the white collar recession. Things are changing faster than we've ever seen before. That I was making impact in organizations but not always seeing the full benefit. You get some protection because of that. But I wanted something a little different. That's a pretty that's about as a staple as a job you can have. What are the problems that you are uniquely designed to solve? You may be really great at designing labels for eight tracks. No one's buying that right
now. individuals that have really never had to struggle to find a job um that are struggling. We might be able to have two that are overseeing the AI and double-checking the AI work. How do we figure out how to pay for this? All chickens come home to roost. Getting them back to the office, it's really a guys that can figure out more ways to lay people off. Now that the cheese has moved, the landscape has changed. What's
a resume, right? Like you had to basically back the recruiters out of your inbox if you were any good. Everyone's both a tech company and a media company. They are not in business to help you feed your family. Hard stop. Everybody needs to have an entrepreneurial mindset. The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read or write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. 85% of the jobs in 2030 don't actually exist right now because
you were at that job, right? And I'm not and they still laid you off. What you going to do? like you got to actually be able to have a dynamic uh conversation. You are positioning yourself to work harder. [Music] Welcome to Disruption Now. I'm your host and moderator, Rob Richardson. You know, on the show, we love to bring on innovators, entrepreneurs, and those who are disrupting the status quo in their
own way. And Nicole is doing that for the for the rec for the white collar recession we're having right now to help you through your job search through your career because things are changing faster than we've ever seen before. But before I get into the show, always I want to encourage you to become part of our community of disruptors. You know, about 90% of you that watch the show aren't actually subscribers. Ask you to be a subscriber. Please leave a review.
Also, if you're listening to this on on podcast, leave a review. That's how we can spread our message more to make sure that uh we continue to uh move society forward to make it more human centric as as emerging technology uh becomes more a part of our society. So we can't get that message out unless you tell people. So we need more fellow disruptors. We need you. Uh we also have an upcoming conference that we'd love to invite you to September 10th and 11th called
Midwestcon. a social innovation conference that focuses on humanizing uh innovation and embedding empathy into innovation. But without any further ado, Nicole, great to have you on the show. How you doing today? I am doing well. Thanks so much. Glad to be here. It's a long time coming this conversation, Rob. It has it has been a long time coming, but you know, I I enjoyed our prep conversation and uh I'm really um inspired by what you do and uh
want to talk to you more about it. So, you haven't been doing this your entire career and uh so I'm curious like what made you realize that that you wanted to be in uh in the mission of helping people through their job and through their careers? Like how did you come to this epiphany? Yeah. Yeah, that's a great question. Uh my background really is in a few different sectors. Corporate America and the nonprofit sector as well as um uh
entrepreneurship and consulting. On the corporate and nonprofit side of my background, I've done quite a bit in operations and administrative management as well as human resources. I have always loved the process of hiring my teams, helping the people that are on my teams grow and develop within the roles at my company and also just thinking through what are the steps to make my
hiring process more efficient. Right? So that's kind of where it started as a manager growing teams in at the time what was a fast growing ear a new state a newer industry which was um for-profit or online university I was hiring handover fist every quarter for at the time I was working with Kaplan University and we were at the point the number two player in the market and growing that team of of support team and how do I go about having these level one and level two
tech support people come through my my my team, get them upskilled quickly so they can address the issues. So that was how I cut my teeth on all all things related to hiring and the hiring market um as a hiring manager. Uh from that point though, I also then moved into doing some things in um related to HR and recruiting for other organizations. Uh everything related to how do you help
managers make better decisions. Fast forward to a few years later, I'm working in management again myself at Northwestern University at the law school there and I am hiring a smaller team, but I'm doing some hiring and and there as well. And in the midst of things that were happening in that economy, which we are of a similar age range, so 2008, 2007, 2008, we all know what was happening in
the economy at that point. Um, and I had a series of things that happened that made me decide that it was time for me to step out and try something on my own. Let me try this entrepreneurship thing. I have entrepreneurs on both sides of my family. I started to realize that I was making impact in organizations but not always seeing the full benefit of the impact that I was making because that's what happens when you um are employed and that's okay. You get some protection
because of that. But I wanted something a little different. Hm. Theoretically, yes. But yes, the theoretically theoretically, right, fast forward to today. Um, however, I wanted to try something different and I stepped away from a full-time job in management at the at the law school there at Northwestern um to start uh my very first business, which was basically consulting to small business owners on legal services. Wow. I did that in 2008
um is my last day there. And of course if we know what happened 2008 2009 it became quite clear that we were it was business it was not business as usual if you will and through that process who I had to become in order to quite frankly close sales Rob I had to take every aspect of my professional background everything I learned from marketing my first job out of college I worked in in in luxury package goods marketing um and how to help people understand those elements ments I
everything I learned as a go there a little bit Nicole I'd like to get to your aspects but you obviously have a lot of career experience and you made that big transition between uh you know having a job at Northwestern is a that's a pretty that's about as stable as a job you can have uh it used to be government very different nowadays too but I digress uh that was a very stable job what advice would you give looking back your younger self knowing everything you know now
in terms of like making that transition because a lot of people are going to either awaken to that transition right now or going to be forced to that transition right now. So what advice would you give your younger self when you're first starting off from uh leaving the 95 to the entrepreneurial journey? Nothing is wasted, right? What do you do best? What do you love to do
most? Um what is it that when you do it people marvel right it's not it's common it's common place to you when but when you do it people are just shocked and awe in shock and in awe that you can see a solution to something what are the problems that you are uniquely designed to solve and secondly even so that's your own self assessment but the second part of that is what does the market need right now you might be really great at designing labels for eight tracks. No one's buying that right now.
