Paving the Path to Your Dream Job with Bob Gardner

Jordan  00:00

Hi, everyone, this is Jordan, the owner and CEO of Greaser Consulting. On today’s episode, we have Bob Gardner, who is a career coach; his whole focus is on helping folks find the jobs that they were really destined to get into. He walks through the process of how do you define what you’re looking for? How do you go through a solid application preparation process? How do you get ready to get into those interviews? I thought this was an especially, kind of, timely conversation; we’ve been watching what’s been going on in the market and, typically, on these conversations, these podcasts, we try to be a little more conversational a little bit, just let’s see where things go. But I asked Bob today if he could be a bit more prescriptive than we usually are… a bit more, “hey, here’s what you should be thinking about and doing” just in an effort to try to help some folks that suddenly find themselves without a job or needing to get into a new position. And so, listen, this is going to be slightly more tactical than usual. But I think it’s very timely, very great information. And so hang tight with Bob; he does this all day long. We’ll go ahead and kick over to the podcast now. Thanks for listening. 

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Jordan  01:33

Hey, everyone, and welcome. We’ve got Bob with us today. Bob, go ahead and introduce yourself.

Bob  01:39

Yeah, thanks, Jordan. So I would love to say good to meet everyone like I’m running a webinar. But good to be here. Good to be chatting with you. My name is Bob Gardner. I run a business called CareerPioneer where I help people land jobs that they love, recently came off working with a variety of different startups over the last couple years and just excited to be doing something that I personally love: helping other people. So it’s cool to be doing this, cool to be on here with you, my friend.

Jordan  02:04

Well, I think Bob, the, the timing of this conversation couldn’t be… I don’t know if I should say better or worse, quite frankly. I mean, right, right now, it’s like every day you go on LinkedIn, and you just see lay off, lay off, lay off. And I think I think the job search right now is alive and well. Whereas what was it? Just nine months ago, boy, you didn’t even have to interview half the time; recruiters were just picking you off, throwing all kinds of money. And it was just amazing how quickly, how quickly things have changed. And so have you like, are you experiencing that right now? And what you’re going through? Is there a lot more folks suddenly looking or what’s going on? 

Bob  02:49

Yeah, you know, it’s a, it’s a really interesting time, I would say, Jordan; you make great points. And I do think there are, kind of like the media elements, right, like what we’re hearing and how that’s being amplified. Other people are saying the same thing that makes it seem really bad. But I don’t think it’s necessarily as bad as it’s kind of, you know, pitched up to be right? Like, absolutely are companies laying off… are there, you know, looks towards an economic downturn in some capacity, it really seems like that, right? But there are other organizations that are doing well, that are hiring, that are in different areas that can benefit from where we’re at now, or things that people are interested in. And so there still are a lot of great jobs out there. But it would feel like you’re in a really terrible market, right? Not to say that it’s not competitive, right, and you don’t need to really be a high-quality candidate. But I think there’s still great opportunities to be had. I just think what’s critically important now is that, you know, if you are in the market for a job, if you do get laid off and want to find something that was just as good or better than where you were before, you have to really rigorously prepare yourself to stand out from other people, right? Because there’s more people on the market, right? There’s more availability, higher-quality folks; you have to show why you’re the best. So there’s challenge, but there’s opportunity, you know, at the same time, but I’m an optimist.

Jordan  04:05

You know, on that topic, like do resumes even matter anymore, or is it all network?

Bob  04:10

You know, it’s funny, I was listening, maybe I was reading… you know Justin Welsh? He’s like a LinkedIn kind of influencer. You don’t know?

Jordan  04:19

I don’t know, I don’t know man. I should, but I don’t.

Bob  04:22

People should know. He’s really interesting guy. And he talks about how to build great content on LinkedIn. And one of the things he talked about was having contrarian posts such as, you know, resumes don’t even matter anymore. Right? And so I laugh because you mentioned that; I was just reading about it earlier.

Jordan  04:35

I actually… I’m looking him up right now. This is the guy; I’ve seen him. He’s got like, he’s, he’s the guy who posts everywhere. “I’ve got I don’t know 15 different revenue sources that all make X number of million.” 

