November 22, 2023 • 37 mins
Whether you’re just starting out, trying to make a change, or gunning for the C-suite, this conversation with the #1 CEO recruiter in the world and best selling author on career and leadership will get you to the next level. Tons of incredible advice, including:
🎙️ When to be a generalist, and when to “declare your major”
🎙️ The biggest mistake people make in interviews
🎙️ Solving the permission paradox: getting the job without the experience
🎙️ Making a career pivot—it’s never too late
Whether you’re at the beginning of an ambitious career or looking to make a surge to the top, this conversation is essential.
Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-office-hours-with-mike-st-122602026/
🚨And coming up next week: Shishir Mehrotra, founder and CEO of Coda, former product leader for YouTube. DM your questions or call 213.419.0596
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📚 The Five Patterns of an Extraordinary Career
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to office hours, but we sit down with the
people shaping the world and answer your most pressing questions
about leadership, career, and life. I'm Mike Steibe, and if
you've ever wondered what it takes to get all the
way to CEO, to these conversations for you. As the
leader of Spencer Stewart's CEO recruiting practice, our guest today
has likely played more CEOs in their roles than anyone
(00:25):
else in the world. In addition, he's also the author
of seven life changing books on career growth and leadership,
including the Career Playbook and the international bestseller You're in
Charge Now. What if your cell phone blows up and
Jim Sittern is on the line, You take the call.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Jim.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Thanks Mike. Such a pleasure.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
So, Jim, when I was twenty six and I'm struggling
with my career, I read a phenomenal book and it
was your book, The Five Patterns of an Extraordinary Career,
and it literally changed the direction of my work and
where I ended up. And now you, your firm, have
put me in some of the most interesting situations board CEO,
et cetera. It's really come full circle and it is
(01:11):
for me a real amazing pleasure to be here with you.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Oh that's so great, Mike.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
We're gonna have a lot of fun. As you know,
we got a bunch of questions from the audience. Folks
wanted to hear about you on how to get to CEO,
how to make their first couple of career choices, how
to shape their careers. And there's a bunch of questions
in here about how to interview too, which nobody knows
better than you. So it's all right, Will let's go
to the first one. It's from Mateo and San Diego,
and he said.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
I find the hardest thing about planning my career is
knowing what I want to do. How did you guys
know the right direction for you early in your career
and what advice do you have for someone who's struggling
to see that path?
Speaker 4 (01:46):
So, Jim, I got this great job at Morgan Stanley
as a financial analyst on Wall Street, and it was
the early eighties, and I was okay at it, but
I wasn't great at it, and I did well enough
to be fine. But I was able to get into
Harvard Business School, which was amazing I had a framework
for what I wanted to do. I was twenty six,
(02:08):
and I'll be really honest, Mike, I wanted to work
in a highly prestigious organization. Have prestige was important to me.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
You've noted that can be important in career paths is
having that early blue chip experience.
Speaker 4 (02:20):
I am a huge believer in going blue chip early
and then building off of that. And I'll be honest,
I wanted to make a lot of money as well,
So lifestyle, money, and prestige were my three kind of things.
And then I interviewed across the board, and I was
good at interviewing, so I got lots of different opportunities
and pretty advanced offers. I went to a company at
(02:44):
the time was one of the most valuable media companies
in the world. It was many of the listeners might
not even remember it, but you certainly will readers Digest Readers.
Digest had just gone public. It was a six billion
dollar company, the largest magazine company in the world. I
had my year review and I had a boss who said, Jim,
he said, you had an okay year. You know, it
(03:05):
wasn't great. He said, let me ask you a question.
What is the skill on the back of which you
want to build your career.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
It's a really interesting question.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
That's a good way to think about it.
Speaker 4 (03:15):
And I was thirty three, and without even hesitating, I said, relationships.
So long story short, at the age of the tender
age of thirty four, I went into Spencer Stewart and
it's been an amazing twenty five plus years.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
And it sounds like before that you were focused on
the sort of external items like prestige and money and location,
and not that those things aren't important, but as soon
as you turned your attention to the internal motivator, the
thing that you personally enjoyed doing.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
Yes, I had a.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
Very similar experience. I was at McKinsey early in my
career as well, about eighteen months into it. Our receptionist
Linda said to me, Mike, you don't look happy. And
I said, I don't know, Linda, this jobs like that.
And she said, well, Mike, you know it's not address
rehearsal that your life. You probably wouldn't do something else.
She was right, and I got my you know, I
got my head on what I mean, what I personally
realized is I just I really enjoyed the doing I
(04:08):
enjoyed the operating interesting and the you know, the advice
you give in consulting. It can be a lot of
fun to get to that point, but it felt so unsatisfying.
I kept eating the appetizer, not the entree. So it's
really helpful. It was great advice.
Speaker 4 (04:21):
It's great and that's why you've become a multiple time
successful operating CEO.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
And you're awesome at it.
Speaker 4 (04:26):
I would have been allows the CEO because what I
loved about McKenzie was I love the advisory work. I
love the teamwork, I love the communications, I love the
global network of it. I love the people. And so
what I what I learned and what I've learned, and
I've now done research and proven this and we'll talk
about this in the five Patterns in the Career Playbook,
(04:46):
is that those criteria that really are important. Number one
is people. You can have the worst career, you could
have the worst job description, you can actually make lousy money,
you can have a really brutal lifestyle. But if you're
truly working with people who you love, you respect, through
(05:07):
your friends, you admire, you're going to be pretty happy.
And that's why if you look back on people who've
been in the military or in the police force or
the fire department. They love it because they're like bond.
There's a bond there. So people is number one. And
then the second thing is what I learned again, you
were an operator, so your strengths are going to run companies.
(05:29):
Playing to your strengths is a really So back to
the original question of our listener, in the age of
and in your twenties and your thirties, try and be
really self aware and get advice from your friends, your family,
your colleagues. What are you're distinctive at. I was great
at interviewing, I was great at communicating, I was great
at writing. I'm actually good at selling and persuading things.
(05:53):
So if you're in a role that plays to those strengths,
you're going to be successful. And if you can do
that with people who you like, then the financial success
will inevitably follow. And the lifestyle if you can shape
it a little bit, especially in our now more of
a hybrid world, but that will also fall into place
as well.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
That's fantastic.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
You know.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
The next question it dovetails off of this nicely. Grace says,
I'm early in my career that I've always performed at
a high.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Level, and I have ambitions to be a senior business leader.
What can I be doing now to set myself up
for success in the long term.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
So you talked a bit about some of your early
experiences and you've seen a lot of people's trajectory. What
are those? What do people do?
Speaker 2 (06:36):
How do we get there? That's a brilliant question.
Speaker 4 (06:39):
So and we've actually researched this and in the book
The Five Patterns of Extraordinary Careers, we did we interviewed
over one thousand senior leaders, and we surveyed scores of thousands,
and we were looking for the differentiators and that's where
those different cerentiators between the good and the great are
(07:02):
the five patterns. There are two things in those five
patterns that are at the heart of the question. Number
one is you have to do the basic job well.
It sounds trite, but you have to do whatever your
job is. You have to do it well. You have
to be really responsible, and then to do it with
(07:25):
a good attitude, especially as someone in their twenty I
think it's true no matter what age. But doing it
with a positive attitude, it can do attitude, be responsive
to your colleagues to if you have clients or customers,
to your clients or customers, be responsive and have an
attitude of how can I help so, and just do
high quality work. That's essentially the ticket to the dance.
(07:47):
But that's not the real answer to the question of
how you differentiate and make it to that corner office.