Not that I know. I'm just saying. Not that there may be like five people that are collecting them for their, you know, personal museum, right? And I'm so happy that you have those customers. However, looking at what the marketplace needs plus what you are uniquely designed to do and bringing those two together can be a very powerful place. Right. No, the intersection. Go ahead. Yeah, I was going to say there's some additional nuances to that, right? You know, what does the
competitive set look like? How hard is it to bring that to profit? Um, how easy is it for that to scale based on what your actual goals are? But those are the two first pieces. Yeah. But that that's that's, you know, being able to identify what you're uniquely positioned at and and what the market actually needs. Yeah. and and these fundamentals don't change right now even in the midst of this this uh this white collar recession
that we're going through right now. So I think that's really really great advice. Let's talk about this shift though. What do you think has what is going on right now? What is the shift that you see is happening and because we've seen cycles before, right? I think there's a difference between things being cyclical and that like 2008 there was a there was a you know just a downturn, a recession, a mass recession and those things
happen. Uh but we talked about this and I think you you agree there's been a fundamental shift. What do you think the fundamental shift is when it comes to the job market right now specifically with the white collar market? Yeah, I think the biggest shift is that there are individuals that have really never had to struggle to find a job um that are struggling and I can speak about this from an industry's perspective.
Clearly, this this audience and and your platform, you speak a lot more to folks that are in the tech industry or that are tech curious or that are looking to implement that more into their life every day and in the business and political sectors. However, I think it's important to realize that it's gone beyond that. And yes, we can start at this year, but we actually could probably start two and a half years earlier when open AI came to the forefront in many ways to bring Gen AI
to the masses. That's when we started to really see the disruption about two and a half two two and a half years ago. Um that January of what 2023 when it started to show up everywhere and we were hearing all of that talk. um companies from 2023 and I'm speaking now specifically to the tech industry. Of course it is trickling down to other
industries. Companies from 2023 started to say wait a second we are paying our you know top um architects and these other people that have these highly skilled high high level skills $300,000 $200,000 base or 250 plus you know 20% bonus you know total comp plus stock for one person. And we have hundreds or possibly thousands of these people across the planet. But there's this AI thing that costs a lot of money to
implement. Yes. But it's proponing. It's saying that we may very well be able to cut instead of having 10 programmers or developers doing this work. We might be able to have two that are overseeing the AI and double-checking the AI work. So a lot of companies went into this and said, how do we figure out number one, how not to be left behind, right? And number two, how do we figure out how to pay for this? How do we figure out how
to pay for it? Right? And so those are the couple of things that happen that are probably the easiest for everyone to see on the surface. But we could also quite frankly go even further back than that. Remember this little thing called COVID, right? 2020, 2021, and the global impact of that. There was a cost in America for us to put some of the policies in place for the world to shut down. And some of that cost we have been paying for for the past several years
through inflation, right? The cost of goods and services have gone higher have gotten higher. And again, not to talk go too far into politics and and political policies, but it's kind of hard not to touch on it a little bit. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, you're not you're not you're not you're not debarred from doing that. So, go for it. Multiply. Well, well, I want to make sure that we there's so much noise right now in the marketplace and we'll get to the what
what people need to be doing today. I I have some very specific thoughts about that, but I do think in order to even have a context of what to do today, we need to understand what has happened. Agreed.
part of the world shutting down um and goods and services not moving the way that they once did across our planet um caused not only a backlog um it cost it cost a lot of money for the the the world to shut down the way that we had to because we didn't have a cure for this thing called yeah people were dying and we like to remake facts about things but like million I think over a million people died in the US alone there's a lot of people that died in the US alone.
Exactly. Right. So we are we had to do certain things and also because again I I referenced 2008 2009 at the beginning beginning of this conversation but there are politicians in 20 in 2020 that were in office or were very much working adults during 2008 and 2009. And if you understand what happened in 2009 and the fact that the world went into a global recession because American polit we allowed big banks to fail which impacted monetary um monetary structures across the planet.
No one wanted to be in politics and have it on their back that they allowed again an an economy to crash. So we wrote checks like anything. We were sending stimulus checks. We were, hey, if you've got a mortgage, you don't have to pay the mortgage for a year. We will hold it because we know that we're not working. We will do all of these things. We've got PPP loans. We've got all this money that we threw in to make sure that this the economy didn't go to the bottom,
i.e. 2009, right? And that worked in the short term, but all chickens come home to roost. Yeah. Someone's got to pay for that. And some of that's being paid for in inflation. So, that also started it. That also started where things cost more. If eggs for you and I cost $8 a dozen and a company needs to for us, how much more where everything from paper goods to microchips to anything that a company needs to buy is it costing?
Yeah. No, I agree. I mean, I agree. I mean, it's it's definitely it's something that we can't we got here through a collection of things, right? And you look at 2020. 2020 was a different market when it came to the on
the employee side, right? You were I think it's one of the strongest markets we've seen and people got a false sense of I think power and security about what it looks like and I feel like we're seeing the mirror reflection or exact opposite I would say of 2020 we're seeing in 2025 in that this is now a completely employer market. employers are moving to get people I think back to the office under the guise of getting them back to the office. It's really a guise I think to figure out more ways to
lay people off. Uh but that's the but but I think this is the world that we're in and we can complain about it all we want but the this is the world we're in. So you are we are navigating this as working professionals like how what advice do you give to working professionals now because things are different now that the cheese has moved the landscape has changed how do you advise current working professionals that like you said aren't necessarily used to the struggle and are and are
adapting to a new reality. Yeah. It's interesting because a lot of the work I personally personally one-on-one have probably worked with at this point in my career over 1500 people that are in career transition this year. Probably a hundred alone this year, right? Um so it's not I I have a lot of conversations with folks in a lot of industries. Probably about 60% of the people that I work with 50 to 60% of them are coming
from the tech space, right? Um certainly I've worked across all industries, but that's probably a bigger component of that. So, I'm going to first talk to that person because I think that is the audience that is probably the most has been the most surprised or disrupted by what's been happening the last couple of years, right? Um, number one, it's not business as usual in a job search. Quite frankly, the in in the past, my average tech professional didn't even really have to
do a job search. What's a resume, right? Like, you had to basically back the recruiters out of your inbox if you were any good at what you did and if you had a particular trajectory in your career. um that was the way that you did that. You got a very strong six-figure income doing work that you were good at that people were constantly recruiting you to
pay you more money to do. Right? So that if you grew up in the tech space and you grew up, let's say you are somewhere between 30 and 50 and you've spent the last, you know, 20 10 to 20 plus years of your professional career in tech up until two and a half years ago, you probably don't know a whole lot about what it is to actually have a true full-time proactive job search. You don't know that life. You don't know that world. No. Right. So that's the first thing. Um, now we are, you and I
are talking in 2025. This is a conversation that I've been having with folks since 2022, 2023. Um, and it's even more relevant today because it's trickling down to other industries and sectors, right? Um, so number one, understand that you actually have to execute a true job search and not just any old job search, but a job search
strategy, right? Which means you're doing certain things based on a goal that you have in mind about where you want to go, not today, but where you see the marketplace going in the future.
