Nonlinear Careers and Seeking Permission | JobSearchTV.com

00:00. So, my guest today is David Fano. David, well,
I'll just simply say, He's not your conventional person. He grew up, didn t follow a straight
path, he had a nonlinear career and gone from being an entrepreneur to a full-time employee.
In 2015, he sold his company to we work wherever you may want to think about that, where he
grew a team from 150 to 3500 people. During that time, he found his passion for helping
people navigate their career. And now he's building a technology platform called teal
to help people do exactly that. David, welcome.. Great to have you on.
00:43. Thanks so much for having me, Jeff. I really
appreciate it.
00:46. So here you are. You grew up as an art kid,
which makes perfect sense as a technologist, collected comic books, again, part of the
profile, you were entrepreneurial, when you were young, selling stuff to your parent's
rich friends. Oh, I love that part of the story. So obviously, there's an indication
of nonlinear careers there. How did you wind up being where you are today? Like, what was
your thought process? As you were developing yourself from being that kid to where you
are today?
01:22. You know, it's, I've always allowed myself
for better or worse, to follow my curiosity.. When I was a kid, and you know, someone from
the cable company would come to hook up the cable, I would stand next to that person and
annoy them and ask them questions nonstop.. You know, I don't know if it was bothering
them or not. But it's just the way I've always been. And my curiosity has just kind of driven
me. So, when I was a kid, it was comic books.. And I wanted to learn how to make them I bothered
my uncle who was a graphic designer, he finally gave me a computer, I learned how to scan
the pages and color them I learned Photoshop, which led me to technology. And it's never
been about a sort of set destination, but about kind of what I wanted to learn at the
time. And that's, you know, just continued to build on itself, which, you know, then
led to me wanting a career in art, my dad telling me, hey, that's not a real job, that
kind of job doesn't pay well. Okay, well, that feels like that could be the case. So
I went and studied architecture, which was kind of in between, since he had been in the
building industry, which then led me to, you know, finding more about technology and 3d
modeling, which then drove me to going to. Columbia, which was a great, you know, technologically
oriented architecture school, which then led me to learning about how things in the computer
become real with CNC manufacturing and digital fabrication, which then led me to an architecture
firm. And then that led me to realize that it moved too slow for me. And I wanted to
go quicker and that led me to seeing that technology is something that can be released
quickly and iterate and, and, you know, then. I started a company with some friends helping
architecture firms do that, which then got acquired by wework. So, I got to learn about
what it was like to be in a high growth organization.. And which then exposed me to the complexities
of managing a career. And let's say it's like more of the corporate world, and which, you
know, kind of put everything together and said, I love when people get unlocked by technology,
I have had a lot of privilege and access in my life. And I want technology to empower
that for more people. And I want to help level the playing field. So, I'm going to dedicate
the next 10 years of my life to trying to crack that problem.
03:28. And I want to offer up a quirky question,
who gave you permission to do all that stuff?. You. You gave yourself permission. It wasn't
hierarchy, if you did that. You kind of figured out gaps along the way, figured out that this
was probably better if I did this instead of this right. And then from there that led
to the next thing. And again, you're back to be curious. Am I right about that?
04:04. Absolutely. Absolutely. Because honestly,
when I would go seeking permission, I would get, you know, kind of what I say is usually
critique with career advice people tell you what they would do. Like, it's not helpful
for me to know what you would do. What would you do if you were me? you know? And so, I
asked my dad and my dad would say, well, you have a stable job, why are you going to go
start a company? That's really risky. That's, you know, you've got a good job, you're moving
quickly. You've progressed, you've actually like doubled your salary in two years. Why
would you leave? And it's like, yeah, because. I'm not happy. And I don't, I'm not I don't
enjoy this. And so oftentimes, when I did seek permission, I didn't get it. So, it's
a good point that you bring up.
