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Honestly, my mantra is nurture your network.
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Nurture it.
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And that, you know, you kind of get almost like a planty vibe with it, you know?
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You have to put time and you have to put effort into it.
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But it's people.
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Yeah.
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And people are important.
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And you are important.
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Everyone, welcome back for this next episode of Marketers Managing, the mini-series of the Marketers Barely Managing podcast.
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Of course, I'm your host, Rachel Moore, here at the Floor Content Marketing World.
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I am standing next to Amy Fair of Vontage.
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Amy, welcome to the podcast.
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Welcome to my microphones.
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Welcome to Content Marketing World.
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It's an honor.
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I'm so excited to be here, especially with you.
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I appreciate you so much.
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And I I love that you wanted to hop into my little podcast booth with me.
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But Amy, let's lay the groundwork here.
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Amy's a veteran of Content Marketing World.
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Amy, how many years have you been coming to this conference?
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This is my ache content marketing world.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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So she's been around and she's wearing orange, which uh really briefly, can you tell us what is orange?
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Why is that a thing here?
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Orange is the color of content marketing world.
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It is something that is kind of a legacy thing.
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Even in our Slack group, you do not use a red heart to react.
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You use an orange heart to react.
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So the more orange, the better here at Content Marketing World.
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So for those of you who are in that Slack, I think I might have put a red heart on the back.
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I dare you.
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I know.
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I'm sorry.
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I retract, I take it back.
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But Amy's obviously come here for years because there's meaning here, and I have a feeling we're gonna get into that here right now.
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Because why do you keep coming back to content marketing or what's the value that just keeps presenting itself every year for you?
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For me personally, yes, they have amazing speakers, and you learn so much, but it truly, for me personally, is the people.
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The community that the Content Marketing Institute has built as a part of this conference is insane in a good way.
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Yeah.
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Um you know, you see it in the Slack group throughout the year.
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It's not just a one-and-done thing.
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Yeah, it is like it seeps into your whole year.
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It's just a community, it's a great group of people.
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Everyone is so welcoming, so inclusive, and I love coming here and like being able to look at people in the eyeballs and give them big hugs around their necks.
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Yeah.
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So Amy is she's such a veteran of the conference here.
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She's on a panel, she was on a panel last night, we saw for first-time attendees.
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And Amy, you talked about something that I know I tell my kids this all the time.
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I've got a 20-year-old and an almost 18-year-old, and I emphasize this to them all the time because they're looking at a whole future, the whole career.
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The value of network.
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Yes, and professional networking.
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Can you talk to us a little bit about what your philosophy is and that why, you know, how important is that?
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So for me, networking is definitely a two-way street.
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And the reason that I say that is because in my experience, I have had situations where I heavily leaned into my network, and that's a uh vague way of me saying I lost my job and I needed people to help and support me.
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And I'm not saying I expected people to like give me a job, right?
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But at that time it was super hard, and I kind of went into it like I would get scared when everything went dark, when no one was reaching out.
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Right, there were no jobs, but I for me the key was if no one was giving me their time and their support, then that's I was like, that's rock bottom for me.
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Yeah, but I think that it goes both ways.
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I have to be willing to give that support when people reach out to me, ask for a 15-minute phone call.
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I literally had somebody from Content Marketing World reach out to me one day and said, Can you please get on a call for just 15 minutes?
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I'm having a breakdown.
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And I said, Absolutely.
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But it's so important for it to be a two-way street because I believe in karma and you give what you receive, and to me that's so important,
Load full transcript
especially in networking.
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That's so important.
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This is so funny too, because Anne Wynne, our mutual friend, was just on interview for the same miniseries as well.
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We talked about the give to get thing.
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She was talking about the collaborativeness that marketing professionals need to have.
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But you are so right too, the networking part where it's like none of us know.
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I mean, we wish we did, right?
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We wish there was some more certainty in this world that we would just like, oh, I know when I'm gonna need the power of a network.
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You don't know.
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That's why it's so important to build it in those moments and phases when things are going great for you.
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Keep that up, keep that networking muscle going.
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But you're saying too, it's like it's in those moments where you're like, because I love that you really got into the emotion of that.
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Because I think all of us can relate.
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Yes.
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Unfortunately, more of us now than a lot of people because there's a lot of uproar in the career area, the career space, and finding jobs, but you really talk about like that felt scary, right?
