Career Cafe

Aligning Yourself with the Ideal Job

Episode Summary

With so many careers and positions out there, how do you find an employer that values the same things you do, fits your aspirations, and also needs your skills on their team? Brandon, McKinley, and special guest Madalyn Swanson will go over how to find potential employers you’ll feel great working for and the importance of researching employers before you apply to them—kind of like scouring Google Reviews before deciding what cafe to eat lunch at. Listen until the end for a Career Center dad joke!

Episode Transcription

00;00;09;05 - 00;00;31;26

McKinley Hatch

Welcome to Career Cafe, a podcast to help you thrive in the professional world. Today's episode. From candidate to contributor, aligning yourself with the ideal job. We're going to be talking about all of things to help you find a job that aligns with your skills, values and career aspirations. Joining us today, we have Brandon Street and special guest Madalyn Swanson and myself, the moderator.

 

00;00;31;27 - 00;00;35;27

McKinley Hatch

So, Madeline, why don't you introduce yourself and tell us who you are?

 

00;00;35;29 - 00;00;53;13

Madeline Swanson

Hello, everyone. I'm Madeline Swanson. I am the business career services coordinator here at Southern Utah University, and I've had a career in higher education that range from career services to faculty development and academic advising. And right now, I work specifically helping business students find careers.

 

00;00;53;15 - 00;01;14;06

McKinley Hatch

Awesome. Thanks, Madeline. We're excited to have you today. Let's just jump right in. I wanted to get an understanding of how our candidates and our students and listeners specifically can align themselves to a job with their specific skills and values and goals and finding finding a good job for them that reflects their values and their skills. Right?

 

00;01;14;09 - 00;01;38;29

Brandon Street

Yeah, That's I you know, one thing I would suggest to individuals out there who are trying to find jobs that align to them is first, identify who you are, meaning, you know, what are my skills that I have? What do I value in a job? You know, what are my career goals? And starting with skills, I think there's a few things that that you can do to help identify your own skills, because I think at times we might find our own skills are hidden from us, right?

 

00;01;38;29 - 00;01;53;03

Brandon Street

We don't know what they are. We can identify all the skills that we have and sometimes we need help of others or things to help us do that. And so a couple of things I might suggest to our listeners as they're trying to identify their own skills. I would start by writing down all the skills you can think of.

 

00;01;53;03 - 00;02;14;12

Brandon Street

So go to a particular job you had. Write down all the skills that you can think of that you obtained from that job, right? And and maybe pull the job out, out and write down the skills they said you should have had to write, but then talk to people who are close to you, maybe a colleague who is on the job with you or who is on the job with you and ask them, Hey, what are some of my skills that you see?

 

00;02;14;12 - 00;02;29;00

Brandon Street

I employ each day on the job and then talk to close family relatives and kind of expand that list a little bit so you feel like you have a good collection of skills that came from the job you have, but also that people identify in you in general. I think that's just a great way to start identifying your own skills.

 

00;02;29;06 - 00;02;48;17

Brandon Street

One other thing I might suggest there are great resources like O*NET online. If you're not familiar with O*NET online, O*NET online.org is a place that you can go and punch in a certain type of job and learn about those jobs. But also you can you can put in your own jobs that you had and identify the skills and things, duties, skills that you should have learned from those things.

 

00;02;48;17 - 00;02;51;16

Brandon Street

So a great way to identify what skills you have.

 

00;02;51;18 - 00;03;12;10

Madeline Swanson

Brendan I would also recommend that you look back if you've had any performance reviews and see some things that maybe your supervisor found out were really, really great, or even faculty members might give you feedback on assignments like attention to detail or things like that, and you can really find those skills. I think in our culture we're taught we can't brag about ourselves, so we have a hard time finding these skills.

 

00;03;12;15 - 00;03;18;00

Madeline Swanson

But when you sit down and look at it, really look and examine yourself and in multiple different areas.

 

00;03;18;01 - 00;03;29;27

Brandon Street

Yeah, I think that's a really good point because I sit down with students all the time, are like, I don't want to brag about myself. I said, Well, you're not bragging. You've got to tell people the reality of what you've learned. If you don't tell them no one else is going to do it for you.

 

00;03;29;28 - 00;03;31;20

Madeline Swanson

Right? Exactly. You're selling yourself, right?