04:45. And it's funny. I'm a dad, I know you are
as well. I've been very careful not to read the dad playbook. So, my son is 20 now, and
he's in New York. We aren't and it's been the idea. of supporting him, as he explores
stuff and figures it out on his on his own, he comes back to me for questions, rather
than my telling him, oh, no, that's crazy.. You should never, you got benefits, you've
got stability in this this idea of the nonlinear career folks, you know, whether you think
it or not, you may think you've got a stable job, but the world is nonlinear. At this point,
you know, look, look 10 years ago, where you were and where you are now. And it just doesn't
work that way anymore, does it? tech is moving so fast careers are moving so fast. The idea
of being linear and following that progression is going to leave you in the dust. So just
be aware, you got to open yourself up to new possibilities. Am I wrong here?
05:52. I completely agree. And I think just new occupations,
new professions, new skills, right, five years ago, who would have thought that Amazon would
be hiring ahead of cryptocurrencies? Right?. That just, you know, I mean, it's been around
for more than five years, but the fact that these are at fortune 10 companies, right,
so just new industries, new technologies are forming faster than we know. So, to say that
I'm going to go to school, and I'm going to learn this one thing. And that, that's going
to be the thing that propels me through my, the rest of my careers, it's not real anymore.
They're like technology's advancing too quickly.. And so as, as people thinking about our careers,
what we really need to do is embrace that growth mindset. And that these are opportunities
for us to learn and grow, which also coincides with why people leave jobs, people leave jobs,
because they don't feel like they're growing, it's not really about like comp, they want
to grow, they want to feel like they're being intellectually stimulated. And I think we're
at a moment now, more than ever, where the workforce is predominantly, you know, young
millennials, and Gen Z at this point. And they're not willing to just take a job. You
know, like my parents were, the idea of liking your job was just, you know, that that's not
something you got to do, you just sort of worked. Now, I think people are unwilling
to accept that they will, they will not like their job. Life's too short, they recognize
it. And so, I think we're gonna see much more iterative versions of careers as people work
through what matters to them, what matters to them in the moment, and then how the context
change as the world changes.
07:33. And for yourself, and I'm going to use you
as a model to help other people see how it might be done. You know, it doesn't sound
like you were consciously trying to craft the career he may have at the beginning. But
it doesn't sound like with all those things, you went through it at the beginning. Doesn't
sound like that. It's that's what you went into. True?
07:59. No, I've been a little more opportunistic.
I would say, you know, I have maybe an idea of what I'd like to do next. But I was never
kind of like, envisioning what was written on my tombstone, you know, like, well, you
know, what's gonna be the story told of me, you know what, you know, when I retire, what
that just felt like, I was setting myself up for failure, because the chances of that
happening were so low. And then I'd like to put up blinders and close myself off to the
opportunities that presented themselves. Now, that said, I don't want to just be taken where
the wind takes me. So, I've always tried to manage an idea of like, what, what matters
to me, what do I want to be doing? What are the opportunities that the world is kind of
presenting to me? And then how do I navigate the intersection of those two things? So,
I'm iterating, closer and closer, just loving my job every day, you know, obviously, some
days are not going to be great, but like,. I want to be excited to jump out of work.
And basically, you know, people have asked me before, like, how did you decide when to
leave? And my answer to all everyone was always like, when the pain outweighed the pleasure.
As soon as the pain outweighed the pleasure,. I just knew it wasn't time for me to be there
anymore. And there was really, literally no amount of money in the world that could keep
me at that job.
09:08. If you have been an older worker, trained
like I was, I'll just simply say, folks, you may have numbed yourself out to the pain by
now and he got to get back to feeling stuff.. Now, what's interesting is Gen Z, the Zoomers
are much more like the boomers in that they they're workhorses. They work hard. They are
focused on because their first memory. You know, I was in New York for 9-11. So, I have
that perspective. And many people in the United. States have that perspective. Their perspective
on 9-11 is from YouTube. Their first real impact moment is the great recession of 2008
to 2010. And thus, they're economically motivated.. Many of them are economically motivated. Far
more Some of the older millennials. So, I just want to remind you, or maybe you could
remind folks, that how do you get that feeling back? When being you numbed out to feeling
stuff? How did you do it?
