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Advice for Finding Your Next Sales & Marketing Job
56 Plays4 years ago
We know it. You know it. 2020 has kind of sucked for a lot of people.
Maybe you or a friend have experienced a job loss or feel a sense of job insecurity this year, so we decided to invite a career search expert to the show.
Our guest for this episode is Jacob Warwick, CEO of Discover Podium, an organization dedicated to helping find a more fulfilling career. During our conversation with Jacob, he shares:
- The challenges for sales & marketing professionals when looking for a job
- How to assess your career experience
- Positioning yourself for a leading career
- Performing a job search
- Things to remember when it comes to interviewing
Much of the information Jacob shares in this episode will be available in eBook format in September 2020. Be sure to check the Discover Podium website or register for our podcast email alerts to find out when the eBook will be available. It's jam-packed with valuable information and links to templates for your career search.
Connect with Jacob
If you'd like to connect with Jacob on LinkedIn, be sure to add a personal message that includes something about The B2B Mix Show and that the Jackson sisters sent you!
Jacob Warwick on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacobwarwick/.
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About The B2B Mix Show
The B2B Mix Show with Alanna Jackson and Stacy Jackson is brought to you by Jackson Marketing. Need help with your B2B online presence? Let's talk!
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Transcript
Introduction and Episode Overview
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to the B2B Mix Show with Alaina and Stacey. In each episode, we'll bring you ideas that you can implement in your sales and marketing strategy. We'll share what we know along with advice from industry experts who will join us on the show. Are you ready to mix it up? Let's get started. Hey everybody, this is Stacey Jackson. And I'm Alaina Jackson and we are the co-founders of Jackson Marketing. And in case you still haven't heard, we are also sisters.
00:00:29
Speaker
Stacey, what are we talking about?
Job Security During the Pandemic
00:00:31
Speaker
Today we're going to talk about jobs and job security and finding a job and all the steps you need to go through to find that new career. And this is especially important during this pandemic when a lot of people have lost their jobs, whether you're in sales and marketing or some other career. We know that it's a real hardship on a lot of people.
00:00:53
Speaker
But, you know, these are also tips that our guest is going to leave you with today that maybe you're just looking for your dream job. Elena, what do you think about the whole job search thing and what's involved with it? Well, looking for a job is never fun. It's almost like a job in itself, right?
00:01:09
Speaker
There's tons of things to do and it's just overwhelming. But I think that our guest is going to give us some tips that will probably help a lot of people out. And you know, one of the things that comes to mind is thinking about marketing teams. Usually when people are downsizing, marketing is the first to go. So it's a good thing that we've got this for anyone listening that maybe you were in a marketing job and you were let go. This will help you find a job that will be fulfilling to you and kind of help you land back on your fee, hopefully.
00:01:38
Speaker
And there's a bonus to this interview. Our guest has an ebook coming out soon about helping you find a job. And there's lots of great advice and templates. So we'll be telling you when that is going to launch. Tentatively, it's September 7th. But we'll let you know more. Alaina, would you like to introduce today's guest?
Guest Introduction: Jacob Warwick
00:01:58
Speaker
Yeah, let me introduce him. Jacob Warwick is a senior go-to-market executive with an extensive background developing and leading high-growth teams in the enterprise technology sector. He has more than 12 years of go-to-market experience in Silicon Valley and now leads Discover Podium as CEO.
00:02:15
Speaker
Jacob has helped hundreds of leaders find more fulfilling work, including C-suite executives at major Fortune 500 organizations and business leaders around the world. Jacob and his wife live in Reno, Nevada with their dog Cooper, which I just found out is a lab. So Jacob, welcome to the B2B mix show. Elena, Stacey, thank you for having me. Yeah, it's great to have you. Before we get started, would you like to tell our audience a little bit more about Discover podium?
00:02:41
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. So Discover Podium is a leading career consultancy right now. And really what we do is we help leaders find more fulfilling work. And the key operative there is the word fulfilling. It's not just finding someone their next job, but really understanding how to position, go to market and really all of the nuances that you need to understand in order to find that next opportunity that
00:03:08
Speaker
that job that makes you excited to get up in the morning. And if you are commuting to work these days, the one that makes that commute not so bad, the one that when you get home from work and you see your family, you have a smile on your face and you're happy to see them and you feel like you've done something fulfilling. That's really our mission is to help people or at least more people understand what that feeling is like and work for more than just a paycheck.
00:03:35
Speaker
I love that because so many people are in jobs that they just can't stand. And to have a job that is fulfilling, it makes you feel happy inside to think about that. And right now, especially with everything that's happened, so many people are out of jobs. This is their opportunity to look for a job that will be fulfilling to them.
Overcoming 'Golden Handcuffs'
00:03:58
Speaker
Yeah, ultimately, it's always the right time to try to find something that makes you happy.
00:04:04
Speaker
Too often in our lives, I call these the golden handcuffs. No matter how little or how much you make, it's scary to look for another job because you don't know what's going to happen, right? Change is always scary. And at the end of the day, the most important thing is to survive, whether that be for yourself or for your family or for other needs.