 

00;03;31;20 - 00;03;48;23

Brandon Street

Exactly. One of the thing I suggest values identify what you value in a job because you might be able to get a job which aligns with your skills. But if you don't like that job because it doesn't align with your values, I mean, you're going to be short, short term in that type of job, right? And so identify what you really want.

 

00;03;48;23 - 00;04;03;24

Brandon Street

Our job when I was getting into my career, I knew that I wanted a career was available to my family. And so I wanted to ensure I found a job that was more of an 8 to 5 job with weekends off, where I didn't travel a lot because I actually I wanted to be there with my family for my kids as they're growing up.

 

00;04;03;24 - 00;04;20;24

Brandon Street

And that and and that was my own. You may value something different, and that's okay. It really is okay. If you value travel, then find a job where you're going to do that. If you value money, then identify jobs are going to pay you. Right? But find out what you do value in a job and make sure you're aligning that with your skills as well.

 

00;04;20;26 - 00;04;30;10

Madeline Swanson

Brendan That's so great. When I meet with students first, that's the first question I ask is what do you want your life to look like five years past graduation? And that really helps to find those values.

 

00;04;30;13 - 00;04;31;22

Brandon Street

Yeah, I love that.

 

00;04;31;24 - 00;04;48;26

McKinley Hatch

Yeah, I love it. Thanks for sharing this. I think it's really important to find a good job for you to write. A lot of what we've talked about on this podcast so far is, you know, how can you help the employer? But of course we wanted to have a whole episode devoted to this, right? You want a good fit for you, too, right?

 

00;04;48;26 - 00;05;11;01

McKinley Hatch

Absolutely. And in the interview and all of that, we talk about how you can benefit the employer, but how can they benefit you? Right. So thanks for touching on that. I want to talk about now diving into the employer's right, the importance of researching industries, specific employers and maybe different resources. We have here at Southern Utah University to share with our students and listeners.

 

00;05;11;03 - 00;05;37;24

Brandon Street

Yeah, So once you I mean, once you know about who you are, you need be able to find those jobs that align with you, right? Those types of careers. And so one thing I'd suggest is, you know, once you again, you've identified those things, try to find companies that fit who you are. A lot of times, especially our students, know about the major companies that are out there, but often they miss those mid companies that are out there that could that could fit them so well and they could grow well in right.

 

00;05;37;26 - 00;06;03;27

Brandon Street

And so, you know, there's there's lots of tools be able to find companies out there you may not be aware of. I mean, obviously just a simple Google search on what career you want and companies that that have that. But there's also one I'm aware of called firm find. It's one at least in the state of Utah. The Department Workforce Services has this tool for you to be able to identify all of the the companies that are registered with them, who have who fit whatever keyword you put in.

 

00;06;03;27 - 00;06;19;19

Brandon Street

So if it's engineer, for example, you put that in, it'll show you all the engineering companies and how many employees are there. So you can see, is this a major employer? Is it a mid employer, Is it a startup company? Right. And again, you could you can then look them up and identify do they kind of align with the skills you have?

 

00;06;19;19 - 00;06;22;06

Brandon Street

And again, those values and goals you have in a job.

 

00;06;22;09 - 00;06;41;02

Madeline Swanson

Now, that's a that's a great resource. Even doing conducting a simple search, a job search and finding out what companies in those keywords. A lot of times people don't start looking at jobs until when they're close to graduation. But by doing that sooner you can start to identify companies that are hiring in those areas. And you can also find out the skills that they're looking for.

 

00;06;41;02 - 00;06;44;03

Madeline Swanson

And if you need to work on those skills, you can start adopting them now.

 

00;06;44;05 - 00;06;58;00

Brandon Street

I love that. Yeah, I do do that. Same thing with students is find a couple of job ads now. I mean, even for the ones you graduate three years from now, find what those are because you can identify very quickly. These are skills I need this is how I could grow and be ready for this job.

 

00;06;58;01 - 00;07;05;10

Madeline Swanson

I just had a student asked me, am I on the right major? And I said, Hey, what are the jobs saying? Yeah. And it completely blew her mind. So love.

 

00;07;05;10 - 00;07;25;01

Brandon Street

That. Yeah. One other thing you know, I talk about I think is really important is to identify, you know, we always try to identify what you'd be doing on the job, but who are you working for, Right? Like, again, when we talk about values and what you want, you're going to be spending at least 40 hours a week with the colleagues you can be working with at a company you're going to be with.

