The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Podcast - If You've Lost Or Are Looking For A New Job Do This With Career Contessa's Lauren McGoodwin

Episode Date: May 26, 2020

#269: On this episode we are joined by Lauren McGoodwin. Lauren is the founder and CEO of Career Contessa, an online blog and resource for women looking for career and development resources. Lauren also hosts the popular podcast "The Femails". On today's episode we discuss how you can stand out to employers, how to find your dream job, how to find work if you have been laid off or furloughed, and how to look for new career paths if you are unhappy with your current path.   To connect with Lauren McGoodwin click HERE To connect with Lauryn Evarts click HERE To connect with Michael Bosstick click HERE Read More on The Skinny Confidential HERE For Detailed Show Notes visit TSCPODCAST.COM To Call the Him & Her Hotline call: 1-833-SKINNYS (754-6697) This episode is brought to you by HYDRANT Hydrant is a simple, morning hydration mix, optimized to hydrate you rapidly. Lightly flavored with real fruit juice = subtle, refreshing taste. Up to 3x the electrolytes of a traditional sports drink. There are no synthetic color or artificial sweeteners. It's also vegan and only a buck a day for a 30 pack. For 25%off your first order , go to DrinkHydrant.com/skinny or enter promo code ‘skinny’ at checkout This episode is brought to you by THRIVE MARKET. We use Thrive for our online grocery delivery on a weekly basis and we also now get our wine at Thrive! They provide the highest quality products and ingredients delivered straight to our door with unbeatable prices.  Be sure to grab our deal by going to to https://thrivemarket.com/skinny to select your preferred memberships package and start saving today! Produced by Dear Media

The following podcast is a Dear Media production. Again, that's thrivemarket.com slash skinny to find a membership that fits your lifestyle. Everything is 25 to 50% below retail straight to your door. Thrivemarket.com slash skinny. She's a lifestyle blogger extraordinaire. Fantastic. And he's a serial entrepreneur. A very smart cookie. And now Lauren Everts and Michael Bostic are bringing you along for the ride. Get ready for some major realness. Welcome to the Skinny Confidential, him and her. You're trying to align everything you do to show that you fit in here. Like you are worth the 15 seconds of the review on the resume. Even better is can you find a way to send your resume personally

to a person? That's a whole other thing is people sending, like you just said, sending really long emails about all the reasons why you should hire them. Everything you do in an application should be about how you're going to add value and input to that company. Welcome back. Welcome back, everybody. The Skinny Confidential, him and her show. That clip was from our guest of the show, Lauren McGoodwin. On this episode, we are talking about how to find a job, how to pivot, and how to stay productive during this interesting time. I mean, we're just finishing Memorial Day weekend here, but it feels like this has been one long holiday, nightmarish holiday, to be honest, for a long time and everyone's like enjoy the long

weekend i'm like what are you talking about we've been at home for months now so yeah i'm ready i'm ready to like get out there and pop my puss it all feels the same i did anyone like just like wow we couldn't do anything one more i mean it's just we've basically been having them a three-day weekend for the last three months yeah so i think this episode is really great for anyone who has been furloughed or lost their job or is actively looking to find a new job. I think Lauren gives really tangible takeaways and tips. So many that I was actually taking some notes for you guys. And I'm doing a blog post with her to recap this episode because I thought there was so much valuable information in this episode. So

this is one of those ones that you want to pull your composition notebook out and take notes. I'm telling you. Yeah. And it was really interesting because Lauren, for those of you that aren't familiar with her, she's the founder and CEO of the wildly popular blog, Career Contessa, and also has a podcast called The Females with the Dear Media Podcast Network, if I do say so myself. And she founded it in 2013 after experiencing a gap in the career development resources for women. So this episode is really interesting because she's really been able to showcase tips and tricks and hacks and how to basically find a job, stand out, how to stay productive, how to look for new resources. It's a really valuable episode

during this time because there's so many of us right now that have either been furloughed, we're out of work, we're looking for something new, we're looking for a different career path. And Lauren and I were able to kind of come in from the other side and say, this is potentially what employers are looking for. So for anyone out there that has experienced any of these setbacks, I think this episode's for you. I think it's valuable if maybe some of your friends, your family, share it with them. So I think this episode could be a tremendous resource for anyone that's experienced any of these setbacks or knows anybody that has. And I'm assuming we all do because this is unprecedented times. There's

a lot of people that are down and out. So here's what you should do to have a productive week. If I were someone and I was looking for a new job or I was doing an online hustle, I would listen to this episode, take notes. Lauren gives so many tips, not me, Lauren, Lauren from Career Contessa. And then I would go to the episode that we posted on Saturday. We did a mini episode and I broke down how I plan my mornings specifically to quarantine. And learning to plan your mornings mixed with this episode will be really, really helpful for this week to set the tone for a productive week. I think those two episodes mixed together, you can't go wrong.

So with that, let's welcome Lauren McGoodwin of The Career Contessa blog and The Females Podcast to the Skinny Confidential Him and Her Show. This is The Skinny Confidential Him and Her. The Career Contessa herself, Lauren McGoodwin. It's been a long time coming. I feel like we should have done this earlier and we should have done it in the Dear Media studio, but here we are in quarantine.