00:04:27
Speaker
it's always most important to survive. And that's why we work in the first place. And a lot of times, and when you go down a particular career path, even if it's not the most fulfilling path for you, you'll start to increase your wage, you'll start to make a little bit more money, you'll start to grow comfortable with that. And if you were to pick something that maybe you found more fulfilling, maybe you lose 20, 30% of your income, or maybe more.
00:04:52
Speaker
Or maybe you don't know what's going to happen. And that ultimately threatens our survival. And if that's the case, it often stops us from taking action. And we just kind of grow complacent and continue doing the same thing because that's what pays the bills. And I really shouldn't complain because at least I have a job or, you know, XYZ reasons why you have a job in the first place. And it is truly a blessing to have work in general, but it's even more amazing to have work that puts a smile on your face.
00:05:22
Speaker
Definitely. So Jacob, I know you run with a large network of sales and marketing professionals with all this COVID-19 job loss and fear of job security.
Marketing vs Sales Job Security
00:05:33
Speaker
Have you heard from your network what they're facing during the pandemic? Yeah, absolutely. And first of all, I've lived through a bit of this myself when I started my career in Silicon Valley back in 2008.
00:05:48
Speaker
I actually had an advantage because I was very, very young and a lot of older, more experienced marketing executives and sales executives were out of work. So I got opportunities, certainly not making as much as they were, but I got a lot of opportunities that I probably shouldn't have had at a young age because of that turnover and because of that chaotic environment. So right now, what happens, and this is really unfortunate, but I say this time and time again, particularly marketing professionals,
00:06:15
Speaker
A lot of companies view marketing as an expense, as a nice to have. A lot of folks realize that
00:06:23
Speaker
or at least incorrectly think that marketing is this expense that you just make when times are good to try to grow. And unfortunately, that's a misconception. Marketing is really an investment. And marketing is something that you put money into a bucket and you don't always get money back for several months, right? So when times get rough, I would say that marketing is often last to hire and first to fire because they see it as an expenditure.
00:06:51
Speaker
So marketing professionals are often in a constant state of fear around their career. And while they can make significant money, the average tenure is really only a year and a half, particularly in startup environments. So you're always looking for new work and you're always just kind of, well, I have to have some sort of unrealistic growth in terms of what I'm bringing to the company or I'll lose my job.
00:07:17
Speaker
Marketing doesn't always work like that. I know you two understand this very well, particularly content marketers. The content that you create today doesn't necessarily create immediate value for the business the second you launch it. It's all about the distribution and making sure the audience reads it and making sure it solves customer needs and it continues to build and grow over time. But regardless, when you're creating content, you have to invest in it all right now and you don't realize that investment for several months.
00:07:47
Speaker
When I talk about that with marketing professionals, they get it. They get that pressure. And there are some companies that are still investing in marketing. And they're right to do so. Now should be a time where you're creating the foundational success so that you come out of the pandemic and you continue to grow and you invest in your people. So marketing professionals deal with that. Now sales professionals on the other end, they're directly judged based off of what they bring in the door that day.
00:08:16
Speaker
So with sales, you put money into a bucket and a lot of times companies consider sales coin operated. You put money into your salespeople, they bring money out. Now the challenge for sales is that it's a much more different and dynamic selling environment that you've ever had before. So fortunately for our team, we have a very short selling cycle. So we work with individuals. It's more of a B2C type sale. And I know this podcast is directed at that complex B2B sale that takes time
00:08:46
Speaker
and adding a pandemic and adding all of these different challenges in election coming up, riots, depending on your industry, I mean, all of these things are going to affect your selling process. It doesn't necessarily change how you sell or that you should be compassionate, empathetic, check in, solve the customer need first, those things, but it adds a lot of complexity that takes time to adapt to.
00:09:09
Speaker
So sales leaders, sales reps, whether you're an AE, whether you're a BDR, whether you're a VP of sales, you know, there's a lot of complexity there that's changing and they have to adapt very quickly or they have to find another job. I do think that, well, it's never easy to find a job. I do think that sales have a slight advantage over marketers because sales can come in in their interview process that one, they already know how to sell, so they should know how to sell themselves.
00:09:38
Speaker
But they can say, look, I can immediately impact the bottom line because I can hop on the phone and introduce you to these people and close business. And where marketers, marketers often stumble when, when they have that ROI conversation. They'll say, look, I can get these campaigns launched. I can set up your revenue operations, your systems and HubSpot or Salesforce. I can set up your email campaigns. I can adjust to the database that you have. I can market to those people, but I can't show ROI immediately because it's going to take time to learn.
00:10:06
Speaker
So I see that as being kind of a key differentiator for sales and marketers right now. And I think some of it has to do with the understanding of those decision makers and the people in charge of not understanding really how all of the marketing stuff works, because there's a lot to it. And they see ads, oh, I'll get you on page one of Google.
00:10:28
Speaker
Within 24 hours and they think that there's some immediate results and so there's there's that misunderstanding of kind of how it Works and that it's it's really the long game. It's not an immediate results kind of situation Yeah, and in that case, it's up to the marketer to educate those those decision makers. I
00:10:50
Speaker
And it's scary to do so, particularly if you're in a position of, I would say it's a position of weakness in terms of how we perceive it. When we're asking someone for a job, we often feel lesser than, and that's the incorrect way to go about it, first of all. But when you're trying to work with someone new, they hold the keys to something that you want, which is essentially a job so that you can create some revenue for yourself and pay for your family and those things.
