Hey, I got a treat for you today. I'm gonna share with you how a career coach goes about finding
a job for themselves. So, if you're new to the channel, my name is Bill Benoist. I'm a Certified
Professional Career Coach here in Silicon Valley. I’m going do something today I rarely do,
and that is I'm going to bring somebody else onto this channel. She's a friend of mine. Her name is
Vera Fishman. I've known Vera for a number of years. We've even worked together at a career
transition company. We even shared an office together. Vera took a little bit of a different
path. So, she although, you know, we both started out working with clients on a one-on-one basis.
She decided to go into Corporate America and follow a coaching journey there.
And she just recently, - her position was eliminated recently. I had coffee with her last
week and during our coffee date, she mentioned that she wanted to somehow document her journey.
She could maybe be able to help people out there as to essentially the process that
she was going to go through and really kind of share her process. And I thought, you know what,
I have a great way to document that. And I said, let's do it on my YouTube channel.
So, the plan is in today's video, we're gonna just spend about 10 minutes. I'm going to let
her introduce herself and talk a little bit about what's going on in her first couple of weeks and
what she's doing right now. And then, in about a month from now, and like a month after that,
we're gonna do this as a series. We are going to meet once a month.
We're going to find out where things are going. So, you know, very possible
we could only have two videos in this series, if she lands between now and the next video.
But again, what we're gonna do is we're gonna just see where she's at right now, what she's
been doing for the first couple of weeks, and then where she's at and a month from now,
what kind of interviews, if any, that she's at, let me go ahead and share my screen with you and
introduce Vera to you. Let's see what she's doing right now. So, everyone, I wanna introduce you to
Vera Fishman. As I mentioned in the introduction, she's been a friend of mine for some time. She's
a career coach and Vera I'd love, you know, in your own words, please just say a little bit about
your background and what you were doing with your last position that was just recently eliminated.
Absolutely. And first of all, thank you Bill, for having me. I know we've literally been talking
about doing something together for years, so I'm very excited. The time is finally right for that.
Well, we did, but we did share an office together. We
did share an office together, but we never recorded anything. So, I'm very excited about
bringing our two voices together. So, um, my name is Vera Fishman. I'm a career services program
manager, as you know, already. I started, uh, in career coaching, working directly one on one,
uh, with clients helping there in various career transitions.
And then I made my way back into Ed Tcch. So, I was at Udacity for a while. It's an online
e-learning platform where people go to prep for new careers, and I managed their coaching
delivery there. And then, the past three years I was at Coursera, which is another eLearning
platform. Coursera also has programs that prepare learners for brand new careers and at Coursera,
I manage the entire career services that they offer to those learners. So from scratch, I build
out the career services offer that includes resume preparation, interview preparation content that
helps people navigate the job market, understand what they're getting into, how they're going to
succeed in that, et cetera, also launch the first Coursera's job platform as well while there,
Wow, wow. Some major accomplishments for your resume. And we both know, I mean,
we both know you can put a resume together. I've seen, I've seen your work. You're,
you know, you're a terrific resume writer and, but you would also probably agree
that the resume is not what usually lands you the job. It's just the foundation of the job search.
Yep. Absolutely
All need one. So, what is it that you wanna do next?
So, um, I am, you know, that's a great question. I think it's a really important question because,
um, a lot of people, especially professionals who have experience to some extent, uh, like our
careers are not straightforward, right? So there, there isn't necessarily an immediate obvious
role that I expect to go into. And so a lot of what I'm doing right now is figuring out what
it is exactly, but my career is essential. It built around he helping other people
build their careers. So what I'm looking for, I'm really interested in leadership development
companies, uh, coaching tech companies, um, and managing career services and coaching delivery
there. So I'm looking into that industry. Um, another side of things is, you know,
I have so much experience delivering those services, but there are company roles, um,
learning development program management roles, where people employ those companies and engage
with those companies to deliver those services. So that that's another type of role I'm looking at.
Okay, cool. And so you and I, we had coffee just a matter of a few days ago,
and I know you had just recently your position was eliminated, uh, from course Sarah, what is
it that you have been doing? I mean, you know, let the people that are watching this video know,
I mean, what is it that a career coach, you know, does that when their position is eliminated,
what what's been happening in the first couple of weeks for you?
Well, first of all, thank you for asking that question. I love that question so much because
it's, it's one thing to know what's the right thing to do, and to be able to tell others it's
completely another thing to actually do it. So I'll, I'll talk about the things that I
have been doing and have not been doing. Um, so the thing that I have been doing
is talking to a lot of people. Um, my life, uh, since I started active job search my life pretty
much fully migrated onto LinkedIn. Um, and it's not intentional, you know, I, as in, I'm looking
for a job and therefore I should be on LinkedIn. I just have been engaging with so many people
all the time that LinkedIn, you know, there's constant notifications coming from LinkedIn.
There are constant things I'm looking at. And so I've been spending a lot of time on LinkedIn.
I, um, I just, as in preparation for this conversation, I looked up and just the fun fact,
like last week I had, um, I've exchanged messages with 27 people on LinkedIn. Um,
I had 14 meetings of different types, all of them related to my job search.
So that's really how I'm spending my time, you know, talking to people, scheduling, uh, time to
talk with people, researching companies. Um, the thing that I have not been doing that is kind of
interesting even to mind to me, is that I have not been actively heavily interviewing.
Um, if you, you know, when I think about a job search and somebody who is
immediately actively looking for a job, honestly, I think you apply for a job. And then you start
the interviewing process. As, as I said, that's, that's not what has been really happening for me.
