I finally figured out why I can’t find a job

And the reason is actually me....

And this note is everything I haven't been able to express in a 30 minute behavioral interview.

Let’s unpack that a bit shall we

“I don’t get it.”?

“I just don’t get it."

“What happened to me? “

"What is wrong with me?"

This has felt like the chorus of the song that has been my job search.? Suffice to say, it has been an extremely hard time.

I’ve often said that I’ve had an eventful life which is my coded way of saying… I’ve seen some sh*t.? And while that’s true, I’ve also figured out some sh*t. I’ve been able to figure out how to navigate nearly every situation in my life for the last <however old you think I am> years. I’ve never wanted people to focus on my hardships - I’ve wanted people to see how I was able to solve my way through them.

I figured out how to get full rides to play soccer at 2 different colleges.? I figured out how to relocate to multiple cities on my own. I figured out how to launch and grow a business on a whim. Why can’t I figure out how to find a job??

I've worked in recruiting...I should know the rules of the game... so why does it feel like I'm trying to run down the field with 2 left feet?

Some Dark Days?

This weekend was full of, what my friend Sarah and I would call, some dark days.?

To be clear, Sarah and I coined the term because we were both pretty bad coordinators. Our first fall recruiting season was full of missteps that were so stressful in the moment but hilarious with even minimal hindsight.?

“Remember when we were making interview binders at 7pm and you dropped the 3 hole punch?’

“Oh yes - those were some dark days.”?

Nearly 15 years later and we still text about? the dark days …. dropping that 3 hole punch, the name tags with misspellings, the binders that weren’t color coded correctly, the tshirt sizes that were miscounted. Everything that truly doesn’t matter in the grand scheme - but felt like the world was ending at the time.?

But this period has been different. The last few years have been different. It isn’t one misstep that you learn from and keep going. It’s deeper than cleaning up all the little paper circles off the floor after Sarah dropped the 3 hole punch.

But for real - don’t ask her about that. It was a dark day.

I’ve struggled with some of the most basic questions in interviews, stumbled over myself trying to not be too detailed but also not be too vague.

Trying to show I'm a real team player, but not using "we" too much because while there's no "i" in team there's 2 in the word interview so make sure to lead with how you did everything.

I have felt my body physically shift when an interview starts. I’m a chatty person, but I can no longer carry a conversation in this setting.? What is going on? Why am I so awkward?

I’ve tried to validate the situation and “be my own best friend”: layoffs are hard, it’s a tight job market, you just need interview practice. But it has been something so much more than that and no amount of asking for feedback and perspective has gotten me any closer to changing my current situation.

It has left me confused. It has left me dejected. It has left me feeling so lost.??

My life went from solving a puzzle to solving a Rubik's Cube. While I can work on a hard Sudoku puzzle for hours - I absolutely want to throw a Rubik's Cube against the wall.

On Sunday a lot of things came to a head.??

I failed another?set of interviews. Back to square 1. It was 4 months between interviews this last time... My contract is ending in 2 weeks… How much runway do I have left for bills and rent??What if it's another 4 months until I get a callback?

On Friday, I wrote about teams in the workplace and real teams you play on in sports and something finally inside me finally gave.? I didn’t write about college soccer to self promote - I needed a conduit to express so much sheer frustration.

I was extremely upset all weekend - but was I upset because I miss playing soccer???No...

I started thinking about all of the hard times I’ve gone through and writing everything down.

• What caused the hard time
• Why it impacted me
• How I “figured it out”

I didn’t do this to feel sorry for myself - but rather to try to see if I could draw anything from a past experience. What is the common thread that could pull this all together? Why can't I make sense of any of this? Trying to stave off a panic attack, I did something I don’t normally do … I reached out to 3 people for help.??

2 didn’t respond, 1 wasn’t free. Seems about right.?

But that 1 person? gave me an opening to just “talk” over text… so I did… and I unloaded.?

I didn’t unload in a “whoa is me fashion” but said everything that I’ve needed to say for years. Things that I haven’t been able to say because people interrupt me, tell me I’m too long winded and stop listening, say they can’t follow my train of thought and I don’t make any sense. So I sat at my laptop weeping into my iMessage window as Season 2 of NYPD Blue played in the background and Andy Sipowicz continued to learn how to adjust to life with a new partner.?Talk about some dark days.

What I have needed for the last several years is to be heard. I didn’t need pity, I didn’t need a pep talk, I didn’t need a problem solved by someone else. I just needed to be heard and I needed to be raw.??

I needed to be able to lay all of my pieces out on the table and figure out why things weren’t fitting this time.

What I figured out?

