103: Using Your Mindset to Get Promoted

My Client, Becca, was the Director of Operations at a startup that was struggling to stay afloat.

And before the startup even closed its doors, she landed an incredible opportunity as the VP of Operations at a larger, more established art organization.

In today’s episode, Becca shares her story and the mindset shifts that helped her achieve her goals. She’ll tell you how she showed up for herself every day and made things happen, even when the odds weren’t in her favour.

Transcript

Hey leaders, welcome back to the podcast. Great to have you back this week because this week, I have another interview with one of my clients. Her name is Becca, and she was able to move from a director of operations at a startup and become a VP of operations at a much larger, more established art organization.

Today, the story that I want to share with you is really all about how managing her mindset helped her reach her goals. She had a lot of friends who were out of work, and she had a really hard experience getting the job that she has now. She didn't want to have to go through this job search process again. 

In fact, when Becca and I started working together, it really wasn't about job search. The job search sort of came on because the startup was going under. Even though they had kept her on the longest of most of their employees because she was so great at her job, she knew that eventually, she was going to have to find something. Of course, bottom line up front, she did—before the startup even actually closed its doors, she found this great job. She attributes a lot of it to learning to manage her own mindset through this process and just showing up every day for what she had to do to get the job that she wanted. 

I'm going to let you hear it in Becca's own words. I'm sharing this with you today as part of my series of client profiles on my clients who have been promoted. I'm doing this series as part of the launch of my brand-new group coaching program called Promotions on Demand. It is a group coaching program that's exclusively for leaders on how to get promotions coming to you.

I'm a big believer in not having to go out and apply for promotions, chase bosses, and wait around until hiring or promotion freezes are over. There is always opportunity for growth for you if you want it, and you can get it to come to you. You don't have to go chase after it. Especially when you're a leader, it is your job to do the work to get out there to build your profile.

I know that, to some people, this is kind of cringy. Like, it sounds fake and weird. The idea of self-advocacy and talking about yourself can be so uncomfortable, for sure. But that's only because you haven't been taught to do it authentically. You haven't been taught to do it in a way that's professional, makes sense, is expected, is natural, and easy. It's possible. It's just a process. 

A lot of my clients come to me for leadership growth, and then somewhere along the journey, they realize that they are ready for promotion. They are more ready than they thought they were. They want to leave the organization and move up, or whatever it is, but they're nervous about it. So we take everything we learn as leaders, and we apply it to how we advocate for ourselves and how we basically build a strategy around the vision for our career and then execute that strategy. It can be simple. 

That's what I'm teaching in Promotions on Demand in the safe space of a coaching relationship with other people who are doing the same thing. I am so excited to launch this group, and it opens for enrollment on December 5th. The way to get your name on the list for enrollment is to go to melsavage.com/getpromoted. You will sign up for my free training: Get Promotions Dropped in Your Lap.

This training is going to be epic. It is actually happening on December 5th. I just wrote it last weekend, and I love this training. I actually have to cut it down because it's so epic. There's going to be so much good stuff in there. You're going to leave with amazing tools.

If you're one of the people who comes to the training or even signs up for the training, just get on my list. Because if you're on the list for the training, you are going to get early enrollment before anyone else. You're going to have 48 hours to early enroll to get into the group because spots are limited. Then I'm going to be opening up more public enrollment on December 7th.

I highly recommend you go to melsavage.com/getpromoted if you are someone who wants to get promoted in 2025. This is the program for you. You don't want to miss this opportunity. We're going to kick off the year. The program starts on January 13th. We're going to kick off the year motivated and ready to build the careers that we want.

Enough about that. I'm going to pass it over to Becca.

Mel: Hey, leaders. Welcome back to the podcast. Today, we have a very special guest, one of my favourite clients. I say that for every client, though, and it doesn't have any weight to it whatsoever. And I want to welcome Becca, to the podcast. Thank you for doing this, Becca.

Becca: Yeah, happy to be here.

Mel: So maybe we could just start by you telling everyone a little bit about yourself, and you can share as much or as little as you want about who you are and what you do.