10:16. You know, I'd say that the other thing that
was part of my thought processes less from a career perspective, and this was I saw my
dad enjoy life. My dad's an immigrant, he came from Cuba in 1960, with nothing, but
I always saw him be unrelenting on life experiences, if he wanted to travel, we figured out a way
to travel and eventually his, his desire for experiences drove him to be successful, where
if he wanted to have a sports car, he could do it. And, and so this kind of combination
of the career, as the thing that I enjoy, facilitates or enables these experiences that
I want to have in life, if I can get those two things working in a bit of a flywheel,
then they start to motivate each other, right?. So, if I want to be able to just say, hey,
on a whim, I want to go with my family on a vacation this weekend, well, obviously,
I need to have the money to do that. That's the blocker to do that. But it's less about
the money and more of my ability to sort of act with urgency and so that then drove me
to figure out how can I make more money? or how can I make more money as well, but I also
still really want to like my job. And I think that there's been a kind of a symbiotic relationship
between personal pursuits and endeavors, and how my career can enable those things.
11:33. Gorgeous, gorgeous, thank you. Now, tell me
about your company Teal, what's it all about.
11:41. So, you know, the origins of it, were when
I was at, we work, and I was thinking about leaving, you know, like, I'd been there for
four years, I had been consulting to them for about three before that. And for anyone
not familiar with the wework story, it was, you know, fairly high growth and a lot of
excitement and things going on, you know, we grew the company from when I first got
there, and we were acquired a total of like, 600 people to between like 14 and 16,000,
when I left four years later, and then after. I left, you know, if anyone's familiar with
the things in the news, and tricky things happened, and it got complicated. But it was
a very fast paced thing. And I was, you know, one of the top five executives in the company
at the time. So that was involved in a lot.. And I got to see, really kind of all strata
of the business from, you know, folks that were opening buildings at the beginning of
the month, all the way to what was happening in the executive meetings. And I had never
worked at a company so big before I had consulted to companies that big, but I didn't really
understand the inner workings. And I just overtime got to see the amount of infrastructure
that a company has. And I got to see like when people left, you know, the kind of conversations
we had had, you know, how do we deal with this deal with that. And so, when it was my
turn to leave, we were having our second child and I said, you know what, I really need a
break, I've been going sort of nonstop for a long time here. And I really want to spend
time when I we had just sold case, two, we were on our first daughter was born. And I
didn't want to do that again. And the company was getting at a point in time where it was
big and probably not like the best suited for me, in terms of what matters to me. And
there's gonna be more qualified, we had that experience to take over the things I was doing.
I think I had served my time at the right time. But I started to think about all these
concerns. It's like, oh, well, I've got, you know, I got an employment agreement. I've
got this, I got that I got that. And the company was always really wonderful to me. They didn't
do anything that led me to believe that they were going to do anything to me, but just
the natural fear in that moment. That just comes right. Because if we're worried about,
you know, if we resign, well, they just say, hey, Well, okay, that's cool. You can just
leave today and say, oh, wait, but I was counting on that money. Or, well, you're gonna have
to exercise your options, in 90 days, how you're gonna come up with that money, or you're
gonna have a tax it. And again, the company did nothing to make me think that they were
going to do anything, it was just all in my head. And I saw more and more people going
through that. And, and I know that there's things like Employment Lawyers, but they're
incredibly expensive. You know, there's career coaches that can help you find that. But in
those moments, to go through that process of finding someone that's a good match for
you, it's really hard. And so, it just got me it really opened my eyes to the lack of
what I would call career infrastructure for the consumer. Right companies have an HR department,
they've got recruiting departments, finance departments, legal departments, consultants,
and the consumer really has nothing. And so,. I got kind of obsessed with these ideas. Like
what if everybody had this global collective. HR department that was driven by data and
analytics that help them make career decisions with confidence? Because these experiences
that each of us are having may feel incredibly unique, but the truth is, they're not, right?
There are people resigning every five seconds, and there's a best way to do that. You know,
there's people signing an exit agreement every five seconds, and there's the best way to
do that. And, you know, maybe once you become a real senior executive, it becomes more bespoke
and more complicated. But for the majority of the people who are less represented and
don't have the infrastructure as technology can help this, and I've just always been such
a big believer on how technology can unlock so many things, said, there s got to be a
reason to do this. And, and I know people need it, they know they want it. Then the
big question is, is there a business here?. Because to date, there hasn't been right,
we've got apps to help us with our fitness, we've got apps to help us with our finances,
we've got apps to help us with our mental wellness. But we don't have a consumer app
for our career. And that excited me the idea of like tackling a really big problem, getting
to build technology from scratch on a problem that I'm, you know, kind of obsessed with.