It's really about differentiating yourself based on doing more than
what's asked. But here's the distinction. Back in the research
for the five patterns, and we did an analysis of
(08:10):
the kind of the top quartile of executives, and most
of them the survey and the research was to what
extent do you meet your objectives? And basically on a
self reported basis, everybody says, of course, I meet my objectives.
And then the people who are the top quartile, they
(08:32):
overall exceeded their objectives by about twenty twenty five percent.
So if they were in sales, they'd overdelivered their quoted
by twenty five percent, if they were in operations they
would deliver better costs by twenty percent. If they were
in finance whatever cost of borrowing makes sense. But the
top five percent tile actually only met their objectives. But
(08:55):
before we figured out. We was like, wait a second,
there's a mistake in the data because these are the
demonstrated top five percentile. But they just meet their objectives.
When we did the follow up, we did something like
three hundred follow up interviews to get at the heart
of this question, and they said, no, just doing twenty
percent more, that's not the thing. What we were able
(09:16):
to do is free up some capacity doing a great
job in the basics and then thinking what would add
value to my job, or to my team, or to
my department or to my company, and then do that.
And this is where you can be very much of
a proactive person. Your boss isn't going to really know
(09:36):
what else you can do. You know your job better
than anybody. Do the basics, do it really well with
a great attitude, free up time and say, huh, I
can do this, and whether it's a side project, it
can go back to being an intern and sit and
volunteer to do the summer outing. Or you can be
a CFO and all the way at the top and
(09:59):
freep to time and serve on an external corporate board.
Or you can be a division head working on your
division and say you know what I actually think there's
an opportunity to do an enterprise wide AI strategy. I'd
like to do that. The principle applies from the beginning
of your career to the end. So it's the differentiation
(10:20):
and here's the thing. Do a great job on the basics,
free up time to do something different that meets two tests,
that adds value to the organization, and that you bring
others along with him, so you're not considered just a
grand standard.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
You talked before you went and got an MBA. I
get that question a lot early in your career. Is
it a good investment of time?
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Now?
Speaker 1 (10:43):
What's your framework for that? And what do you see
in other successful leaders?
Speaker 4 (10:47):
It's changing a lot, Mike. Back when I went to
business school, I don't have the numbers on the top
of my head, but back then the Fortune five hundred CEOs,
there were a lot of Harvard MBAs, and it was
like the Supreme Court it was today, it's not nearly
(11:08):
so much. A lot of founders, not only today, not
recommend MBAs, A lot of them. You know, I don't
even recommend going to college exactly. I think that's a
risky strategy. I'm a big personal believer in education. I
think education is a huge opportunity both to develop skills
and to develop relationships. Relationships will be something that carries
(11:30):
you through your career.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
And it's probably debatable if it raises the ceiling, but
it definitely raises the floor.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
It's great.
Speaker 4 (11:35):
That's a great way to say so. In general, I'm
supportive of it, but with particularly with the question of MBAs,
it's a if you're in that top twenty schools where
the network are going to really be a part of
your professional future, then it could be worth the opportunity
cost of coming out full time and the cost of
(11:59):
doing that, But if it's not, if you're not in
the top top group then and you really want the skills,
there are lots of different opportunities to get the skills today,
and it goes back to this eighty twenty rule. Just
freeing up some capacity, you know, getting advanced education, and
whether it's on a course basis through companies like Coursera,
or if it's online education through degree programs. That's the
(12:23):
way I would think about it.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
Nail the day job, do the side job, bring other
people along with you, and you don't necessarily have to
take the two years off you can learn through the
side hustle. We've been part of the question on AGA
and Nashville had hit me up on LinkedIn and asked,
is like, is it better to be a generalist or
a specialist? And how long do you need to spend
and role? So that's highly related to this question. Do
(12:45):
you have a deeper perspective.
Speaker 4 (12:47):
In the end, And I'll answer Mike by going backwards
to me. In most cases, generalists lead big organizations, big
teams and solve big problems and have bigger impact. But
to get to be that high impact generalist, you have
to be known for something if you've got to do something.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
So my.
Speaker 4 (13:12):
Ideal recommended pattern is start a little generalist. You have
to start with something, whether it's sales, finance, technology, engineering,
something physical, it doesn't matter. Start and do it well.
But in your twenties, try and get a lot of
different experiences. See what you like, see what you're good at,
see where you're thriving, and then by think of it
(13:35):
in kind of decades. So in your twenties you're trying
out lots of different things. By the end of the twenties,
you want to say this in the career playbook. You
want to essentially declare your major. In my case, I
was going to be a human capital or recruiter. You
want to be a finance person and technology and engineer
whatever it is, and then do a great job in that.
But through this principle of finding other ways, then you
(13:59):
add add value in outside ways and you become more
for generalists. And by the way, this leads to a
really really important question, which is how do you you
can become such a specialist and so valuable to your
organization that how do you actually move So I think
there might be other questions about about that. Let me
(14:20):
go to the next one, and we're starting to get there.
John David and Tuscaloosa, Alabama said, every.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
Interesting job posting, I see it requires me to have
experience in that job already.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
How am I supposed to get a job that requires
me to have already had the job? And why would
I want to do a job I've already done?
Speaker 4 (14:37):
So you actually teed this up quite nicely. Well, that's
such a great question, and it is. It's something, it's
a conundrum, and I call it the permission paradox.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
Permission I remember, I remember that you.
Speaker 4 (14:51):
Can't get the job without the experience, but you can't
get the experience out of the job, so you're you know,
but you don't want to be defeatists. So how do
you actually over come that permission paradox? And there are
strategies to do that, but by the way, just be
encouraged everybody. It's not only at your entry level or
the manager level. It's all the way to the CEO suite.
(15:14):
You know, you're on public company boards, you know, pup
boards say oh, we're recruiting for CEO. We want someone
who's been a CEO before because we don't want to
take the risk.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
We want a board director. Make sure they have public
company board experience exactly.
Speaker 4 (15:26):
So that permission paradox is there throughout your entire career.
So the understanding it and being able to overcome it
is actually a really valuable lifelong skill. So the way
to overcome that is well, there are few ways. Number
one is to break down whatever the next job is
into its component parts. And let's say it's a manager,
(15:51):
where you will have had to the listing on LinkedIn
says you will have had to manage five to ten
people a budget of xyz.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
You will have had to drive revenue and manage costs
or something like that.
Speaker 4 (16:05):
And let's say you haven't been a manager yet, so
you're breaking into your first manager job. You take each
of those things and you try and find other ways
to get that experience. Okay, so you haven't been a
manager in your current job, but let's say you're the
coach of youth soccer team, or you're doing the budget
for the school fundraising drive or something like that. You
(16:28):
just you address it and you say, well, I know
the listing is asking for all these skills. I haven't
done that all in my job, but I've done it
in these five different places. And that way you kind
of build it up and then you break. You give
the opportunity for them to take a chance on you
(16:49):
because you've said, okay, you understand what their need is,
but you've found a creative way to address that.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
I remember when I wanted to get to management and
I hadn't been a manager, and it's a zero to
one move, as you suggested, and I pitched my team
on us getting some NBA interns because I knew nobody
would want to manage them. So once we got the interns,
I got the interns, and so for the summer. You know,
at this point I'd probably read twenty books on leadership,
and these two poor NBA interns came in. I was like,
(17:16):
sit down, You're about to be managed like you wouldn't believe.
But then you get a small piece of it, you
get a jumping off point. Yes, we go next to
Darius in Washington.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
I have a big interview coming up. Well, mistake to
people making interviews and what are the keys to impressing someone?
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (17:43):
So the interview is with a type company? So what
should I weary?
