Think Fast Talk Smart: Communication Techniques - 184. Fit or Quit? Find the Job That is Right For You—Catalyze Your Career

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hi, Matt here. We have two days left before we close our listener viewer survey. A big thank you to all of you who have already provided feedback. Please take a few minutes to share your input on the show. We still have a few prizes left to give to lucky respondents. Go to FasterSmarter.com.com. To give us your input. That's FasterSmartter.com.io slash survey. And now a word from one of our sponsors.

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Starting point is 00:01:12 Visit strawberry.me slash smart to get matched up with your coach today. That's strawberry.combe slash smart and get 50% off your first coaching session. It's the most affordable time ever to see if coaching is right for you. Career growth and fulfillment comes from work that is meaningful and aligned to who you are and where you want to go. I'm Matt Abrams, and I teach strategic communication at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Welcome to Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast. This is the first of three Catalyze Your Career miniseries episodes that we've produced in collaboration with LinkedIn. Together, these three episodes will help you chart your career path and find your job match.

Starting point is 00:02:01 This first episode is distilled down from a LinkedIn live event we held. Today I'm excited to speak with Catherine Fisher. Catherine is a seasoned career expert at LinkedIn, where she educates and inspires people on how to think about and grow their careers. She also serves as vice president of global consumer communications. You may have seen Catherine on television or read her career companion newsletter. Welcome, Catherine. I look forward to our LinkedIn Live conversation.

Starting point is 00:02:31 about how we can all advance and accelerate our careers. Thanks so much for having me. It's one of my favorite conversations to have. Awesome. Thank you. And we look forward to taking questions from all of you who are joining us. Feel free to type questions in, and we'll periodically pause to give you direct feedback and some advice.

Starting point is 00:02:51 So, Catherine, let's get started. What are some key indicators that suggest it might be time for a career pivot? How can individuals recognize these signals before they become significant issues. When you sit back and reflect and you realize, maybe I'm not as motivated as I used to be, I'm not interested in learning, little things are annoying me more than they should be,

Starting point is 00:03:16 is usually a time when you want to make some changes. And the good news is that work is changing so quickly. The workplace is very dynamic. You could probably do some little tweaks here and there to help change your work. I think what some people do is jump to the conclusion that they need to switch companies. And before you do that, you really need to sit back and reflect and figure out, is it the relationship with your manager? Is it that you're unmotivated because you're just bored?

Starting point is 00:03:45 And so really trying to identify what that is before just jumping out of the frying pan to the friar. Absolutely. You know, many of us are so busy with what we have to do at work and outside. it sounds like taking time to reflect on how am I feeling and what is causing some of these feelings can then help us. And I think that's really important for us to think about. Reflection is critical. You've mentioned that the best time to seek a job is before you actually need one. What are some proactive strategies we can implement to stay ahead in our careers and effectively prepare for new opportunities? Sometimes people, when they're in their role, they feel like, I'm just going to stay here and it's going to be great.

Starting point is 00:04:26 for the rest of my career. And the reality is that you never know what opportunity is going to come your way. And there's several things that you can do to make sure that you're continuing to be prepared for those opportunities. The first is really tending to that network. We like to talk about how the network is almost like a garden. Like you're not going to go plant your garden and then walk away and just expect it to flourish and then give you ripe tomatoes. You actually have to go in there. you have to water it, you have to fertilize it, you have to tend to it. And this is the same thing with your network. You want to make sure that you're really keeping that network strong. The other thing is you want to make sure that you're continuously learning. We see that the skills

Starting point is 00:05:09 that are required to do the jobs today have changed dramatically. If you look on our jobs on the rise list, many of the jobs didn't even exist 20 years ago. And so what that tells you is that you want to always be prepared. It's being prepared, tending to your network and the last last thing is just really being adaptable, understanding that work is changing. Absolutely. Several people listening in might remember that I helped run learning and development for companies many years ago. And we were motivated by exactly what you said.

Starting point is 00:05:37 Things are always changing. And we needed to provide our employees with those skills. So I invite everybody to tend to your skills, to tend to your network. And just like an athlete prepares for their sport, you need to prepare for your career. It's very easy to become passive in one's career. You've talked about actions we can take, but I'm curious about mindset as well. You advocate for a growth mindset in career development. How can we all develop this, especially when we feel stuck in traditional sort of job-seeking ways?

