Pause on Climb to talk Career Hacks

To be completely transparent with you, the last few weeks have been tough. As I've mentioned a few months ago in a previous post , committing to climb-training can be a mental journey as it is a physical one. Last week proved to be one of those mentally challenging weeks, with the ongoing headwinds in the tech industry and LinkedIn's layoffs . While my role remains in tact, many of my other peers and friends have been impacted.

Not shockingly, writing about "Snow Hiking for Dummies" didn't feel appropriate. As such, I wanted to deviate this week's Choosing Chaos to sharing personal lessons learned on job searches and interviews -- consider this a momentary pause from the usual complaints about how sore my legs are and pleas for donations. I like to break things, and my favorite things to break is job searches and interviews. This post will go beyond the "spruce up your resume" and go through some hacks I've learned.

Note, I come from a business background. These tips and tricks will be more oriented around this area.

Know the Job You Want & Beta Test

Whether or not you know what your next dream job is, it's important to answer the following questions:

• What experiences or skills do I want in my next role?
• What opportunities will get me there?
• AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, do I have what it takes to get noticed?

Fortunately, there's an app for that: LinkedIn. I'll admit I'm biased, but I've been a LinkedIn Premium subscriber since college. Why? Because LinkedIn runs on an algorithm, and it's important to understand how to crack that algorithm so that you show up on the right searches. In addition to LinkedIn Premium (which includes great resources like Rock Your Profile courses ), you can go through job descriptions to 1) identify the roles you want and 2) incorporate key words into your profile.

Key words like the ones highlighted below can allow you to show up in searches more strategically. Like in the job description below, I can tell to make sure I include accomplishments that highlight my ability to develop go-to-market strategies, manage stakeholders, and partner with others. You can go a step further by "beta testing" your profile as the changes to your "algorithm results" can reflect in your Recommended Jobs. I've had my recommended jobs / recruiter outreach go from SAP Administrator to Sales Strategy Manager just by changing 2 words on my profile!

Create Your Interview Story Matrix

Lock down an interview? Great, now comes the prep work. Like a crib-sheet for a college exam, an interview story matrix can be immensely helpful to guide your interview season. What is an interview story matrix? Just like rocking your profile, you can use those job characteristics to suss out what questions you'll get in the interview like stakeholder management, executive communication, etc. For each of those "traits", you can also leverage websites like Glassdoor to find commonly asked questions as well.

Once you've identified a solid list of "questions", you can then apply the STAR method to script out your interview stories. I like to keep 8-10 stories on hand to cover most situations. Do what works best for your learning style. For example, I'm a tactile learner, and so handwriting my matrix helps me remember my lines.

Whether or not I'm on the job hunt, I do this exercise annually to help refresh what I've accomplished in the last year -- and to retire stories from the past.

Learning about a Company in 4 Days or Less

Do. Your. Research. And. Take. Notes.

We've got that out of the way. Knowing about the business can add an extra sparkle to your interview that could separate you from the next best candidate. Yet, like others, I have an incredibly short attention span and very limited amounts of free time. As such, reading a 50-page 10K for every company I'm interviewing for just won't cut it.

Understand how you learn best, and use that to inform how you prep. During an interview with Waymo 5 years ago, I leveraged a combination of Wikipedia, 30-minute MIT lecture on Youtube video, and a handful of podcasts to learn about LIDAR and self-driving car technology. After studying for 1-2 hours before bed for 4 days, I managed to get to a final round interview.

You're not expected to be a rocket scientist for every interview, but I recommend filling out on a sheet of paper (the magic word is ? crib sheet ?) the following before any business-related interview:

• Company Mission, Vision, Structure & Leadership (CEO)
• Products & Offerings
• Strengths, Opportunities, Threats and Risks
• Cool Tidbits in the News about the Company (I'm a big fan of Bloomberg Interviews, the WSJ Tech Podcast, and Seeking Alpha to source these)

Another tactic I've been playing with at work is using generative AI to summarize account / company research. ChatGPT, Notion, and/or other basic-level AI can be used to help summarize bulky documents like financial analyst reports into shorter summaries.

It's a tough time out there, but finding a new job doesn't need to be chaotic. Leverage your network and ask for help. If you have any other tips, please holler in the comments and provide links to jobs!

Now for some hiking lessons learned...

Lessons Learned

• Restorative yoga is incredibly helpful at relieving glute, shoulder and other muscle tightness related to long-hikes... but be wary of "yoga butt"
• Long-distance hiking is a balance between salt-and-sugar intake . Hooray for Girl Scout Cookies!

To support my fundraising goal for Breast Cancer Prevention, you can donate?here . If you're a LinkedIn employee, go to my go/Gives campaign at go/ShastaStrong.