00:11:17
Speaker
But ultimately, it's a mutual conversation. And any marketer that's worth their salt knows that it's going to take time. They know they have to do these investments. And if they don't stand up for themselves in that interview and hiring process, then they're just as much to blame as the executive that doesn't know any better.
00:11:33
Speaker
So it's something that's really important. You have to feel your own convictions in the way that marketing is. And it took me several, several years to learn this. I definitely, I got my butt kicked in interview processes. I reached too high on the ladder. I took director jobs that I shouldn't have had yet because I was basically a manager, maybe even associate marketer. And I got
00:11:53
Speaker
I mean, I got my ass kicked. I lost a lot of jobs. I was too arrogant. I had a lot of ego. I made mistakes. Along the way, I found some phenomenal mentors and partners. I actually like Stacey. Stacey's helped me through a lot of this as well. So thank you, Stacey.
00:12:12
Speaker
But along the way, well, thank you for you've been a good example for me, too. I've learned. Well, I appreciate that. I'm glad we can give back to one another. But I learned a lot of you have to stand up for yourself and you have to know it's right. And you can't just be a yes, man or a yes, gal when it comes to an executive putting that pressure on you. They say, look, I want to be on the first page of Google. And you say, well, I understand that that would be a goal of yours. Tell me why you think it's important to be there.
00:12:43
Speaker
you start to validate their concerns and then you ask them why it's important. And then you ask them, how do you think we can accomplish that? In which the response is usually, well, you tell me you're the marketing expert, right?
00:12:54
Speaker
Right. In which you say this is how it works. We create engaging content. We do keyword research. We use tools like SEMrush, for example, or Ahrefs. We dive into the details here. We get this. We learn this. We do some competitive analysis. We create this content. We do all of this. And they're like, wow, that sounds like a lot of work. And you're like, yeah, that's right. It is a lot of work. We can expect an uptick in traffic of 20%. If we do all of these things, let's put a game plan together to get there.
00:13:20
Speaker
So you approach the situation by educating and by creating a game plan and being solution oriented, rather than saying something like, well, I can get you on the front page of Google, just hire me. You have to set those expectations in order to get there. And it's the same for sales. You know, if you're you have sales executives listening, they know that, man, this product is $400,000 a year, I'm not just going to hop on a phone and close it. I need to work through several decision makers, I need to understand
00:13:48
Speaker
what the buyer is struggling with. And I need to make sure that our solution can help them. And I need to put a game plan in place to help them. And that doesn't happen overnight. So if you're expecting me to sell a product that is 100,000, 400,000, a million dollars a year, whatever, you're going to expect at least a four to eight month buying cycle, if not longer.
Jacob's eBook and Job Search Mindset
00:14:10
Speaker
So I briefly mentioned a little bit ago about your new ebook that's coming out. And it's called The Complete Guide to Understand Your Job Search. So some of our listeners may find themselves kind of in a situation right now where they need to find a new job and they could use this resource to help them to find the right job, a job that's fulfilling for them.
00:14:34
Speaker
Let's walk through some of the guidance that you'll be sharing in the book that's available. And I think Stacey, you wanted to talk about the assessment.
00:14:43
Speaker
Yeah, so in the book, I've had a chance to actually read it. So the book's broken down into four sections about assessing your your career experience, how to position yourself, the process of finding a job and the showtime moment where you go get that interview and negotiate. So let's talk about the assessment period first.
00:15:04
Speaker
Jacob, what is it without giving away the whole book that people should be doing to assess their career experience and how to really get their foundation set before going out for that job search? Yeah, ultimately eight. This is likely the key section of the entire book.
00:15:25
Speaker
It's the most psychological as well. It's the most honesty we need to put on ourselves. It's very challenging to accurately assess where you should be in your career versus where you want to be. It's a section where you need to remove your ego from it, first and foremost. You need to ask yourself tough questions like, what do I want to do? What makes me happy?
00:15:50
Speaker
You know, I got into marketing not because I wanted to be a marketer, but because I wanted to learn how to, at some point, bring something to a greater audience of people and I wanted to know how to do that. But most of the jobs I had in my career, I didn't enjoy marketing. I didn't enjoy marketing a new way of building a spreadsheet to other executives. It was kind of boring to me. It wasn't fulfilling, but I knew that the tactics I learned there would help propel my career forward.
00:16:19
Speaker
So it's about being honest with yourself. Is this job my forever job? Is this job my stepping stone job? Is there anything I can learn in this experience that would help me get to a position that I enjoy more later? And a lot of times the assessment says that, yeah, I am in the right place. All I need to do is I need to communicate with my teammates, with my superiors, and I want to build a path here because I know a little bit more about what I'm looking for and I can clearly communicate that now.
00:16:48
Speaker
So the assessment is this really important section. We found that, I mean, we've worked with over a thousand executives in the last two years. We've had a lot of clients, some successful, some not successful. And the number one factor between success and failure is mindset and attitude. A lot of the job search things you need to do are very menial. They're menial tasks that you have to do again and again and again and again and fail and fail and fail and start to get some traction here and there.
