Speaker 1: Welcome to office hours, but we sit down with the
Speaker 1: people shaping the world and answer your most pressing questions
Speaker 1: about leadership, career, and life. I'm Mike Steibe, and if
Speaker 1: you've ever wondered what it takes to get all the
Speaker 1: way to CEO, to these conversations for you. As the
Speaker 1: leader of Spencer Stewart's CEO recruiting practice, our guest today
Speaker 1: has likely played more CEOs in their roles than anyone
Speaker 1: else in the world. In addition, he's also the author
Speaker 1: of seven life changing books on career growth and leadership,
Speaker 1: including the Career Playbook and the international bestseller You're in
Speaker 1: Charge Now. What if your cell phone blows up and
Speaker 1: Jim Sittern is on the line, You take the call.
Speaker 2: Jim.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2: Thanks Mike. Such a pleasure.
Speaker 1: So, Jim, when I was twenty six and I'm struggling
Speaker 1: with my career, I read a phenomenal book and it
Speaker 1: was your book, The Five Patterns of an Extraordinary Career,
Speaker 1: and it literally changed the direction of my work and
Speaker 1: where I ended up. And now you, your firm, have
Speaker 1: put me in some of the most interesting situations board CEO,
Speaker 1: et cetera. It's really come full circle and it is
Speaker 1: for me a real amazing pleasure to be here with you.
Speaker 2: Oh that's so great, Mike.
Speaker 1: We're gonna have a lot of fun. As you know,
Speaker 1: we got a bunch of questions from the audience. Folks
Speaker 1: wanted to hear about you on how to get to CEO,
Speaker 1: how to make their first couple of career choices, how
Speaker 1: to shape their careers. And there's a bunch of questions
Speaker 1: in here about how to interview too, which nobody knows
Speaker 1: better than you. So it's all right, Will let's go
Speaker 1: to the first one. It's from Mateo and San Diego,
Speaker 1: and he said.
Speaker 3: I find the hardest thing about planning my career is
Speaker 3: knowing what I want to do. How did you guys
Speaker 3: know the right direction for you early in your career
Speaker 3: and what advice do you have for someone who's struggling
Speaker 3: to see that path?
Speaker 4: So, Jim, I got this great job at Morgan Stanley
Speaker 4: as a financial analyst on Wall Street, and it was
Speaker 4: the early eighties, and I was okay at it, but
Speaker 4: I wasn't great at it, and I did well enough
Speaker 4: to be fine. But I was able to get into
Speaker 4: Harvard Business School, which was amazing I had a framework
Speaker 4: for what I wanted to do. I was twenty six,
Speaker 4: and I'll be really honest, Mike, I wanted to work
Speaker 4: in a highly prestigious organization. Have prestige was important to me.
Speaker 1: You've noted that can be important in career paths is
Speaker 1: having that early blue chip experience.
Speaker 4: I am a huge believer in going blue chip early
Speaker 4: and then building off of that. And I'll be honest,
Speaker 4: I wanted to make a lot of money as well,
Speaker 4: So lifestyle, money, and prestige were my three kind of things.
Speaker 4: And then I interviewed across the board, and I was
Speaker 4: good at interviewing, so I got lots of different opportunities
Speaker 4: and pretty advanced offers. I went to a company at
Speaker 4: the time was one of the most valuable media companies
Speaker 4: in the world. It was many of the listeners might
Speaker 4: not even remember it, but you certainly will readers Digest Readers.
Speaker 4: Digest had just gone public. It was a six billion
Speaker 4: dollar company, the largest magazine company in the world. I
Speaker 4: had my year review and I had a boss who said, Jim,
Speaker 4: he said, you had an okay year. You know, it
Speaker 4: wasn't great. He said, let me ask you a question.
Speaker 4: What is the skill on the back of which you
Speaker 4: want to build your career.
Speaker 2: It's a really interesting question.
Speaker 1: That's a good way to think about it.
Speaker 4: And I was thirty three, and without even hesitating, I said, relationships.
Speaker 4: So long story short, at the age of the tender
Speaker 4: age of thirty four, I went into Spencer Stewart and
Speaker 4: it's been an amazing twenty five plus years.
Speaker 1: And it sounds like before that you were focused on
Speaker 1: the sort of external items like prestige and money and location,
Speaker 1: and not that those things aren't important, but as soon
Speaker 1: as you turned your attention to the internal motivator, the
Speaker 1: thing that you personally enjoyed doing.
Speaker 2: Yes, I had a.
Speaker 1: Very similar experience. I was at McKinsey early in my
Speaker 1: career as well, about eighteen months into it. Our receptionist
Speaker 1: Linda said to me, Mike, you don't look happy. And
Speaker 1: I said, I don't know, Linda, this jobs like that.
Speaker 1: And she said, well, Mike, you know it's not address
Speaker 1: rehearsal that your life. You probably wouldn't do something else.