 

00;07;25;01 - 00;07;44;29

Brandon Street

So you need to identify who are they, what do they value, what are you know, what's their culture, what do what do they create in a team? And who would I be working with? Because it's a really important to understand. Again, who would I be working with at least 40 hours a week? I spend as much time during the week with my colleagues as I do with my family at times right during the week.

 

00;07;44;29 - 00;07;50;29

Brandon Street

And so it's important to make sure I can identify you, enjoy your career by understanding those types of things about a company as well.

 

00;07;51;01 - 00;08;07;29

Madeline Swanson

And you can find those things like on Glassdoor dot com. That's a great resource there. Reviews for companies. Now you have to always take those reviews with a grain of salt, but you can go through and you can see common negatives or common positives and you can find out are those negatives something that I can work with? Are those positives something that really means something to me?

 

00;08;07;29 - 00;08;10;15

Madeline Swanson

I think that's wildly important.

 

00;08;10;18 - 00;08;25;20

Brandon Street

Yeah, I agree. And and I think another way to do that is through social media to LinkedIn, those types of sites where you can go and learn more about a company and what people are posting about their company, Right. And things like that as well. You can you can learn a lot from those types of things as well.

 

00;08;25;27 - 00;08;39;05

Brandon Street

Or if it's crickets, maybe they're not posting anything you're wondering, you know, what's going on there. But, but it's a great a great opportunity to get on there and find people that perhaps even ask a few people on there what what their experience is like for with a certain company. Right.

 

00;08;39;07 - 00;08;55;14

Madeline Swanson

An informational interview is invaluable when when starting your job search and aligning your skills and asking those questions. That's why will always recommend that you ask, you know, why do you love working for that company? And you can really get an interesting answer and watch body language, things like that.

 

00;08;55;15 - 00;08;55;25

Brandon Street

Yeah.

 

00;08;55;26 - 00;09;17;16

McKinley Hatch

Love them. Yeah. Madalyn You just said aligning your skills right to a specific company. We've talked about understanding your value right? Understanding what employers are even out there, how to find them. But what about aligning your skills and experiences to a specific company and job right, Right.

 

00;09;17;16 - 00;09;37;08

Madeline Swanson

I mean, we touched on about like searching, searching jobs and finding looking for job titles and doing that sooner rather than later is wildly important because they're telling you what they want. We spend so much time guessing and putting things on our resume because we think that's what people want when they're truly telling us what they're looking for.

 

00;09;37;15 - 00;09;51;23

Madeline Swanson

And so if you can if you have a company that you know, you want to work for, if you look for a job 2 to 3 years in the future, you can start getting jobs while you're in school. That can help you refine those skills that maybe you're not as you don't have just yet.

 

00;09;51;26 - 00;10;08;16

Brandon Street

You know, I, I just thought of you know, we talked about this having students go and finding job ads. It I love this technique. And again, I, I use that as well. But but there's also things like the occupation Outlook handbook that you can get on and see what they identify you should be doing now to prepare yourself for a certain career.

 

00;10;08;18 - 00;10;27;27

Brandon Street

It lays out skills you should have, it lays out those types of thing, the knowledge you need to have, how to prepare for those things. And I love that because again, if we have a career goal to become something we need identify how do we build a roadmap to get there? I think sometimes we feel like, that person just stumbled into that job and that does that does happen.

 

00;10;27;27 - 00;10;47;09

Brandon Street

But we can be a little bit more strategic on preparing ourselves to get there. And that's not only laying out the what we need to do as far as experiences and developing ourselves, but also who are the people I need to know along the way, right? Like I can be intentional in creating a network of people that might help me get where I want to be when I when I'm ready for them.

 

00;10;47;11 - 00;11;10;01

Madeline Swanson

Brandon That's such a good use. I actually, when we do informational interviews, if it's a company that that student is really interested in and we connect them with someone at that company, I always have them ask the question, What advice would you give me someone who's trying to get a job at your company? And and that really helps too, because their process might be different, the way they evaluate.

 

00;11;10;01 - 00;11;15;22

Madeline Swanson

They might look at one skill higher than another skill, even though both are listed on that job description.

