Mastering the Art of Career Transition and Networking with Expert Jane Ashen Turkewitz

Experienced executive recruiter Jane Ashen Turkewitz offers valuable insights from the world of recruitment to enhance your competitiveness in today's challenging job market. In this episode, we delve into the following topics:

1. Navigating the Complex Landscape of Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS)
2. Maximizing the Effectiveness of Networking
3. Reimagining the Art of Cultivating Professional Connections
4. The Significance of Strategic Career Planning for Your Career Path
5. Gaining Perspective on Intentional Decision-Making in Your Career

Show Guest

With over two decades of experience in career services and executive recruitment in New York City, Jane Ashen Turkewitz specializes in connecting high-level talent, from VPs to C-suite executives, with opportunities in digital media and emerging technology. 

She excels in placing talent across diverse roles, including marketing, product development, sales, business strategy, communications, editorial, video production, and creative positions. 

Currently, Jane plays a multifaceted role at UTNY, The University of Texas at Austin's NYC program, where she serves as an adjunct instructor, offering guidance to students in navigating the competitive job market and interview process. She also spearheads partnership development and program oversight, facilitating internships with various organizations.

 Jane is recognized for her career insights on LinkedIn and in prominent publications, and she has been a panelist at industry events. Before her career in career development and recruiting, Jane excelled as a marketing executive at Seventeen Magazine, Disney, and The New York Times Company.  Follow Jane Ashen Turkewitz on LinkedIn 

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:46

This is the career refresh podcast and I'm your host, jill Griffin. This week, I have the pleasure of interviewing Jane Ashen Turkowitz. She is a career services professional and an executive recruiter in New York City with more than 20 years experience. Jane and I met digitally years ago and have always kept in touch, and she's such a incredible thought leader and what she is sharing today. This is definitely an episode where you want to grab a pen, you want to open your notes out, because she is talking about all the things from how to get through the applicant tracking systems and how to network, and that we're not treating it as a transactional conversation but to really think about it in the way of building a relationship. Currently, jane is in partnership and development oversight for University of Texas at New York City, which is UTNY, and it is a play space experiential learning program at UTNY. Jane develops partnerships with corporations, nonprofits, art institutions and associations to assist UTNY students in securing semester long internships in New York City People. She is doing tremendous work here. She also teaches UT students how to navigate their way through the interview process and get hired by some of the most competitive companies in the world and in one of the most competitive job markets we've seen in recent time.

Speaker 1: 2:12

She is a featured blogger and she writes regularly about career related topics on LinkedIn. She's also published variety of articles in consumer trade publications. Her work has been featured in Business Insider, ad week, imedia L, the ladders real simple, just to name a few. She has also been a panelist at industry events, including women's in communication, and you can also find her advice in the book Wanted a New Career the definitive playbook for transitioning to a new career or finding your dream job, by Marlo Lyons. Jane is an expert in this area. She has spent her career prior to being a recruiter, serving as a marketing executive, where she rose to the ranks of several companies like Seventeen Magazine, disney and the New York time. She's a graduate of University of Michigan and an average traveler, and she currently resides in Westchester with her husband, two kids and her dog.

Speaker 1: 3:07

Dig into this episode, as always. If you have any questions, email me at hello at jillgriffincoachingcom, and listen. We can always bring Jane back. If you have questions, we can do an FAQ. We can bring her back and get your questions answered. Friends, thank you for being here. I wish you a beautiful week, one that is filled with so much possibility. Now here's Jane. Hey, jane, I am so excited that we get to have this conversation. I know we've been trying to do this for a while, so I'm glad that you're here today with me.

Speaker 2: 3:37

Hi, jill, thanks so much for having me Thanks.

Speaker 1: 3:42

So, as I ask everyone, take us through your career journey. Like, you are a top, well-known recruiter and you've made it a pivot recently into going on to the academic side of things and recruiting there. But, like, take us through how you got there, being over 20 years of doing professional services and executive recruiter. You've got a lot of information to share with us today and I want you to tell us how you got there.