And then I was lucky enough to find some partners and venture capitalists to help fund the idea.
And I've been working diligently on it for the last few years.
15:57. Fabulous. So, part of being a consumer is
I'm not always happy in my job. And it's time to look for something else. Have you recommended
people go about their search? Like? That's such a huge question. But I'm sure it's part
of what teal has tackled. So, what, what should people do when they're starting their search,
whether engage in the search, other than hire a coach, of course. But getting off the humeral
line, what does teal do? What do you do? What do you recommend that people do when they're
starting their search?
16:40. So, what I've identified is there's two kinds
of meta buckets in Job seekers. There are the people that know what they want to do,
and the people that don't know what they want to do. And there that is a very, very different
jobs, right, we may call them pivoters, and there's obviously a wide gradient of like,
the degree at which someone is pivoting, right?. Are they switching industry, and occupation
and location and all sorts of stuff, that's like a mega pivot to someone who just might
be shifting industries, but you know, still wanting to be a sales salesperson from pharmaceutical
to Software as a Service, that's still a bit of a light pivot, versus the person who wants
to do what they did before? And they want to keep their career progression. You know,
getting promoted in the context of a job search is not trivial. The easiest is just do what
you did before. And that's like the employer s favorite. But first is kind of like understand
not best for the employee, but definitely what the employer wants. And so, let's say
putting someone in one of those two buckets is really, really important, because what
I've seen is that people that tried a job search that aren't clear on what they want
to do, they tend to kind of languish in the job search for a while. Because they put out
a very, sort of general version of themselves.. And, and so when someone is looking to hire
them, like, well, what are you good at? And so, I think that's, that's one of the first
things I tell people is like, be very comfortable presenting the best 10% of yourself, not the
average 100% because that's actually a deterrent.. And it's a bit counterintuitive, people think
I'm going to show you everything I'm capable of. And what that ends up doing is like turning
off the job, you know, the, the employer, so show that you're really good at, you know,
a few things, which are the things they tell you they want in a J.D. And then once you
get.
18:37. Job description
18:38. Thank you, Industry lingo. And I've become,
you know, I'm a little indoctrinated, indoctrinated into the, into the career space now. But yeah,
exactly. And then once you're at the company, you can grow, then you can go do all the things
that you're capable of, and you're excited about. But I think people kind of conflate,
you know, pitching, where they want to go, all the cool things they want to do. All the
things they've done with the idea that this company has, they have an acute problem, which
is the reason they opened this job, they want to know that you are the solution to that
problem. And then once you're in, you can do all sorts of stuff. And so, they kind of
mix the interview and job landing process with the career growth. And so, the advice
I give everybody if you're gonna do one thing, get crystal clear on like, what your value
prop is to the market, how you're going to land that job. And then once you're in, you
can focus on career expansion.
19:36. And with value proposition. I think in terms
of what you're most capable of what your expertise is, is being a major part of the value proposition
beyond the personal Is that what you see as well?
19:51. Absolutely. Right. I say like abilities or
skills are the currency of careers. As we get more senior the skills get a little softer.
That's the first 10 to 15 years of our career, the skills are very much about those abilities
that you have. Because if the company had those abilities, they wouldn't have opened
the job position. Right? They would have either trained somebody from within, they're saying,
we ve got a gap, we've got a deficiency in terms of abilities to accomplish this thing,
we are going to go hire a person that has them. And I think people don't they really
make it this emotional process where it's really quite pragmatic, right? Oh, well, they'll
train me when I get there. Like, why would they do that? They would just train somebody
that they already know is great. Right? Sure, some companies may do it. So, I'm speaking
very parabolically about it. But if you think pragmatically, this is a commercial arrangement,
a company is out there seeking to procure abilities in the form of a salary to do something
they can't do today. And, and people really need to think about it in this very dry way,
then things like the resume in the application become far less emotional, and less a, an
extension of my identity in written form.. And more of a response to an RFP, which is
the request for the proposal is the job description.. And my proposal is my resume, and maybe becomes
a little less emotional and less belabored.
