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You heard about it here. Again, that's longangle.com. Hello and welcome to another episode of All The Hacks, a show about upgrading your life, money, and travel. I'm Chris Hutchins, and I'm excited to have you on my journey to find all the hacks. And today we're talking jobs, careers, and everything in between with Katherine Minshew, founder and CEO of The Muse, a career platform that serves over 7 million people each month, and the co-author of the best-selling book, The New Rules of Work, the modern playbook for navigating your career.

I am so excited to chat with her about finding and getting the right job, making networking suck a whole lot less, and how to build your personal brand online without needing to become a social media influencer. But before we jump in, I want to share two quick things. First, I would love your support in nominating All The Hacks for a Plutus Award for the best new personal finance podcast.

It will only take a couple seconds, and you can do it by going to allthehacks.com/vote. Second, I'm going to be doing a listener mailbag episode soon. So if you have any questions for me, or you have any hacks to share with the thousands of All The Hacks listeners, please send an email to chris@allthehacks.com.

All right, let's get to the interview. Katherine, thank you for being here. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to join. We actually have had a bunch of people write in asking if we could do an episode on career, work, jobs, everything. So I'm really excited to do this.

And I want to kick it off with just a random question, which is, what do you think is the biggest misconception when it comes to navigating the modern workplace? Oh, the biggest misconception. I think a lot of people are so fixated on how do I get the job? How do I convince the company to choose me that they forget to ask themselves what do I want?

And what type of company should I be picking? Because a job is not one size fits all, right? It is incredibly dependent, not only on your skills, strengths, experiences, but also your preferences, your needs, your values, and how those align with the kind of preferences, needs, values of the team that you work with, the organization that you work for.

And I think sometimes, especially early career professionals, but I see this at any age, people are so focused on getting picked, getting chosen, getting through the interview, that they forget to really turn the question around. And how do you think people should figure that out? Like, if you are not happy in your current job, and you're not sure what you want to do next, obviously, you could just start applying to random jobs.

But is there a process or some advice you give people that are unsure what they should do? Yes, yes. And in fact, I don't recommend starting with applying to random jobs, because I think that there's a step before that, a phase zero, that sets you off on the right foot.

And that is a process of self-discovery and self-exploration. Now, before, you know, someone listening freaks out, it doesn't have to be weeks or months long, you could do it in a focused afternoon, although I do recommend taking a week or two if you have the time. And essentially, it's a process of looking at where you are, the experiences that you've had in the past, and trying to ascertain when have you been in flow state, which is, you know, as probably everyone listening knows, when just time seems to fly by and you're totally locked in, you can start to think about when have you been happiest in your career?

When have you felt most motivated, and most engaged and productive at work? If you have the time, I really recommend asking friends, family, perhaps former colleagues who you don't worry might be might be tipped off to the fact that you're thinking about a change, but asking them, you know, what do you see as my strengths?

When do you see me light up professionally? And I think once you start to zero in on a couple of your values, professionally, it can be much easier and more straightforward to organize a job search. And these aren't these values aren't the same for everyone, right? So you might realize that you really value a stable work environment, or someone might want quite the opposite.

They might want a work environment where things are constantly changing, and there's experimentation and things are very new and fresh. Some people might really value prestige or compensation. Other people might want maximum flexibility, or creativity, or they may want to be deeply aligned with the mission of the organization that they work for.

There are a lot of different things you can prioritize in your career, but you're not necessarily going to find a job or a company that is 10 out of 10 on every dimension in the world. But you can find one that's 10 out of 10 on the you know, three to four values or dimensions that matter most to you.

So I think that's the most powerful place to start. Even though sometimes people can get impatient, and they just want to dive in and jump in. Yeah, I've been in this situation before. And if you get laid off, obviously, there's a different sense of urgency to what happens. But I noticed you didn't say, you know, pursue your passion, which is something I hear a lot of people often say when you're looking for what to do.

How do you feel about that phrase? I just don't find it very helpful as a phrase, right? First of all, like, what is my passion? A lot of people don't know, and labeling something a passion can make the stakes feel incredibly high. Secondly, a lot of people are actually happier serving their passion if it is outside of work, but they pick a professional set of pursuits that complement it.

So what do I mean by that? You might love to paint, but do you want to be a professional painter? Maybe and if you do, absolutely, like go live your dreams. But for a lot of people that have a passion for painting or a passion for some sort of perhaps artistic endeavor, they are actually happier not putting all of the pressures of financially supporting themselves on that passion.

They're happier thinking about a career that is motivating, that is exciting, but perhaps provides the financial stability or the flexibility. Again, I think live your passion is, you know, it's a fun phrase. It's a great catchphrase, but I just think it's a little bit overused because, you know, it doesn't necessarily provide signpost.

Now, for some people, they're deeply passionate about making some sort of change in the world or a specific mission. And if you can align your career with the larger good you want to see in the world, that's incredibly motivating. And I think it's something that, again, if that matters to you deeply, you should absolutely strive to do.

But I wouldn't necessarily say that always fits in the catchphrase of like follow your passion. I think that sometimes it's helpful to just take a step back and and really think, you know, what what am I good at? What can I make a living at? What do I enjoy?

Where's an intersection between those? And again, if you have a passion, an artistic pursuit, a hobby, et cetera, I think it's really important and fair to say, do I want this to be my livelihood or do I want this to be a beautiful and important part of a larger life that includes a different professional component?

And I think that both of those are really valid. And again, I just really encourage people to ask themselves the question and honor whatever answer comes up for them, not what answer you think culturally you should choose or what your friends say or what some influencer on Instagram told you to do.

It's really like what is the right answer for you specifically, because each of us has such a different set of needs as well as hopes and dreams in our careers. Yeah, my brother in law loves golf and used to be a professional golfer briefly and realized that that changes the whole thing.

When this thing that you loved doing as a hobby, as a way to spend time, as a way to enjoy time with friends becomes your job. He started not loving golf as much as he had before and immediately was like, I need to find something else. And now he runs North American sales at AppDynamics and it's a totally different career and is so happy that he's not a professional golfer but still golfs all the time.

So I'm a big fan. You know, my day job is not pursuing, you know, all the all the hacks. It just happens to be what I do on my free time. So it doesn't have to be the same thing. I totally agree. If we go back in time for you, how does what you're doing now line up with your passion?