So that's the first thing. I think the second thing to keep in mind is that we didn't just have this inflationary environment and companies are laying off let's just say tech professionals um because of needing to find f funds and change priorities right um so that they can implement and bring on more of these AI and genai tools so they can be competitive it wasn't just that it is now you also tech professional need to understand how to use some of these AI tools and what what are the pros and
cons of using these every single day in your in your particular function. I feel like and that's a conversation that we could talk about beyond just um the tech industry. Every single industry, I don't care whether you are a um teacher, I don't care whether you are an accountant, whether you are a podcaster, um whether you are a content creator, whether you are a marketer, um every single industry is now having to think about whether they want to or not.
How is Gen AI and the tools that are coming out disrupting the way that I do business? Yes. Yes. I mean, it's it's it's Yes. Yes. And yes. So, beyond being a podcaster, we also build and build applications uh AI and Jet applications.
But mo the most important and the and the thing and the place we start with is you know what is your vision for your company and and what changes are you seeking to make and helping them and what are your pain points and how do you currently go about them now um and and so like I think that's so important what you said and I think getting back to this working professional right you have to think about the fundamentals to be successful you kind of hit some of them
right um like I look at it and I'd like to get your comments on this basically about three things you needs to understand. It's a different way. Uh we have the job seekers and there's a way that I want you to talk about that a little bit about what you need to be successful because I think I want to dive more into that. But the working professional, the founder, whoever you are, right?
Whatever whatever you're doing, whoever who who's ever listening to the sound of my voice, you are going to have to approach things differently. Like it used to be, as you know, and we had this conversation when we prepped for the uh podcast, a a person that was a coder, if you were a good coder, you can just go sit in a corner, not talk to anybody, go code. As long as you coded well, no one cared, right? Um there might be a few people like that, but you have to be so damn
good. You have to probably be in the top 1% like to be to for that to be something you can get away with. Now, that's no longer the case. you have to now have a more global picture of things of understanding the business fundamentals. Um, even if you're not technical, as you said, everyone's both a tech company and a media company. Everybody has to know some level of technology. Period. Hard stop, right? And you have to know how to interact
with AI in some ways. That doesn't mean you have to be an expert in all things, but you better be comfortable with AI amplifying what you do. and then look for uh opportunities uh that others don't see and find and connect patterns. I say so we have to be in some ways we have more opportunities but in in a way in in another way you have to also kind of know a little more and learn a little more than you had to before even though that there's more tools at your ca at
your at your disposal. I'm curious to see what do you think as a working professional if you had to give the top three things you you need to do to be successful as a professional what would those things be? Number one you must understand business perspective. So this is where the white collar professional the white collar recession piece comes in. As I mentioned a few moments ago we have people that never really had to struggle because
they did the things right. They got the bachelor's degree, maybe even a master's degree in their area of expertise. They worked through the Fortune 500s or Fortune 100 companies. They grew their skill set over time and they continue to do so. And even those people because of no fault in many instances of their own um they may find themselves out of work in an environment that has shifted,
right? Um, for some of those individuals, and I'm I'll speak to the tech industry professional, but also beyond that, whether we're talking about someone that's in accounting or someone that's in education or some other piece, they really didn't have to know what how the business made money or really have a full understanding of how the business that they were working for, the company that they were working for, um, made money, what was the competitive set around them, um, what were the things
that were shifting the decision- making in the company. That was something that no one really wants to talk about this, but you kind of didn't need to understand that unless you were in a sales or a you were more a senior level role as you were going up into the the the senior level or senior director, vice president level roles, then an understanding even more so of the business perspective was necessary. That
is not the case anymore. I do believe that a lot of reasons, a lot of the reason that companies ended up cutting people from their staff that may even have been in functions that were making money, they just needed maybe that was a lower priority for the business. So understanding how the company that you're considering working for that you currently work for, how do they make money, right? What is the competitive
set around that company doing? Because if you do not believe that many of the layoffs that were happening in fame companies were happening because the competitor across the street right whether I'm Amazon and I'm looking at Meta laying off and I'm over because they're getting ready to get money together to go ahead and invest in these data centers or I am you know IBM and Dell's over here doing layoffs right like it they respond to each other and how they are responding and that
trickles down to you accountant you marketing um director ctor you you know programmer. Yeah. I mean that's that's yeah that that's go ahead Nicole. Yeah. So I I think I was just going to say that's that's one of the biggest things like recognizing that understanding business is actually in my opinion something that is becoming much more of a fundamental need for the everyday worker. Right? We are in whether you want whether you like it or not. We are in a society that is
based on capitalism. Business are businesses are in business to make a profit. They are not in business to help you feed your family. They are not in business to um primarily in business to produ um release goods and services to the marketplace. They are a business is a business in order to make a profit. Right. Yeah. Hard stop. Hard stop.