21:17. And unlike a real RFP, most of the time, the
job description often is inaccurate. HR people laugh when I say 80% of job description is
accurate. We just don't know, which is the 20%. That is inaccurate. So, I always coach
people to ask about the role at the beginning of the interview. So, you can talk about what
you've done that matters to them, and not just talk about what you've done. Because
they only really care about its kind of Neanderthal like. Oh, nice person, oh, this person can
do. And they want square peg, square hole, plug and play. And then they start expanding
from there. But they want to know that the concrete things that they need done can be
done by you. And then from there, they come up with a little bit tiebreaker. So, I'm with
you wholeheartedly. We've got to get people focused on delivering the goods as early as
possible. Whether you're the person who's the pivoter, or the person who's the plug-in
play, it's what is it that they need that you can do and making sure they know you could
do it, rather than hi, I'm going to tell you everything. I want you to bask in my magnificence.
Aren't I wonderful here and wasting everyone's time including your own?
22:47. Yeah, I completely agree. I use that line
all the time, you need to be the square peg for their square hole.
22:53. Right. So, what kind of tools can people use
in order to optimize their side of this? as employers, of course, they've got applicant
tracking systems, they've got video these days to evaluate assess people, I'm finding
a one-way video, rather than just simply two-way video, what sort of tools can Job Hunters
use, or deploy in order to support their efforts?
23:21. Yeah, so we subscribe to the idea what gets
measured gets managed. And a lot of job seekers kind of keep it in their head, they'll randomly
apply to things. They don't keep track; they don't do follow ups. And so, some diligent
job seekers will make a spreadsheet, but then you got to like, think about how to design
it, what to put in it. So, we said, look, don't worry about any of that stuff. We're
gonna give you a process, and we're gonna give you tooling to help reinforce that process.
So, it starts with a Chrome extension. The other thing we said is, we're gonna go to
you, there are so many ways to find jobs out there, we said, we're not going to try to
create this super-duper Google of job searching.. It's too big of a problem. And many of the
jobs aren't even online. Right? It's from talking to a friend or in a community or who
knows what. So, let's go with you. Let's create this companion. So, you install this Chrome
extension, the majority of people still job searching, the browser, eventually will have
an app. But the bulk of the job searching work happens at a computer. So, we said, look,
let's get focused and do that. And then once you install this Chrome extension, it really
goes with you everywhere. So, whether your job searching on LinkedIn, indeed, you know,
hired any of these sites. I think we support over 50 job portals, you just click this button,
and we ingest all the data for you. we ingest the company the job posts, the day it was
posted. And our main design ethos is how do we save you time so you can focus on the things
that matter. So, with LinkedIn in particular, which is where I think like 85% of the jobs
that have been saved on Teal are from, we then start to monitor that job for you daily
if it gets taken down. As soon as it goes into Teal, we extract all the keywords for
you. We put it into a funnel automatically of apply. So bookmarked applying. So, you
have a time to sort of think about how to customize your materials, applied interviewing,
negotiating. And then when it's in each of those stages, rather than just being a passive
data management tool, we then start to embed guidance. There's a checklist for each stage,
there's embedded email templates for you to send communications, there are tools to bookmark
contacts and see the skills of a person. So, you can build rapport. There are automatic
notifications on follow up, there's a dashboard for your cadence and pacing of your job search.
And then there's a whole bunch of other content on you know, best practices on how to interview
and, and things like that built into the platform, but really, what we're trying to do is create
this companion, that helps you make the right decision, a lot of people wake up, they look
at their computer, and you could do anything when it comes to job searching. So, it's like,
we should know better than them that they should focus on today, they get the highest
output from that little bit of time that they have to focus on their job search. So that's
our goal. Right now, I'd say we've got all the data tracking in place, we've got a lot
of the time savings. Now we're really focused on the embedded proactive guidance.
26:08. Fascinating, it's a Chrome extension runs
on any number of platforms as a result. And. I'll ask some of the questions that I'm always
asked, what does the system recommend in terms of when someone should follow up here for
submission.
