How to Job Hunt While Employed

The Daily Job Hunt Video Podcast

In this episode:

• Sonja shares her story about attending 6 colleges over 7 years, getting a job as an admin assistant for a small startup, trying on a lot of careers, and eventually consulting as a career coach.
• Learning by doing versus a preparation mindset. 
• How to create and leverage your personal experience.
• What are “The Great Transformation” and “The Great Resignation” and how you can boost your career.
• Practical short and long-term job hunting and career planning tips.

Please watch the video podcast below.

Daily Job Hunt Video Podcast Transcript

Joel: (00:10)

Hey everyone. This is Joel from the daily job hunt. If you so happen to be new to us, this is the audio version. Typically our show is the audio version of the daily job hunt email, which you can subscribe to@crash.co crash.co. We have closing it on 150,000 subscribers who are reading the daily job hunt newsletter. We give you a quick dash of mindset, hype and, and no nonsense advice for you to stand out, feel empowered, follow your curiosity, and ultimately discover and do what makes you come alive, which is our mission here@crash.co and the daily job hunt. So today we have a special guest. Our special guest is Sonya price, and she is chief career strategist and founder of dynamo careers. She has 15 plus experience, 15 years plus experience in career and leadership consulting. She's worked with a wide range of clients, including Amazon at and T Facebook, Google, HBO, and numerous other organizations. She's certified career and executive coach. And she's passionate about empowering professionals to accelerate their career. Success become financially free, make a positive impact around the world. And that's so much what we're about that empowerment and that impact to do professional work that has meaning and purpose for you. So thanks so much Sonya for being here. Welcome.

Sonja: (01:52)

Hey, thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to dive into this conversation today.

Joel: (01:57)

Yeah, me too. My pleasure to have you. Uh, so I would love to hear more about your origin story. I understand you went to, to college, you have a master's degree, did that for six, seven years, I believe. And you finished that master's degree and then all the job opportunities automatically starting knocking on the door. Is that right?

Sonja's Personal Job Story

Sonja: (02:19)

Oh, I wish I wish don't. We all wish it was that easy. Um, no, I have kind of a little bit of a unique story. Um, I actually, I think I should get an award for this. Actually I went to six different colleges and it took me seven years to finish my undergraduate degree. And part of that was just because I didn't know what the heck I wanted to do. Like I, I had, I, you know, in high school and through college, I did, didn't really have a lot of guidance and I didn't have mentors or sponsors or people who were really like looking out for me or could help guide and direct me and where to go in my career. And so my undergraduate degree is actually in fine arts. Um, and when I finished my degree, I thought I was gonna become a documentary filmmaker, which I still have, you know, hobbies and passions that I pursue on the side, as far as documentary filmmaking goes, but little did I know way back when you know, how much money that you could or could not make as a documentary filmmaker?

Sonja: (03:17)

So, um, um, when I got about three quarters of the way through my college degree, I decided to take a break in school because I just was like, I don't even know what the heck I'm gonna do with my degree. And so I ended up getting, you know, a glorified internship position actually was not an internship, but it was basically an admin assistant position for a small startup company. And that ended up being a really wonderful opportunity for me because the company was growing fast. We were fairly well funded. And so each and every time that there was a new op a new job opening or a new job opportunity internally, I, I would just say to the founder, Hey, look, let me take on that role. And then we can hire somebody to backfill my position. So I very quickly kind of, you know, rise in the rank.

Sonja: (04:10)

So to say, inside of this very small company, and I grew the company from two to 22 employees, and we'd gotten a couple rounds of funding during that timeframe. And then that's actually what led me my interest in going back to grad school, because I saw how each and every time that we were bringing on new team members, I saw how the team dynamic shifted internally in this very small organization. And then when we brought on a new CEO and we had like this, this extra year of leadership, I just saw how different the culture and the dynamics of a company culture can change. So I ended up going back to school. I, I had finished my undergraduate degree along the way. And then I went back to school to get a master's in leadership and organization development. And that led me to pursue an in eventually pursue an interest consulting.

