Joe Miller:Hey, John, welcome to Titans of Transition.

John Tarnoff: Hey Joe, good to see you.

Joe Miller:Hey, listen, I was really glad to connect with you. What was it? Four months ago, we made a connection, said we should really do something together. And another executive coach and you're an author, something I aspire to. So you can tell us a little bit about what you've written before. But I thought maybe we kick off the conversation talking about this crazy job search, recruiting. Things are kind of broken, man.

John Tarnoff:Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Totally broken. They've been broken for years and they're just getting worse.

Joe Miller:I mean, I'm sure you hear a lot of these, I will call them horror stories. I hear it mostly from the candidate standpoint these days, now that I'm semi-retired. I certainly have a view from a hiring manager standpoint. But yeah, I hear lots of frustrations of people trying everything they can think of to land the next position. We know that there's been some tech layoffs in not too distant past.

Joe Miller:But man, it just seems like more than ever today, people are just really struggling to land that new position. I just wonder what your perspective on it is.

John Tarnoff: So just to kind of inject the personal side of this, I come to this as a former executive. come out of a really volatile business, entertainment. was a film studio executive for many years. I took a kind of a sabbatical in the nineties out into technology. I founded a little startup with a partner and we, you know, raised the money and had a whole bunch of developers working in a warehouse. And then 2001, just as we were starting to build traction and get clients, boom, the bubble burst. We burst with it.

John Tarnoff:The clients went away, the money went away and I just thought, okay, what am I gonna do? Now I was just about to turn 50. And I had always used my network because in entertainment, it's changed a little bit now, but back in the day, it was a completely who you know business. So I had a resume and I would always have the resume to send out, but.

John Tarnoff:I was always calling people on the phone. People were calling me. It's like, what's open? What do you got? So it's completely by referral because it was such a volatile business. It needed to be referral based because things are moving so fast. You don't want to have a question about the person you're hiring. You want to get verification. And I think the rest of the world has become like entertainment in the intervening 20 odd years where everything is so

John Tarnoff:volatile, fast-moving, unstable. Today's solution may not be tomorrow's solution. You need something more than the skills that are listed on a resume, which is why the so-called hidden job market arguably represents about 80 % of all hiring because put yourself in the hiring manager's shoes. Wouldn't you rather hire someone that's been recommended by a colleague?

John Tarnoff:versus taking a chance, rolling the dice on someone who comes in over the transom.

Joe Miller:I mean, absolutely true. And as a hiring manager, as an IT executive, even back in the day, I used to have positions open. I would get flooded with resumes, right? Even with the help of HR helping me screen. It was overwhelming. And yeah, if I had a strong personal reference, or here's the other one, someone has already worked for me in the past and I know what I'm getting.

Joe Miller:totally there. But if I had a strong personal reference, just that was lots of weight. But do you think even today that is sort of powered down in a way? Or do you think most of them? Yeah.

John Tarnoff:The referral-based hiring? Well, I think the referral-based hiring works particularly well and should be focused on for more experienced professionals. I think if you are earlier in your career, you're going to rely on your skill set because you don't have the experience to back it up, right? You don't have the experience to be strategic. So I kind of joke that skills are for kids, like tricks are for kids.

Joe Miller:You don't have the track record. Yeah.

John Tarnoff:that and that's fine when you're at the beginning of your career, you want to develop those skill sets because you want to develop a varied portfolio of experiences based on those skill sets. However, when you hit your mid 30s, late 30s into your 40s, now all of a sudden you're starting to grind a little bit. You're starting to hit a bit of a wall because everyone's got the skills and now the younger kids

John Tarnoff:have the skills and they have maybe better skills or different skills or more up-to-date skills and you're now being perceived as something of a dinosaur. And this is particularly true as you know in tech. I have a colleague who is in her early 40s. She started a podcast because she was let go at 40 for being a dinosaur in her tech job. And...

Joe Miller:yeah.

John Tarnoff:found it really difficult at 40 in tech as a woman to get hired. And she's become quite a bit of an activist. Her name is Maureen Clough. So I would recommend that your listeners follow Maureen. And you know, this is the new reality. So you have to figure out something different. Insanity after all is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result. So for people who are

Joe Miller:We'll check her out. Yeah, I'm sure she has some great wisdom to share.

John Tarnoff:Lamenting the fact that they have applied to 50 100 200 jobs of 500 jobs without getting an interview I say maybe you're doing something wrong and that there is an alternative and it does go back to what we were talking about initially which is Referrals, right? So that I think is the the antidote to the broken hiring system

Joe Miller:Mm-hmm.

Joe Miller:Yeah.

