- Robb Conlon
Episode 34: Escapee Edition II : Ft. Jessica Bajwa and Francine Parham of Francine Parham and Co.
Updated: Jan 8, 2021
Episode 34: Escapee Edition 2 (Season 2 episode 14): It's amazing what a simple LinkedIn post can lead to. Robb invites one of his longest time listeners on to discuss her recent new position and how vulnerability, networking, and honesty made a great opportunity for her, and the steps she's willing to share with you to do the same. PLUS: We take it a step further and bring her new employer on to boot!
Guests: Jessica Bajwa and Francine Parham of www.francineparham.com
Francine and Jess's Company:
LinkedIn:
Jess - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessicabajwa/
Francine - https://www.linkedin.com/in/francineparham/
TIMESTAMPS - Coming soon
0:00 - Intro
TRANSCRIPT - Coming Soon
on this episode of recruiting hell we're back with our second episode of escapee edition with another real story about what it takes to escape recruiting hell with her position eliminated by the pandemic jessica bajwawa took to social media for her job search and not only networked her way into an appearance on this show but also into a job with the fabulous francine parham a past connection from her time in college we'll hear from both jessica and francine in our first double guest episode of recruiting hell [Music] hello and welcome to recruiting hell it's great to have you with us here today for our second episode of escapee edition i'm your host rob conlon i've been waiting to get this episode scheduled into the rotation for quite some time because the success stories of those who get back to work are so important to hear these days when it seems that everybody's kind of facing some hardships now these bright spots are designed to help you hear what's working in the job market as it happens and of course to give you actionable steps from people who have succeeded in their job hunt that can apply to your own search today as we enter 2021 it's becoming more and more apparent that the world's not really going back to normal as quickly as we'd hoped with mass mandates across the country across the world cities like san francisco in a second stay-at-home order and of course unemployment benefits either running low or exhausting for millions of americans the fires of recruiting hell have likely never burned hotter it's my goal to help fight these rising flames with a tide of content that stretches into the new year and continues to help people the world over adapt to the new flow of job searching the one other point we make before i wanted to get started is that recently i found a bit of data from our friends at spotify and from spreaker about this show and about who listens i was really humbled to find out that there are 22 different countries around the world that have tuned into this show some of which i have absolutely no connection to and where english is not the primary language so to those of you in our international listener group particularly those folks in sydney and sydney mines canada julia slovakia or delhi india i have to say it's wonderful to have you here the world doesn't just focus on america and i know that there are challenges in every country this year i'm so glad you've come to be a part of the listener family here on recruiting hell and i will do my best to always make sure the job advice presented here on this show helps you no matter where you live or what platform you might enjoy this show on speaking of platforms a quick moment to ask you subscribe to us on youtube we're there of course you can always find us on all of the podcast platforms as well spotify apple itunes amazon music wherever you want to find recruiting hell we are there but if you'd really like to help the show drop us a subscription on youtube it would really be a great thing help us get a little bit more formal when it comes to running that channel and of course if you actually want to see the vods of this it's a great way to enjoy that as well one other minor thing before we start there were some technical issues in the latter part of this episode it was a connection issue i've since diagnosed it with my system we ran some cables and things like that over the holiday and it seems to be rectified in this case but if there are some audio artifacts i do apologize for those i believe that everything that needs to be heard in this coming episode can be heard exceptionally well with a very very small number of exceptions and of course context clues can most likely help you figure that out so on with the show and of course today we are joined by another excellent success story from recruiting hell here from the listener family jessica bajwa joins us today to not only share her journey through recruiting hell but we also want went one level beyond with this episode and we also welcome her uh employer francine parham who helped to end jessica's journey in more ways than one it is my pleasure to welcome you both to the show ladies thanks for coming on thanks for having us rob really excited i echo that thank you as well rob i'm excited to be here definitely well i love episodes like this because it's you know part of this is listener interaction which is kind of cool because i know jessica you were a listener for uh quite some time but it's also the networking knowledge that comes out of this because we can sort of demonstrate to other people who are listening to this show what effective networking looks like and it kind of looks like this which is outstanding so to kick us off here jess tell us a bit about your journey to this point and how you kind of you kind of finally came to win your job hunt with francine and then after that francine i want you to chime in and tell us uh a little bit more about what you do on a daily basis and the excellent work that you're involved with so just kick us off thank you so much rob so i actually graduated from rutgers university may of 2019 and i felt a little burnt out after college most people kind of went straight into the workforce and i was like no i'm going to take a little break the job market's pretty good right now so it can wait for me for a little bit and i had my goal set for um full time looking for work and actively trying to get out of the recruiting hell um in january 2020 and in hindsight we know now uh the world kind of changed in march of 2020 so during march i was actually doing multiple interviews and one by one each interview got cancelled week after week after week and then those positions weren't even being filled they were in fact laying off or foreloing their workers so it was in that transitional time where everyone was trying to go remote and figure out their next steps in their company and in september is when francine reached out to me with a possible role and i met francine my senior year of college and we had maintained a relationship since then so really grateful for her for getting me out of the recruiting health and she does really amazing work i think that's a great lead in francine what what do you do and what what takes up jess's days now well i'll let jessica talk about that but i'll tell you first of all what i do and that should lead you to uh understand what jessica helps and supports me in doing so i'm francine parham obviously a francine parham company the namesake of my business and what i do is i focus on the advancement of women and women of color into positions of leadership and authority in the workplace so i spent a great deal of my career in corporate america becoming an executive a global executive and what i decided to do when i exited the corporate america space was to continue what i do or what i did i should say um in the corporate world and that was really helping what we call incorporate speak the talent agenda so really ensuring that i had you know individuals such as a jessica or senior all the way from very junior individuals to very senior individuals joined the organizations that i led or the companies that i was a part of so when i came out of the corporate sector i said you know what i love that i got a lot of success i became known that was my brand um in the corporate world before branding was important or talked about and i said i'm going to do this on the outside so i'm going to work the outside from the outside but still work the inside so i spend a great deal of time with corporations and organizations really helping them with the development of their professional women and women of color and it ranges from entry level women all the way to executive level women and i have programs and things of that nature that you know make them work on what i call the unwritten and unspoken skills of career advancement so everything beyond or beside the technical skills that you bring we know that those are the things that truly help you go to the next level so anytime advancement i'm in it on it and i'm a part of it so that's the work that i do that is outstanding and such a worthy thing too because we are made stronger by diversity in the workplace we really are and that's something that this year has taught me so much coming from a very homogeneous atmosphere in some of my past jobs i have had my eyes opened to the wonderful techniques tactics talents that other people from other walks of life bring i mean it it's so it's so funny because it's just been such a a gear shift for me so that's that's just outstanding to hear and i think that the most incredible thing that you mentioned in their friend scene is that you don't just focus on the execs or the upper folks you focus on the people who are entry level and that is something that i think is such a missing link in a lot of today's uh professional success in job hunt so that is excellent so we have a stage set here listener let's uh let's kind of dive into this journey uh through recruiting health justice is kind of back to you more a little bit more of a formality because you said you started your position in september what exactly did you land and how's it going so me and francine kind of curated um the name for the position she had an idea of what she was looking for but we both agreed on a brand project manager and each day i'm learning what that means more and more as my tasks might change but overall we're trying to launch a bright talk channel um brighttalk is a webinar streaming service so francine has her own channel um i believe we can search it through francine parham and company um and we are trying to curate content that we would usually do and have as in-person networking events obviously the world has changed and we want to still be able to give people that same content and give them those tools those unwritten rules from the comfort of their own home um so we're coming up with different topics for each month that we really think are important for people that might be at a mid-career level that feel like they aren't elevating or aren't reaching their career goals and giving them tips and tricks with great experts panelists we have a few sit-down conversations set up to help them um navigate their career goals excellent excellent and that sounds again it sounds like it's an exciting it's not just a like type in the data kind of job you know you get a little bit and there's nothing wrong with a type in the data kind of job but we've seen a lot of things in the work world fade away because they've been automated or they've been you know there's an app for that now or whatever it might be so it's nice to hear that this is a what i what i call a creative job number one but also one that possibly pushes a little bit on your your growth and development which is great yeah i've definitely been pushed out of my comfort zone in a really good way and i've learned a lot in the last few months for sure excellent well francine now i want to bring you in here a little bit more because in our pre-call when you ladies were describing how to this all kind of got set up and jess you mentioned as well that you kept in contact with francine after college this is kind of one of those little serendipity stories and would you two kind of explain and share with us how the relationship sort of started between you that was kind of the networking portion that led to what you're at now yeah well jessica do you want to uh you have you have the foundation of it and i'll jump in okay yeah i'll definitely kick it off so as i mentioned before i met francine my senior year of college and it actually was my last few weeks of college it had to have been march of 2019 and i was graduating in may and yeah uh right before um one of my professors had said hey i'm doing this extra credit lecture at six o'clock at night uh sign up if you want to come and i'm like i need the extra credit i'm gonna go um and right before the lecture i was actually reviewing my resume and i'm like oh my god graduation's a few weeks away what do i want to do i have no clue i feel like everyone around me has a pretty set path that they're going to follow and i feel like i haven't figured that out yet so i went into uh this lecture a little down on myself and i really didn't know what to expect uh francine mentions that i walked in with like a baseball cap and i came in late i don't even remember that part but honestly the way i used to dress in college most probably was accurate and francine just got up and started talking about your brand and how you can position your collegiate career into a professional career and what people are looking for when it comes to entry level employees and how to navigate those first 90 days on the job 90 days before the job and it really opened my eyes and it was the exact thing i needed to hear that day at that time um so i built up the courage to go up to her after her lecture and i just thanked her and i said thank you so much for coming here and doing this because i really needed this today um and i asked if we could connect on linkedin and we did and francine was actually doing a three-part lecture so she was coming once a week for the next three weeks so i made sure that the next time she was coming next week i was there early i stopped her i said hey can we get a cup of coffee i'd love to sit down with you i have no clue what i'm doing with my life and clearly you're an expert and i'd love to get your insight so that's kind of how um our whole conversation started and if francine you want to pick it up from there well yes and jessica's exactly right and then i was asked by um jessica's professor at the time to actually come in to um do one of my workshops now keep in mind my workshops are not geared for collegiate students so what i had to do was i had to kind of recraft one of my workshops and i said you know what this is my gift to give back um to the academic community because i usually charge and so um and so this was one of my gifts and i was just encouraged because i'm always i mean first of all i'm always out looking for um talent and i never know where i'm going to find it so i've always been taught as a leader uh to always look and so i said hmm i'm thinking about some internships that i'm going to have and i've had an intern that actually was from uh jessica's school at rutgers university joined me and i'm still looking so i'm going to go into the space and actually see some people live versus just getting you know some resumes from the college recruiting you know whatever they do to get resumes through the academic channel to um you know individuals like me who are looking to hire so what i did was i used it as an opportunity i used it as an opportunity to to see who would i see out there um i was looking for the people that raised their hand i was looking for the people that approached me i was looking for the people that wanted to have a conversation and had something to say because that tells me you're thinking and so even though jessica did come in late and she came in with the baseball hat and she looked like she just