Yesterday was what I call an emotional hangover.? A day that you just feel tired and like you’re walking through jello - almost in slow motion.? Oddly, these days are usually when I’m able to start to truly problem solve.? Emotional hangovers are normally when my mind is clear because I’m drained, when all of the “yuck” is no longer clouding it, and I can figure out my next move without overcomplicating it because I'm just too tired.??

Yesterday, I had a few big realizations that don’t solve anything in the near-term - but at least make it possible to keep moving forward and not give up.??

<not a humble brag> People have often told me I’m smart.? I have always known I wasn’t stupid but what does being smart even mean? I just read a lot… I’m just curious....I like puzzles. I like improving things.

I have always assumed everyone consumed information the same way I did. Doesn’t everyone have this insatiable desire to connect all of the dots?

No. No they don’t.??

And then I finally realized… I’m the reason I’m in this situation. I’m the reason I can’t find a job.

Everything that makes up my strengths is everything that is also holding me back.?

Realization 1: I look at life like a puzzle

Blame my dad for this.? Actually, if you met the guy - you couldn’t blame him for being anything but “totes adorbs” as the kids would say. Growing up, we clicked because we could make just about everything into a game.?

In 2nd grade, I really wanted to beat this one kid in “Around the World” (aka the ultimate head-to-head multiplication competition…)

My dad was an elementary school teacher and started bringing home timed tests with 100 multiplication questions - all in different order. At night, I would sit at the kitchen table and run through 5 or 6 of them. He would time me, and “grade” my paper.? We’d look at all of the tests and talk about if I was getting faster and more accurate or just going faster and making more mistakes… Were the mistakes one offs or common?

Sometimes we’d cap the time and I’d see how many questions I could complete - sometimes we’d time how long it took to get through all of them and make no mistakes… just to keep it interesting… just to look at the “data” from a new? perspective.

My best friend from childhood recently asked: “why do I remember that you were so good around the world?” And the answer is not because I was a math savant. The whole time I was juicing on worksheets to get me ready for peak classroom performance.? Didn’t everyone?

The summer I turned 10 years old, I was? about to start competitive soccer. I decided I needed to get in running shape since it was now the big leagues. We figured out a 1.28 mile route that I would run 5 or 6 times a week while he rode the bike and timed me.? We had a sheet of notebook paper with a grid (a spreadsheet if you will) hung on the fridge and would write down my times.? We even went so far as to track different segments of the 1.28 mile loop to get consistent with pacing.

We noticed that my running times started getting a lot faster and randomly so did all the times from my swim meets. So we went back and retroactively logged previous swim results and started tracking those in real time, moving forward, on a different sheet.? We then could compare the week-over-week improvements and figure out where and why the improvements started.

Boom. A cross-training plan was born. As was a data-driven 10 year old.

What I learned as a multiplication table enthusiast and what I learned that tracking my times that summer created a foundation that I used to get in shape for college soccer and how I trained for marathons. I would track everything in a notebook or spreadsheet and then after a few weeks, go back and figure out what was working and what wasn’t - make adjustments…? rinse and repeat.?

I realized that this method of tracking and evaluating / identifying and improving, also set the foundation for how I”ve approached every job. It’s why I could figure out new ways of working that actually worked. It’s why I can troubleshoot software and articulate to engineers where the gaps are between how a tool was built and how a tool is used.?

If I can envision what “good” looks like, then I can take stock of what I currently have and identify what I’m missing. I can figure out the patterns and parse the correlations from causation.

Realization 2: My brain works backwards?

I already semi-alluded to this, but I tend to start something by figuring out the end.?

• What am I actually trying to do?
• What am I actually trying to solve?
• What is the goal here??

And then... What happens right before I get to that endpoint? What happens right before that? And so on and so forth.?

This is what soccer drilled into me - except then it was just called anticipating the ball… it was called seeing the field.? I didn’t realize we were taught to reverse engineer the game.

What does “good” look like in soccer??

• Scoring goals

So what all has to happen to get the ball across that line??

• Who is involved??
• What is their role??
• Where are they positioned on the field??
• What else do I need to be aware of??
• What are the rules?

I never understood why I could catch edge cases that seemed so obvious... You just rewind every single step of a process.? Once you do that- you take her for test drive going the opposite way…

• Can you take the same route forward that you took backwards?
• If not - what was different??

I realized I have not been able to answer the most basic interview questions because most of the time (in interviews and outside of them), my brain is working backwards not forwards.

When your brain is working backwards and you’re figuring out all of the inputs that comprise that final output - all of those behavioral interview questions are just baked into the journey - they don’t stand out as anything that should signal competency... should they?

In all honesty, behavioral questions have always been nothing short of silly to me. The underlying expectation is that you spring out of bed each morning as Odysseus and your job is a series of daily encounters with the sirens and cyclops but all somehow neatly wraps up and you sail home at the end of the day.