Welcome to the show. Excited to talk to you. Yeah, thank you so much for having me. Where do we begin with all this? I mean, there's a lot. Everyone's careers have just gone to shit. I know. Just kidding. Well, hopefully you can help them with that. So yeah, I mean, there's a lot. Everyone's careers have just gone to shit. I know. I'm just kidding.

Well, hopefully you can help them with that. So yeah, I mean, there's a lot of directions that we can take this. Lauren and I, I'm sure as you, the same, have a lot of questions coming in right now about what do you do right now in this economic downturn? What do you do if you've been furloughed? What do you do if you've been laid off?

I thought it'd be kind of fun to talk about it from multiple perspectives. Obviously, you being an expert in the space and being able to help young people and women find work potentially if they're out of it. And then maybe me from my perspective, what I'm potentially looking for in hire. Yeah, absolutely. For those that are unfamiliar with you, and I think many of our listeners are, let's get a little background on you and Career Contessa. Okay. So my name is Lauren McGidwin.

I launched Career Contessa in 2013, actually as a side hustle. I like you, Lauren. It seems to be a good story. But I actually, I went to school to be a teacher, decided I didn't want to be a teacher, worked a job I hated, figured out how to use informational interviews to land a job in recruiting at Hulu, which then put me on sort of the other side of the hiring table, which is always really interesting. And I was writing my master's thesis on millennial women and career resources. And I fell into this weird loophole

where I got some grant money to create the very first prototype of Career Contessa. So I launched it as sort of this answer to the problem of my thesis, which was that the workforce was going to have more women in it than ever before. We're now more than 50% of the entire workforce. And there wasn't a career resource that just spoke to women. And at the time, nobody was really talking about how it's different to be a woman at work. Now, of course, we're all aware of the wage gap and a lot of other discrepancies. So launched that in 2013. And then in late 2014, left to work on it full time. And Career Contessa is much more than a job site. We do have a curated jobs board, but we are a comprehensive one-stop shop resource for your career. So you can do everything from

look for new jobs, grow in your career. We have an anonymous salary database that's totally free, where people can literally look at thousands of real salaries. And our whole goal is to help women build successful, fulfilling careers on their terms. So we don't want anyone to ever feel like there's one solution. There's a lot of different ways to have a career. And I do believe at some point in life, you won't be asking people, what do you do? It will just be sort of like, what are all the things that you do? Because careers are long and not linear. That's for sure. So we're all in quarantine. There's a lot of people that have been laid off or furloughed, maybe some looking for jobs. What are some tangible tactics that people can do to find a new job? Yeah, good question. There's more people

unemployed today than there's literally ever been at one single time in our history. So the first thing I'm going to say, this might sound obvious, but take a step back, make sure you've applied for unemployment. When you're getting those benefits, make sure that you do a deep dive into how long your runway is, meaning how much money do you have in the bank? What are your expenses? Cut out anything that's not essential because really truly, there's sort of two parts to this answer. If you don't have the resources to survive for two months without having a job, then I'm going to give you a really simple answer, which is go where the demand is. Anyone who is hiring right now, and there are companies that are shouting it from the rooftop, Amazon, we're hiring. Instacart, we're hiring. I'm going to say,

take whatever job you can. Dear Media. Yeah. Actually, we have a job posting for Dear Media on Kirk and Desmond. Nice. Yeah. So the point being is go where there's demand. If you do those exercises and you have a little bit longer runway, then you get to do sort of this opportunity work, which is take a step back and self-reflect. What did you like about your last job? What did you not like about it? What projects gave you the most energy? Who did you like working with and why? And now you get to really evaluate how do you want to move forward, but you can't really decide where you want to go if you have no idea even the direction. Part of that self-reflection work is, again, taking a step back and understanding maybe what roles, but I think sometimes that's really challenging for people. So I would also recommend that if you're like, I'm good at a lot of different things, at the moment, that's not very helpful. It isn't overly helpful to be a generalist.

Right now, we want people who are really good at one thing. So another thing you could consider is, what are your target companies? Like if you're not really sure what you want to do, maybe where do you want to work? And what I have found is that more nine out of 10 times people who love their job, it's because they love the company and the people they work for. So that's another thing that you can certainly focus on. Obviously, taking care of your mental, emotional, physical health is really, really important. You know, managing that inner critic because nothing is quite damaging to your self-confidence, quite like going on a job search. So I always encourage people to, we have this phrase in recruiting where we say you spray and pray, which is you spray your resume everywhere and you pray

that someone will pick it up. They won't. And so it's really important that before you start hitting apply and editing your resume, that you understand what it is you want to apply for. And the more you can narrow that down, I always recommend for people to create a list of maybe 10 target companies that they're really interested in, and then narrow that down to about three or four if you can. But understanding what are your wants, what are your needs, what do you have to have in your next job? Maybe it's a certain salary. So starting there first before you hit apply means you're going to be much more successful. It's not about applying to a thousand jobs every second and every day. That doesn't actually successfully get you a job. It's about being really specific. I want to work at Dear Media.