I, I am currently actively interviewing with one company, but just one company.
And that actually another thing to say is that that's given that I applied to 13 jobs last week.
So I, I, you know, having a great resume as you pointed out, ,
I've applied to 13 jobs. I haven't heard from any of them. Um, and, uh, that's an, that's
very interesting to me. And yet I feel like I'm, I know that I'm doing all of the right things,
because what I'm doing is I'm talking to people who are at companies that are interesting to me,
I'm building those relationships so that when opportunities come up and statistically speaking,
if I'm monitoring 50 companies, opportunities will be coming up. I actually have somebody there who
can refer me. Um, I can find out about the role so I can be more prepared for interviews, et cetera.
And did your, you mentioned you have one interview here right now,
you've only been, like you say your position was just recently eliminated. Was that,
was that interview based upon a referral through networking or was it a job?
Surprisingly, I think there's a bit of a beginner's luck because when I, you know,
realized that that my role is now going to be there for, for a long time, I started applying and
I ended up with, uh, three interviews right off the bat. Two of them were referrals.
Both of those didn't work out for various reasons. This third one was complete blind application.
Um, wow. The hiring manager actually told me that he had received and reviewed 800 resumes for that.
Well, that tells you, you know, if you, anybody out there looking for, uh, resume writing or
something like that, you know, sometimes a good career coach can do that for you.
So Vera, one of the things that you did do that I thought was really cool was, um, that almost
immediately, you announced on LinkedIn, that you were looking for work out there,
you looking, you know, for a new position. Just talk a little bit about that for just a moment.
The reason I did that is because, uh, I have, I have a large network on LinkedIn. Um, everybody I
know have met in some capacity, whether professional or not is a part of my LinkedIn
network. Um, and realistically you never know, uh, where your next opportunity is going to come from.
And the thing is, um, I can not apply 2000 people individual, and one by one that I'm looking for
a job, even if I take, uh, six months doing that. Uh, but it is important that everybody
knows. And so that's really the thinking behind the post is make sure that anybody that I've
ever touched in my life actually know that I'm looking for a job in case there is something.
And then the other thing that it does, right? It does a couple more things. One,
it just gives me accountable because if people know I'm looking, then, um, they start asking
me about it and engages me, pushes me out of my comfort zone, engages me in those conversations.
Um, and then also it is a fantastic excuse to talk to people because a lot of people are,
you know, a lot of people are commenting and if somebody's commenting, there is always a
reason to follow up with them. Sometimes there are people that I haven't talked to in years,
and honestly it could be a bit uncomfortable to reach out and say, Hey, I'm in between jobs can
catch up, but if they've commented on my post, then that opens the door for that conversation.
And, um, I have, I think I have over 150 people now who have liked the post. And I
also take that as an invitation to reach out to them and say, thank you for your support. Can we
Chat? And I saw that, I saw that post of years before we even met for coffee. You know, I brought
that up during our, you know, when we had coffee, I says, I loved your post. You know, out there,
I saw this, I've seen it, uh, be successful. Like what you're saying. Um, many, many times
I I'm gonna just read, I just wanna read one little part of this and it says, what's next for
me? I'm not sure yet. I'm very actively looking and would love your help. I mean, you're asking
right off the bat there, my skills and passions lie on the intersection of career services,
coaching program management and tech. Some of the most obvious job titles for me are career
programs, manager, coach, operations manager, head of career services. I'm also diving deeper
into the industries of coach tech, hiring tech, leadership, training, and workshop development.
If you have companies, you love connections, you're willing to make or jobs you have
come across, please do send them my way. You're just asking. And that's what I
wish people would do. This is, you know, going back to the very beginning, you are a fantastic
resume writer. There's no doubt about it, but you know that what really is gonna work for
you is establishing your network out there. So I wanna, I wanna kind of conclude this.
I don't wanna go too long with this, but we will be talking in about a month from now,
you know what what's going on, but I would like to ask you one final question and that is, I mean,
you, you, you're very optimistic. I can, I can tell. I mean, you know, we talked and stuff, but
what's this what's scaring you right now. What are you worried about?
I'll be honest with you. It is unsettling when I don't know the exact path from here
to that job offer that I'm going to accept, right? Even the fact that
as I said, I have one active interview process happening right now. But, um,
if that doesn't work out and statistically speaking, it's not going to work out,
uh, where is that next interview is going to come from and where is the next, um, where's the next
10 interviews are going to come from because I expect I will need to interview with at least
10 more companies be before there is actually the right fit. So that that's unsettling.
Well, Vera, thank you so much. I really appreciate this. And I know that the, you know,
we kind of had a mutual agreement here. You wanted to document your journey. And I think
this is really good because I mean, the people that my audience out there are people that are
either in career transition or they're looking for a new job. And is that, it's just so cool. I mean,
you know, a lot of 'em they go to career coaches, but what happens if a career coach wants to go out
and look for a new job, what are they doing? And what you're, what you're really sharing is what we
talked with about our clients is that this, so are the steps that you want to do and you're following
the steps. So thank you. And we're gonna schedule something in about a month from now as a follow up
and it will be our first follow up. Maybe it will be our last, we don't know.
I'm so excited to see what's going to happen during that follow up.
Thank you so much. So I hope you found this video informative and useful. It was kind of
a fun video. And if you haven't already done, so make sure that you subscribe to this channel, hit
that bell notification. That way you're not gonna miss any of my, uh, future videos, including the
next series with Vera. Thanks for stopping by. And I look forward to seeing you next week. Take care.