← The Futur with Chris Do
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- [00:00]
A
I've seen in my DMs in the last couple of months, so many different people say I haven't worked in a year, six months, I haven't worked in two years. Something's going on. So we know it's already really hard to get the opportunity where there's a job opening and you think you're ideal fit for it and no one calls you or you actually get the call and you get the interview, but you're so out of practice, you don't even know what to say. So sometimes you go FUBAR on the whole thing. So Jules here, Joel Kim, who's a longtime collaborator of ours on the pod and elsewhere, she's a coach and she's going to share some stories about how she's helped someone who hasn't been able to get any opportunities to land it. So we're talking about how to land the job interview and how to get it in the first place so you stop bombing. Jewel, welcome to the show.
- [00:46]
B
Thank you, Chris. Always fun to do this with you. Thanks for having me.
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A
Okay, why don't you take us through what you plan on talking about?
- [00:55]
B
So today we're going to be talking about some of the people that I've been coaching over the past couple of years now. I'm an executive coach. Many of you may know this, but what I don't widely advertise as much is the fact that I literally coach people and prepare people for their interviews. So if you have a job interview lined up, or even if you're getting ready to get back on the job market and you want help for the fixing your resume, you want help positioning yourself correctly. There is a certain approach to this entire process that I think 99% of you are just not aware of. So you go into it and you just kind of slap together your resume. Maybe you stress for a couple of weeks or a couple of months, you don't actually put in the work to fix your resume the way that you want, nor do you understand even basic things like how your resume is ingested into the systems. For most companies, what ends up happening is that your resume ends up never being seen by anybody human because it's already been filtered out by the systems that these companies are using, especially if they're going through systems like indeed or the other big job tools. So we are going to cover some of just the easy lift, like very low hanging fruit that you can fix today just to make sure that your resume at least gets through that first cut and, and get some human eyeballs on it, which is then how you get a chance at landing an interview or at least a phone screen. So if you don't already know this, how most companies will handle this entire process when they're looking for somebody to fill a position is they'll put out a job posting, they'll get flooded with often hundreds, if not thousands of resumes. The automatic system, whether it's AI or whatever software they're using, will flood, filter out, because there's no way anybody has time to look at this. And then they'll end up with some small pile of resumes to actually vet by a human, usually their HR person or the hiring manager. And then from that point on, if your resume didn't make that first cut of just getting past the automated system, then that might be why you never get a call. So first is going to be the phone screen. There may be a follow up phone screen and then usually a job interview, which these days is often virtual. Now the other part that we'll be covering today is once you do get the golden ticket to get the interview, what do you do, how do you prepare for this? What are the kind of things you need to say and how do you present yourself while remaining in integrity and not being a liar? So that's what we're going to cover. And I have somebody who I've been coaching just over the last month and a half who literally landed a job offer last week, which was amazing. So happy for her. Let's get right into it. Since I teed it up and first I'm going to share the story of my client, Angela. She told me that she has literally applied to 250 plus applications. It may be even closer to 300 over the past six, seven months. And I've been coaching her for the past year, not on interviews, but on other various things, you know, job and life type of issues. But she recently wanted to move more into a full time role and at the same time she got laid off, which as you know, can be very tough on you mentally and emotionally. So what ended up happening is she'd been applying for a while. I told her there are certain techniques that you really need to activate and apply to this process if you want a chance in hell to even get seen by somebody who's human. I know that whenever I coach somebody new on any of this process, it can often feel like an avalanche. It's very overwhelming. And what a lot of people or most people will generally do is they'll hear it and then it'll feel like Too much work, so they won't implement it right away, which is totally natural. Now, I think she went on for a couple of months without getting any interviews, and then she sort of hit rock bottom. She was super discouraged, which I think we've all been. And then she finally reaches the point where she's like, I'm, like, I have to find a job. Like, things are getting a little bit desperate and I'm stressed all the time because I don't have a job and I really need one. And so this is where I say, okay, so are you ready to get down to it? Because I promise you, I have the answers. I promise you your results will change if you just do even half of the stuff that I'm about to tell you. And she says yes. That was roughly two months ago, or maybe less now. Since then, some of the major things that I had her stop doing was the spring and praying approach. So as the name suggests, this is where you take your resume and you just blast it across as many job applications as possible. So she was applying to probably 20 jobs a day, easy. Yeah. If not more. And this is where you take your resume. You don't make any changes to it, and you're literally just hitting apply, apply, apply, and just sending email, sending emails, submitting your resume through the System, maybe through LinkedIn, whatever that platform is. There's no cover letter. There's no even really looking at the job description. There's no research on the companies or the jobs to see if you would remotely want this job if they were to call you for an interview. Right. You're just doing it like a mass market approach. So that was the first thing I told her she had to stop doing. Because what most people do not know, and this is my time having worked at Amazon, I was not a recruiter. But the thing that is not very commonly known is that at Amazon or big companies like Amazon, such as Microsoft, whenever you go in for a job interview, you are probably