Speaker 2: 4:07

Yeah, sure. So I do like to start off by saying this, and I promise I won't be 20 minutes long but I majored in Russian history at the University of Michigan and people are always fascinated by that because what did you, why and how did you end up doing what you're doing? My point in saying this is that it doesn't matter what you majored in. This is for your younger listeners. You never know where your career is going to pivot.

Speaker 2: 4:33

I started out at the New York Times in market research, then went into marketing. I spent about 10 years on the marketing side in major media organizations when I decided I wanted to do something that was a little bit more people oriented, and that's when I took a stab at recruiting. It came by fortuitously to me. I was thinking about it in my own brain and I never said anything to anyone, and the only recruiter that I ever worked with happened to ask me if I was interested in a marketing director role at Us Magazine and I said actually I'm pregnant, and she said, hmm. She said, well, how would you like to work for me as a recruiter? And I said I can't believe. You just asked me that and that is how I started recruiting. So I do believe it was yeah, there was.

Speaker 2: 5:17

There was karma, cosmic energy that put me there, and it was the best decision I've ever made in my life, and I always worked for sort of boutique agencies helping them to build up their digital businesses when Web 1.0 started, and then I opened my own firm called High Touch Executive Search back in 2014, in which I focused focused on executives only Okay.

Speaker 1: 5:43

And then recently you made the switch to go to University of Texas Austin.

Speaker 2: 5:49

Yes, I did. So what happened is I started doing a fair amount of writing and blogging on career development, job search strategy and leadership and, lo and behold, I started getting millions of readers on LinkedIn which was really shocking and getting picked up by the business insider and all these other places and I was like, wow, I have something that I can give back here. I have something that people are interested in. I want to help students. I really want to help students who are just trying to navigate their way into the world of careers and who's teaching them this stuff really from a recruiter's point of view, from somebody who's been in the business for so long? So I started building my resume and I think this is really important for anybody out there who's looking to pivot.

Speaker 2: 6:36

You can't just pivot. You have to actually do things to make yourself someone that people want to hire in a different industry. So I started doing some speaking arrangements, spoke at the University of Michigan, spoke at PACE, did some stuff with the ANA, and then this opportunity opened up at the University of Texas at Austin and I jumped on it, became an advisor first for a year and came on board in 2020. I am still based in New York working for a New York program that they set up for New York based internships. Okay.

Speaker 1: 7:13

So I want to talk about a few things that you said over the last few minutes. So one, russian history, and the takeaway is that you're not just a recruiter, you're a student. You're a student, you're a student. And the takeaway of that, which I hear all the time I studied law, I studied finance, I studied marketing this is what I'm going to have to go back to school, I'm going to have to get a different degree. I mean, maybe, maybe, not Right. So the idea that what you study is wonderful, right, great. You have knowledge in an area. How can you apply that in a different way? I think that's the first point that I heard you make.

Speaker 1: 7:51

The first thing that I learned from you is that you need to be strategic about it, and one of the things that I always talk to people about is how are you thinking about your professional brand, and whether you're putting your professional brand out there on a social media platform like a LinkedIn, or whether you're working your industry and going to trade events and, you know, looking for opportunities to be a speaker. You have to put yourself out there so that you can be noticed. And then, third, is you did it in stages, right? So you're getting picked up by some of the trades and, as you said, business insider. And then it was also advising to UT. I guess it's UTNY right, so advising to them and then eventually becoming right. So it's the various stages of it. It didn't happen necessarily overnight and I love that. I think that's applicable to so many people in their job search, especially in our current market.

Speaker 2: 8:41

Absolutely. I think that it's a long hike. It's not the race, and I always say to people I wrote a piece about this after I took this position with UTNY this did not happen overnight. I had to build stepping stones to get where I needed to do and I had to make some sacrifices on compensation in order to get where I wanted to be. But I'm very fortunate at this point because I've got the ability to choose purpose over profit and that's where I am in my career right now. It's really important for me to feel a sense of purpose in what I do and every single time I have a student retell to me and tell me that they got this great internship or they're coming back to New York because they got a job at NBC Universal and they utilized all the skills that I gave them to get there. I cannot tell you how rewarding that is, but it did take steps and a process for me to get here.

