Layoffs that seemingly keep coming, along with hiring systems that may reject an applicant before any person reads a resume, have left a great many professionals wondering where the next job actually comes from, and in the third episode of Better @ What You Do, host Ben Olmos brings back three former guests of DissedMedia: A Startup Story to work through that question from noticeably different seats. The conversation opens with Disney president Dana Walden's remarks at a Bloomberg conference, where she called the company's latest round of cuts extremely painful while signaling that restructuring will continue each year. Jack Oujo, who spent eight years as a professional baseball umpire before founding Oujo Wealth Strategies, draws on clients between 50 and 65 who have lived under the threat of a layoff for years, and his advice centers upon knowing your numbers well enough to weigh a consulting role or an equity stake when the call finally comes. Josh Rosenberg, who was asked to relocate six times in six years to keep his job at a global beverage company, pushes back on the public reaction to Walden, arguing that society has grown cruel toward leaders who speak candidly and that accountability between employer and employee may be closer to 50/50 than most people care to admit. However, Ben holds that a leader ought to open with the people affected before offering the business rationale, and Dr. Christiane Schroeter adds that no job stays safe for the rest of anyone's life, so the work of building skills and relationships has to begin well before any announcement arrives.
From there the panel turns to hiring, where research out of Stanford suggests that applicants screened by the same vendor can carry one result from employer to employer, and where the discussion keeps returning to the people a job seeker already knows. Jack notes that all five people his firm hired in the past year came through personal connections, while Josh describes how a referral can pull a screened-out candidate back to the top of the pile. Christiane, who teaches innovation and entrepreneurship at Cal Poly, explains why people tend to be hired for character and trained for skill, and she introduces the failure resume, an exercise that turns setbacks into some of the strongest material a candidate can bring into an interview. Ben's own interview advice centers upon asking what success looks like in the role before answering anything else and closing every answer with a quantifiable result, and the group questions whether sending 200 applications without following up on any of them can really be called a job search.
The final stretch centers upon paid mastermind groups, some of which charge $20,000 to $40,000 for a seat, and Ben admits openly that he struggles to see the value proposition. Jack suggests that a struggling owner may learn more by sitting down with customers and employees before paying anyone, and Josh shares that he has been let go from three coaching engagements in the past year because clients did not like what their own people told him. Christiane offers a behavioral economist's reading of the price tag, in which spending an uncomfortable amount of money may be the very thing that finally makes some people accountable enough to change.
Connect with the panel
Dr. Christiane Schroeter, leadership strategist, Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Cal Poly, and host of Happy Healthy Hustle
https://doctorchristiane.com
Take the Superpower Scorecard Quiz: https://quiz.tryinteract.com/#/680acbb35fb6f0001547ba20
https://linkedin.com/in/christianeschroeter
Jack D. Oujo, founder of Oujo Wealth Strategies and author of Too Smart to Be an Umpire
https://toosmarttobeanumpire.com
Get the book: https://amzn.to/4xaM7lx
Speaking engagements: https://bookjack.org
Josh Rosenberg, founder of Forward Thinkers
https://www.forwardthinkers.io
Ben's book: 10 Topics To Help Managers, Leaders, and Entrepreneurs Get Better @ What You Do
https://amzn.to/4uDUC7K
Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DissedMedia?sub_confirmation=1
Better @ What You Do is sponsored by Rostr Studio. Questions about topics or guests can be sent to podcast@dissedmedia.com.
www.dissedmedia.com www.rostr.studio www.dailypitch.news www.benolmos.com