Sonja: (05:02)

Um, but what I thought is that, you know, I'm gonna spend all this money and get this fancy master's degree and companies would be lining up to hire me, right? Yeah. Not so much because I didn't actually have the consulting experience to back it up. So that's kind of what led eventually led me to get in to career coaching is that I realize how hard it actually can be, especially to break into a new industry in a space that you don't already have that exact specific background and experience. So it took a lot of, um, time and strategic thought and strategic energy, and also finding some mentors coaches who could help me along my journey in knowing how to really position myself in the right way for the right type of job. And, um, I just happened to get really good at doing that. And, you know, along the way, I actually changed focus career focus a handful of times.

Sonja: (06:00)

So I'm one of those, um, serial career changers where I've done kind of almost everything under the sun, along the way. And, um, through doing all of that, I really found really what are the core skills of what you need to know, how to do to position yourself in the right way to land the right kind of job, even when you don't already have like oodles of experience to back that up. Um, and then me becoming a career coach was kind of born just out of my own journey because each and every time I changed jobs, not only was I, you know, moving up in a, in, um, gaining you higher levels of leadership or more responsibility, more scope, I was also making significantly more money. And then I just had friends and family who were kind of watching me what I was doing in my career.

Sonja's Career Coaching Service 

Sonja: (06:48)

And they were like, Hey, how did you do that? And can you show me how to do the same thing? And so for fun, I just started coaching people on the side. And then I started getting referrals and referrals from referrals. And it took me a little while before I was like, Hey, wait a second. I think I, I think I've got something here. Like this is a unique skill that I have that I AC that I happen to love doing. And you know, why don't, why don't I do more of this? Why don't I help there? There's just obviously so many people in the world that could use more coaching and guidance for around what the heck do they wanna do with their career? What kind of money can they make doing this kind of thing? And how can they really optimize their opportunities in, you know, what ends up being a relatively short period over the course of your life? I mean, we all work for 20, 30, 40 years, but you know, how can you actually optimize your, like from wherever you are in your career to wherever you want to get, how can you actually maximize that to the fullest extent to get what you want, um, but do in a way that really works for you in a way that's in alignment with your values, or you can have that meaningful work and also maximize your earning potential throughout that period of time too. So if you wanna retire early, that could actually be a possibility,

Joel: (08:03)

Good stuff. And I, I love what I'm hearing from you is that period after the master's degree, you started kind of just diving in to the deep end and learning how to swim. And in terms of getting that first job, getting those career development skills, and then that ended up turning to this career coaching. And so it was, it was a very organic process in that you were learning what I, what I'm, what I'm hearing you say is you were learning by doing, in terms of how to the nuts and bolts of how to, you know, run an effective job search. And I just wanted to highlight that because, you know, we talk about this kind of, um, learning by doing versus the preparation mindset. The preparation mindset is go learn in a formal situation and study all the books and the textbooks and get the degree, et cetera. And then, and then maybe you actually do it one day, but oftentimes, you know, the fastest way to, to learn anything is to go step up to the plate and take a swing, even if that means you swing and miss at first. So I just be curious to hear you talk about that sort of mindset of like coming outta that master's degree and then diving in and figuring things out on your own and how, how that unfolded for you.

Sonja: (09:22)

Mm yeah. What a, what a great topic. Um, and I'm glad to hear that that's how you kind of approach working with people as well. Uh, that makes me think I work with a lot of tech professionals and I've also worked in tech myself, and it's kind of the, that whole iterative design approach, right? Of like, what's your prototype, get it out there, test it, see how it goes, iterate along the way. And I'm a firm believer that each and every action step that you take more and more clarity comes along the way too, cuz you never know, once you get yourself out there and you start interacting and engaging with people, you're gonna get fee feedback from the market. Um, and you might also find people who, you know, can help guide and coach you along the way as well. Um, what happened for me is that I'd been working at that startup company.