00:17:17
Speaker
And if your mindset isn't in it, you will fail no matter what. It's similar to, and this is going to be obnoxious for some, but I look at a job search as going to the gym. And the thing is, if you want to have a beach body by summer, so to speak, you don't start in June. Right. Right. Well, I mean, depending on your level of fitness, of course. But the time to go is now, right?
00:17:46
Speaker
And that's because you can't just run a marathon and be the fittest person on the planet. You can't just bench press 300 pounds 10 times and all of a sudden have a massive chest. You'll actually be in a lot of pain. But it's the little things. It's maybe you can't do a push up. So maybe you do one on your knees and you do a quarter of a push up and that's all you do that day. But the next day you do two of those. And the next day after that you do two and a half. And it's these little incremental menial tasks that add up
00:18:14
Speaker
to be a month down the line, you can knock out 15 pushups normal. And then another two months down the line, you can do 30 or 40. And it's the same with building momentum in your job search. And you have to have that mindset, you have to set honest expectations with yourself. So that's really what we want to get set in the first, the first section of that book is if you can get your head in the right space, we call it flipping the switch. As soon as you recognize that I want more from my life,
00:18:41
Speaker
I know that some of the things I'm going to have to do are annoying or menial or not going to produce a lot of results in the meantime, but that's okay. Once you get that mindset and that's triggered, that's half the battle right there, if not more.
00:18:57
Speaker
One thing that's interesting with that whole assessment period or phase that you need to go through, that honesty part, being honest with yourself, do I want to be CMO or whatever? Or am I happy being a content writer or a SEO specialist versus the strategist and leader? Because I think a lot of people
00:19:20
Speaker
get in their mind I always have to be moving ahead instead of specializing in where I am and being comfortable with that even though that's what I might enjoy. Yeah that's that's a mistake I've made several times over and over and didn't recognize until I was in this position at Discover Podium and even then I still make mistakes with that. So throughout my career
00:19:43
Speaker
I started young and I basically hated everything I did. It was a bunch of building custom CRMs and some email marketing. And it wasn't really that I hated doing it. It's just that it was a lot of tactical stuff that I didn't really understand the greater picture of things. And I'm very much like a big picture thinker. I'm not very good in the weeds doing a lot of the tactical stuff that really puts the results in.
00:20:12
Speaker
I'm good at thinking of strategies and developing new ways to do things and thinking outside the box. And that's what engages my mind. So I could do it, but I wasn't the best at it. So I always try to push my career forward. And I've never been the best at any one given thing on my team. And that was something that actually propelled me to be a leader was to help other people get the best out of themselves.
00:20:33
Speaker
And my mindset is, well, I'm going to just keep moving forward because if I'm a director, I'm a VP, I get to do more strategic things. I'll understand why email marketing is important or I'll understand why the cold call is important or why the BDRs do what they do because I've done all of those things. And I can vouch for them and I can drive them forward. Now, the mistake that I made time and time again is expecting other people to think and do like I do. So for my business,
00:21:01
Speaker
particularly early, I hired a lot of friends and I said, look, you're all going to be leaders. You're all going to lead teams and you're all going to do this and this and this, because that's what I wanted. Right. So I unfairly put pressure on, on individuals that didn't want to be leaders. And it's not that they couldn't, it's that it really wasn't something that brought them joy or fulfillment.
00:21:26
Speaker
And I put that on people because I thought that, look, everything in in in your career is if I get promoted, I will make more money. If I make more money, I will be happier. Right. It's a simple, semi logical progression that's kind of misses the point.
Valuing Expertise Over Leadership
00:21:43
Speaker
And that is I read a few books. Recently, I read Radical Candor by Kim Scott, which is probably the most transformational book that I've read about leadership.
00:21:53
Speaker
And she said, look, not everyone's made out to be a leader, but you could have rockstar independent contributors. Just the best SEO specialists you've ever had can optimize anything. Doesn't want to lead an SEO or a content team, but knows how to do all this stuff and knows how to do it well. Now, is it fair for you to never give that person a raise because they're not leading people? And so the best people
00:22:20
Speaker
tend to stay where they're at because they recognize like, Hey, I don't want to be a leader. So they're not going to push for that, but they also don't get compensated for being the best. And that's unfair. So there's this mentality of like, you have your rock star employees and you have your superstar employees. And really the difference is nuanced, but rock stars are really good at what they do. And that's all they want to do. Like I have a really strong writing department and they, all they want to do is write.
00:22:46
Speaker
That's it. They write very well. They want to do creative writing. They want to do resume writing. They want to do writing, right? Now, do I want them to lead a media team and a PR team and all of the next steps? Some of them maybe, but ultimately that's not what they want to do. But it doesn't mean that I need to hold their career back because I don't have a promotion for them. So that was something that I was challenged with. I just assumed that everyone wanted to go straight up to the top.
00:23:13
Speaker
But ultimately, it's a completely different skill set that you need every step of the way. And it's not always fulfilling when you do that kind of work. So after you've kind of gone through and done the assessment and you've flipped the switch, you've got your mindset right, the next step is positioning, right? And you're positioning yourself for leading a career. What exactly does that mean and entail? Well, I think sales and marketing folks, if that is our audience on this podcast, we'll get this very well.