 

00;11;15;24 - 00;11;48;28

Brandon Street

That's true, Absolutely. One thing I suggest to our listeners as well as, you know, as you start looking to apply for jobs and we've talked about this, you know, in our other offices, but this is where the importance of then taking the skills and knowledge, you know, you have after evaluating those things and tailoring your documents to ensure that you're showcasing, you have the background of those, you know, knowledge, skills and abilities that employers looking for and helping them, you know, and that's what I always say to those who are working with resume is help help the employer understand why you're a good candidate.

 

00;11;49;01 - 00;12;05;17

Brandon Street

I think there's nothing more frustrating to employer than seeing a bunch of resumes and they cannot identify anybody who looks like a great candidate because we don't know how to do that necessarily at times. Right. And so be intentional in helping them understand once you develop those skills, how you have those through those documents.

 

00;12;05;19 - 00;12;25;04

Madeline Swanson

Employers love to find that information quickly so they can move on and get you in for that interview. And I think that's such good advice. Brandon, I actually recommend that students have multiple resumes at the ready for their different industries that they're interested in. Once you start to identify those industries, then it makes it even easier to customize when you're doing your job search.

 

00;12;25;04 - 00;12;27;10

Madeline Swanson

So you're not recreating the wheel each time.

 

00;12;27;13 - 00;12;50;17

Brandon Street

Absolutely. And one other thing I might suggest, you know, I think a lot of people worry like, well, if I'm changing a career from one career to another, how do I translate the skills into a new career? And I think we underestimate again, the skills that we have. That's why it's important to identify them first, right? But once we've done that, then we can take our resume and really not talk about what we did on the job holistically.

 

00;12;50;18 - 00;13;03;28

Brandon Street

But as much or more on, again, the the the skills that we learn and things that will translate directly to that because there's I think there's much more many more skills that translate than don't at times. And we undersell that a lot.

 

00;13;04;01 - 00;13;24;22

Madeline Swanson

I agree 100%. I think most employers know that they're going to have to train their new employees on the aspects of their job. But you can't teach some of those intangible transferable skills like work ethic or customer service or the ability to communicate effectively. Yes, you can refine, but if that person comes in with those skills already, they're a better candidate than someone who may not.

 

00;13;24;29 - 00;13;35;17

Brandon Street

Be absolutely getting along with people. Right. I mean, that's another big one for employers. Just. Okay, can you just come in? Come in and get along with people? Be a positive. You. Right.

 

00;13;35;19 - 00;14;06;17

McKinley Hatch

Awesome. Thank you both for sharing those tips for us. I think some of those resources you shared are invaluable for our students and for our listeners in general. We know the number one way people get jobs is through networking. Love it. So hopefully you guys are going to say that in unison. We're yeah, networking is huge, right? We talk about job search and aligning yourself and finding a good job in an employer, in a company who values who who have good values, Right.

 

00;14;06;17 - 00;14;18;03

McKinley Hatch

That align with yours. But what about networking in this process? Right. This is such a huge thing. So let's talk about some strategies for our listeners and how to network effectively and build those connections.

 

00;14;18;05 - 00;14;37;26

Madeline Swanson

there's so many different things that you can do to build your network SUU has a wonderful alumni network. And I would love to see people use SUU Connect and LinkedIn as a way to reach out to those folks. There's a great feature on LinkedIn where you can search alumni in certain job fields and then conduct, but then there's also industry events, things like that.

 

00;14;37;26 - 00;15;03;24

Madeline Swanson

Find out an association associated to the career that you want to go into, like the Utah Association of Public Accountants. That could be one. And you could go to those events where you could network with people in that career. And I know they welcome undergraduate students. There's also I mean, there's just so many different opportunities. Even if you don't have someone close by like here at SUU, you were kind of geographically isolated.

 

00;15;03;27 - 00;15;05;26

Madeline Swanson

So we use LinkedIn a lot.

 

00;15;05;29 - 00;15;20;14

Brandon Street

Yeah. And honestly, and I know many of you alumni or resonate with this, I'm an alum of SUU. We want to give back to our students. I always look for ways. I mean, I was poor when I was first out of SUU. Let's be honest. I had no money to give back to the university. All my kids was taking my money.