going to face what's called a loop, an interview loop. This means you'll be interviewed from anywhere by, let's say, two to four people. And in some cases it may be even five to six, depending on how senior the role is. So you're going to face a loop. And because Amazon takes its hiring practices very seriously, in order for you as an Amazon employee, to be even involved in that job interview loop, to interview potential candidates, you yourself have to take an interview class on how to interview. So Amazon has this principle called raising the bar. And in theory, the principle is that every person that they bring on be at least 50% better than the people who are already in the role today. So if you think about that and you say, okay, so maybe not every company out there is just like Amazon. But you're, you're thinking of this line in the sand and you're like, okay, how do I demonstrate that I'm better than at least half of the people who are already in the role? This is now, as I said, Amazon makes everybody who's, who's involved in the interview process take this class on how to interview is very illuminating. And a lot of companies like Amazon of that similar size will handle things roughly in a similar way. So I'm talking meta, Google, Microsoft, probably even slightly smaller companies, maybe like Nintendo, et cetera. So if you want to be in the tech world, these things kind of follow a similar process. Now, maybe some companies, you don't face an interview loop of one person back to back. Sometimes you'll face what feels like a firing squad, which can be a little uncomfortable. So whatever the case, I'm going to teach you some frameworks on how to handle this. And it's not going to be about memorizing a script. Okay, so when you apply to a job, I had Angela immediately dial down, and so she was going to actually start looking at job descriptions and only apply to job descriptions. That felt exciting to her. Something really positive. Not just, you know, I'm going to apply to whatever is out there as a warm body, as a human who is alive. I'm only going to look at the companies that I really want to work for. And the job actually sounds like something not just that I can do, but something that I want to do. So this immediately dialed down her number of applications to maybe one or two a day. And now this becomes much more manageable for the next part of the process, which I'm about to tell you when you look at the job description, and because so many of these systems are now handling this in an automated filter, you have to use some of the same language you see on the job description and put that into your resume. So if the job description says, we are looking for somebody who's detail oriented, your resume should say you are detail oriented, not that you are meticulous. Because guess what? The automated system is probably not going to say, hey, meticulous means the same thing as detail oriented. If you're sitting there thinking, well, this sounds stupid, I kind of agree. But again, you have to think of this more like an SEO approach. The automated system will be doing a literal word check between job description and all the thousands of resumes coming in. And that is the first cut even before automated systems were in place. I used to date somebody who was a recruiter for multiple companies, including Amazon, and he was applying the same approach. Even as a human, he would scan multiple resumes and in order to get through the thousands of resumes he had to look at per day, he was just scanning, I'm not joking, I'm not exaggerating when I say he only spent about three seconds on any person's resume because he was just scanning for certain keywords on there. And if you did not have those keywords, your resume went into the trash. So that's going to be probably the most intensive part of your resume lift is to make sure you look at the resume, you understand what they're looking for, what they're asking for, and then you start to tailor your resume to include some of those keywords. Now, the second part of this process that most people find potentially even more difficult is to rewrite each of your resume bullet points so that it actually makes sense. Now what do I mean by that? Many people out there will think I have to speak corporate, I have to insert corporate lingo jargon into my resume. And somehow that's what's going to get me noticed. I promise you it is not. And somehow if you make it through the first round filter and you get an interview, you are going to crash and burn. If somebody actually asks you what do these bullet points mean? And if you've written it in a manner where you're using weird words, you're putting bullet points on there that kind of use a lot of words but don't really say much, you are going to get caught. Is never a good look, so do not do that. So make sure that your bullet points are just stating things like how you would normally say things to a real life person, your friend even. So if your job was to interview candidates and look for a good fit, then just say that. Don't say something crazy like managed process incoming, you know, candidates and handled automated systems and coordinated projects between multiple teams and blah blah, blah. So try not to insert extra words or things, and especially do not lie. So I know that a lot of people will potentially exaggerate a little bit of what they do. Try not to do that, like just be super plain, super direct. The next part that I'm going to address, which is very easy, is just have a simple one column resume. And I'm saying this especially because Most of your audience tend to be creatives. These are people who are constantly looking to stand out. Just like you accessorize your outfits with all these embellishments. I've seen designers especially do this with their resume, meaning they put their photos on there, they put graphics, they put background watermarks, they do three column resumes. And I'm telling you, if you do that, you are already killing your chances of making it through the first round. The filter, like you've already killed it, probably by more than 50%. What happens is in the ATS, which is the Applicant Tracking System, you upload your resume and then that system will often take out, it will extract the text from your resume instead of just passing on the file as is alone. When it extracts the text from your resume, you having two columns, three columns will really f up that ingestion process a lot of the times. So maybe something that was three bullet points across the page in separate three columns will end up looking like fragments because now it's smashed them all together. So do not do this. If you put in any graphics, take them out. Your resume should be ultra simple. Your name, your contact information, your phone number, your