Speaker 1: She was right, and I got my you know, I
Speaker 1: got my head on what I mean, what I personally
Speaker 1: realized is I just I really enjoyed the doing I
Speaker 1: enjoyed the operating interesting and the you know, the advice
Speaker 1: you give in consulting. It can be a lot of
Speaker 1: fun to get to that point, but it felt so unsatisfying.
Speaker 1: I kept eating the appetizer, not the entree. So it's
Speaker 1: really helpful. It was great advice.
Speaker 4: It's great and that's why you've become a multiple time
Speaker 4: successful operating CEO.
Speaker 2: And you're awesome at it.
Speaker 4: I would have been allows the CEO because what I
Speaker 4: loved about McKenzie was I love the advisory work. I
Speaker 4: love the teamwork, I love the communications, I love the
Speaker 4: global network of it. I love the people. And so
Speaker 4: what I what I learned and what I've learned, and
Speaker 4: I've now done research and proven this and we'll talk
Speaker 4: about this in the five Patterns in the Career Playbook,
Speaker 4: is that those criteria that really are important. Number one
Speaker 4: is people. You can have the worst career, you could
Speaker 4: have the worst job description, you can actually make lousy money,
Speaker 4: you can have a really brutal lifestyle. But if you're
Speaker 4: truly working with people who you love, you respect, through
Speaker 4: your friends, you admire, you're going to be pretty happy.
Speaker 4: And that's why if you look back on people who've
Speaker 4: been in the military or in the police force or
Speaker 4: the fire department. They love it because they're like bond.
Speaker 4: There's a bond there. So people is number one. And
Speaker 4: then the second thing is what I learned again, you
Speaker 4: were an operator, so your strengths are going to run companies.
Speaker 4: Playing to your strengths is a really So back to
Speaker 4: the original question of our listener, in the age of
Speaker 4: and in your twenties and your thirties, try and be
Speaker 4: really self aware and get advice from your friends, your family,
Speaker 4: your colleagues. What are you're distinctive at. I was great
Speaker 4: at interviewing, I was great at communicating, I was great
Speaker 4: at writing. I'm actually good at selling and persuading things.
Speaker 4: So if you're in a role that plays to those strengths,
Speaker 4: you're going to be successful. And if you can do
Speaker 4: that with people who you like, then the financial success
Speaker 4: will inevitably follow. And the lifestyle if you can shape
Speaker 4: it a little bit, especially in our now more of
Speaker 4: a hybrid world, but that will also fall into place
Speaker 4: as well.
Speaker 1: That's fantastic.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: The next question it dovetails off of this nicely. Grace says,
Speaker 1: I'm early in my career that I've always performed at
Speaker 1: a high.
Speaker 2: Level, and I have ambitions to be a senior business leader.
Speaker 2: What can I be doing now to set myself up
Speaker 2: for success in the long term.
Speaker 1: So you talked a bit about some of your early
Speaker 1: experiences and you've seen a lot of people's trajectory. What
Speaker 1: are those? What do people do?
Speaker 2: How do we get there? That's a brilliant question.
Speaker 4: So and we've actually researched this and in the book
Speaker 4: The Five Patterns of Extraordinary Careers, we did we interviewed
Speaker 4: over one thousand senior leaders, and we surveyed scores of thousands,
Speaker 4: and we were looking for the differentiators and that's where
Speaker 4: those different cerentiators between the good and the great are
Speaker 4: the five patterns. There are two things in those five
Speaker 4: patterns that are at the heart of the question. Number
Speaker 4: one is you have to do the basic job well.
Speaker 4: It sounds trite, but you have to do whatever your
Speaker 4: job is. You have to do it well. You have
Speaker 4: to be really responsible, and then to do it with
Speaker 4: a good attitude, especially as someone in their twenty I
Speaker 4: think it's true no matter what age. But doing it
Speaker 4: with a positive attitude, it can do attitude, be responsive
Speaker 4: to your colleagues to if you have clients or customers,
Speaker 4: to your clients or customers, be responsive and have an
Speaker 4: attitude of how can I help so, and just do
Speaker 4: high quality work. That's essentially the ticket to the dance.
Speaker 4: But that's not the real answer to the question of
Speaker 4: how you differentiate and make it to that corner office.
Speaker 4: It's really about differentiating yourself based on doing more than
Speaker 4: what's asked. But here's the distinction. Back in the research
Speaker 4: for the five patterns, and we did an analysis of
Speaker 4: the kind of the top quartile of executives, and most
Speaker 4: of them the survey and the research was to what
Speaker 4: extent do you meet your objectives? And basically on a
Speaker 4: self reported basis, everybody says, of course, I meet my objectives.
Speaker 4: And then the people who are the top quartile, they
Speaker 4: overall exceeded their objectives by about twenty twenty five percent.