That's hard stop. Hard stop. And so if the landscape in which a company makes profits changes, the company is fast, especially if they're publicly traded because hello, they've got to answer to to shareholders, right, about how they're doing things, right? So this is why Target's a little bit in trouble right now and a few other companies like that that you've made decisions that are now impacting the bottom line and we own
part of you. So now you need to come talk to us about what you just did and who who thought about this. Right. Exactly. So companies are being called on the carpet and have to be and have that's the nature of being publicly traded, right? You know, Nicole, it makes me think about if you were because you know, most people are not
entrepreneurs. Uh, of course, and it's a and it's it is a different life and I don't say everybody should be an entrepreneur, but I firmly believe everybody needs to have an entrepreneurial mindset where you are to your point. Right. So, this
is you have to always be learning. uh you have to understand the business because if you do that you'll be much better positioned right and you can't just see your role as I just do my job my job is limited to this and you can't think one-dimensional anymore in a in a fourdimensional world like things are moving so quick things are you need to in order to make yourself um stand out you have to do the things you're saying right uh but we I think there's there is
a struggle right getting back to both job seekers it is very difficult specifically for people that have thought a certain way for a long time to be able to change the method of their thinking. Yeah. This is this feels difficult to me. Maybe I'm wrong. No. Um it's not. How do you advise uh you know your clients who have been fixated on this is how the world works. If I do this, I work hard at my job. I understand my role. I should be okay. Right? And that's obviously not the
case. um if I have this I've had all these um career uh opportunities, I've uh built my career, I have experience, I should be able to easily find a job. We know that's not the truth. Number one, how do you guide them towards that mindset? And then the second question is what's the most impactful thing they can do to begin to make the transition from where they were to where they need to
be? Yeah, this is a great question. Um there is a quote that honestly I've been quoting for years and I don't think it's ever been more true than today. Um there's a futurist by the name of Alvin Tooffler and he stated that the illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read or write but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn. Right. Oh, that's a that's a mic drop moment. That is good. Yeah. Yeah. like it is it's authentically um impossible
in the long term. I'm not talking about in the next two to five years. I'm talking about in the next you know 8 to 20 years to maintain even your sanity let alone your marketability if you are unwilling to embrace a growth mindset.
Right? I would also say it's a pivot from becoming I'm not saying that there's not a place to become a subject matter expert in a particular area because I think that is the case right I really do I really do think there is that however in addition to being a subject matter expert in an area you must also start to generate a certain or develop a certain mindset that is curious and that is open to learning you want to think about this tech the tools and the skill sets that are needed in
the marketplace today. That's another major trend that's happening and it's been happening for a while but we're seeing much more of a pivot towards it even now this side of you know open AI and Gen AI really taking to the forefront which is a skills-based economy right that means you literally might see something in a job posting and you got 60% of the requirements required skills and there may be two or three things on there that you don't really know a whole lot about but you're
noticing that every time you look for a job with this title they're asking now for these particular two or three technologies. What does that mean? Instead of thinking, "Oh gosh, let me throw up my hands. I don't know how to do that." You go find yourself a LinkedIn learning course, you go find a UDI course, you go spend a weekend on, you know, YouTube and do some YouTube university and educate yourself enough about that thing so that you can have an
intelligent conversation. I think my average tech professional understands that to a certain extent because certifications have been a thing for quite some time and they unlock higher levels of salary and responsibility based on certain certifications you have right um however the average working professional um that used to be that mindset of growth mindset that a that mindset of upskilling myself on a regular basis that has been has been something that's been not new um it's
been around and the people that I love to work with we talk about that and have talked about that for a decade but now it's becoming table stakes. Absolutely. Absolutely. Like everybody from you know all those I don't agree with the approach of what's happening at the with the everything at the at u at 1600 Pennsylvania and how they're going about it is I think is inhumane. Yeah. But there's no question even at federal, state, and local levels we're gonna have to
reimagine services. We're going to have to reimagine how we um how we serve the
public. uh uh those who those who work in the public sector too also are going to have to learn more and learn faster and some do but that's going to be the requirement for everyone right everybody right and this is because this is the world as it is right and so you know there's a study um by Dell I think and several others that that that that shows that by 2030 85% of the jobs in 2030 don't actually exist right now right so hold on to that that's pretty pretty wild.
Even if that's an exaggeration and it's not 80 to 85%. A large portion of jobs are changing right now. And so you got two options. Pretend like it doesn't exist or figure out how to pivot and change with the times. And there's so many tools to do it right now. You just said a LinkedIn learning. Google offers a free course. I think Microsoft offers a free course for AI. I think even MIT and Stanford offer all types of free courses for it. It is not outside of
your capability. You just have to get your mindset right and you have to learn by doing. Like I how I how I'm learning AI, how I've learned AI, how I've learned everything technical is that I sit down, listen, and then I go do it. It's really that's really it. Like it's not rocket science. It's you got to just sit down and go do it. And you have the ability to do it. You just have to decide to do it. And and we need more
people to do it. to build right now. Uh so really appreciate the work you're doing. So what I'm curious uh what do you think is the biggest kind of misconception right now with job seekers that's happening right now? Yeah. Yeah. I think um gosh that there's there's several. Let me try to narrow it down to a few.
Um, someone that's brand new in the job search that maybe hasn't had to do an external job search in the past might think that the best and only way to find a job is to um get their resume done and start applying using LinkedIn and the job boards um Indeed and LinkedIn. And it is it is a great strategy. In fact, I it's a foundational job search strategy to anyone that's in in job search um because here's what job boards do. They allow you to see what the marketplace is
calling your type of role today. Y it allows you to understand the vocabulary that the marketplace is using to describe your skill set today, right? Which if you've been in you haven't been in the open market in 10 years or five years, you may not realize that what used to be called um you know web designer is now UX design is now some other new designer, right? Um so you may not recognize that shift. Um however um so that's a good thing. However,
everybody's doing that. So, if you are going into a job search thinking that the way I'm going to find a job is only and solely by going through the job boards, then that's a wrong way to go about doing it. I think the strategies for how I recommend my clients find jobs, they haven't changed. There are six core job search strategies that anybody that's listening can and could possibly be using for their job search.
And dependent upon your personality, dependent upon um the market and the industry that you're targeting, two or three of them, most people should be doing at least two, maybe three job search strategies. Do we have time for me to just mention those six briefly now? We do. Yeah, we have time. Yeah, we have No. Okay, cool. Let me just mention them briefly because I find that too many people get focused on one thing and
not enough of the others. So, in no particular order, the first one I've just mentioned is thirdparty job boards. That's your Indeed. That's your LinkedIn. That is your uh you know Zip Recruiter, Glass Door, you know, Dice, what whatever your job boards that you're using that you're finding jobs.