Bob  04:48

Yeah, exactly. I wish I had 15 revenue sources. But yeah, in my dreams; you’re closer than I am. But no, I mean for your question: do resumes matter anymore? Um, I don’t want to say that they don’t matter. But I do think the medium of a resume doesn’t matter as much; what I think is that there’s the idea of what a resume entails and what it’s attempting to convey. And it’s just being transitioned from like a physical document, a PDF document, right, which was once a physical piece of paper you would bring with you to a job interview, right? Or you would hand in physically a long time ago; now, this is turning into, you know, something that’s available via your LinkedIn profile and your online presence, right? So I think that the information that a resume conveys, and the kind of the purpose behind it, when done really well, is still important. I just think the actual medium itself is changing, right?

Jordan  05:46

So walk me through that. So you’re saying, now it’s LinkedIn or now it’s, you got to create a bunch of Vidyard or Bombbomb videos, like what are you talking about?

Bob  05:55

No, I think you can be creative, right? But I would say so for the clients that I work with in my business, we actually do start by building a resume, because there are still organizations that will ask for that as part of hiring process at certain points of time, right? But we do that when we start, you know, step one of the process of working with me to get a bunch of content together that you can use to enrich your online presence, right? Because if you have a really I believe, if you have a really great LinkedIn profile, if your LinkedIn profile shows value, it shows the results you’ve driven, right, shows the knowledge and skills that you have, in the context of the type of job you’re going after, in the context of what a hiring manager is looking for in their next employee, you can be highly successful, right? And in fact, a little bit of DL information, with the clients I work with, we use folks’ LinkedIn profile to give folks a quick glance into the value, they can offer those organizations through non-traditional means. So not applying online, submitting your resume submitting a cover letter, etc. So I think you’re still conveying the same type of information; you’re just doing it in a medium that you can use and make accessible to folks that’s more familiar with them to show value. Now, you can put video; there’s all kinds of creative stuff you can do, right? You can write content; you can do all kinds of things to share your perspectives. And that’s above and beyond. But I think at the very least, you should have a good LinkedIn profile that shows contextual value, right, a lot of people find it very easy, Jordan, to say what they’ve done, right? People that are a little bit you know, sharper, and you know, more on tune can see what they’ve done in the results they’ve driven, right? People that are really on top of it can say what they’ve done, the results they’ve driven, in the lens of the people they want to market themselves to for a new opportunity. And that is where the real value is, at least I believe.

Jordan  07:33

Well, you’re talking about, okay, there’s some antiquated systems, but maybe there’s some new ways to think about it; we can, we can go a different direction. I remember coming… My wife and I lived in Iraq for a while as teachers actually. And we came back from overseas and we, we started interviewing, or I should say, applying for jobs or whatever else. And I remember submitting resumes, cover letters, you know, all these things in between, and then having to go back on the website and manually input all the information… 

Bob  08:12

When it doesn’t get consumed well… Oh, this looks terrible.

Jordan  08:14

Some of these applications, right? Like some? Yeah, and some of these applications would take like 45 minutes or an hour just to fill that out, let alone anything else they’re asking you to do. And I remember thinking, “I’m sure that this is some type of like weeder, right? Like it’s weeding out the people that are serious versus not.” But at the same time, I was thinking, I could probably, like, physically call 10 different companies and try to talk with somebody before I fill out one of these applications. So I’m saying that to say, are those sort of fill-in things, like when you’re working with clients, are you saying, “Hey, listen, this is a necessary evil. That might be antiquated, but you have to do it.” Are you out there saying, “Listen, don’t waste your time; you’re gonna get more bang for your buck somewhere else.”  

Bob  09:00

Yeah. And I laugh as you’re talking about those, because they were kind of painful, having done those a long time ago. And you’re like, “Why did I even write this out? When I’m writing it again here?” It’s like, and I’m not gonna get a call back anyways.

Jordan  09:13

Right? And yes, and everything’s on the resume to begin with. 