Speaker 4: So if they were in sales, they'd overdelivered their quoted
Speaker 4: by twenty five percent, if they were in operations they
Speaker 4: would deliver better costs by twenty percent. If they were
Speaker 4: in finance whatever cost of borrowing makes sense. But the
Speaker 4: top five percent tile actually only met their objectives. But
Speaker 4: before we figured out. We was like, wait a second,
Speaker 4: there's a mistake in the data because these are the
Speaker 4: demonstrated top five percentile. But they just meet their objectives.
Speaker 4: When we did the follow up, we did something like
Speaker 4: three hundred follow up interviews to get at the heart
Speaker 4: of this question, and they said, no, just doing twenty
Speaker 4: percent more, that's not the thing. What we were able
Speaker 4: to do is free up some capacity doing a great
Speaker 4: job in the basics and then thinking what would add
Speaker 4: value to my job, or to my team, or to
Speaker 4: my department or to my company, and then do that.
Speaker 4: And this is where you can be very much of
Speaker 4: a proactive person. Your boss isn't going to really know
Speaker 4: what else you can do. You know your job better
Speaker 4: than anybody. Do the basics, do it really well with
Speaker 4: a great attitude, free up time and say, huh, I
Speaker 4: can do this, and whether it's a side project, it
Speaker 4: can go back to being an intern and sit and
Speaker 4: volunteer to do the summer outing. Or you can be
Speaker 4: a CFO and all the way at the top and
Speaker 4: freep to time and serve on an external corporate board.
Speaker 4: Or you can be a division head working on your
Speaker 4: division and say you know what I actually think there's
Speaker 4: an opportunity to do an enterprise wide AI strategy. I'd
Speaker 4: like to do that. The principle applies from the beginning
Speaker 4: of your career to the end. So it's the differentiation
Speaker 4: and here's the thing. Do a great job on the basics,
Speaker 4: free up time to do something different that meets two tests,
Speaker 4: that adds value to the organization, and that you bring
Speaker 4: others along with him, so you're not considered just a
Speaker 4: grand standard.
Speaker 1: You talked before you went and got an MBA. I
Speaker 1: get that question a lot early in your career. Is
Speaker 1: it a good investment of time?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 1: What's your framework for that? And what do you see
Speaker 1: in other successful leaders?
Speaker 4: It's changing a lot, Mike. Back when I went to
Speaker 4: business school, I don't have the numbers on the top
Speaker 4: of my head, but back then the Fortune five hundred CEOs,
Speaker 4: there were a lot of Harvard MBAs, and it was
Speaker 4: like the Supreme Court it was today, it's not nearly
Speaker 4: so much. A lot of founders, not only today, not
Speaker 4: recommend MBAs, A lot of them. You know, I don't
Speaker 4: even recommend going to college exactly. I think that's a
Speaker 4: risky strategy. I'm a big personal believer in education. I
Speaker 4: think education is a huge opportunity both to develop skills
Speaker 4: and to develop relationships. Relationships will be something that carries
Speaker 4: you through your career.
Speaker 1: And it's probably debatable if it raises the ceiling, but
Speaker 1: it definitely raises the floor.
Speaker 2: It's great.
Speaker 4: That's a great way to say so. In general, I'm
Speaker 4: supportive of it, but with particularly with the question of MBAs,
Speaker 4: it's a if you're in that top twenty schools where
Speaker 4: the network are going to really be a part of
Speaker 4: your professional future, then it could be worth the opportunity
Speaker 4: cost of coming out full time and the cost of
Speaker 4: doing that, But if it's not, if you're not in
Speaker 4: the top top group then and you really want the skills,
Speaker 4: there are lots of different opportunities to get the skills today,
Speaker 4: and it goes back to this eighty twenty rule. Just
Speaker 4: freeing up some capacity, you know, getting advanced education, and
Speaker 4: whether it's on a course basis through companies like Coursera,
Speaker 4: or if it's online education through degree programs. That's the
Speaker 4: way I would think about it.
Speaker 1: Nail the day job, do the side job, bring other
Speaker 1: people along with you, and you don't necessarily have to
Speaker 1: take the two years off you can learn through the
Speaker 1: side hustle. We've been part of the question on AGA
Speaker 1: and Nashville had hit me up on LinkedIn and asked,
Speaker 1: is like, is it better to be a generalist or
Speaker 1: a specialist? And how long do you need to spend
Speaker 1: and role? So that's highly related to this question. Do
Speaker 1: you have a deeper perspective.
Speaker 4: In the end, And I'll answer Mike by going backwards
Speaker 4: to me. In most cases, generalists lead big organizations, big
Speaker 4: teams and solve big problems and have bigger impact. But
Speaker 4: to get to be that high impact generalist, you have
Speaker 4: to be known for something if you've got to do something.
Speaker 2: So my.
Speaker 4: Ideal recommended pattern is start a little generalist. You have
Speaker 4: to start with something, whether it's sales, finance, technology, engineering,
Speaker 4: something physical, it doesn't matter. Start and do it well.