Becca: Yeah, great. I'm in my mid-thirties. My background is in finance. I've had a couple of iterations of my career—started out in finance, worked my way up there, and decided I wanted to do something different. Went back and got my MBA from MIT, and after that, I've been in operations. I'm currently the VP of Operations at a shipping company that ships personal effects. I've worked in technology companies and startups. This is a more established company, so I've been around a little bit in this world.

Mel: That's so great. And when I met you, you weren't the VP of Operations. You were still at the last startup that you worked at. So first of all, let's just start by congratulating you on this great job. Not only did you get a new job but got promoted to a bigger organization. So congratulations to you on that.

Becca: Thanks.

Mel: When we first met, we weren't actually talking about getting promoted or moving to another organization. You actually, I think, sought me out originally from a leadership capacity. But let's just talk—I’ll let you tell the story. Why did you seek out a coach? Why did you decide to work with me?

Becca:  I was in my first, what I would say, real management job. I had management experience, but I had a team—a number of teams, actually—that I was entrusted with. I had to essentially make a lot happen with those teams, and I struggled with some of the people on my teams. With certain people, it would just gel, and we’d work together really well, and they would get stuff done. And it felt like I was at my best self in those moments, coaching them and helping them grow. But then there were other people on my team where I really felt like I was stuck. They weren’t doing what I needed them to do.

Mel: Emerging talent, right?

Becca: We call them exactly—my emerging talent. Because I had grouped them into maybe a less nice title. I mean, you’re very much about connecting what you say to what happens in your brain. And you were like, we can't keep—I won’t even say the name of it—we can’t keep calling them that. So we developed a framework for how I would approach having a better working relationship, I would say, and basically just getting more out of those people in a way that benefited both me and them.

Mel: And I remember you, too. You had a lot going on. You were working really hard, and you were trying to find a way to get out of the day-to-day. And so you were going through that classic doer-to-leader transition in that role. But then things started shifting at the organization that you were in. Tell us about that.

Becca: Yeah, and I think that even actually before, things had shifted. You and I had started to say, maybe it was time that I was creating repeatable successes, and there still felt like I had a lot to learn just with management. Or maybe not—I needed to hit the right place, I would say, for how I wanted to interact. But we started saying, okay, Becca’s being asked to copy-paste here, which is great, but maybe it’s time to start thinking about what’s next. And then the company was struggling so it just all fell together that I really had the desire and the need to look at the same time.

Mel: I think the great thing about you is you were performing so well, and you’re such a valuable asset to the organization. Even as they started letting people go and closing things down—you could see the writing on the wall—they wanted to keep you because your clients loved you and you were great at what you were doing. So, from that standpoint, you weren’t in a rush necessarily to find a role, but as you say, you needed to do something because you knew it was a limited time that you could be there and you weren’t getting the growth that you were looking for. So we talked about starting to implement a job search process. Slowly—not like hardcore crazy or anything. But how was that for you when we started doing that? What were some of the biggest challenges for you in starting to look for a job?

Becca: We did a couple of things, I guess—but the initial thing was, I had gotten my last job by being a good individual contributor. I had started out as an individual contributor, worked my way up, and basically was in the top 10 people running the company at that time.

But when I looked for that job, I had really been focused on what I could do for them as an individual contributor when talking to potential employers. I went into an interview with that kind of outdated mindset. I had all my leadership examples and blah, blah, blah, but my mindset was still like, "I needed to go from"—we called it—"worker bee mindset to leader mindset."

So we worked on framing that out. We also did the Power Brand framework, which we say is thinking, feeling, actions, and asking, "How do I want to show up in a way that is more reflective of who I am now?" Whereas before, I had reverted back to what I had done when I had looked for jobs the time prior. So that was one thing that we did. There are other things, but I’ll pause there if you want to add anything.

Mel: Well, I was just going to say, I love that. I love the idea of one thing as a vision, like creating that vision of who you want to be as you’re looking for the job. And then I remember, too, overcoming a little bit of hesitation on your part—like wishing you didn’t have to do this. You were really busy, but also just the whole discomfort of having to sell yourself because getting this job felt harder than you wished it was initially. And you thought you didn’t want to go through that again. Tell us a bit about that.

