Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep73: Getting interviews with Google and LinkedIn.

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to the Corporate Survivor Podcast, where we talk about how to grow your career confidence, build your skills and value, increase your salary, and the many lessons we learn in the corporate world. For more career support, click on over to www.mayping.com. This is Mayping, your corporate leader turned career coach. I hope you enjoy, like and subscribe. Welcome back to another episode of my Gotta Ping, a careers podcast that you should listen to if you want to grow your career online and offline. So welcome back to another episode of my 30-day client success story series, where in this week, we'll be focusing on job search success because one of the most stressful things that I hear from job seekers during this time is, hey,

Starting point is 00:00:50 Mei-Ping, is it now the right time for a job? Can I realistically get a good job and good career opportunity during this pandemic? And you know what? The short answer is yes, you can. Yes, you can if you're applying the right strategy and you are utilizing the correct methods to plan your career and actually look for a job that focuses on your career growth because i can wholeheartedly say this because i have so many clients who have actually achieved you know gotten new job offers they're actually really great opportunities during the pandemic so if you're not really seeing results in your job search process you might really want to reconsider how you're going about your job search and whether you're actually

Starting point is 00:01:33 applying the right strategies or maybe you're you know taking advice from the right people who know what they're talking about all right okay so in today's episode i actually want to share with you a story of my client who um to be honest, I guess for lack of a better word, he is actually a job hopper. And when he first came to me in the later part of last year, he was actually really stressed out about it. And what has happened is that throughout his career over the past, I think it's about four years, three to four years, he had consistently moved from one job to the other. So it was actually really frustrating for him. And he always felt that he couldn't perform at the job. And he was asked to leave actually multiple times.

Starting point is 00:02:17 And it was quite demotivating. And the worst thing is that I actually started hurting his own self-esteem. So when he first came to me, actually, he had really low self-esteem self-confidence and he told me that you know i don't really know what's wrong because i feel like i want to do my best but the moment i get into the job right within three months i realized that hey you know this is actually not for me so um how can i you know avoid the such situations where I get into a job and, you know, within three months, I realized that, hey, you know, this is not for me. And then when I keep looking for another job, you know, more problems come because, you know, it's not a comfortable question to get asked. Like, hey, you know, why are you leaving your job in every six months?

Starting point is 00:03:01 You know, it's actually extremely uncomfortable. And of course, it started also affecting his overall career trajectory, even though he had really good education and qualifications. But what hiring managers and recruiters see are all his jobs that is moving in and out, which is not a good impression that he wanted to create. So when I worked with him, we actually really started with the career clarity sessions

Starting point is 00:03:25 where we really talk about actually what he liked and not like about certain roles and also managed to identify several skills gap in there as well. And that's why nowadays I tell a lot of my clients to say that, hey, personality is really

Starting point is 00:03:40 like the first part of like, you know, your career planning, right? So if you don't know your personality or if you don't really understand yourself well, there's a high chance that you will get into a job that is actually not suitable for you. And unfortunately, once you get into a job, you know, it's not so easy to resign in three to six months. Or even if you did that, just like my client, you know, you will be judged and you will also affect your career options in the future because people are making a negative judgment on your on your career history and your resume which is you know kind of uncomfortable so that was pretty much what

Starting point is 00:04:15 happened to him and in the first few sessions really really focused a lot around his personality his skills gap and basically how to how to actually select a job right because there was a lot of like mistakes in the approach that he was taking in the past and you know he landed up in roles that were not suitable um either to his personality or um you know couldn't really leverage on his core skill set right all his core competencies where he could shine but in fact he got into situations where it was not suitable for him and he ended up actually struggling right maybe you know to a certain extent it's not really his fault because you know he didn't actually do that self-reflection self-assessment at the start

Starting point is 00:04:56 that was kind of what created the snowball effect later on right so that was pretty much what happened and what we did so after the first phase of like finding clarity understanding his personality right skills gap self-reflection self-assessment all those things then we moved on as usual to the resume review so one of the things people you know don't really realize or rather you know there's a bit of a misconception here is that they think that oh just because i'm a job hopper that means means that I would just have to take like, you know, a low pay because, you know, people will not appreciate me. That's not really the case. Actually, for very experienced, I guess, career coaches and like hiring managers, we can actually identify the