Even Google, which most people don't seem to realize, if you type the job title, you type the city and the word job that you're looking for, Google itself uses the power of the Google search engine to act as an an aggregator, pulling jobs from all over the internet and presenting them to you. So, that's another one that people seem to forget about, but all of those are the same thing. Third-party job boards, right? Um, and that's great until they're not, right? So, that's number
one. There are strategies and techniques I teach to make that more efficient um for somebody when a job is posted matters right now. Um, where you f found the job matters right now. Using it to source the job, but not necessarily using it to apply for the job, that matters right now, right? You find it on the job board, you go to the web website. Anyways, lots of things on that one, but that's only one. Most people use that only. The second one that we're talking more about now and I'm grateful
for is networking, right? Networking is a job search strategy, particularly for my tech tech professionals right now. Um, networking is a job search strategy and a care and a career boosting long-term strategy that people underestimate underestimate really underestimate. And if I want you to dive on that, don't forget your point. No, I do want to say this and especially
talking to the younger generation. Um, you really have to learn at your earlier career, you need to actually, this is going to sound counterintuitive, but early in your career, you need to value relationships and building them and learning over money. That sounds weird. Yeah. And they're like, "No, I need to get paid as much as possible right now." I get that. And I'm not saying you don't need money and you need you need to have
you need to make money. However, for you to get that money, you have to develop some level of relationships where people actually learn to trust you, rely on you, understand the value that you bring and that you actually want to bring value, not just take. And then you got to develop some skill sets, right? Like it's it's that takes learning. And so like, you know, I I' I've seen this challenge happen a lot. And you know, I
I love a lot of the energy. I love the perspective of a lot of the younger generation trying to bring balance to the workforce and I agree with that. But if you are in and you're talking to an entrepreneur on your first job and your first line or your repeated line is work life balance when you are just starting. I'm I always ask I ask people like what are you balancing? I'm just asking I feel like because they a lot of times they don't have kids or anything else.
I'm like like I'm just I'm just trying to understand but that's all I Okay, I digress. But go ahead, Nicole. You you were on your I I Oh my Oh my So I I have a a a client that I was working with earlier this year. We had a conversation and he's in that, you know, 30s age range. Um and we we we had a lot of conversation around um the idea of having a professional network and that generation for all kinds of reasons like I follow trends.
If you haven't learned this from me, I kind of watch what's happened historically and see what's repeating, what's new and how we can leverage the past to see what's happening in the future. Sure. And I look at it from outside of sectors. So we have this whole kind of pay me what you owe me kind of energy that has come out uh for the the the younger generation, right? Not a bad mindset in theory because they saw their parents and sacrifice time
with them, right? You were not at my at my at my football game or at my basketball game or at my cheer cheer meet because you were at that job, right? And I'm not and they still laid you off, right? they're coming from that energy and then they're seeing, okay, they just saw front and center, I went and did all the things and I still couldn't find a job or whatever the case may be in those
early years. So, they they have that kind of mindset and then of course popular culture with songs like better have my money, right? you know, like that we we laugh it and we and we joke at it, but like the the ramifications are you go into the workplace and you start expecting that same sort of energy like I'm going to, you know, toeto toe you on this and if you don't have it, I'm out. And that's cool, but what you're what you're not doing is collecting that collateral over the
years. So when the time comes that you do actually need a reference, you do need sponsorship. You do need someone to mentor you or someone to call just to ask a question. You don't have that because transactional relationships are transactional in both ways, right? So if that's if we're going to be transactional, we're going to be holistically transactional. So please do not be mad when I don't not respond to your LinkedIn inbox because all you wanted was to clock that to to to punch
that that clock and to leave. Yep. I don't know you. You didn't build a relationship with me. Yeah. No, it's
it's it's it is the truth. And that and that also goes to relationship of not only people you work with um people you don't work with and the people you work with there's also levels of relationship like if I have to like being an entrepreneur you know and having and having staff you know you've seen people that are like okay let me do I see this as it it's it's 5:00 cut off done I'm done with this not even if they have nothing else to do right like and and
there's like all right I'm done I bring in this amount and no more and That's all right. The problem with that is that if that's the mindset, an ecosystem means that if you just take from it, it doesn't build especially as an entrepreneur and a small business. So that goes to understanding like as a job seeker now and as a working person, it is very important that you understand that you try to seek to bring value.
Doesn't mean you you you don't you ignore people if they're trying to exploit you, but I think there's also some overreaction and misunderstanding about what it takes. like there is some level of building relationships and paying dues that you have to go through that we all have to go through that we've all gone through and there's also nothing wrong
with that. There's I think this this this overfocus on balance has bringing us out of balance into what it actually takes to become successful in what it always has taken. Yeah. Yeah. Which is a lot of hard work and a lot of sacrifice. You know, you can have it all just not at the same time. Nope. Nope. Not at the same time. And I wish I wish that was understood more. Um, but we could we could talk about that a lot. I want to make sure I share the other four strategies. Um, so you got two. The
first two were what again? Let's just recap those. Third party job boards number one. Um, networking. Networking is number two. Number two. And the third party job boards aren't as effective, but they help tell you the landscape and the language of currently what's happening. Okay. What are the other four strategies? Um, the the the third one is um recruiters. Working with recruiters,
right? third party recruiters at a staffing firm, a temp agency, an executive search firm, ped hunter, all the same thing, just different versions of that externally. You're not their customer. The company that's paying them, which is the company you want to ultimately work for, is their customer. You are a resource to them, right? Each one of these strategies, there's pros and cons to um but that's another one. In the past, I think our tech, my tech professionals have relied more on on um
an inreach, right? So recruiters were reaching into them and the first thing that most tech professionals did was go out and try to reach out to recruiters and they're not getting calls back because everybody's reaching out to those recruiters now, right? So if you didn't have a relationship with them in the past and the recruiters are trying to pay their bills too because guess how recruiters get paid by placing people
like you. And if they're not placing people like you because their customers are laying off 20% of their developers, they're not getting the same checks they used to get. So they're trying to buy the eggs too that you're trying to buy. It's all everything is connected which is why we cannot look at this thing from just a a siloed approach to it. We have to really look at it holistically.