26:27. So, I give this one in the sort of the Digital
Course, I haven't embedded it in the interface yet, but I'll give you the response I give
to everybody is. So, there's a little bit like an IF, if I apply, like in the first
half of the week, follow up within the week, don't let the weekend lapse. And then if you're
applying if you send out your first communication on a Thursday or Friday, send it right at
the beginning of the next week. So, it's not like a hard and fast rule. And I think this
is one of my issues with a lot of the job search advice is that they really try to distill
it down into prescriptive things that people can follow. And I try to take it back to the
intent because I want people to use their thought process, right, use your common sense
and your intuition. So, if you sent it at the beginning of the week, well, you've given
yourself some time, but you want what increase your chances of a response. But that's the
goal. That's the outcome. Don't get too hung up on the tactics I give people. So, what
I try to say is you want to best position yourself for a response, if you send a follow
up on a Friday afternoon, your chances of getting a response are really low, they're
going to get a whole bunch of emails, it's going to go to the bottom of the list. So
that's just not a good time. And so instead of me over complicating it and giving you
all these kinds of instructions, I tried to give people the intent, the intent is to get
a response. So don't send a follow up on a. Thursday or Friday. That means if you first
communicated with them on a Wednesday, well, it's probably weird to send a follow up within
48 hours. So, wait till Monday. And so that's kind of generally when people want the tactics.
That's what I say if you first communicated on a Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday, you have
until Friday, if you communicate it on a Thursday or Friday, get it up by the you know, Monday,
Tuesday or Wednesday of the next week.
28:14. And I do agree with you. You know, one of
the things I would always tell Job Hunters when I did search is, you know, it's Friday
afternoon. If I follow up with them today,. I know it's going to voicemail. So, I can
send them an email, but it's on the bottom have how we tell people if you're applying
for a job, and it's Friday that this job came out, and you're sending the application now
like I'll also say, why would you ever want to apply for a job? Why not just network your
way? But that's a digression here. So, if you're applying on a Friday afternoon, like
you know you're buried, everyone's come in on the weekend, at least do we delay send
so it goes in on Monday at 7:45am creates the impression that You're up early. It's
before 8, all you've done is a delay send on the resume. People want? Yeah, because
of the model of transformation that so many organizations have created. They want formulas
and prescriptions for what to do. they've stopped really thinking about what it's like
to be the person on the other side receiving.. They want to know; I should do this. And keep
it that simple. Anyway, what other kinds of tools to still have for Job Hunters, that's
going to make them more effective. We've got the Chrome extension; we know those things
built into that. What are those kinds of tools are available too?
29:47 so, we have a personality assessment. We think
a lot of times starting off a job search with understanding who you are, is really important.
We call it a work style. You know, it's not like Myers Briggs or something that's a little
more it's modeled off a two-factor system or a four-quadrant model, like disc or colors,
or hexacode, or any of the others. What we've added to it is a 360 component where you can
have others take it because a lot of times, we have a lack of self-awareness or blind
spots. And that's all free, actually, the whole platform is free. And so we think that's
really helpful when we encourage people to do that at the beginning of their process
to get that self-awareness, because then we can actually give you job search advice based
on your work style, you know, so as an example, if your primary two which is someone who's
a bit more gregarious and extroverted and likes talking and thinks out loud, networking
comes a little easier for them. actually, getting applications finished on that last
10% might be a little bit harder for them.. You know, someone who in our style is like
a primary for analytical, very high-quality bar, they really enjoy the researching finding
opportunities, but the struggle for them is perfectionism. And so, they might struggle
to get an application out because they needed to be perfect. And then they let perfect be
the enemy of good enough. And so, we give people those kinds of insights based on their
work style, some people really connect with it, others don't. But we find that to be really
valuable. We are in the beta testing of a. Chrome extension for bookmarking contacts,
because we know that like networking is the ultimate career unlock. And LinkedIn really
lacks a lot of functionality for saving contacts, adding notes on a contact. So that's in beta
right now, it should be out in early September.. And we also have the beginnings of a resume
builder. We call it the career history. We've intentionally not focused on the formatting
of the resume, which unfortunately blocks a lot of people from using it, but it's the
wrong thing they should focus on. And it really emphasizes the content. We've got like an
achievement wizard to help you structure achievements with what you did, what was the outcome, what
was the result, using metrics, and gives them almost like a mad libs interface to doing
that. And so, we're very focused on the content and tooling to help you best present yourself
as fast as possible.