Starting point is 00:06:11 It's understanding that your career is not going to be linear, that you are going to have twists and turns and you're going to have to learn new things. And where people sometimes get overwhelmed is they feel like, oh my gosh, I have to learn all these new skills. and I'm going to have to go back to school and I'm never going to have a life. And that's not the case. You could do bite-sized learning. Just take 10 minutes a day to take an online course, to learn something new, to practice something. So I talk a lot about how I first started getting comfortable with AI.

Starting point is 00:06:44 And it was just really small things that I did. I incorporated it into my day-to-day life. And the next thing I know, it's just become part of it. This notion of a growth mindset comes from Carol Dweck, who teaches at Stanford where I teach, and it's really powerful in so many aspects of our lives. I really like how you're applying that idea to our careers and having the ability to change and to grow and not being stuck in who we are and how things are. And I like your idea of bite-sized learning. There are LinkedIn courses. I've taught one. I participated in many and learned lots of great things. Taking a few

Starting point is 00:07:23 moments to listen to Think Fast, Talk Smart, 20-minute episodes can help with communication, lots of things that people can do. I'd love to invite those who are live with us to type in some questions. There's one that came in directly from LinkedIn that says, I love these strategies and these ideas, and I plan to execute them every day, but sometimes I lose my motivation. Any thoughts on how we can keep the momentum going as we look to develop and catalyze our careers? Yeah, I think it's the same philosophy of doing it in bite sizes. And I wish that LinkedIn had been around when I graduated from college. Looking at profiles of people that you really admire and love their career and see what was their career progression. What did they study in school? What skills do they have? Where did they make changes in their career? It gives you that longer term goal. Sometimes I think that it's hard when you're feeling stuck. is just really kind of mapping out, what are the skills that you want to learn?

Starting point is 00:08:25 I look at career as not being linear, but it's really a collection of skills. Maybe it's that you don't love the industry, but you can take your skills and really transfer them to a different industry. So really being mindful and thinking through what do you love to do, what do you want to learn to do,

Starting point is 00:08:44 and how are you going to do that? Even if it's just 10 minutes a day, you will start feeling like you're making that progression I love that definition of a career, of a collection of different skills and knowledge that you gained. We've done a couple episodes where we talk about this very issue around motivation and how to fit things in. Episodes with Katie Milkman and Suu Kyi Huang really talk about things we can do to incent ourselves to move forward. In one of the classes I teach, our students actually go out and look at LinkedIn and find people who have careers and jobs that they're interested in and actually look at how they got there. And the students come back with two major learnings.

Starting point is 00:09:22 One, it's not a linear path, as you've said. People do a lot of things to get to the jobs that they end up in. And two, that just by reaching out, people are so kind and willing to talk about what they've done and do informational interviews. I'd like to come back to some of the questions I have, and then we'll take more questions that have come in. And thank you for those of you who've typed some questions in. What creative practices can individuals engage in to help them envision their potential future? your career paths and how might these insights shape their current job search or professional development efforts? You've already touched on using LinkedIn as a tool to see how others got

Starting point is 00:10:00 where they are. But I'm curious if you have other suggestions. So another thing you can do is look at the job descriptions that are of interest to you. And you can see if you're a job match or not. And then on LinkedIn, it'll show you what qualifications you have for it and what qualifications you don't. So looking for a job that you know may be way out of reach, go to the job description, see what the skills that they're listing, and then plot out a plan to acquire those skills, whether it's through online courses, through your job, other means of doing it. And I think it's that planning and having that longer term goal. Now, I will be honest with you, I've never had the 10-year career goal. I've not even had a five-year career goal. But I knew in

Starting point is 00:10:47 just intuitively what I enjoyed. And I would always ask to be given opportunities to learn. So just making that little plan for yourself. And I loved what you said about listening to podcasts. Like on my way into work, I was listening to a podcast. So learning those skills and just absorbing information doesn't mean that you're just in a classroom. It is through the content that you see. It's the podcast that you're listening to.

Starting point is 00:11:14 it's like this surround sound of opportunities for you to learn. This notion that there are lots of ways that we can learn around us, observing others, going to meetups, talking to people, and just taking the time, and it becomes rewarding just the effort itself. This idea of thinking about the job description and using it as a tool for learning, that's a nugget of gold for me that I had never thought of.