Anyways, so recruiters um the fourth strategy is something called target company list um where you identify a set of criteria that make sense to you for the type of company you want to work for. Right? The criteria could be all sorts of things. Direct competitors your com your family uses their products, goods and services. It could be um they're a small company. They um regularly show up on the 100 best companies to work for in your city. Whatever the criteria is, you set the
criteria first, number one. Then number two, you look for the companies that match that criteria. This is a little bit different than most people the way most people say, "Oh, build a target company list." I teach my clients this because quite frankly, if I just say, "Give me a list of your top 20 companies." Everybody gives me the same 15 companies. Everybody. It's the companies that are front and center,
good or bad, right? I can't tell you how many people that I've spoken with that have a particular culture that they want to work with in an organization and then they give me a list of a certain group of fang companies and I'm like, not around there, partner. Like, not around there. Like, you're not going to get that. Not that it boo. You don't want that. You don't don't want what you don't want. So, think about what you actually want and then look for
companies that are doing that. There are plenty of companies that are making more than enough money to pay you very well that you've never heard of. You know why? Because they just do their business. Yep. They're not in the headlines every five minute. They're not on LinkedIn news every 3 seconds being talked about. Yeah. You can tell me more about Nvidia, but who are the companies
that supply them? Who are the companies that they're working with that have the money because Nvidia is one of their major contracts? Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. The suppliers behind the scene is a huge huge industry in that. Forgotten. Forgotten all the time. So I can talk a lot about that. I teach target company list strategy in four steps, but those are the first two that are the most critical. Set your criteria and then find the companies. So we've talked
about four of them so far. Um the fifth strategy that I like to to consider is actually contracting. Contracting is a subset of recruiter strategy. When I say contracting, what I mean is I am very clear on my skill set. And I am going to now offer this particular skill set as a gun for hire, if you will, to a company that has a short-term or midterm need. A short-term need could be three to six months. Midterm could be six to a year. Some companies even will do longer term
contracts. If you play your cards right, and if you are clear on your your subject matter expertise, this is why going back to what we said earlier, can add value. You can step into a company with limited ramp up and actually create value for that company for this short-term engagement. There's two things that come from that. Number one, they get to kick the tires on you and you get to kick the tires on them to see if they're crazy and they get to see if
you're crazy. If you are good at what you do and there's a need, they will keep you on for other things. The other thing that benefits for that is that you also keep your skills sharp. You make sure if you've been in a longer job search, finding a contract can actually help you to land an opportunity that you may not went out. Went out. Move the questions down too. Yeah, I don't know why it's doing that. Go ahead. So, make sure to mark that part. Go ahead. Yeah.
So if you are able to find a contract that makes sense for your background, you're you're getting your skills your your skill set is is is being cultivated in that environment and possibly even testing new skills that you are picking up because you are learning, unlearning, and relearning while you're in transition. It also can extend your financial runway, right? Um lots of things, but they're negatives to contracts. Again, pros and cons to all
of them. Um the sixth strategy that I like to talk about this is either going to work or it's not going to work for people. It's called boomerang, right?
This is works best when you have had a career where you've worked with different types of companies over the years and you can look back at the companies you've worked with in the past and you can find a company that can I boomerang back to a company that I worked with in the past at a higher level or at a slightly different skill set that I have because I've grown over the years. Clearly that only works if you did good work there, right? If you if the company and the industry that
they're in is viable, right? Because some industries are no longer viable, i.e. the eight track label creation company, right? That that's not a thing anymore. Yeah. Right. Um and do I um do they have a policy of hiring people back? Right. um slight little adjustment to something and I think it's important for for I think your your audience to listen to especially if they're contemplating a proactive job search or
they are out of work right now. Um one of the things that our current economic environment is doing as it relates to how hiring managers, recruiters and leaders are thinking about talent is they are more likely to invest their their they want to lower the risk. It is expensive for a company to make a bad
hire or a mishhire. And when you talk about a world where we've got AI tools that are making it harder for a recruiter, right, because I've sat in the recruiter seat, I've sat in the HR professional seat, and I have sat in the hiring manager seat, right? So, I'm doing everything I can to discern whether the time I'm going to invest in you for the next two to three months to get you to 70% of what I need you to be doing, am I going to see the return on
that in six months? And we've got AI tools that make it harder for the person sitting in this seat today to discern whether you actually thought that or you were just reading something that chat GPT gave you. Exactly. No, preach. Preach. Listen. Listen. So, here's what's happening, right? The recruiter, the hiring manager, that leadership team, they're leaning more into relationship recruiting than perhaps in
the past, right? because they want and and even some of your candidates, I see this more in my tech industry professionals, they will talk about the fact that they are going through maybe more and greater rounds um of the testing process here in like seven, eight, nine interview. I'm like what? Listen, I talked with a candidate this week um and they are in um sales enablement and she was saying, "Yeah, each one of these I'm doing these like five or six rounds." And I'm just like,
wow. Right. But she's mo mostly for SAS companies, right? And they want to make sure like you're not just allowing some AI tool to produce this presentation. Like you actually have put some thought into it and we want to test it in
multiple ways. That's also why you're seeing the increase in the application process of the annoying applications where you're getting open fields where you have to answer test question textbased questions in some of the that because they want to stop you from using tools like lazy apply which is an AI tool that allows you to quote unquote
apply in your sleep. Yeah. Side note, if anybody is listening and can I I long for the day where one of these tools that are promising candidates that they can make the application process more effective and apply on their behalf. I I I long for the day to see that give a true return on investment in terms of actually getting jobs. I'm not seeing it yet. I hope for it. I hope for the technology to get better, but these
tools are not yet doing it. And the people that are most likely to lean into those tools, they are being very active, but it is not productive. M right. So, you're doing a lot. You've applied to 400 jobs this week while you were out playing, you know, tennis. Okay, great. I'm so glad that you applied to those 400 jobs. Awesome. Awesome. However, what's your ROI on that? Yeah, I mean, there's this goes to the limitation of relying on AI, right? And algorithms. Algorithms think
differently than we do. They process differently than we do. And there are some things that they won't that that it won't pick up that we as humans will pick up. And you have to you have to put the the nuances where the real opportunity for AI actually is not in
the just mass reproduce. Right. So if you don't have any thoughtfulness like you said those you you were very intentional and and very uh thoughtful about the steps one can do and if you don't if you don't have a process for it, you're you're you're going to lose
nowadays. Now AI can amplify that stuff but it can't replace what you have to do because guess what let's say you even does work Nicole you get the interview then then they start interviewing you and then it's like once they ask you these questions you come back with a blank face you know you got to go to chat GPT in the middle of the interview like what you going to do like you got to actually be able to have a dynamic uh conversation and there are tools that
are doing that as well as we speak today there are tools that are being sold as a tool that you can have up next to your virtual interview and when they ask the question you can either type it in or it automatically is listening and then it'll give you a prompt right so are particularly companies that are yes yes it is used it is being used today so when I say coming back to what I said a few moments ago the person that is sitting in the recruiter the hiring
manager that seat they are becoming more likely to rely on referrals from their current employees they are more likely to try to grow somebody inside the organization and you know go out here in the wild and get somebody off the street that they don't know. So if you do not have a networking strategy in your job search pocketbook right now or your your back pocket, you are positioning yourself to work harder. In fact, I'm
going to tell you something. If right now when I'm working with somebody that has over 15 years of professional experience, that is one of the number one things that we're just we're cracking down on that. Okay, what does your networking strategy look like? And you've got to customize it based on the person's personality, right? Um, however, it can be done and it unfortunately or fortunately must be done if you want to shorten the amount of time it takes to land your next job.