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It was scary, but I think also too, what like people going into the market or into college right now.
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I think there's also this hesitancy to use their parents' network.
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Yeah.
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They like, I want to do it myself.
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That's great if you can, but legit, I got my very first job through my dad.
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Yeah.
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My dad was my very first LinkedIn connection.
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Yeah.
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And I love him.
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And he's weird, and he, you know, he's a total boomer, and I hope he never sees this.
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To hear me saying that, upsetting you.
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But I think you have to use every resource that you have available, and if it's your parents, that's okay.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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Yeah.
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And again, my son finally, he's a junior in college, and he finally got his LinkedIn going and he said, Okay, mom, I'm going to a thing today, help me take a headshot.
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And it did.
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And so he's like, Okay, well, and I was like, Well, I'm gonna get you out of my network.
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And he's like, All right.
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But by that evening, he texted me back, said, So I have eight new connections.
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Your power is unmatched.
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I'm like, Well, I don't know that's true, but I'm glad you have that.
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And so, Amy, I want to ask you, like, let's talk about two different audiences here.
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Maybe there's people here at Content Marketing World and they're seeing this after, you know, we're gonna get you this video tomorrow.
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And they're like, Well, I'm here and you're talking about the power of network.
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I'm trying, but what should I be doing?
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Amy, do you have some advice for our listeners for that?
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I do.
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You have to put forth the effort to talk to people.
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Yeah, it's not always gonna work out.
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Some people might be busy.
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I'm literally looking at some people right now on their phones here in the expo hall.
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She can come get you too.
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I wish they would be, you know, eyes up talking to the people that are sitting at their tables, but that's part of it.
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Yeah.
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I think people here are pretty receptive to that, so you don't have to feel like you're gonna get like shot down.
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Yeah.
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But we highly encourage people to just talk to each other.
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You never know where you're gonna find a commonality.
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I literally was in line to talk to a speaker after a session, and this guy had he was from Ohio, so I looked at his badge, and he knew my husband's uncle in random Tip City, Ohio.
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Oh my god.
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So you never know what kind of commonalities or connection points you might have unless you just, you know, get out there and talk to people.
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That's so key.
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I mentioned earlier I actually recorded this uh people you can hear the marketers barely managing for next Monday, the normal episode, but I shot it here this morning.
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I mentioned how yesterday I was I went sleeveless and I had two, not one, but two people come up to me because of my tattoos.
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Because they had affinity with it or whatever.
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You just don't know.
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I love that too.
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And and you listen, we all wear these badges around this conference.
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It's giving us the people our name, the business, where we're from, which I think's great.
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Wait, and I'm gonna hold it up.
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We also have these awesome things.
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So I basically almost tried to make a skirt out of this, or you know, it's a really great loincloth, actually, if I needed that kind of thing.
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But so many of these little flags that you can put on your badge, which again lets people know oh, maybe you and I are first timers at the or we're of alumni.
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We've been here before, or I'm hiring there's one that there's a flag that's available.
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I also love too how these tables at lunch, I think they turn them into those common things.
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Yes, it's a great way for people to connect about not necessarily work stuff.
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I mean, they have the work stuff like the different industries, groups, and things like that.
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But it I mean, one year they had like a Swifty table, so all the Taylor Swift fans could get together.
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There's a bookworm table.
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Yeah, there's a mentoring table as well.
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So I feel like everyone can find their place here.
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Yeah.
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What now we know there, like we just mentioned, there's a lot of marketers out there who maybe between jobs.
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Yes.
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And maybe where you were, where you're like, yes, I got laid off, I got let go, I need to make money to make, you know, to eat, and things like that.
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And they're okay, what could they be doing to help with their network to say, okay, maybe they've been great at cultivating their network, maybe they're not.
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And now, but now they're in that moment, right?
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They're they need that network.
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Do you have any some guiding wisdom for them too?
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Like, what can be are you talking about here?
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Well, here or just in general, because I have a feeling there's a lot of folks out there looking for words.
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Yeah, so I actually talked about this.
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I did a speaking session in 2023 called How Marketers Market Themselves, nurturing your network.
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And I tried to give practical tips because there was another aspect to it though, that I think sometimes topics like this can be embarrassing or shameful, and people hesitate to talk about it, and not only the losing your job part, but even like folks who find themselves in toxic work environments, which I have found myself in.