Speaker 1: 9:38

So my takeaway to that for our listeners is you are creating your next job today. You were in your job. You are doing what you need or if you're applying the actions you take today are creating what you're doing in the future. So, reading, studying, networking and where I know you and I are going to go into a bit around networking and overall communications in our conversation today but those are the things that you're doing today to create yourself the opportunity in the future. It is to your point, the long game.

Speaker 2: 10:09

Absolutely, and I would just. The only thing that I would add to that, jill, is that I feel like sometimes you don't even know where that path is going to take you, so you might be laying down, and that's okay. Yeah, exactly, you might be laying down those stones, but you don't realize where you're going to go with it. And that's the situation where I found myself. I had no idea that I was going to end up going in this direction, but it happened, and I made a plan of how I knew I wanted to get here, and you know exactly what you said. I took the necessary steps to build my resume, to build my brand, to build a voice and to get noticed.

Speaker 1: 10:48

Perfect. I use the analogy sometimes of like making a snowman, where your career is like that, where you're pulling in all of these pieces to sort of build it up, but it takes time to pull in those pieces to create the first snowball, the next snowball, right? That's the way I look at it. So, as long as you're in that space where you're thinking consciously about your career strategy and what it is that you want, even if you don't know ultimately what you want, you know what you want to feel. You know kind of. You know.

Speaker 1: 11:16

Are you working for purpose? Are you working, doing meaningful work? Very different, right? Making a difference is outward work. Meaningful work is a personal choice. No one has to know how meaningful. So what are the things that you want to think about as you're building your career strategy that everything that we're talking about today really lines up well for. So I want to get into the article. I think it was an article or newsletter that you posted on LinkedIn, which I know got a lot of traction. So why don't you take our listeners through that story around the student and the internship?

Speaker 2: 11:53

Yeah, so recently I made a posting. I have a student who had applied for an internship at an agency, a PR firm in New York, and she developed a relationship with a recruiter there who manages early careers. They spoke multiple times. She had a couple of interviews set up with different departments, exploratory stuff. Everybody really liked her and as she was kind of moving through the process, she ended up getting another internship offer and since she was coming from Texas to New York, you know there was a time period that she needed to adhere to and she decided that she just wanted to accept this internship. It was a good offer. She didn't want to have to work on it the whole semester and be stressed out. Lo and behold, the recruiter from this agency saw on the student's LinkedIn profile that she had received another offer and accepted it and sent her a note and said you know so and so I see you received another offer and accepted it. Congratulations, happy for you, but so disappointed. We were really hoping to bring you on as an intern this summer. I hope that we can stay in touch for the future.

Speaker 2: 13:02

The student never wrote her back and subsequently saw that recruiter and she shared the story with me and she. She looked at me and she said I was really disappointed and I said, oh, she should have written you back and she said she should have. Like, we really liked her and and I thought she was interested in in us as a company and that we were building relationship and just felt like it was a very transactional interaction versus her really wanting to be here in the future and I feel like she missed an opportunity there. So I wrote about this on LinkedIn and I would say most people said you know, great advice to the student. You know, relationship building is so important, important. But it did have a few people who wrote to me and said they didn't understand what the problem was. It was not an issue, whatever, right.

Speaker 2: 13:53

Recruiters blow us off all the time and you know, and that just hurts my heart, and I'd say the old Jane would have responded to that and tried to explain it further. But I'm kind of dumb doing that. I feel like you know what. If you don't understand the messaging here and the importance of it, I'm not here to teach that to you. You can make those bad decisions, but when you're out there and you're interviewing, if you have a recruiter who is responsive and wants to have a relationship with you, that's a gift and it doesn't happen as often as it should, but when it does, you should take advantage of it, in my opinion.

Speaker 1: 14:32

And perfect example. I mean I think you and I I don't think you ever placed me anywhere, but I think you and I first met 20 years ago Probably have been connected in each other's career where I've referred people to you or you've asked me if I've known people. I mean, that's what it's about and I think you know I don't know that we're ever going to have data on this we might. But I also wonder if the impact of COVID on the current students who were in school and therefore went remote and therefore their own education took on a different form, where it wasn't face to face and we weren't, wasn't about relationships in the same way, because everything went remote. Now they're in the workforce and I often wonder, because it is my 25 years of building a network and a relationship in an industry I mean I come out of media, marketing, advertising, technology, love that industry. I work adjacent to that now where I help people, you know, as an executive coach in that industry.