Speaker 1 (17:47):
And by the way, I went to my Google interviews
how many every many years ago in a suit from
NBC and I'll never forget how weird I felt walking
around the Google campus and a suit and tie. So
we can help you.
Speaker 4 (17:58):
Darius, Darius question, and as I said at the early part,
interviewing is sort of my hobby and passion.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
How many thousands of interviews have you done?
Speaker 4 (18:08):
I've estimated that I've done now approaching fifteen thousand interviews
I wrote. I wrote an article on LinkedIn. I think
it was my number one read article, I think four
hundred thousand reads, and the title of the article was
interviewing to live living to interview. Okay, and I've been
(18:30):
in so many interviews and as I said earlier, being
this is.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
The number one interviewer in the world. So what do
we need to know?
Speaker 4 (18:39):
First of all, the interviewer, they're just they're trying to
solve a problems, just like open job exactly, and so
they're looking to do If you recognize you can be
the solution to their problem, then it changes the power dynamic,
It changes your mentality. You're not nervous, you're trying to
(19:00):
understand what it is. So a few tips on that.
Number one is try and really if you can research
the person that you're going to be interviewing with. Now
in this wide information world that we all live in,
you might not know, but that's possible. You know, to
(19:21):
ask someone in advance to be set up. Who am
I interviewing with? Number two here's some There's been tons
of research on interviewing, and this is something to take
advantage of when you're the interviewee, but something to be
cautious of when you're doing the interviewing. Most people make
a decision in their first five minutes, even in their
(19:44):
first three misure and the psychology psychological research shows that
people make a decision in the first three to five minutes,
and then they spend the next twenty five minutes or
forty five minutes, whatever it's scheduled, looking for data to
support the decision that the I've already made.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
We've talked about Daniel Connerman and Daniel Conoman and show
all of his research shows the way that we make
these instinctual, emotional decisions.
Speaker 4 (20:07):
And by the way, sometimes those decisions are not bad.
But as an interviewer I train people on this all
the time. You really have to resist that and be
aware of it and look for real situational situational data,
behavioral data, cultural data. But most people don't do that.
(20:30):
Most people will in the first five minutes, which means
that you really need to have your opening answer. You
need to when you if it's in person or on zoom.
How you introduce yourself, how you sit down, how you
shake a hand, what you're wearing is essential because they're
going to have a huge impression in the first thirty seconds.
(20:50):
So the opening is key. So whatever they whatever they ask,
So Mike, tell me about yourself or you know, why
are you interested in this? You want to have you
want to practice in front of a mirror. You want
your two minute opening statement, which basically quickly tells your
story in like two minutes maybe three minutes, who you are,
(21:11):
where you came from, why you're interested in this job,
and why you might be great for this job. Rehearse
that and have that no matter what they ask. That's
the answer to the very first questions like how's the
weather great? You know, and it's like, oh, great to
see you today. Well, let me tell you why I'm
really excited to be here today, Mike, and you do
you do that? So having a two or three minute
(21:33):
rehearsed opening statement of who you are and basically a
little bit of a narrative, not just the other thing
is so now you've had a good opening and now
it's five minutes in and now they're asking you about
your experience, and like you apply these these principles like
the permission paradise say oh, Mike, you haven't been a
(21:54):
manager before, and said, well, yes, I know that's what.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
So you have that.
Speaker 4 (21:57):
And you also want to talk very humbly about what's
worked well and what hasn't worked well. You don't want
to be arrogant, and you really want to be come
across as self reflective. Let me tell you the environments
in which I've really thrived and why I think this
could be a great fit.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
I appreciate that as a hiring manager when I ask someone,
you know, what are your weaknesses? What are you and
they tell me and I try too hard, I care
too much. I mean, the interview just is over. It
is over, and you've got to be constantly learning and
reflecting on what you've done wrong and what you've learned
from it. Exactly having a humility show in an interview
is so important.
Speaker 4 (22:33):
Okay, most first interviews like yours, Darius, probably coming up,
is probably going to be half an hour, and they're
going to make this decision very quickly. But in the
last five or seven minutes they say, okay, well let
me turn to you. What questions do you have for me?
And there's a real temptation, especially early in your career.
You want to be polite and respectful. That's great, but
(22:53):
you say no, no, I don't want to take more time,
and then they leave, and that's a huge opportunity missed.
You would be shocked at how many hiring managers basically say, oh,
I really like her for this job. Why because she
asked the best questions. Okay, so how do you actually
ask the best questions? Here's the way to ask the best.
(23:14):
This is so simple and so powerful and so doable
for anybody about to do an interview. Whatever company you're
going to interview, go into Google and type the company,
say you're going to interview into it. You put in
into it CEO, Q and A and then Sosan Ga
(23:36):
Darzi the CEO of Into it will be shown on
CNBC or whatever and Reuter's whatever company, and you'll have
professional journalists who have spent with producers preparing really good
questions about the company, the culture. You basically take those
same questions and then you put them in your own voice.
(23:58):
Then you get the said, wow, they've done their homework.
That's terrific advice. I've always been astounded.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
I've interviewed executives right who've asked me, you know, what
are the company's priorities? And I've been like, we're public company.
I tell everybody every ninety days like little bit of research.
Speaker 4 (24:12):
But so if you went on you know EXO, CEO,
Q and A, you they've given so many interviews and
then you pick three or five. But the other thing
about so prepare in writing, have them written down or
typed up, have them there, Because when you get to
that question, what questions do you have for me? You
want to look down at your notes. And it's okay
even if you're in person to have a little notebook
(24:34):
or have a chatty that you're prepared. That's right, Thank you,
Jamal and Charlotte says, Hey, I'm.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
A fintech recruiter in Charlotte.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
What's your advice for finding the right candidates and getting
them interested? So another recruiter wants to know from the best,
how do I do it?
Speaker 4 (24:50):
Most people make decisions on a very emotional basis, and
they want you want to know what's really important them.
And then again it's this is a perfect example of
it's the same situation on the other side of the coin.
You know, what are they trying to accomplish and why
is this company or this role a great fit to
(25:12):
their priorities. As a general thing, I think that we've
done a lot of research on this, mikeid Spencer Stewart.
The role of purpose and mission has become one of
the most important differentiators for people looking for great, great roles,
and so I would go to, here are our values,
(25:34):
here's our purpose, here's our mission, and here's how this
role fits into that. So give them the big thing
and then how this fits into that, and then talk
about the culture. I think culture sells. We do boardwork
for some of the biggest companies in the world, we
do CEO work of the biggest companies in the world,
(25:55):
and talking about where a culture is and what is
celebrated and where that needs to change or evolve culture
really sells as well. And then of course there are
things pragmatically right now about flexibility, job mobility and where
it's leading and all that, but I would really default
(26:17):
to purpose and mission and how this role fits into that.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
I've also when I'm hiring someone, I spend a lot
of time with them. I've actually maybe at least the
last fifteen years, I haven't made an offer that somebody
hasn't hasn't accepted because by the time we get there, right,
we really know each other nice. And so you know,
my suggestion to the to Jamal, who's the recruiter here,
is have your business partners really involved in the process,
(26:42):
and a lot and I'm always I'm always taking it
back by how insufficient amount of time people spend on
what I think are the most important actions they'll take
in the year, which is assembling their team. So Jamal,
it's also it's time and conveying. As Jim said, that
energy around the mission and the culture and the people
and the prize that you're after. People really feed on that.
(27:03):
So a lot of our questions have been about these
sort of early and mid career moves. That where we
have a question here from Brian and Columbus who says.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
I'm fifty years old.