kind of gotten up you know i'm like i i did that too you know when i was in college i remember those days you know and i think so i think they're at they're doing this for credit so you know like i totally get i totally get the mindset on this one and it's six o'clock and they're here for the pizza you know so i gotta really make this exciting um so at the end of the day uh that's what i did and i came back three times and it was great that a person like jessica came um up and she stood out and that's you know one of the things i know we're going to talk about later on i'm rob but that's what i tend to look for so um from that i offered i stood up in front of the class and i just said you know what i've got an internship that i'm offering here's what i'm doing i'm going out on the road i'm going on tour i had a summit at the time called sharpen your skills professional women's advancement summit i know it's a mouthful but it's a women's advancement summit and um so i said i'm looking for someone that wants to you know share in this be an intern for me and i'll tell you more about it and that's how you know jessica came to the table and she joined me you know she said hey i'm interested i said this isn't a paid internship this is just a couple times i'm going to do some marketing um you know to test the market is what i was out there to do and uh she said you know count me in and she i said okay you know and she was one of the few that really um stood out and stood up and the rest is history that is again it's so wonderful to hear a story like that from you like jesse you probably conveyed to us that you didn't really want to go to this this was like oh i need extra credit i might not be doing so well in this course and it wasn't something that you necessarily wanted to do but you you made the effort anyway and i think that's a real big important takeaway for everybody who is listening to this show is that you have to somewhat put yourself out there you have to somewhat get yourself into a position that you're sort of uncomfortable with when it comes to meeting new people or doing things that you don't like to do in your job hunt and for you it's obviously paid off exceptionally well because it's not only a job for you but now you're on this show and i have a connection with francine like there is so much that stemmed from you putting on that baseball cap probably putting your hair in a ponytail i'm betting and marching off in in your your lounge pants to a pizza pizza party in college to to listen to a speaker for extra credit and it's so neat that little stuff comes like that so that's absolutely excellent so let's fast forward a little bit more to earlier this year i found you on linkedin uh jess through a post that you made and that was uh we've mentioned that on the show before about how you always felt like those outside sales jobs disguise themselves as marketing i i really hate those and i think you could probably do as well i don't want to put any food or any uh any food how many words into your mouth uh as you know food for thought but i have to ask it you got into the job market in january of 2020. everything went to hell in a hand basket but 60 days later what did your job search look like initially yeah so during the time between graduation and leading up to january um i was working with francine and on the road with her um and through her professional women's advancement summit i learned a lot of tools and a lot of those unspoken rules um that were talked about over and over again so i used a lot of that content in my job search during those months whether it be revamping my personal website or adding more action words to my resume i was using a lot of those skills that i had learned through francine and the women at the summit to help me even before my job search i call it my pre-job search so once i did get on the market i kind of had somewhat of an idea how to navigate it i went straight on to linkedin i turned on my uh open for jobs and letting recruiters come find me as well and i was looking for jobs every single day and i'd highlight the ones that i thought were interesting and unfortunately as um as an entry level i found that every single job was saying three plus years experience like how do you expect me to get three plus years experience if i'm barely in my 20s and i'm still just trying to figure out what i want to do um so i was applying here and there here and there and i'd get calls back from certain type of companies and i noticed that all of them were kind of similar in the way that they had their interviewing process and it just seemed a little sketchy to me and they were coming up over and over again and they were disguised as marketing agencies and that's the kind of field i was looking to go into i wanted to be a part of a marketing agency and work with clients um these kind of jobs disguise themselves as yeah we work for clients and you're gonna sell your the stuff for the clients i was like no no no that's not what i'm looking for and this was coming up over and over again in multiple cities under multiple names and i was like is there just a list of these companies that can go and find on the internet i was going on glassdoor and i felt like i wasn't getting enough information and i was getting frustrated which is why i made that post on linkedin and i was asking people in my network and my friends that have recently graduated in the marketing field if this was happening to them too um and it was but they also didn't have the answer to this question which is what prompted me to post and thank you for commenting because now we've created this relationship and i'm so happy to hear that you also had the same experience with these companies and especially on your episode with the fake job scam i love that episode and it perfectly encompassed the frustration of these companies and it really hindered my um job searching experience because then i started getting a little um frustrated and tired and i just didn't feel like looking anymore um and i had to push through and your podcast definitely helped me with that with all the advice that came afterwards well that's awesome i wasn't even going to ask for the endorsement until the end and and thank you for for plugging a couple of those episodes that might be really useful to people who are going through that like that initial kind of crash phase of hunting for a job i actually just ran across a woman in my current circle who was let go from a job she had been at for three weeks today and it's it's like that like you you won but then you lost again it was so terrible and i just i felt so bad for her and i just can't imagine how she's feeling going back out there looking at the types of jobs that you were looking at jess to say this just sucks like these are these aren't their jobs but they're jobs that take no advantage of any of your skills you're spending all day in home depot hawking directv or whatever it might be or going door to door uh selling selling spectrum cable or whatever it might be which is really funny slight side story here so there's a marketing company like that here in milwaukee that does exactly that as i described with the door-to-door selling cable and i can't remember what their their exact name is but i've seen them so many times i've scrolled through linkedin like uh it's those guys and so sure enough i get a knock at my door about four weeks ago and i opened the door and there's two guys standing there and they have the logo from this company god they know where i am this is awful that was a that was a terrible uh terrible interaction because they would not take no for an answer to the point where i should get off my property which is kind of funny uh but me uh me being a curmudgeonly old you know get off my lawn kind of man aside uh that's kind of what i think a lot of people face jess and francine is that a lot of people see these jobs out there and they just they have no interest in them or whatever it might be so the next question i kind of want to ask is to both of you once you find something that is fitting if you will there's an interview process obviously so for the two of you this interview process was probably kind of unique how did that go from looking to [Music] you know looking to help to i'm looking for a job and hey we should team up between the two of you well do you want me to start jessica yeah okay sure well you know from an employer perspective you know as i as i mentioned that um it's not just about looking for the job when the job is open okay and i know that from you know my you know experience in the corporate sector i was a zealot i was always out talking looking saying hmm i see some potential i can see tell me what you do so how do you do this so i was always out i was always i always had that curious eye and i think that that is really important when you are looking for the right talent even if it is not the exact talent for what you need you know there is an opportunity to look at what i call the other skills so many so many um individuals focus on or companies um focus on those technical skills and those are important don't get me wrong those things are really important and but that is not the crux of why you necessarily hire someone you hire them for the fact that they do the technical skills like you got it you can you know you read you your computer scientists whatever it is right i got that what i'm looking for and what you're always looking for are things such as you know their ability to think through their ability to solve a problem um you know their ability to be able to you know create a convincing you know a story or a convincing proposition to get something done on behalf of the organization or have behalf of the company or whoever they're working for those are the things that you're always out looking for so just as a jessica or individuals are out talking and networking with people um so should you be out doing the other thing as well and you know i've never ever gotten a job through applying for anything i've never applied for a job in my career and i had a very nice career i became ultimately a global executive in about i want to say it was after i left graduate school that 11 years later i became a global executive of a company called johnson and johnson let me tell you that was all based on me being positioned knowing the right people navigating showing the skills that i had that were beyond my basic course skills that was a given you know you being able to do some of the basic stuff you went to school for or you know that you know about that's a given it's what do you bring to the table above and beyond okay that's what's important and that's what you have to go out and demonstrate consistently and constantly and i promise once you do those things you start to get known or people know you or it gives you permission to start having conversations with people beyond i'm just looking for a job right and so when you're looking for a job is not the job to find a job okay i'm just saying there's the nugget right there right there's a nugget and so those are the things i think about from the you know the hiring hiring manager side um of it so i guess jessica i'll turn it over to you to talk a little bit about the the employee side and what you're looking for because i think that's equally important yeah um i definitely learned this lesson from francine um before i even came on as a full-time employee uh something i learned from her on our time on the road and when i was starting that application process in january i was looking for companies that i thought would be a really good fit for me and even if they didn't have a job posting i was reaching out to them i i reached out to a few hiring managers and met with them and had gotten job offers but then realized it wasn't the fit that i thought i was looking for but it did lead me to a position that wasn't there they created a position for me so had i not reached out i wouldn't have known that one this company does exist two that they are willing to carve out a position for you if you show your skills and that you are able to go out and get what you want and get it done um just like what francine said with the problem solving so it's a little more difficult you definitely have to put yourself out there and it's something that i've been learning as time has gone on i've definitely gotten out of my comfort zone and been a little more confident and not asking for a job like francine said uh it could just be an introductory interview saying hey um it might be an alumni from your school oh looks like you graduated from this school you have a really cool sounding position i'd love to learn more about what you do on a day-to-day basis considering a role in this industry you're not asking for a job you're just asking for some advice and if you hit it off really well they might say hey um this uh position actually freed up this week and you have a lot of the experience we're looking for why don't you come in and meet with us and then it turns into this whole huge thing that when it wasn't even uh an application online like francine said she's never applied for a job she just networked her way in which i think is really powerful most definitely and i think you you dropped a couple little other bits in there too of you know you don't have to tap the people who are necessarily closest to you you can kind of go outside of that small circle find those recruiters find those connections on linkedin that maybe your second or third degree to but also the alumni from your university and i'm actually very fortunate i went to a state college here in wisconsin the i have never met somebody from uw lacrosse who has been anything less than a saint like it's weird like i go to go to these events say oh yeah i went to uw lacrosse what you're just graduating blah blah blah and they're the coolest people and i think that that's maybe an untapped resource for listeners here is to say you know what go look where you've been and maybe even you know maybe you haven't been to college go to your high school class go to things that are and you know a lot of times things get a bad rap for people think you know pinging in their old connections for like multi-level marketing stuff don't don't be that of course right i got i got candles to sell you i got uh here's here's some uh some other you know shampoo or whatever it might be but look at those connections build those connections being real with those connections i think is is definitely a great thing that we can pull from that ladies thank you uh jess this one's just kind of one for you and what was this internship that you did with francine was that paid or was it kind of just come along for the ride along for the ride sort of thing i think francine had mentioned that earlier we were going from city to city uh doing the professional women's advancement summit so i got to go around the country i thought it was fun it was a great time and uh like i said i you couldn't put a price tag on the information i learned from francine and the women that were there gotcha and then i guess my other question without this is something that sometimes i think a lot of people have a real hard time swallowing because it doesn't pay the bills how is working for free how does that feel um for me it was okay um i was fortunate enough that i could move back in with my parents after college and they were willing to support me i know a lot of people don't have that luxury which i completely understand but i did use that time to grow and say hey i'm not sitting on my butt i'm not just chilling with my degree in my pocket and uh watching netflix all day um so knowing that i was doing something with my time and something that was going to help me advance um it made me feel great and i i didn't think about the getting paid part of it at that point so so early on in my career um i think i was