Here's what I want to do there. Here's why I want to work there. I'm going to tailor my resume, my LinkedIn, all of my information. I'm going to fill my skills gaps. If you want to apply for a job in podcasting and editing, start taking editing classes and learn how to edit and have examples. I think the best thing people can do right now at their job searching is understand that this is going to be a process of you have to show, not just tell, how amazing you are in the workforce. Let's stay on that for a second because, like I said, I think we can actually kind of hit this conversation from both sides. Right now, like you said, unemployment's higher than ever. And we'll just use Dear Media because

it's something I can speak to. Obviously, Dear Media is in a position right now where we're hiring. There's multiple listings out. But the problem is, unlike other times, there are so many people unemployed that what we're seeing now is, and I'm not just saying this because it's Dear Media, it's my business, there's thousands and thousands of applicants. And so we're sitting there with a small team. And obviously, we want to vet great candidates. We see an influx of applications because there's huge unemployment. It makes sense.

But the trouble is now, and I think I'm going with this, is that it's hard to figure out which applications to look at and how they stand out. Cause there's no way that we can go through five, 6,000 applicants. It's impossible. So if somebody is out there and they're listening and you kind of answered this a little bit about standing out, like what are some actual tactical ways and tips and tricks that candidates can do to stand out to companies that they're applying for? Because from my perspective, I'm like, where do we begin? Hot little break to talk about hydration, specifically electrolytes and hydration. So recently we partnered with this brand called Hydrant and they created these flavored electrolyte packets. Basically you mix them directly in your water. I like them in ice water and they hydrate

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it comes to glowy skin, luscious hair, and weight loss. You want to get your hydration on, okay? There's no synthetic colors, stevia, or artificial sweeteners in this brand, and it's also vegan. And a 30-day supply is just about a buck a day, and you can save even more with a monthly subscription. And even more than that, you can save more with our code that we always provide to our lovely listeners. For 25% off your first order, go to drinkhydrant.com slash skinny or enter promo code skinny at checkout. That's drinkhydrant.com slash skinny and enter promo code skinny for 25% off your first order. drinkhydrant.com slash skinny and enter promo code skinny. Enjoy guys. Get that hydration going. Yeah, it's overwhelming. So the first thing I always tell people is that there's a lot of

hints in the job description. Dear Media team probably spent a long time writing amazing job descriptions because you wanted to attract a certain type of candidate with a certain type of experience. So my best hack for this is whatever the job description is or the job title is that you are applying for, go find five other job titles just like that. It would be even better if you could find, let's say editor. Let's just use that example. An audio editor for a podcast studio. Go see if you can find five other job descriptions or job titles for that type of role at other podcast companies or even media companies will take. Now print them all out, take a highlighter and highlight the keywords or phrases or software or skills that you see listed in all five of those. That means those are the most important skills

or expertise or keywords. Now that you know what those are, you're going to tailor your resume, you're going to tailor your LinkedIn, you're going to tailor your portfolio website. And if you don't have a portfolio website, you're just applying with a resume that you're just literally changing the name from Hulu to Dear Media and saying, that's not going to work. You're going to have to put in a lot of effort. The show don't tell means creating that portfolio website. So if you are expected to be able to show a tangible skill, please do that. You know those keywords and phrases, you're going to go back to your resume, your LinkedIn, and all those things, tailor it. And then you're going to apply for the job.

The other tip I have for people is I almost always will tell people you want to work your way backwards into a role. So instead of just applying straight away at Dear Media, it would be a really good idea to get to know some people that work at Dear Media. Maybe have some informational interviews. Maybe talk to one of the hosts that works there

and ask them what it's like to work there. Learn everything you can about a company before you apply, because not only can you work that into your application materials to tailor them even more so that you appear as not just a culture fit, but the value fit. Are your values aligned with your media? And there's so many people who don't do that. The other tip I would have as somebody who used to, like again, Hulu, we used to get thousands of applications and it was overwhelming. And I'll tell you that aesthetically pleasing resumes are really, really important. If your resume is four pages long and size seven font, I'm going to throw it in the trash. I don't have to look at it. But if you

have a one page resume that is really simple and easy to read. I think that goes for emails too. I think that goes for anything. I think none of us have to go through all these, but if you write pages and pages and anything, nobody has time anymore. Yeah. But even I think about the fact that people will use basic resumes from Microsoft Word and it's like, you're applying to work at a company that has, again, using Dear Media, puts a lot of effort into their branding and their aesthetic. So you're trying to align everything you do to show that you fit in here. You are worth the 15 seconds of the review on the resume. Even better is, can you find a way to send your resume personally to a person? That's a whole other thing is people

sending, like you just said, sending really long emails about all the reasons why you should hire them. Everything you do in an application should be about how you're going to add value and input to that company. There is nothing worse than a 10-page email with a resume attached that's a 40-page resume. I really think that it's so important to communicate, like when you were saying this, communicate your point as quickly and as efficiently as possible. Because right now there's thousands of emails, there's thousands of DMs. How are you standing out in a way that's efficient too? Yes. Yes. Can you sort of speak on that? Yeah, definitely. I think that they called an elevator pitch because it was supposed to take

you the amount of time it took you to ride an elevator to pitch someone on something. So using that, it means that it should take 60 seconds or less. That means it should take them no more than two minutes, maybe even less than two minutes, a minute to read your email. So you need to become incredibly concise and clear about who you are, how you add value, or you're innovative and why the company should care to hear from you. And maybe give three bullet points on your experience with your resume attached. It should not be long. It should be quick and concise and to the point. And I think this is a real struggle for people because they always have a challenge of writing about themselves or talking about themselves. But if you go back to those job descriptions or going to the website

about Dear Media, again, using that example, or all the press that Dear Media has had, you can listen to all that, read all that. And I'm sure you can say, you know what? These are the things I keep hearing over and over again. Dear Media is a female-focused podcast network. So how can you talk about something you've done that's female-focused or why you care about that or why you're aligned with that? So it doesn't have to be a lot. It's like pick your top three things. I always come back to this story. My husband told he works in finance and they made this huge pitch deck and the CEO of this bank just looked at him and said, I'm not reading that. Tell me the top three things. And it was like a 100 page pitch deck.