Speaker 3 (27:10):
I'm titled the old that I've done, but my career
helped plots in the last few years, and now a
lot of my contemporaries are getting tweezed out when there's
a cost cut at the company. Is it too late
for me to reaccelerate my career or to make a pivot?
Speaker 2 (27:24):
Brian, absolutely not.
Speaker 4 (27:26):
If hopefully you're again, I'm even older than you, and
I feel very fortunate to be in good health and
high energy, and I think being ambitious, curious, high energy,
and really motivated well into the second half of hopefully
(27:47):
a very long life is the way to go. And
I actually think this is a huge both issue and
opportunity for our economy as everybody has age lifespans extend.
So number one is if you're healthy and fit and energetic,
that absolutely it's not at all too early. But how
(28:09):
you move mid career is very different than early career.
And then there's a whole other topic ten or twenty
years Brian from now, when you will have been doing
something again, and then you have to think about what
most people refer to as retirement. And I actually don't
believe in that word. I believe in moving from phase
(28:30):
to phase to phase. There's an amazing book I wish
i'd written it called From Strength to Strength?
Speaker 2 (28:38):
Did you ever read that?
Speaker 1 (28:38):
I just read it.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
It's brilliant.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
I'm too young, fortune, Yah, you're too young, but it's
really good. It's about how to think of the sort
of last twenty or thirty years of your professional life
and how you wanted to play yourself.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
So check that out.
Speaker 4 (28:49):
But the point is that you move from a say
age fifty or in your fifties, you want to build
on the experiences you've had and then try and find
new ways to apply that experience. Let me tell you
the story just a great example of this my brother
in law. We're here at iHeart. He was a lifelong
(29:13):
senior executive in the music industry and music promotion and
he was brilliant at it and go to radio stations
around the world many iHeart stations and get the labels
acts on air. That jaw that role and the role
of promotion has changed dramatically. He went into live entertainment.
(29:35):
But what is he doing now? He's got a private
aviation company. It's like, how did you get from one
to the other. It's a ten year process. What he
did is when he was doing music promotion, oftentimes he
had to go bring the acts from point A to
point point to point B around on these tours and stuff,
(29:57):
and so a lot of times the labels would have
to he'd have to arrange charters sometimes propeller things, but
go from play to place to place to place. And
he developed a lot of expertise in that. And during
COVID when when a lot of the commercial travel didn't
work so well, he had all these clients or these
(30:20):
relationships where he was doing representing them and he has
a music management company, but he was solving problems and
then all of a sudden, other people were saying like, oh,
I know you, you send you know so and so
on these things. Can you help us? You know our family,
You need to go to Florida or whatever. He created
this this great, great charter aviation company called Right Lane Aviation.
Speaker 2 (30:44):
It's amazing and.
Speaker 4 (30:46):
He just it's so anyway, there's ways to apply the
experience that you've done in one thing to other ways.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
Lee in New York City says.
Speaker 3 (31:04):
I'm pretty interverted and not much of a networker. How
do I make sure I know the right recruiters and
that I'm on their rata so that my career opportunity
is prevent this out.
Speaker 4 (31:14):
Most jobs are not gotten through recruiting. They're gotten through referrals.
And actually they're not even gotten through referrals of your friends.
They're really most of them are referrals of people who
have referred you, so their second level referrals. I'm going
(31:36):
to come back to the answer, but I'm going to
give a very important suggestion. When you're looking for a job,
you want to help make it easy for other people
to help you, and everyone will say, oh, how can
I help? You need to have a very crisp answer
to what you're interested in, and think of it as
(31:58):
planting a seed with anyone you're talking to. Mike, I'm
actually interested in a human capital position in a tech company.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
That's it.
Speaker 4 (32:07):
And Mike will be out at a party and someone
will say, hey, do you know someone who can help
me on our talent teams? Like, oh, I just talked
to I just hurt. So have that and share that
snippet very broadly, and think of that as kind of
a seed that's planted and it could go across you
use the word.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
Networking.
Speaker 4 (32:28):
I'm in the recruiting business, in the relationship business. I've
got all this stuff. Personally, I'm an introvert and I
I hate networking. I think I think of networking.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
I'd rather eat a lanyard than put it on and
walk around in the conference exactly.
Speaker 2 (32:43):
It's a little walking.
Speaker 4 (32:44):
People hate it, and by the people hate being networked too,
so so get rid of the even that my the word, oh, networking.
I find that really cringey, and think of it as
relationship building. And in a relationship ship, there's a quid
and a quid brogo, and there's how can I help?
(33:04):
If you come up into conversations with how can I
help all of a sudden, it's not a networking thing.
And when they ask you how can you help, then
you say, well, I'd be really interested in being human
columing and technical intelligence in that. And then there's another
way to think about this challenge. And it's hard. I mean,
(33:27):
trust me, I know. Look at looking for jobs is
really hard and really stressful. In the timeframe that you're
doing it, it's never fast enough and it's uncertain, and
there's self esteem issues that come up. Use the process
as a learning journey and you can you can now
where anyone can be a publisher. One tactic is to
(33:48):
do an article, even if it's self published on Medium
or on LinkedIn. You can talk to people and say,
I'm doing an article on the on the best practices
in human capital talent acquisition in technology. Can I get
ten minutes of you to chat about that. You do that,
I'll get your fifteen people. You get your access and
(34:09):
people will be much more interested. If you're doing that article,
then oh, I'd like to have a courtesy interview about
a human couple. You can do that with any topic.
And that's another tactic.
Speaker 1 (34:19):
I'd echo that I wrote an article for first round
Review and the title is something like, don't network, build
your meaningful connections. And it was very much that you know,
all the good things that have come to me through
a quote unquote network in my career been someone else
I just like and probably have done something for and
then they thought of me rather than the other way around.
I will make one note specific to recruiters is eventually
(34:40):
they'll find you and reach out that don't just say no.
Say no, but here are two or three people you
might like. I always like to leave a recruiter with
other folks because what have you done. You may have
helped somebody who you think highly of land a job.
You've helped a recruiter solve the problem they're trying to solve,
and then you'll get the call next time. Because even
if you're not the guy like, at least you know
people know you're on the floor and you can help
a good source put yourself into the ecosystem.
Speaker 2 (35:03):
That's a great point, Mike.
Speaker 1 (35:04):
This has been a ton of fun and really insightful
and for me, like I've been, this is a conversation
I've been looking forward to for twenty years, so very special.
Thank you for doing it.
Speaker 4 (35:13):
Talk about this stuff all day.
Speaker 1 (35:18):
Well, my friends, we covered a lot of ground today
from how to interview and how to shape your career
and how to make these important choices throughout. But if
I were to take one observation from this really insightful
and inspiring conversation with Jim, you heard from someone who
has broken down into its component parts, this ambiguous and
(35:41):
overwhelming thing that is your career and your career plan.
And I want to encourage everyone to do the same thing.
Don't just think about your next job, don't just think
about your next promotion, But as Jim advised, think about
what are those things that I enjoy? What are those
requirements that I have in my career? What are those
internalities things that I'm really good at that I want
(36:01):
to build my career on. And I'll remind you I'm
here for you in this podcast, is here for you
to help. You can always call in your questions or
you can DM me on LinkedIn or Instagram. The number
if you want to send in a text or a
voicemail is two one three four one nine five nine six.
You know you can find me online at Mike steib.
(36:23):
We We put this podcast together to help people have
extraordinary impact on their work and if there's anything we
can do to help you, just give us a shout.