looking more for experience and information and advice that was the biggest thing i was looking for at that time excellent and so for those folks who are in the situation of maybe being very early in their career it sounds like what you're doing and the awesome opportunity that francine has that set up for you to have you kind of be this uh apprentice almost i would use that word which is i think is awesome is a really great opportunity so if you're early in your career development maybe that is a real opportunity to find that mentor to find that person who's gonna kind of take you along for the ride if you will uh that generous person and you know for somebody who's maybe a little bit later that's possibly not an option because he got a mortgage and kids and whatever it might be so there's definitely so many different ways that different people are able to find opportunities i'm so glad that you found yours here so you know one of the things i'm rob that is important is that yes as jessica said you know in her situation where she was in her life if you will um was great but as um a individual who was a single parent in college and having internships it was very important that i get paid so i've not done many internships where i didn't get paid okay um because i had family i had someone that was depending on me my son at the time and so um you know it's just really important that you are clear with your goals and what you want okay because you know it's not don't take the internship just because it's a great experience but it's you know you're not going to make any money for it if it being if being paid i mean you know salary or whatever the case may be or whatever those other amenities are are important to you then you need to ask for that you need to ask for that or say is that negotiable is there an opportunity see here's the deal that you have an employer such as i'll say i'm the employer i put it out there and i say here's what i want okay and you never come back to me and say well you know would you ever consider because you just think that that's the way it is and i say well no it's not everything is open to negotiation so i don't care what level you are when you take an internship whatever you do have that conversation to get exactly what you want out of it and you also put your employer on notice you let them know that you know what you're thinking about this you let them know that you you know you consider it you think it's great but here are some things that you would like to have as well to make it successful for both of you so you can do this whether you are straight out of school whether you've lost a job or you want to switch careers whatever you want to do because you know you can find internships later on in your career doesn't have to be right out of college you should think through and have the negotiables and have that dialogue it does not hurt and it helps you make a choice and it helps you and your employer feel more comfortable about what you're about to do and actually what they actually need you to do does that make sense absolutely and i think that's another great piece of information for folks who are maybe considering an internship and being like oh i don't know if i can swing this i have all these responsibilities and francine it's great to hear that you you traveled that road and we kind of got a two-for-one there you know somebody who didn't maybe have the extra responsibilities and and things to carry with them especially you know when it's you know a child you know kids are so important i guess the next question is sort of for you jess what questions did francine ask you kind of when you were negotiating this that made you say this is the place i gotta be i don't know if it was necessarily a negotiation um it was kind of when i had asked her for coffee that one day we allotted about a one hour conversation and i just wanted to talk about what i wanted my career goals to look like because i was so unsure at that point in my life and i knew she was an expert so i just wanted to pick her brain on career development and what steps should i take next uh the best thing for me is my life was so structured up until that point um i always say from first grade you go to second grade from second grade you go to third grade and my whole life it was okay now you do this you graduate high school you go to college you finish college and you're like i get to do whatever i want i don't know what that is i mean my whole life i've been told this is what you're gonna do next so go do that next and i didn't question it i said yeah sure okay cool um let's do it so at this point i'm like oh i don't know what i want to do and i just wanted to pick her brain about that that's what the topic of the conversation was and it was just both of us going back and forth and i think we were sitting at barnes and nobles for about three plus hours francine um and this is when she told me about how she wanted to go on this nationwide speaking tour called the women's advanced professional advancement summit um and her goals for what she wanted the event to look like and what she wanted involved in it we were both just talking about career goals um and at the end she goes is that something you might be interested in and i was like yeah um definitely i got to travel the country i got to meet amazing women and a lot of the my beliefs and values aligned with what francine was trying to do and that's a really big thing for me i always wanted to be a part of something bigger and i just didn't know how to get involved um that was one thing i wish i had done in my collegiate career that i just never got the chance to do so this was my opportunity to be like i want to go out and i want to meet these amazing people and help them and i'm going to learn along the way um i'm going to help advance women and i'm also going to advance as a woman and i just thought it was a great opportunity i could not pass up so it wasn't necessarily a negotiation rather than a conversation and both realizing that yeah this could work for us gotcha now francine i'm gonna alter the question from this because you know just said it wasn't a negotiation you mentioned that you've done a couple internships in the past that you've offered these to people and things like that when this college girl comes up to you with her hair and a ponytail and threw a baseball cap and what i guess is made you say that one that one is one i want to put some effort into this one is worth worth pursuing and things like that what made me you know say i want to know more about this young woman is that i said that there are so many you know i had a lot of people that helped me along the way i'm a fundamental believer that no one does anything by themselves i don't care you know like oh i got this promotion no you didn't there were like five or ten people behind you that help position you help talk about you help do something to get you there so that is a premise that i fundamentally believe in and i have practiced it forever and i also believe in the fact that you you know because i've been so um you know i've been so fortunate and it wasn't just me you know like it didn't have to be in the right place the right time and all that good stuff that was not the case you know i you know said that i wanted to um let me backtrack back in the formative part of my life my father um told me a long time ago he used to tell me to listen he said listen francine listen and see what's happening listen and pay attention to what people are doing and you know don't always be the first person that speaks up because you may not have anything that anyone wants to hear right and so i really learned in course of that and i carried that into my you know my college days i carried that into my first job i carried that on to you know myself in terms of being in you know this person who helps women advance and it was really taking uh you know really intentionally listening and finding and seeking so when i met an individual like jessica i was seasoned in the practice of listening you know and seeking and finding and discovering um really and i call you know i see a lot of women a lot of younger women women i see women general you know holistically women women of color um as well who are in the formative stages of their careers in many aspects they may have spent a great deal of time in on a job but they're still in the formative part of their you know their career to get to the next level and it's my ability to be able to assess that and so when i see that i know that there's that is someone that is worth investing my time in and i meet a lot of women i can't even begin to tell you that and when i have the conversation with them and my first question is though so tell me you know who you are and what your name is and i'm happy to know that but my next question to you is so what do you want to do next like what are you what are you doing like what are you trying to do to advance that's all i care about if you got a great answer count me in if you haven't thought about it or you don't have a great answer you're like well i don't kind of know you know i'm like i i like i have no time to really help you get there necessarily i have time to help you get there if you've got something in that so that three-hour conversation that jessica mentioned was um a conversation where i was intrigued by her ability to think through what she wanted to do and i wanted to help her so while she's telling me all this the other side of my brain is like well how can i help her get there because no one does anything alone right like i didn't i haven't had my third starbucks cafe mocha skinny you know whatever i get like you know okay like i got a lot to do i really have a lot to do but i'm really impressed with what she brings to the table the core talent so what i'm talking about is the core of what you have from a talent perspective because i meet a lot of people who've got a lot of skills they're this they're that they accomplish this they accomplish that and my role is usually when i hire them i want them to be a part of my team is to strip away all of that because that doesn't matter to me because i can give you my resume my resume could be three or four pages i've been in the business for a little bit of time right and so at the end of the day but i'm looking for certain things and i'm looking for your ability to problem solve i'm looking for your ability to think through how to solve a problem that you don't know how to solve so jessica and i when we were sitting down she was actually spending time with me whether she knew it or not solving her own problem i was only asking her a series of questions i was probing her you know i was giving her some insight but i wanted to see how she was going to solve getting a job because that's what we were there for like i said i was on my third cafe mocha you know i'm looking at her saying okay you know where we go with this right and so she was taking me through that and then i said to myself here's someone i think that has some core skills because i can teach her all the other stuff i want to know what she brings to the table from a core skill set and i think that's what all you know people who are hiring are looking for there's some jobs like they want to know can you code can you do this can you you know do you understand this concept or whatever but it's so much bigger than that and that's what brings you into a company you know so that's what got me intrigued about the work that i could help jessica do because it's not just positioning her for my job and the current job i have my role is to position her for the next job because what i learned in my experience in corporate america i'm only as good as the people that i hire and promote not the people that i keep but the people that i hire and promote so i'm hoping that jessica will have my job and she'll maybe get another bigger job i have maybe she'll go on and do something else but i want the you know i want the echo on linkedin or whomever she happens to be talking about to say i was a good developer of her to get her to the next level it's not about the job she's doing now because she knows i'm pushing her right now to do a lot of different things that she hasn't done she mentioned that before because i'm positioning her for the next job and that's what a good manager does i mean a good manager a leader of people you'll say that's a leader francine that's a leader a leader helps elevate a leader helps promote a leader helps get everything you know everybody up a leader is a tide that lifts all the votes which is great all right this is the last second to last question i'm going to ask you ladies and it's it's a one or two word answer from each of you and and jess i want you to want you to start with this what's the number one thing that you make you feel made you stand out from other applicants in your job hunt so i want you to answer first and then francine i want you to tell us what that number one thing is for jessica it doesn't have to be the same thing jess what do you think yours is um i would say mine was confidence and as well as understanding my vulnerability um when i did approach francine i was very vulnerable at the time and i wasn't the most confident person before that i would never have raised my hand or gone up to her afterwards it was something inside me pushing me to say you don't know where this is gonna go so go find out if you don't do it you'll never know so having the confidence to go and just see what happens because you never know where a connection's going to take you i never thought i'd be on a podcast and here i am today so you never know where the journey is going to take you so you what what's the saying you miss every shot you don't take absolutely and i 100 agree with that all right francine she's on the other foot is she accurate with uh with any vulnerability and and confidence or is there something else that you think you know i know i agree with that you know this is a great conversation because i'm learning a lot about jessica like i'm learning more than you know i mean thank you rob yeah what are you bringing down you bring out the best in us podcasting is like this great thing go ahead look at this okay have this back no different topic right different topic but you know i would say that um what really intrigued me about that i would say about jessica is is her curiosity that was the thing that was most intriguing to me because i said to her listen i am you know i'm in this entrepreneur i don't have everything figured out and if you're looking for an organization where you come in and you've got like you know your employee badge waiting for you and all your collateral and you know all that stuff on the table you're you know i'm gonna send it to your house guess what i'm not you know i'm like i'm gonna be very honest with you in terms of what i have and what i offer um and you know here it is and so i would say um i appreciated that from jessica in terms of saying okay you know and i said i say the honesty i say the honesty because you know i'm very honest and very real about what i do and what i will do and what i won't do okay i make no you know i don't try to mask it because it's like i'm just you know it's not worth it and so it's you know it's like jessica talking about the marketing that marketing kind of telesales thing you know why would you set someone up like that that's bad business just bad as a as a human being but anyway so at the end of the day i appreciated her saying you know what i'm gonna give it a try you know and you don't have it all figured out but here's the things that you offer sound kind of cool francine and we can work we can figure this out together so i appreciated that and i saw that in jessica because she came to me in the very beginning and said i want to have a career i want to do great things like not like maybe you but