And they had to on the spot say the three most important things. You have to be able to work like that. And you cannot send 40-page resumes. That's an absolute no. Well, there's two things here. Also, this is just a side thing. Another thing that I see where things go in the trash outside of long pitches is, say there's a company with multiple job listings. One of them's in sales, one of them's in media, one of them's this, and you see the same application apply for all three jobs. Like immediately those ones to me go in the trash. Cause it's, cause what I'm looking at, I was like, okay, to me, that just looks like somebody that's like, I'll take anything. I don't really care. I'm not really going to specialize. I'm not really focused. Like, and it's, I'm just like, okay, I can't, I need focused people. That's a tangent. But the other thing is, we talked about this a little bit.

And this is maybe just my personal style, but I actually think it's becoming extremely important to more companies. 99% of the time when I'm personally hiring, if somebody is extremely excited and passionate about the business or the space, but are maybe a little bit lacking in the skill, I would rather actually hire somebody that's just excited about the culture, excited about the space, excited about the business. They're just like, it says something about them, just like the same way all of our businesses say something about ourselves.

And they're just fired up to be there because I feel like you get the best performance out of people. They keep them happy. They get integrated in the culture, opposed to someone who may have the skillset, but is just not excited about the business. And so I do this all the time. I'm like, okay, this is maybe somebody, they don't really know how to sell yet, or they don't really know how to produce podcasts, but they can learn and they're excited to learn. I'll hire for that nine times out of 10 before somebody that's maybe more qualified on paper. Absolutely. I always tell people, I'm like, I didn't get my job at Hulu because I had been a recruiter before. I was working as an administrative assistant for a dental school. I had no business

being in this interview. But what I did is I had informational interviews with other recruiters for nine months, collected information, tailored my resume, my cover letter, found someone at Hulu to send it to, wrote an amazing email that was concise. She forwarded it to a recruiter and I got the job. And I know specifically that I was in the interview process with other people that had experience, but I was able to explain really concisely how much passion and excitement I had for what Hulu was building and why I would be an amazing recruiter. And the other thing I would say is that if people don't think they have the skills, but they can learn it, yes, you can show examples about that, but you can also have transferable skills, right? So again, as an

admin assistant, my job is to answer the phone. Okay, that's not that exciting, but saying I answered over 100 phone calls a day to mitigate any concerns, okay, now we're talking about 100 phone calls a day. Now we're having a reason to that. And now you are explaining how that skill is transferable to being a recruiter because it has to do with the candidate experience. So I think what I find too is that what irritates me in the job interview process is people always think that it's like a box. This is the box and you're not allowed to break out of the lines. There are no rules in how to apply for a job. And the person who puts some critical thought process into the process and gets creative with it is going to stand out.

And there's literally less jobs out there than there are people applying for them. So if you are doing things status quo, the way you've always done them, you can apply to as many jobs a day. You can hit apply on LinkedIn. You can do whatever you want. It's not going to get picked up.

So I personally think that Instagram is really important too, because when someone sends me a resume, the first thing I'm going to do before opening the resume, if I think that it's a candidate, is go and look at their Instagram. So if I were at home right now with all this time on my hands, I would be really focused on creating a brand, your own brand of yourself on your Instagram. What do you feel about that? I think it all depends on the industry. I think if I were applying for a job at Dear Media or with you, I would absolutely prioritize that. If I was applying to work for an ad agency, I would probably absolutely have that. If I was applying to a management consulting firm, I probably wouldn't prioritize that. I would prioritize LinkedIn and

having and sharing really important updates on LinkedIn and networking with other consultants because consulting is sort of this very old school profession, but also there's lots of different types of consultants. So I think it completely depends on the industry you're going for. And that's why I say there are no exact rules. It is the Wild West out there. And you have to put on your thinking cap and say, how am I going to catch their attention? And also, what matters to them? I interviewed this woman. She was the head of inclusion and diversity at Pinterest. And she talked about how at Pinterest, they don't hire for culture fit, they hire for value fit. Value fit, culture fit, skills fit, these are all things you have to think about. And you can't just say, oh, I hit apply and that's it. It just can't emphasize that enough.