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But I think it's important that we talk about it and we don't like shy away from the hard things.
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Yeah.
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You need your community in those moments.
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You absolutely need your community because it can get dark and it's scary.
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And so, you know, I would talk about the things about like the two-way street, making sure that you're not sitting in your cushy job, living your best life for you know, three years, and then all of a sudden you lose your job and expect all these people, you know, to come at you.
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That's right.
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But there's other things like you know, you just have to talk about it.
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Yeah, people need to know because they don't know if you're just sitting there like faking it till you make it, that's not gonna work.
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That's right.
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So if anyone's in a job search right now, I really truly believe that you have got to leverage your network.
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Yeah.
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I have only gotten one job in my whole career that I got like cold turkey on my own without knowing anyone at the company.
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And at the job I just got, I had two contacts within the company who helped me, you know, get in.
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Well, that could be the difference too.
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And I agree, like, I think there was a stretch in my career, like three jobs in a row, I got because of LinkedIn, literally just because of LinkedIn.
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Like, I either it was I saw someone I had worked for before, she posted a role, and I'm like, oh, do you mind if I apply?
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And she's like, Oh my god, come here, please do.
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Yeah, yeah.
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And so, and I would say too, like, even if you think I posted this on LinkedIn the other day, it was a tweet that I saw where someone said, if you think that the four people watching you isn't a lot, imagine four people watching you parallel park.
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Yeah, it's a lot.
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And I say that too, and it, yeah, I mean it's funny, but then you're like, well, if only four people are seeing my post that hey, I'm looking for my next gig.
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And I it's so sad too, because we can see in the feeds as well these days, people are hitting some desperate points where like sometimes they're out of work for months and stuff, but I think we come back to the give to get.
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Even if you're looking for work as well, but if you have a contact that person can be helped by, help them.
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You know, and that like you said, karma will come back.
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There is something to that.
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And I think the uh with all of the AI stuff as part of that hiring and recruiting process too, the human element
is so critical because there's one side of it where you just you know throw over your AI generated and you know, tweaked resume into the infinite abyss of the ATS that's gonna just immediately kick it out.
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Or you can send in your resume and ping somebody inside the company that you know and you've you're like legit connected with and say, Hey, I just applied for this job, can you please flag it with the HR team or the hiring manager?
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Because that is what's because ATS is they will just kick you out for the weirdest things.
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But if you have a person who can say, I vouch for this person, yeah, at least give them a look.
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You're not again, you're not saying give me this job.
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You're saying just look at me.
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I'm here.
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That's well, and even if you can help get that person a phone screen or that interview, even if they don't get moved along the process, that is get practice, and it's the now you just never know.
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You've made an impression in steps.
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In those situations, any small glimmer of hope is so powerful.
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Yeah.
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Well, I wanna I know we're running out of time with you because we're doing these little 15-minute shots, but they're impactful.
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That's what we wanted from these.
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Amy, if you had a final word to say just about how you feel about networking and the power they're in, what would you say?
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Honestly, my mantra is nurture your network, nurture it, and that you know, you kind of get almost like a planty vibe with it, you know?
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You have to put time and you have to put effort into it.
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Yeah, but it's people, yeah, and people are important, and you are important.
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That's what I wanted.
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Because I'm just like this all comes back to people.
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Yes, we know AI is out there, but the people matter, and people matter in your network, and you have made that so clear, and I really appreciate that.
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But Amy, thanks so much.
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Looking forward to some more sessions here at Content Marketing World.
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Oh yeah, very good.
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Oh yeah, yeah, I'm excited.
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And Amy's got her own little fan club here, by the way.
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So next year we're gonna have Amy fan club shirts that we're gonna all wear.
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I have no idea.
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I know.
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Well, that's see, people matter, and that's that's how much you've mattered to us.
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Honestly, if I look back to the root of like, you know, we had Ann on here too, talking about like I'm here because of her, and she's here because of you, and you people matter.
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So it's really just manifested in everything you've done here, including this interview.
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Amy, thanks so much for joining us.
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Thank you for having me, Rachel.
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All right, tune in for some more episodes with the Marketers Managing mini series here on Marketers Barely Managing.
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We'll be back.