Starting point is 00:11:41 I'm going to certainly include that in some of the things I teach. I love this idea that the job description not only informs how you apply for the job, but it actually can inform how you develop some aspects of your career and what you learn. I know so many of my students and even friends who are intimidated by the job description. And I think flipping and saying, hey, this is a tool to help you grow your career is wonderful. I'm going to read this question verbatim. It comes from Akshay, and Akshay says, given how quickly the skills landscape is involving, how does one differentiate between learning those

Starting point is 00:12:18 skills which one truly is interested in versus ones which are just current talk of the town? How do you differentiate and where do you place your bet in terms of learning? Great question. I think it comes down to what gives you energy and what zaps your energy. If you're learning a skill because you feel like you have to or you should, if it doesn't truly interest you, it's going to be hard. If there is something that is a barrier of entry in terms of getting a job, if you want to progress in this area, then you're just going to have to get these kind of basic skills. But some of what we find is actually those people skills, the human skills, those are highly in demand from hiring managers. So don't think that it's just hard skills that

Starting point is 00:13:04 you have to learn. It could also be those more people skills, like communication and leadership. Think about your skill set as being well-rounded. It's not just go learn AI. It is learn how to lead a team as they're changing the way they do work as a result of AI. You want to look at it more holistically than just line by line of different skills. So many great points there. So one is we have to be realistic, right? Work is work.

Starting point is 00:13:32 If we can be passionate about parts of it, I love my teaching. I love my podcasting. grading it's a valuable part of what I do, but I don't always love it. So really putting it into perspective, I think, is important as well. And I really like what you said about it's not just the skills itself, but think about how those skills get deployed. So as you begin to think of your learning plans, AI is all the rage. People are learning about AI, learning about these LLMs, but also think about how do you deploy it. How do you actually work with a team that's now using it? And those skills are really valuable. I want to take another question that came in, and this one's from Bashir,

Starting point is 00:14:09 and it's really about our personal brand. And Bashir, know that coming up as part of this mini-series on catalyzing your career, we'll be talking to Dory Clark, who is an expert in personal brand, and she'll be able to talk even more about this notion. But let me ask you, Catherine, how do we identify and leverage our unique strengths and talents to create a distinct personal brand as we go about pivoting or trying to advance our career. Another great question. What has worked for me is understanding how I want to be perceived. And sometimes that is based on experiences that I've had where it didn't feel good.

Starting point is 00:14:50 You can't just say, I want to be known as a really empathetic leader and then just think that it's going to happen. It is that consistency over time and really making sure. sure that you're also not just getting stuck in what you thought would be your personal brand. Maybe it shifts. When I look at my career, I've been at LinkedIn for 12 years. I've had many different jobs, but there's always been that kind of core strength, which is communications, and then it splinters out in terms of how I deploy that. I think understanding what that kind of core is that you want to be and consistency over time with some flexibility. It comes back to

Starting point is 00:15:31 But you started with this notion of reflection. We have to reflect on what's important to us. How do we want to be known and then act in ways that are consistent? I would add one more element, and that is this notion of thinking about how we communicate that, not just through what we say, but what we do, where we go, where we don't go. It comes down to that reflection of what are my strengths, what are the things that interest me, and then maybe think about what are the things that differentiate me from others and what roles can I serve. I love that. this question coming from Shan because it uses this idea that I really like. And the question is, what's your advice on job crafting, how to do something more that you love? You're in a job. What can we do to actually craft it to be more what we'd like? Or perhaps as we look for jobs, craft those jobs to our liking. You have to ask for what you want. That is a piece of advice I give all the time. Your manager is not there to manage your career. Your manager is there to manage the work that gets done. If you want to craft your career, you're going to have to, A, know what it is that you want to be asking for and being comfortable asking it, which I know can be hard.

Starting point is 00:16:46 When you ask for it, you want to be able to say, I would like to take on this project. I'd like to take on this role. Here's why I think that this is important for the company and the job. And if you take one thing away from this is to ask for what you want and also be prepared for someone to say no. When I look at the rules that I've had over the last 12 years, I would say probably 70% of them was because I asked for it. And sometimes I asked and was told no. And then a couple years later, I got what I had asked for. It's uncomfortable. But if you go in there knowing that 50, 50, that will happen, at least then you're made. manager will know also, hey, I remember you said you were interested in this and I couldn't make

Starting point is 00:17:33 it happen last year, but now this opportunity has come up. So it won't be immediate gratification, but it's managing your career. Right. So crafting a career is first really reflecting and knowing what it is you're interested in, thinking about ways of positioning it and then focusing on the communication and having that resilience and tenacity to come back if it's not granted or not exactly what you wanted. And sometimes it's not saying, I want this. It's showing, hey, recently I was able to accomplish this and I think I can do even more moving forward. So how you ask can be really important as well. We'll be right back to finish our conversation. But first, a quick word from one of our sponsors. Their support allows us to bring you this show free of charge. If you've ever felt