Joe Miller:Yes. And I also think something else came to mind when you were going through that. And that is you're really trying to differentiate yourself from the mass pool of other people who have all the skills at that level. And I would say having that referral, especially when you're looking to move. And this typically happens in mid-career when you're looking to move out of maybe supervising a small team, you're starting to move into the director level.

John Tarnoff:Yep. Yep.

Joe Miller:moving up the ladder, you're in a position with more influence, regardless of what the title says. Then they're looking for someone who can truly lead and push things forward. That's where that kind of referral stuff that someone has the track record, because you're almost commodity when you're just looking at these check boxes on her resume. And there's another thought I want to throw in to John, I want to get your thoughts on this.

Joe Miller:It seems to me that a lot of what happens if the hiring manager doesn't really get very actively involved in the job spec and doesn't have the ability to influence that job spec into something that's rational, that's really aligned to what he or she is really looking for, that it becomes the union of everyone else's checklist.

Joe Miller:Say you're hiring manager, all your peers who have to interact with this individual, they add all their extra things in there. well, you you're, you're, you're supporting or you're, let's say your peer is the head of engineering. Well, then this person has to be have engineering background. Or if your peer is someone who has sales experience, heading the sales organization, then they have to have key elements of what he's looking for for to support him or her. And so that becomes this huge checklist.

Joe Miller:of items that must be a competitive landscape for any applicant as well.

John Tarnoff:Here's the problem with the flatter hierarchy of business today. Okay. Generally, I love the idea of the flatter hierarchy, empowering people, teamwork. But the problem with the flatter hierarchy is that everyone's got to voice their opinion. So as a candidate, never used to happen.

Joe Miller:Yeah, go ahead. I think I know where you're going. Yeah.

John Tarnoff:Now, all of a sudden, you're not going to get anywhere until you're on that team interview on zoom with six or eight people on that call. my God, what a cluster blank that is. And you know that if you're the candidate, have to, you know, you have to please everybody on that call in order to be the slam dunk.

Joe Miller:Yes, it's a committee.

Joe Miller:Yes.

John Tarnoff:and you don't know who on that call is exercising the most influence.

Joe Miller:What's the real structure, right? There's the chart structure, who, what's the real, yeah.

John Tarnoff:So this becomes a very, very challenging. It's another example of why the hiring system is broken, right? And why it becomes so difficult to get hired because look, I come out of entertainment, right? Auditioning for parts, actors lining up outside. We all know this cliche of people studying their lines and going in and then auditioning. Well, that's what application through

Joe Miller:Yeah?

John Tarnoff:resume is going to get you. You're going to be in a cattle call with, I mean, 250 people auditioning for the average job these days, narrowing it down to what? A half dozen first round interviews, maybe three or four final round interviews. And you have that problem with the team. So it's broken.

Joe Miller:Mm-hmm.

Joe Miller:Easy. Yeah.

Joe Miller:Yes.

John Tarnoff:You have very little chance of pushing through, which is why you have to get out of this flywheel of death, this hamster wheel of destruction that's going to impact your career.

Joe Miller:Yeah. And it's hard when you're in the middle of that milieu, spinning around. It's very difficult to really understand it from a broader perspective of what's going on. You're in survival mode, trying to make the right short-term moves that you think will advance you in that whole process. So that's really a good context, I think, to set the stage and maybe talk about some of the

Joe Miller:the general things that you bring in your key teachings, maybe through your book you've written and your executive coaching that you do, that you think are really might be great for people who are in the middle of all this to consider. So it's kind of, you're stuck on, I'm going to use the word inside. Before we got on the call, we talked about the outside inside. that's a prompt here. So you're stuck in this inside view. So why don't you,

John Tarnoff:Yes.

John Tarnoff:Good, I'll take it.

Joe Miller:Why don't you dive into that in this way, this paradigm or the way of framing the situation for us.

John Tarnoff:So for me, antidote to the broken hiring system starts with a paradigm shift. And that is that instead of seeing yourself as an outsider, trying to get in and fit yourself into someone else's idea of what they want, because hiring managers, as you've mentioned, they don't necessarily have a really clear idea about what the job is that they want. They may not even have written the job description. So you're

John Tarnoff:It's a fool's errand. Instead, you want to proceed from an inside out process where you start with your value proposition. And this is particularly important for older professionals who actually have the experience. They actually have the savvy and the insight to be able to build that portfolio of value that they must present as a deliverable, not as a set of skills, not as a set of responsibilities.

John Tarnoff:but as a deliverable that they provide that they are offering and that needs to be consistent across all of the jobs that they apply to. So they're not applying to every job that they can do. They're only applying to jobs that are the best fit and that requires a lot of work, right? To be able to really focus in to resist the temptation of applying to a

Joe Miller:Yeah.