Bob  09:18

Yeah. It’s, it’s like you’re being forced into this box that they want you to go through where you’re not necessarily going to have even a good chance at an ideal outcome. Right? So that’s a really, really great question. What I would say is that it’s really funny you mentioned calling out to these companies, right? Because you now have obviously a great background in sales and sales, development and outbound sales, all your experience working in Outreach and everything you’ve done in your career, right? And it’s really funny in my notes, you know about things I thought would be beneficial to share here, Jordan, I talk about the intersection between being able to land a great job and being, I don’t know if you want to call it being a good salesperson, but having or using good sales skills and an outbound capacity and what I mean by that is, you can either be on, you know, one side of the coin or the other; you can be a reactive job seeker, right? That’s like wait, that’s like marketing and trying to get inbound leads, right? Maybe you can submit job applications and get some callbacks here or there, potentially have some good opportunities, but it’s very much out of your control. And it’s highly reactive: job’s posted; I respond, right? They show interest in me; I follow up with them. That’s great, but you can create as many opportunities as you want. And you also can’t really determine which companies are going to get back to you to the best of your ability; you can never fully control that, right? But if you were to flip the coin and say, “hey, if I think about this in the lens of an outbound sales process, right, what’s great about an outbound sales process? It’s harder, right? However, I can choose who I target; I can choose, in this case, the companies that I want to apply for. Do they have the characteristics that are important to me? Right? Are they at the level of maturity that’s important to me? I can target the people that I go after, if I would reach out to them, right? Maybe you want to cold call them, maybe I want to send a cold email to them. Right? But I should be able to define who is the benefit? You know, the beneficiary of me being hired, often that as a hiring manager, right? So what I work on with folks is flipping the script, say, “Hey, we’re not going to apply to a bunch of jobs online, right? If you want to network, feel free to network,” right? “But we’re going to put together a bunch of high-quality content, such as a great LinkedIn profile,” right? “You know, rather than just a resume, we’re gonna have you go outbound towards these folks that could benefit most from you being hired for this job, show some value,” right? Use your LinkedIn profile as a little bit of a carrot. Right? Hey, you know, in my email, if you want to learn a little bit more about me, check this out, right; we’ve done a great job to make sure it shows all the characteristics they want, right? And all we’re trying to do here, Jordan, the same way, you went on a cold call saying, hey, someone’s gonna, like, hey, I’ll take a meeting; I’ll learn a little bit about you know, you know, what you want to sell. In this capacity, we want someone to say, “Huh, this person is interesting enough. I’ll, I’ll refer them to my recruiter for a phone screen, right, just to get a little bit of a chance. So just like you have great experience in the outbound sales process, I think applying an outbound sales process to finding a job is incredibly empowering, right, and can lead you to more success for what you really want.

Jordan  11:59

So what’s the starting point, though? Are you going… you’re working with a client, and you’re… and this is even just for the listeners, right, I mean, if they’re thinking through what to do. Are you still going to Indeed, looking at five jobs and saying, “Oh, these are the five I want,” but then instead of applying through the system, or maybe you apply through the system too; you tell me if I’m right or wrong. You’re saying let’s go find them, get their number somehow call them directly. We’re going to chase that. Or are you saying instead of finding five jobs on Indeed, hey, listen, I want to work at Pepsi or Apple or you know, whatever. And I’m not even going to bother looking to see what the jobs are. I’m just going to go and find the people that I need to talk to. And if there’s a fit, there’s a fit.

Bob  12:43

Yeah, that’s a, it’s a really great question. Right? And I’m sure different things can work here.

Jordan  12:49

Bob, I appreciate that. You can keep telling me I’m asking great questions. I like this. You can, you can come back, you could come back, Bob,