00:23:43
Speaker
Really, again, my background's been in sales and marketing. I build go-to-market strategies for businesses. What you're doing here is building a go-to-market strategy for yourself. So for content marketers that are writing blogs for companies and writing Glassdoor, they're cleaning up the company perception and the page, and they're doing website content, they're doing these things, it's simply doing it for yourself. And I say simply, but it's never easy to talk about yourself.
00:24:12
Speaker
we're definitely taught not to brag. We're especially taught not to humble brag, which is kind of what LinkedIn's for. It's kind of the king and queen of humble bragging will happen on LinkedIn. But essentially, you're developing the content for your audience. It's as simple as that. So you want to understand, okay, let's say Stacy, Stacy, you want to be a director of marketing, let's say VP of marketing.
00:24:37
Speaker
So your hiring manager's likely going to be a chief revenue officer, chief marketing officer, maybe an operating officer or the CEO, depending on the size of the company. You want to create the perception that you are the person that person needs. That's it. So what does that person care about? It's just like going to market with anything else. You're creating a blog article. Who's your reader? What do they care about? What do they need to see? But you're doing it for you.
00:25:04
Speaker
And you only have a few channels on which to get that story across. And that's actually a blessing. We know that marketers go, okay, what content do I need on Facebook versus Twitter versus, let's say, I'm going to do some Quora stuff. I'm going to do some website content. I'm going to do some eBooks. I'm going to do some of this. I'm going to just, you have so many channels, right? In your job search, you have your resume.
00:25:30
Speaker
You have a little bit of a LinkedIn profile. You may do a cover letter. You may have a portfolio. You may have your own website if you're really ambitious. There are very few channels. You likely don't need to write a white paper about your career to find a job.
00:25:45
Speaker
Right. I've seen it. I've seen a little bit of everything. I've also seen, I've seen 20 page resumes from Deloitte executives because consulting is very complicated to explain. And the more of a jack of all trades you are, the more complicated it is to explain. So
00:26:06
Speaker
What I mean in this section and what our team means is let's narrow it a little bit. Let's narrow it to what you want. You can still want multiple things, but you'll need different positions for that. So for example, I'm the CEO of a startup.
00:26:20
Speaker
If I were to go back into the corporate world, I may look for a chief revenue officer job. I may look for a VP of marketing job. That's a significant overhaul in my content from leading people. Right now, I lead product teams. I lead an engineering team here starting pretty soon, a marketing team, a sales team, and I lead all of these functions. Now, that's pretty much jack of all trades. If you're going to go into a marketing environment, you're only going to lead marketing. So why are you talking about all this other stuff?
00:26:48
Speaker
that detracts from your goal at that point. So you have to really focus your content around what it is you're trying to accomplish. And you don't want to overshare in a lot of cases. You want to share just enough to peak interest because your goal is that conversion, or to get someone to click on you, or to get someone to connect with you, or to get someone to do XYZ thing. And the other important part of this section is, and I know Stacy, you'll appreciate this, you can create the best content in the world. And if nobody sees it,
00:27:19
Speaker
Did you really create the best content in the world? Right. So you can spend, let's say you spend 20 hours on your resume, you get it absolutely perfect and you never send it to anyone. Or worse, you send it to everyone, but you never send it to the right one, which is worse. You'll start to second guess yourself. Am I not saying something right about myself?
00:27:43
Speaker
Am I positioning myself wrong? Well, if you're sending it to the people that you know you want to be hired from and they're giving you that feedback, then yeah, you're positioning yourself wrong. If you're sending it to the wrong people and they don't reach out to you, that's a good thing because they wouldn't have had anything for you anyway. So it's important to say like, look, I'm going to spend time articulating my thoughts, creating the content, but more importantly, I want to make sure I get that to the right eyeballs and I want to make sure I earn just enough attention to have a phone call.
00:28:13
Speaker
So I can have the opportunity to continue the dialogue on the phone, understand their challenges, position myself as one of the solutions for those challenges, or work to understand their challenges and realize that I'm not a good fit for that. And then I'm actually looking for something a little different than I thought and moving your content forward based off of that feedback that you've gotten.
00:28:34
Speaker
Yeah. So there's a lot of self-reflection and work that you have to do about yourself and to talk about yourself in these first two chapters. The next part is really about the part I hate the most about looking for a job is actually looking for a job.
Job Search Strategies
00:28:52
Speaker
When I got laid off for work.
00:28:55
Speaker
Yeah, when i got laid off several years ago that was just the worst and i probably didn't do it the best way after reading this chapter what are some really important tips that people need to know when it comes to their job search process. Yeah i'm gonna pull this from my consulting team and it's something that my team has done a very good job of articulating that i couldn't in the past and.
00:29:20
Speaker
It kind of goes against what we want to do as marketers and sales folks. And that is to be looser at the beginning and to be, you know, you don't have a lot of expectations right off the bat to put yourself out there and see what kind of feedback you get. I used to call it like you got to bump off of both sides of the walls so that you can narrow in on what it is you're looking for to target down and what my team says. And I think this is from Brandon and Laurel are two consultants right now.