Joe Miller:Yeah.

John Tarnoff:so-so job that you can do because guess what you're not going to get that job anyway. Right. There's so many reasons for them to reject you only focus on the best possible fit for yourself.

Joe Miller:Right, right.

Joe Miller:Well, we'll get back to how do you get that clarity? Let's kind of put that on the shelf for a second, but you made me think about this, maybe a little bit of a mindset shift, and that is you really are interviewing the opportunity yourself to see whether there is a fit. So regardless of the job spec and the job description, whatever one is saying to you, I think this is something as you've positioned it, folks who have some experience,

John Tarnoff:Absolutely.

Joe Miller:have a unique ability to be able to lean in and listen for what's behind the questions and what the pain points are and what the hiring manager's really asking for. as a hiring manager, I was often in such a desperate need for someone to work directly for me. I was doing two or three jobs. And so it was hard for me to engage in the process and to be articulate.

Joe Miller:and the way probably I should have at the time. So a prospect, the one that I think really, really differentiates yourself if you can suss out what that need is clearly and then make your determination of how your unique gifts, skills, experience to meet that need and specifically what you can offer and get specific. I think that's what you're teasing too. Don't be a ethereal.

Joe Miller:about it and also be willing to say not a fit, which is really hard for applicants to say. I mean, how often do you hear people you coach you say, well, I just stepped away from that because it was clearly not going to work even if I got it.

John Tarnoff:If you're working with me, that's what you're going to be doing.

Joe Miller:That's good. So we get into the clarity.

John Tarnoff:Right? Because, yeah, because I'm going to insist on it because you're wasting your time. If you are applying to jobs that are fruitless, that are pointless, that are not right for you, you're wasting time that could be spent researching, targeting, developing referral relationships for the jobs that are right for

Joe Miller:brings to mind a coaching framework Thomas Leonard had. That is, are you moving towards something? Are you moving away from something? So that's something I think from a motivational base can trip us up if we're not clear on it.

John Tarnoff:Right. Right.

John Tarnoff:Yeah, I would build on that and say that it's not so much are you moving towards something or moving away from something, but are you waiting for someone to pick you out of a lineup? Or are you targeting or are you targeting the people and the places where you would be the best fit and then making your case for why you are the best fit?

Joe Miller:Great analogy.

Joe Miller:Mm-hmm.

John Tarnoff:That I think is a much more productive way of going about it. And my problem with the LinkedIn open to work banner, which is a very controversial topic, and I've gotten into a lot of trouble on LinkedIn about this because people have misinterpreted my position on this. I don't think there's anything wrong with it. But I think it's a passive signal. I think that on some level you're saying,

John Tarnoff:I'm waiting for the phone to ring. Here I am, hire me. And recruiters who are in favor of or who praise the open to work banner, I think are lazy because they're not going for the people who may already have a job.

John Tarnoff:or who may not want to signal that they are unemployed because there is a certain amount of shame about this in our culture. No getting around that. And because employers would rather hire someone who is already in a job versus someone who is out of a job because this raises the question of, how come they're out of the job? What happened? Was it them? Was it the other party? I mean, it just raises all of these alarm bells. So,

John Tarnoff:recruiters who are not probing more deeply and looking for your value proposition, regardless of whether you're open to work or not, those are the recruiters that you want to be targeted by. And I think that putting open to work up doesn't really do very much. It may help you connect to your friends who are going, oh, I didn't realize you were open to work. Well, great. What do you want? I mean, I haven't heard of anything, but if I do, I'll call you, which never happens.

Joe Miller:Mm I'll let you know. Yeah. Right.

John Tarnoff:So bear that in mind.

Joe Miller:Yeah, yeah. So when you're having discussions with those you coach or others reach out to you for advice,

Joe Miller:Where do you start with them?

John Tarnoff:When I start with a client, I start on the inside. I start with a self reflective process before we even get to the resume, the LinkedIn profile, because you want to know what you stand for. You want to know who you are. You want to know what your preferences and abilities and best, you know, best face is going to be out there in the marketplace. And the exercise that I start with is the Iki guy exercise. So

John Tarnoff:Iki-Gai for those of you who are not familiar with this is this it's kind of a westernized version of a Japanese concept of life's purpose. And there are four questions in the Western Iki-Gai. What do you love to do? What do you do well? What does your world need? I kind of vary it in the classic Iki-Gai Venn diagram. It says, what does the world need? I think that's far too

John Tarnoff:expansive, I think you want to focus on your world, right? Your business, your industry. And then the final question is, what can you get paid for? So the goal is to create a product out of yourself. Right? And it's a product that you can get behind because you love it. You're good at it. There's a product market fit for it. And people are in these jobs. People are getting paid. So

John Tarnoff:One of the things that you can do as kind of preliminary research and part of your IKIGAI process is to look around on LinkedIn and see who's got the job that I want. Do some searching, study these profiles of people who are doing the kind of job that you want. Maybe you actually are going to combine a couple of different jobs into one value proposition, or you're going to kind of take some of the things that you do really well.