Bob  12:56

I’m telling you… I can’t help myself from doing it. But I tell all my clients, when you’re in an interview, always say “you know, that’s a great question,” right? Whether it’s… you’re not trying to sound disingenuous; it’s just about being positive, right? And level setting. What you’re asking, Jordan, there’s probably a variety of different policies that can work, right? But the process I focus on is pretty highly organized in focusing on a couple of things. But number one, is helping people to understand what it is they want to do and where it is they want to go. Right? So it’s first and foremost, what are you trying to accomplish? Some of the folks I work with are transitioning from one industry; I have a client right now it’s coming from healthcare that wants a technology role doing customer success, right? They are translating their experience in one field into another, and they want to find a CSM job. Other folks I’m working with once you find a better job with an organization that has a better culture, and an environment that’s supportive of the people that work there, because they’re in a volatile space right now, right? Or they have, you know, lack of management, and they want a good supportive leader so they can learn and grow. Right? So the first thing we do is we start with determining what’s important to this person in their next role. Right? And oftentimes, these correlate back to, is this going to be a role I want to do it’ll help me grow my career or be a stepping stone? Right? Is there going to be good, you know, management or leadership, the organization that I can benefit from and work with, right? And is there a good healthy organizational culture? I.e. does this organization actually follow through with the things it says to the best of its ability, right, actually focused on helping its employees, things like that, right? Folks have different levels of care towards these things. But there’s three things we try to focus on, and then hone in on what someone really wants. Once we do that, Jordan, this is kind of like building out, you know, a little bit of like my ideal client profile, right, we can now start to update their content. So like I said, we physically do a resume. So we have that done, but because a lot of the content in the resume will translate directly over to the experience section on a LinkedIn profile, right? Because now we know the types of companies we’re going after; we know the types of jobs we want, so we know what accomplishments to highlight, right? In the context of what someone for XYZ job cares about. Right? We know which responsibilities you’ve had in previous roles, right, to highlight that are important for the types jobs you’re going after. So we define the roles of what you want to go after. And we use that to hone our content so it’s tailored and personalized, right? Bless you, my friend. From there, once we have that, right that you can think about that as like a, like a high-value piece of sales collateral, right? You’re gonna, we’re gonna use your LinkedIn profile as a piece of sales collateral, right? Because now, we’re going to use the company profile you’d find to go out and find companies looking at LinkedIn and other sites that may meet, you know, the criteria of the things that you care about, right? Within that Company Search, we’re also going to look for, do they have the types of jobs we’re looking for? Right? When they do boom, boom, we put these down, right? And I teach folks to do you know, a couple of these a day, maybe two or three of these a day; spend 30 minutes doing it for a few weeks as we’re working together. So they’re getting a lot of these companies and roles lined up, right? In parallel with that, what we’re doing is we’re working from a templatized email, right? It’s not as fancy as Outreach and a whole cadence of emails, right? Even though you could certainly use Outreach. But we’re taking this email template, right, that’s already built out for the folks we’re going after which 95% of time are hiring managers, right? Because a hiring manager, if they’re going to be the direct manager of the person who’s being hired, is going to benefit the most from that individual being hired, right, because they have some type of need, that’s not met; they have something that needs to get done, they have additional work that’s not being managed, or it’s being done by other people on the team, because they’re short a headcount; they benefit the most from bringing this person on. They also want the least pain, right? They don’t want to have to interview; you’ve interviewed lots of people. I bet if you think back to this, you’re like, “shoot, this is right.” You’re like, “I don’t want to interview 25 people for one job,” right? And then do it over and over again, right? It’s extremely challenging. If someone, if I was a hiring manager, reached out to me, showed value, right? And I was like, “they might be able to do the job.” I would absolutely talk to that person. I’ve done that in previous hiring manager roles. And I had someone actually do this to me. And so it really, really stood out effectively is like, “hey, yeah, I don’t want to interview 10 people. I’m tired of this,” right? “It’s taking hours and hours of my day. I have other things to do. I’m gonna give this person a shot.” So I teach my clients to do that exactly. We do a little bit of personalization; their emails, right, I can tell you more about that, if that’s helpful. But the goal is for that person, like I was sharing before Jordan, to say, “Hmm, this person seems like they could be worthwhile to have a conversation. I’m going to refer them to the recruiter,” right? But now they have a foot in the door; they get their interview scheduled, you know, and then from on, and then from there, we can go into more of it, right? But I coach them to have meaningful conversations to show value in the context of the interaction they’re having; it’s different for a phone screen, from a hiring manager interview, to meeting with ancillary or tangential team members, right? Like a product manager or a Support Manager, if you’re like a sales rep or a CSM, right? It’s showing value all in a similar fashion, but in the lens of what each of those people care about. So we focus on, you know, honing in their skills to do that effectively, you know, with the goal of getting one or multiple job offers, right, and then making a wise decision as well. Because one thing that I’ve seen, I promise, I know this is long-winded, but this is important as well, is that oftentimes when we optimize people’s outbound process, they get great interviews; they get really good at interviewing, so they get good opportunities, right? Sometimes, opportunities that don’t fully align to back with where we started, which is I need these things in a company, I need these things in a role, right, for very specific reasons that are important to me. And you don’t want to make a bad decision, right? Because you’re, you’re seeing a smart, shiny object, right? Man, I don’t think I can make $150,000. You know, in this role, I’m coming from a role that’s like, $60,000, it’s just crazy. I have to take this job offer. Like, first of all, this is incredible, right, that you have this opportunity, but we want to come back to what’s most important to you. It’s just like, if you’re a salesperson, right, and you see a client that wants to buy, but you know, they’re not a perfect fit, right? And they could churn out, you know, this; they could churn out later on. It’s like, is it really worth selling to this person? Is it really worth taking this job, if I’m gonna end up in a bad situation or less than ideal situation? So there’s an opportunity to help them at the end of the process there as well. Anyways, that’s my schpeel.