Becca: I know at least amongst my peers who are looking, mid-job searches are never fun. I talked to a lot of friends who were looking. The tech world has turned upside down right now, and people are struggling and are still really struggling to get jobs. So I was very focused on thinking, This is going to be so hard.

I think, inherently, I don’t love selling myself. That kind of framing, as we talked about, was also not helpful. But just gearing myself up—not for this to be super hard, which was how I was framing it in my head—but to just tackle it and not think too many steps down the road, like, What if I’m doing this again in three months or six months or whatever?

One of the things that you told me, which really helped me, actually, was: Your job is to create a plan and execute against it. The timing of how this plays out is none of your business. That thought process worked for me. Thinking, I don’t need to sit here walking down the road of what if this happens, and I’m doing this again, or I’m still doing this in three months or six months. I don’t know if I have the stamina. Just figure out what you need to do today and do it. Everything else will fall into place.

Mel: And it so did. But I won’t jump to that. I just wanted to underline what you’re saying. For everyone listening: all we need to do is decide who we want to be, which Becca did through this job search process. You had a plan, which we can talk about a little bit. And your job every day was just to show up for the plan as the person that you wanted to be as much as you could.

This is true of all my clients, so I’m not calling you out, but none of my clients execute at 100%. Most are in the 50–70% range of execution. So even showing up 50% of the time, or doing 50% of the plan, or eight out of ten, or whatever it is, moves everything forward. It still works. You don’t have to be perfect as you’re executing it. And then it’s a learning curve, right? You’re not going to be showing up one way on Friday and a different way on Monday. You have to work yourself up to creating momentum and getting comfortable with the situation.

Becca: I think that was one of the things that we really focused on too—balance. Because I’m the type of person in these moments where I’m like, Oh my God, I need to do this. I was dropping everything else. I was working nine- or ten-hour days, then working five or six hours in the evening doing job stuff and going crazy.

It wasn’t good for my mental state. But also, we talked about what balance looks like. We always say this: we’re the type of people who are going to list 20 things we’re going to get done today, and for some reason, despite all past evidence, walk into the day truly believing that we will get those 20 things done—even when only four might actually get done.

Just being able to hit more of a balance and say, Okay, you’re going to create this really aggressive plan for yourself because you always do that, but you also have to have this other aggressive plan for how you’re going to take care of yourself during this process. Exercise and do all these other things you need to do to keep yourself sane, happy, and healthy.

Mel: I’ll add to that too and say, one of the things that I think is a constant rebalance for all corporate leaders is this: the balance between how much time to spend on professional development versus the job at hand. Oftentimes, what we do is deprioritize our professional development because we think the work needs to be job one, and professional development will happen after hours if it happens—when everything else is done. But everything else never gets done. And there’s always something else you can throw in to avoid the professional development thing because that can be scary sometimes.

So for you—and for lots of people—it’s about really, not forcing yourself, but intentionally making the space for it. Professional development is the most important thing. It doesn’t mean you spend the most time on it, but it is the most important thing to get done today or this week because it’s for you.

Becca: Yeah, definitely.

Mel: You had a plan. You can tell everyone your plan if you want, or what pieces of it. After we started working together, you started getting some interviews. You were reaching out to your network. You were starting the job search process and you had your own plan based on how the company you were working for was going. And then out of nowhere, a job fell in your lap. Tell us a bit about how that was going.

Becca: We had created a plan. I think we had created an end-of-Q2/start-of-Q3 timeline for where I was going to be. And just a lot of reaching out. I had a laundry list of stuff I thought I could do and tried to prioritize that. I also set rules for myself on applying for stuff because I think dumping your resume into random jobs is not very helpful. But then I had a recruiter reach out to me about the role I’m in now.

The role really made sense for me with my background. I knew immediately from reading it. Incidentally, I was also connected to the people who were hired through a number of connections as well. That point, I didn’t believe it at the time, but I did realize throughout the process that a lot of that prep work—deciding how I wanted to show up in these interviews and how I was going to level up the way I talked about my experience—really put me in a good place for this interview process.