Speaker 1: 15:36

But it's that industry that kept me, kept me supported and intellectually connected through COVID, as we were all in lockdown in New York City. That's the, that's the basis for so much of my professional career and the idea of not having that or not having built that, and that's what I'm sad to me, but I go. Ok, great, you got to jump where you go next. If you don't have a network to talk to people, not only what are you seeing, but who do you know? And you know how can we help each other in reciprocity through this. What are you seeing around the same idea and what's going on today and how we can help our listeners really, and that's what I think is the most important thing about relationships differently.

Speaker 2: 16:18

I think that COVID is part of it, but I also just think the nature of technology and social media. And you know phone use and just you know people just don't talk to each other anymore. There was just an article that I read the other day that basically says the new etiquette with phones you don't leave messages, you send a text and say can you speak?

Speaker 1: 16:41

Which is why I'm like, just try it, I have agency. I don't want to talk to you. Here's an idea. I cannot pick up the phone.

Speaker 2: 16:48

Right, but that's not what we do right. And if you look at I don't like to generalize necessarily too much, but I would say the majority of younger people are not very comfortable picking up the phone and calling people or leaving messages. It's not the way that they were brought up, it's not how they learned, and so I think those two things are certainly affecting students and their ability to be more communicative on a verbal level and a relationship building level. I also think that you know networking is a bad word. Just most people think of it like four letter word. Okay, love this.

Speaker 2: 17:26

When I train my students, what I say to them networking is not a bad word and you need to. What you need to do is flip it. So you need to stop looking at network as doing something to help yourself, but offering yourself up as being able to contribute. So let me give you an example of, if I might please. I tell my students that you might be interested in organization or a company for an internship and you might not see an internship for that company. So figure out who the hiring manager is at that in the department that you're interested in and reach out to them. And when you reach out to that person.

Speaker 2: 18:00

What you're going to do is you're going to say I'm coming to New York. I'm going to be there from January through May of 2024. I'm looking for an internship in marketing for an entertainment and media organization that's in medium growth and I'm really interested in your organization. Could you use an extra pair of hands this spring? I'd love to be able to help you. So you're flipping it. You're not saying how can you help me, but here I'm offering to help you and I will tell you it works. But you have to teach the students how to do this, because they're not intuitively going to do this.

Speaker 1: 18:38

I got news for you.

Speaker 2: 18:40

I think some of my executives, your executives, listening to this, might be having an aha moment as well on this point.

Speaker 1: 18:46

I mean, I think it applies for all of us, right? That's why, when I mentioned reciprocity, so often it's like I don't want to network. I don't know what to say to the guy, right, Because you're coming at it under the veil of an ask. I need something, and I don't know how to say that because I'm going to feel off or it's going to feel awkward, versus coming and sharing. We're talking about the entertainment industry and the marketing industry. Well, the writer's strike just ended. Maybe there's a point of view that you have on that where you can reach out to someone and have a conversation and now, next thing, you know you're not asking for anything but by default, you're showing your thought leadership about how that applies. You're able to do that and you're not necessarily being like gimme gimme. It's being in conversation with people.

Speaker 2: 19:35

Right, and I think the two words that you said were really important to me are thought leadership. You can't go into these conversations without having done research and coming with a point of view and knowledge, because that's not going to get you anywhere. In my own example, I will tell you. When this program, utny launched University of Texas in New York and I wanted to be a part of it, I reached out to the associate dean who manages this program and they didn't say hey, I'm in New York City, I'm looking for an opportunity to get into career development and help students. Would you be open to having a conversation? What I said was hey, I'm an executive recruiter in New York. I've been here my entire career. Have connections across entertainment, media technology, any kind of business you can think of. Let me help you make connections for your program.