 

00;15;20;14 - 00;15;51;10

Brandon Street

But anyway, but I could give back and I wanted to give back and in mentoring students and you know, Madeleine, you talked about SUU Connect. What a great resource. If you don't know about SUU connect, find, find it. We have it on our web page. You can find that. But SUU Connect allows you as an alumni to jump on and connect with our students, our faculty and staff in a way that you can be a mentor, that you can offer your experience to our students in a way that help connect them to the world of work.

 

00;15;51;10 - 00;16;09;26

Brandon Street

And and, you know, this we're kind of unveiling this in full this semester to our students, and we're excited to get them on and connecting with our alum. And so what a great way to do that. You know, you talked to also about Madeleine, about LinkedIn, and if you don't know about that, alumni tool, I think we have about 35 no.

 

00;16;09;26 - 00;16;29;28

Brandon Street

We have about 39,000 alumni on there right now. And what I mean, networking means you have a connection with someone typically. And in that alumni tool, it allows you to connect with people you already naturally connect with, Right? And so they're more likely to respond to you and you say, Hey, it looks like your fellow alum or Hey, it looks like you graduate from SUU.

 

00;16;29;28 - 00;16;41;13

Brandon Street

Just reaching out to see how how did you how did you become so successful in your career or get to where you are and how do I prepare myself? They're more likely to respond if you kind of go with that natural connection.

 

00;16;41;13 - 00;16;57;04

Madeline Swanson

You have one of the recommendations I have for my students, Brandon, is exactly that. When you reach out to them on LinkedIn, tell them why, and then ask them do they have time for a 5 to 10 minute phone conversation and then get those alums on the phone, ask them questions. Don't ask for a job per se, but ask, you know, why do you love your job?

 

00;16;57;04 - 00;17;12;19

Madeline Swanson

Why do you like what you're working, where you're working? What challenges do you see facing your industry, your company in the next six months? And then do you have anybody else you'd be willing to connect me with? And I've had students do that for great success.

 

00;17;12;21 - 00;17;30;09

Brandon Street

Over the years. Well, yeah, I mean, because naturally when you start talking to these individuals again, I've said this over and over on this podcast, but what you do is develop a level of trust with people and when they trust you, they they trust you with their opportunities, right? And so you may not be asked for a job now, but you're developing a relationship and developing trust.

 

00;17;30;09 - 00;17;35;29

Brandon Street

And then when those opportunities come, guess who they talk to? Yeah, the people they trust, right? They'll. They'll come back with that job offer.

 

00;17;35;29 - 00;17;50;17

Madeline Swanson

They'll reach out to you with that job opportunity. Absolutely. I actually do this in a in a way for for my students. I've reached out to over 2000 alum in the last couple of years, and I've only had one person, you know, not respond to me. And so I think that's a pretty good track record.

 

00;17;50;22 - 00;17;53;13

Brandon Street

That's really good. That means our alumni want to give back their.

 

00;17;53;14 - 00;17;54;00

Madeline Swanson

They do They do.

 

00;17;54;00 - 00;17;55;11

Brandon Street

Thank you alumni.

 

00;17;55;13 - 00;18;03;22

McKinley Hatch

And use them, right? Like definitely utilize them. They have all this knowledge. They're like a database for our student. Absolutely information Brandon.

 

00;18;03;22 - 00;18;10;13

Madeline Swanson

And I can't know everything. So I mean it's at least I guess alumni that's yes.

 

00;18;10;15 - 00;18;33;12

McKinley Hatch

Awesome. Thank you both Brandon and Madeline for joining us on this podcast today. And thank you listeners for tuning in. Don't forget to follow along and subscribe to our podcast and share it with other fellow T-Birds alumni and friends. And then don't forget to give us a follow on social media at SUU Career Center, we share tips and resources on there.

 

00;18;33;15 - 00;18;48;27

McKinley Hatch

It's a great, great to follow, so make sure to do that and then tune in next week for our episode on The Power of First Impressions, Dressing for success and reimagining handshakes in the post-COVID world. And Brandon, why don't you close us off?

 

00;18;49;02 - 00;19;09;09

Brandon Street

Yeah, I'd love to do that. I don't know if you two know, but I was actually recently looking on changing careers. I think about becoming a mirror installer. I could just really see myself doing that, so. you're so good. And I loved it. I could tell already she's that. Yeah, she gave me the face.

 

00;19;09;11 - 00;19;11;21

McKinley Hatch

Awesome. Thanks listeners. Tune in next week.