It helped, too, that I had another level-up role I interviewed for where I had not done this. That was a real stretch, and it did not go well. I convinced the recruiter to put me in touch with the hiring manager and let me have the interview because I was like, It would be great. I would actually be a budget hire based on the salary range that you have here. I convinced her to go out on a limb for me, and then I showed up wearing my worker bee hat.

I could see physically in that hiring manager’s face that she was like, Whoa, this is not what I want. So having that experience, having gone through and set up how I wanted to be ready to represent myself, I went back and revisited all the stories you tell in interviews. I made sure I was hitting the right balance between what I did versus really how I led. That really set me up to make the case for why I was a good fit for this role and had the leadership experience they needed. Because I did—it was just about framing.

Mel: Yeah, exactly how you framed it. I remember too, like this job came to you. You were doing the work, you were reaching out, you were being open, but you had decided, "I'm not going to take a job until..." Probably it was like three or four months after you actually took this job. You had said, "I'm not taking a job until..." I think it was like Q4 or something.

You were going to ride out where you were now. You were going to take some time for yourself. And then this job came along, which fit your criteria. And I think it's really important too, for everyone listening, that when you have clear criteria for what kind of job you're looking for, then you can recognize it when it shows up. You're not distracted by shiny objects. You're not like, "Well, what if this is a good job? What if this is a good job?" You have criteria for what it would take for you to take a job and step out of your strategy. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Becca: You're right. We had made the decision, but I was getting money from the—I was still working in this other role. I had some other opportunities that were coming out of the woodwork, and I had just decided it had been a rollercoaster that I was gonna not do that. I was going to actually take a break and enjoy the summer and see how things fell throughout the summer with my company that was winding down.

But right as we were making that decision, this recruiter reached out to me. I was like, okay, I'll just do this one. And I did actually stop applying during that process. But because I slid into this process for this VP of operations role, I pursued it. 

I think for me, it was really clear that I'd seen a lot of things happen in my old role within the leadership team. I just knew I wanted to take that step up and be more in a leadership capacity with a lot more responsibility at a new company. And I knew I wanted to continue to work in a job that had an element of frontline operations and operational planning. I also knew I wanted to continue to have a role where I was gaining leadership with a team. This checked all the boxes. And it was really obvious when it came over. It was just very obvious.

Mel: That's so good. So then you went all in on this, got the job, and then we started talking again when you wanted to onboard into this position. Before we talk about onboarding into this position, it sounds to me, if we want to sum up your job search process, what really worked for you versus some of my clients, which is like, "Oh, okay, I just need to get out and do the self-advocacy. I need to put a plan together about what my brand needs to be and start communicating that."

For you, everything you've talked about so far was really the mindset. It was getting yourself into the right mindset and really focusing on being intentional about who you want to be. Would you say that's right? Or would you add anything to that?

Becca: I think that's right. And I don't know, maybe if I had continued to look, we would have talked about other stuff. But for me, that mindset was so important. I think also, one of the things that we did that was really helpful was journaling. We talked through journaling prompts. Actually, the one that I still go to now is five minutes on how you're feeling, five minutes on how you want to feel, and five minutes on how you're going to get to how you want to feel. 

I think part of the job process—the really hard part for everybody—is the uncertainty. When am I going to get something? What am I going to get? Is it going to be the right pay? Is it going to be a good company? Am I going to like my boss? Am I going to be set up to succeed at this new...? There are just like a thousand different uncertainty elements that come through the job process. And we had called that, like, how are you going to grab the certainty today? Managing through that was so important.

What I realized with it was I would wake up, I'd be anxious knowing that I was going to do job search stuff that day and all that uncertainty and dealing with the weight of that. And I would just get it all out before I did anything and create a plan. And really separating what is within my control and trying to let everything else that's not in my control go. The journaling was really helpful. And that allowed me, I think, to more accurately execute the plan because I was in a better headspace.

Mel: I remember that now because one of the things we talked about a lot when you said the certainty is, we don't know what's going to happen, what the job's going to look like, or when it's going to come, and what the pay is going to be, blah, blah, blah, but you can be certain that you will get a job that you love. Practicing being certain about that. And I think the "what ifs" can really kill you. And back to what it ends up being and how it happens and all the things and how it comes to you—none of that is your business. Your job is just to show up at your best, however you get there. In your case, getting your mindset focused every morning was helpful, grounding yourself in the certainty that if you keep showing up, this is going to happen, and really trying to feel that certainty every day.