Jordan  18:56

Yeah, Bob, there’s a, there’s a, what you just laid out is a machine, right, of how do I get hired? Okay, it’s a step-by-step, start here, do this mechanism. You know, there’s a couple of phases: there’s prep, there’s application, there’s, you know, get the interview. And then I mean, that’s a, it’s almost like a sales process, right? The interview is like, opportunity open, right, and you’re gonna discovery, demo, you know, whatever, you got into this whole thing. But I want to talk for a second about perhaps the human aspect of this. Because you’ve worked with so many folks to get them placed into jobs, to get them to the right place. At what phase do you typically see discouragement if it sets in? Like, is it at the raw, all the way at the beginning of “Oh, my gosh, I need to find something.” Is it in the interview process? Like where are folks most likely to just raise their hand and give up because they’re tired or I mean, you could tell me if there’s just a different reason. 

Bob  19:59

Yeah. I, I’m glad you mentioned that because that’s, that is like a fully real thing. And there’s so much content out there. I think it’s getting better these days, but about just like driving hard and having grit, right, and we totally gloss over the emotional impact of what’s something that’s like very tied to our personal perception of value. That’s exactly right. 

Jordan  20:22

Our identity, right?

Bob  20:24

We value so much our work and the jobs that we have and tied them back to who we are, if we don’t have one, if we’ve lost one. Or if we have a bad one, we feel bad about it, right? Or if we’re underpaid or undervalued. It’s just a really emotional process. Right? So to answer your question, I see it in all, all steps of the phase; there’s incredible amounts of self-doubt, even the most intelligent, most impressive individuals I work with have, like it’s baffling, right, like we all have a little bit of impostor syndrome. But we think others don’t, or others are better than us, right? Or I messed this up, whatever it is, it’s like people self-doubt themselves the whole way. And I joke about this, Jordan, but I tell folks in my “hey, if I didn’t teach you any of my strategies or guidance at all, if I could just motivate you and help you to build confidence, that in itself would benefit you probably more than any other individual element” because people become downtrodden so many times throughout this process, because there’s so many, there’s so many negative things that can happen that make you feel bad along the way. “Hey, I send these outbound emails, right? Seems like a great job. I’m really passionate about this. I really found this company looks great. This job looks perfect.” Right? No one replies back to you. Feels bad, right? No, I thought I crushed that interview. Like, “Bob, I did an awesome job, all of this.” “Hey, Sarah, we decided to go with other candidates” right? In it, these things feel so personal to people. But the thing is that what I try to work with folks on is number one, being kind to yourself, right? Like, if you are doing the best that you can do, right? There’s not really more that you can do. I do think not everyone is always doing the optimal version of the best they can do, because they don’t have all the information to do it, you know, in the best way possible. But as long as you’re doing the best you can do, you know, certain things are out of your control. Right? And you’re never gonna be perfect for every job. Right? You may be the perfect fit for certain jobs; you might be not a good fit for an organization’s culture. Right? You have to be okay with that. What’s most important, Jordan, is that agnostic of having emotional fluctuations of being down and being up, right? It’s about learning along the way, in getting better and being honest with yourself, “hey, where did I come from? I didn’t know anything. I was submitting jobs online, submitted 100 applications, got nothing, right? Now I’m getting some interviews. Right. Now I’m getting some phone screens. Now I’m doing more and more. And folks slowly get through the process; some faster than others. Right? But I have to do, I’ll say this, I have to do, not have to… I like to do like pep talks with folks to get them feeling good again, because they will sometimes get downtrodden. They’ll have emotional high, or they get they’re like “I got three interviews this week for all these companies. I’m so excited.” Right? And then yeah, they don’t get any calls back, right? And it’s like, hey, how do we handle that emotional situation; we got to be empathetic, right? But you also got to push them to be motivated. So it’s a little bit of coaching aspect too.