Sonja: (10:08)

Then I went to get my master's degree and I thought, okay, I'm gonna break into consulting. And then I applied for a bunch of jobs and I got, it was crickets, nobody even approached me at all. So I was like, okay, well, you know, I need a job. I was ready for a new opportunity by that point in time. And so, um, I just started applying for any and every job that I thought I could possibly qualify for and I ended up having a recruiter, contact me for, um, a user ability engineering job, which is basically what I had been doing prior to going to grad school. And so I was like, all right, you know, I, I interviewed for this company, they hired me pretty quickly and I was like, all right, well, I mean, I got the, I got the master's degree and I invested like $80,000 in it.

Sonja: (10:54)

And now I'm doing exactly what I did before grad school. Um, but what I did is I got this job. I knocked it out of the park cause I knew how to do it. Um, not only that, I was actually very nervous about this job because it was on a much larger scale than what I had ever done before. And not only that, but I moved into this job and my boss quit two weeks later. And so, and I was like running the entire lab by myself and had, I, I mean, I figured it out, but if I really honest with myself, I didn't really know what I was doing, but I figured it out. Right. So this is one of those like iterative approaches of like just, you know, when the problem is there, when the problem arises, just step in and you're gonna figure it out.

Sonja: (11:37)

I mean, there's very a few jobs in this world that are like actual rocket science. Um, so I think most jobs, you, you can, you, if you step in and you get to work, you can probably figure it out within, you know, a few months on the job. But what I, um, what I ended up doing is, um, while I was there doing this usability engineer job, I started kind of shopping, shopping around with all of the directors internally. And so I just, I made good friends with the directors and I would go up to 'em and say, Hey, you know, you may not know this about me, but I actually have a master's in leadership and organization. And you know, if the need should ever arise, if you feel like you need organizational consulting, I would love to partner with you on that. And I think at first they all kind of maybe laughed a little bit behind my back, like, oh, that's really cute.

Sonja: (12:27)

You know, the, the usability girl wants to, you know, help me with my team. Um, and then, um, you know, lo and behold, one day one of these directors pulls me off to the side. We, he sees me in the hallway and he says, Hey, come in here for a minute. He takes me into a, a conference room. He says, nobody knows this. So I'm gonna share this information with you. But, um, I just got word that we have, there are four legacy companies that are all getting merged together and my team is quadrupling in size, starting tomorrow. I'm gonna have 140 people reporting to me and I'm freaking out. I have no idea what to do. And I like beside myself because here's this, you know, director that I really admire and respected and he's asking me for help. And I'm like, okay. So I go home and I pull together all my materials and everything I learned in grad school.

Sonja: (13:23)

And I come back and, um, gave him this presentation the next day. And he said, Hey, sounds great. Hey, tomorrow at 10:00 AM, can you please do the same presentation with all of my direct reports? And so, um, that kinda, um, that whole project ended up taking us well over a year to implement. Um, but basically I helped him. Uh, I basically helped him figure out what his new org chart was gonna be. And we had a number of different technologies that each of the different teams had used. We had to figure out, okay, what's gonna be the central technology for all of these teams coming together. And there was a lot of people challenges because as you can imagine, there's these four different teams that all ha now have to figure out how to work together. So, um, that really helped put my consulting career on the map because then what I did is I ended up leveraging that opportunity to show that I really did have those consulting skills.

Sonja: (14:21)

And then I started applying for consulting positions again, but I had some creative positioning in my resume and reaching out to people on LinkedIn and all the things that you do to, you know, get people to recognize and notice you. And then when I interviewed for those roles, I actually some, some real solid work success stories that I could, um, reference saying, you know, the work that I had done, um, in a very large organization, it was a fortune 500 company and was able to say like, oh no, I actually, I actually do have this consulting experience and here's why you should hire me.