Speaker 1: 20:28

I mean right, there is a best use case of how to approach people and go about it. I also recommend to my clients and to my listeners that whatever trades or whatever podcast or whatever media you're consuming about your specific industry, to be keeping, however you wanna do, a repository, but to be keeping links and articles at the ready so that you're making your own life one a little bit easier and then when you connect with someone, you can be useful and maybe share. Oh, I saw this podcast that relates to what we were talking about. Again, you're showing that thought leadership. But doing that little by little so that you always have a fresh repository, is a lot easier than oh gosh, I have an interview next week and now it's all of a sudden it's like the night before the final and you're cramming. It's a completely different energy where you're able to come in with ease, versus panic and graspy and like I gotta figure this out. It's totally different energy.

Speaker 2: 21:24

Yeah, and I would also just like to add something to that. I mean, that is all very true, but I also think that what happens with networking is that it does tend to be a little transactional when people don't really know how to do it. So, after you make that connection, after you have that interview with that recruiter who seems to be interested in you but wasn't able to pull the trigger as quickly as you would have preferred, stay in touch with that person. After you've had your internship or your job, stay in touch with that person. Connect with them on LinkedIn when it's their birthday, send them a birthday message. Set up Google searches so that you get information on what's going on with that company or organization, so you can send your contact a note and say oh, I just read about blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 2: 22:07

Congratulations on that new business win or congratulations on your promotion. Stay in touch, don't just reach out when you need something.

Speaker 1: 22:15

Yes, all beautifully, beautifully said. So I wanna ask you a couple of very specific questions that I see on LinkedIn regularly that people will ask me. I hear my other friends that are recruiters talk about too, and it's just. I know there's not a one size fits all for everyone, but let's talk about what is your definition of getting ghosted?

Speaker 2: 22:42

I love this question. I remember once I got into like a little online discussion with somebody who insisted that being ghosted is when a recruiter does not get back to you, even if you applied for a job. Technology has made it extremely easy sorry, it easy to get your resume in an applicant tracking system, but what it has done is made it extremely difficult to get your resume actually reviewed by a hiring manager. So any one opportunity could get 10,000, 100,000 applications and I am not joking. There is absolutely no way a recruiter can get back to every single person who applies for a role. Okay, it's just not feasible. That's why they have these tools where you can set up automatic replies to anyone who has not interviewed Thank you for your application. Fortunately, we're not going to consider your candidacy at this time. At least it's a response, right.

Speaker 2: 23:38

Ghosting is when you actually interact with a recruiter or hiring manager or both and you interview for a job. And I would say even once, if you interview with a recruiter and the recruiter says I'll get back to you and let you know what next steps are If you don't hear from that recruiter or hiring manager, I consider that to be ghosting the recruiter or hiring manager who interviews you, even if it's one, should get back. It's not that difficult. It takes five seconds to send an email to the people that you have actually interviewed for a role. I'm not talking about 10,000 applications for a resume, right, right. So that's my personal feeling. And you get multiple emails for a candidate and the candidate just wants to know what's going on. Where am I in the process and you don't get back to them. Shame on you as a person. Shame on you as a person. It's not nice.

Speaker 1: 24:30

I love that because I think it also releases a little bit of the pressure on what I see is like recruiters ghosted me, blah, blah, blah. So if you've had a conversation and they're saying, yeah, we're gonna put you in the list of candidates to move forth, and you don't hear back yeah, that's ghosting. But if you've applied, you're gonna get back to me, to any of the online ATSs and you've submitted a resume and you don't hear back, while it is really really easy to set up some AI technology to have an automated response Thanks so much for moving forward we're not moving forward with your application at this time. That's not ghosted Ghosting when you really don't hear anything again.

Speaker 1: 25:14

Right, you're expecting to hear.

Speaker 2: 25:16

You ask them to have a conversation after you've been considered. And the most egregious ghosting, as we all know, is when someone goes through three, four, five, six rounds of interviews, gives up all their time and then they don't ever hear anything, and that is just. I just don't understand that at all.

Speaker 1: 25:33

I just don't, and it does happen. It does happen, unfortunately. Yes, it does happen To that. How do you break through the ATS Meaning if the applicant tracking software or system, depending on how you want to look at it is out there and you see a job posted? I'm always out there noodling around because I'm sending jobs that I see to clients all the time, like here this might be relevant to you and we know people there. How?