email address, and maybe just say what city you live in, if you're paranoid about your address, and then just go from there. Have a summary at the top of the page. Basically, who you are, how many years of experience, what kind of things excite you, what you're really good at. That should be no more than four lines, maybe even just three. You move into your work experience. Now, this is where it's a toss up. If you went to a prestigious school. For myself, I consider Berkeley to be fairly prestigious for people in Chris's audience. If you went to Art center, that's very similar. Very prestigious in your industry for people who are in the computer science field, for example, my husband, he went to the University of Waterloo in Canada. Very prestigious as well. So you know the status of where you went to school. If you went to a very good school, something that holds like a strong brand and status, then it may make sense for you to list education first. Right? Just put the school you went to in your major. If you had any honors or awards during that time that are relevant to the job description that you are applying for, then maybe put those in there too. But just keep it very light. Okay, so so far we have the summary, we have your. Your education, if it makes sense to pull that forward first. And then we're going to get into your work experience. Now, one of the mistakes that I've heard recruiters complain about multiple times is that people will make claims to things. In their summary, they'll say, I've done this, this, this, you know, I've achieved, I've moved, or I've like 3x income at all of my companies. But then in the actual work experience, there is no evidence to back that up. You kind of look like a fraud. And I have literally had recruiters tell me that they hate seeing resumes like that because they don't believe these people. So you need to make sure that whatever you're putting on your resume is backed up by evidence as best you can. So if you're going to make a claim saying that you are a problem solver and you have 3x traffic to multiple sites, you know, at multiple companies, then your work experience sections for those companies need to actually show that and how you did that. Now, lastly, because we are in the age of the personal brand and people wanting to know who you are as a person, what really moves you and motivates you, you'll also want to think about including certain things that aren't necessarily professional, but things that just show who you are as a person, what kind of hobbies you have, do you speak any extra languages? Maybe you have skills in certain programs. So not just stuff like Word, but if you're a designer, maybe I would expect the baseline to be you're very skilled in Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and whatever else is out there. But perhaps you can include stuff like you're also experienced with Gen AI in Photoshop. Your experience with Midjourney, you're experienced with Dall E. Where have you traveled? Do you volunteer at places? Who are the types of people that you like to help? Or even are you a crazy cat lady like I am? Any of those things? Something that helps bring a little bit of quirk could make the difference. So keep in mind that when someone is looking to hire and they're usually quite desperate because from everything I've seen at most companies, they tend to be reactive about the process. Meaning they only hire when there are like 10 fires to put out. Like they actually should have hired maybe three months ago or even six months ago, a year ago, but they've waited until it's pedal to the metal and things are so desperate and the company is just crumbling around them and now they're hiring. So they'll tend to be quite desperate and they'll be looking for almost like anybody to fit the job. They're going to get inundated with a ton of applications, a ton of resumes, people with great experience. And so the first level filter that. That everybody is going into this is credentials, skills, and experience. Now, those three things are not that hard to meet the bar on. I know that sounds a little bit ridiculous if you're a little bit newer in your career, but I promise you, as you even achieve five years into your career, you'll find that it's not your skills and experience that really set you apart. It'll be your personality. So the first level filter that people are looking for once they get people into the interview process is can this person do the job? And if you've made it all the way to the interview, they've already mostly ticked that box. They've already decided this probably this person can probably do the job. So when you get to the interview, they'll now be vetting a little bit more deeply. Can you actually do the job? Do you actually do the things that you say you can do on your resume, which is where some testing might come in. But then they'll be looking at, will this person be a good fit in our team that already exists. Will this person be a good fit for our company culture? Do they align with our company's principles and values? What is it about this person that sets them apart from this other person? And I have a story here. I helped one of my other clients earlier this year land the job. It was at one of the most famous VC companies. I won't name which one. And the role was essentially between him and one other person. He wanted me to look over the slide deck that he had been given an assignment to do. So he had the initial phone screens, the initial short interviews, and then they wanted to bring him on to do an actual presentation. So he wanted me to look at it. I said, sure, I look at the presentation. And I said, what the f is this? This. I could just fall asleep during this. Your personality, the thing that really makes you special, your special sauce, is beyond you just doing the job. This slide deck says that you're just trying to fit yourself into the box that you think they want from you. But. But I promise you, this is not going to fly. I'm expecting you to really showcase your quirkiness and make this interesting. Now, to his credit, he actually reworked the entire presentation over the next 24 hours. He went and watched the movie I told him to watch, and then he came away and he radically like the presentation he ended up with, I don't think had even a single slide in common with the first Thing he showed me, he went and did the presentation. He knocked it out of the park. They gave him the offer, I think within three days. Not only that, the recruiter told him that the other candidate went into the presentation with exactly the kind of presentation he first showed me. And the feedback was, it was, it was like this, the other candidate and this was him way up here because he leveraged his ability to entertain and just have fun with this.