i want to have that be in that sphere and i want to figure out how to best do it and so will you help me and i'm like absolutely why would i not you you you you know you're working your rear off to try to do this and i appreciate that because that's what i had to do and look at how what it got me you know so i'm i'm there to help lift as well and that's what you know my intention is amazing and i think jess i think that's a pretty pretty strong indictment of uh your work ethic and all sorts of great things about who you are as a person so uh high praise and francine thanks for uh thanks for telling her she's right but i was telling her she's a little bit uh she's got some other skills there and and i think that there are a lot of people out in the world who have excellently similar skill sets and personality traits that just does they're honest they're hard working they're humble they're all these good things and and showing that to people and being vulnerable which i think is still the number one thing because again that's how you wound up on this podcast my friend is you were vulnerable and you said i have this problem what the heck is going on with these stupid jobs can somebody help me understand and that i think is one of the most key things for your job hunt now the last question i'm going to kind of go into here for myself is i always struggle with this and jesse touched on it a bit before it has to do with the show obviously jess what credits what what portions of the show do you want to credit that give you the new success and on tactics and things like that that you think other folks who are in similar situations to you should you go back and listen to or maybe we should touch on again in the future yeah so i think a big theme in the conversation we had today was leveraging linkedin in different ways um and you don't realize how expansive the name linkedin network is um i know i was talking about this with francine we were talking about goal setting my goal for 2020 was i'm going to go to all of these market i mean these networking events i'm going to go meet people shake hands that sounds terrifying now do not want to shake anyone's hand do not want to be in front of people so what do i do i leveraged linkedin um and kind of tried to build my network that way and that's kind of the world we're living in right now um one big advice or two or three actually i got so much from your podcast that i i think i have a little note from every little episode um but one of the big ones was resume 101 because i had gone to a bunch of resume clinics at school where they brought people in some people say write an objective don't write an objective they don't care they do care um so getting that expertise from someone and really having it mapped out for you and explained helped me a lot in how i reworked my resume as well as your what you call your 50 cent approach um yeah that you add your um to 25 different posts is that what it was right it's called yep you put your two cents on 25 posts on linkedin um i can't take credit for coining that phrase no pun intended there but at the same time it it it's something that has really worked for me it's increased my linkedin reach by literally more than 50 percent this year like it's people it's crazy cool but continue please and then we'll uh get into a bit of a wrap up here yeah and i mean you did that to me you were like hey jess had the same thing i have a podcast you should check it out and i was like okay this guy's got a podcast let's see if he's a real deal or not and i tuned in to the first episode and i was like that was awesome and i went through 10 episodes in like two days wow it was it was on when i was binge yeah i had it if i was taking the dog for a walk it was on if i'm doing the laundry it's on um so i got a lot from your podcast and a bunch of little tidbits along the way have really helped me and in the future i'd love to talk more about different tools you can use with linkedin we always talk about networking networking networking but what does that really look like on linkedin i think we talked about a few things such as leveraging your alumni association or maybe some third connections that you have somewhat of a relationship with uh that you might be able to tap into or like you said the 50 cent approach where you start commenting on post and i know that's something that i'm planning on working on in 2021 is creating content for linkedin and uh commenting on those posts to have that engaging conversation with people good deal good deal yeah well ladies there's the last question of the the day belongs to you two and it get you get to ask not to say me but you get to say hey what did we miss what did we miss about job hunting that you maybe know that the rest of the audience and maybe the linkedin world wherever else this winds up that they need to know kind of you know the one thing that we missed from each of you go ahead whichever of you would like to lead off i'm not sure francine do you want me to take this one i'll piggyback off you you know i i was in linkedin before linkedin was popular and just because it was you know i felt i didn't i couldn't climb my way out of facebook like things kept happening and i take nothing away from facebook instagram you know any of those other things because i just felt like i need like i need order and calm maybe it's my corporate background i'm like i need structure i don't know um and i was just like i i went into linkedin and i said how do i really leverage linkedin and i would say that one of the things i thought about was what was really my message and so when i go in to connect with people i find fascinating another trick i would just say is that you know there's a section in there where you can send them a direct message so a lot of people will hit that little connect button they connect it and they just like you pop up in my feed and i'm like who the hell are you like why am i talking to you right but there is a section you know there's a other tab that you click on and you click on it and you get to send someone um a note and i think the characters i don't know how long a hundred and something two no three hundred three hundred so to be a quick note i tell you i have met so many interesting people by telling them just like kind of what i do and real quick you know and i say i would ask that you please consider humbleness is a great thing like never assume that anyone needs to connect with you because you got something cool to say because see there are five other people that have something cool to say just like what you said right so it's really important to be humble and to ask about that so i would say you know really thinking through what you want to say before you go say it is really really important and that will get more people to connect with you directly and because that's how i reach directly out to a lot of folks just to say i found it you know please connect with me i would like to share more of my work with you i'm not selling anything i'm just saying i want to share more of the work that i do and voila it happens so really thinking through your message that's a really good one francine that's a really good one jess uh you muted a little bit there i think but uh oh there you go thought we were going to lose you lose your tidbit here go ahead what uh what's the one thing you'd like to to add to the the listener base here to in the same way francine did um i guess mine's a little different for the listener base the thing that i loved about this podcast and this community is knowing that there were people like me out there that were sitting in recruiting hell and boiling from the fire of recruiting hell knowing that people were going through the same struggles i was going through and i wasn't alone in my community of people that are recently graduated a lot of them are posting on social media hey i got this job hey i got this promotion but they're never talking about the journey that got them there or the struggles that they went through to get to where they are now so having a community an open and honest community like this was really helpful for me and i bet really helpful for the listener base as well knowing that there are people out there that are willing to help you um and willing to help you advance and you're not alone and one day very soon in the future you will not be in recruiting hell anymore that is so awesome and again i think that fits so in with the the show because you know we we are all here temporarily and i think that's one of my marketing uh whiz friends said to me you know rob your your listener base kind of is self-extinguished and i'm like good like if people get a job they may they maybe don't listen to your show anymore i hope you do because we talk about promotion stuff too but i i think that the the fact that people need to realize they're not alone number one jess is a huge thing and number two and both of you touched on this this time is that asking for help is a sign of strength not a sign of weakness and when we ask for help we are showing more strength than we possibly know so that's just excellent i want to thank you both so much for spending the last hour with us here today it was just a blast you two are just some of the top people i've met on on linkedin through this entire endeavor this year i just want to thank you so much for being here today and again there were a lot of firsts this is our first double guest episode which is really cool it's also the first episode where i have this snazzy chroma key background which is a lot of fun but i love it i know it is fun full kind of got that red carpet look a little bit you know that they got the logos on that thing when people walk and buying fancy dresses but as we close up ladies where can our listeners find you both personally and professionally if they'd like to hear more from you jesse first yeah um like i said my goal for 2020 slash 2021 is advancing on linkedin that's the best way to finally reach me so um my full name jessica umbajwa that's b-a-j-w-a um right on linkedin so um would love to hear from you guys excellent excellent francine your turn to work yeah for me um you know i echo that i am in a couple places that i really do give back to people and i'm just kidding i do get back to the majority of the people that reach out to me but if you really want to um connect with me you know first thing um i am in linkedin i'm very active so it's francine parham you know um very simple and the other place um is that if you want to you know if you have something you want to say and you don't want to put it on linkedin connect with me and my email address so it's email at francineparham onewords.com just shout it out say i heard you know i heard what you talked about um on you know rob's show and here's what i have a question or i want to know something or whatever and i'm more than happy to see what i can help you with excellent well that is just so generous of you francine and a lot of our guests do that to say connect with me i want to help you i want to do what i can from both of you thank you so much that's going to wrap us up here for today i just wanted to chime in real quick go ahead jess go ahead i'm going to put a little plug in for me and francine if you don't mind please do don't don't let me uh i was i gave you the plug opportunity come on where can i find it yes but i wanted the combined one now that's on a bad host for not giving you the combined one go ahead no that's okay so we will be launching our bright talk page so that's brighttalk.com i be believe slash francine parham but the best way is to look in the search bar we're launching our page um and each month we're going to have curated content that's based around a certain theme whether it be goal setting networking um what else do we got francine we have corporate culture culture organizational advocacy the economics of women advancing in the workplace right tons we have a content calendar that is amazing and she down here is going to be leading a big piece of it awesome that is so awesome ladies so again that website again justin and francine brighttalk dot com italk.com and then search we'll be loading it up we'll have a huge kickoff in uh january around all the content we have um our professional women's advancement summit that we just did in october we're going global and we're going to do it in october of 2021 so global guys so we're looking forward to doing this across the world we're 100 focused on advancing women and women of color in the workplace and rob you're invited to be a part of it um because we need not only allies we need accomplices we need everybody so we're going to we're going to count you in i got you on record now you said thank you and if there is a way if there is a way that i can help please let me know that's what this whole thing this whole endeavor is about helping build people and helping get things going so excellent well ladies that is uh that is all we have for today and listeners thank you so much for sticking with us francine and jess have been just amazing guests and it it's i think we can be very proud to say this is probably one of the best episodes we've ever put out closing out for us here at recruiting hell a reminder that our free job hunting guide is available at recruitinghell.com again recruiting dash hell.com i do have it on the front page and i found out the other day when i was showing it to a friend of mine who is a marketing expert that uh that link was broken so if you tried that in the past you might want to give it another click again get to that page that gives you the guide and things like that click that button it'll take you there get you six strategies to help end your job hunt for good i truly do hope that that guide is valuable to you in your job hunt to give you the tools to set up a great journey for you and a great strategy so for more from the show you can of course find our blog our social media accounts show notes and links to both rt public and our patreon page at recruiting hell.com to help support your job hunt and of course support the show and the work that this show does recruiting hell is a production of westport studios and is proudly made in wisconsin lastly please kindly rate our show on your favorite podcast app subscribe to us everywhere absolutely possible especially on youtube we could really use your help there and if you have feedback please send it along either via our website or to the recruiting hell podcast gmail.com as always a big thank you to purpleplanet for our music and you the listener for tuning in i'm rob conlon and until we meet again keep moving forward with your job hunt and your self-betterment it's a marathon not a sprint and recruiting health will be here to help you [Music] keep pace [Music]
Videolytics
Summary 7 Total Views 0 Comments 0 0 SEO 0/20 Creator Suggested (click to load) Ranked Tags
00100
SEO Score
Social 0 Likes 0 Upvotes (click to search) Mentions
Channel
156 Views 22 Subscribers na Videos
Best Practices ✓ High Res. Thumbnail ✗ Info Cards Added ✗ End Screen Added ✗ Comment Pinned ✗ Liked on Facebook ✓ Captions Added ✗ Comment Hearted ✗ Chapters Added
Tags career success professional development leadership development
Up next 1:27:14 Now playing Waterford Board of Education - BOE Finance Subcommittee Meeting 2021-01-07 4:45 pm Waterford Board Of Ed
25 viewsStreamed 17 hours ago New
32:06 Now playing Deep dive into Milgram's experiment and how it correlates to today's hot mess of society. Better Bachelor
12:16 Now playing Twitch has made a sneaky TOS change & I'm all over it like a hound dog! It'sAGundam
21:28 Now playing Now 6 countries in the EU have laws that basically mean if she says so...he's done. Better Bachelor
11:24 Now playing Instant Regret: Journalist DISCOVERS Everyone HATES Them & The Reaction Is SPECTACULAR! TheQuartering