Joel: (14:53)

Yeah. I love that you have that audacity to essentially pitch yourself, um, to your colleague. And that started snowballing in, in a positive way for you. And all of a sudden you started gaining that experience because you put yourself out there. And a lot of there's a lot of power and potential when you just, when you just start and you go for what you are interested in, you go for what you desire and it might not happen. And your dream might not, um, unfold overnight. But when you start, then there can be that, that, that beautiful snowball effect. So I'm really curious to dive into this top of what you've talked about, um, quite a bit, uh, is this idea of the great transformation as opposed to the great resignation. Um, we've heard a lot about in, um, in the career world the past year or two, how there's been, I mean, obviously in 20, a lot changed in the world.

Joel: (15:54)

And one of the things that changed is, I guess you could say people, a lot of people started kind of having some new thoughts and new perspectives on their own lives. And this actually sparked for, for a percentage of people, um, the, the, the desire to resign from the, our current job. And you're, you're starting to frame this, this sort of, um, um, recalibration process as, as the world has shifted as an opportunity for, for transformation and to take a deep reflection, a conscious reflection on what it is that you desire. And I, I would love to flesh that out because we're huge fans of, of, of any sort of personal transformation and that self-discovery process to go after what you truly desire. So tell me more about how you define this, this great transformation.

The Great Resignation into the Great Transformation

Sonja: (16:51)

Yeah. Um, well, you know, I, I, I think everybody's very aware of the great resignation by now. Um, I did wanna share a couple key stats about that. Sure. Um, just that I think, you know, a big thing is that employees are actually experiencing significantly more burnout than we ever have before. Um, in fact, we, employees are experiencing a 21% increase in burnout over the last two years throughout the pandemic. Um, I think that's really what's causing this resignation. Um, you know, our resignation rates are 10 to 15% higher than they were in, in 2019. Um, and 50% of the workforce is actually can considering changing or doing something different. So that's kind of leading the way for the great transformation and the way that I like to think about it is that it's like, yeah, you know, for whatever reason people may be feeling burnt out, or they may be considering a new opportunity, but if you can utilize this as a really wonderful opportunity and opening for something new and different, and to really get clear on who are you, and what's important to you, you know, our lives have changing significantly over the last two years.

Sonja: (18:11)

So it's like, you know, when's the last time that you really did that reflection to understand, okay, where am I at in my own life? And what's important to me and what do I want for my career and my life and my family, and, you know, the overall lifestyle of how we all live and work together. Um, so I really recommend, you know, just getting really clear on, you know, who are you and what do you want? Um, when I work with clients, I have a whole series of criteria that we, that we work through to help evaluate what's important to you. And how does that rank against everything else that you could and should be considering when making a career change? Um, and are you really considering making a very big career change? Are you wanting to move into a new job title or a new industry, or is it mostly just moving into a new organization doing kind of the same things that you've been doing before?

Sonja: (19:04)

Um, so, you know, I call it the great transformation because this is really an opportunity to be in the director's seat of your own career for you to get clear about what you want and then start to create those right kind of opportunities for you moving forward. And I think a lot of times people think if they're gonna work for someone else, that they just take whatever job comes to them, whatever job's available, um, and even, you know, whatever the pay is, comes along with that. But can you utilize this as an opportunity to get really creative and actually create the right types of opportunities for you, um, or make sure that whatever roles you are interviewing for that, it actually aligns with your values, it aligns with who you are and what you want and the impact that you wanna make in this world.

Sonja: (19:51)

And I think that's some of the things that can lead to that resignation is that maybe you're working for an organization that's actually not in alignment with who you are, or, you know, if you're working 40 plus hours a week for someone else, can you actually relate what you do to the impact that that company makes in the world. And do you feel good about that? Do you feel good about how your, your skills and background and expertise are being, you know, utilized to contribute to something bigger than you along with all of your coworkers and other employees? So, um, you know, what is it that's important to you and how can you actually create those opportunities or identify those opportunities, ensure that, and ensure that you are pursuing the exact right things. Um, so just to be a little bit more clear about that is like, you know, do some short and long term career planning and figure out is what you're doing right now is that in alignment with where you actually want to go in a longer term future, and then, you know, what are all the things that you need to have in place to help pursue that roadmap?

How to Move in the Right Career Direction?