How did you end up finding an entire career in, you know, this career? Yeah, so I do feel like I pursued my own winding, eclectic career path by following a lot of the principles that are now part of what I talk about via the Muse and via my book.

So for me, when I started, and actually I'll go back like way back to age 13, 14 year old Catherine, I fell in love with that television show Alias that starred Jennifer Garner. If you or anybody listening remembers, it was this amazing show about like a double agent. And I decided really early on, I was going to be either a CIA agent or an ambassador.

Like that was the plan. That was the goal. I did actually briefly think also about pursuing theater professionally. Theater was a big extracurricular passion of mine, and I loved it. But you know, when I did a few community theater productions or talk to people who were professionals in the field, to your point about your brother, it didn't really feel like doing that professionally was going to be as fulfilling as doing it as a hobby or, you know, an activity that I deeply enjoyed.

And so I focused in on like, I'm going to be this secret agent or this, you know, state department official. And luckily in 2007, I applied for and was accepted to work at a US embassy in Nicosia, Cyprus in the regional security office. And let me tell you, I have some amazing stories from that time.

It was a totally wild, fascinating experience, but I very quickly realized that the sort of reality of life in the state department and in government service in general, it didn't match this idea I had built up in my head, right, about what the career was actually like. And so even though I consider that time to be an incredible experience, I also came out of it with all of the angst of a 22-year-old saying like, "What do I want to do with my life if it's not this?" And I then spent the next two or three years feeling somewhat lost.

I worked at McKinsey and Company as a consultant for a few years. I moved to Kigali, Rwanda and ran a vaccine introduction for a period of time, which, by the way, fascinating now that vaccines are in the news again. But I was really trying these different careers and I was also spending a lot of time on job boards.

I was on monster.com all the time. I was looking on different company career websites, trying to figure out what were the jobs that were even out there? What did that actually mean to do those jobs? Would I like that? And I became just personally fascinated by, first of all, how complex the career search is.

I became really interested in how to assess what a company's culture and values are from the outside. What is the employee experience like? Because it's very different at very different companies. You know, a sales job or an engineering job or a marketing job is not a single interchangeable thing where it doesn't matter where you work.

No, it actually matters very much where you work. And so I was really interested in how people make career decisions from the outside. And it frustrated me at the same time when I was leaving McKinsey. I was getting recruited by some hedge funds, by big tech companies, and some of them were rolling out the red carpet with these very expensive recruiting dinners.

And all of this time, they were investing one-on-one in me, trying to convince me to join their company. And then I would go online and look at other jobs. And it was this terrible, transactional, paper-thin experience where they were just like, "Do you have these skills? Apply. Maybe we'll consider you." Like, it was just terrible.

And I thought there's got to be something between these two extremes. There should be an online platform that helps create a digital red carpet experience, that gives someone insight into the culture and values that a company, you know, and helps also guide and coach people as they go through the often fraught and challenging process of finding a job, figuring out what they want to do.

And so the idea for The Muse was percolating for a long time before I actually started the business. But I really felt like I built it because I needed it and it didn't exist. Well, that's amazing. I had like six follow-ups that came from that. Okay, go. One was, you ended up having to go work at the State Department in order to figure out that you didn't want to do that.

Knowing everything you know now, do you think there's something you could have done to figure out if that would have been a good fit without having to go do it? You know, I think if I had been able to sit down with people who worked at the State Department, what's called an informational interview, that might have given me the insight that I needed, or even watching enough videos of people who were in that career path talking about a typical day in their life, what they did, how it worked.

That's frankly, some of the experience that I've tried to approximate with The Muse, because not everyone has the opportunity to go work for an organization and then change their mind or go sit down one-on-one over coffee with someone who's in a particular career field. Obviously, I got a really deep front-row seat to what the organization was like by working there, but I absolutely think that had I been a little bit savvier of a job searcher, I might have been able to recognize that beforehand without going all the way to Cyprus to find out that it wasn't the end-all be-all for the rest of my career.

So that brings up an important part of this entire process that you dedicate, I think, an entire chapter to about networking with people. I'd love to just dig into how you think people could do a better job. I know that it can be daunting for some people, especially going into a new career to find people, both for the purpose of learning, for the purpose of having an in if you find a company you want.

Are there things you think people should start with to try to build those skills and be productive with networking? Yeah, so first of all, I don't know about you, but when I first started thinking about networking, it almost had a bad rap to me, right? I imagine these guys in ill-fitting suits and briefcases, mechanically shaking hands and passing business cards back and forth in like a hotel lobby.

And I think if you break that apart in your mind and you just say, OK, networking is about meeting new people, learning about them, getting to know them, and thinking about it as a long game of just investing in those around you. It really reframes networking for a lot of people.

And I think that it also helps you understand what works for you. Some people really ace those big, giant networking events like conferences. Other people do really well by hosting their own smaller networking events, getting to know people in quieter or more small group settings. And I think that's all right.

So when I think about tips for networking, I often encourage people to understand your own preferences, what's going to make you most comfortable. Do you want to try going to bigger events? Do you want to invite four people that you know professionally and ask them to each invite two people and host some sort of smaller group?

I've had people have great success organizing book clubs around professional related books and using that as a forum to meet people. So understand what works for you. I think it's also helpful to set a few goals for yourself. Is it that you want to attend one networking event a month or reach out to three contacts from your network every week to see how they're doing?

Whatever the goals are, sometimes just writing them down can give you a clarity around what you're trying to accomplish. If you're going to in-person events, I always recommend, you know, dress comfortably. You want to focus on the people there, not your shoes or your outfit. It can be really great to bring what I term in the book, a wingman or a wingwoman, which is someone else who's in your same professional space who you feel very comfortable with.

You enjoy their company so that, you know, you may find that at the event you spend a lot of time apart talking to different people, but you also know that if you want a kind of touchstone or you want to just recenter yourself in the middle of the event, you can go find them, join the conversation they're having and vice versa.

I also think that again, networking doesn't have to be this sort of large kind of faceless thing. You can focus at times on just, you know, a smaller number of deeper connections and informational interviews are a really helpful way to do that. And, you know, is it helpful if I talk a little bit about informational interviews for people who may not be as, as familiar with the best practice there?