00:29:50
Speaker
they recommend that you have your perfect fit jobs. These are the ones that you're going to apply for. Maybe you found them on LinkedIn or Indeed, or maybe a friend referred you into those. And you want to track those. Those are the best fits for you. And you want to put most of your attention in that. And then the part that a lot of folks are frustrated with, and I think it perpetuates a problem of being a very noisy environment anyway,
00:30:17
Speaker
is the term they call they coined raffle ticket roles. And the roles that you may not be a good fit for. Maybe Stacy, maybe you're looking for a director role, but you found a VP role. It's not quite a good fit, because you're a little under experienced for it. And first of all, I'm not saying that you are because I definitely know your VP talent, Stacy. But maybe it's a stretch, right? Now, what harm do you have by going after it?
00:30:44
Speaker
What possible negative things could happen? What do you spend a few minutes on an application to put yourself out there that you're likely going to get rejected for anyway? So kind of whatever, right? But maybe you have a conversation and then at that point you decide, is it worth it for me to continue this conversation or would I rather be doing something else with my life?
00:31:04
Speaker
All we're trying to do in this phase is open doors, open any opportunities to learn. Because worst case, you interview for this VP job, you understand, oh man, I'm really not a good fit for this. But I understand more about what they're looking for. And that's going to help me better articulate what I'm looking for too. And if I ever want to be a VP in the future, I now know that I should work on those skills. So it's an educational opportunity, right?
00:31:31
Speaker
And in some cases, if you're like me, you accidentally win those interviews and get into positions you don't belong because you want to feel wanted somewhere. That's a whole other mental problem that I have. I'll have to express another time. But essentially, the whole job of this process is to try to open doors. And you want to be a little looser, even if they're doors that you don't want to walk through, because there's something to learn from that. And if you approach your interviews and you approach that process,
00:32:00
Speaker
by providing more value than you're asking in return, then the people that you end up speaking to, you're not wasting their time either. You're talking through them. What type of challenges are you trying to accomplish with this VP role? What concerns do you have about my career? What do you think is missing? Oh, in my experience, I've seen that these are the types of candidates that work best. If you have conversations like that, you can provide value every step of the way. And then ultimately, all we're trying to do is change
00:32:28
Speaker
the power to you as the job seeker. Here are five doors you can walk through. Now we have a choice. That's a good problem to have. If you're looking for a job and you only ever have one offer, which happens often, by the way, especially now, it's a very tricky environment to work through. You'll have one offer and you look at that offer and you go, if you're out of work, you're probably going to take it because you need the money. If you're not out of work, you might question it a little bit and say, is this a good move for me?
00:32:56
Speaker
but you don't have anything to compare it to. You only have one offer or maybe one avenue to explore. And again, that's where it starts to become more of a first world problem because if you are unemployed, any offers a good offer in a lot of ways because you want to make sure you're bringing some cash home and you want to make sure you're taking care of your family. So if you get into a position where it is why I recommend always looking for work, even if you have work that you like, just give yourself options, learn about what's out there,
00:33:25
Speaker
And then you can start to determine what the best course of action would be. Just because you open doors doesn't mean you have to walk through them. And I kind of went on more of a theoretical rant here than going into the details of the job search. And that's because the job search is like going to the gym and then doing sit-ups, sit-ups, sit-ups, sit-ups, sit-ups over and over and over again. Apply, apply, apply, rejection, rejection.
00:33:48
Speaker
Some of the things that we talked through in this is how to go beyond just we call it knocking on the front door. If you send a job application, you're knocking on the front door. Now, if you knock on the front door with 500 other people, what are the odds that someone's getting led into that that party, so to speak. Now, if you're the person that goes around the side to the backyard of the party and says, Hey, guys, we got a bunch of people at the front door. Can you let me in?
00:34:10
Speaker
you're going to be more likely to be heard. And you'll be the one that kind of stood out in the crowd there. So, you know, that's a metaphor for everyone. But we try to teach methods to help people think outside the box. Okay, I've sent an application and I've actually connected with a handful of people on their team already.
00:34:30
Speaker
And let's say I talked to their marketing manager. I learned a little bit about what this company was going through, what they value in a leader. Then they introduced me to the hiring manager. And I expressed the challenges that the marketing manager shared. And now I'm already creating solutions that I'm not even hired yet. Those are ways we can start to cut through the noise and do more efficient use of our time in that process.
00:34:53
Speaker
So once you've kind of gone through the process and you've got some interviews set up, it's, it's what
Preparing for Job Interviews
00:35:00
Speaker
you guys call it. It's showtime. So what are some of the things that people should be doing or some of the biggest mistakes that people are making during this interview stage and the offer stage?
00:35:13
Speaker
Well, the interview stage, a lot of folks get very nervous. I think that some of the clients that we've had that do the best are the ones that practice more. They do more research. They spend more time understanding. Now, this is something you might not do for your raffle ticket rolls, right? You may not spend the time to invest in learning about the company and their challenges.
00:35:37
Speaker
But it's ultimately a mistake to not research and to not prepare for your interviews and to understand the direction that you'd like that conversation to go. Another thing that is glossed over is that you sit in an interview and you wait to be asked all the questions that you'll be asked. You have no control over the conversation if you just wait for the other person to speak.
00:36:01
Speaker
And ultimately, your job is a two-way commitment. It's not, and this goes back to a point I brought earlier where sometimes we feel lesser than because we have our hands out trying to get a job. But there's mutual value there. It is a mutual exchange. You are giving your time, which is one of the most finite resources we have on the planet, by the way, so it's exceptionally valuable. You are trading your time for money.