Sonja: (20:55)

How do you position yourself to start to move in that next right direction? And, um, you know, if you don't already have the skills and qualifications to do that, then how can you get creative of about getting those right things in place you actually can move in that direction.

Joel: (21:12)

Beautiful. Yeah, it's definitely an opportunity, um, with any, with any challenge comes an opportunity I believe. And it makes sense for sure that so many people are feeling burned out, um, with all the different pressures from different directions that have happened in the past couple of view years, um, has also has been a fair amount of people suddenly working remotely and who are not accustomed to that. And that can create, excuse me, that can create a sense of alienation or social isolation sometimes. And so there can be that type of, um, in terms of one's mindset, there can be perhaps a feeling of resignation itself. And so it's an, it's an opportunity when we can kind of pause and say, okay, I have, I have the power to choose my attitude here in these circumstances, and I'm gonna choose to an attitude of creativity and growth and purpose and intention, and how can I, I have taken this situation and redirect and leverage it towards something that I desire, um, and perhaps to actually live and experience a professional life that's meaningful.

Dream Job Career Advice

Joel: (22:23)

And, and if not just your absolute dream, I mean, I think people hear the word dream or they, the term dream job or dream career. And it sounds like, um, it sounds not realistic, or it sounds like fluffy. And, you know, I like what I like to encourage people to do is like, Hey, share you, are you in touch with how short life is, and why not? Like, why not go for it? Why not go take a pause and reset and say, okay, what do, what do I really want? Like, let yourself allow yourself to dream and visualize and get clear on what it actually, you, what is it that you actually want? Because I believe that happiness is your birthright. So why not allow yourself to experience that? So, um, yeah, I'd love to hear you talk a little bit more about that, that process of, of you've sort of touched on it, of, of setting those goals. And I just love that idea of like, being really clear about the planning process. And I'd love to hear, like any exercises you do with your clients and how to go about defining, you know, figuring out what you want and like, to sort of finding that underlying why or that underlying purpose.

Sonja: (23:36)

Yeah, absolutely. Um, so I mean, as we've already been talking about like, you know, changes in our lifestyles through the pandemic, a big theme that I'm seeing with a lot of my clients is that people are almost no longer willing to go into a physical office space. Um, I think there are some people who are eager to get back into the office because they've been, you know, stuck at home with their family and their kids. And maybe it's a little too chaotic in the home, the home environment. They actually wanna get back out and engage with adults on a, you know, coworkers, similar like-minded people on a day-to-day basis. But the vast majority of people that I talk to are like, I want a hundred percent permanent role moving forward. And I'm hearing a lot of people that want the ability to travel and work at the same time.

Sonja: (24:28)

So, you know, if that's, you know, that may or may not be you, if you're listening to this, that may or may not be you, but that's like one example of something that you could think about of like, what's the kind of lifestyle that I want to have and how can my career fit into that? Um, you know, I think the lands escape around that is changing. And I think companies are, if, if they don't already have a work from home policy, like post-pandemic, if they don't already have that, they're gonna need to come up with something very soon so that they can, um, meet the demands or the desires of their employees. Um, but some companies just, aren't gonna go for that. They're gonna call everybody back into work. And then, you know, if that's you and the company you work for, and you want that remote role, or you want the ability to have that laptop, that laptop lifestyle, then that might be something that you wanna consider.

How to Move Forward in Your Career

Sonja: (25:19)

So that's one example. Um, other things that I work on with folks is, you know, we look at compensation like, where are you at now? And where do you wanna be in the future moving forward? And are you even looking at the right feasible types of opportunities that can get you into the income range of what you really desire? Um, other things could be like growth opportunities or leadership opportunities. You know, if you, um, are an individual contributor, right, but you'd like to move into management or leadership, or you're already in a management role, but you'd like to move into a higher level of leadership. You know, how is, how important is that to you? And is that part of your overall search process and how are you positioning yourself in the right way for those types of roles? Um, you know, we look at things like, you know, benefit and retirement contribution.