I want to thank Jim for coming in. This was amazing,
and of course I want to thank Jen, Cara, Meg Jada,
Matt and the whole team at Blue Duck Media for
putting this all together. Dylan, Sasha, Gay, Nathan and Christine
(36:45):
at iHeart want to thank Bahd in the studio put
it all together, and Ben and the rest of the
team at William Morrison Dever for all their support. Office
Hours is a production of Blue Duck Media and distributed
by iHeartRadio. I will see you next week, Gang in
the meantime on your grind
Welcome to office hours, but we sit down with the
people shaping the world and answer your most pressing questions
about leadership, career, and life. I'm Mike Steibe, and if
you've ever wondered what it takes to get all the
way to CEO, to these conversations for you. As the
leader of Spencer Stewart's CEO recruiting practice, our guest today
has likely played more CEOs in their roles than anyone
(00:25):
else in the world. In addition, he's also the author
of seven life changing books on career growth and leadership,
including the Career Playbook and the international bestseller You're in
Charge Now. What if your cell phone blows up and
Jim Sittern is on the line, You take the call.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Jim.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Thanks Mike. Such a pleasure.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
So, Jim, when I was twenty six and I'm struggling
with my career, I read a phenomenal book and it
was your book, The Five Patterns of an Extraordinary Career,
and it literally changed the direction of my work and
where I ended up. And now you, your firm, have
put me in some of the most interesting situations board CEO,
et cetera. It's really come full circle and it is
(01:11):
for me a real amazing pleasure to be here with you.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Oh that's so great, Mike.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
We're gonna have a lot of fun. As you know,
we got a bunch of questions from the audience. Folks
wanted to hear about you on how to get to CEO,
how to make their first couple of career choices, how
to shape their careers. And there's a bunch of questions
in here about how to interview too, which nobody knows
better than you. So it's all right, Will let's go
to the first one. It's from Mateo and San Diego,
and he said.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
I find the hardest thing about planning my career is
knowing what I want to do. How did you guys
know the right direction for you early in your career
and what advice do you have for someone who's struggling
to see that path?
Speaker 4 (01:46):
So, Jim, I got this great job at Morgan Stanley
as a financial analyst on Wall Street, and it was
the early eighties, and I was okay at it, but
I wasn't great at it, and I did well enough
to be fine. But I was able to get into
Harvard Business School, which was amazing I had a framework
for what I wanted to do. I was twenty six,
(02:08):
and I'll be really honest, Mike, I wanted to work
in a highly prestigious organization. Have prestige was important to me.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
You've noted that can be important in career paths is
having that early blue chip experience.
Speaker 4 (02:20):
I am a huge believer in going blue chip early
and then building off of that. And I'll be honest,
I wanted to make a lot of money as well,
So lifestyle, money, and prestige were my three kind of things.
And then I interviewed across the board, and I was
good at interviewing, so I got lots of different opportunities
and pretty advanced offers. I went to a company at
(02:44):
the time was one of the most valuable media companies
in the world. It was many of the listeners might
not even remember it, but you certainly will readers Digest Readers.
Digest had just gone public. It was a six billion
dollar company, the largest magazine company in the world. I
had my year review and I had a boss who said, Jim,
he said, you had an okay year. You know, it
(03:05):
wasn't great. He said, let me ask you a question.
What is the skill on the back of which you
want to build your career.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
It's a really interesting question.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
That's a good way to think about it.
Speaker 4 (03:15):
And I was thirty three, and without even hesitating, I said, relationships.
So long story short, at the age of the tender
age of thirty four, I went into Spencer Stewart and
it's been an amazing twenty five plus years.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
And it sounds like before that you were focused on
the sort of external items like prestige and money and location,
and not that those things aren't important, but as soon
as you turned your attention to the internal motivator, the
thing that you personally enjoyed doing.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
Yes, I had a.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
Very similar experience. I was at McKinsey early in my
career as well, about eighteen months into it. Our receptionist
Linda said to me, Mike, you don't look happy. And
I said, I don't know, Linda, this jobs like that.
And she said, well, Mike, you know it's not address
rehearsal that your life. You probably wouldn't do something else.
She was right, and I got my you know, I
got my head on what I mean, what I personally
realized is I just I really enjoyed the doing I
(04:08):
enjoyed the operating interesting and the you know, the advice
you give in consulting. It can be a lot of
fun to get to that point, but it felt so unsatisfying.
I kept eating the appetizer, not the entree. So it's
really helpful. It was great advice.
Speaker 4 (04:21):
It's great and that's why you've become a multiple time
successful operating CEO.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
And you're awesome at it.
Speaker 4 (04:26):
I would have been allows the CEO because what I
loved about McKenzie was I love the advisory work. I
love the teamwork, I love the communications, I love the
global network of it. I love the people. And so
what I what I learned and what I've learned, and
I've now done research and proven this and we'll talk
about this in the five Patterns in the Career Playbook,
(04:46):
is that those criteria that really are important. Number one
is people. You can have the worst career, you could
have the worst job description, you can actually make lousy money,
you can have a really brutal lifestyle. But if you're
truly working with people who you love, you respect, through
(05:07):
your friends, you admire, you're going to be pretty happy.
And that's why if you look back on people who've
been in the military or in the police force or
the fire department. They love it because they're like bond.
There's a bond there. So people is number one. And
then the second thing is what I learned again, you
were an operator, so your strengths are going to run companies.
(05:29):
Playing to your strengths is a really So back to
the original question of our listener, in the age of
and in your twenties and your thirties, try and be
really self aware and get advice from your friends, your family,
your colleagues. What are you're distinctive at. I was great
at interviewing, I was great at communicating, I was great
at writing. I'm actually good at selling and persuading things.
(05:53):
So if you're in a role that plays to those strengths,
you're going to be successful. And if you can do
that with people who you like, then the financial success
will inevitably follow. And the lifestyle if you can shape
it a little bit, especially in our now more of
a hybrid world, but that will also fall into place
as well.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
That's fantastic.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
You know.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
The next question it dovetails off of this nicely. Grace says,
I'm early in my career that I've always performed at
a high.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Level, and I have ambitions to be a senior business leader.
What can I be doing now to set myself up
for success in the long term.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
So you talked a bit about some of your early
experiences and you've seen a lot of people's trajectory. What
are those? What do people do?
Speaker 2 (06:36):
How do we get there? That's a brilliant question.
Speaker 4 (06:39):
So and we've actually researched this and in the book
The Five Patterns of Extraordinary Careers, we did we interviewed
over one thousand senior leaders, and we surveyed scores of thousands,
and we were looking for the differentiators and that's where
those different cerentiators between the good and the great are
(07:02):
the five patterns. There are two things in those five
patterns that are at the heart of the question. Number
one is you have to do the basic job well.
It sounds trite, but you have to do whatever your
job is. You have to do it well. You have
to be really responsible, and then to do it with
(07:25):
a good attitude, especially as someone in their twenty I
think it's true no matter what age. But doing it
with a positive attitude, it can do attitude, be responsive
to your colleagues to if you have clients or customers,
to your clients or customers, be responsive and have an
attitude of how can I help so, and just do
high quality work. That's essentially the ticket to the dance.
(07:47):
But that's not the real answer to the question of
how you differentiate and make it to that corner office.
It's really about differentiating yourself based on doing more than
what's asked. But here's the distinction. Back in the research
for the five patterns, and we did an analysis of
(08:10):
the kind of the top quartile of executives, and most
of them the survey and the research was to what
extent do you meet your objectives? And basically on a
self reported basis, everybody says, of course, I meet my objectives.
And then the people who are the top quartile, they
(08:32):
overall exceeded their objectives by about twenty twenty five percent.