Speaker 4: But in your twenties, try and get a lot of
Speaker 4: different experiences. See what you like, see what you're good at,
Speaker 4: see where you're thriving, and then by think of it
Speaker 4: in kind of decades. So in your twenties you're trying
Speaker 4: out lots of different things. By the end of the twenties,
Speaker 4: you want to say this in the career playbook. You
Speaker 4: want to essentially declare your major. In my case, I
Speaker 4: was going to be a human capital or recruiter. You
Speaker 4: want to be a finance person and technology and engineer
Speaker 4: whatever it is, and then do a great job in that.
Speaker 4: But through this principle of finding other ways, then you
Speaker 4: add add value in outside ways and you become more
Speaker 4: for generalists. And by the way, this leads to a
Speaker 4: really really important question, which is how do you you
Speaker 4: can become such a specialist and so valuable to your
Speaker 4: organization that how do you actually move So I think
Speaker 4: there might be other questions about about that. Let me
Speaker 4: go to the next one, and we're starting to get there.
Speaker 4: John David and Tuscaloosa, Alabama said, every.
Speaker 3: Interesting job posting, I see it requires me to have
Speaker 3: experience in that job already.
Speaker 2: How am I supposed to get a job that requires
Speaker 2: me to have already had the job? And why would
Speaker 2: I want to do a job I've already done?
Speaker 4: So you actually teed this up quite nicely. Well, that's
Speaker 4: such a great question, and it is. It's something, it's
Speaker 4: a conundrum, and I call it the permission paradox.
Speaker 1: Permission I remember, I remember that you.
Speaker 4: Can't get the job without the experience, but you can't
Speaker 4: get the experience out of the job, so you're you know,
Speaker 4: but you don't want to be defeatists. So how do
Speaker 4: you actually over come that permission paradox? And there are
Speaker 4: strategies to do that, but by the way, just be
Speaker 4: encouraged everybody. It's not only at your entry level or
Speaker 4: the manager level. It's all the way to the CEO suite.
Speaker 4: You know, you're on public company boards, you know, pup
Speaker 4: boards say oh, we're recruiting for CEO. We want someone
Speaker 4: who's been a CEO before because we don't want to
Speaker 4: take the risk.
Speaker 1: We want a board director. Make sure they have public
Speaker 1: company board experience exactly.
Speaker 4: So that permission paradox is there throughout your entire career.
Speaker 4: So the understanding it and being able to overcome it
Speaker 4: is actually a really valuable lifelong skill. So the way
Speaker 4: to overcome that is well, there are few ways. Number
Speaker 4: one is to break down whatever the next job is
Speaker 4: into its component parts. And let's say it's a manager,
Speaker 4: where you will have had to the listing on LinkedIn
Speaker 4: says you will have had to manage five to ten
Speaker 4: people a budget of xyz.
Speaker 2: You will have had to drive revenue and manage costs
Speaker 2: or something like that.
Speaker 4: And let's say you haven't been a manager yet, so
Speaker 4: you're breaking into your first manager job. You take each
Speaker 4: of those things and you try and find other ways
Speaker 4: to get that experience. Okay, so you haven't been a
Speaker 4: manager in your current job, but let's say you're the
Speaker 4: coach of youth soccer team, or you're doing the budget
Speaker 4: for the school fundraising drive or something like that. You
Speaker 4: just you address it and you say, well, I know
Speaker 4: the listing is asking for all these skills. I haven't
Speaker 4: done that all in my job, but I've done it
Speaker 4: in these five different places. And that way you kind
Speaker 4: of build it up and then you break. You give
Speaker 4: the opportunity for them to take a chance on you
Speaker 4: because you've said, okay, you understand what their need is,
Speaker 4: but you've found a creative way to address that.
Speaker 1: I remember when I wanted to get to management and
Speaker 1: I hadn't been a manager, and it's a zero to
Speaker 1: one move, as you suggested, and I pitched my team
Speaker 1: on us getting some NBA interns because I knew nobody
Speaker 1: would want to manage them. So once we got the interns,
Speaker 1: I got the interns, and so for the summer. You know,
Speaker 1: at this point I'd probably read twenty books on leadership,
Speaker 1: and these two poor NBA interns came in. I was like,
Speaker 1: sit down, You're about to be managed like you wouldn't believe.
Speaker 1: But then you get a small piece of it, you
Speaker 1: get a jumping off point. Yes, we go next to
Speaker 1: Darius in Washington.
Speaker 3: I have a big interview coming up. Well, mistake to
Speaker 3: people making interviews and what are the keys to impressing someone?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 3: So the interview is with a type company? So what
Speaker 3: should I weary?
Speaker 1: And by the way, I went to my Google interviews
Speaker 1: how many every many years ago in a suit from
Speaker 1: NBC and I'll never forget how weird I felt walking
Speaker 1: around the Google campus and a suit and tie. So
Speaker 1: we can help you.
Speaker 4: Darius, Darius question, and as I said at the early part,
Speaker 4: interviewing is sort of my hobby and passion.
Speaker 1: How many thousands of interviews have you done?