- [21:47]
A
I'm listening to the stories. There's a bunch of questions and comments in the live stream about like, how can you fit all your experience in a two page resume? Won't adding all your quirky weird hobbies and interests open you up for scams? I don't know why there's scams here. I don't know what's going on. Like you're applying for a job, how do they scam you, give you the job? I don't know. But that's a question.
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B
It's a scam if you apply to a job that doesn't exist in the first place. So it's not really about your resume at that point. Yeah, yeah, I do see those comments, so I'm going to address those. So the question of how long does the CV have to be? How do you deal with a CV that has a lot of experience and 15 years of experience? So basically the same question. I'm going to give you a secret. My resume at times has been four pages long. I know that directly contradicts a lot of the advice out there that says you should only have a one page or two page resume. I don't believe that. And I've seen other people also say that doesn't really matter to them. The only people that that matters to is when the company is only using human recruiters to vet resumes. So when you run into that situation, they don't have any filter in place or maybe even with a filter they're still getting hundreds of applications. That's when you'll have somebody who looks at a resume and be like, this is too bleeping long. I'm moving on. If that's the company you're applying to is probably not a fit anyway. I'm just going to lay it out there. I have seen many people apply with just one page and unless there are like they were a freaking superstar, they moved billions of dollars in revenue, they fixed things that were broken for 10 years. If you don't have like amazing huge projects and things to showcase that you're a superstar, having a one page resume probably not going to help you. So if you have 15 years of experience, the first thing I would say is this, you need to do a filtering process within your own experience. What I mean by that is, if you have had job positions that weren't as relevant to the job you're applying to now just trim those down. Those become just two lines, three lines at most, just to show that you were employed, but that it's not something to really pay attention to. And when you trim it down to just two to three lines, you want to save those two to three lines for your most impactful results you achieved in those positions. If there's nothing that you can say that was really special, then just go at your best, your best guess. Just pick out the things that you think would be most notable and as always, default to what's most relevant with this job description. So, notice I said earlier, you really need to tailor your resume to the job description. So if I apply to two jobs a day, my resume for those two jobs should not look the same. Will this take some work on my part? Yes. But I promise you, this is what's going to get you the results. In my history, before I started my business and I was employed, like most of the world, whenever I went through these cycles of having to look for a job, whether I was unemployed or I was already employed and looking for a job, I was applying to jobs. At most, I only ever applied to five to six jobs total within that period, whether we're talking six months or even a year. And that is because I was ultra selective in the jobs that I was evaluating. So one mindset shift you want to really pick up here is many people, many candidates go into the interview feeling like they have to prove themselves. The mindset shift is the employer has to also prove themselves to you. They are not just evaluating you to see whether you are a fit, you are also evaluating them to see if they're a fit for you. And does it make sense for you to spend the next year of your full time working life with them or the next two years. So you have to really think about that. What kind of personalities, what kind of people are at this company? If you have network connections in common on LinkedIn, I would contact those people and just be like, hey, can I get the download on what it's like to actually work there? What do the people you know say about this company? The stuff that they won't say in public? Do that research. I've seen people apply to some of the jobs that I've Put out there with six pages. Now did I ding that person? Yes, but it wasn't anything to do with it being six pages long. It was because none of the experience she listed was relevant. And she also had weird formatting, as in, I think she had three lines in between each line. So then it made me question, do you even know your job as an editor if this is the resume you're applying to? So in my past life I was a content manager, a content strategist, a product manager and an editor. If you apply to certain types of roles, you know, as a writer and editor, then I'm going to expect your resume to look better than if you're applying to something like McDonald's. No shade on people working at McDonald's. Chris, you're like, stop talking Juul.