John Tarnoff:and apply them to a particular niche and deliver a very compelling proposal for how people can use you to their best advantage and your best advantage.

Joe Miller:It's interesting how many parallels there is. You use the word product. You use the phrase value proposition. It really is that. I think you are anchoring to competitive avatars, I'll call it that. Others that are in the role or the situation you're seeking as well. That's competitive analysis. These principles apply. You are selling yourself.

Joe Miller:you are selling yourself as a product sounds like a cheap thing to say, it essentially is the same. So a lot of those same principles apply here.

John Tarnoff:A valuable product is a valuable product, right? Why would you not want to see yourself as a solution to a problem?

Joe Miller:And

Joe Miller:Yeah.

John Tarnoff:Don't focus on roles and responsibilities in your resume, your profile. Focus on your output, focus on your results, focus on your stats. Even if you were in a position that it was more qualitative in nature, there's always a way of describing your value in a quantitative way. You might consider using, using

Joe Miller:And in the transition, the transition or the effect you're having for an organization in quantitative.

Joe Miller:Aspects

John Tarnoff:Yeah, if you, I just want to say if you are struggling with figuring out what is the quantitative characterization description of your success.

John Tarnoff:Get on your favorite LLM, input all of your information, you know, your resume, your questions, anything that you can about you and ask it to help you craft a value-driven, results-driven, quantitative profile and resume that really focuses on not all of the, you know, I've supervised a staff through five initiatives and three

John Tarnoff:corporate turnovers about it's like, you who cares? What did you do? Everyone knows that corporate world is complex and tumultuous and we're all dealing with the same thing. What's different about you? All right. What did you deliver? That exercise will also help you that that that exercise will also help you really focus in on what's your niche? What's your specialty? Where did you get the most traction? You may not even realize through the

Joe Miller:What value did you add?

John Tarnoff:20 plus years of your experience, what the patterns are. And if you can tease out those patterns and put those into your profile, that drives the value that you represent in your interview so that you have a cohesive career narrative that you can present to the interviewer and come across in a very confident manner.

Joe Miller:Yeah, I like that. Again, I'm hearing value repeated multiple times. What value have you added? Right? And how have you added that value? And then not just your last position, but your whole career arc, then looking at what those different successes where you have added value, what is the common thread that strings through there? And I've talked about this in the past with people on the podcast that

Joe Miller:Often people don't have a good clear understanding of what their real, I kind of hate the word superpower, but you know what their gift is, you know, I think really getting clear on that is important, but it really helps to go through this sort of audit of your past successes to see, well, how did I really do that? Well, there isn't really a job description that says that you are a connector. There isn't really a job.

John Tarnoff:I use it all the time.

Joe Miller:description says that you are a visionary who sees it through to the end. That's not a job description. That's elements that make people successful and loss a different job.

John Tarnoff:Well, if you were a business development executive and you're not a connector, then you're not much of a business development executive, right?

Joe Miller:I know. Yeah, what I'm saying is I don't see job descriptions that say, or titles that say connector. But we get.

John Tarnoff:right. Well, no, of course they're not. They're not. But that's your responsibility as the candidate. Your responsibility as the candidate is to is to really sell who you are, not what you do.

Joe Miller:Yeah, but-

Joe Miller:I agree.

Joe Miller:And I think that's a paradigm shift. That's shift that I think is very important to point out. And is that they often, we often, I'll say we, collective we, we often hyper-focus on job titles and role titles. And the things that describe activity versus our superpowers that describe how we generate value.

John Tarnoff:So here's a little cheat sheet for people on the LinkedIn profile about section. And this is a real differentiator, I think, from the way most people handle their about sections. people use it as a kind of a bio. A lot of people leave it off the profile entirely. They don't know what to do with it. For me, the LinkedIn about section is a mission statement. It is a statement of who you are.

John Tarnoff:why you do what you do, the inclusion of a couple of really important meaningful successes that you had in your career, and then at the end, a conversation starter statement about where you want to go, where you want to take it. What are the problems that are out there that you want to solve as your business is evolving? You're projecting into the future. You're seeing that these are the problems that people are dealing with.

