Words. Ideas. Actions.

07 March 2023

The cycle of interviews and presentations and cover letters and rejection emails continues this week. It all has me a little frazzled. Obviously, the rejection is the hardest part of all this. So, with a hat tip to the Pizza and Affirmations session I joined last week (thank you Jane Ruffino and Shannon Leahy), I want to share a few thoughts if you are facing any of the job-searching self-doubt similar to mine. Essentially, these are reminders to myself about the many reasons why I didn’t land a role I wanted, combating the voice in my head screaming, “you’re not good enough!”

They lost funding for the position.
This is definitely happening. As companies go through their own layoffs, the projects that were funded and the hiring they expected could be cut due to a refocused roadmap which no longer includes the project you might have been hired to help bring to life.

You have too much experience.
This idea has come up a couple of times for me this month. And it sucks. And it’s short-sighted. I get to decide how senior a role I’m willing to take. But what people hear, sometimes, is, “He's trying to take my job.” I can appreciate that senior people can be more costly to hire, and that can hamper some hiring decisions, but threatening the job security of the hiring manager is also an unfortunate possible outcome of being a “seasoned” professional. And there’s nothing you can change to make someone else more secure in their role. Move on, and be glad for the reprieve.

You were a great candidate, but — believe it or not — they found someone even better.
This can be hard to take, but there’s just so much fabulous talent available right now that employers are able to find people who check all the boxes. Which is fine, because you are that person for some company, you just haven’t found them yet. Keep looking, refine that presentation one more time, and remember no one else has your unique combination of skills, experience, and perspective. There’s nobody more you than you.  

One constant that has kept me going is that I know what I know, and I’m not afraid to point out the areas where I’m still learning. The companies I want to work for aren’t ones who want me as I am today, but are looking forward to, and encouraging, my growth with them. Those are the places I want to exert my effort. Those are the products I want to help build. Those are the companies I’m willing to take a chance on. To repeat an idea I shared last week, I want to be hired for my potential, not my accomplishments. I’m so much more than what I’ve already done, and we need to get better at appreciating people’s potential, not just their portfolio. So, for myself and to you: You’re going to find exactly what you need. You may just have to be a little more patient than you had hoped.

See you tomorrow?

30 January 2023

I spent a good part of the day working on my résumé (sorry for the rhyme; should I add it as an endorsable skill on LinkedIn?). As I tried to cobble together the metrics and stats that would make me a more attractive candidate for a future employer, I realized a couple of things. The first is that gathering that information after the sudden and unexpected revocation of access to all of your previous role’s accomplishments is incredibly difficult. And, second, this process reminded me of an off-handed thought I added to a proposed talk about labels and naming that I pitched to a conference last year. With your indulgence, I’d like to dig a little deeper into it tonight.

For some background, the talk I initially came up with was about how important naming can be when thinking about how people will interact with your product or feature. It’s more than just a branding exercise, especially if you’re going to need them to use a search function to get anything meaningful out of it, or even find it in the first place. The inspiration for the talk came after I read Lulu Miller’s book, Why Fish Don’t Exist. There’s a lot more going on in it than just the classification of spices, but I was intrigued by the idea that every item in our known universe has a name because someone thought to attach one to it. And these names came from — and with — all that makes humans both fantastic and fallible. Creative, yes, but also classist. Pictorial, but prejudiced. Explanatory, but exclusionary. The talk went on to present some ideas to think about when coming up with a name for your thing, but there was a part I added about identity that I wanted to focus on tonight.

See, as the résumé rebuilding was going on in my head, I thought back to how much of my own identity has been tied up with some of my jobs. My self worth, too. Never was this more apparent than my time at Twitter. And, as I know now, it wasn’t healthy. By the time I got to Google, I had learned my lesson. The hard way. Now, it’s not that I wasn’t proud to be a Googler — I was incredibly proud (Remind me to tell you the story about the first job I applied to when we moved here in 2006 … Hint: It was for Google.org). I’ll be proud of finally landing a Google gig for the rest of my days. But I didn’t let the work, or the company, define me. Instead, I would use it as a way to help define my priorities. And as a constant reminder of the privilege I had at my fingertips. Thankfully, that job let me live a life I defined. But it didn’t define my life for me. 

Which leads me to the point of all these sentences. Despite working for Google and Twitter, or any of the other accomplishments I’ve achieved in my life, I still experience imposter syndrome. A lot. And the off-handed thought I added to my talk was This: Even as you look at people who are giving talks or posting insights on LinkedIn or climbing up their ideal career ladder as aspirational or something you don’t think you’ll ever be able to do yourself, their are people looking at you and admiring all that you’ve done. 

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been blown away by speakers at conferences and then just wanted to show up my hands and say, “I’ll never be that good, I quit!” But the whole point of going to meet-ups and training sessions and conferences is so you can learn new ideas. And then make them your own. And, hopefully, build on them so that maybe one day you can be the one on stage. But even if you’re not the one presenting, more likely than not, there’s someone in that same room with you thinking of you and your accomplishments with the same envy and admiration that you have for those onstage.  

This is all a long way of saying, essentially, “You’re doing great!” Sure, you may have unmet goals and more on your to-do list. But that ambition is what’s going to keep making you the inspiration for someone else. So, keep working on what you think is important. You may not realize it now, but what you’re doing now may not define you, but it adds to the totality of you. And that’s an inspiration. At least to me it is.

See you tomorrow?