32:02. And it's funny that you do it that way. Because,
folks, this is the framework for stories when you get to the interview phase. So don't think
of in terms of the resume, think of it in terms of its interview prep material. So,
this way, you're able to sell yourself very effectively, using a story format, that's
going to allow you to stand out from others.. This is fabulous by the way, what can we cover
yet that we really should.
32:34 look, there's a lot of components, to thinking
about how to grow your career, and there's a lot of research out there right now that's
talking about 41% of the workforce intends to switch at the end of the pandemic, you
know, we'll see what that means. You know, maybe there's no end, you know, but anyways,
I think the takeaway from those headlines is that the world has woken up to the idea
and understanding that being in a job they don't love is unacceptable. And it's not even
that the companies are bad or treating them poorly. A lot of the people, it's just, I
don't want to do this. You know, I somehow found myself in this career, because, like
me, my career counselor told me to do it, and they were wrong. You know, my parents
forced me into it. It was the career of our family. And I don't want to do this. And I
think there's more and more examples of people that have had that courage and made that leap
and are really happy doing work that they love. And I think that the pandemic has shown
people that life's too short, you've got you know, you people have had trust and autonomy
for 18 months, they got to work remotely.. And now they're being told to come back to
the office, but they don't want to go start a company, which is the alternative. So, they're
gonna go look for companies that are going to enable them to live the life they want
to live. And, and I think that we're at this moment, more so than we ever have been. And
it's what I've been calling the age of agency.. And so, I think that's going to be a really
interesting thing to watch here. As people start to transition you, I think April of
2021 is the largest month on record of voluntary resignations. So, I think that there's a lot
of a lot of things going on there. What I would caution people and advise them to do
is even as unhappy as you may be in a job.. Understand that your relationship with the
company is commercial. Your relationship with the people is personal. That goes with you
forever. So even though you may say I'm done with this company, I hate them. Do not be
disrespectful to your manager, give notice, do the right things because those things stay
with you forever. And so be mindful that your reputation, you can't a sponge. These things
on your record when you were rude. When you didn't you didn't leave with grace. You didn't
help the company you didn't leave a good impression.. So be mindful and even if you are miserable
at your job and you hate it. Be mindful of those things though. People may recommend
you one day they may have been going through a hard time themselves. If they go to a new
job, maybe they thought great of you and they'll recruit you, your network is the gift that
keeps on giving. So do everything you possibly can to nourish and leverage that network as
you're leaving your job.
35:15. Amen, brother, how can people find out more
about you, Teal, everything, how can they get in touch with you.
35:22. So, I'm most active on Twitter, at . I'm very
active on your last name for them. f like. Frank a, n like Nancy, o, that's what I heard
my mom say all growing up when she was on the phone. And I'm very active on LinkedIn,
it's in, you know, slash , the same. And then teal, you can find us at teal, like the color
tealhq.com. And you can get all the tools there, it's 100% free, you can sign up for
our workstyles our job tracker. And we also have an incredible community on slack where
people give each other jobs search advice and help each other out. So, it's, you know,
you can find me on any of those platforms.. I try to be responsive as I can or you can
email me dave@tealhq.com
36:08. And I'd be less and folks we'll be back soon
with more. I'm Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter.. Hope you enjoyed today's interview I did.
And if you're watching on YouTube, click the like button, share it do something that lets
people know was worthwhile. connect with me on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/thebiggamehunter
mentioned that just saw the interview. I just like knowing I'm helping some folks. And my
network tends to be bigger than yours, so your network will expand a lot. Plus, I want
to mention my website, thebiggamehunter.us where I've got 1000s of posts in the blog,
you can watch listen to her read that and help you find work more quickly hire more
effectively manage and lead better resolve workplace-related issues that you might have.
And you can also schedule a free discovery call or schedule time for coaching. I'd love
to help. Hope you have a total epic day and most importantly, be great. Take care
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