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A
No shade whatsoever.
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B
Jewel, you get what I mean? If you're applying for a job digging ditches, then I'm gonna expect your ditch digging technique to be good. Your resume doesn't have to look amazing to me.
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A
Let me ask you a question. Have you ever applied to work at a fast food place?
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B
I have not. But I have to work in retail.
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A
So you don't know what you're talking about.
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B
I have relevant job interviews here. Oh yeah, which fast food for Arby's.
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A
And you get a form, you just fill out the form. There's no resume. They don't expect a CV. It'd be overkill for McDonald's job.
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B
Oh my gosh.
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A
But you know, this is 30 plus years ago, so they might have changed everything.
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B
Well, I don't know. Even 20 plus years ago I applied for a job at Old Navy and I had to turn in a resume plus fill in the, the form thing you're talking about.
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A
Oh, maybe that was a higher skilled job. Who knows? Who knows? You brow beating me right now.
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B
Higher skill. Do my brows look beating?
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A
You're like. Well the jobs that I've applied for require a resume. Chris. So sorry about your low labor, non skilled work. I got you.
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B
Well, what can I say? Retail. Okay, Retail.
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A
Yeah, I didn't really work retail.
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B
Well, I have worked at all kinds of places. So. There was Old Navy, there was Blockbuster. I haven't done fast food or the restaurant industry, although I've always kind of wanted to just to see if I'd be any decent at it. Yeah, but most of my experience obviously comes from corporate jobs. I worked as a, what do you call it? The, the front desk in the dorms in college. Yeah. And I've also worked as a private Tutor.
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A
So you have what we call high quality jobs where I've had just stock boy, French fried boy, and something else. I can't remember this. Another stock boy in the supermarket. So that's it.
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B
I think I've had practice, which people will say the same for you. And look at where we are today.
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A
Look at where we are. I went from the bottom to the top and nothing in the middle.
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B
Yeah. So maybe that's really the path to follow. People do it like Chris.
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A
So we have a question. What movie did you ask that person to watch? You kind of teased them and then you just dropped it and walked away. People were asking.
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B
I knew you were going to ask me that. I can't remember the name of the movie, but it was a basketball movie, so I will get back to you. I have to check my text history.
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A
Basketball Diaries. No, White man can't jump.
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B
No, it's not an older one. It's somewhat newer. It's the movie that showcases LeBron as, like, a young guy in high school.
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A
Oh, okay. They'll know.
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B
Yeah. So if you find the movie that shows not only LeBron but his, like, besties he played basketball with in high school. Yeah, that's the movie I'm talking about. The reason why I told him to watch this movie was because of how the story was set up. And I think there was another movie I told him to watch. It was. It might have been the one that talks about how is it Nike that came to the forefront for shoes? There was a movie a couple of years ago. Yeah. So there's something about Bill called Air. Is it that one?
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A
Okay, yeah. With Matt Damon. Is that the one you're talking about where they negotiate the deal with Michael Jordan?
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B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Ben Affleck's in that one too, right?
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A
I think so, yeah.
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B
So also that movie, I told him to watch both of those movies. Now that's actually a decent segue for this next part as we move into interview mistakes. The reason why I told my clients really watch those movies is because people do not understand that storytelling is really king in an interview. The people who just kind of come off average or lower than average in any interview is because they approach the interview process as something where they talk about their job history as almost like a to do list. They were at this job and they just did some stuff. And this is why I really hate the Star Method. That is all over the place out there. If you have not heard of the Star Method, it's the framework that tells you to approach every Answer to an interview question as here's the situation, here's the task, here's the action I did, and here's the result. My problem with that is that interviewers, whether they know it or not, are looking to see how you think, how do you solve problems, how do you navigate challenges? My issue with the STAR method, that framework, is that it doesn't really set you up for that. It just has you saying, well, here's some stuff that happened and then here's what I was told to do, and here's what I did, and then here's what happened. It does not set you up to look like a superstar. So instead of the STAR method, what I recommend is my framework and it's five steps and I want you to write this down if you're taking notes. The framework starts with P, which is what is the problem? What was the problem that your company was facing or that you were facing, your team was facing, the customer was facing, what was the problem? The