21:30 Now playing Masculine is bad, women getting in to men's sports and awful dating profile of the day Better Bachelor
The Super Mario Effect - Tricking Your Brain into Learning More | Mark Rober | TEDxPenn TEDx Talks
Deamonworld Preview (40k Audio) ABORDER PRINCE
Follow Your Budget - It's Your Financial GPS The Dave Ramsey Show LIVE
What happened to the Noble/Loyal Shard of Magnus? | Warhammer 40k Lore Majorkill
I'm Divorced - The Story I Don't Talk About. #grindreel Joshua Fluke
Why Now Is The Time To Understand Your Money Habits The Dave Ramsey Show LIVE
25K viewsStreamed 2 days ago New
How to Play a Hexblade Warlock in Dungeons and Dragons 5e Dungeon Dudes
The Biggest Cheating Scandal In Speedrunning History Karl Jobst
Guardians of the Galaxy Awesome Mix Vol 1 Vol 2 Full Soundtrack Felipe Thiesen
Think 2020 was bad for the dating market, you ain't seen nothin' yet. Better Bachelor
If the Bemperor had a Text-to-Speech Device Special 7: Space Game Pain Bruva Alfabusa
I'm attractive and am called beautiful, but no man wants long term dating, just hit it and quit it. Better Bachelor
Why was this type of armour in use for so long? Modern History TV
LIVE: Trump Condemns U.S. Capitol Riot, Concedes Election Amid Impeachment Calls Bloomberg Quicktake: Now
Episode 34: Escapee Edition 2 (Season 2 episode 14): It's amazing what a simple LinkedIn post can lead to. Robb invites one of his longest time listeners on to discuss her recent new position and how vulnerability, networking, and honesty made a great opportunity for her, and the steps she's willing to share with you to do the same. PLUS: We take it a step further and bring her new employer on to boot!Guests: Jessica Bajwa and Francine Parham of www.francineparham.com Francine and Jess's Company:FrancineParham.com LinkedIn:Jess - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessicabajwa/ Francine - https://www.linkedin.com/in/francineparham/TIMESTAMPS - Coming soon0:00 - IntroTRANSCRIPT - Coming Soon on this episode of recruiting hell we're back with our second episode of escapee edition with another real story about what it takes to escape recruiting hell with her position eliminated by the pandemic jessica boshwa took to social media for her job search and not only networked her way into an appearance on this show but also into a job with the fabulous francine parham a past connection from her time in college we'll hear from both jessica and francine in our first double guest episode of recruiting hell [Music] hello and welcome to recruiting hell it's great to have you with us here today for our second episode of escapee edition i'm your host rob conlon i've been waiting to get this episode scheduled into the rotation for quite some time because the success stories of those who get back to work are so important to hear these days when it seems that everybody's kind of facing some hardships now these bright spots are designed to help you hear what's working in the job market as it happens and of course to give you actionable steps from people who have succeeded in their job hunt that can apply to your own search today as we enter 2021 it's becoming more and more apparent that the world's not really going back to normal as quickly as we'd hoped with mass mandates across the country across the world cities like san francisco in a second stay-at-home order and of course unemployment benefits either running low or exhausting for millions of americans the fires of recruiting hell have likely never burned hotter it's my goal to help fight these rising flames with a tide of content that stretches into the new year and continues to help people the world over adapt to the new flow of job searching the one other point we make before i wanted to get started is that recently i found a bit of data from our friends at spotify and from spreaker about this show and about who listens i was really humbled to find out that there are 22 different countries around the world that have tuned into this show some of which i have absolutely no connection to and where english is not the primary language so to those of you in our international listener group particularly those folks in sydney and sydney mines canada julia slovakia or delhi india i have to say it's wonderful to have you here the world doesn't just focus on america and i know that there are challenges in every country this year i'm so glad you've come to be a part of the listener family here on recruiting hell and i will do my best to always make sure the job advice presented here on this show helps you no matter where you live or what platform you might enjoy this show on speaking of platforms a quick moment to ask you subscribe to us on youtube we're there of course you can always find us on all of the podcast platforms as well spotify apple itunes amazon music wherever you want to find recruiting hell we are there but if you'd really like to help the show drop us a subscription on youtube it would really be a great thing help us get a little bit more formal when it comes to running that channel and of course if you actually want to see the vods of this it's a great way to enjoy that as well one other minor thing before we start there were some technical issues in the latter part of this episode it was a connection issue i've since diagnosed it with my system we ran some cables and things like that over the holiday and it seems to be rectified in this case but if there are some audio artifacts i do apologize for those i believe that everything that needs to be heard in this coming episode can be heard exceptionally well with a very very small number of exceptions and of course context clues can most likely help you figure that out so on with the show and of course today we are joined by another excellent success story from recruiting hell here from the listener family jessica bajwa joins us today to not only share her journey through recruiting hell but we also want went one level beyond with this episode and we also welcome her uh employer francine parham who helped to end jessica's journey in more ways than one it is my pleasure to welcome you both to the show ladies thanks for coming on thanks for having us rob really excited i echo that thank you as well rob i'm excited to be here definitely well i love episodes like this because it's you know part of this is listener interaction which is kind of cool because i know jessica you were a listener for uh quite some time but it's also the networking knowledge that comes out of this because we can sort of demonstrate to other people who are listening to this show what effective networking looks like and it kind of looks like this which is outstanding so to kick us off here jess tell us a bit about your journey to this point and how you kind of you kind of finally came to win your job hunt with francine and then after that francine i want you to chime in and tell us uh a little bit more about what you do on a daily basis and the excellent work that you're involved with so just kick us off thank you so much rob so i actually graduated from rutgers university may of 2019 and i felt a little burnt out after college most people kind of went straight into the workforce and i was like no i'm going to take a little break the job market's pretty good right now so it can wait for me for a little bit and i had my goal set for um full time looking for work and actively trying to get out of the recruiting hell um in january 2020 and in hindsight we know now uh the world kind of changed in march of 2020 so during march i was actually doing multiple interviews and one by one each interview got cancelled week after week after week and then those positions weren't even being filled they were in fact laying off or foreloing their workers so it was in that transitional time where everyone was trying to go remote and figure out their next steps in their company and in september is when francine reached out to me with a possible role and i met francine my senior year of college and we had maintained a relationship since then so really grateful for her for getting me out of the recruiting health and she does really amazing work i think that's a great lead in francine what what do you do and what what takes up jess's days now well i'll let jessica talk about that but i'll tell you first of all what i do and that should lead you to uh understand what jessica helps and supports me in doing so i'm francine parham obviously a francine parham company the namesake of my business and what i do is i focus on the advancement of women and women of color into positions of leadership and authority in the workplace so i spent a great deal of my career in corporate america becoming an executive a global executive and what i decided to do when i exited the corporate america space was to continue what i do or what i did i should say um in the corporate world and that was really helping what we call incorporate speak the talent agenda so really ensuring that i had you know individuals such as a jessica or senior all the way from very junior individuals to very senior individuals joined the organizations that i led or the companies that i was a part of so when i came out of the corporate sector i said you know what i love that i got a lot of success i became known that was my brand um in the corporate world before branding was important or talked about and i said i'm going to do this on the outside so i'm going to work the outside from the outside but still work the inside so i spend a great deal of time with corporations and organizations really helping them with the development of their professional women and women of color and it ranges from entry level women all the way to executive level women and i have programs and things of that nature that you know make them work on what i call the unwritten and unspoken skills of career advancement so everything beyond or beside the technical skills that you bring we know that those are the things that truly help you go to the next level so anytime advancement i'm in it on it and i'm a part of it so that's the work that i do that is outstanding and such a worthy thing too because we are made stronger by diversity in the workplace we really are and that's something that this year has taught me so much coming from a very homogeneous atmosphere in some of my past jobs i have had my eyes opened to the wonderful techniques tactics talents that other people from other walks of life bring i mean it it's so it's so funny because it's just been such a a gear shift for me so that's that's just outstanding to hear and i think that the most incredible thing that you mentioned in their friend scene is that you don't just focus on the execs or the upper folks you focus on the people who are entry level and that is something that i think is such a missing link in a lot of today's uh professional success in job hunt so that is excellent so we have a stage set here listener let's uh let's kind of dive into this journey uh through recruiting health justice is kind of back to you more a little bit more of a formality because you said you started your position in september what exactly did you land and how's it going so me and francine kind of curated um the name for the position she had an idea of what she was looking for but we both agreed on a brand project manager and each day i'm learning what that means more and more as my tasks might change but overall we're trying to launch a bright talk channel um brighttalk is a webinar streaming service so francine has her own channel um i believe we can search it through francine parham and company um and we are trying to curate content that we would usually do and have as in-person networking events obviously the world has changed and we want to still be able to give people that same content and give them those tools those unwritten rules from the comfort of their own home um so we're coming up with different topics for each month that we really think are important for people that might be at a mid-career level that feel like they aren't elevating or aren't reaching their career goals and giving them tips and tricks with great experts panelists we have a few sit-down conversations set up to help them um navigate their career goals excellent excellent and that sounds again it sounds like it's an exciting it's not just a like type in the data kind of job you know you get a little bit and there's nothing wrong with a type in the data kind of job but we've seen a lot of things in the work world fade away because they've been automated or they've been you know there's an app for that now or whatever it might be so it's nice to hear that this is a what i what i call a creative job number one but also one that possibly pushes a little bit on your your growth and development which is great yeah i've definitely been pushed out of my comfort zone in a really good way and i've learned a lot in the last few months for sure excellent well francine now i want to bring you in here a little bit more because in our pre-call when you ladies were describing how to this all kind of got set up and jess you mentioned as well that you kept in contact with francine after college this is kind of one of those little serendipity stories and would you two kind of explain and share with us how the relationship sort of started between you that was kind of the networking portion that led to what you're at now yeah well jessica do you want to uh you have you have the foundation of it and i'll jump in okay yeah i'll definitely kick it off so as i mentioned before i met francine my senior year of college and it actually was my last few weeks of college it had to have been march of 2019 and i was graduating in may and yeah uh right before um one of my professors had said hey i'm doing this extra credit lecture at six o'clock at night uh sign up if you want to come and i'm like i need the extra credit i'm gonna go um and right before the lecture i was actually reviewing my resume and i'm like oh my god graduation's a few weeks away what do i want to do i have no clue i feel like everyone around me has a pretty set path that they're going to follow and i feel like i haven't figured that out yet so i went into uh this lecture a little down on myself and i really didn't know what to expect uh francine mentions that i walked in with like a baseball cap and i came in late i don't even remember that part but honestly the way i used to dress in college most probably was accurate and francine just got up and started talking about your brand and how you can position your collegiate career into a professional career and what people are looking for when it comes to entry level employees and how to navigate those first 90 days on the job 90 days before the job and it really opened my eyes and it was the exact thing i needed to hear that day at that time um so i built up the courage to go up to her after her lecture and i just thanked her and i said thank you so much for coming here and doing this because i really needed this today um and i asked if we could connect on linkedin and we did and francine was actually doing a three-part lecture so she was coming once a week for the next three weeks so i made sure that the next time she was coming next week i was there early i stopped her i said hey can we get a cup of coffee i'd love to sit down with you i have no clue what i'm doing with my life and clearly you're an expert and i'd love to get your insight so that's kind of how um our whole conversation started and if francine you want to pick it up from there well yes and jessica's exactly right and then i was asked by um jessica's professor at the time to actually come in to um do one of my workshops now keep in mind my workshops are not geared for collegiate students so what i had to do was i had to kind of recraft one of my workshops and i said you know what this is my gift to give back um to the academic community because i usually charge and so um and so this was one of my gifts and i was just