Sonja: (26:10)

Um, we look at company culture, you know, the work environment and the values of that, that organization, what your manager, what your relationship with your manager might look like or relationship with coworkers that that's actually a huge, both of those are huge contributing factors to employee retention in is like how, you know, what, what's your relationship like with your direct manager? Um, and if you're in a position right now that you, you don't feel supported by your manager, that might be, that might be a big consideration of whether it's time to move on or not. Or if you don't get along with your coworkers, that can really have a huge contribution to your overall, uh, work and life satisfaction. So we look at those kinds of things and we get real specific about, okay, well, what, what does that look like to you? You know, if, if the relationship with your manager is so important, like what do you, what do you want in your future manager and how will you know it when you see it so that when you are interviewing with a new organization, that you can actually be proactively evaluating that, uh, evaluating that through your interview process.

Sonja: (27:17)

So the more clear that you are on all of these things upfront, and you've kind of gone through all this various different criteria and you've evaluated it and you've, um, defined it specifically for you, what is your satisfaction criteria? And like, what exactly does that mean to you then when you are interviewing and engaging with new opportunities, you can be reevaluating the same criteria and you know, how well it meets the mark for, and if you don't, if you're not able to see that, you know, from your first few interviews, then you, you can start to formulate, okay, what kinds of questions do I need to ask to be able to make the right decision for me to see if this is the right next opportunity for me to move into? And I think sometimes people don't really clearly think through that and, and they get a job offer.

Sonja: (28:05)

They're just really excited that somebody's offering them a new, a new job. Um, especially if it, you know, includes a little bit more money than what you've previously been making, but is it, is it actually in the income range of what you said was important to you? You know, cause it's like, oh, I'm gonna make $5,000 more in this next new role or $10,000 more great. That's awesome. But what if you could have made $50,000 more per year, you know, were you targeting the right types of opportunities or, you know, is that company actually doing something that's important to you in the world? Like when you accept that opportunity, are you gonna feel proud of the work that you do and is this something that you're gonna want to talk to your friends and family about? Or is this something you kind of like you, you know, wanna keep to yourself and just kind of hide? Um, yeah. So there's a number of different things that you can really explore. And I think the important thing is to evaluate that criteria, figure out exactly what it looks like for you, and then make sure that you are incorporating that evaluation criteria as you're entertaining, what other future potential offers could be out there for you.

Joel: (29:09)

Yeah, that's good stuff with, I love the level of detail that you've just you've described with all these elements of, of a career and a particular job. And if you can get that clarity, that specificity, um, and kind of create that blueprint and dial in with the real clear vision, then you can have something to aim for it. It's so it's, it means so, um, obvious in one sense, but it's, um, it's incredible how often we forget to, to be that specific about exactly what we want and then to go aim for that, and then you can adjust accordingly as you go on. So I love that and, um, really appreciate this conversation, Sonya and people can find you@dynamocareers.com and I would love to just pass it back to you for any other last words. Any other places people can find you or anything else that you wanna talk about?

Sonja: (30:01)

Sure. Thank you, Joel. Um, yeah, you can go to my website, dynamo careers.com. Um, I also have a free quiz that I would love to offer to people that actually continues what we were just talking about. It's called the, does your, does your work work for you quiz? Um, and so it's a great really quick assessment. Go through an answer, few questions. It'll take you five minutes or less to answer those questions. And at the end it will showcase, you know, how well your work is currently working for you and can give you some additional guidance or potential action steps of what you could start to take to move forward in a new direction for you. So to find that you just go to dynamo career.com/quiz and dynamo is D Y N a M O careers.com/quiz Q U I Z. Um, so I'd love it. If you check that out, you can also find me on LinkedIn. Uh, my name Sonya price, S O N J a P R I C E. Um, and it's been an honor and a pleasure to be here with you today. It's really fun. Appreciate you having me on the show, Joel

Joel: (31:08)

RA on we'll link all to those spots in the show notes and, um, yeah, thanks again, Sonya. And we'll, uh, be in touch. Appreciate you coming on.

Sonja: (31:17)

Fantastic. Thank you.