I think one thing that all three of us agree on, and especially in a 2020 world, is that the paper resume that we were taught in school years and years ago, it's maybe not enough anymore. I think we all agree that there should be some type of personal resume that lives on a platform, whether that's a LinkedIn account, an Instagram account, a blog, a YouTube, whatever field you're in. There should be something online that exists that an employer can go to and say, ah, because I think all of us do it, right? Or maybe not the individuals, but even hiring managers or HR managers, they go and look and say, what's this person about? And there should be something. I do agree with you on that. Maybe it doesn't make sense if you're

going into finance to have a pretty Instagram aesthetic. I was going to say, I want to talk about something that's a little bit of a tangent here, but I think relevant. A lot of people have lost jobs right now, but they may have been at jobs that they weren't necessarily excited about or happy with when it was just like, hey, I'm paying the bills, staying here for a paycheck. And now because of the current situation, we're in a lot of people have lost those jobs and they're in a panic. What Lauren and I have been talking about and trying to champion a little bit is maybe this is an opportunity to start focusing on things that you actually want to do and work with companies you actually want to work with. Maybe the paycheck's not big enough. Maybe it'll take

longer. Maybe it's a side hustle. But I want you to talk about that a little bit because I know you talk about it in your show and just talking about not just taking a paycheck, but actually doing what you want. Lauren, I got to be honest. I am pretty much done with the quarantine. I have had enough. I'm getting sick of it. One thing that I appreciate though, that I have not had to deal with during this quarantine time is those pesky grocery stores. I have not had to deal with the chaos and the mess of going into the grocery store. I have not had to wear my mask in there or worry about the dirty germs because as always, we have Thrive Market as a partner of this show. I want to break down my Thrive Market order. So I got Raoul's homemade Arbiata sauce.

It is the best spicy pasta sauce on the planet. You can also do little pizzas with it on cauliflower thins. We got organic canned pumpkin for the dogs. We got Yum Earth organic licorice. They have this flavor. It's like a strawberry flavor. It is so good with popcorn. And then we also got some raw apple cider vinegar.

And of course, always the raw almond butter at Thrive is so good. I put it in a date. I add some cinnamon and throw it in the refrigerator. It is the best dessert on the planet. We've been part of Thrive for a really long time. And when this whole pandemic hit, we knew we're covered because they have everything from household supplies, groceries, beauty supplies, dog supply. I mean, they pretty much have everything right straight to your door, 25 to 50% below retail. And during this time of COVID, they've also added extra safety precautions. Every employee has been taking the extra sanitary precautions with all the packages. So when you get them, you know, they're all good and safe guys. You got to try it out. I've been, we've been talking about it for forever. It really is the best online grocery store out there. And like I said,

thrive market is an online membership based market on a mission to make healthy living easy and affordable for everyone. Enjoy member-only prices up to 25% to 50% off traditional retail prices, so you're saving money with the membership. To check it out, go to thrivemarket.com slash skinny to get up to $20 in shopping credit. Again, that's thrivemarket.com slash skinny to get up to $20 in shopping credit. And if you're a new member, we typically, or we do, do the 12-month membership because it works out to just five bucks a month. And like I said, with that 25% to 50% below retail savings, it more than pays for it. So enjoy thrivemarket.com slash skinny. Absolutely. I couldn't agree more with you where this is an opportunity. I just had someone the

other day write me and she said she had been working in like the bridal industry for seven years, got furloughed. And this is actually kind of this blessing in disguise because she wasn't passionate about it. And when people get furloughed or laid off, it almost becomes even more apparent how much they were just too afraid to make the leap. But now they've been pushed off the cliff, right?

This happened in the last recession too. There were so many people who launched businesses out of that because they got laid off and they got a severance and it gave them the opportunity to explore something. So if that is you, I think this is an amazing opportunity to say, how are you going to spend this time to get you closer to what it is that you want? One of the things I would recommend people do is go on what I call a listening tour. Meaning if you have no idea what you want to do, and you guys just had a similar podcast to this

where it's like people fall into a couple buckets. Like they totally know what they want to do, but they've been too afraid to do it. Yes, create a side hustle, start learning it. It's going to be messy. It's going to be ugly. It might not be something you want to share, but start learning those skills

and just get started somewhere. I remember when I was trying to decide if I should leave my full-time job at Hulu, which of course had like benefits and pay and all that kind of stuff and launch Career Contessa. I remember when I was trying to decide if I should leave my full-time job at Hulu, which of course had benefits and pay and all that kind of stuff and launch Career Contessa, I went to South by Southwest and I listened to this panel of women entrepreneurs and they asked them what's one regret they all had and they all said, I wish I had started sooner. So if that's you and you know what you want to do, this is your opportunity to do that.

Everything that a lot of us do, we teach ourselves and the internet is full of opportunities to learn opportunity to do that. Everything that a lot of us do, we teach ourselves and the internet is full of opportunities to learn how to do that. And you might be able to use that side hustle as a way to build something that you can leverage into a full-time job later on if you decide that you do want to go back working for somebody else. If you have no idea what you want to do, like this woman where it's like, I never liked that industry, but it was an easy job. Now, what do I do? Then again, sit down and figure out, but it was an easy job. Now, what do I do? Then again, sit down and figure out what is it that you have enjoyed? Of course, you can take assessments. I'm kind of old school and I think the best self-assessment you can do is kind of sit with your thoughts and have some self-reflection. Again, what did you like? What

gave you? I would also go back to asking people to answer two questions. What gave you the most energy and what were you successful at in your last job that's required for work? It's great that you love gardening, but if you can't make money at gardening, that's a hobby, not a job. Answer those two questions. See if you can come up with some general themes and then go on what I call a listening tour. So find people who have jobs that you admire, either jobs or companies that you admire, and have informational interviews with them. and then go on these listening tours with people maybe you've worked with before you work with currently and ask them, hey, when I tell you that I'm interested in these five things, what comes to mind? And just