next part of the framework is I, which stands for investigation. So once you saw this was the challenge or the problem, what research did you do? What did you start to study? What did you start looking into? What was the work you put into to try and understand this problem and what was causing it? The next part is R, which is realization. As a result of your findings, what did you realize? So, for example, one of my clients, she was telling me the story of how she, she changed some processes and she automated some stuff and then she ended up saving the company, the team, something like 70% of the time. So proposals or invoices were taking months to be paid out, which of course would make vendors really angry. They're cranky. She looked into this and then she, in her words, she just automated some stuff and cut down the invoice time down by 70%. Okay, so stuff that used to take like seven, eight weeks to pay out turned into two weeks, three weeks. And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, you are not doing this story justice. So she was missing the investigation and the realization part. So what happened here is like, as she reworked this story, she went to those teams and she literally asked them, okay, so what's going on? When an invoice comes in, what happens to this invoice? Where does it go in the system? How many people are looking at this? And she finds out that it's an entirely manual process. The invoice has to go through the hands of something like five or six people who then have to do some manual check offs in freaking Excel Spreadsheets. So she's like, oh my God, that's ridiculous. So she puts in a lot of automations in the Excel spreadsheets and she streamlines this entire workflow, which is how it ends up going from eight weeks down to two to three weeks. That's the kind of thing I'm talking about. Most of you are telling stories like the first version of how she was telling this. So again, problem, investigation, realization, and then a for action. As a result of your realization, what did you do? In my client's example, she went and implemented, implemented all of these Excel automations. So then all they had to do was upload the invoice and then from then on the system would take care of it. There were still some manual steps in the process, but she cut down so much time. And as always, time is money. If you save time, you save money. At the end of the day, you are saving the company money. And then the last part is impact. As a result of you doing this action and all of this research and investigation, what changed? What was different for the customer, for your company, for yourself, for the team? Did you change something and how long it took? Which is, you know, what it. What was the example in my client's story? Or maybe you actually saved money. So back when I was at Amazon, I was brought on to save a global translation project. The translation series was not going very well and there were a lot of people, many different moving parts in different countries and they weren't talking to each other. Plus we had a system that wasn't working very well and the editors hated this content management system. Now, as a result of me working in there and bringing together all these people, putting some band aids in place, we cut down translation costs by I think, $20 million. Right? It's not, it's not trivial. So whatever your impact is, you need to try and tie it to something. Now, where I commonly see people freaking out over this is they're like, I don't have numbers. People don't share those numbers with me. And I'm going to say this. Every time you finish a project that you know was high status, had high visibility, I want you to write down just a couple of bullet points about that project. You're going to keep that in your Google Docs or your iOS notes. And then you're going to remind yourself to go ask the project owners, the product managers, the project managers, whoever was involved, maybe it's the program manager. And you are going to ask them, hey, so what are some numbers that I can Attach to this just for my own reference. So, for example, I did some SEO work at one of the startups that I used to work at, Avvo. I overhauled, I think, 100 Q&A pages. I employed the data entry team, giving them the guidelines of how to implement some of the SEO techniques. They didn't know that's what they were doing, but that's what they were doing. I gave them the keywords to look out for, and I taught them how to approach this. As a result of this project, maybe three to six months later, those hundred pages were bringing in 30% more traffic. So you need to go and chase down people and try to put some numbers to this, whether it's money, whether it's more traffic, more revenue, time saved. The other side of this is if you can't get quantitative data, then try to get something that's qualitative, a success story, a case study of some kind, and attach it to this. What are your thoughts, Chris?
- [38:20]
A
My thoughts are your life experience is so vastly different than mine. Talking about metrics and building up a resume. It was not my intention to ever apply for a job again in my life a few months after working for a different company. So this is fascinating to me. It's a whole world like this corporate world that I don't even understand at all. So it's been fun listening to you so far. It's like, God, what was that like? How would that be if I had applied for a job? Because I haven't worked on any of those things that you talked about. So footnote, for myself, if things don't work out in the future, I better start thinking about some of these ideas you're mentioning.
- [39:01]
B
Oh, please. You and I both know you had hit those interviews out of the ballpark, out of the park.
- [39:09]
A
It's my own resume. Like, how did you do as an employee? I did great because I reviewed myself.
- [39:14]
B
That was excellent.
- [39:16]
A
Really good.
- [39:17]
B
I gave myself exceeds expectations in all categories.
- [39:21]
A
What a delight to work with, brings ideas, proactive, team player.
- [39:27]
B
Oh, my God. Okay, that's actually a really good point. You know how you and I love to talk about suitcase words, right? Those are some of the most famous suitcase words in corporate. If you see somebody list that stuff on their resume and let's say you're hiring for someone at the future, what would you ask about any of those terms? Let's say team player.
- [39:50]
A
I would ask him. Can you give me some specific examples where you demonstrated that skill that you're talking about?