So if they were in sales, they'd overdelivered their quoted
by twenty five percent, if they were in operations they
would deliver better costs by twenty percent. If they were
in finance whatever cost of borrowing makes sense. But the
top five percent tile actually only met their objectives. But
(08:55):
before we figured out. We was like, wait a second,
there's a mistake in the data because these are the
demonstrated top five percentile. But they just meet their objectives.
When we did the follow up, we did something like
three hundred follow up interviews to get at the heart
of this question, and they said, no, just doing twenty
percent more, that's not the thing. What we were able
(09:16):
to do is free up some capacity doing a great
job in the basics and then thinking what would add
value to my job, or to my team, or to
my department or to my company, and then do that.
And this is where you can be very much of
a proactive person. Your boss isn't going to really know
(09:36):
what else you can do. You know your job better
than anybody. Do the basics, do it really well with
a great attitude, free up time and say, huh, I
can do this, and whether it's a side project, it
can go back to being an intern and sit and
volunteer to do the summer outing. Or you can be
a CFO and all the way at the top and
(09:59):
freep to time and serve on an external corporate board.
Or you can be a division head working on your
division and say you know what I actually think there's
an opportunity to do an enterprise wide AI strategy. I'd
like to do that. The principle applies from the beginning
of your career to the end. So it's the differentiation
(10:20):
and here's the thing. Do a great job on the basics,
free up time to do something different that meets two tests,
that adds value to the organization, and that you bring
others along with him, so you're not considered just a
grand standard.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
You talked before you went and got an MBA. I
get that question a lot early in your career. Is
it a good investment of time?
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Now?
Speaker 1 (10:43):
What's your framework for that? And what do you see
in other successful leaders?
Speaker 4 (10:47):
It's changing a lot, Mike. Back when I went to
business school, I don't have the numbers on the top
of my head, but back then the Fortune five hundred CEOs,
there were a lot of Harvard MBAs, and it was
like the Supreme Court it was today, it's not nearly
(11:08):
so much. A lot of founders, not only today, not
recommend MBAs, A lot of them. You know, I don't
even recommend going to college exactly. I think that's a
risky strategy. I'm a big personal believer in education. I
think education is a huge opportunity both to develop skills
and to develop relationships. Relationships will be something that carries
(11:30):
you through your career.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
And it's probably debatable if it raises the ceiling, but
it definitely raises the floor.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
It's great.
Speaker 4 (11:35):
That's a great way to say so. In general, I'm
supportive of it, but with particularly with the question of MBAs,
it's a if you're in that top twenty schools where
the network are going to really be a part of
your professional future, then it could be worth the opportunity
cost of coming out full time and the cost of
(11:59):
doing that, But if it's not, if you're not in
the top top group then and you really want the skills,
there are lots of different opportunities to get the skills today,
and it goes back to this eighty twenty rule. Just
freeing up some capacity, you know, getting advanced education, and
whether it's on a course basis through companies like Coursera,
or if it's online education through degree programs. That's the
(12:23):
way I would think about it.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
Nail the day job, do the side job, bring other
people along with you, and you don't necessarily have to
take the two years off you can learn through the
side hustle. We've been part of the question on AGA
and Nashville had hit me up on LinkedIn and asked,
is like, is it better to be a generalist or
a specialist? And how long do you need to spend
and role? So that's highly related to this question. Do
(12:45):
you have a deeper perspective.
Speaker 4 (12:47):
In the end, And I'll answer Mike by going backwards
to me. In most cases, generalists lead big organizations, big
teams and solve big problems and have bigger impact. But
to get to be that high impact generalist, you have
to be known for something if you've got to do something.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
So my.
Speaker 4 (13:12):
Ideal recommended pattern is start a little generalist. You have
to start with something, whether it's sales, finance, technology, engineering,
something physical, it doesn't matter. Start and do it well.
But in your twenties, try and get a lot of
different experiences. See what you like, see what you're good at,
see where you're thriving, and then by think of it
(13:35):
in kind of decades. So in your twenties you're trying
out lots of different things. By the end of the twenties,
you want to say this in the career playbook. You
want to essentially declare your major. In my case, I
was going to be a human capital or recruiter. You
want to be a finance person and technology and engineer
whatever it is, and then do a great job in that.
But through this principle of finding other ways, then you
(13:59):
add add value in outside ways and you become more
for generalists. And by the way, this leads to a
really really important question, which is how do you you
can become such a specialist and so valuable to your
organization that how do you actually move So I think
there might be other questions about about that. Let me
(14:20):
go to the next one, and we're starting to get there.
John David and Tuscaloosa, Alabama said, every.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
Interesting job posting, I see it requires me to have
experience in that job already.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
How am I supposed to get a job that requires
me to have already had the job? And why would
I want to do a job I've already done?
Speaker 4 (14:37):
So you actually teed this up quite nicely. Well, that's
such a great question, and it is. It's something, it's
a conundrum, and I call it the permission paradox.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
Permission I remember, I remember that you.
Speaker 4 (14:51):
Can't get the job without the experience, but you can't
get the experience out of the job, so you're you know,
but you don't want to be defeatists. So how do
you actually over come that permission paradox? And there are
strategies to do that, but by the way, just be
encouraged everybody. It's not only at your entry level or
the manager level. It's all the way to the CEO suite.
(15:14):
You know, you're on public company boards, you know, pup
boards say oh, we're recruiting for CEO. We want someone
who's been a CEO before because we don't want to
take the risk.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
We want a board director. Make sure they have public
company board experience exactly.
Speaker 4 (15:26):
So that permission paradox is there throughout your entire career.
So the understanding it and being able to overcome it
is actually a really valuable lifelong skill. So the way
to overcome that is well, there are few ways. Number
one is to break down whatever the next job is
into its component parts. And let's say it's a manager,
(15:51):
where you will have had to the listing on LinkedIn
says you will have had to manage five to ten
people a budget of xyz.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
You will have had to drive revenue and manage costs
or something like that.
Speaker 4 (16:05):
And let's say you haven't been a manager yet, so
you're breaking into your first manager job. You take each
of those things and you try and find other ways
to get that experience. Okay, so you haven't been a
manager in your current job, but let's say you're the
coach of youth soccer team, or you're doing the budget
for the school fundraising drive or something like that. You
(16:28):
just you address it and you say, well, I know
the listing is asking for all these skills. I haven't
done that all in my job, but I've done it
in these five different places. And that way you kind
of build it up and then you break. You give
the opportunity for them to take a chance on you
(16:49):
because you've said, okay, you understand what their need is,
but you've found a creative way to address that.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
I remember when I wanted to get to management and
I hadn't been a manager, and it's a zero to
one move, as you suggested, and I pitched my team
on us getting some NBA interns because I knew nobody
would want to manage them. So once we got the interns,
I got the interns, and so for the summer. You know,
at this point I'd probably read twenty books on leadership,
and these two poor NBA interns came in. I was like,
(17:16):
sit down, You're about to be managed like you wouldn't believe.
But then you get a small piece of it, you
get a jumping off point. Yes, we go next to
Darius in Washington.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
I have a big interview coming up. Well, mistake to
people making interviews and what are the keys to impressing someone?
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (17:43):
So the interview is with a type company? So what
should I weary?
Speaker 1 (17:47):
And by the way, I went to my Google interviews
how many every many years ago in a suit from
NBC and I'll never forget how weird I felt walking
around the Google campus and a suit and tie. So
we can help you.
Speaker 4 (17:58):
Darius, Darius question, and as I said at the early part,
interviewing is sort of my hobby and passion.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
How many thousands of interviews have you done?