Jordan  23:19

I just wonder… this is actually why I tell folks, whether you want to be an SDR or not, everybody should be an SDR for at least a hot minute. Because you’re going to get into that motion. When you first hit the phones and somebody says no to you, it feels like a rejection of yourself. “I’m not good enough, I can’t do this.” And then something happens, the longer you’re in the role. It’s not like you enjoy making cold calls. There’s a couple of freaks out there that do. But in general, you get to this point where, all of a sudden, it becomes a game, where it’s not, it doesn’t attack my personal identity that you’ve said “no,” it doesn’t challenge who I am or whether I’m good enough or not. It’s simply a chess game. This time I got you, or this time you got me; who’s gonna win, who’s gonna lose? Now listen, when I hang up from that phone call, and I lost, I still don’t like that I lost, but that’s a whole lot different than thinking “I’m not good enough. I’m terrible. It doesn’t work.” And so that SDR role, it like chisels your mind, so to speak, to be able to handle some of those hurdles. But what I’m hearing from you, and you could tell me if I’m wrong, because everybody has tricks. But the big trick that I would tell people over in the sales process is it’s not life or death. It’s a game. It’s not an indictment of who you are. It’s how did you play the game this time, right? And there’s strategies, there’s skills, there’s techniques. And when you get into that game mode that helps. Is that something that you see with your folks as well, that the folks that end up doing really well or kind of handle the emotional journey? It almost becomes a game? Or you’re like “Jordan, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Actually, this thing over here i’s how it works, how I see it working out.”?

Bob  25:01

Yeah, well, first of all, I appreciate you sharing that. And I fully agree that everyone should be an SDR. I think there’s not a better thing you could do in a business career than get that skill and knowledge and get that grit, right, because it takes a lot to be turned down over and over and over again. Right? And how and building kind of like the physical mental fortitude of like saying, “Hey, I’m gonna get better at this, I’m going to be okay with it,” right? It’s just a level of kind of neutrality you have to get, and it benefits you other things. I will say that there is the idea… I don’t think about it as gamification or think about it like a game; I think about it more of like, almost like building a habit or honing a muscle. Right? And you have to kind of get into it. So great. There’s a great example right? This gentleman named James Clear, he wrote a book called Atomic Habits, you might have heard this or read this by chance. No? I keep referencing things. 

Jordan  25:52

Bob, you’re educating me today.

Bob  25:56

I’m going to send you, like, 10 links after this. In short, what James Clear speaks about is building habits that have consistency, right? A habit is made up of doing something consistently over a certain amount of time, right? And one of the foundations of his perspective is building habits that are sustainable, right? He talks about getting, getting fit, right? He goes, “Hey, you want to get fit? Don’t try to go to the gym, and you know, try and do a whole nutrition, nutrition plan that’s totally different from where you’re at.” Now, if you’re not doing anything, he’s like, just drive to the gym after work every day for a week. He’s like, you don’t even have to go inside. Sounds counterintuitive, right? But now you’re getting used to that, okay, great, after a week, go in and do five minutes of stretching, right? And you’re getting more used to that; you’re spending a little bit of time to do more and more and more, right. So there’s ability to do little chunks of things at a time. And it doesn’t feel like you’re doing a lot in that moment. But it’s adding up over time. And so what I work with folks on is even though they’re having emotional challenges, it’s about consistency. And it’s about getting consistently more critical irons in the fire outbound emails, potential opportunities, by doing it in little chunks, 30 minutes a day, maybe 45 minutes a day for a few weeks to really get the opportunity spun up that you want. Because even if you’re not feeling good, Jordan, it’s only 30 minutes, right? I’m not saying hey, do two hours of this, do a ton of this. It’s a little bite-sized piece that can help when done many times over, create the results you’re looking for. It’s hard to see the forest through the trees sometimes. But when you do little pieces at a time, you can have a substantial impact, right? And sometimes just doing a little bit of work is more feasible when you are down versus when you’re up, right, versus making you ask, you know, to something big, right? It’s like, “Hey, I’m tired. I’m not gonna go work out for two hours,” right? Yep, you’re not gonna go work out for two hours, like, “Hey, I got turned out from the, you know, these five jobs.” “Okay, great. Reach out to three more, you know, take 15 or 20 minutes this afternoon,” right? Keep it going. It’s lightweight, helps you to feel good. So it’s not the same thing as motivating people in that sense. It’s more building the muscle and helping them to see where they can go in making it as easy as possible. And sustainability. And a lot of things but especially in this process is so important. Because oftentimes it takes longer than they think it will to get a job. And so you have to be sustainable with everything you do.