Starting point is 00:18:20 like you're trying to do everything yourself, especially when the stakes are high, you're not alone. the biggest shifts I see in effective leaders growing their organizations comes from focusing on the right things. But that's hard to do when you're stretched thin. You need to be able to delegate some tasks to competent professionals. That's where Upwork can really help. Upwork is a one-stop platform to find, hire, and pay expert freelancers across areas like marketing, development, data and analytics, and more. It gives you fast access to specialized talent so you can move quickly, fill key gaps and scale your work without taking on full-time overhead. You can browse profiles, review past work, and get support scoping your project so you can hire with confidence. It's a simple way

Starting point is 00:19:04 to focus your time where it matters most. Visit upwork.com right now and post your job for free. That's upwork.com to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That's upw-w-rk.com. And now back to our conversation. So before we end, I'm asking all of the guests for this career catalyst mini-series, the same two questions. Are you up for that? Of course. Excellent. So question number one, what is the best career advice you ever received and why? I would say it was a long time ago, and my kids were really young, and I was really struggling.

Starting point is 00:19:48 My kids are 18 months apart. And I remember talking to a woman, and she was kind of encouraging. me to take on more. And I was like, I can't take on anymore. It's just too much. And her advice to me was that as you get more senior, you can control your schedule and when you're available and when you're not. The reason why it was important is because how you're feeling today doesn't mean that it's the rest of your life and it's not the rest of your career and that your career is going to evolve and you can shape it in ways that will meet what you need. And at that moment in my life, what I needed was honestly just to do my job and try to manage. But it just opened up that I'm not

Starting point is 00:20:29 in the same space in my life for the rest of my life. I hope that makes sense. I hear in that advice, this notion of agency and control, especially when we feel that we don't have that. And it can be really helpful to take a step back and say, no, I have a little more control here. I can make choices that do that. I think all of us, I certainly know there are times where I get overwhelmed that that advice would help. All right, final question. What is one thing you wish you would have done differently in the way you've managed your career? Oh, this is a good one. I had no plan at the beginning. I studied art history. I graduated from college and was like, I don't know what you do with an art history degree. I was a bank teller. I was all over the place. I got lots of good

Starting point is 00:21:14 skills and skills are transferable. I wish I had just talked to people. I did not ask for one of advice and I wish I had and I didn't understand the importance of the network and the importance of just asking those questions and seeing if they were me, what would they do? I had a very windy career path that took me while to get to where I am. That notion of asking others and reaching out and building a network is so important. Catherine, thank you so much for your time today for your advice and guidance. Super helpful. And really what I'm hearing

Starting point is 00:21:51 is we have to reflect. We have to have a growth mindset towards our career. And we need to be very active with it. You need to keep nurturing and growing. It's not something that we just wait until something bad happens. And I appreciate that.

Starting point is 00:22:04 I encourage everybody to check out Catherine's Career Companion newsletter on LinkedIn. Catherine, thank you so much. And thank you to all of you who joined and especially those of you who asked questions. Thank you. Thank you for joining us for this Catalyze Your Career miniseries episode sponsored by LinkedIn.

Starting point is 00:22:23 Be sure to tune in to the other two episodes in this miniseries. You can learn more about LinkedIn's job match feature at LinkedIn.com slash jobs. This episode was produced by Ryan Campos, Shelby Meriwether, H. Ash, and me, Matt Ibrahims. Our music is from Floyd Wonder, with special thanks to LinkedIn and Podium Podcast Company. Please find us on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. Be sure to subscribe and rate us. Also, follow us on LinkedIn and check out FasterSmarter.io for deep dive videos, English language learning content, and our newsletter.

Starting point is 00:23:01 Please consider our premium offering for extended Deep Thinks episodes, AMAs, Ask Matt Anythings, and much more at FasterSmarter.io slash premium. Before we wrap up, I just want to say thank you for listening. It really means a lot to hear how people all over the world are using these ideas in their own lives. It inspires me and the whole team that brings you this show. If you want more episodes and resources, feel free to follow, subscribe, and explore past conversations. We're grateful for your support of Think Fast Talk Smart.

Think Fast Talk Smart: Communication Techniques - 184. Fit or Quit? Find the Job That is Right For You—Catalyze Your Career

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