John Tarnoff:That's where you want to go. So you are defining essentially you're defining your job interview in that mission statement. You're laying out all of the important deeper aspects of why you're right for the job beyond the skills and guarantee you if a recruiter or hiring manager is going through your profile and they start at the headline and the headline is a rich collection of the

John Tarnoff:roles and deliverables that you offer. The about section is this strong, confident mission statement about who you are, where you're going, what you want to do, concrete examples of where you want to go. Your experience section then is your resume. It's got all the details. But if that about section and your aspirational statement at the end of your about section maps to the open position that they're filling, you've got an interview.

Joe Miller:Yep. That's great. That's great. That's great. Very practical. Very practical. Are there other practical things that come to mind as we've talked through this?

John Tarnoff:There's a ton. see. Where do I start? Well, one thing I would say is that it comes up for me is that confidence comes last. People are always saying, well, I'll do more networking when I feel more confident about what I've done. I want to wait for this deal to close because I feel like I really don't have a lot to talk about. Whatever the excuse may be. If you're waiting for the confidence, you're going to be waiting forever.

John Tarnoff:I think if you talk to most entrepreneurs, successful entrepreneurs, they will admit, it may take a couple of drinks, but they will admit that they are scared blankless most of the time when they're going out with a new venture. They're standing up there with that PowerPoint, making the presentation to the investors and they're terrified. But with practice, it gets better.

Joe Miller:Mm-hmm.

John Tarnoff:And finally, when they close, now they can feel confident because they did it. But until they close, who knows what's going to happen, right? It's back to the Thomas Edison line about I haven't failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work. It has nothing to do with confidence. Don't wait for the confidence dive in.

Joe Miller:That's good. That's good. And I think there are certain temperaments that tend to.

Joe Miller:amplify that hesitancy to dive in. There are some natural sort of profiles of people who are a little bit less risk adverse. There's some warnings on that side. But in general, we'll often come up with lots of different reasons why, and confidence is one of them, but lots of different reasons why they're not jumping out, why they're not taking those risks.

Joe Miller:And sometimes they're just, it's the delay of game tactic. You know, I remember years ago, I worked for an Irish company and it was a software company and we did a, I was selling software at the time. We did a presentation and my boss was with me. did a presentation. This was lab automation software. some of my people in the past, well recognize what the company is, but well, it's been a long time. And we did a presentation and

Joe Miller:There was a question that came up in a room about certain set of functions, functionality. And I was going to say, well, we don't have that. But my boss jumped in and said, yes, we have that. We have that. We have it in test with a couple of key clients. And we'll have it for sure by the time you need it. And so after my boss and I went out for dinner. I said, what are you talking about?

Joe Miller:You

Joe Miller:Oh, we'll figure it out. But and he wasn't completely wrong. I have a little bit of a problem with the ethics of the situation. But yeah, you can get yourself so wrapped around the axle of wanting everything to be perfect before you take any action or make any commitments. And I think that the

John Tarnoff:And he said, don't worry, we'll figure it out, right?

Joe Miller:That comes through. if you get an interview, right? There's a difference. think there is. Would you agree there's a difference between confidence and being petrified? There's a difference between healthy caution of what you're going to affirm on and a sense of I don't really know what I'm talking about.

John Tarnoff:Yes.

John Tarnoff:Yes.

Joe Miller:The hiring manager can see that. And even if you have bravado about it and you're trying to quote, this is the connection I'm trying reaching for John, even if you're trying to act confident and think you have to act confident right off, people see through that heartbeat.

John Tarnoff:Yeah, I guess. Yeah. Yeah.

John Tarnoff:Right. Right.

John Tarnoff:If you have to act confident, you're dead. But I would say that confidence is kind of irrelevant. Confidence is not as important as preparation. And by that, I mean that in this model, if you've figured out, again, back to the Iki-Gai what you love to do, what you do well, what your world needs, what you can get paid for.

Joe Miller:You're not confident.

Joe Miller:Mm.

John Tarnoff:what your product market fit is, if you've defined that, that's what you're pitching. And because it's what you love to do and because you do it well, what's the problem, right? Where is the fear and the hesitation? Now, you may get thrown some curve balls along the way. Those curve balls are good. Don't expect, again, perfection is a complete mind killer.

John Tarnoff:that you're going to score on those first few interviews. But you want to take the opportunity. If you're not getting interviews, then you want to be pitching to your network, to your friends, your colleagues, your family, anyone who will hear your pitch and who will help you refine it, who will throw the curve balls, who will find the flaws, who will find the holes. You want them to help you.