encouraged because i'm always i mean first of all i'm always out looking for um talent and i never know where i'm going to find it so i've always been taught as a leader uh to always look and so i said hmm i'm thinking about some internships that i'm going to have and i've had an intern that actually was from uh jessica's school at rutgers university joined me and i'm still looking so i'm going to go into the space and actually see some people live versus just getting you know some resumes from the college recruiting you know whatever they do to get resumes through the academic channel to um you know individuals like me who are looking to hire so what i did was i used it as an opportunity i used it as an opportunity to to see who would i see out there um i was looking for the people that raised their hand i was looking for the people that approached me i was looking for the people that wanted to have a conversation and had something to say because that tells me you're thinking and so even though jessica did come in late and she came in with the baseball hat and she looked like she just kind of gotten up you know i'm like i i did that too you know when i was in college i remember those days you know and i think so i think they're at they're doing this for credit so you know like i totally get i totally get the mindset on this one and it's six o'clock and they're here for the pizza you know so i gotta really make this exciting um so at the end of the day uh that's what i did and i came back three times and it was great that a person like jessica came um up and she stood out and that's you know one of the things i know we're going to talk about later on i'm rob but that's what i tend to look for so um from that i offered i stood up in front of the class and i just said you know what i've got an internship that i'm offering here's what i'm doing i'm going out on the road i'm going on tour i had a summit at the time called sharpen your skills professional women's advancement summit i know it's a mouthful but it's a women's advancement summit and um so i said i'm looking for someone that wants to you know share in this be an intern for me and i'll tell you more about it and that's how you know jessica came to the table and she joined me you know she said hey i'm interested i said this isn't a paid internship this is just a couple times i'm going to do some marketing um you know to test the market is what i was out there to do and uh she said you know count me in and she i said okay you know and she was one of the few that really um stood out and stood up and the rest is history that is again it's so wonderful to hear a story like that from you like jesse you probably conveyed to us that you didn't really want to go to this this was like oh i need extra credit i might not be doing so well in this course and it wasn't something that you necessarily wanted to do but you you made the effort anyway and i think that's a real big important takeaway for everybody who is listening to this show is that you have to somewhat put yourself out there you have to somewhat get yourself into a position that you're sort of uncomfortable with when it comes to meeting new people or doing things that you don't like to do in your job hunt and for you it's obviously paid off exceptionally well because it's not only a job for you but now you're on this show and i have a connection with francine like there is so much that stemmed from you putting on that baseball cap probably putting your hair in a ponytail i'm betting and marching off in in your your lounge pants to a pizza pizza party in college to to listen to a speaker for extra credit and it's so neat that little stuff comes like that so that's absolutely excellent so let's fast forward a little bit more to earlier this year i found you on linkedin uh jess through a post that you made and that was uh we've mentioned that on the show before about how you always felt like those outside sales jobs disguise themselves as marketing i i really hate those and i think you could probably do as well i don't want to put any food or any uh any food how many words into your mouth uh as you know food for thought but i have to ask it you got into the job market in january of 2020. everything went to hell in a hand basket but 60 days later what did your job search look like initially yeah so during the time between graduation and leading up to january um i was working with francine and on the road with her um and through her professional women's advancement summit i learned a lot of tools and a lot of those unspoken rules um that were talked about over and over again so i used a lot of that content in my job search during those months whether it be revamping my personal website or adding more action words to my resume i was using a lot of those skills that i had learned through francine and the women at the summit to help me even before my job search i call it my pre-job search so once i did get on the market i kind of had somewhat of an idea how to navigate it i went straight on to linkedin i turned on my uh open for jobs and letting recruiters come find me as well and i was looking for jobs every single day and i'd highlight the ones that i thought were interesting and unfortunately as um as an entry level i found that every single job was saying three plus years experience like how do you expect me to get three plus years experience if i'm barely in my 20s and i'm still just trying to figure out what i want to do um so i was applying here and there here and there and i'd get calls back from certain type of companies and i noticed that all of them were kind of similar in the way that they had their interviewing process and it just seemed a little sketchy to me and they were coming up over and over again and they were disguised as marketing agencies and that's the kind of field i was looking to go into i wanted to be a part of a marketing agency and work with clients um these kind of jobs disguise themselves as yeah we work for clients and you're gonna sell your the stuff for the clients i was like no no no that's not what i'm looking for and this was coming up over and over again in multiple cities under multiple names and i was like is there just a list of these companies that can go and find on the internet i was going on glassdoor and i felt like i wasn't getting enough information and i was getting frustrated which is why i made that post on linkedin and i was asking people in my network and my friends that have recently graduated in the marketing field if this was happening to them too um and it was but they also didn't have the answer to this question which is what prompted me to post and thank you for commenting because now we've created this relationship and i'm so happy to hear that you also had the same experience with these companies and especially on your episode with the fake job scam i love that episode and it perfectly encompassed the frustration of these companies and it really hindered my um job searching experience because then i started getting a little um frustrated and tired and i just didn't feel like looking anymore um and i had to push through and your podcast definitely helped me with that with all the advice that came afterwards well that's awesome i wasn't even going to ask for the endorsement until the end and and thank you for for plugging a couple of those episodes that might be really useful to people who are going through that like that initial kind of crash phase of hunting for a job i actually just ran across a woman in my current circle who was let go from a job she had been at for three weeks today and it's it's like that like you you won but then you lost again it was so terrible and i just i felt so bad for her and i just can't imagine how she's feeling going back out there looking at the types of jobs that you were looking at jess to say this just sucks like these are these aren't their jobs but they're jobs that take no advantage of any of your skills you're spending all day in home depot hawking directv or whatever it might be or going door to door uh selling selling spectrum cable or whatever it might be which is really funny slight side story here so there's a marketing company like that here in milwaukee that does exactly that as i described with the door-to-door selling cable and i can't remember what their their exact name is but i've seen them so many times i've scrolled through linkedin like uh it's those guys and so sure enough i get a knock at my door about four weeks ago and i opened the door and there's two guys standing there and they have the logo from this company god they know where i am this is awful that was a that was a terrible uh terrible interaction because they would not take no for an answer to the point where i should get off my property which is kind of funny uh but me uh me being a curmudgeonly old you know get off my lawn kind of man aside uh that's kind of what i think a lot of people face jess and francine is that a lot of people see these jobs out there and they just they have no interest in them or whatever it might be so the next question i kind of want to ask is to both of you once you find something that is fitting if you will there's an interview process obviously so for the two of you this interview process was probably kind of unique how did that go from looking to [Music] you know looking to help to i'm looking for a job and hey we should team up between the two of you well do you want me to start jessica yeah okay sure well you know from an employer perspective you know as i as i mentioned that um it's not just about looking for the job when the job is open okay and i know that from you know my you know experience in the corporate sector i was a zealot i was always out talking looking saying hmm i see some potential i can see tell me what you do so how do you do this so i was always out i was always i always had that curious eye and i think that that is really important when you are looking for the right talent even if it is not the exact talent for what you need you know there is an opportunity to look at what i call the other skills so many so many um individuals focus on or companies um focus on those technical skills and those are important don't get me wrong those things are really important and but that is not the crux of why you necessarily hire someone you hire them for the fact that they do the technical skills like you got it you can you know you read you your computer scientists whatever it is right i got that what i'm looking for and what you're always looking for are things such as you know their ability to think through their ability to solve a problem um you know their ability to be able to you know create a convincing you know a story or a convincing proposition to get something done on behalf of the organization or have behalf of the company or whoever they're working for those are the things that you're always out looking for so just as a jessica or individuals are out talking and networking with people um so should you be out doing the other thing as well and you know i've never ever gotten a job through applying for anything i've never applied for a job in my career and i had a very nice career i became ultimately a global executive in about i want to say it was after i left graduate school that 11 years later i became a global executive of a company called johnson and johnson let me tell you that was all based on me being positioned knowing the right people navigating showing the skills that i had that were beyond my basic course skills that was a given you know you being able to do some of the basic stuff you went to school for or you know that you know about that's a given it's what do you bring to the table above and beyond okay that's what's important and that's what you have to go out and demonstrate consistently and constantly and i promise once you do those things you start to get known or people know you or it gives you permission to start having conversations with people beyond i'm just looking for a job right and so when you're looking for a job is not the job to find a job okay i'm just saying there's the nugget right there right there's a nugget and so those are the things i think about from the you know the hiring hiring manager side um of it so i guess jessica i'll turn it over to you to talk a little bit about the the employee side and what you're looking for because i think that's equally important yeah um i definitely learned this lesson from francine um before i even came on as a full-time employee uh something i learned from her on our time on the road and when i was starting that application process in january i was looking for companies that i thought would be a really good fit for me and even if they didn't have a job posting i was reaching out to them i i reached out to a few hiring managers and met with them and had gotten job offers but then realized it wasn't the fit that i thought i was looking for but it did lead me to a position that wasn't there they created a position for me so had i not reached out i wouldn't have known that one this company does exist two that they are willing to carve out a position for you if you show your skills and that you are able to go out and get what you want and get it done um just like what francine said with the problem solving so it's a little more difficult you definitely have to put yourself out there and it's something that i've been learning as time has gone on i've definitely gotten out of my comfort zone and been a little more confident and not asking for a job like francine said uh it could just be an introductory interview saying hey um it might be an alumni from your school oh looks like you graduated from this school you have a really cool sounding position i'd love to learn more about what you do on a day-to-day basis considering a role in this industry you're not asking for a job you're just asking for some advice and if you hit it off really well they might say hey um this uh position actually freed up this week and you have a lot of the experience we're looking for why don't you come in and meet with us and then it turns into this whole huge thing that when it wasn't even uh an application online like francine said she's never applied for a job she just networked her way in which i think is really powerful most definitely and i think you you dropped a couple little other bits in there too of you know you don't have to tap the people who are necessarily closest to you you can kind of go outside of that small circle find those recruiters find those connections on linkedin that maybe your second or third degree to but also the alumni from your university and i'm actually very fortunate i went to a state college here in wisconsin the i have never met somebody from uw lacrosse who has been anything less than a saint like it's weird like i go to go to these events say oh yeah i went to uw lacrosse what you're just graduating blah blah blah and they're the coolest people and i think that that's maybe an untapped resource for listeners here is to say you know what go look where you've been and maybe even you know maybe you haven't been to college go to your high school class go to things that are and you know a lot of times things get a bad rap for people think you know pinging in their old connections for like multi-level marketing stuff don't don't be that of course right i got i got candles to sell you i got uh here's here's some uh some other you know shampoo or whatever it might be but look at those connections build those connections being real with those connections i think is is definitely a great thing that we can pull from that ladies thank you uh jess this one's just kind of one for you and what was this internship that you did with francine was that paid or was it kind of just come along for the ride along for the ride sort of thing i think francine had mentioned that earlier we were