CAREER AND NETWORKING ADVICE FROM A GOOGLE EXECUTIVE. LISTEN HERE.
Our next guest on Hiring Insights is Jenny Wood. Jenny has grown from entry-level to an executive role at Google over her 16 years with the company. She leads a large operations team that helps drive tens of billions of revenue per year. In 2021, she started a passion project within Google called Own Your Career. Through the program she founded, she’s trained tens of thousands of people on: acing a job search, building relationships, personal branding, effective email writing, landing the right mentor, maximizing workplace influence, and most importantly, increasing confidence. A former Harvard Business Review writer, Jenny is now writing a book about going above and beyond to unapologetically achieve your goals. Jenny is a graduate of Brandeis University.
Jenny joined us to discuss navigating a career path, job search tips, and how to create followership as a leader to showcase your full potential.
NAVIGATING A CAREER PATH
While navigating your career, you should not only consider upward moves, but lateral moves as well. We couldn’t agree with Jenny more when she says, “lateral moves are some of the most powerful moves anyone can make. Your career is not always going to be up and to the right.”
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A common theme for many of our guests is their non-linear career paths. Matt Miller, Jennifer Champlin, Ricardo A. Watson, Dimitri Mastrocola, and Alex Su have all discussed the challenges and benefits of non-linear career paths.
Lateral moves provide opportunities to craft varied skills, experience different work cultures, broaden your network, experience different industries or departments, and potentially experience working in a different location.
It isn’t always about what is right in front of you, sometimes it’s about short-term achievements to achieve long-term goals.
RESUME TIPS
We’ve talked about the RSTAR method (Results Situation Task Action Results) that we encourage all of our clients to use when writing a resume, and even shared the STARR method (Situation Task Action Results Reflection) from Kristi Stepp. Jenny brought even more context to these methods by sharing her resume bullet tips:
The goal is to utilize numbers, context, and action. Jenny's example:
"Grew revenue by $5 million, 20% year over year, despite economic headwinds by launching weekly office hours for the customer, which had never been done."
Quantification: $5 million.
Context: 20% year over year, despite economic headwinds.
Action: by launching weekly office hours, which had never been done.
Anyone can be in a situation, be assigned a certain task, and take action, but it’s all about the results you achieve. Results are what sets you apart, and ultimately what gets you hired.
Take stock of your accomplishments not just on an annual basis, but get into the habit of a quarterly self-review. Often times when you sit down to write a resume and you’re looking back over a span of five years, it’s hard to recount all of the detail in your successes. This self-review can also be extremely beneficial when it comes time for a performance review and could potentially help you achieve a promotion or raise.
Jenny talks about blockers that we put in front of ourselves that limit our full potential when it comes to our results and the process of quantifying them. Not everyone is going to be driving multimillion dollar impact, or have a large book of business to bring with them to a new firm. Keeping track of what you may think are small actions; the number of meetings you lead, contracts you wrote, rewriting process... all of those seemingly small actions can be quantified on a resume.
CREATING FOLLOWERSHIP AS A LEADER
Many of our clients are already leading others, but some are just starting their leadership journey. Throughout the interview process you will consistently be demonstrating your leadership abilities through your responses and demeanor, so taking a deep look at the qualities and attributes that make a good leader should be something that you take time to do.
We asked Jenny what qualities make someone a good fit for a leadership role?
Her response, “Two things come to mind... being a net positive energy contributor and humility.”
If you take a minute to reflect on good leadership that you have experienced or witnessed, most likely you’re thinking of someone who had a “we can do this” attitude, the proverbial glass was always half full in their eyes. They brought positive energy to the room. Be that positive energy contributor.
Should a leader have all of the answers? No. You definitely need to have some of them, but regardless of your title, there is a constant evolution of your knowledge and abilities, so it’s okay to not have all of the answers. That’s one of the benefits to building a strong team, as Bill George shared with us from his decades of executive leadership.
Both Bill and Jenny discuss the idea of servant leadership. How can you support your team? How can you coach them up?
“You're going to have lots of one-on-ones, one-on-one meetings, that is with your direct reports. At the end of every one-on-one meeting with your direct report, regardless of their level, I recommend closing your one-on-one conversation with this question: how can I support you this week?”
RELATIONSHIP BUILDING: Transactional vs. Transformational Relationships
In a transactional relationship one party is always expecting something in return, it’s self-serving and built solely on reciprocation. These relationships serve a purpose, but these aren’t the people who will keep you top of mind for opportunities.
A transformational relationship thrives on authenticity and engagement. You have to ask questions, listen, and perhaps it’s not necessarily a job opportunity you’re getting, but you’re learning or growing from the relationship. It doesn’t feel one-sided or like a business deal.
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If you don’t have a robust network, and you’re actively seeking a new job opportunity, the process of networking can feel a bit rushed or forced at times.
You’re going to try and find common ground to use as leverage to start a conversation, you’re going to see if you have anything of value to offer the person you’re reaching out to, but once you get them on the phone, you have the opportunity to show a genuine interest in them as a person and the experiences they can share with you.
Continue to connect on topics of interest to both of you -- your points of affinity can spark relationships in unique and meaningful ways. Share an article you saw or a conversation you had with someone else a few weeks later, that may be of value to them. Introduce them to someone else in your circle. This is something Brian H. Potts shared with us on his episode of our podcast.
Not every relationship will be transformational, but bringing a sense of authenticity to each conversation will help you start building an extended circle of people with your best interests in mind.
COMING UP NEXT...
Stay tuned for our next episode featuring Brenda Morris, Drew Fossum, and David Hecker. Brenda is the V.P. and Assistant General Counsel, Litigation, Employment and Compliance at Sealed Air Corporation, Drew is the V.P. and General Counsel at Tenaska, and David is the Group General Counsel for Kiewit.
Thank you to everyone who subscribes to this newsletter. You can find more information about Top Talent Advocates on our website here, by following us on our LinkedIn page here, or by emailing us at TTA@TopTalentAdvocates.com. We encourage you to provide feedback on the podcast by posting comments, forwarding to others in your network, and encouraging others to gain insights into the hiring process for executives and attorneys. Don't forget to listen and subscribe here. You can also find the transcript for each episode of Hiring Insights here. Thanks, as always, to Lindsay Hofbauer.
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