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What do they do in a typical day? What are the kind of best and worst things about their job? It's a really great way of exploring a career field, a company, a particular type of work before you dive in and fully commit. Frankly, it's what I wish I had done earlier in my career so that I would have known more about some of these different fields before I dove in.

So there's a few tips that I find make informational interviews go much better. First of all, do your research ahead of time. Many informational interviews will start out with either you reaching out cold to someone, perhaps through your network, through your college or university's alumni network. You know, you might be introduced by a mutual friend, but you're reaching out to someone and asking for 15, 30 minutes, maybe an hour of their time to learn more about their career path and guide you on your own.

And so I think it's really helpful to do a bit of research ahead of time, understand where they've come from, what are some of the key elements of or key turning points in their career so that you're not asking them questions that you could have answered with a Google search, thinking about making a good impression.

This is someone who might be able to refer you for a job or an opportunity in the future, someone that you may be able to help. So really being prompt, being respectful of their time is very helpful. I also love asking what I call dual questions or positive negative questions.

So sometimes one of the most helpful things you can learn from an informational interview is something like what sort of people would not be happy in a career field like yours, or what are some of the challenges of working at, you know, company XYZ. But often if you ask a directly negative shaded question like that, sometimes people will be protective of where they work.

And so they may hesitate to give you an honest answer, which is why I like these dual questions. It's essentially asking a positive and a negative at the same time. So this might look like asking someone, I'd really love to understand more what it's actually like to work at company XYZ.

What are some of your favorite things about working there? And what are some of the things that might be more challenging or frustrating for people? Or you could ask, you know, when I'm thinking about whether I want to build a career as a brand marketer or a data engineer or whatever the career field is, you what do you think are some of the things that are really most enjoyable and exciting to you about the field?

And what are some of the things that are drawbacks or challenges that someone should be aware of? I think if you give people a chance to answer both the good and the bad, you tend to get much more honesty. And again, honesty is what you're going for because you are ultimately usually in these conversations, trying to get the information that will help you decide if a particular career field or a particular company is going to be a good fit.

Yeah. I mean, I think it's really important to realize that networking doesn't have to just be these big events with lots of people. And there's a lot of value that can come from this one-on-one. I'll share a couple of my tips because I really love the challenge of finding email addresses and finding connections to people.

I feel like that's just a game that I really enjoy. And so when I started thinking about how to do this kind of one-on-one networking, first I would go to LinkedIn and I would look at all my connections and then I would look at all their connections and I would just scroll through.

And so before I would meet with someone, I would go in with a list. And sometimes I even printed it out depending on how well I knew them. But I was like, here are the seven people that this person knows that could be a good fit for me to meet.

And so every time I went to one of those meetings, I would go and know who could I potentially be looking for an introduction for. And then I always have an idea of my network. So who are you looking to meet and how could I add value back to you?

That's when you know the person you're meeting with. When you don't, sometimes you need to find an email address. And so there are a bunch of browser extensions. I use one called Lucia, which basically like when you're on a LinkedIn profile will show you an email. But the biggest trick I found that for validating emails is if you just search in Google for an email with quotes, you'll get, but it's not in quotes.

It always fails. But if it's in quotes, you usually get back whether that email is out there. And I found emails in the strangest places. So you just kind of like guess someone's email address, you know, for you, I would try, you know, first name, last name, first letter, last name, all these different combinations.

And I've seen things pop up where there's like a random PTA agenda for some, you know, school, but they're the coordinator. And so their email is on this agenda. And so when you're trying to find email addresses, there's a lot of ways to be creative. I love that. Yeah.

I mean, I go a little bit intense sometimes, because I want to make these events efficient. So if I go to an event, one thing that I find that most people don't know you can do, you can often email a conference and say, Hey, do you have a list of the attendees?

You don't need the email. Sometimes they just include the email addresses, which is like, you know, someone sent you a plate of gold. Sometimes they don't. But I go through every conference or every event. I try to find all the attendees, figure out who's interesting. And sometimes I'll go one step further and I'll go to their LinkedIn profiles.

I'll copy their photos and I'll put them in a notes doc on my phone. So when I'm like, okay, I'm going to go stand on the wall for a second, look through this and try to identify who are these people I'm trying to meet. And then I'll be like, there's Bill.

And then I'm like, I'm like targeting, I want to go talk to Bill. And I walk up there. I love this so much by the way, because I think what you just gave is a mini masterclass on how to get the attention of people who are otherwise busy. And you're completely right.

That being in the same place at the same time is one of the best ways I would say, you know, back when I used to attend a lot more conferences, my schedule was packed. But if someone said, Hey, Catherine, I'm also going to be where you already are. Do you have 15 minutes during one of these breaks?

I am probably about 30 times more likely to say yes, than if it had just been a cold email asking for a phone call or something. Likewise, if you can find any other points of connection with that person through perhaps Googling them, talking them, it's such a great way to get on someone's radar.

And I think that's brilliant. Yeah. So sometimes it can backfire. So when I was in college, I was applying for a job in New York and I was at home and I grew up like you did in Northern Virginia, right outside DC. And there was a company in New York and I really wanted to work at this company.

And so I sent an email to the person that I'd been introduced to. And I said, Hey, I'm in New York this week. And I, you know, it's four hours away. I was like, would you be up for meeting up? And I thought, you know, if this person thinks I'm already there and I'm only there this week, there's a higher likelihood that they'd make the effort.

And I remember getting an email at like 10 PM that was like, could you come in at six tomorrow morning or seven? There's some really early time. And so I literally took the 1am Amtrak up to New York, got in at like 3.45 in the morning, went to a friend's house and took a shower and got all dressed up.

I put my suit on and, and showed up. And, you know, only about six months later, did I actually say, you know, I was actually not in New York at the time. And the person thought it was funny, but it worked. People love the hustle though, right? It really does.

That's actually how I got the URL, themuse.com. The person who owned it was this amazing guy who lived in Washington, DC, actually. And I at the time was in San Francisco, California, because I had just finished the Y Combinator Incubator Program for the Muse. And similarly, I actually had gotten his email through some connection.

I had been emailing him, researching him, trying to get a meeting. And finally I said, I'll be in DC this weekend. And somewhat similarly, he's like, great, how about Sunday morning at 10 AM? And it was a tight turnaround, but I was on a, I think, a red eyes that Saturday night.