Speaker 4 (18:08):
I've estimated that I've done now approaching fifteen thousand interviews
I wrote. I wrote an article on LinkedIn. I think
it was my number one read article, I think four
hundred thousand reads, and the title of the article was
interviewing to live living to interview. Okay, and I've been
(18:30):
in so many interviews and as I said earlier, being
this is.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
The number one interviewer in the world. So what do
we need to know?
Speaker 4 (18:39):
First of all, the interviewer, they're just they're trying to
solve a problems, just like open job exactly, and so
they're looking to do If you recognize you can be
the solution to their problem, then it changes the power dynamic,
It changes your mentality. You're not nervous, you're trying to
(19:00):
understand what it is. So a few tips on that.
Number one is try and really if you can research
the person that you're going to be interviewing with. Now
in this wide information world that we all live in,
you might not know, but that's possible. You know, to
(19:21):
ask someone in advance to be set up. Who am
I interviewing with? Number two here's some There's been tons
of research on interviewing, and this is something to take
advantage of when you're the interviewee, but something to be
cautious of when you're doing the interviewing. Most people make
a decision in their first five minutes, even in their
(19:44):
first three misure and the psychology psychological research shows that
people make a decision in the first three to five minutes,
and then they spend the next twenty five minutes or
forty five minutes, whatever it's scheduled, looking for data to
support the decision that the I've already made.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
We've talked about Daniel Connerman and Daniel Conoman and show
all of his research shows the way that we make
these instinctual, emotional decisions.
Speaker 4 (20:07):
And by the way, sometimes those decisions are not bad.
But as an interviewer I train people on this all
the time. You really have to resist that and be
aware of it and look for real situational situational data,
behavioral data, cultural data. But most people don't do that.
(20:30):
Most people will in the first five minutes, which means
that you really need to have your opening answer. You
need to when you if it's in person or on zoom.
How you introduce yourself, how you sit down, how you
shake a hand, what you're wearing is essential because they're
going to have a huge impression in the first thirty seconds.
(20:50):
So the opening is key. So whatever they whatever they ask,
So Mike, tell me about yourself or you know, why
are you interested in this? You want to have you
want to practice in front of a mirror. You want
your two minute opening statement, which basically quickly tells your
story in like two minutes maybe three minutes, who you are,
(21:11):
where you came from, why you're interested in this job,
and why you might be great for this job. Rehearse
that and have that no matter what they ask. That's
the answer to the very first questions like how's the
weather great? You know, and it's like, oh, great to
see you today. Well, let me tell you why I'm
really excited to be here today, Mike, and you do
you do that? So having a two or three minute
(21:33):
rehearsed opening statement of who you are and basically a
little bit of a narrative, not just the other thing
is so now you've had a good opening and now
it's five minutes in and now they're asking you about
your experience, and like you apply these these principles like
the permission paradise say oh, Mike, you haven't been a
(21:54):
manager before, and said, well, yes, I know that's what.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
So you have that.
Speaker 4 (21:57):
And you also want to talk very humbly about what's
worked well and what hasn't worked well. You don't want
to be arrogant, and you really want to be come
across as self reflective. Let me tell you the environments
in which I've really thrived and why I think this
could be a great fit.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
I appreciate that as a hiring manager when I ask someone,
you know, what are your weaknesses? What are you and
they tell me and I try too hard, I care
too much. I mean, the interview just is over. It
is over, and you've got to be constantly learning and
reflecting on what you've done wrong and what you've learned
from it. Exactly having a humility show in an interview
is so important.
Speaker 4 (22:33):
Okay, most first interviews like yours, Darius, probably coming up,
is probably going to be half an hour, and they're
going to make this decision very quickly. But in the
last five or seven minutes they say, okay, well let
me turn to you. What questions do you have for me?
And there's a real temptation, especially early in your career.
You want to be polite and respectful. That's great, but
(22:53):
you say no, no, I don't want to take more time,
and then they leave, and that's a huge opportunity missed.
You would be shocked at how many hiring managers basically say, oh,
I really like her for this job. Why because she
asked the best questions. Okay, so how do you actually
ask the best questions? Here's the way to ask the best.
(23:14):
This is so simple and so powerful and so doable
for anybody about to do an interview. Whatever company you're
going to interview, go into Google and type the company,
say you're going to interview into it. You put in
into it CEO, Q and A and then Sosan Ga
(23:36):
Darzi the CEO of Into it will be shown on
CNBC or whatever and Reuter's whatever company, and you'll have
professional journalists who have spent with producers preparing really good
questions about the company, the culture. You basically take those
same questions and then you put them in your own voice.
(23:58):
Then you get the said, wow, they've done their homework.
That's terrific advice. I've always been astounded.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
I've interviewed executives right who've asked me, you know, what
are the company's priorities? And I've been like, we're public company.
I tell everybody every ninety days like little bit of research.
Speaker 4 (24:12):
But so if you went on you know EXO, CEO,
Q and A, you they've given so many interviews and
then you pick three or five. But the other thing
about so prepare in writing, have them written down or
typed up, have them there, Because when you get to
that question, what questions do you have for me? You
want to look down at your notes. And it's okay
even if you're in person to have a little notebook
(24:34):
or have a chatty that you're prepared. That's right, Thank you,
Jamal and Charlotte says, Hey, I'm.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
A fintech recruiter in Charlotte.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
What's your advice for finding the right candidates and getting
them interested? So another recruiter wants to know from the best,
how do I do it?
Speaker 4 (24:50):
Most people make decisions on a very emotional basis, and
they want you want to know what's really important them.
And then again it's this is a perfect example of
it's the same situation on the other side of the coin.
You know, what are they trying to accomplish and why
is this company or this role a great fit to
(25:12):
their priorities. As a general thing, I think that we've
done a lot of research on this, mikeid Spencer Stewart.
The role of purpose and mission has become one of
the most important differentiators for people looking for great, great roles,
and so I would go to, here are our values,
(25:34):
here's our purpose, here's our mission, and here's how this
role fits into that. So give them the big thing
and then how this fits into that, and then talk
about the culture. I think culture sells. We do boardwork
for some of the biggest companies in the world, we
do CEO work of the biggest companies in the world,
(25:55):
and talking about where a culture is and what is
celebrated and where that needs to change or evolve culture
really sells as well. And then of course there are
things pragmatically right now about flexibility, job mobility and where
it's leading and all that, but I would really default
(26:17):
to purpose and mission and how this role fits into that.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
I've also when I'm hiring someone, I spend a lot
of time with them. I've actually maybe at least the
last fifteen years, I haven't made an offer that somebody
hasn't hasn't accepted because by the time we get there, right,
we really know each other nice. And so you know,
my suggestion to the to Jamal, who's the recruiter here,
is have your business partners really involved in the process,
(26:42):
and a lot and I'm always I'm always taking it
back by how insufficient amount of time people spend on
what I think are the most important actions they'll take
in the year, which is assembling their team. So Jamal,
it's also it's time and conveying. As Jim said, that
energy around the mission and the culture and the people
and the prize that you're after. People really feed on that.
(27:03):
So a lot of our questions have been about these
sort of early and mid career moves. That where we
have a question here from Brian and Columbus who says.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
I'm fifty years old.
Speaker 3 (27:10):
I'm titled the old that I've done, but my career
helped plots in the last few years, and now a
lot of my contemporaries are getting tweezed out when there's
a cost cut at the company. Is it too late
for me to reaccelerate my career or to make a pivot?
Speaker 2 (27:24):
Brian, absolutely not.