Speaker 4: I've estimated that I've done now approaching fifteen thousand interviews
Speaker 4: I wrote. I wrote an article on LinkedIn. I think
Speaker 4: it was my number one read article, I think four
Speaker 4: hundred thousand reads, and the title of the article was
Speaker 4: interviewing to live living to interview. Okay, and I've been
Speaker 4: in so many interviews and as I said earlier, being
Speaker 4: this is.
Speaker 1: The number one interviewer in the world. So what do
Speaker 1: we need to know?
Speaker 4: First of all, the interviewer, they're just they're trying to
Speaker 4: solve a problems, just like open job exactly, and so
Speaker 4: they're looking to do If you recognize you can be
Speaker 4: the solution to their problem, then it changes the power dynamic,
Speaker 4: It changes your mentality. You're not nervous, you're trying to
Speaker 4: understand what it is. So a few tips on that.
Speaker 4: Number one is try and really if you can research
Speaker 4: the person that you're going to be interviewing with. Now
Speaker 4: in this wide information world that we all live in,
Speaker 4: you might not know, but that's possible. You know, to
Speaker 4: ask someone in advance to be set up. Who am
Speaker 4: I interviewing with? Number two here's some There's been tons
Speaker 4: of research on interviewing, and this is something to take
Speaker 4: advantage of when you're the interviewee, but something to be
Speaker 4: cautious of when you're doing the interviewing. Most people make
Speaker 4: a decision in their first five minutes, even in their
Speaker 4: first three misure and the psychology psychological research shows that
Speaker 4: people make a decision in the first three to five minutes,
Speaker 4: and then they spend the next twenty five minutes or
Speaker 4: forty five minutes, whatever it's scheduled, looking for data to
Speaker 4: support the decision that the I've already made.
Speaker 1: We've talked about Daniel Connerman and Daniel Conoman and show
Speaker 1: all of his research shows the way that we make
Speaker 1: these instinctual, emotional decisions.
Speaker 4: And by the way, sometimes those decisions are not bad.
Speaker 4: But as an interviewer I train people on this all
Speaker 4: the time. You really have to resist that and be
Speaker 4: aware of it and look for real situational situational data,
Speaker 4: behavioral data, cultural data. But most people don't do that.
Speaker 4: Most people will in the first five minutes, which means
Speaker 4: that you really need to have your opening answer. You
Speaker 4: need to when you if it's in person or on zoom.
Speaker 4: How you introduce yourself, how you sit down, how you
Speaker 4: shake a hand, what you're wearing is essential because they're
Speaker 4: going to have a huge impression in the first thirty seconds.
Speaker 4: So the opening is key. So whatever they whatever they ask,
Speaker 4: So Mike, tell me about yourself or you know, why
Speaker 4: are you interested in this? You want to have you
Speaker 4: want to practice in front of a mirror. You want
Speaker 4: your two minute opening statement, which basically quickly tells your
Speaker 4: story in like two minutes maybe three minutes, who you are,
Speaker 4: where you came from, why you're interested in this job,
Speaker 4: and why you might be great for this job. Rehearse
Speaker 4: that and have that no matter what they ask. That's
Speaker 4: the answer to the very first questions like how's the
Speaker 4: weather great? You know, and it's like, oh, great to
Speaker 4: see you today. Well, let me tell you why I'm
Speaker 4: really excited to be here today, Mike, and you do
Speaker 4: you do that? So having a two or three minute
Speaker 4: rehearsed opening statement of who you are and basically a
Speaker 4: little bit of a narrative, not just the other thing
Speaker 4: is so now you've had a good opening and now
Speaker 4: it's five minutes in and now they're asking you about
Speaker 4: your experience, and like you apply these these principles like
Speaker 4: the permission paradise say oh, Mike, you haven't been a
Speaker 4: manager before, and said, well, yes, I know that's what.
Speaker 2: So you have that.
Speaker 4: And you also want to talk very humbly about what's
Speaker 4: worked well and what hasn't worked well. You don't want
Speaker 4: to be arrogant, and you really want to be come
Speaker 4: across as self reflective. Let me tell you the environments
Speaker 4: in which I've really thrived and why I think this
Speaker 4: could be a great fit.
Speaker 1: I appreciate that as a hiring manager when I ask someone,
Speaker 1: you know, what are your weaknesses? What are you and
Speaker 1: they tell me and I try too hard, I care
Speaker 1: too much. I mean, the interview just is over. It
Speaker 1: is over, and you've got to be constantly learning and
Speaker 1: reflecting on what you've done wrong and what you've learned
Speaker 1: from it. Exactly having a humility show in an interview
Speaker 1: is so important.
Speaker 4: Okay, most first interviews like yours, Darius, probably coming up,
Speaker 4: is probably going to be half an hour, and they're
Speaker 4: going to make this decision very quickly. But in the
Speaker 4: last five or seven minutes they say, okay, well let
Speaker 4: me turn to you. What questions do you have for me?
Speaker 4: And there's a real temptation, especially early in your career.