listen. Just listen to what other people tell you. Because at the end of the day, I think clarity comes from the engagement of the world around you. So engaging in informational interviews, engaging with projects on your own, listening to podcasts, taking online courses. I think just curiosity and investing in learning new skills. I think the challenge is people kind of know to do that, but they get so overwhelmed where they're like,

where do I start? I'm a huge fan of saying, create a weekly routine. I interviewed this woman on my podcast. She's a time management expert. And she said, we don't live our lives in days. We live our lives in weeks. So don't pressure yourself to do everything in one day. Instead, for the week, set three goals that you want to accomplish. Do you want to have an informational interview? Do you want to sit and make that list? Do you want to just write your first blog post and publish it on LinkedIn? I mean,

I know someone who has a LinkedIn blog and newsletter, so it doesn't have to be overly complicated, but in order to make progress with anything, you have to start somewhere and take those micro steps. Having a morning routine is also an incredible tool to help you kind of stay focused and make that progress. Those are, I think, actionable, tactical things that people can do. And I know, again, just from our show, that they always come back to that. People always tell you that if you want to make progress on your goals, it doesn't start with hitting a massive goal. It starts with the baby steps. The small wins add up. There's actually a book called The Progress Principle, where these researchers at Harvard learned that actually you cannot accomplish big things in one sitting. You have to make progress.

You have to embrace progress. I got to check that one out. That is so true, especially when writing a book. You can't take the whole pizza at once. You just have to have like a pepperoni. Yeah. I feel like with writing a book too, when it's such a massive project or even if you want to make a big career transition, if somebody doesn't work in the podcast industry, but they just love podcasts and now they're like, I want to work in there. It's not just saying you want to work there. It's now figuring out what is your strategy? What's going to be your game plan? I also felt when I was an admin assistant and really lost my job and I didn't know what I wanted to do,

just having informational interviews with people who do cool jobs, work at cool companies, it jazzed me up. All of a sudden, I had the energy to reach out to the next person, reach out to the next person. And you cannot be afraid of no's. I interviewed this woman. She's a positive psychologist and she talks a lot about goal setting. And she said that when you imagine your goal, like your big goal, so let's say it's like, you know, working at Dear Media or something. That's awesome. But when you imagine all and you fantasize about how glamorous it will be to work there, you also have to be really pessimistic, meaning you have to anticipate the challenges being told no. What are you going to do when like 10 people tell you, no, you can't work here?

What are you going to do when your resume is rejected? What are you going to do when 10 people tell you no, you can't work here? What are you going to do when your resume is rejected? What are you going to do when you try to publish that blog post and it doesn't work? So she was saying what happens in these daydreams is that people are so optimistic. And then when life doesn't happen the way they envisioned it, they give up. But that's because you never envisioned the challenges or you were pessimistic about what could come your way too? I want to stay on this for a second because Lauren and I were actually just talking about this in the car the other day when we were driving. And I think we've all just kind of touched on it, which is, yes, do what you want to do. Yes, chase your passion. Yes, try new things.

Yes, get excited. All of those things. I always have a problem with just the single narrative. And I think you've probably heard me say this. I have a problem with the single narrative of like, follow your dream, follow your passion. Of course, we all know that. That's right. But it should be caveated with, while you're doing that, there are going to be things that happen every week, every month, every year that fucking suck. And they're not going to be fun. It doesn't necessarily mean that it takes away from your goal and your dream and your

passion. But what I think what happens is people start chasing their dreams and their passions. And then they hit a road of like, wait a minute, I didn't realize this was part of it. I didn't realize I was going to have to do this thing. I will say to your media, we have a great time. We have fun. But there's a lot of things that take place in the day, just as any other job, which are not the most fun.

That's what I want to talk about a little bit, because I think what it does is people start chasing and then hardships come around. It's like, oh, wait, this must not be my passion. I don't I want to talk about a little bit because I think what it does is people start chasing and then hardships come around. It's like, oh wait, this must not be my passion. I don't like it. I don't like this aspect. And so let's stay on this for a second. Yeah, I literally have an entire chapter in my book

called The Dream Job Does Not Exist. It's the myth of the dream job. And I purposely do not use that language ever to describe jobs because dream jobs don't exist. And to be very honest, you don't want them to exist. That would basically be saying that you are meant to do one thing your whole life. I mean, can you imagine whatever you were doing out of college, doing it your whole life? It would be your life changes, you have a family, you move, you want to do different stuff

and your interests are allowed to evolve. And so part of this is that the dream job is... And thinking one of them is out there and chasing it might be the thing that's actually just keeping you stuck. So that's kind of step one. I think step two is that another thing I talk about is the fact that the reboot is not about the hustle. It's not about doing more and more and more. Sometimes it's about doing less. In order to reach the big goal, it's about starting small. The reboot is not about the hustle. It's about resilience. It's about grit. It's about, okay, you knock down. You're going to sit, take a break, take a pause, sit on the curb, go for a walk, and then you're going to get back in there and you're going to do your best. That is truly what builds confidence in yourself and confidence in your skills over time. They're

muscles. Nobody goes out and runs a marathon on day one, right? These are all cliches for a reason because they are actually so true. And I don't know why, but somehow... Actually, that's not true. In my book, I talk a lot about this because millennials, especially, we got kind of hooked on this because everything in our life was very on demand. What do we have that's not on demand? The problem is that life is not on demand. Careers are not on demand. You know, as a manager, that if you hired somebody and they worked for you and they did an awesome job, three months later, if they asked for a promotion, you'd be like, that's just part of your work is to do an awesome job. Every time you do something doesn't necessarily mean you get an award and accolade. And so that's a really big challenge, especially for people.