- [39:56]
B
Okay, maybe we can do a Little bit of a role play here to demonstrate the average mainstream answer versus, like a really great answer. Okay, how about I give you the average answer and then you tell me what you would want to hear and you can even grade me. So A through F. So your question. Give me. You said some examples. I'm going to say, just give me one example. One of my clients, she told me, yeah, I like to help people at work. I try to spend some time and mentor them. How would you grade that?
- [40:42]
A
That would probably be a D minus. And I'm being kind.
- [40:46]
B
So tell me why.
- [40:49]
A
Broad, generic, no details, no transformation, nothing to record. And it almost sounds like a lie right now. So I'm borderline going to give it.
- [40:57]
B
An F. So what about it sounds like a lie?
- [41:02]
A
I like to help people. Okay. And that's super generic. Like, I've used software before. I've done things. I got words, so many words. It's like you haven't said anything. Give me a detail. I literally asked you for an example. And to be honest, I wouldn't say this out loud, but I'm like, I think you're pissing me off right now because I asked you for a specific example and you don't have one. So that we have a problem already. It's sending all the wrong signals to me. I've even mentored someone. Yeah, I had a cousin who's hot. It's like, so you don't know her. She goes to another town. It's like, okay, come on, let's get real.
- [41:43]
B
So when someone asks you for an example, this is now us moving into step number two of most common mistakes is people are not specific enough. Now, I have noticed that when we're talking about creatives and designers especially, there is just something very strange going on where it's almost like you guys hate words. You guys are always trying to chop things down to the fewest words possible, but you are not gifted communicators enough to choose the right words to showcase and highlight the right examples. So do not do that. So if somebody gives you the same question of, can you tell me about a time where you demonstrated being a team player? I want you to go through the framework I gave you. So anytime somebody says, can you tell me about a time, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, that is your cue to then mentally go through the framework I just gave you. Right. Problem, investigation, realization, action and impact. So how somebody could make this answer a lot better. I like to help people. Who do you like to help? Well, myself, Joel Kim. I particularly like to help Asian American women because I'm Korean American and I grew up in Alabama. I grew up amongst people feeling like I never belonged. And these days, when I go into a job interview, 99% of the time, I'm going to be faced with people who do not look like me. And that makes me feel awkward. Afghanistan. I'm always worried that I'm coming off the wrong way. I have an rbf. Maybe they don't like the sound of my voice. Maybe they don't like how I look. Maybe I just look scary. I've heard that a lot. I have gone through 10 years of corporate experience feeling like I was in a game where I didn't know the rules. And this is why I like to mentor people who were almost like the earlier version of myself. Asian American women who are trying to succeed in the workplace but don't seem to get the promotion and have literally been told that they're not confident, they're not assertive enough. So this is how I like to spend some of my time being a team player. I will devote two hours per week out of my time to mentor two members every quarter to try and get some of their soft skills leveled up. So the problem that we're facing is that Asian Americans tend to be qualified as submissive and meek, lacking assertiveness. I do not like that characterization of Asians at all. And unfortunately, there's something about our cultural background that I think lends itself to that. Asians tend to be a very hierarchical society. So when they come into the workplace, they are unconsciously bringing that in as well. So they come into it with a lot of fear and respect for authority. And I would say maybe too much respect for authority. So that's the first problem. The investigation is a lot of what I just told you. There's a lot of cultural components at play. And then investigation. I will literally ask people to record their meetings and send me their meetings so that I can observe their behaviors. Now, over the last five people I've done this with, I have realized that they don't know how to project their voice. I've realized they use a lot of hedging language, stuff like I think and I guess. And they also speak with an upward inflection in their voice. Yeah, maybe instead of, yes, assertiveness. Now, because I realized that there were key components of their presence that they weren't signaling correctly, I drew up an action plan. Here are the top three things you need to work on, and here's how you go about that. So I'LL typically work with people over 1/4 and then we'll gauge their progress every week, again with recordings, because I need receipts to see that you're putting these things into action. And then the impact is their family members, even their children will say stuff like, oh my gosh, Mommy, something's really different about you. I've had people at work tell me that their boss said that they no longer had concerns over their confidence. Can you imagine if that's you? So that's me going through the same framework. I give you this framework because it's designed to force you to be more specific. Now, even after I give people the framework, what I find is that there's still a gap to be closed. When we do the interview coaching, there's some tweaking to be had and it's almost always around the specifics. They'll often give me too many details of stuff that just nobody cares about, nobody gives an F about. And you have to remember when you give too many details that are irrelevant, the person starts mentally checking out you've given them an information overload. So sub tip 2.1 here. Okay, 2 is to be more specific. 2.1 is write out your answers. And I'm not saying that from a place of scripting, but you need to write out your answers so that you know your stories. When you go into an interview without prepping, without practicing saying the answers, without practicing writing out your answers, you are creating the experience where you're trying to learn how to play, learn how to fly the plane and fly the plane at the same time. And this is why interviews feel so awkward. You need to think of interviews almost like you going into a public speaking spot. Would you ever deliver a talk with no practice? Probably not. I mean, some of you are crazy enough to do that. And unless you have a ton of experience, like Chris, where he's done so many public speaking spots, given all day workshops, even I know that if somebody were to approach Chris and say, Chris, you need to go on in five minutes and deliver a talk about personal branding, Chris would be like, what the hell? Oh please, I don't buy it. Chris's first response, first response would probably be, how much are you paying me?