John Tarnoff:close those holes so that when you go out on that interview, you're going to do better. And every time you go out, you're going to learn and build on the past experiences with the interviews and you'll do better. Eventually, you will nail it.

Joe Miller:Very encouraging. So don't be afraid.

John Tarnoff:It's true because you're not doing anything. You're not, you're not, you know, you're not faking it, right? There's this whole line, fake it till you make it. I think that's ridiculous. You don't have to fake anything, right? But you can act as if there's a difference. Faking it is faking it. You don't really believe it, but you're just trying to put your best face forward. Acting as if is a statement of intention.

John Tarnoff:I'm going to walk into that interview as if I already have the job, as if this person is already a friend of mine and a colleague of mine. And I'm going to have a relevant in-depth conversation about what's going on at the company, who else is on the team? What are the client relationships like? What is the biggest challenge going on right now? How does this job fit into that and how I can use my background to

John Tarnoff:make a difference, make a change. And you may not feel quote unquote confident going into that interview, but if you play this little game with yourself and say, I'm just going to act like a colleague as opposed to acting like a supplicant, trying to make points, trying to impress them, don't try to impress them. Try to solve their problem.

Joe Miller:Yeah, that's powerful. I'd have to say that when I remember situations when I felt like I did just what you're suggesting, I usually got the position.

John Tarnoff:Yeah. And people who did that to you when you were hiring, you hired them.

Joe Miller:And yeah, and this may not be the only reason why. But one thing that comes to mind in addition to what you've said is as a hiring manager, I'm trying to see the person I'm interviewing in the position. I want to know what they're going to do. And we all get rehearsed, you know, about what are the questions you should ask? you know, what from both sides of this, you know, acting

Joe Miller:scenario with your production background, right? We both approach it that way. But really what I'm trying to do is envision the person. Can I trust them? Are they going to make moves that make sense? So going back to the point you made, why not just assume you have the position and just tell them what you plan to do in the first 120 days and why you think it's been successful in the past and give them examples of why you and adjustments you've made. Completely different discussion.

John Tarnoff:I would tweak that a little bit. I don't think you necessarily go into the job interview telling them what you would do in the first 90, 120 days. You wanna listen, right? You wanna ask, ideally you wanna ask more questions than they ask you, right? You wanna flip the conversation around, right? And it's back to Stephen Covey.

Joe Miller:Yeah.

Joe Miller:yeah, yeah. I guess I wasn't suggesting you would lead from that. I was suggesting that you would get there.

John Tarnoff:Right. Right. Right. But it's back to Stephen Covey. It's back to seek first to understand then to be understood. So if you start asking the questions and kind of get the conversation off on that tack, you're going to then be able to pivot to what their answers are focusing on. And then you'll be able to bring your narrative and your value proposition to bear.

Joe Miller:See you. Right. Right.

Joe Miller:Right. Right.

John Tarnoff:and say, and this is awkward, but if they say, well, you know, the focus is we've got this big, big project and here's the challenge we're facing, you might be able to say, interesting, well have you tried this approach?

John Tarnoff:And you don't say, well, I can do that. I did this five years ago at this company. No, no. You go in and say, here's a solution for you. Here's an approach. Is this what you're doing? Have you talked about this? Don't tell war stories. Don't think that your experience means a whole hell of a lot to the hiring manager, the interviewer, because back to financial services.

John Tarnoff:Past performance is not an indication of future results. You want to be very solution-based, very much in the present, very service-oriented, service-minded, and get them talking about their pain points.

John Tarnoff:be aspirational, be a solution provider, ask them questions. It's gonna go a lot better.

Joe Miller:I'll just reinforce what I said little earlier. I wasn't suggesting that, you know, that 120 days thing was something that would be kind of the beginning to the end of the discussion. Absolutely agree with you. You have to listen. You have to understand the problem, what they're looking for and really do that research in the discussion to understand.

Joe Miller:And then if you feel like it lines up back to our earlier conversation with who you are, your strengths, your superpowers, that you feel like there might be a connection there you can offer, have you considered this or you can say, great, here's the way I think I could help based upon my experience in the past. Then I think that makes more sense. didn't, I didn't mean to interject it sort of as a

John Tarnoff:Yes.

Joe Miller:replacement for what you were saying before at all.

John Tarnoff:Conducting the interview that way as a colleague asking questions, that's actually demonstrating what kind of person you're going to be to work with. And that's really what the purpose of that interview is. Because if you're in the interview, you've passed that sniff test. They've seen your resume, they've looked at your profile. They're bringing you in because they are seriously considering you. Otherwise they wouldn't waste their time.

Joe Miller:conversation.