Speaker 4: You want to be polite and respectful. That's great, but
Speaker 4: you say no, no, I don't want to take more time,
Speaker 4: and then they leave, and that's a huge opportunity missed.
Speaker 4: You would be shocked at how many hiring managers basically say, oh,
Speaker 4: I really like her for this job. Why because she
Speaker 4: asked the best questions. Okay, so how do you actually
Speaker 4: ask the best questions? Here's the way to ask the best.
Speaker 4: This is so simple and so powerful and so doable
Speaker 4: for anybody about to do an interview. Whatever company you're
Speaker 4: going to interview, go into Google and type the company,
Speaker 4: say you're going to interview into it. You put in
Speaker 4: into it CEO, Q and A and then Sosan Ga
Speaker 4: Darzi the CEO of Into it will be shown on
Speaker 4: CNBC or whatever and Reuter's whatever company, and you'll have
Speaker 4: professional journalists who have spent with producers preparing really good
Speaker 4: questions about the company, the culture. You basically take those
Speaker 4: same questions and then you put them in your own voice.
Speaker 4: Then you get the said, wow, they've done their homework.
Speaker 4: That's terrific advice. I've always been astounded.
Speaker 1: I've interviewed executives right who've asked me, you know, what
Speaker 1: are the company's priorities? And I've been like, we're public company.
Speaker 1: I tell everybody every ninety days like little bit of research.
Speaker 4: But so if you went on you know EXO, CEO,
Speaker 4: Q and A, you they've given so many interviews and
Speaker 4: then you pick three or five. But the other thing
Speaker 4: about so prepare in writing, have them written down or
Speaker 4: typed up, have them there, Because when you get to
Speaker 4: that question, what questions do you have for me? You
Speaker 4: want to look down at your notes. And it's okay
Speaker 4: even if you're in person to have a little notebook
Speaker 4: or have a chatty that you're prepared. That's right, Thank you,
Speaker 4: Jamal and Charlotte says, Hey, I'm.
Speaker 2: A fintech recruiter in Charlotte.
Speaker 1: What's your advice for finding the right candidates and getting
Speaker 1: them interested? So another recruiter wants to know from the best,
Speaker 1: how do I do it?
Speaker 4: Most people make decisions on a very emotional basis, and
Speaker 4: they want you want to know what's really important them.
Speaker 4: And then again it's this is a perfect example of
Speaker 4: it's the same situation on the other side of the coin.
Speaker 4: You know, what are they trying to accomplish and why
Speaker 4: is this company or this role a great fit to
Speaker 4: their priorities. As a general thing, I think that we've
Speaker 4: done a lot of research on this, mikeid Spencer Stewart.
Speaker 4: The role of purpose and mission has become one of
Speaker 4: the most important differentiators for people looking for great, great roles,
Speaker 4: and so I would go to, here are our values,
Speaker 4: here's our purpose, here's our mission, and here's how this
Speaker 4: role fits into that. So give them the big thing
Speaker 4: and then how this fits into that, and then talk
Speaker 4: about the culture. I think culture sells. We do boardwork
Speaker 4: for some of the biggest companies in the world, we
Speaker 4: do CEO work of the biggest companies in the world,
Speaker 4: and talking about where a culture is and what is
Speaker 4: celebrated and where that needs to change or evolve culture
Speaker 4: really sells as well. And then of course there are
Speaker 4: things pragmatically right now about flexibility, job mobility and where
Speaker 4: it's leading and all that, but I would really default
Speaker 4: to purpose and mission and how this role fits into that.
Speaker 1: I've also when I'm hiring someone, I spend a lot
Speaker 1: of time with them. I've actually maybe at least the
Speaker 1: last fifteen years, I haven't made an offer that somebody
Speaker 1: hasn't hasn't accepted because by the time we get there, right,
Speaker 1: we really know each other nice. And so you know,
Speaker 1: my suggestion to the to Jamal, who's the recruiter here,
Speaker 1: is have your business partners really involved in the process,
Speaker 1: and a lot and I'm always I'm always taking it
Speaker 1: back by how insufficient amount of time people spend on
Speaker 1: what I think are the most important actions they'll take
Speaker 1: in the year, which is assembling their team. So Jamal,
Speaker 1: it's also it's time and conveying. As Jim said, that
Speaker 1: energy around the mission and the culture and the people
Speaker 1: and the prize that you're after. People really feed on that.
Speaker 1: So a lot of our questions have been about these
Speaker 1: sort of early and mid career moves. That where we
Speaker 1: have a question here from Brian and Columbus who says.
Speaker 2: I'm fifty years old.
Speaker 3: I'm titled the old that I've done, but my career
Speaker 3: helped plots in the last few years, and now a
Speaker 3: lot of my contemporaries are getting tweezed out when there's
Speaker 3: a cost cut at the company. Is it too late
Speaker 3: for me to reaccelerate my career or to make a pivot?
Speaker 2: Brian, absolutely not.