And even if you're not a millennial, you've started to adapt to this, which is the constant feedback, the on-demand, the immediate instant gratification, the whole overnight success and self-made. Those are all lies. No one is self-made. No one is an overnight success. And unfortunately, the glamorization and Instagram has been awesome for a lot of things, but it's been horrible for some other stuff. And you used to just have the next door Joneses that you can compare yourself to. Now it's the digital Joneses. Oh my God, that's so good. That's so good. I got to use that. It's like that song, Looking Back Texas, remember keeping up with the Jones? Yeah. That's a country song. The other thing too,

is that there's this new phrase called Fawn, the fear of not doing. Our generation or our society has this fear of like, if they stop moving then or stop doing stuff, then they're not being productive and they're not meeting their goals. But like I said, the reboot is not about doing more and more and more. Yeah. It's funny talking about millennials and instant gratification.

I think one thing that where Instagram and social and podcasts and the digital age has basically helped with is it's really inspiring for... I'll be honest. We saw some people that we admired in this space doing podcasts. And four years ago, Lauren and I said, hey, let's do a podcast. We were inspired by others. Yeah. Right? That's where it's good. Where it's bad is you go and you say, look at how big this person's podcast is or blog

is or Instagram or whatever it is, YouTube channel. And you start and if you don't get there right away, you're like, oh my God, I'm not going to make it. I'm defeated. I did a post the other day on my personal feed, which is rare. And I was talking about Dear Media. And I was like, you know, this looks like it was a quick thing. But if you really look at it, it's like Skinny Confidential started close to 10, 11 years ago. The podcast started four or five years ago. It's got a close to 300 episodes. Like Dear Media

has been two years. So what looks like it's been a seamless, easy, effortless thing that's been fast, it's really been like a decade of work. And when I work with young people, I'm like, listen, I don't just promote and raise people because they've been at Dear Media for a certain amount of time. It's all based on merit, right? And I think a lot of young people need to understand when you're going to work for a company, the idea, and this could be taken or received in a controversial or wrong way, is that you are bringing the employer the value, not the other way around. And the trade-off is if you bring the employer value, he or she is going to compensate you fairly and create opportunity and growth.

That's the trade we have. But I think a lot of us young people, and I'd include all of us in that category, it's like, well, I've been here for six months. I deserve a raise. It's not, I've been here for six months. Have I added a lot of value and do I deserve that raise? And if I was in the other seat, would I get, you know what I mean? So I think for young people listening, I want them to think like the job, if you're going for a job is to bring the value to the company, not the other way around. Absolutely. And I would, someone gave me this advice a long time ago. They were like, if you're not going to spend five years on it, then don't spend five minutes on it. Because that's something you have to wrap your head around. You might do something and it might not pan out, but it's never a waste.

It's never a failure because at the end of the day, you're always going to learn from it. And I think that's important. I think that the other thing about working for a company, and obviously, I created an organization that talks to a lot of people who work inside of companies. And I just want to point out to people who are maybe feeling like somehow they've lost in the game of life. They're not an entrepreneur and own their own business in the glamorization. You know what companies need more than anything? They need entrepreneurs, people who have an entrepreneurial spirit who can bring it to a company and they can build their own career within that organization. There are a lot of positives of doing that. And companies today are offering a lot more flexibility. They're looking

for these people to step in and add value. And the days of the nine to five are gone, like even more now they're gone. And so if you can figure out how to build something that's yours and do it within a company, that's awesome. And it's not meant for everybody to be an entrepreneur. As you guys know, it's really hard and that's okay. And I just, I sometimes, I hope young people or any person doesn't get confused with thinking like there's only an either or. Like there's so much in the middle of those two extremes

of owning your own business and working nine to five somewhere else. And I think that's important. I also think that as hiring managers, recognizing how can I hire that person to come into my organization? Because those are the people who are going to take initiative. They're going to take ownership. They're going to do stuff because they want to build it, not because you asked them to do that. And that's another huge thing is people who want to work at companies, anticipate what your boss needs.

And make sure that your goals align with the company's goals. It's awesome that you want to build this thing, but maybe that has nothing to do with what Dear Media is trying to build. So make sure whatever you're working on, it aligns with the overall goals of the company. And those will be your North Star. Those will steer you right. So you just wrote a book. I want to know what routines you took in the morning and the day and at night to get this book done. And if there's a morning routine that sets you up to write, because I know I have to have my stuff a certain way before I can start writing. Yeah. So it's interesting you asked about that because because of the book, I've become obsessed with rituals. Anybody who's talked about rituals or have studied them, I'm

becoming interested in them. And so writing a book was the hardest thing I've ever done. I thought that because I wrote a master's thesis, I could just write a book, which is, I don't know why I thought that because writing 60,000 words is a lot. And so you will not get through a book unless you have a process in place. So for me, it started with having an amazing outline. So I spent the bulk of my time working on this very detailed outline of the chapters, the sections, the specific takeaways. So every piece of my book is like, I introduce a chapter, but then I also want to give you specific takeaways. And the other thing I would say that was challenging about writing the book is that's a lot of information. How are you going to tell a story and keep it interesting as you're giving people a lot of information?