Joe Miller:Right? Yeah.

Joe Miller:You know, John, you just maybe think maybe we shouldn't be calling it interviews. Maybe we should call it auditions.

John Tarnoff:Right.

Joe Miller:Yeah?

John Tarnoff:I like that job audition.

Joe Miller:Yeah, in a way, this kind of incorporates what you've been saying.

John Tarnoff:Yeah, you heard it here, folks.

Joe Miller:You

Joe Miller:this has been a great conversation. wow. There's so much we could talk about, but I don't want to kind of miss some opportunities. I'd like to, if we can pivot now and have you talk about, the book you've written, I think it does have the word boomer in the title.

John Tarnoff:Yes. that sense is a little bit outdated. I published the book in 2017. It's called Boomer Reinvention, How to Create Your Dream Job Over 50, Your Dream Career Over 50. The key is over 50. So it really is about generations over 50. And that really, I wrote the book really to kind of codify the framework that I've been working on for these past 10, 15 years. And the way that framework has evolved over time,

Joe Miller:Okay.

Joe Miller:Overfit.

John Tarnoff:is down to really just three elements. And the first element is superpower. And we kind of talked around this a little bit, that combination of skills, preferences, abilities, natural ability, capability that you have that moves the needle. It's that icky guy, know, what you love, what you're great at, what the world needs, and what's a valuable commodity in the marketplace. Articulate that superpower, use the LinkedIn profile,

John Tarnoff:to create that mission statement, value statement. That's what's going to cover the second element, which is build a community of colleagues who have shared interests around that value proposition, around that superpower. Because if they know what your superpower is, they can market for you. Most of the time people really wanna help you, but they just don't know how. And your profile, your resume is too vague, it's too corporate speak, you

John Tarnoff:seasoned marketing executive with 25 years experience, blah, blah, blah. It's like, ooh, right? No one wants to see that. Right, no one wants to deal with that. So if you have a really targeted deliverable focused value proposition, superpower, now your network can really move for you. And that's how you get opportunities brought to you. You want to focus more time on your network than on your job applications. By all means, keep.

Joe Miller:It's like spaghetti on the wall.

John Tarnoff:applying to jobs if you see a good job. But really believe that your network is what's gonna bring that job to you. Third element is this. Question I get from people all the time. What am I supposed to do? I've got all these connections. I've reached out, I've reconnected to people, I've built new connections. What do I do now? Do I email everybody every two weeks to ask them what's going on? I don't wanna be annoying. Good point. So that...

John Tarnoff:is solved by thought leadership. The idea that you want to stand up for what you stand for, be active out there online, LinkedIn, other sites that make sense, Reddit, Quora, whatever that might be, where you can exercise your expertise and build trust and credibility in your professional value.

John Tarnoff:get involved in professional organizations, events, other industry gatherings, teaching, mentoring, where you have a point of view that reinforces the value you bring to the job. This is kind of not directly about getting a job, but it's all about getting the job. Because if you walk into this job interview, they're considering you, and you have this kind of

John Tarnoff:footprint around you of statements, articles, podcasts, blog posts, engagement on LinkedIn, sitting on a panel at a conference. That builds credibility. You're not just some defined profile. You're not just auditioning based on that picture and resume like the actor. You have a real reputation. You you walk in the actor analogy, you've been on three different

John Tarnoff:TV series, you've worked with this great director, you know, all of these reputational values that you bring to the table.

Joe Miller:personal brand came to mind when you were unpacking that last one in particular, right? You're really leaning into that, not as just some exercise that's gonna, of itself, kind of in an empty way, be a lever you push, but really being true to yourself and getting out there and leaning into that.

John Tarnoff:Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

John Tarnoff:I think the difference between personal brand and professional brand, as I would call it, is the question of impact. I don't think that from a personal brand, it's like, he's been in advertising for 20 years. He was involved in this campaign, that campaign. He's a kind of a smart guy, has good credentials, worked at good companies. That's kind of your personal brand. The professional brand goes to thought leadership. Yeah, yeah. Where's the impact, right? Where's the strategic?

Joe Miller:Yeah.

Joe Miller:Okay, I think I was talking more about professional. Yeah, absolutely.

John Tarnoff:Mindset that you bring to the work that you do right you want to be particularly as an older professional You want to be sitting in those meetings saying things that other people are not thinking about right you want to come up with Something that people are kind of you know Smacking themselves going. my god. Why didn't I think of that?

Joe Miller:And I think it's also important to be, to feel comfortable being able to say things that not everyone's going to agree with. So I think you're teasing that a little bit. Because I think sometimes with, you know, going back to Covey, if you have a scarcity mindset, then you're worried that, you know, anything you say could polarize you and you

John Tarnoff:Yes.