Speaker 4 (27:26):
If hopefully you're again, I'm even older than you, and
I feel very fortunate to be in good health and
high energy, and I think being ambitious, curious, high energy,
and really motivated well into the second half of hopefully
(27:47):
a very long life is the way to go. And
I actually think this is a huge both issue and
opportunity for our economy as everybody has age lifespans extend.
So number one is if you're healthy and fit and energetic,
that absolutely it's not at all too early. But how
(28:09):
you move mid career is very different than early career.
And then there's a whole other topic ten or twenty
years Brian from now, when you will have been doing
something again, and then you have to think about what
most people refer to as retirement. And I actually don't
believe in that word. I believe in moving from phase
(28:30):
to phase to phase. There's an amazing book I wish
i'd written it called From Strength to Strength?
Speaker 2 (28:38):
Did you ever read that?
Speaker 1 (28:38):
I just read it.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
It's brilliant.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
I'm too young, fortune, Yah, you're too young, but it's
really good. It's about how to think of the sort
of last twenty or thirty years of your professional life
and how you wanted to play yourself.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
So check that out.
Speaker 4 (28:49):
But the point is that you move from a say
age fifty or in your fifties, you want to build
on the experiences you've had and then try and find
new ways to apply that experience. Let me tell you
the story just a great example of this my brother
in law. We're here at iHeart. He was a lifelong
(29:13):
senior executive in the music industry and music promotion and
he was brilliant at it and go to radio stations
around the world many iHeart stations and get the labels
acts on air. That jaw that role and the role
of promotion has changed dramatically. He went into live entertainment.
(29:35):
But what is he doing now? He's got a private
aviation company. It's like, how did you get from one
to the other. It's a ten year process. What he
did is when he was doing music promotion, oftentimes he
had to go bring the acts from point A to
point point to point B around on these tours and stuff,
(29:57):
and so a lot of times the labels would have
to he'd have to arrange charters sometimes propeller things, but
go from play to place to place to place. And
he developed a lot of expertise in that. And during
COVID when when a lot of the commercial travel didn't
work so well, he had all these clients or these
(30:20):
relationships where he was doing representing them and he has
a music management company, but he was solving problems and
then all of a sudden, other people were saying like, oh,
I know you, you send you know so and so
on these things. Can you help us? You know our family,
You need to go to Florida or whatever. He created
this this great, great charter aviation company called Right Lane Aviation.
Speaker 2 (30:44):
It's amazing and.
Speaker 4 (30:46):
He just it's so anyway, there's ways to apply the
experience that you've done in one thing to other ways.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
Lee in New York City says.
Speaker 3 (31:04):
I'm pretty interverted and not much of a networker. How
do I make sure I know the right recruiters and
that I'm on their rata so that my career opportunity
is prevent this out.
Speaker 4 (31:14):
Most jobs are not gotten through recruiting. They're gotten through referrals.
And actually they're not even gotten through referrals of your friends.
They're really most of them are referrals of people who
have referred you, so their second level referrals. I'm going
(31:36):
to come back to the answer, but I'm going to
give a very important suggestion. When you're looking for a job,
you want to help make it easy for other people
to help you, and everyone will say, oh, how can
I help? You need to have a very crisp answer
to what you're interested in, and think of it as
(31:58):
planting a seed with anyone you're talking to. Mike, I'm
actually interested in a human capital position in a tech company.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
That's it.
Speaker 4 (32:07):
And Mike will be out at a party and someone
will say, hey, do you know someone who can help
me on our talent teams? Like, oh, I just talked
to I just hurt. So have that and share that
snippet very broadly, and think of that as kind of
a seed that's planted and it could go across you
use the word.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
Networking.
Speaker 4 (32:28):
I'm in the recruiting business, in the relationship business. I've
got all this stuff. Personally, I'm an introvert and I
I hate networking. I think I think of networking.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
I'd rather eat a lanyard than put it on and
walk around in the conference exactly.
Speaker 2 (32:43):
It's a little walking.
Speaker 4 (32:44):
People hate it, and by the people hate being networked too,
so so get rid of the even that my the word, oh, networking.
I find that really cringey, and think of it as
relationship building. And in a relationship ship, there's a quid
and a quid brogo, and there's how can I help?
(33:04):
If you come up into conversations with how can I
help all of a sudden, it's not a networking thing.
And when they ask you how can you help, then
you say, well, I'd be really interested in being human
columing and technical intelligence in that. And then there's another
way to think about this challenge. And it's hard. I mean,
(33:27):
trust me, I know. Look at looking for jobs is
really hard and really stressful. In the timeframe that you're
doing it, it's never fast enough and it's uncertain, and
there's self esteem issues that come up. Use the process
as a learning journey and you can you can now
where anyone can be a publisher. One tactic is to
(33:48):
do an article, even if it's self published on Medium
or on LinkedIn. You can talk to people and say,
I'm doing an article on the on the best practices
in human capital talent acquisition in technology. Can I get
ten minutes of you to chat about that. You do that,
I'll get your fifteen people. You get your access and
(34:09):
people will be much more interested. If you're doing that article,
then oh, I'd like to have a courtesy interview about
a human couple. You can do that with any topic.
And that's another tactic.
Speaker 1 (34:19):
I'd echo that I wrote an article for first round
Review and the title is something like, don't network, build
your meaningful connections. And it was very much that you know,
all the good things that have come to me through
a quote unquote network in my career been someone else
I just like and probably have done something for and
then they thought of me rather than the other way around.
I will make one note specific to recruiters is eventually
(34:40):
they'll find you and reach out that don't just say no.
Say no, but here are two or three people you
might like. I always like to leave a recruiter with
other folks because what have you done. You may have
helped somebody who you think highly of land a job.
You've helped a recruiter solve the problem they're trying to solve,
and then you'll get the call next time. Because even
if you're not the guy like, at least you know
people know you're on the floor and you can help
a good source put yourself into the ecosystem.
Speaker 2 (35:03):
That's a great point, Mike.
Speaker 1 (35:04):
This has been a ton of fun and really insightful
and for me, like I've been, this is a conversation
I've been looking forward to for twenty years, so very special.
Thank you for doing it.
Speaker 4 (35:13):
Talk about this stuff all day.
Speaker 1 (35:18):
Well, my friends, we covered a lot of ground today
from how to interview and how to shape your career
and how to make these important choices throughout. But if
I were to take one observation from this really insightful
and inspiring conversation with Jim, you heard from someone who
has broken down into its component parts, this ambiguous and
(35:41):
overwhelming thing that is your career and your career plan.
And I want to encourage everyone to do the same thing.
Don't just think about your next job, don't just think
about your next promotion, But as Jim advised, think about
what are those things that I enjoy? What are those
requirements that I have in my career? What are those
internalities things that I'm really good at that I want
(36:01):
to build my career on. And I'll remind you I'm
here for you in this podcast, is here for you
to help. You can always call in your questions or
you can DM me on LinkedIn or Instagram. The number
if you want to send in a text or a
voicemail is two one three four one nine five nine six.
You know you can find me online at Mike steib.
(36:23):
We We put this podcast together to help people have
extraordinary impact on their work and if there's anything we
can do to help you, just give us a shout.
I want to thank Jim for coming in. This was amazing,
and of course I want to thank Jen, Cara, Meg Jada,
Matt and the whole team at Blue Duck Media for
putting this all together. Dylan, Sasha, Gay, Nathan and Christine
(36:45):
at iHeart want to thank Bahd in the studio put
it all together, and Ben and the rest of the
team at William Morrison Dever for all their support. Office
Hours is a production of Blue Duck Media and distributed
by iHeartRadio. I will see you next week, Gang in
the meantime on your grind
Host
Mike Steib
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