! [email protected]

Content & recommendations from this episode:

• Matrescence: On the Metamorphosis of Pregnancy, Childbirth and Motherhood - Lucy Jones
• The Lowdown
• Alice’s Substack
• Bubble - an app for booking nannies and childcare

On the first episode of their second season, Annie and Bec talk how to quit your job. They discuss when to quit, how to quit, and whether it’s ever a good idea to go out in a blaze of glory. Like most people, Annie and Bec debate whether it’s always best to have your next job lined up when you quit, or just to go.

Listen to this episode to hear more about:

• How to think about job tenure
• Job scenarios when you may want to quit
• Job scenarios when you don’t want to quit
• How to quit well
• How not to quit
• What to do in a notice period
• What not to do when you quit

Enjoying this content? Please rate and subscribe on your preferred platform, and let us know what you think! [email protected]

There’s a few life updates in this one - which shape some of the content of the second season. So don’t miss out!

If you like our content you can follow us both on our personal platforms:

• Bec's Linkedin & Substack
• Annie's Linkedin & Substack