00:36:28
Speaker
And ultimately, you're providing something that's much more valuable than money, and that's time. So you have to recognize that in that interview process, it's a two-way street. You want to make sure the person that you're giving your time to believes in you. But more importantly, you want to make sure you believe in them. And a lot of mistakes we make in interviews are, I'm here, it would feel good if I was wanted.
00:36:52
Speaker
And particularly if you've had a tough job search or you've been, you've had tough bosses and you know how hard it is out there. Sometimes we just want to walk away from that interview going, please want me, please want me. Now we wouldn't necessarily approach our dating life like that. Right. Right. Like I went to a bar and I found a guy and I said, please want me. Right. That's not necessarily how that works. Why would we do that in a job environment?
00:37:21
Speaker
So we want to make sure that in that interview process, it's a two-way street. The only way it's going to be a two-way street is if you can engage in that conversation with a lot of research that you've already done. Hey, you know, I recognize that a couple of years ago, you raised $15 million in investment. How's that investment going? And what have you grown? What have you learned from investing in your company with that? Like, that's quite an open-ended question that you've asked me, the very astute observation. It shows that you're invested in learning about us.
00:37:51
Speaker
shows that you're paying attention. And it shows that you care about things that I care about. So now I can have a more engaging conversation with you. So the research part of it's really important in that practice. And that's one thing we really like to practice with our clients. We ask them questions like that. So what are you concerned about with this role? And typically when they speak with us, because they're not being interviewed for a job,
00:38:18
Speaker
They'll be very honest. They'll say, Hey, I'm really worried about this. And we're like, great, say it. Say what you're worried about. Ask them. Let's get some clarity on this to make sure it's a good fit. That's, that's really important information for people to hear. And I think people do just get nervous, especially if they really need a job. And that's why they might blow it or end up doing something they don't want to do or getting less than they want.
00:38:47
Speaker
Yeah. The thing is, the more you research, the more confident you're going to be. And ultimately confidence and obviously the ability to do the task is the most important element. You need to be confident. And if your confidence shows, you're going to be more attractive in that process. It is important that you can do the job. This is actually something that is frustrating for women a lot of the times as well.
00:39:14
Speaker
A man will come into an interview process, may know 5% of what they need to do. And I'm speaking from my experience of me doing it myself. I was maybe 5% qualified for a role, but I came in so confident that I could figure it out along the way that I got hired anyway. Now in a similar boat, a woman could be 95% qualified for a role, go into that and go, ah, but I'm missing that 5% and not get the job because of that insecurity.
00:39:41
Speaker
And ultimately, that's frustrating. That's one of the reasons we have some of this discrepancy in pay wage gaps and other things that we're trying to overcome as well through education. Right. So before we wrap up, a couple of questions for you about the
Gender Confidence Gaps and Perception
00:39:58
Speaker
e-book. When will that be available and how can people get it?
00:40:02
Speaker
So I think the first section is released on September 8th or 9th. So a couple weeks from now. And then the rest to follow over the next couple of weeks. I know that I don't want to misspeak for my marketing team. So I'll make sure to check in with them afterward. And maybe we can buzz out a newsletter to your
00:40:22
Speaker
to your followers here, Stacy. But ultimately, I believe we're starting a newsletter and an email list too, so you can sign up for updates there. And I do highly recommend the content so far. It's been five, six months in the works for developing it in the first place, and then has over a decade of experience included into it. Not your typical type of ebook experience.
00:40:45
Speaker
We'll definitely be happy to tweet, post, sing it from the hilltops when it's available. So we'll make sure our listeners get it too. Well, thank you. I do appreciate that. And I would ask you in your experience, I know you've read the e-book, what did you think? Your honest opinion, where could we have gone deeper? And what did you learn along the way?
00:41:08
Speaker
It was a pretty thorough document. I think what I learned, because like you say, a lot of people don't like to brag. And some of the things that I might have thought about if I were having to look for a job right now that I would have thought of as bragging is really just being confident and talking about myself in a way that I can go help this customer the same way I would sell our services as Jackson Marketing. But it just feels sometimes a little
00:41:37
Speaker
braggy, and maybe women even get a little more like, oh, I'm not supposed to show off or have a big ego about this. But not thinking of it in those terms and thinking about, well, I'm writing a piece of content, this resume, to sell my service to this employer. I think it's really changing mindset that way is one thing I really learned. It's easier to sell a company or a product than it is yourself sometimes.
00:42:03
Speaker
Yeah, I definitely agree with that. And I know it's a sensitive topic, the gender gap and discrimination and diversity and inclusion and all of these challenges. We need to look beyond the surface level things that we're all talking about here. And ultimately, a job is, can you do the task, yes or no? It doesn't matter anything in the past. In a lot of cases, your experience can help you build the confidence for it. But your experience is in the past. Everything that you're working towards is the future.
00:42:34
Speaker
So ultimately, can you learn on the fly? Can you do these things? And it doesn't matter if you're, you know, what your background is, if you can communicate that you do that, you should get that job. And ultimately, if you're torn down from some amount of bias, whether it's sexism, racism, homophobia, xenophobia, or any number of reasons, ageism is a big one. If you're turned down for that, you don't want to get pissed.