Starting point is 00:05:37 skills. It's just about the overall positioning of his resume, which is the main thing, right? So because he did gain skills during the time he did he did have he does have the right skills and qualifications is the problem is that the way he was articulating his resume was just painting a very negative picture so when i worked with him i actually looked to like reposition a lot of his um experiences and really pull out the skills and um the yeah the skills and expertise that he had that were able to generate results even during you know certain short stints or projects as well so there was a lot of positioning and angling done for his resume which was a little bit tricky given

Starting point is 00:06:18 that you know he had a bit of a history of a job hopper but can definitely be done so that was the first one of the first things we did and of course you know he went through like my my six six step program which is the you know number one career clarity number two resume third linkedin profile fourth um job search networking strategy fifth interview prep and six is the evaluation of job offers so once he applied um my linkedin building a linkedin profile as well as the linkedin networking strategies he was actually very surprised to see that he started getting i guess headhunted and even some of his network right i mean he's actually a pretty extroverted person he has a lot of friends but in the past he just didn't really know how to

Starting point is 00:07:04 network effectively for jobs like his networking was more around the chit chat one, which is actually, to be honest, a bit different from professional networking if you want to focus on career growth. So I taught him a lot of methods around how to go about professional networking, how to actually engage with his ex-colleagues, engage with people who have worked with him before, how to re-establish a lot of the relationships as well and the good news is actually after putting in a lot of his networking efforts and of course you know applying for jobs that were more suitable to what he was looking for he started getting a lot of interviews and he was actually really surprised because he said that before that right i've been sending tons of resumes like everybody just ignored me because

Starting point is 00:07:43 they just labeled me as a job hopper but he was actually really surprised that with utilizing his new um revamped resume together with a strong linkedin profile plus networking strategies actually all this is like the secret sauce that all comes in together right so he started getting interviews at like a lot of startups e-commerce space which was actually his target um his target industry so he was getting a lot of like job interviews from yeah his target industry and his target is his target department which is which is a good thing because from a job suitability and career growth standpoint that's actually really positive then the other thing that also happened was that because he was networking a lot right he actually got um opportunities to be interviewed at google

Starting point is 00:08:27 as well as linkedin in his country so how he got the google interview was um he he saw the job opening right he applied for it and of course he also applied some of the networking strategies that i taught him to um become a little bit more visible to get his application on top. But aside from that, he also noticed that he knew some people working in Google as well. So he reached out, again, utilizing my networking methods. And his contact actually was willing to put in an extra good word for him and actually gave him a lot more information on what the role was hiring for. So actually, that kind of helped him, give him some context as to what the role was hiring for. So actually that kind of helped him,

Starting point is 00:09:08 give him some context as to whether that role was suitable for him or not. Then the other situation where he got the application with LinkedIn was he applied on the platform, right, on LinkedIn itself. He did manage to get the interview because I do teach a lot of my clients how to get your applications right on top um he got the interview as well and again he also noticed that he kind of knew somebody in there and he was able to network and just get extra bit of information about how the company worked and what is the nature of the department that he was actually applying for so i'm not you know discount you know actually networking is something that's actually really powerful but what i noticed for a lot of people is that they are not utilizing networking correctly.

Starting point is 00:09:49 So networking is done correctly. You can actually gain a lot of information, not just on the company, but also on the role that you're applying for. You can also potentially get your network or connections to put in extra good work for you, which will actually help you stand up against other candidates also. So aside from these two, he actually got a lot of calls from other startups. And he went for actually multiple, multiple interviews that helped him further enhance his interview skills. So one thing that when we actually

Starting point is 00:10:19 got into the interview phase of our program, he started noticing that, oh, actually, there's a bit of a difference between interviewing for startups versus interviewing for global multinational companies. So there's actually a bit of a different focus due to the company culture. So what was interesting is that he started getting actually job offers from the startups, but due to various evaluations and different, different things, he actually didn't accept any of the roles. And the next phase was that he really wanted to make sure that he could improve his interview skills with global multinational companies because one thing good about him is that over time i realized

Starting point is 00:10:55 that he became a lot more self-aware of his limitations and he was actually able to identify his weaknesses because when we first started working together he couldn't really tell like what was wrong he's just everything's a problem but he couldn't really identify why the problem happened so over time he also came to me and said hey meeping i noticed that um i i'm actually able to think a little bit better now i have critical thinking which he was really proud of because he's actually a more emotional person so critical thinking doesn't come very naturally to him. But I mean, you know, aside from that, that's a more of a soft skill thing.