Jordan  28:10

Well, Bob, I wish I would have talked to you when I came back from overseas because I remember job search was an all-day thing. My wife, I don’t know how this happened, but she got pregnant, right or not. I don’t have a job yet. Baby’s coming on the way after coming back from overseas. And I think there’s a thing that you talked about as well is right up front, you sort of honed in, what am I looking for? I remember scrolling Indeed. And being like, “well, I could do that job. I could do this job. I could do…” But in the sea of choices, suddenly nothing, nothing actually stood out to apply for. Am I this, or am I that, or am I whatever? And I think boiling some things down a little bit, getting a little bit more honed. Also, not getting in the mindset of this is an all-day thing, because I just remember being paralyzed. I mean, spending hours at the end of the day, I clicked through everything. But did I actually do anything? Did I actually take an action? And so I think getting some of those sorts of things figured out ahead of time, slowing down a little bit, not letting it consume your day, even from just a mental capacity standpoint, has to go a long way. So Bob, listen, this is your last chance to talk. Any final words or thoughts before we hop off today?

Bob  29:33

Oh, man, final, final, final words. What I would leave folks with this saying that you really genuinely can land a job that you love, right? This is totally feasible, right, even in a challenging market. But it does take thoughtfulness; it does take time. It does take effort. I joke with folks about this like asking, “Hey, do you actually practice and prepare for interviews?” And they’re like “yeah, I practice.” I’m like, “okay… How much do you practice? What do you do? How do you make sure that practice is good, right?” It does take time and take effort to do well. But if you really do invest in it thoroughly, and you do the right things, for example, the things that I teach folks how to do, you will be highly successful, right? But if you don’t, and you allow yourself to get distracted or downtrodden, or do too much like you were mentioning that you did Jordan; you try to do too much. It burns you out; it turns you off, right? You can end up going nowhere; you can end up in another place that isn’t ideal, right? So that’s important. You also have to have a lot of discipline, my friend, you have to have discipline to say, “hey, if I define where I really want to go, and it’s relatively feasible, right, where I’m going to get into the stepping stone role, that’ll take me there,” right? You can land there; you just have to put in the time, put in the effort, make it sustainable, and it’s all feasible.

Jordan  30:51

Oh, Bob, listen, I appreciate you coming on. And I know folks listening today had to have gotten at least a few good nuggets out of this conversation to go run with. I know, Bob, you talked a lot about LinkedIn. If anybody wants help or wants to reach out to you, is that the best place to find you?

Bob  31:07

Yeah, ping me on LinkedIn. You just find me Bob Gardner – Career Pioneer, check out my website. It’s not fancy; I built it myself. Careerpioneer.io I tried to get .com, and they wanted too much money for it.

Jordan  31:21

Hey, you might, you might get some web developers calling you up saying “Hey, Bob, I think you need to hire me” so who knows?

Bob  31:29

Help me optimize, optimize my web presence, but no… either channel’s good. Or folks might be at my… I have a phone number on my, my LinkedIn profile. You can text me if you’re interested in chatting. I’m happy to sit down with folks and just do kind of exploratory conversations, see where they’re at. Give some tips and guidance that would be useful. But yeah, I appreciate you having me Jordan, always incredible conversation with you. You always have a good energy, gets my mood up.

Jordan  31:52

Bob, I appreciate it; I appreciate you coming on. I appreciate you saying that I asked great questions. I feel great about myself now. And hey, crew, listen, find Bob. He will help you. And with that, we’re gonna say See you later. Bye, everybody.

32:07

Hot dog. That was a great episode. Thanks for listening. If you want to learn more about Greaser Consulting or any information you heard on today’s episode, visit us online at www.greaserconsulting.com. Be sure to click the Follow button and the bell icon to be notified on the latest here at RevOps Therapy. Thanks and see you real soon.