going from city to city uh doing the professional women's advancement summit so i got to go around the country i thought it was fun it was a great time and uh like i said i you couldn't put a price tag on the information i learned from francine and the women that were there gotcha and then i guess my other question without this is something that sometimes i think a lot of people have a real hard time swallowing because it doesn't pay the bills how is working for free how does that feel um for me it was okay um i was fortunate enough that i could move back in with my parents after college and they were willing to support me i know a lot of people don't have that luxury which i completely understand but i did use that time to grow and say hey i'm not sitting on my butt i'm not just chilling with my degree in my pocket and uh watching netflix all day um so knowing that i was doing something with my time and something that was going to help me advance um it made me feel great and i i didn't think about the getting paid part of it at that point so so early on in my career um i think i was looking more for experience and information and advice that was the biggest thing i was looking for at that time excellent and so for those folks who are in the situation of maybe being very early in their career it sounds like what you're doing and the awesome opportunity that francine has that set up for you to have you kind of be this uh apprentice almost i would use that word which is i think is awesome is a really great opportunity so if you're early in your career development maybe that is a real opportunity to find that mentor to find that person who's gonna kind of take you along for the ride if you will uh that generous person and you know for somebody who's maybe a little bit later that's possibly not an option because he got a mortgage and kids and whatever it might be so there's definitely so many different ways that different people are able to find opportunities i'm so glad that you found yours here so you know one of the things i'm rob that is important is that yes as jessica said you know in her situation where she was in her life if you will um was great but as um a individual who was a single parent in college and having internships it was very important that i get paid so i've not done many internships where i didn't get paid okay um because i had family i had someone that was depending on me my son at the time and so um you know it's just really important that you are clear with your goals and what you want okay because you know it's not don't take the internship just because it's a great experience but it's you know you're not going to make any money for it if it being if being paid i mean you know salary or whatever the case may be or whatever those other amenities are are important to you then you need to ask for that you need to ask for that or say is that negotiable is there an opportunity see here's the deal that you have an employer such as i'll say i'm the employer i put it out there and i say here's what i want okay and you never come back to me and say well you know would you ever consider because you just think that that's the way it is and i say well no it's not everything is open to negotiation so i don't care what level you are when you take an internship whatever you do have that conversation to get exactly what you want out of it and you also put your employer on notice you let them know that you know what you're thinking about this you let them know that you you know you consider it you think it's great but here are some things that you would like to have as well to make it successful for both of you so you can do this whether you are straight out of school whether you've lost a job or you want to switch careers whatever you want to do because you know you can find internships later on in your career doesn't have to be right out of college you should think through and have the negotiables and have that dialogue it does not hurt and it helps you make a choice and it helps you and your employer feel more comfortable about what you're about to do and actually what they actually need you to do does that make sense absolutely and i think that's another great piece of information for folks who are maybe considering an internship and being like oh i don't know if i can swing this i have all these responsibilities and francine it's great to hear that you you traveled that road and we kind of got a two-for-one there you know somebody who didn't maybe have the extra responsibilities and and things to carry with them especially you know when it's you know a child you know kids are so important i guess the next question is sort of for you jess what questions did francine ask you kind of when you were negotiating this that made you say this is the place i gotta be i don't know if it was necessarily a negotiation um it was kind of when i had asked her for coffee that one day we allotted about a one hour conversation and i just wanted to talk about what i wanted my career goals to look like because i was so unsure at that point in my life and i knew she was an expert so i just wanted to pick her brain on career development and what steps should i take next uh the best thing for me is my life was so structured up until that point um i always say from first grade you go to second grade from second grade you go to third grade and my whole life it was okay now you do this you graduate high school you go to college you finish college and you're like i get to do whatever i want i don't know what that is i mean my whole life i've been told this is what you're gonna do next so go do that next and i didn't question it i said yeah sure okay cool um let's do it so at this point i'm like oh i don't know what i want to do and i just wanted to pick her brain about that that's what the topic of the conversation was and it was just both of us going back and forth and i think we were sitting at barnes and nobles for about three plus hours francine um and this is when she told me about how she wanted to go on this nationwide speaking tour called the women's advanced professional advancement summit um and her goals for what she wanted the event to look like and what she wanted involved in it we were both just talking about career goals um and at the end she goes is that something you might be interested in and i was like yeah um definitely i got to travel the country i got to meet amazing women and a lot of the my beliefs and values aligned with what francine was trying to do and that's a really big thing for me i always wanted to be a part of something bigger and i just didn't know how to get involved um that was one thing i wish i had done in my collegiate career that i just never got the chance to do so this was my opportunity to be like i want to go out and i want to meet these amazing people and help them and i'm going to learn along the way um i'm going to help advance women and i'm also going to advance as a woman and i just thought it was a great opportunity i could not pass up so it wasn't necessarily a negotiation rather than a conversation and both realizing that yeah this could work for us gotcha now francine i'm gonna alter the question from this because you know just said it wasn't a negotiation you mentioned that you've done a couple internships in the past that you've offered these to people and things like that when this college girl comes up to you with her hair and a ponytail and threw a baseball cap and what i guess is made you say that one that one is one i want to put some effort into this one is worth worth pursuing and things like that what made me you know say i want to know more about this young woman is that i said that there are so many you know i had a lot of people that helped me along the way i'm a fundamental believer that no one does anything by themselves i don't care you know like oh i got this promotion no you didn't there were like five or ten people behind you that help position you help talk about you help do something to get you there so that is a premise that i fundamentally believe in and i have practiced it forever and i also believe in the fact that you you know because i've been so um you know i've been so fortunate and it wasn't just me you know like it didn't have to be in the right place the right time and all that good stuff that was not the case you know i you know said that i wanted to um let me backtrack back in the formative part of my life my father um told me a long time ago he used to tell me to listen he said listen francine listen and see what's happening listen and pay attention to what people are doing and you know don't always be the first person that speaks up because you may not have anything that anyone wants to hear right and so i really learned in course of that and i carried that into my you know my college days i carried that into my first job i carried that on to you know myself in terms of being in you know this person who helps women advance and it was really taking uh you know really intentionally listening and finding and seeking so when i met an individual like jessica i was seasoned in the practice of listening you know and seeking and finding and discovering um really and i call you know i see a lot of women a lot of younger women women i see women general you know holistically women women of color um as well who are in the formative stages of their careers in many aspects they may have spent a great deal of time in on a job but they're still in the formative part of their you know their career to get to the next level and it's my ability to be able to assess that and so when i see that i know that there's that is someone that is worth investing my time in and i meet a lot of women i can't even begin to tell you that and when i have the conversation with them and my first question is though so tell me you know who you are and what your name is and i'm happy to know that but my next question to you is so what do you want to do next like what are you what are you doing like what are you trying to do to advance that's all i care about if you got a great answer count me in if you haven't thought about it or you don't have a great answer you're like well i don't kind of know you know i'm like i i like i have no time to really help you get there necessarily i have time to help you get there if you've got something in that so that three-hour conversation that jessica mentioned was um a conversation where i was intrigued by her ability to think through what she wanted to do and i wanted to help her so while she's telling me all this the other side of my brain is like well how can i help her get there because no one does anything alone right like i didn't i haven't had my third starbucks cafe mocha skinny you know whatever i get like you know okay like i got a lot to do i really have a lot to do but i'm really impressed with what she brings to the table the core talent so what i'm talking about is the core of what you have from a talent perspective because i meet a lot of people who've got a lot of skills they're this they're that they accomplish this they accomplish that and my role is usually when i hire them i want them to be a part of my team is to strip away all of that because that doesn't matter to me because i can give you my resume my resume could be three or four pages i've been in the business for a little bit of time right and so at the end of the day but i'm looking for certain things and i'm looking for your ability to problem solve i'm looking for your ability to think through how to solve a problem that you don't know how to solve so jessica and i when we were sitting down she was actually spending time with me whether she knew it or not solving her own problem i was only asking her a series of questions i was probing her you know i was giving her some insight but i wanted to see how she was going to solve getting a job because that's what we were there for like i said i was on my third cafe mocha you know i'm looking at her saying okay you know where we go with this right and so she was taking me through that and then i said to myself here's someone i think that has some core skills because i can teach her all the other stuff i want to know what she brings to the table from a core skill set and i think that's what all you know people who are hiring are looking for there's some jobs like they want to know can you code can you do this can you you know do you understand this concept or whatever but it's so much bigger than that and that's what brings you into a company you know so that's what got me intrigued about the work that i could help jessica do because it's not just positioning her for my job and the current job i have my role is to position her for the next job because what i learned in my experience in corporate america i'm only as good as the people that i hire and promote not the people that i keep but the people that i hire and promote so i'm hoping that jessica will have my job and she'll maybe get another bigger job i have maybe she'll go on and do something else but i want the you know i want the echo on linkedin or whomever she happens to be talking about to say i was a good developer of her to get her to the next level it's not about the job she's doing now because she knows i'm pushing her right now to do a lot of different things that she hasn't done she mentioned that before because i'm positioning her for the next job and that's what a good manager does i mean a good manager a leader of people you'll say that's a leader francine that's a leader a leader helps elevate a leader helps promote a leader helps get everything you know everybody up a leader is a tide that lifts all the votes which is great all right this is the last second to last question i'm going to ask you ladies and it's it's a one or two word answer from each of you and and jess i want you to want you to start with this what's the number one thing that you make you feel made you stand out from other applicants in your job hunt so i want you to answer first and then francine i want you to tell us what that number one thing is for jessica it doesn't have to be the same thing jess what do you think yours is um i would say mine was confidence and as well as understanding my vulnerability um when i did approach francine i was very vulnerable at the time and i wasn't the most confident person before that i would never have raised my hand or gone up to her afterwards it was something inside me pushing me to say you don't know where this is gonna go so go find out if you don't do it you'll never know so having the confidence to go and just see what happens because you never know where a connection's going to take you i never thought i'd be on a podcast and here i am today so you never know where the journey is going to take you so you what what's the saying you miss every shot you don't take absolutely and i 100 agree with that all right francine she's on the other foot is she accurate with uh with any vulnerability and and confidence or is there something else that you think you know i know i agree with that you know this is a great conversation because i'm learning a lot about jessica like i'm learning more than you know i mean thank you rob yeah what are you bringing down you bring out the best in us podcasting is like this great thing go ahead look at this okay have this back no different topic right different topic but you know i would say that um what really intrigued me about that i would say about jessica is is her curiosity that was the thing that was most intriguing to me because i said to her listen i am you know i'm in this entrepreneur i don't have everything figured out and if you're looking for an organization where you come in and you've got like you know your employee badge waiting for you and all your collateral and you know all that stuff on the table you're you know i'm gonna send it to your house guess what i'm not