00:43:02
Speaker
You just recognize, wow, that's a blessing because I don't have to work for that guy or that gal. Yeah. Because they don't respect me or appreciate the value, the diversity that I can bring to their team. And I dodged a bullet. And we turn that fuel into, let's find the people that do support us and find our ambassadors in our corners and work for more of those people. That's going to help us really elicit a lot of positive change for our country.
00:43:26
Speaker
We have one more question for you and it's just a just for fun question. So if you weren't the CEO of Discover podium, what would your dream job be? Honestly, a lot of what I do is my dream job right now.
Jacob's Career Consultation Passion
00:43:44
Speaker
I can tell you just a bit about it. What I would be is a direct consultant.
00:43:51
Speaker
And I would likely be more affordable as well, um, from a time commitment because I really enjoy helping individuals. And I realized that this was my passion, um, with a few of my early clients where I worked with a gal who was unemployed for six months. She's a single mom in San Jose and she was so down on herself and so like emotionally, um, upset.
00:44:21
Speaker
just felt worthless, got laid off to no fault of her own. And she recently had a divorce, she's a single mom, and her daughter was about to go to college. And that's a lot of pressure, first of all, especially in San Jose, which is one of the if not the most expensive city to live in the country. And she felt worthless. Her self esteem was shot
00:44:46
Speaker
She put a lot of her value in the man she was with, as well as her career, and she lost both, right? So what we did together is we learned how to respect ourselves again. We learned how to, first of all, let's be objective. You're living in the most expensive city in the world. You have enough savings to live for another six months without needing a job, which is incredible, by the way, that you've saved that type of money.
00:45:13
Speaker
you are a single woman, like making about $200,000 a year in the most competitive environment on the planet, and you're still surviving, you tell me how you're weak. And that was where, you know, it's pretty emotional. And some of our career coaching turns into therapy sessions like that. Not that we're licensed therapists, because I'd never say that. But you tell me how you are not good enough.
00:45:40
Speaker
And once we came over some of those emotional barriers, we ended up getting a job offer with a $20,000 increase on base from what she was previously making. And we negotiated a $35,000 signing bonus. Nice.
00:45:57
Speaker
First of all, that's all great. There's ROI in that, cool, that's all the business and buzzwordy stuff that we are all used to, especially B2B marketers. We love the ROI and the lifetime value and the customer happiness and all of those buzzwords. But when I recognized that the confidence and the life changing moment that was, that now the careers changed,
00:46:22
Speaker
that stability is there, that survival is there, the daughter can go to college now, the wings have been unclipped, so to speak, and she could now experience her life in a completely refreshing way where she can let go and turn the chapter into optimism. That's why I do what I do. And it doesn't have to be someone that makes $200,000 a year, because that's a lot. We've worked with folks that have made 20 or 30,000 and doubled it.
00:46:50
Speaker
or still want to make, you know, 20 or 30,000 a year and found a more fulfilling way to do it, giving back in a nonprofit, doing things like that. It's not all about the money. It's not all about the job or the cloud or the title. That's where our term like we want people to love what they do. We want the fulfilling aspect. The fulfilling aspect is different from other people. And for her, this individual, it wasn't about the money.
00:47:17
Speaker
But it was about I can put my daughter through college now and I can turn this new chapter in my life. There's nothing to do with her actual expertise. But that that's where I find fulfillment. So as a very long convoluted answer to your question, if I wasn't the CEO of this company helping others do that for others, I would just be doing it individually for others.
00:47:39
Speaker
Well, Jacob, thank you so much for taking time to talk with us today about helping marketers and salespeople find more fulfilling jobs and improving their job search.
Connecting with Hosts and Guest
00:47:48
Speaker
If people want to reach out to you or connect online, what's the best way for them to do that?
00:47:53
Speaker
So LinkedIn is most appropriate. You'll have to send a connection request and a message because my connection request situation is a little crazy over there. So I'd love to just see a message and say, hey, Stacey, or in your connection request, say, Stacey, Elena, they recommended I reach out to you and I'll connect with you and we can have a conversation.
00:48:15
Speaker
So we will put your LinkedIn in the show notes so that people can easily find you. And don't forget to put the note with it. That is very important. The note is the critical part. Personalize it and say, the Jackson sisters sent me, and you'll get priority treatment. I wish that went in every place of life that just mentioned the Jackson sisters. Yeah, that's the promo code to get a discount on everything in your life.
00:48:44
Speaker
Alright, so make sure that you guys go follow and connect with Jacob. If you want to get in touch with me or Stacey, you can hit us up on social on Twitter. You can find Stacey at Stacey underscore Jax. That's S T A C Y underscore J A X. And you can find me at Elena underscore Jax. That's A L A N N A underscore J A X. And if you're not a Twitter fan, you can look us up on LinkedIn. That's Stacey Jackson and Elena Jackson. So talk to you next time. Thank you.
00:49:17
Speaker
The B2B Mix Show is hosted by Stacy Jackson and Elena Jackson of, you guessed it, Jackson Marketing. If you need help with your B2B inbound marketing efforts, visit us at JacksonMarketingServices.com.