Yeah. So, you know, I want to get to some uh wrap-up final questions, but one final followup with that though. There everybody's not a natural extrovert like you and I are, right? I least it feels like you're an extrovert. Maybe I meet you in person, maybe you're more introverted, but you feel like very
extroverted. What do you get? What about those advice to people that aren't naturally uh you know uh that aren't naturally out there engaging with people and they might have to do some more thoughtful work or it's harder for them specifically to network or engage with people. How do you advise those people that may have a block or a struggle for that because I'm sure there's a lot of people like that too. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I'm actually an ambbervert
so I'm right in between. Uh and I've been known to be an introvert whisperer.
So um in first finement we have meaningful conversations about real things right so um I will tell you that most of the time when I'm working with somebody that is struggling with networking it's because I have a very specific definition of networking and it is um whether this is true or not business cards at this networking event a lot of like shallow conversations that you're having with a whole lot of people talking about nothing or sch smoozing right there's a very specific mind image
that those individuals tend to have about what networking actually means. Um, if you're a more quiet person, you're thinking just what you said. You're very gregarious. You're engaging everyone in five minutes. And if I can't do that, then I can't network. Yeah. Not true. Not true. Networking, the way that I like to teach it has multiple layers.
Yes, you have the network. The person that can go into a conference or into a networking event and connect with, you know, 20 people and have light conversations over canipes and like melon balls wrapped in pushcuto. Like that's great. I'm glad you can do that,
right? However, networking can also be I have as an introvert maybe have gone deeper with fewer people and I have let my work and my work ethic and my consistency and my ability to think internally before externally processing things show itself and I have built relationships but they're just real relationships. Yeah. I don't have a hundred shallow relationships. I've got 10 real ones. And so what I'm going to do in my networking is I'm going to
reach out to the 10 real ones. I'm going to have done some pre-work that Nicole gave me to do beforehand to prepare a networking strategy. Networking is not let me just blast my resume out to 50 of my closest friends and families. Hey, I'veorked. Hey, I'm looking for a job. Here's my resume. Let me know if you find something. Okay, that's great. But one of those 10 people can help you. However, if you are truly executing a networking strategy, you are actually
sitting down. You're asking for a meeting that may be, you know, 20 to 30 minutes. Um, and it may be virtual or in person. And you have some sort of a structure around what you're hoping to to get from that meeting. And it's structured in a way that you're not asking them to find you a job or to even know of a job, but you're asking for guidance. You're asking for specific details. and you might be asking for recommendations or referrals to who else
you should talk to, right? So there there's a there's a there's a there's a way to do it and it's usually the person that has a block. They're thinking about networking a particular way and it's a very linear way that only works for a smaller percentage of the population. Yeah, I think that's that's well said.
And even for those who may be naturally gregarious and and and and in outreach, the I think the other side of that is that if you're not doing it in a way that's thoughtful and you're not and you're just talking versus actually y listening uh versus asking questions like that that show that you have some level of interest and that you're that you actually see that person. Uh it's not as effective either, I don't think.
So I think even even the people that can reach out to a lot of different people uh you need to also hone that skill uh as well and the like like that's something that I've learned to get better at, right? Uh to learn how to ask the right questions, to learn how to be a better listener, uh to uh you know be intentional when I when I when I reach out to people. Not that I wasn't, but you know when you've also ran for office and you've met like I don't even know how many people like it's it becomes
very hard to do it too. But I've noticed you make a big difference when you remember something about somebody, right? Uh and and then and initially like I try to ask questions like a question I I'll ask people like, you know, like what are you working on that you're passionate about? Something that they don't expect at the first time you meet them versus what do you do? Like okay, that's such a such a like that's
such a question everybody asks. So one of one of my strategies is to come up with a few things that other people wouldn't ask. And a lot of people think that people are afraid to be intimate when you first meet them. But a lot of people are interested in telling you about themselves if you ask because most people don't care about anything other than themselves. When you ask them, people are genuinely surprised, right? I feel like they're like, "Oh, wow." Like,
no one's ever asked me that. I don't think that's that novel of a question. When I ask that to people, you know, they they really get surprised. So, I got some novel questions for you to to kind of wrap up towards the end here. So, uh, okay. If the last five years of your life was a chapter in a book, what would that have been about? The It would be about pivoting. It would be about responding and it would be about trend trend spotting, right? Um
and it would also be about passion. I started doing video content and actually launched the first season of a podcast when I um realized that what I had to say was more important than me learning how to get the light right um or how to figure out the microphone or how to um whether I was going to mess it up. Right. the message was greater than my insecurities about whether I could
figure it out. And what nobody realizes is that you don't get to this level of the production that you have or the what you have going on unless you're willing to do a trash job the first two or five episodes. Yeah. Right. You don't get to that level unless or 10. Honestly, I was gonna say 10, but I didn't. Like really like if you're not willing to do 10, right? If you're not willing to do 10
bad videos, right? 10 bad, you know, YouTube shorts, you're not willing to put out content that only your mom watches, then you know what? Quite frankly, maybe the message and the passion isn't big enough. Right. Exactly. Um, and this also, I think, comes back to like that that having to lean into a growth mindset. I have to have something to say to people in this in this in this environment. So that's the last five years. That's
what the book would be about. The last five months, honestly, Rob, the book would be about one thing, emotional management. That's it. That's the that would be the the highlight of the book because how do you define emotional management? Great. Being able to set boundaries about what you're going to internally consume or what you're going to consume mentally,
right? Guarding my eye gates and my ear gates against things that I am not yet in an emotional emotionally regulated place to be able to um receive in a way that's going to be serve be of good of service to me or to others. And that's hard. It is hard right now in the age of social media and and the craziness all day every day 10 times a day. Exactly. Realistically, right? like I've really had to just literally just in the past five months just recognize you may be familiar with um someone
named Mel Robbins. She is an author, podcaster. We all know her. She has her book this year is called Let Them. Um and I'm going to tell you, I feel like it was the book that 2025 we didn't know that we needed, but it's the message we needed. At some point, we we're here now, right? We're here now. Like as a nation, we said, "Okay, January 6, 2021. Maybe that wasn't a big deal. Let's go ahead and do it again. And now we're here reaping the benefits of this.