Starting point is 00:11:28 But this is actually how it could come across. It could be actually could affect your, I guess, job search or job evaluation and all those things as well. So in terms of interview skills is continuously leveling up. And you also want to make sure that you your skills are not just good enough to interview for a startup but it's also good enough right to interview for a global multinational company because you want to make sure that you are open to as many job opportunities as possible so i think the biggest change that i see in this client is that actually he gained a lot of confidence and he started getting really excited the moment

Starting point is 00:12:05 he started seeing recruiters, headhunter messages, right? And he started to impress doing interviews, actually started getting job offers, which actually never happened in the past. Like he used to interview for tons and tons of interviews, but he never get the callback. So it was a big transformation in him as well. And I think the biggest thing for him is really like i said right from the start this self-esteem and self-confidence definitely went up a lot because if you're at a point starting as a you know being called a job hopper that is not a good thing for your self-confidence because you will start thinking that okay there's something wrong with me and maybe i'm stuck in a pithole that i can't come up from so let me tell you right now that

Starting point is 00:12:44 is not true at all you can always come out from. So let me tell you right now, that is not true at all. You can always come out of that hole. What you need is career planning and you need very clear positioning to make sure that the hiring managers can understand your actual value and you need some real proper visibility strategies beyond the on-ride rah-rah that actually does not work. You need real visibility strategies to make sure that you are seen as a valuable skillful and expert professional regardless of the number of years that you're working and that

Starting point is 00:13:13 100 completely can be done so to me i think that is really the biggest success with this client where he actually regained a lot of his confidence his-esteem, and he is now able to better position his overall value and just start actually believing in his value because it was for some time he just felt very useless, right? So it's about really starting to believe in his value, skills, and expertise. And guess what? He actually has something to offer because if he doesn't, then he will not be getting all these job offers as well so just a very quick update on this client at the moment he's actually in the process of moving to relocating to another country actually and he has already started applying for jobs and he actually dropped me

Starting point is 00:13:55 a message last week which is the latest development dropped me a message last week and just say hey maybe you know i'm kind of like in the process of moving to X location. And I have already gotten interview calls and interview schedule even before me flying there. And guess what? Your LinkedIn strategy actually works, not just like in Hong Kong, but it actually works in other countries as well. And I told him that, yes, it is an international strategy

Starting point is 00:14:20 because that is something I personally use for myself. And I work with clients from over 30 countries so if my clients from over 30 countries can get results locally or internationally you can also get the same result so I'm actually really happy for this client because I think the biggest transformation like I said is in his self-esteem and self-confidence and finally believing that he is that valuable professional with the right skills expertise and more importantly mindset that is focused on growth as he continues to move forward in the next phase of his career so that's for that's it for today's client success story i hope that this story inspires you and empowers you to believe that hey just because you're a job hopper in the past doesn't mean

Starting point is 00:15:01 that you forever have to be a job hopper what you need to know is to you know figure out actually what is the root cause of your job hopping and make sure that you plan your career with the right strategies and i guess you know get the right advice from the right right people so that you continue to be confident in your skills and ability so that's it for today's episode i hope that you enjoyed it and i hope that you also catch um the rest of the 30-day client success story series if you want to get inspired by my other client success stories as well as um success in getting you know multiple job offers that fuels their next their career growth in the next phase of their career so if you enjoyed this episode remember to like and subscribe and if you want

Starting point is 00:15:41 to share your own story remember to tag me um at me at me ping on linkedin and i will see you in the next episode bye

Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep73: Getting interviews with Google and LinkedIn.

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