And I made the meeting and ended up getting the URL and bringing him on as an advisor. So sometimes you just have to show up or pretend in this case that you are already there. I know. Yeah. So two things that you mentioned in your book that I thought were really interesting.

I want to make sure I highlight one was in addition to these two sided questions, when you're networking, you mentioned asking open-ended questions. And I think I fail at this a lot, but the tip I really loved is instead of saying, do you like working at Google where someone can be like, yes.

And then, you know, there's nothing left. You could say, well, what's it like to work at Google? Do you, you know, what do you think? And that's a much longer answer. And I think my brain when I'm in work mode is always in the, let's be efficient, let's be efficient.

But when it comes to building relationships, the goal isn't to get to the end result as fast as possible. It's to build the relationship. So that's one tip that I really liked. And then I'll ask you this one. This is where I feel like I fail. I am terrible at just leaving a conversation in a professional setting where, you know, I've been there for, I'm trying to meet 10 people.

I've only got a couple hours. Do you have any tips what to do when you're 15 minutes in, you've made that relationship, you've kind of set up maybe a next step and you're trying to get around the room and meet more people? Yeah. So first of all, I think it can be helpful to recognize that often the other person is secretly thinking the same thing they're thinking I've loved this conversation, but I could really use a refill on my drink or, you know, I'd like to go chat with some others.

So first of all, if you are in an in-person setting, I like to purposefully have as much as possible, a half empty drink or a nearly empty food plate. So I can use that as an excuse. It's a universal human excuse. Oh, Chris, it's been great catching up, but I actually am going to go get a refill, but I'll catch you later.

Or, you know, I think I'm going to go try more of that guacamole. I don't know. I love food. I'm very food motivated. I find that people tend to react really well. If there's no food or drinks or you have a full drink, that's not an option. I think sometimes you can just be really kind, but direct.

Maybe they've told you about something, let's say a work accomplishment, you know, wow, that's, that's really incredible. You must be really proud. Well, I'd love to hear more about that. I actually need to walk around the room quickly and there's a few people I need to catch up with, but, but let's swap information and maybe we can follow up later on.

Or I think sometimes just saying that I've really loved talking to you, but I would love to continue this later. And as much as it can be awkward to do often, the other person is grateful. And in fact, if I'm speaking with someone who's much more important than me, for example, a speaker at a conference, or, you know, when I've met, you know, various tech celebrities, I always make a point of ending the conversation first because no one ever does it with them.

And it's such a power move to be talking to, you know, Elon Musk. It'd be like, well, it was amazing getting to meet you, but I'm going to go grab another drink, but hopefully see you around people. I find it's actually whatever the situation, it can be such a great way of acknowledging the other person's time.

And the fact that they likely have a long agenda, if the conversation is meant to continue, you can find each other later at the event or in a separate follow-on. Yeah. Yeah. And those follow-ons, I tend to say, try to come up with some next step. If you want to meet this person, as opposed to waiting, people are always more willing to commit to things in person.

So if you're trying to get someone to introduce you to someone person at their company or a friend of theirs, just ask because if you wait until you send an email, it's so easy for someone to say no. But if you say, Hey, would you be willing to introduce me to this person?

People are really, really uncomfortable saying no in person. So that's also something I always suggest in person. Yes. And definitely just head on. I think the importance of following up saying, you know, the next day, sometimes even that, that same day, sending a quick email. So great to talk to you, you know, as we discussed, I'd love to X, Y, Z, putting it in writing, getting that quick follow-up.

Often I find I'll need to send a second note a few days later because many people get backlogged on email right after they speak or when they're at an event, but that's okay. I think it's just helpful to really be fairly quick with that follow-up while things are still fresh.

And ideally while they're still feeling the enthusiasm of the human connection of the conversation that you two had. So don't follow any dating rules. Don't wait seven days. Just follow up quick. Yeah, absolutely. I think that, you know, there are many parallels between dating and professional connections, but I absolutely think that this is not one you don't want to play too hard to get, especially if you're in the position of looking to build your network, looking to meet new people, you know, people often respond very favorably to the kind of clearly expressed intention that you admire their career.

You'd like to get to know them better or learn from them or something like that. So it's not a time to beat around the bush. Yeah, totally. So I want to, before we jump into kind of actually finding opportunities that could be interesting, there's a part of the book that talks about building your personal brand.

And when I hear someone talk about building their personal brand, my immediate reaction is, "Oh, I've got to go become a YouTube influencer. And I have to start creating video content every day and posting on social media." Is it really about all of that? Or does it have to be about all that?

No, it does not. But I love that because you're exactly right that many people have this idea that having a personal brand is synonymous with being an influencer or spending hours every week crafting an online persona. The fact is you have a personal brand, whether you've thought about it or not, everyone does.

Your personal brand is how people talk about you when you're not in the room. And it's sometimes uncomfortable to think about that. But every single one of us is referred to or discussed in various casual ways by colleagues, by bosses, by others when we're not there. And so I like to think about it, first of all, as this question, what do you want to be known for?

So what are the attributes, the adjectives and the accomplishments that you want people to think of when they say your name? And, you know, if you want to think about building a personal brand, again, this doesn't have to be an arduous process, but I think it is really, really important in today's world because of how interconnected we are on social media, because of the way that your reputation is going to precede you in so many different aspects of your professional career and frankly, your personal life as well.

And so, again, just like I talked about the beginning of a job search is often that period of self-reflection or self-discovery. I think that a good personal brand exploration starts the same way. Just thinking, what do I want to be known for? If you have the time, I love to recommend that you ask colleagues, bosses, friends, what do you think I'm known for?

What do you think are some of the adjectives people would use to describe me? What are some of my strengths? And then ideally think about a few key words or phrases that are really important. Maybe it's around your creativity. Maybe it's your consistency and dependability. Maybe it's your financial acumen, your sort of, you know, facility with numbers, like whatever it is, just getting really clear about how you want to be known is step one.

And then thinking about how you consistently communicate that, you know, a very baseline place is your social profiles, your LinkedIn, your Twitter, your Instagram. If you have them, I think it's important also to know that that you should have them consistency, but that doesn't mean sameness. So every profile shouldn't look exactly the same because you know, because they're not the same platforms, right?

If I showed up exactly the same way on Instagram that I do on LinkedIn, one of those would be a really awkward fit, but I should clearly seem like the same person with some of the same key values. So whether that's authenticity, you know, my interest in the future of work and talent, just really being deliberate and specific, making sure that you have a reasonably good photo of yourself on each platform.