Right. So, here we are in these streets and I have to just let them Yeah. I have to I have to let them let it be what it's going to be so that we can say, "Okay, so we've done this. Now, are we finished
with this exercise? Can we move on to something that makes sense?" or if there are things that are making sense because I do think somewhere in the there there was a there is a there's a mindset behind what the decisions that are being made by our current administration and I I I get it on one level like how do we reduce we cannot keep kicking the can of debt down the road it is not it's not sustainable and we cannot keep spending money willy-nilly worrying about someone else
the next generation figuring it out, right? I get the mindset and also how do we do this without taxing the wealthiest people because why do they have to pay the bill for everybody else? I so I understand the mindset, right, of why it is. And I feel like that's where I think sometimes we forget. Yeah. Um, however, it's not the mindset, it is the process and the way it's being done and the lack of change management and sensitivity to the fact that you're dealing with
humans, not robots. And the fact that there is a way that things get done and it doesn't get done in five seconds. No. And if you do try to do it in five seconds, here are where here's where we are today. Yes. You can cause more damage. Uh I will say this to a broader point of um protecting your emotional energy and your emotional space. Um you know, news has always been triggering right before even social media, right? But news is to the brain what sugar is
to the body, right? It feels good in quick hits, but it's toxic long term. So, we have to remember that as we absorb news and I think the people that that are doing this understand what they're doing in terms of uh sparking emotion. It's a it's always been an effective uh strategy for uh rallying the masses. People are easily triggered when they're in their feelings and when things are are framed and nothing's as simple as they make it out to be. But how we consume media now even more than
we have in the past. 24 hours uh 24-hour news when that first started was actually triggering. Now we have instantaneous news, breaking news, breaking news, breaking news, breaking news every like nobody can absorb this stuff, right? Yeah. So you have to preserving that emotional space and by the way that goes for even even people that enjoy what is happening. Yeah. It
looks like they are going mad too. So I'm saying there's no there's no good pol there's nothing good about overabsorbing information and I don't believe if I have to tell like advice what you need to do to absorb information anything you get on a quick hit on the internet that sparks you stop because when you have fear or anger it is not a true depiction of how you actually feel or what's going on and the and and the goal with that is to trigger you to not think and so Like it's
natural for us to do this. This is this is human nature. Yeah. But we're going to have to work harder than ever in the age of algorithms, uh, social media when we have entities that are, uh, you know, unfortunately the other side of this entities that care about nothing else other than to maximize engagement. And that's right. Maximizing engagement means currently uh, maximizing outrage, maximizing making people feel bad because that actually keeps you more in
tune. So you gota you got to let them as you said and you got to let yourself be and let that stuff go. We can't we can't do nothing about all that all of it. You got to just take care of what you can in your community. All right, more questions before we wrap up here. What is an important truth you have that very few people may agree with you on that this too shall pass. Right. Um I it could be the type of individual that
I am working with today. Um at this point in my career, the vast majority of my clients are at the director, senior director, vice president level. They are either in career transition, i.e. they were laid off with no choice of their own or they are in a leadership role trying to figure out and develop their leadership skills because they are leading through things that none of us have seen before. Right? Those are that's who I serve. Let's talk about the
person in career transition. Many times that person has a financial runway of you know six months, a year, two years. They may never have to worry about finances. A lot of the emotional manage the emotional stress of job search is things that they are not in their reality. Um so helping someone recognize that this too shall pass that you will
work again. But it will not happen if going back to the earlier point, you are just being tossed to and fro based on whatever headline or you know LinkedIn story you just listened to or whatever the case may be. Um this will pass. We will work again. We will get through this as a nation. Absolutely. If we meet a year from now, what are we going to be celebrating? A year from now, what we will be
celebrating? Um I have two things. Uh I have been working very slowly on a book um that deals with all things related to the things that stop people from having success in their professional lives. Right? It's the foundation of everything that I do. Um there are eight or 10 places there 10 places that people tend to most often be um stopped in in professional success. So we'll be celebrating that book uh coming being
being complete and coming to market. And the second thing we'll be celebrating, I am in the midst right now of doing a massive pivot in the way that I do work. I I love being able to work with individuals. Uh and I am at the place in my life professionally and also personally um where I want to have a bigger impact and I want to work more directly with companies and directly working with the leadership in
companies. And so pivoting my business towards more of a a B2B model specifically um in a way that I have not done it before. Uh so that will look a little bit different and I'll be celebrating seeing some wins. I've already had a couple of wins this year but more intentionally f focusing in on that. Yeah. Nicole Dumbar with Congruency International. It's been a pleasure having you on. Um don't make yourself a stranger. Please join the community. I hope you actually uh come
to Midwest Con. you would make a I would make you a convenor of some of the some of those companies you can meet if you want to come. Love to have you. Uh but definitely this was a great episode. Lots of great nuggets here. Appreciate you coming on and keep disrupting. Thank you. [Music]