you know i'm like i'm gonna be very honest with you in terms of what i have and what i offer um and you know here it is and so i would say um i appreciated that from jessica in terms of saying okay you know and i said i say the honesty i say the honesty because you know i'm very honest and very real about what i do and what i will do and what i won't do okay i make no you know i don't try to mask it because it's like i'm just you know it's not worth it and so it's you know it's like jessica talking about the marketing that marketing kind of telesales thing you know why would you set someone up like that that's bad business just bad as a as a human being but anyway so at the end of the day i appreciated her saying you know what i'm gonna give it a try you know and you don't have it all figured out but here's the things that you offer sound kind of cool francine and we can work we can figure this out together so i appreciated that and i saw that in jessica because she came to me in the very beginning and said i want to have a career i want to do great things like not like maybe you but i want to have that be in that sphere and i want to figure out how to best do it and so will you help me and i'm like absolutely why would i not you you you you know you're working your rear off to try to do this and i appreciate that because that's what i had to do and look at how what it got me you know so i'm i'm there to help lift as well and that's what you know my intention is amazing and i think jess i think that's a pretty pretty strong indictment of uh your work ethic and all sorts of great things about who you are as a person so uh high praise and francine thanks for uh thanks for telling her she's right but i was telling her she's a little bit uh she's got some other skills there and and i think that there are a lot of people out in the world who have excellently similar skill sets and personality traits that just does they're honest they're hard working they're humble they're all these good things and and showing that to people and being vulnerable which i think is still the number one thing because again that's how you wound up on this podcast my friend is you were vulnerable and you said i have this problem what the heck is going on with these stupid jobs can somebody help me understand and that i think is one of the most key things for your job hunt now the last question i'm going to kind of go into here for myself is i always struggle with this and jesse touched on it a bit before it has to do with the show obviously jess what credits what what portions of the show do you want to credit that give you the new success and on tactics and things like that that you think other folks who are in similar situations to you should you go back and listen to or maybe we should touch on again in the future yeah so i think a big theme in the conversation we had today was leveraging linkedin in different ways um and you don't realize how expansive the name linkedin network is um i know i was talking about this with francine we were talking about goal setting my goal for 2020 was i'm going to go to all of these market i mean these networking events i'm going to go meet people shake hands that sounds terrifying now do not want to shake anyone's hand do not want to be in front of people so what do i do i leveraged linkedin um and kind of tried to build my network that way and that's kind of the world we're living in right now um one big advice or two or three actually i got so much from your podcast that i i think i have a little note from every little episode um but one of the big ones was resume 101 because i had gone to a bunch of resume clinics at school where they brought people in some people say write an objective don't write an objective they don't care they do care um so getting that expertise from someone and really having it mapped out for you and explained helped me a lot in how i reworked my resume as well as your what you call your 50 cent approach um yeah that you add your um to 25 different posts is that what it was right it's called yep you put your two cents on 25 posts on linkedin um i can't take credit for coining that phrase no pun intended there but at the same time it it it's something that has really worked for me it's increased my linkedin reach by literally more than 50 percent this year like it's people it's crazy cool but continue please and then we'll uh get into a bit of a wrap up here yeah and i mean you did that to me you were like hey jess had the same thing i have a podcast you should check it out and i was like okay this guy's got a podcast let's see if he's a real deal or not and i tuned in to the first episode and i was like that was awesome and i went through 10 episodes in like two days wow it was it was on when i was binge yeah i had it if i was taking the dog for a walk it was on if i'm doing the laundry it's on um so i got a lot from your podcast and a bunch of little tidbits along the way have really helped me and in the future i'd love to talk more about different tools you can use with linkedin we always talk about networking networking networking but what does that really look like on linkedin i think we talked about a few things such as leveraging your alumni association or maybe some third connections that you have somewhat of a relationship with uh that you might be able to tap into or like you said the 50 cent approach where you start commenting on post and i know that's something that i'm planning on working on in 2021 is creating content for linkedin and uh commenting on those posts to have that engaging conversation with people good deal good deal yeah well ladies there's the last question of the the day belongs to you two and it get you get to ask not to say me but you get to say hey what did we miss what did we miss about job hunting that you maybe know that the rest of the audience and maybe the linkedin world wherever else this winds up that they need to know kind of you know the one thing that we missed from each of you go ahead whichever of you would like to lead off i'm not sure francine do you want me to take this one i'll piggyback off you you know i i was in linkedin before linkedin was popular and just because it was you know i felt i didn't i couldn't climb my way out of facebook like things kept happening and i take nothing away from facebook instagram you know any of those other things because i just felt like i need like i need order and calm maybe it's my corporate background i'm like i need structure i don't know um and i was just like i i went into linkedin and i said how do i really leverage linkedin and i would say that one of the things i thought about was what was really my message and so when i go in to connect with people i find fascinating another trick i would just say is that you know there's a section in there where you can send them a direct message so a lot of people will hit that little connect button they connect it and they just like you pop up in my feed and i'm like who the hell are you like why am i talking to you right but there is a section you know there's a other tab that you click on and you click on it and you get to send someone um a note and i think the characters i don't know how long a hundred and something two no three hundred three hundred so to be a quick note i tell you i have met so many interesting people by telling them just like kind of what i do and real quick you know and i say i would ask that you please consider humbleness is a great thing like never assume that anyone needs to connect with you because you got something cool to say because see there are five other people that have something cool to say just like what you said right so it's really important to be humble and to ask about that so i would say you know really thinking through what you want to say before you go say it is really really important and that will get more people to connect with you directly and because that's how i reach directly out to a lot of folks just to say i found it you know please connect with me i would like to share more of my work with you i'm not selling anything i'm just saying i want to share more of the work that i do and voila it happens so really thinking through your message that's a really good one francine that's a really good one jess uh you muted a little bit there i think but uh oh there you go thought we were going to lose you lose your tidbit here go ahead what uh what's the one thing you'd like to to add to the the listener base here to in the same way francine did um i guess mine's a little different for the listener base the thing that i loved about this podcast and this community is knowing that there were people like me out there that were sitting in recruiting hell and boiling from the fire of recruiting hell knowing that people were going through the same struggles i was going through and i wasn't alone in my community of people that are recently graduated a lot of them are posting on social media hey i got this job hey i got this promotion but they're never talking about the journey that got them there or the struggles that they went through to get to where they are now so having a community an open and honest community like this was really helpful for me and i bet really helpful for the listener base as well knowing that there are people out there that are willing to help you um and willing to help you advance and you're not alone and one day very soon in the future you will not be in recruiting hell anymore that is so awesome and again i think that fits so in with the the show because you know we we are all here temporarily and i think that's one of my marketing uh whiz friends said to me you know rob your your listener base kind of is self-extinguished and i'm like good like if people get a job they may they maybe don't listen to your show anymore i hope you do because we talk about promotion stuff too but i i think that the the fact that people need to realize they're not alone number one jess is a huge thing and number two and both of you touched on this this time is that asking for help is a sign of strength not a sign of weakness and when we ask for help we are showing more strength than we possibly know so that's just excellent i want to thank you both so much for spending the last hour with us here today it was just a blast you two are just some of the top people i've met on on linkedin through this entire endeavor this year i just want to thank you so much for being here today and again there were a lot of firsts this is our first double guest episode which is really cool it's also the first episode where i have this snazzy chroma key background which is a lot of fun but i love it i know it is fun full kind of got that red carpet look a little bit you know that they got the logos on that thing when people walk and buying fancy dresses but as we close up ladies where can our listeners find you both personally and professionally if they'd like to hear more from you jesse first yeah um like i said my goal for 2020 slash 2021 is advancing on linkedin that's the best way to finally reach me so um my full name jessica umbajwa that's b-a-j-w-a um right on linkedin so um would love to hear from you guys excellent excellent francine your turn to work yeah for me um you know i echo that i am in a couple places that i really do give back to people and i'm just kidding i do get back to the majority of the people that reach out to me but if you really want to um connect with me you know first thing um i am in linkedin i'm very active so it's francine parham you know um very simple and the other place um is that if you want to you know if you have something you want to say and you don't want to put it on linkedin connect with me and my email address so it's email at francineparham onewords.com just shout it out say i heard you know i heard what you talked about um on you know rob's show and here's what i have a question or i want to know something or whatever and i'm more than happy to see what i can help you with excellent well that is just so generous of you francine and a lot of our guests do that to say connect with me i want to help you i want to do what i can from both of you thank you so much that's going to wrap us up here for today i just wanted to chime in real quick go ahead jess go ahead i'm going to put a little plug in for me and francine if you don't mind please do don't don't let me uh i was i gave you the plug opportunity come on where can i find it yes but i wanted the combined one now that's on a bad host for not giving you the combined one go ahead no that's okay so we will be launching our bright talk page so that's brighttalk.com i be believe slash francine parham but the best way is to look in the search bar we're launching our page um and each month we're going to have curated content that's based around a certain theme whether it be goal setting networking um what else do we got francine we have corporate culture culture organizational advocacy the economics of women advancing in the workplace right tons we have a content calendar that is amazing and she down here is going to be leading a big piece of it awesome that is so awesome ladies so again that website again justin and francine brighttalk dot com italk.com and then search we'll be loading it up we'll have a huge kickoff in uh january around all the content we have um our professional women's advancement summit that we just did in october we're going global and we're going to do it in october of 2021 so global guys so we're looking forward to doing this across the world we're 100 focused on advancing women and women of color in the workplace and rob you're invited to be a part of it um because we need not only allies we need accomplices we need everybody so we're going to we're going to count you in i got you on record now you said thank you and if there is a way if there is a way that i can help please let me know that's what this whole thing this whole endeavor is about helping build people and helping get things going so excellent well ladies that is uh that is all we have for today and listeners thank you so much for sticking with us francine and jess have been just amazing guests and it it's i think we can be very proud to say this is probably one of the best episodes we've ever put out closing out for us here at recruiting hell a reminder that our free job hunting guide is available at recruitinghell.com again recruiting dash hell.com i do have it on the front page and i found out the other day when i was showing it to a friend of mine who is a marketing expert that uh that link was broken so if you tried that in the past you might want to give it another click again get to that page that gives you the guide and things like that click that button it'll take you there get you six strategies to help end your job hunt for good i truly do hope that that guide is valuable to you in your job hunt to give you the tools to set up a great journey for you and a great strategy so for more from the show you can of course find our blog our social media accounts show notes and links to both rt public and our patreon page at recruiting hell.com to help support your job hunt and of course support the show and the work that this show does recruiting hell is a production of westport studios and is proudly made in wisconsin lastly please kindly rate our show on your favorite podcast app subscribe to us everywhere absolutely possible especially on youtube we could really use your help there and if you have feedback please send it along either via our website or to the recruiting hell podcast gmail.com as always a big thank you to purpleplanet for our music and you the listener for tuning in i'm rob conlon and until we meet again keep moving forward with your job hunt and your self-betterment it's a marathon not a sprint and recruiting health will be here to help you [Music] keep [Music] so you UCbAT6VpypNrdGIYemruLalw