- [48:03]
A
Facts.
- [48:04]
B
It's like you got my 30k fees. Or maybe it's 50k fees for 5 minutes. Maybe it's 100k, right? Like 5 minute notice. I can do this, but it's going to cost you. Yeah, but we all know Chris can deliver the goods because he's had so much experience. So as Chris likes to say, you need to put in the reps. When we're talking about interviewing you. Putting in the reps means you practicing writing your answers down to how you would explain how you would answer some of the most common behavioral questions. Right? Can you tell me about a time when you disagreed with your manager and what you did about that? That question tends to get asked in almost every interview because people want to see how you deal with conflict. Can you tell me about a time when you weren't able to deliver a project on time? Those questions, there's a million of those out there. Go find some of those questions and then practice working your answers through the framework I gave you. Step two is to practice saying those answers. So just outline your answers. Do not script it out. Just outline. Right. Bullet point P I R A I outline some things so you can jog your memory and then practice answering that question in real time. Because 50% of what makes this awkward is you are not used to speaking of yourself. You are not used to speaking of your experience. You are not used to telling stories in a way that highlights yourself. And in a lot of cultures, we will feel uncomfortable feeling like we're tooting our own horn. If you're a woman, you may even worry that you're being arrogant somehow big headed. And I promise you that a job interview is the time where you need to pull forth all of your best highlights, your best accomplishments. You are building a brand in that interview. Step three is for common interview mistakes. Remember I said a lot of you go into the interview where it's like you're trying to learn and fly the plane at the same time. You don't want that. So number three is you need to create a story bank and you need to have enough stories of some of the results you've achieved. So it's not going to go so well. When you've only got like two or three stories, you want at least five to eight stories so that you can hit different questions with different stories. Because if you've only got like one or two stories, what happens is all the people who interviewed you, when they get together to share their thoughts and be like yes or no. And then they start to review notes and compare with each other and they realize you've really only got like one or two stories, that's when you run into some trouble here. So try to compile a list. I generally like to go 8 to 10 just so you have them. But the biggest issue here is that most people, when they're in the job, they're not recording their experiences. So anytime you do a good job at anything, any project, any scope, any level, remember, you need to take some time out of your day. This should only take 10 minutes. And you just write like a short description of what the problem was, what you did, what you investigated, what you realized. Just kind of fill in the framework already so that you don't have to try and remember. Because when too much time passes, you. You'll find that you have a really hard time remembering anything. So as you're in the job, fill in the pirai. Make sure especially you chase down people for the I bid get those numbers 30% lift $36 million saved in translation costs, things like that. For some of the workflow that I managed with the content management system, I was able to cut down workflows by 40% in some of the examples that we worked on. Yeah. So create a story bank and then attach theme labels to them.
- [51:58]
A
Thanks, Joel. I think that was informative, rich with examples and very usable frameworks. I saw people writing in PIRA or PRI or something like that in the comments a lot. Before we get out of here, can you just remind people for whoever might have tuned in kind of late, what the framework is really briefly. Just summarize that and we'll get out of here.
- [52:22]
B
Yeah. So throw away the star method for interviews and take this framework and said so. P is for problem. What was the problem? What was the challenge they were trying to solve? I is for investigation. What's the study? What's the research? What did you look into? R is the realization. What did you figure out as a result of all of the research you did? What did you learn? What was the takeaway? And so because of that, what was the action you took, which is a. And then lastly, what was the impact? Who result? Like who was impacted by this action that you took in this overall project? Was it the customer? Was it your team? Was it the company? Was it time saved? Was it money saved or was it money gained? So any of those things, you need to demonstrate impact and try to make it as quantifiable as possible. And if you can't get the metrics, you can't get the numbers, then try to at least get a story, a case study, at least one example.