John Tarnoff:Good point. Good point.

Joe Miller:potentially get an opportunity or get a connection you want. But really, it's kind of the other way around. It's finding common people in your tribe, so to speak, people that resonate with you. Yeah.

John Tarnoff:Yep, yes. Yep. I think the way around that and the thing to keep in mind is that you always want to be constructive. You never want to be snarky. You never want to make a critique without having an alternative solution, right? You always want to be the person who is taking it to the next level as opposed to kind of crossing your arms and going, you know, look at how this company failed, right?

Joe Miller:Just trying to shoot them down. Right. Your point of view, your perspective is different. It's not just to annihilate someone else's.

Joe Miller:That kind of thing.

Joe Miller:Well, we're getting we're getting close to the hour I had allocated, but I wanted to swing back and ask you, Dig in, just a little bit more. We touched on this briefly. Obviously, is the 50 plus kind of focus, but and talk to you about ageism a little bit because having gotten older, I'm a little bit more sensitive to that. But I just wanted to know.

John Tarnoff:You're right.

Joe Miller:What's your perspective on how your clients should address or overcome ageism in the hiring process?

John Tarnoff:I think if you define your value, if you define your deliverables, if you make it really clear exactly what you do, why you do it and why you want this position, particularly if you've done something perhaps even more senior in your career, you have to provide context around that. But I think it is possible to circumvent ageism, not all the time, people who are

John Tarnoff:decidedly agist, they're not going to hire you taking 10 years off of your resume, changing your dates, all that. That's not going to help. Right? You're not going to fool anybody. Do not buy into this empty advice from coaches, recruiters to, to kind of sanitize your profile with respect to age. Are you ashamed of your experience? Are you ashamed of what you've done? Don't act like it.

Joe Miller:no matter what.

John Tarnoff:because that will definitely undermine your confidence. So that's number one. But number two, again, make it about what you deliver and take a more consulting oriented approach to your career. If you are all of a sudden out of work and you've been in a job for a long time, I would add a consulting shingle to the top of your experience section on LinkedIn because why not?

John Tarnoff:You have a set of deliverables skills that you could hire out as a consultant in your field. And while you're looking for a permanent position, you may want to think about what you could do and make that consulting shingle kind of your ideal job description for what you want to do in your next role. But right now you're entertaining openings.

John Tarnoff:for clients to come in, for you to come in on a short-term basis and fix some problems. So that is, think, something that both goes to what companies need, how they see the value of older professionals, and as you get older, it is a kind of a lifestyle that you're gonna want to engage in more and more. Purposeful, doing exactly what you want.

John Tarnoff:None of these silly meetings that you got to attend, the reports that you got to write, all of this BS that you endured for all those years in corporate. Rise above it, right? Focus on the value, focus on the deliverables.

Joe Miller:Yeah.

Joe Miller:That's great. And I certainly am enjoying not going to all those worthless meetings. John, this has been a pleasure. How can people find you? You have a website I know.

John Tarnoff:Right? Absolutely.

John Tarnoff:I think the best place for people to find me is on LinkedIn. I think I'm the only John Tarnoff who's a coach on LinkedIn. So if you just search, yeah, search for me there and contact me. I'm very reachable. And I also have started a community called the Mid Career Lab. And you can find it at midcareerlab.com. And it is a kind of open free community for people who are in mid career, who are

Joe Miller:LinkedIn.

Joe Miller:Well, I will definitely drop your profile link into the show notes.

John Tarnoff:struggling to figure out their next act, who are looking to adopt more tangible and effective career skills, and I'm building the community. So join us.

Joe Miller:Great. In terms of actual engagements with you, what type of services do you offer? Executive coaching? Group coaching? I'm just curious. I don't know.

John Tarnoff:So I work, yes, sure. So I work with people one-on-one increasingly. I am moving towards group cohort programs and I'll be doing some of that within the Mid-Career Lab community. So depending on when you're watching this podcast, check it out and see what's on offer.

Joe Miller:what's on offer, what cohorts are open. Yeah, sounds great. John, listen, this has been great. You brought a lot of wisdom into the discussion and at a time that I think is really critical for people to hear the words you have spoken to us. So glad to have you on Titans. Thanks again.

John Tarnoff:Mm-hmm.

John Tarnoff:Well, Joe, it's great to be with you and I really appreciate the opportunity you're affording me to share this stuff with your listeners and viewers and hopefully they will be able to take some small measure of inspiration out of this and understand that they have agency and if they are struggling, there is a solution.

Joe Miller:great. Thank you so much.