I think that can be very helpful. And then I would really recommend that people consider a personal website. Now, of course it depends on what you do. It's not as relevant for every career field, but it really, you can think of it as a piece of real estate on the internet where you can say exactly what you want about who you are and what you're good at.

Just gives you a little bit more space to talk about key accomplishments, share examples of your work. If it's digitally available, perhaps include video clips or again, just a bit of additional text and give people a way to get in contact with you. That is not just a Twitter DM or LinkedIn in mail.

So we have a lot of tips on the muse for specifically how to think about building a personal website, but I think that they can be a really, really powerful and they're often underused. And also, again, if you're reaching out to industry influencers or others to set up networking events, informational interviews, being able to link to a few key places online that very clearly and concisely give a sense of, again, who you are, what you stand for, what you're known for is really important.

If you want people to respond to your email. So is it your LinkedIn profile? That is that kind of key best thing. Is it a personal website? Maybe if you're a creative, it's your Tik TOK, whatever it is, just really know that you're crafting it so that someone gets as accurate an impression of you as possible in a fairly short amount of time and know that people are going to be Googling you all the time for professional opportunities for personal opportunities.

So the more, again, that you can be intentional about how you show up online, the better. Yeah. I think sometimes people think they have to go write blog posts and create content to manage their brand. But for the longest time I had my name.com and it was literally just a website that had some social links and three sentences about me in a photo.

And, you know, the crazy thing was, if you search for my name, now that's one of the things that pops up. It's this website that didn't have a lot of information on it, but just gave people a very easy way to find you and links in your email address and that kind of stuff, which comes up with another question, you know, maybe 20 years ago, it wouldn't have been a thing.

But nowadays, I think with so many social platforms and employers, you know, Googling employees, is it now okay to have pictures of, of yourself just having a good time on the internet and are all employers okay with that? Or are certain industries a little turned off by that? Or what's the latest policy on what you post on Instagram or Twitter?

Yeah. So I love that you asked this because it is a constantly changing answer as sort of society adapts to the proliferation of images and video and information on social. I would say first of all that most employers recognize that you and me, like we're humans, we have fun, we see friends, we socialize, we might drink an alcoholic beverage.

So I think it's important to use your judgment for the majority of industries and the majority of employers, casual photos of someone drinking or having fun on a social platform are not going to be a problem at all. That said, there's a few exceptions and certain industries are more, more strict.

And I can talk about that in a second, but you know, if you had a photo of yourself doing a keg stand or some sort of like extreme drinking event, I'd probably recommend if you're thinking about changing jobs that you consider taking it down or at least removing your name.

If you have some very incendiary or controversial political views, that can be another thing that can hamper you in a job search. Now some people decide this is me and I don't want to be hired by someone who has a problem with anything I say or do online. And that is an acceptable approach.

But if you don't feel that way, if you want to think about this as, you know, that's my personal life, but I don't want it to interfere with my job, then I often recommend do a Google search on yourself, look at your social profiles and just, you know, think about are there things that might, that might really surprise someone.

Now a few industries, a financial services can be a bit more particular when it comes to a social events on social media, things like client service or therapists where it's one-on-one again, it's, it's very complicated because you still have in some cases a generation that didn't grow up with their lives online judging a generation that did.

So that adds some complexity because it's very easy to throw stones about social media. If you know, Facebook and Instagram didn't come around until you were in your mid to late thirties. But at the same time, I think by and large, hiring managers are much more relaxed about this type of thing than they were in the past.

And they're not going to begrudge someone who's, you know, having a good time, enjoying themselves, unless it sort of crosses a line that I would say is, is again, you know, pretty extreme drinking, uh, very controversial statements. That is probably where I would, I would suggest like, just unless you really feel committed to it, just take your name off it, you know, make it, make it a little bit less because job searching is already hard enough.

And do you really want to worry? Did I not get that interview because of how I answered that second question or because they saw this diatribe that I went on? And again, I find that personally, I like to keep the focus on my professional skills and abilities and not so much on, on things that might be controversial.

Totally agree. I, one tip is if you're trying to Google yourself, make sure you do it from an incognito window, because sometimes you'll search and the results will be different than if someone else was, yes, that is an important one, by the way. And I tend to say, you know, go two to three pages potentially into your results.

You don't necessarily need to go 10. If somebody is 10 pages deep on your results, they're really doing a forensic audit. You can if you're concerned about what's there, but most employers are looking at the first page of Google, maybe the first two, very rarely the third. It's, it's unusual in my experience that someone will go any deeper than that.

So that's, that's a lot about how you can prepare before you're kind of ready for this. This is stuff you can do when you're not even looking for a job when you have more free time. But if you start thinking about what you want to do next and you have a few ideas, what do you think is the right approach today in this kind of modern workplace to find opportunities?

I like to recommend a three pronged approach because I think it's helpful to have a few different irons in the fire when you're thinking about changing a job. So first and foremost, I do think the use of specialized job sites, obviously I run one, the muse.com. So I'm not unbiased here, but focused sites like the muse that give you access to, you know, a really diverse set of offerings that let you see jobs, you know, on our site, for example, you can search for jobs by, do they have, you know, maternity or paternity leave?

Do they offer tuition reimbursement? Like it's a good way to get a broad sense of a lot of opportunities in the market, including things that you may not have heard of. So I think that's one step and we can talk more about that. Second is specific company websites and social media.

So, you know, are there places that are already on your radar as a companies you might want to work for, follow them on social, look to see if they have job search specific social channels. For example, I think NPR has at NPR jobs on Twitter, just, just about working at NPR.

A lot of companies have kind of focused social media handles just on both their employee experience and the roles that they're hiring for looking on the company websites and understanding, is there a talent pool to sign up for because some companies actually end up searching internal talent pools or lists of people who have expressed interest in working at that company before they post roles externally.

So having a short list of companies that you're interested in getting on their radar, definitely helpful. And then finally your network. And, you know, we talked about this from the perspective of building your network the perspective of having informational interviews, but it's very helpful regardless of where you are in your career to tap your network for potential job opportunities.

One thing I like to do is a group email because I think that an individual email one-on-one can be great for people, you know, really well, but for people who you're less close to, sometimes people don't know how to handle it if they don't personally feel comfortable or know you well enough to help.