Speaker 2: 26:00

do you bust through? Yeah, it's hard, it's really hard and you have to stick with trying to get an internal referral. That's what your goal is in an ATS shell get an internal referral. An internal referral goes way further than you just applying into any applicant tracking system. So how do you do that?

Speaker 2: 26:20

So for my students, I tell them first to look for alum. Look for alum. Alum are always looking to help students not always, but most of the time. So you're going to get some response and your goal is to not ask them to give you an internal referral without speaking to you. Nobody is going to do that. You have to develop a relationship with them, have a conversation, ask them questions, go into that conversation prepared to lead the discussion. The biggest mistake you can do is ask somebody to get on the phone with you and not be prepared to lead the discussion. Have the discussion with somebody. Hopefully it's going to go well at the end of that conversation. Hopefully they're going to say I know you apply for this role. I'm going to send my colleague a note telling them that we spoke and giving an internal recommendation. If it is not an alum, it becomes a little bit more difficult, but not impossible.

Speaker 2: 27:10

You have to figure out who the hiring manager is in the department that you're looking to get into. Oftentimes, 99% of the time, especially in the larger companies a recruiter is screening you out or in. So if you and they've got a gazillion, gazillion, gazillion resumes, you can get in through the hiring manager. The hiring manager might be interested once you reach out to them directly. I will tell you.

Speaker 2: 27:35

I sat in as interim head of HR for a technology company for six months. Every single time somebody reached out to the CEO of that company and got themselves out of the ATFs. The CEO handed me the resume and said can you talk to this person for me? Wow, there you go Now. She was a pretty special lady. She was pretty special. Not everyone's going to do it, but if you can reach out to the hiring manager and write a thoughtful note about why they should consider you and make sure you understand their company, write a smart cover note or a smart cover email, there's a really good chance that you'll get a response. Yeah, you might not get it on everyone, but if you keep doing it, you will and you'll get better at it.

Speaker 1: 28:21

The thing that you said that, I think, is that I want to put an extra spotlight on because I get this a lot. When people pitch me to come on my show on the podcast, they'll be like I do this, I want to be on your podcast. It's the same thing as you going to someone who's an alumnus of your university and saying you and I both went to the same college and I really want to get a job there. You are putting all of the invisible labor on the person you're outreaching so that they have to make the connection, versus you saying here are my skills, here's what I can offer, getting clear, of bringing something to the conversation.

Speaker 1: 29:01

There's a way of building that relationship where you can be useful and also be really, really conscious of time. Meaning someone is busy, they may only have 10 or 15 minutes. What are the two questions you want to ask them? How are you in and out strategically? How are you also mindful and saying I've taken up a lot of your time? Is there anything I can do for you? Meaning they might say we're looking for interns this year. If you have any friends or any other graduates, we'd love to hear some. You can be helpful and be useful to them also.

Speaker 2: 29:37

Yeah, absolutely. And I would say also, one thing I always say to students is, when you reach out, you need to say to them this is what I'm interested in in your outreach. Don't make them say, well, what are you interested in? Yeah, don't be coy, this is not the church. Don't make them gas. I just had another idea when we were talking. I feel like every single university has their special little places. University of Michigan has a place that has the best muffins on the planet. So if I was going to be a student I was reaching to an alum from the University of Michigan who took the time to get on the phone with me I would send them a dozen muffins from that place that everybody knows is famous on the campus. Oh, I love Send a little. Thank you, I love that.

Speaker 1: 30:24

You could be remembered. You will be remembered, yeah, and to your point. So to recap, do your homework, read the bios, even if they are an alumnus. Do they have a LinkedIn profile? What can you know about them? Don't be stalker-ish, but do a gentle search. Maybe they spoke at a recent industry conference and you can acknowledge or comment on what you saw, or give them a compliment that's authentic about what you saw and again, be useful. And then, if it fits that type of follow-up, I mean, you definitely become memorable, that's for sure.