Speaker 4: If hopefully you're again, I'm even older than you, and
Speaker 4: I feel very fortunate to be in good health and
Speaker 4: high energy, and I think being ambitious, curious, high energy,
Speaker 4: and really motivated well into the second half of hopefully
Speaker 4: a very long life is the way to go. And
Speaker 4: I actually think this is a huge both issue and
Speaker 4: opportunity for our economy as everybody has age lifespans extend.
Speaker 4: So number one is if you're healthy and fit and energetic,
Speaker 4: that absolutely it's not at all too early. But how
Speaker 4: you move mid career is very different than early career.
Speaker 4: And then there's a whole other topic ten or twenty
Speaker 4: years Brian from now, when you will have been doing
Speaker 4: something again, and then you have to think about what
Speaker 4: most people refer to as retirement. And I actually don't
Speaker 4: believe in that word. I believe in moving from phase
Speaker 4: to phase to phase. There's an amazing book I wish
Speaker 4: i'd written it called From Strength to Strength?
Speaker 2: Did you ever read that?
Speaker 1: I just read it.
Speaker 2: It's brilliant.
Speaker 1: I'm too young, fortune, Yah, you're too young, but it's
Speaker 1: really good. It's about how to think of the sort
Speaker 1: of last twenty or thirty years of your professional life
Speaker 1: and how you wanted to play yourself.
Speaker 2: So check that out.
Speaker 4: But the point is that you move from a say
Speaker 4: age fifty or in your fifties, you want to build
Speaker 4: on the experiences you've had and then try and find
Speaker 4: new ways to apply that experience. Let me tell you
Speaker 4: the story just a great example of this my brother
Speaker 4: in law. We're here at iHeart. He was a lifelong
Speaker 4: senior executive in the music industry and music promotion and
Speaker 4: he was brilliant at it and go to radio stations
Speaker 4: around the world many iHeart stations and get the labels
Speaker 4: acts on air. That jaw that role and the role
Speaker 4: of promotion has changed dramatically. He went into live entertainment.
Speaker 4: But what is he doing now? He's got a private
Speaker 4: aviation company. It's like, how did you get from one
Speaker 4: to the other. It's a ten year process. What he
Speaker 4: did is when he was doing music promotion, oftentimes he
Speaker 4: had to go bring the acts from point A to
Speaker 4: point point to point B around on these tours and stuff,
Speaker 4: and so a lot of times the labels would have
Speaker 4: to he'd have to arrange charters sometimes propeller things, but
Speaker 4: go from play to place to place to place. And
Speaker 4: he developed a lot of expertise in that. And during
Speaker 4: COVID when when a lot of the commercial travel didn't
Speaker 4: work so well, he had all these clients or these
Speaker 4: relationships where he was doing representing them and he has
Speaker 4: a music management company, but he was solving problems and
Speaker 4: then all of a sudden, other people were saying like, oh,
Speaker 4: I know you, you send you know so and so
Speaker 4: on these things. Can you help us? You know our family,
Speaker 4: You need to go to Florida or whatever. He created
Speaker 4: this this great, great charter aviation company called Right Lane Aviation.
Speaker 2: It's amazing and.
Speaker 4: He just it's so anyway, there's ways to apply the
Speaker 4: experience that you've done in one thing to other ways.
Speaker 1: Lee in New York City says.
Speaker 3: I'm pretty interverted and not much of a networker. How
Speaker 3: do I make sure I know the right recruiters and
Speaker 3: that I'm on their rata so that my career opportunity
Speaker 3: is prevent this out.
Speaker 4: Most jobs are not gotten through recruiting. They're gotten through referrals.
Speaker 4: And actually they're not even gotten through referrals of your friends.
Speaker 4: They're really most of them are referrals of people who
Speaker 4: have referred you, so their second level referrals. I'm going
Speaker 4: to come back to the answer, but I'm going to
Speaker 4: give a very important suggestion. When you're looking for a job,
Speaker 4: you want to help make it easy for other people
Speaker 4: to help you, and everyone will say, oh, how can
Speaker 4: I help? You need to have a very crisp answer
Speaker 4: to what you're interested in, and think of it as
Speaker 4: planting a seed with anyone you're talking to. Mike, I'm
Speaker 4: actually interested in a human capital position in a tech company.
Speaker 2: That's it.
Speaker 4: And Mike will be out at a party and someone
Speaker 4: will say, hey, do you know someone who can help
Speaker 4: me on our talent teams? Like, oh, I just talked
Speaker 4: to I just hurt. So have that and share that
Speaker 4: snippet very broadly, and think of that as kind of
Speaker 4: a seed that's planted and it could go across you
Speaker 4: use the word.
Speaker 2: Networking.
Speaker 4: I'm in the recruiting business, in the relationship business. I've
Speaker 4: got all this stuff. Personally, I'm an introvert and I
Speaker 4: I hate networking. I think I think of networking.
Speaker 1: I'd rather eat a lanyard than put it on and
Speaker 1: walk around in the conference exactly.