So I like sometimes sending a BCC email to a small group of people that says, you know, friends, if you're on this list, it's because I really value your professional opinion. And I wanted to enlist your help in my upcoming job search. This is a really great opportunity to be very clear about that personal brand, those personal brand attributes and adjectives that we talked about before.

So you want to concisely explain what it is that you're very good at, what it is that you're looking for and how your network can help. So, you know, I am a healthcare administrator with X years of experience. I focus on this, my peers and previous managers would say that I excel at this.

That by the way, is one of my favorite tips in interviewing as well as in outreach emails is, and again, it has to be honest because many of these people may know or talk to your peers and former managers and you don't want to be caught in any sort of falsehood.

But for things that are true for things that you hear often, rather than saying, you know, I am great at this, people think I am this, being able to say colleagues and managers frequently describe me as XYZ listing out some of those adjectives or talking about some of your accomplishments that others would verify is helpful.

And then I would say, give your network specific ways that they can help. I like to keep the body of the email short and sweet and say, you know, read on below my signature for a list of example companies I'm interested in and more details. But really you can, you know, this is an opportunity to ask for introductions at specific dream employers, list out some of the types of jobs you're looking for.

And this can be really, really effective tool if used well, but I would say generally you want to send maybe one of these per person per job search. So it can be less useful if you're following up with people again and again and again, Hey, help me. Cause you never want your network to feel like you're pushing the responsibility of you getting a job on them.

Yeah. And I've found when you're sending these emails, sometimes I'll go as far as to say, Hey, if you want to introduce me to someone here is a blurb of text at the bottom of the email that says, Hey, I want to introduce you to Chris. He's looking for this, you know, here's a little blurb of his background.

Try to make it as easy as possible for the person that wants to help because they're already going to be doing work for you. And if you can make it less work, they're just more likely to help. Yes, I completely agree. I love that. When people reach out to me and say, Catherine, I'm looking for X, you know, who can you introduce me to?

That's sometimes a much harder question to answer than when someone's like Catherine, I'm looking for this. I noticed in your network, you're connected to these seven people. Who are you comfortable passing me on? Can I write a blurb for you to use? You know, just make it as easy for them as possible because most of the people you're asking are really busy.

Generally, you know, we have hundreds of undone tasks on our to-do list. And so the more that you help someone help you, the more likely they are to do it. Yeah. Sometimes the smallest changes make the biggest impact and trade coffee is a great addition to your new year routine.

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And sometimes if I didn't want to bother people in my network for something, or I found that I'm making too many requests, I'll just find the email address of the person I'm trying to be introduced to. And I won't say that this person has endorsed this introduction, but I'll mention in the email, I'm like, Hey, it looks like we're both connected to Catherine.

That's great. It's better than a cold email, but not as good as a warm intro, but it's somewhere in the middle. So you can do that. Even if someone doesn't have the time to help out. Yes. And again, you brought up a really great point, which is people are more likely to answer you or to help you if you have common points of interest or people in common.

So whether it's someone you both know, a school you both went to, even an interest you both had. When I was telling the story earlier about how I got the muse.com URL, one of the things I did when I was researching the gentleman who had it is realized that he had worked in a global health in Newfoundland and I had worked in global health in East Africa.

And there were some interesting parallels between this past experience. He had this past experience I had. And so given that I didn't have any connections to him, when I reached out, I was able to write my email in a way that highlighted some of the shared things that we seemed to care about from our online profile.

So like you said, it's less good than a warm intro from someone who knows and loves and respects you both, but much better than a cold email. I mean, I get at least 10 emails a week. Hi Catherine, can I pick your brain? But you know, they're all fighting with each other for a very limited amount of brain space.

And the ones that have warm connections or shared points of interest or experience are much more likely to get answered. Yeah. And if we go through the arc of this process, you've figured out how to get in touch with people. You've started to figure out what you care about.

Maybe you've identified a few companies. Obviously if there is a job posting that you're qualified for and that you're excited about, you know, you could apply online. I would treat that personally as the last resort to being able to find someone at the company that could refer you. What about when there's not a job posted?

If you found a company and you're like, I'm very excited to work here, but there's not something on their careers page or listed anywhere. What do you tell people to do? Yeah, absolutely. That happens frequently, by the way, most companies, especially small companies want to hear from you directly.

Larger companies, it can be a bit more complicated because they often are so deluged by applicants that they set up guardrails and blockages. But I would say, first of all, look to see again, like we were saying, do you have anyone in your network who works at this company or is connected to someone who works at this company?

Can you get connected to someone who you can say, I'm really interested in what your company does. I'm excited about working for you. Are there opportunities? You know, here's what I'm good at. For larger companies, they sometimes have what's called a talent network, which I mentioned earlier, where you can send in a general application, which essentially describes who you are, what you're good at, what you're sort of known for and your skills are, and then stays in their database.

But I find that if you can go in through someone directly, that's always the best move. But actually I would say, and this sort of, I maybe push back a little bit on the point you said before, I think sometimes doing more than one thing is best. So even if you know someone, I would often tell people apply to the talent network as well, because, you know, worst case, you're just duplicating your efforts.

Best case, it's another way in another point of contact. Similarly, when you think about online job sites, you know, they get a bad rap because like Indeed is the biggest one, right? Our data right now from a bunch of our customers shows that on average, employers are making about one hire for every 600 applicants from Indeed.

So no wonder it feels like it's just going into a black hole. But for, you know, a lot of focus sites like the Muse, the ratio is like one to 100 or one to 200. It still means there's a lot of competition. It's still best if you have a human intro or a connection.

But even, you know, if somebody reaches out to me through a referral, Oh, you know, Chris is great at this. Like, you know, you, you guys should talk to him for that role you're hiring for. I often will still ask the person to apply as well through our online postings so that they're in our systems.

And I think I often say like you can't go wrong by doing a mix of both sometimes at the same company. Cause I think the latest statistics I've heard are that 56% of all jobs are filled today through online job postings. So while I would always recommend that people do their best to find the connection, do the informational interview, you know, network your way in, it is certainly a higher likelihood way of success.

There are a lot of jobs that get filled from online pools. And so I think it's helpful to think about both because particularly for people that don't have a strong of a network, I think that you can, sometimes people despair. They're like, I'll never get the job if I don't have a connection.