Speaker 2: 31:01

Yeah, and the other thing that I would say is that I do think that sometimes people are shy and this is really hard to get them to do, and when I say you have to lead the conversation, some students get really nervous about that. Well, so I pepper them with questions that they can, different types of categories of questions that they can ask, and I always say this to the students when in doubt and when in panic, ask them to tell you about themselves. Everyone likes to talk about themselves. That is your, that you can always lean on that if you need to.

Speaker 1: 31:36

Yes, and the last thing I would say is don't ask them anything that's Google-able, like. Don't ask them like what do you see in the job market, like right, and don't ask them things like do you have any feedback on my resume or how I can get this job? No, you have an outplacement counselor. If you're still in college, right, you've been outplaced in counselor. Or there's enough resources whether it's someone like myself as a career coach, or enough free resources out there that you can get feedback in those ways that this person that's not what they're there for in this moment.

Speaker 2: 32:12

That is such a good point. I mean, what you're looking to ask is well, how did you end up getting at this company? What do you like the most? Tell me about the culture, what do you think are the top three things that really stand out in terms of the culture of the company? Or how did you get into your position? Why did you choose this company?

Speaker 1: 32:30

Yes, yes, all excellent, excellent, ok. So the next question I have for you that comes in. A lot is all. Right, I've been through the interviews. I might be a semifinalist. I think I'm in the top pool. I've had, I mean, I know someone, a client of mine, who's at like 10 meetings and each meeting has been more than one person in the interview. Right, it's a very high position, level position. It's going to be a very public facing position. Fine, they're putting a lot of rigor on it. But now it's been two weeks. So what do you do? How much is too much? You've written your thank you notes. You've written your follow-ups. What do you do now?

Speaker 2: 33:19

Yeah so.

Speaker 2: 33:20

I think part of this is that at the end of your interview, every stage that you've gone, first of all, you should ask up front if you're going through all these different stages, can you tell me what the interview process looks like, so that you've got the interview process in place? Then, at the end, when you are through the process, what I would ask is can you give me an idea of where you are in terms of the number of people who have made it this round, if you're still looking when I should be hearing back from you? So these are trigger points for you to understand the timelines. If you're the first person to make it through all of these interviews and they still have two people that are going to go through these 10 interviews, you can bet it's going to be a couple of weeks. Yeah, so I would wait probably another three weeks if that were the case. So there's no particular exact formula, but you have to take the clues and make some inferences and then decide. I think the big thing is that you do want to follow up and express continued interest and be able to say is there any additional information that I can give you to help you decide what direction you are going to be in.

Speaker 2: 34:39

If you don't hear back, when you follow up, I would follow up again at the end of the week. So I would send the email at the beginning of the week. Then what I would do is at the end of the week I would forward that email to the same person and say following up in the subject line. Then I would write hey, jill, I just wanted to get on the top of your inbox. I know you're very busy. Just in case you didn't see my follow-up email. I remain extremely interested in this role. I know that you're interviewing. Can you let me know when you'll get back to me?

Speaker 1: 35:15

Beautiful, love it. What if you suddenly in the process and the amount of times this has happened is beyond shocking there's now an internal candidate.

Speaker 2: 35:30

Yeah, you're rejected. No.

Speaker 1: 35:32

They've fed to you Again the amount of times that I've heard this is surprising where clearly they're always encouraged to hire and promote within, but something happened where that candidate didn't surface until they were well into the external interviewing process. So they're seeing other candidates and then suddenly we have an internal candidate we need to interview. Now everyone that's on the list that has been interviewing externally is thinking, oh great, I'm never going to beat out an internal candidate. What advice would you give there?

Speaker 2: 36:04

My guess would be that the internal candidate was probably in the process all along. That's one thing, I would say. They're having backup conversations just in case. I would say that the reality is internal candidates usually do win. That's why you don't put all of your eggs in one basket. It is a two-way street. You do not take yourself off the market. You do not stop interviewing until you have an offer in your hand. Period End of discussion.

Speaker 1: 36:40

I did a podcast a few months ago about how job offer or job searching and dating are very similar. Until there's a ring on it, you keep out there and you keep having conversations. If you're not engaged, you don't have an offer, you're a free agent. Keep going 100 percent.