Speaker 2: It's a little walking.
Speaker 4: People hate it, and by the people hate being networked too,
Speaker 4: so so get rid of the even that my the word, oh, networking.
Speaker 4: I find that really cringey, and think of it as
Speaker 4: relationship building. And in a relationship ship, there's a quid
Speaker 4: and a quid brogo, and there's how can I help?
Speaker 4: If you come up into conversations with how can I
Speaker 4: help all of a sudden, it's not a networking thing.
Speaker 4: And when they ask you how can you help, then
Speaker 4: you say, well, I'd be really interested in being human
Speaker 4: columing and technical intelligence in that. And then there's another
Speaker 4: way to think about this challenge. And it's hard. I mean,
Speaker 4: trust me, I know. Look at looking for jobs is
Speaker 4: really hard and really stressful. In the timeframe that you're
Speaker 4: doing it, it's never fast enough and it's uncertain, and
Speaker 4: there's self esteem issues that come up. Use the process
Speaker 4: as a learning journey and you can you can now
Speaker 4: where anyone can be a publisher. One tactic is to
Speaker 4: do an article, even if it's self published on Medium
Speaker 4: or on LinkedIn. You can talk to people and say,
Speaker 4: I'm doing an article on the on the best practices
Speaker 4: in human capital talent acquisition in technology. Can I get
Speaker 4: ten minutes of you to chat about that. You do that,
Speaker 4: I'll get your fifteen people. You get your access and
Speaker 4: people will be much more interested. If you're doing that article,
Speaker 4: then oh, I'd like to have a courtesy interview about
Speaker 4: a human couple. You can do that with any topic.
Speaker 4: And that's another tactic.
Speaker 1: I'd echo that I wrote an article for first round
Speaker 1: Review and the title is something like, don't network, build
Speaker 1: your meaningful connections. And it was very much that you know,
Speaker 1: all the good things that have come to me through
Speaker 1: a quote unquote network in my career been someone else
Speaker 1: I just like and probably have done something for and
Speaker 1: then they thought of me rather than the other way around.
Speaker 1: I will make one note specific to recruiters is eventually
Speaker 1: they'll find you and reach out that don't just say no.
Speaker 1: Say no, but here are two or three people you
Speaker 1: might like. I always like to leave a recruiter with
Speaker 1: other folks because what have you done. You may have
Speaker 1: helped somebody who you think highly of land a job.
Speaker 1: You've helped a recruiter solve the problem they're trying to solve,
Speaker 1: and then you'll get the call next time. Because even
Speaker 1: if you're not the guy like, at least you know
Speaker 1: people know you're on the floor and you can help
Speaker 1: a good source put yourself into the ecosystem.
Speaker 2: That's a great point, Mike.
Speaker 1: This has been a ton of fun and really insightful
Speaker 1: and for me, like I've been, this is a conversation
Speaker 1: I've been looking forward to for twenty years, so very special.
Speaker 1: Thank you for doing it.
Speaker 4: Talk about this stuff all day.
Speaker 1: Well, my friends, we covered a lot of ground today
Speaker 1: from how to interview and how to shape your career
Speaker 1: and how to make these important choices throughout. But if
Speaker 1: I were to take one observation from this really insightful
Speaker 1: and inspiring conversation with Jim, you heard from someone who
Speaker 1: has broken down into its component parts, this ambiguous and
Speaker 1: overwhelming thing that is your career and your career plan.
Speaker 1: And I want to encourage everyone to do the same thing.
Speaker 1: Don't just think about your next job, don't just think
Speaker 1: about your next promotion, But as Jim advised, think about
Speaker 1: what are those things that I enjoy? What are those
Speaker 1: requirements that I have in my career? What are those
Speaker 1: internalities things that I'm really good at that I want
Speaker 1: to build my career on. And I'll remind you I'm
Speaker 1: here for you in this podcast, is here for you
Speaker 1: to help. You can always call in your questions or
Speaker 1: you can DM me on LinkedIn or Instagram. The number
Speaker 1: if you want to send in a text or a
Speaker 1: voicemail is two one three four one nine five nine six.
Speaker 1: You know you can find me online at Mike steib.
Speaker 1: We We put this podcast together to help people have
Speaker 1: extraordinary impact on their work and if there's anything we
Speaker 1: can do to help you, just give us a shout.
Speaker 1: I want to thank Jim for coming in. This was amazing,
Speaker 1: and of course I want to thank Jen, Cara, Meg Jada,
Speaker 1: Matt and the whole team at Blue Duck Media for
Speaker 1: putting this all together. Dylan, Sasha, Gay, Nathan and Christine
Speaker 1: at iHeart want to thank Bahd in the studio put
Speaker 1: it all together, and Ben and the rest of the
Speaker 1: team at William Morrison Dever for all their support. Office
Speaker 1: Hours is a production of Blue Duck Media and distributed
Speaker 1: by iHeartRadio. I will see you next week, Gang in
Speaker 1: the meantime on your grind