And that's actually not true. Again, if you have an opportunity to make a connection, do it. And when you get further along in your career, the closer you are to an executive or a senior role, the more important connections become the earlier you are in your career, the more jobs tend to get filled through online portals, company websites, et cetera, partially because of just the volume of roles being hired.

But I think that being really thoughtful about multiple channels is helpful. And again, you will ultimately, if you especially are excited about particular opportunities, you want to maximize your chance of success. Yeah. And if there's no job posting, I wouldn't be afraid to just reach out. I know there was a company I really wanted to work at at one point called Simple Geo, and there was no job opening.

And I just decided that this is the company I want to work at. And instead of applying to 20 jobs, I overcommitted to this and I emailed everyone I knew that knew the company. Finally, someone said they'd forward an email to one of the founders. And I said, "Hey, I really want to work at your company.

Here's what I do. Can I give you a presentation on why you should consider talking to me?" And they gave me 15 minutes and I gave a presentation to one of the founders of the company and kind of convinced them that they should consider hiring me. They ended up hiring me to do a freelance project that eventually became a job.

But I think people maybe don't always realize how valuable passion for the company is as an attribute of a candidate. And when I'm looking to hire people at Wealthfront, when I see people email me and I can just tell that they're excited about the product, they're excited about working here, they've done their homework, it bubbles them up to the top of the list.

Not that I would hire them over a more qualified candidate, but I would definitely want to talk to them knowing that they're so excited. And sometimes that happens for roles that we know we're going to hire for in the future, but we don't have listed. So if you're really, really excited about a company, I wouldn't let the fact that there's not an opening now dissuade you from reaching out and applying for a job that doesn't exist.

Yes. Because I think that, again, when you're in the job search seat, you can be really fixated on like, how am I going to convince the right company to hire me? But it's helpful to remember that companies are sitting there thinking, wow, how are we going to get the right people for all this work that we have to do?

And if you can show up to a company and demonstrate that you might be the right person and that you have that passion and that commitment, as you said, they're in some cases, very incentivized to create a role for you, to accelerate a role that maybe they'd been planning to hire for in two or three months, but suddenly a great candidate shows up, you know, who wouldn't want to just fill the role if they have the budget now to do so.

So I couldn't agree more. And actually I was, I was trying to flip through the pages of my book to find this specific email that I got early on in the muse. I had been thinking about hiring someone in marketing. I'd actually been talking to a woman that I thought was interesting.

And right when it started to fall through and it seemed like maybe she wasn't actually going to be the right fit. I got a cold email from someone who had seen me speak at a conference and essentially said, I love your company. I believe in the mission. I want to be part of it.

Exactly like you said, here's, here's who I am. Here's what I'm good at. You know, if you ever need help, if you ever need consulting, if I can ever be of assistance, if there's ever a role, like I am on board, I want this. And I responded, you know, a day or so later and I was like actually thinking about hiring a marketer.

And that guy Elliot worked for the muse for years after that. And it was such a core part of our early growth. And it's all because like you said, we didn't have a role posted, but he reached out. Yeah. I've, I've hired multiple people for that. I've done that myself.

Big fan of that approach. So you, you wrote a whole book about this. We could spend another hour on interviewing and negotiating. So I'll ask a few tactical questions just to kind of fly through things. Is there an interview question you think even the most senior candidates always get wrong?

Well, everybody struggles with tell me about your biggest weakness, because it can be such a hard and vulnerable thing to cop to your true biggest weakness. Frankly, some people don't know it. And I would say that's the biggest problem is when people are not self-aware enough to know their biggest weakness.

I think it is important to be honest because good interviewers are looking for self-awareness at the same time, recognize that if your biggest weakness overlaps with one of the most important criteria for doing this job, well, you will probably not get the job, but frankly, you probably shouldn't get that job.

So I think that there's a way to answer that question that can focus on an area. That's a known weakness, what you've done to mitigate it, why you're committed to improving it. And ideally have it be something that's a true weakness. That is not a core need for the role you're interviewing for, because that can make it very, very hard for an interviewer to feel comfortable giving you the job.

I've been surprised how often candidates, even senior candidates will not do a good job of answering, why do you want to work here or what attracted you to this company? If the answer feels trite, if it feels very surface level, it's so much less compelling than someone who is immediately clear why this company is so exciting for them.

It's kind of like we were joking before about areas where job search is not similar to dating. This is one where it is very similar. People don't want to date someone who just wants a boyfriend or a girlfriend. That's not very appealing. You want someone who's specifically interested in you.

And for many interviewers is exactly the same. They want the candidate to have done deep research and to really clearly be able to articulate why this company, why this role. So that's another one. I mean, honestly, interviewing is tricky. It's one of the things we have, I would guess probably 3000 interviewing articles on themuse.com, but partially it's, you know, we've got articles for different functional areas, different types of questions, different seniorities.

It is a challenge. And I think, you know, I do recommend people practice a bit if you haven't interviewed in a while just to get some of the kinks out. But at the same time, the interviewer generally wants to find someone great. They want you to do well. So I think that's an important thing to keep in mind.

Yeah. We will link to some of these articles in the show notes for people looking for them. Okay. Few last quick things. When people find that job, do you think negotiating is something that people should be doing more of? Yes, I do. Although I think you can take cues from the employer on which of the many different areas to negotiate our best.

So first of all, most of the time when an employer gives an initial offer, it is negotiable unless they very explicitly say that this is, for example, the same offer we give every single person in this role. Or if you're being hired for a role, that's one of a number of identical things, be it customer service reps, consultants at a large consulting firm, et cetera.

Sometimes there's low flexibility, but for most companies, most roles, imagine there's at least five to 10% flexibility in the first salary number that you're offered. And I think it generally doesn't hurt to say, first of all, thank you so much for the offer. I'm very excited about the company, but I just need to take a day or two to consider a few things.

You know, can I come back to you? Sometimes that's helpful for people who are not as comfortable negotiating as immediately going into a negotiation and lets you really sit back and think, what do I want to ask for? How do I want to ask for it? And then I often recommend that people lay out a few different things.

So first of all, what's your desired salary range? You can do some research on various online platforms to understand what other companies might be paying for this role. Know that different platforms do have very different ranges. We find that when we benchmark that certain platforms are consistently higher than others in terms of their ideal or their kind of target salary ranges.