Speaker 2: 36:58

It is a common analogy, for sure. Also, if it were easy, it wouldn't be special.

Speaker 1: 37:09

What advice would you give to someone who's been in the market a while? We're in this wonky time where wages are still high, unemployment is still low, but yeah, there have been in certain sectors there absolutely have been layoffs, which creates adjacent layoffs because of the supporting or just people being nervous of like I don't really know what to do 90 days left in our year. What advice would you give to people who have been out there searching for a while?

Speaker 2: 37:37

Yeah, there's a lot of people out there searching and actually I will say like recruiters are hurting worse than ever. I've never seen this many recruiters laid off. It's really unbelievable and I would say that you have to keep at it. Keep trying, but don't keep smashing your head into the wall to no avail by just sending your resumes into an applicant tracking system. If you're hitting that quick apply on LinkedIn and that's all you're doing, you will not get a job. You won't. You just won't. You have to network your way in. You have to keep trying to network, and that can be very difficult for people who are not Taipei, but you have to become comfortable being uncomfortable. You have to get out there. The other thing that I would say is that you have to pencil in some self care.

Speaker 1: 38:30

You have to you and I knew you and I are in a line. I think the same thing. The universe has given you the gift of time. Don't spend all day staring at your MacBook and thinking that you're going to be searching for a job. Searching for a job all day long. It's not helpful for your brain and self care needs to take precedent.

Speaker 2: 38:47

You can't, and what you can do is you can mark your calendar let's say, three hours a day to work on your job search, and then you need to go out, you need to go take a walk, you need to take a hike. You might be strapped on cash, so you don't want to spend money. There are plenty of things that you can do for free to clear your mind and take care of yourself, and because it can be mentally exhausting and it's so important to take that time to care for yourself. The other thing that you can do is look into trying to make yourself a little bit more marketable. So it could be that you take some classes, or even if it's an online certification program that's less expensive, that will help to make you a little bit more marketable. I think that's good.

Speaker 2: 39:31

Volunteer, if you can Do something good. Go to conferences In your industry. When you see a conference is happening, raise your hand and see if you can help, because if you help, even on a volunteer basis, you're working with people and networking with people, and people are getting to know your work ethic and how you are and who you are, and they're going to be more likely to help you. So you have to get out there.

Speaker 1: 39:58

Yeah, and to that point, I've seen a lot, at least in New York City conferences. If you volunteer like we have advertising week coming up shortly if you volunteer a lot of times, you'll get to attend some of it for free in order to keep costs down. And also, I would say, check out your local library, either to volunteer or to take courses A lot of times. If you have a library card, you can attend a lot of those courses and classes for nominal $10, $15 type things, and sometimes they're also free in order to keep costs down. And the last area that I would say is LinkedIn.

Speaker 1: 40:39

If you are on LinkedIn, there are a lot of courses that LinkedIn has and what LinkedIn also likes is that, from an algorithm standpoint, when you take those courses, you come up higher in the search returns when recruiters are looking for you. So, things to keep in mind and making sure that you're optimizing that LinkedIn profile Remember that your resume is one part of the marketing document Right now. Your LinkedIn is the other part of the marketing product. So you are the product that we are marketing right now. We need to make sure that both those entities, both the resume and the LinkedIn profile, are updated, because you're going to come up higher in the search returns if you do so.

Speaker 2: 41:17

Yeah, and connect with people. Don't forget to do that. Ask people to connect with you. People will mostly say yes. The more connections you make is very helpful. Also, you can teach yourself things Like from a technology point of view. Let's say, you want to learn Excel. You're not a master at Excel. It's easy enough during take an hour out of your day to do some video tutorials that you can find online for free to become really good at something like.

Speaker 1: 41:46

Excel, and YouTube has a ton of really good videos that you can also find too. So all good, jane, this was really helpful. I know that everyone who's listening to this is probably going to rewind and listen to it again and grab a note and jot down some of your thoughts, so I really appreciate you sharing your expertise with our listeners today. I will put in the show notes where you can follow Jane on LinkedIn. It is a treat to see the content that she writes and the good that she's putting out into the world, and I thank you for being here, jane.

Speaker 2: 42:21

Thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure.