Speaker 1: Hey, hey, va fam, It's time for the ba Qa,
Speaker 1: the va qa just with Manday. No Tiffany today. Tiffany
Speaker 1: is still feeling under the weather, so we center all
Speaker 1: of the virtual cups of ginger lemon tea with a
Speaker 1: little bit of honey so that she feels so much better.
Speaker 1: But I got y'all, I got y'all. I am in
Speaker 1: the hot seat today and I am here to answer
Speaker 1: some really juicy career questions. If y'all want to have
Speaker 1: your answers answered or sorry, if y'all want to have
Speaker 1: your questions answered on BA you know what to do.
Speaker 1: Head to our Instagram Brown Ambition Podcast on IG and
Speaker 1: slide into our DMS with your question. Use a fun
Speaker 1: pseudonym if you want to be anonymous, that's fine. We
Speaker 1: love all of your questions, from career to money to
Speaker 1: investing to business questions. We love them all. Just a reminder, though,
Speaker 1: I am your financial bestie, right, I am not your
Speaker 1: financial guru or your financial planners, So bring those salt
Speaker 1: shakers out and get ready to take everything I say
Speaker 1: with a little bit of salt, because obviously I'm never
Speaker 1: going to know everything about your situation, right, but I
Speaker 1: will do my best to give you guys all the
Speaker 1: juicy insights that I can offer to help you through
Speaker 1: these career conundrums. All right, let's kick things off with
Speaker 1: our first question from Paradise. Paradise sent us an email,
Speaker 1: and by the way, you guys can email us your questions.
Speaker 1: Brandnabisson Podcast at gmail dot com. Paradise has an interesting
Speaker 1: question for her sister. All right, She says, my sister
Speaker 1: is in her fifties and has been working in fuel assistance,
Speaker 1: helping individuals and families get fuel for their homes during
Speaker 1: the winter. She's been doing this for nineteen years. She
Speaker 1: would like to move on to a new position, but
Speaker 1: she doesn't have a college degree. What strategies can you
Speaker 1: provide for landing a job without a college degree? Also,
Speaker 1: she's fearful of leaving her job because she'll be leaving
Speaker 1: her job and financial security. How can she overcome these fears?
Speaker 1: Thanks in advance, Oh, Paradise, you're a good sister, alrighty, So,
Speaker 1: first of all, I think there's a couple of things
Speaker 1: working here. She's been there for nearly two decades. So
Speaker 1: at that point you start to lose confidence that you're
Speaker 1: able to do anything else. Anywhere else, and I think
Speaker 1: in order to build her confidence, my solution is get
Speaker 1: her interviewing. So whatever she can do to get her
Speaker 1: resume out there, build a LinkedIn profile if she doesn't
Speaker 1: already have one. I mean the fuel assistance industry or
Speaker 1: just a fuel industry in general. I believe, you know,
Speaker 1: this is a pretty cool niche. And for for example,
Speaker 1: I live in the Northeast and there's all kinds of
Speaker 1: fuel companies because so many of the homes here are
Speaker 1: still powered by oil. And I think with nineteen years
Speaker 1: of experience, I mean, she must have a lot of
Speaker 1: knowledge and expertise that would be really valuable to some
Speaker 1: of these companies that I've been around for a long
Speaker 1: time and would love to hire a veteran. The thing is,
Speaker 1: because she's been there for nearly twenty years, she needs
Speaker 1: to build up her confidence. So that's why I'm immediately saying,
Speaker 1: let's get her notice buy these jobs. Let's get her applying.
Speaker 1: Let's get a LinkedIn profile created for her so that
Speaker 1: she can actually attract some attention from recruiters who are
Speaker 1: on LinkedIn, because LinkedIn is their Google, y'all, when they're
Speaker 1: searching for job candidates. That's their number one stop, right,
Speaker 1: And how are they going to find you if you're
Speaker 1: not there to be found. So she can overcome these
Speaker 1: fears by building her confidence. So let's get her on LinkedIn,
Speaker 1: get her sending her resume out for opportunities. Maybe you
Speaker 1: can even help. You're such a nice sister, Maybe you
Speaker 1: can even help find some jobs that she would qualify
Speaker 1: for and help her submit some applications. She's only going
Speaker 1: to start feeling more confident when she gets into those
Speaker 1: job interviews and starts killing it. And then she realizes, Oh,
Speaker 1: I actually do know my shit. I'm able to answer
Speaker 1: these questions with authority and with knowledge, and I feel
Speaker 1: like college degree or not, I am well qualified for
Speaker 1: these roles. And at this point in her career, with
Speaker 1: nearly twenty years of experience, I think that she'd be
Speaker 1: able to get a job not having a college degree.
Speaker 1: It's going to be based on her expertise. Now, listen,
Speaker 1: I have a four year college degree. I don't have
Speaker 1: an MBA, and yet I'm a business owner. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't have a PhD. And yet I call myself
Speaker 1: a career expert, a negotiating expert. It's not because of
Speaker 1: the paper that I've collected along the way. It's because
Speaker 1: of my experience, right, the fact that I can speak
Speaker 1: from a place of authority and share credibility. And your
Speaker 1: sister is going to be able to do that as
Speaker 1: well if she can discuss herself in a way that
Speaker 1: makes them forget all about the fact that she doesn't
Speaker 1: have a piece of paper and five figure student loan
Speaker 1: debt to go with it. She needs to be able
Speaker 1: to talk about her experience and share. You know, you
Speaker 1: don't really give me much information about what her exact
Speaker 1: skill set is or what role she's in, But with
Speaker 1: nineteen years of experience, I would just be shocked if
Speaker 1: she wouldn't be able to hold a really strong conversation
Speaker 1: highlighting those skills in the interview. But I wish you
Speaker 1: all the best. I think that you are the best.
Speaker 1: I don't know. This is giving like little sister energy,
Speaker 1: I don't know, but the best little sister ever for
Speaker 1: looking out for a big sis and listen. At the
Speaker 1: end of the day, confidence comes like one little tiny
Speaker 1: morsel at a time, and it's by taking those baby steps.
Speaker 1: So help her with the resume, getting that maybe dusted
Speaker 1: off or even created. You know if she's been in
Speaker 1: this job for twenty years, she may not even have
Speaker 1: an updated resume, but there's plenty of templates you can
Speaker 1: use online to create one and then start applying so
Speaker 1: that she can actually hear directly from recruiters or hiring
Speaker 1: managers that she is actually someone they would be interested
Speaker 1: in hiring. And then she will start to overcome that
Speaker 1: fear of leaving and start to realize that even though
Speaker 1: her job feels stable, she has options, and she has
Speaker 1: options to be getting paid a lot more. All right, Paradise,
Speaker 1: thank you so so much. Hey, keep us posted. Let
Speaker 1: us know if your sister ends up applying for any
Speaker 1: new roles and getting some interviews and what happens next.
Speaker 1: We love, love, love y'all's update. All right, let me
Speaker 1: take a quick break and I will be back with more.
Speaker 1: Baqa Soriah says, I hope you're doing well. Here's my question.
Speaker 1: I'm about to graduate with a social work master's degree
Speaker 1: and I'm applying for jobs. Do you have any recommendations
Speaker 1: for doing salary negotiations when you're someone who works in
Speaker 1: social services? I got Mandy's nail the Negotiations scripts Guide.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Mandy, but she talks about negotiating equity, and
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if that's even on the table because
Speaker 1: I'm mostly applying for university and nonprofit jobs. Also, do
Speaker 1: you know what it means when a salary range is
Speaker 1: not posted in a job offer? Soria? Okay, Sarriah girl.
Speaker 1: So much to unpack here. So one of the reasons
Speaker 1: why I felt, like, you know, really connected to those
Speaker 1: question is a lot of my clients, and honestly a
Speaker 1: lot of women in color in general, we are drawn
Speaker 1: to these service industries. We have big hearts, we want
Speaker 1: to help. Y'all know, Tiffany got her start as a
Speaker 1: preschool teacher, and I've been a dirty capitalist from the beginning,
Speaker 1: so I'm very different. I've been about securing that back
Speaker 1: my whole career. No, but in all seriousness, in my
Speaker 1: business now, I serve when of color who are trying
Speaker 1: to over get into a position where they can increase
Speaker 1: their earnings and find new career opportunities. So I'm very
Speaker 1: much in the service space as well. And of course
Speaker 1: through the show, we're all about helping people and that
Speaker 1: is extremely noble, right, It is important work. Unfortunately, the
Speaker 1: work that we do, especially in the service space is
Speaker 1: not always valued the way that it should be. That
Speaker 1: being said, I don't want people who are in the
Speaker 1: service industries or service professions to immediately tell themselves a
Speaker 1: story that starts with I'm never going to earn that much.
Speaker 1: I chose this path, and this path that's probably not
Speaker 1: going to lead to a decent earnings. Now, this may
Speaker 1: be the perception that you have, and hey, certainly if
Speaker 1: you know people in the social work space, they will
Speaker 1: tell you that it does not pay extraordinarily. Well, that
Speaker 1: being said, I do still think there's some things you
Speaker 1: can do to give yourself a stronger position when you're negotiating.
Speaker 1: Now that you've got your masters, which I know is
Speaker 1: like the bare minimum or one of the minimum requirements
Speaker 1: for advancing a career in social work. Like, I know
Speaker 1: that probably wasn't cheap, so riah, Okay, so let's go
Speaker 1: ahead and say that it's worth trying to negotiate because
Speaker 1: you know the stakes are high, that you have maybe
Speaker 1: some student loan debt that you want to pay down,
Speaker 1: and you really want to get the most you can
Speaker 1: out of this degree. So my number one recommendation for
Speaker 1: you is to really hit the interview market hard and
Speaker 1: try to drum up as many job offers as possible,
Speaker 1: like a couple, Okay, maybe three more if you can,
Speaker 1: because leveraging job offers against one another is one of
Speaker 1: the best ways to negotiate, especially when you're not someone
Speaker 1: who's currently employed, and you're someone who doesn't really have
Speaker 1: a sense of what your market value is because you
Speaker 1: haven't been working and you haven't acquired that job yet.
Speaker 1: Does that make sense? So as you're applying, you want
Speaker 1: to be taking those interviews, even the ones that maybe
Speaker 1: are not your top top choice, and killing it, you know,
Speaker 1: making them really excited to hire you so that they
Speaker 1: are giving you a generous offer. And then if you
Speaker 1: have multiple offers on the table, then you can start
Speaker 1: to leverage those against one another. So, for example, I
Speaker 1: have a client named Jasmine who I met last year
Speaker 1: and she's wonderful. She also worked for a university as
Speaker 1: a researcher and at the time she was making like
Speaker 1: fifty thousand dollars and she suspected that she was underpaid, right,
Speaker 1: but she wasn't sure. So I encouraged Jasmine to start
Speaker 1: job searching, applying, putting herself out there, and a few
Speaker 1: months later, she had three different job opportunities on the
Speaker 1: table at the same time. And now this is a
Speaker 1: little bit where luck plays in and timing right, So
Speaker 1: she happened to get the three final offers for these
Speaker 1: roles within the same week of each other. Okay, So
Speaker 1: that meant when Offer one came through, she could tell them, hey,
Speaker 1: I need some time to think about it because I've
Speaker 1: got two more offers on the table. And when she
Speaker 1: got the other offers, she was very quickly able to
Speaker 1: say to offer one no, way, even at seventy three K,
Speaker 1: which is twenty K more than I'm making, it's not
Speaker 1: good enough for me. And so she went to offer
Speaker 1: number two and Offer number two negotiated a little bit,
Speaker 1: they got her up to ninety K. So she's already
Speaker 1: confirmed like, oh wow, I am really underpaid for my
Speaker 1: value in this market. So that was good confirmation. But
Speaker 1: still she had a third offer on the table, so
Speaker 1: maybe whereas she would have been excited over the moon
Speaker 1: for that ninety K offer, originally, she waited for offer
Speaker 1: number three to come. Offer number three came in very
Speaker 1: close to Offer number two, and what she said is, well,
Speaker 1: I've got offer number two on the table. I'm really
Speaker 1: excited about your offer, though, is there anything y'all can
Speaker 1: do to increase the compensation? And they blew her away.
Speaker 1: They added like twenty K to her base, and that
Speaker 1: doesn't happen all the time. She happened to at that point,
Speaker 1: you know, be in a space that was really in demand.
Speaker 1: But what I'm trying to illustrate here is the power
Speaker 1: of leveraging multiple job offers at the same time. So
Speaker 1: when I coach and negotiating, that's one of the first
Speaker 1: things I do is how can we get some excitement
Speaker 1: around you? How can we show that you were in demand?
Speaker 1: And one of the best ways to do that is
Speaker 1: by getting those additional opportunities and getting those other offers.
Speaker 1: And not to knock the nonprofit sector, but actually to
Speaker 1: knock yeah, I'll go ahead and knock them, because I
Speaker 1: think the nonprofit sector gets away with giving the perception
Speaker 1: that they pay terrible and they like that because they
Speaker 1: attract people who are not going to negotiate so hard
Speaker 1: because they think, oh, nonprofits don't pay that much anyway,
Speaker 1: so I should just be grateful. No no, no, no no.
Speaker 1: Some of these nonprofits are Hella funded, Okay, they have
Speaker 1: hella cash on hand, they can afford to negotiate. So
Speaker 1: I think that should give you some extra boost of
Speaker 1: confidence that even though it's a good it's a profession
Speaker 1: that's doing good and you're helping people and it's a
Speaker 1: nonprofit and it gives back, it's still a business, okay,
Speaker 1: and you are still worth what you're worth. So don't
Speaker 1: feel bad about getting competing offers and going to even
Speaker 1: a nonprofit and saying, I've got other offers on the table.
Speaker 1: What are y'all gonna do? You know? So I hope
Speaker 1: that that is helpful. And your last question here, what
Speaker 1: does it mean when a salary range is not post
Speaker 1: it in a job offer? It means you live in
Speaker 1: America where it's trash. I don't know what to tell
Speaker 1: you now. Right now, it's not a requirement in most
Speaker 1: of the country for jobs to list the salary range
Speaker 1: in the job offer. So a lot of times you're
Speaker 1: kind of going in blind and you're expected to guess
Speaker 1: what an appropriate salary range would be. But because they
Speaker 1: put you in this position where they can ask you, okay,
Speaker 1: what's your expected salary range? And by day, I mean
Speaker 1: like the recruiter or the hiring manager. I always coach women,
Speaker 1: don't give a number. You can deflect, deflect, deflect, So
Speaker 1: I offer I think in that scripts guide that you have,
Speaker 1: there's a bunch of scripts that I offer, several that
Speaker 1: are particular to this exact question. What do you say
Speaker 1: when a recruiter asks you what is your salary range?
Speaker 1: So the key is to deflect and tell them that
Speaker 1: you just don't feel comfortable discussing, and then you can
Speaker 1: ask them, hey, if you have a particular range in
Speaker 1: mind for this role or a budget set aside, I'd
Speaker 1: be interested to know. Okay. That being said, in some
Speaker 1: states it is now required for companies to offer the
Speaker 1: salary range in their job posting, so especially with jobs
Speaker 1: that are for national companies, so companies that are hiring
Speaker 1: across the nation, they may have job postings in some
Speaker 1: states like Colorado and what other ones in New York.
Speaker 1: I want to say, you can google it. You may
Speaker 1: find a job listing in the state where it is
Speaker 1: required and be able to see the salary range there,
Speaker 1: just as a you know, as some info to give
Speaker 1: you a bit of a heads up as to what
Speaker 1: the range could be. But that's what that means. They
Speaker 1: don't have to actually give it to you in most
Speaker 1: of the country, and unfortunately all the power is in
Speaker 1: their hands unless we make it different. All right, Thank
Speaker 1: you so much Sriah for your question, and all of
Speaker 1: our BA fan thank you for your questions. I can't
Speaker 1: wait to take more of them again. Head us up.
Speaker 1: We are Brand Ambition Podcast at gmail dot com. You
Speaker 1: can also go to our ig and slide into our
Speaker 1: DMS with your questions. There. We are a Brand Ambition
Speaker 1: podcast on them and I will see y'all next week,
Speaker 1: hopefully with my partner and crime back in the hot seat.
Speaker 1: Feel better, Tiffany, sending you love, Hey, BA fam, We
Speaker 1: could not do this show without your support or the
Speaker 1: support of our team behind the scenes. The Brown Ambission
Speaker 1: Podcast is produced by Cumulus Podcast Network. It's edited by
Speaker 1: the wonderful Emani Crosby and produced by Tanya Bustos. Dennis
Speaker 1: Stimplinsky is our in house tech guru, and I am
Speaker 1: Bandy Woodard Santos your co host, and I will see
Speaker 1: y'all next week.