So I suggest check out a few, but I think it is very common and often expected that you go back to the hiring manager. Again, I always recommend that you first start by really reiterating how appreciative or excited you are. You know, you want the conversation to feel like you're two future great collaborators working in unison towards the ideal outcome, which is that you join the company and everyone's happy.

So, you know, thank you so much. I really appreciated this. I wanted to come back and talk about salary. I'd be really excited to accept this role. If you could get in the range of X or based on my research, I've seen benchmarks for this role that are in a range of Y.

Do you think that's something you can do? The more that you can make it a collaborative process and less like an ultimatum, the more likely it is to start the relationship off on the right foot. It's also helpful to understand internally, is this a question of I would take this role no matter what, and I just want to try and negotiate for a slightly higher base, which I absolutely would encourage you to do.

Or is this, I would only take this role if they can meet certain criteria, knowing that internally helps you frame your negotiation. And it also minimizes unpleasant surprises. If you do end up unintentionally communicating that you absolutely must have a company get to a certain number to say yes, and then they don't get there.

And they're like, okay, sorry, we offered the job to someone else and you're heartbroken. So I think it's important to advocate for yourself, but also understand what is the outcome you're looking for. It's also important to remember. It's not just salary. People think negotiation salary and yes, that's very important.

And I would absolutely start there, but you can also negotiate other things. One executive that I know negotiated a $10,000 conference budget as part of her compensation, because the company was unable to go too much higher on her base comp because they didn't want her to be out of range with other execs, but they gave her a $10,000 budget to have travel hotels and conference fees, which she used to go to incredible conferences all over the world.

She was also able to, I believe, negotiate student loan payment reimbursement and a number of other bells and whistles that were separate from base comp. Companies sometimes are also more willing to give you bonus comp instead of base. So if let's say you want 20 K higher, they come back that they can't do more than 10.

It's, you know, it's often acceptable to ask, could you add five to $10,000 to the end of your bonus or even your signing bonus? Yes, absolutely. That's a great point. Signing bonus, relocation bonus. Sometimes companies just want to be able to say that everyone in this role is between X and Y thousand dollars of base, but if they really want you, they're motivated to find a way to make, to make things work.

The one thing I would say that I would also just caution people to avoid is sometimes you can sour an employer if they feel like it's a, and one more thing situation. So I think it's helpful if you say, Hey, I'm really excited about this, but I just need you to get to this number.

If they come back and get to that number, they're expecting that you're going to say ideally yes, or maybe you might say I ended up going with another opportunity. That's fine. But I wouldn't at that point, come back and be like, thanks for giving me what I asked. And one more thing, especially if you do that two or three times, that's when I've seen sometimes company is sour on a candidate.

If they feel like the person is not being straightforward and direct in their negotiating. And I would just double down that if you're negotiating with your future boss, that I would, I would just emphasize that point even more, because if you're negotiating with a recruiter, you might not engage with them regularly.

If you're negotiating with your boss, building a relationship that will hopefully last for a while. Yes, yes, yes, yes. I would add plus a hundred to that. Ideally this is a long-term relationship where they are going to be a huge advocate and supporter of yours. And so again, making it feel during the negotiation, like you're on the same side of the table, trying to mutually get to a great goal is going to be much better for that relationship than setting something up that feels adversarial.

Yeah. Well, so part three of your book, which we won't get into at all, it's all about charting your course through the workplace after you're working there. And I had intended to try to get to a bunch of questions about communicating with people, getting raises and promotions, but I'll just have to say, check out the book or we'll have you back another time, but it wouldn't be all the hacks if we didn't end asking for your favorite kind of work life productivity hacks.

There are a few in the book, but I'd love to hear what your favorites are. Oh my goodness. Well, I'm a huge lover of pocket to save articles that I want to read later. My favorite job search hack. And actually I would say this, this can apply to promotions as well, which I know we're not getting into in depth, but I think it can be really useful to print out some job descriptions for a role you'd like to have in one to three years.

And then use two highlighters, one to highlight the skills you have today, and one to highlight the skills or experiences that you'd like to acquire in the next one to three years so that you can be a good fit for those roles. It's a great way of being really intentional about where you are in your career, what you have today versus where you want to go.

And then you can use that to raise your hand at work for opportunities or offer in some cases to take on outside projects that might really well position you for those titles, you know, you're going to be going after in one to three years. So that's a good muse hack.

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being here. This was awesome. I really appreciate your time. And where can people find you and everything you're working on online? So the muse website is just the muse.com. That is the biggest repository of career advice, articles, insight into companies and their values and cultures, job search.

For me, you can find me on Twitter @kaymin, Instagram @kayminshu. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to get the exact same handle. You can stalk me on LinkedIn, just Katherine Minshu. And yeah, I love hearing from people and please follow the muse, check me out and hopefully we'll do another one of these sometime soon.

Sounds great. Thank you so much for being here. Awesome. Thank you. This was a ton of fun. That was so much fun. I hope that even if you're not looking to change jobs right now, you learned something valuable. Do you have any suggestions for a guest or a topic in a future show?

Please let me know. And if you have a minute, I would really appreciate a few seconds of your time to give a vote to All The Hacks for an award in the Best New Personal Finance Podcast category. You can do it very quickly at allthehacks.com/vote. Finally, as I mentioned earlier, I'm going to record a special listener mailbag episode soon.

So please share any questions for me or your favorite hacks by emailing chris@allthehacks.com or I'm @hutchins on Twitter. Thanks so much for listening. See you next week. I want to tell you about another podcast I love that goes deep on all things money. That means everything from money hacks to wealth building to early retirement.

It's called the Personal Finance Podcast and it's much more about building generational wealth and spending your money on the things you value than it is about clipping coupons to save a dollar. It's hosted by my good friend Andrew who truly believes that everyone in this world can build wealth and his passion and excitement are what make this show so entertaining.

I know because I was a guest on the show in December, 2022, but recently I listened to an episode where Andrew shared 16 money stats that will blow your mind and it was so crazy to learn things like 35% of millennials are not participating in their employer's retirement plan.

And that's just one of the many fascinating stats he shared. The Personal Finance Podcast has something for everyone. It's filled with so many tips and tactics and hacks to help you get better with your money and grow your wealth. So I highly recommend you check it out. Just search for the Personal Finance Podcast on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts and enjoy.