However, when you reverse engineer your process, you tend to lose The Odyssey because you can anticipate what you'll encounter. You lose the drama and the intrigue which form the basis of behavioral interview scorecards because it's just so normal - it's not groundbreaking.

Realization 3: My personality does not translate over Zoom

I finally realized how I think about things is what makes me different. It's what makes me special.? I kind of started to understand why people say I should write a book… because I approach things differently… but then I realized - this is also the root of all of your problems.?

There are 7 and 10 years between me and my older sister and older brother, respectively. Growing up, I would never accuse my parents or older siblings of dumbing things down for me to account for the age difference. Their antidote to my dreaded “but why” phase was to say “go look it up”.? And as a child of the 90s - my Googler was a set of encyclopedias. If I heard something in a conversation that I didn’t understand - the conversation wouldn’t stop so they could explain something to me. If I interrupted,? I’d be told to look it up and so off to the encyclopedias I would go.

In order to keep up, I got very used to reading something conceptual and applying it to what I had heard… It’s why I often research things before or after a meeting… to make sure that I can keep up with a conversation or confirm that I understood the conversation.

This is why I’ve been called a ”know it all”, this is why I’ve been called abrasive, this is why I’ve been called “long winded”. And frankly, this is why I’m always shocked and hurt when I get that feedback.? It’s become more prevalent with remote work and likely why I’ve felt like all of the sudden something is wrong with me.? Why was I a “problem solver” in person and a “know it all” over Zoom??

When I spot something 2 steps ahead of where someone else is at - it’s not because I’m picking what they think apart, it's not because I think I’m smarter than that person… It’s because I started at the end and they started at the beginning. I simply got to a certain point sooner due to sheer proximity. When I got there, I thought about the current state, did some research, and then identified the gaps.?

It comes from a place of wanting to anticipate what we will encounter in order to land on a good solution. A place of wanting to be a good teammate so we can score goals.? These intentions come through in person because you spend all day interacting and building relationships. Intentions are so often missed or misconstrued in transactional interactions - which is the nature of remote work or Zoom meetings.?

Transactions end with the click of a button… real relationships are continuous, evolve, and don't happen over a screen. If 90 day fiancee has taught us anything as a society....

What this has meant in the job search

This weekend I started making a list of all of the basic questions I have not been able to answer and deconstructed each situation with no regard for the STAR method or how it would sound to someone else… I just wrote out sequentially what I did in every situation that felt successful.

And I realized…?

The way I manage stakeholders, the way I prioritize, the way I problem solve, the way I use data -? is the exact same way I train for marathons, it’s why I’m really good at giving gifts (absolute humble brag), it’s why I need to be able to talk things out so I can organize my thoughts... It’s no different than timed tests, tracking “velocity” on running routes, researching topics of conversation I don’t know about.

But how do you convey this in a 30 minute interview (which becomes a 20 minute interview very quickly)… How do I fit a sometimes circuitous approach into the confines of the ultimate linear way of thinking (aka the STAR interview framework).

Interviews have felt like someone is asking me - what letter comes before “N”.?

• If you start at “A”, you can fairly quickly and succinctly land on “M”... (H,I,J,K,L, M…)
• If you start at “Z”, you take a bit more time but realize - M comes before N? …. but so does L, as does K …. And actually the letter F comes before G which is also before M. So do you want to know what directly comes before N and starting from which direction.... and is it one letter or many?

In short, my answers doesn’t translate in an 30 minute behavioral interview. And I’ve known that.?

So I’ve tried to be perfect, I’ve tried to answer questions the way I think everyone else would. I’ve consumed a ton of information to learn “the right way” to answer a question …. I've tried to be succinct... I've tried to figure out what succinct even means.... And it has failed miserably.

Do I try to explain how I actually think about things? Do I try to be myself and risk being confusing or long winded? Or do I keep trying to be like everyone else? Is it better to conform, continue to be awkward, but answer this question the right way with varying degrees of truthfulness?

I'm a terrible mind reader - but if you tell me what good looks like - I can tell you how to get there.

So what now??

Well, as much as I would like to say that this revelation solved the universe and I now have a job with dental insurance that will let me fix my chipped tooth… But alas, I cannot say that ... yet.?

However, I am feeling a little more hopeful.? A little more hopeful that I now know what makes me special. A little more hopeful that I'll be able to demonstrate that this makes me a better candidate.?

It also makes all of the content posted on LinkedIn all the more nonsensical. Instead of feeling like I’m resistant to feedback or closed minded - I can ignore 99% of the stuff that is posted - because I’m just thinking about my career in a different way.?

(Try to sit back and imagine if you actually worked with someone who acted the way they describe themselves in behavioral interviews. It's a pretty fantastic thought exercise...)