So for me, it was nights and weekends. My morning routine was very much dedicated to my day job at Career Contessa. So I'm a person who gets up at 5am. I go for a one hour walk, right away. I drink some lemon water, then go for a walk. I usually listen to a podcast or a book on tape. I do read a lot, but it's all audio. Then I come back and I take a shower. And while I'm making my coffee, that's where I write down the three most important things I have to get done that day. So I kind of live by this thing called the rule of three, where it's like, no matter what happens today, what are the three things I have to get done that day. So I kind of live by this thing called the rule of three, where it's like, no matter what happens today, what are the three things I have to get done?

And from there, I would go into my day at Career Contessa. And I would pick Fridays, Sundays, and Tuesdays. Those were my nights where I would write. So I would always come home early enough, eat dinner, shower, and then I would actually go to the library. So I live nearby like an old school library. For whatever reason, I had to go to like a physical location to write. I could not do it in my house. Anytime I tried to do it in my house, I was just too distracted. So for me, that was the big part, having a schedule that I, and I had to say no to things I wanted to do after work. I had to say no to rescheduling things, but that was the only way I could get the book actually done was really that, and I would ritualize it. So like I would go down to the library, I would stop at Starbucks and get

a coffee. It was all about kind of the ritual before and after. I also celebrated each milestone. So for my book, at least I turned in three draft drafts. And then what I would do is after each draft was turned in, I would go on some sort of trip or go somewhere and have that as a reward to look forward to. So I'm very motivated by knowing how many words do you need me to have and where am I going to go? Or how am I going to reward myself when this is done? So your book, tell us what someone can find in your book What are the valuable takeaways that they can expect if they buy it? Yeah, so my book is called power moves and it teaches women Well, really everybody but women specifically how they can pivot reboot and build a career of purpose So I think all three of those things have become incredibly relevant and valuable at this time

Pivot seems to be the hot new word. And how are you going to pivot in your career? Whether you've been laid off or you haven't been laid off, you have to pivot in your career right now. Everything is changing. And I also think that what people are going to really enjoy is that I use power moves as sort of my way of describing habits, rituals, routines. And at the end of the day, it's about prioritizing what you're going to get done either that day or that week. And I think the big difference between regular habits and rituals and to-do lists and all that kind of stuff is that power moves are very intentional. They're not doing what you've always done before. It's not about necessarily

self-improvement. It's about self-evolvement. And power moves allow you to not just be this constant learner. The people who are like, I'm always learning this. I'm doing this. I'm doing that. It's like, are you evolving? Are you actually changing your actions and your habits and your routines? And so power moves. And I interviewed a ton of women for this book. And one of the things that I found really interesting is that there are people who have successful careers and they're all over the place. But being successful is not necessarily something that's taking... It's not a one plus one equals two formula. But the difference between people who are successful and fulfilled in their career

is because they're making power moves. They're making intentional moves in their career. They're proactive. They're not just reacting to everything that comes their way. And so it's basically the difference between desperate luck and calculated success. And I think having intention behind what you're doing allows you to have focus. It allows you to feel really strongly convinced that you're making the right decision. I mean, there's this thing called analysis paralysis, and it can literally kill days, weeks, years of your time where you don't make decisions because you don't know what to do. And it's usually because you're looking around at what other people are doing or trying to figure out the expectations of other people. That usually I find just leads to what Christine

Hassler calls an expectation hangover, where you literally do what you think you're supposed to do and you feel hungover at the end of it. You're in this ambition ditch that you can't get out. And then you start asking questions like, how did I get here? How did this happen to me? I did everything right. I know. I've been there before. And power moves are these intentional moves that will hopefully be rooted in what you want and what you need to be successful and fulfilled in your career. I can't wait to buy the book. Congratulations. I know that it's not an easy feat. You're incredible. Where can everyone find you on social? Maybe someone who's looking to get more career tips. Should they follow you on Instagram? Give us the juice. Pimp yourself out. Yeah, I'll pimp myself out. So at Career Contest on Instagram,

we put career advice and tips on there all day long. We also are pretty funny on there. So you'll get a little humor with your career, actionable career tips. The book, you can find all the information you need on powermovesbook.com. I'm at laurenmcgoodwin on Instagram, but the home base for everything is careercontessa.com. We have tons of downloadable resources, that salary project, just bookmark the page and we will be there for every step of your career. You're incredible. Thank you so much for going on. You guys look out for me. I'm going to be on Lauren's podcast, which is on Dear Media, and it's going to be a fun swap. Thank you again for coming on, Lauren. We really appreciate your time. Yeah, thank you. Thank you.

Wait, don't go. If you liked that episode with Lauren of Career Contestas and the females, let us know your favorite part on my latest Instagram at the Skinny Confidential. And a couple of people from the team will drop into your inbox and send some of you guys some pink, sparkly, Skinny Confidential brand new stickers. And with that, we'll see you on friday be sure you also listen to saturday's mini episode see you next time