One of the things I’m sure I’ve said to you but I say to a lot of people as well is everything else is a tomorrow problem. "Oh, well, they liked this. What if they do that? What if they…” You know what? It’s a tomorrow problem. You’ll deal with it when it happens. No point in worrying. Just keep showing up.

Becca: Yeah, and some of those more aspirational journaling prompts, like setting the intention, I think we set the intention: “I want to get a job I love,” you just said, and that meets some of my criteria. And some of those kinds of aspirational prompts, like, journal about why this is true. And initially, I was like, I can’t do this, I don’t believe this is true.

Mel: “Why is it true that I’m going to get this job that I want?" Just mine your brain for some reasons why that’s actually going to happen.

Becca: The thing that I think you said to me that really helped me was, like, if you 5% believe this right now—and you can spend 15 minutes journaling on it, and you believe it at 15% after, still, the 85% is saying what, but that shift matters, and you build on it the next time you go. I think it was really helpful. We get stuck in these negative doom spirals in these situations where there’s so much uncertainty. And it really helps me keep in mind, that there is a whole positive subset of possibilities out there. I’m just focusing on the negative ones. Job searching has been hard in the past. I see it’s hard for other people right now. But at the end of the day, stuff does work out. And I just need to be focused on that and thinking about how I can make that true. So, even though they felt clunky initially to do that, some of that stuff, and it felt silly in a way because I was like, "I don’t believe this. How am I going to spend 15 minutes writing that this is true when I don’t think it’s true?" It was really helpful to reframe and remind myself what could happen.

Mel: Because eventually, you start to see that what you’re writing down and the thoughts you’re writing down are true to you. You just didn’t know they were there. 

Becca: Yeah. And that they fit into this category of: this will work out.

Mel: Eventually, you will get it. Unless something catastrophic happens, you're going to get a job that you love. Period. It’s just a matter of time.

Becca: Yeah, exactly.

Mel: So you get this amazing job, and we decide—well, you decide—that you want to continue coaching because you want to talk about onboarding in the best way possible. We'll get into all the leadership stuff. But I want to just ask you, as you were onboarding into this role, it was a step up, you had a new team, you were working with the founders, and you guys were remote to a large extent as well. What was your most successful strategy as you were onboarded into this role?

Becca: The thing that really helped me was I read some stuff about the First 90 Days book. I didn’t read the whole thing. I got notes, and I also watched some YouTube videos on it. One of the things that were really helpful for me was thinking through, there’s this book or someone—I should have looked it up before this, so sorry—but basically, what made you successful in your last job is not what’s going to make you successful in this job. And so many people think that they have the recipe and they’re just going to come in and repeat it. I think, really being aware of that, and taking the approach that I wanted to listen and be open-minded. I’m the kind of person who can walk in and see a bunch of problems and try to fix them, but taking the approach that I wanted to be a bit more slow and intentional in this role, versus what I had done historically. That was really helpful.

Mel: That’s where I remember us talking about two things. One was, again, just grounding yourself in the leader that you want to be as you onboard here. And part of it was like listening and not trying—even though the organization was like, we need to fix these 20 things by this incredibly fast date—taking the time to not create chaos in your team and listen and learn was one of the things we talked about, I’m paraphrasing. And then the other one was to not feel like you need to prove yourself as much as...

Becca: Yes, we did talk about that a lot, which I think was helpful. We walk into situations, and I think it happens to everyone. I think it happens a lot to women too. Just feel like you need to prove to everybody why you’re a higher-up and you’re valuable and all these other things. And just trying not to rush and try to make that proof, but instead, watch and learn. 

One of the coolest things that’s happened since I started this job was we started this talk about the emerging talent, the people that I was struggling with on the team and, maybe I just got lucky here, though, I’m not sure that’s true. I think it is an approach change, but I have people that need to grow and are, we all need to grow, but they need to get levelled up and haven’t been truly invested in the organization and don’t really know how to make things happen. I have all those people here too, but my ability to step back and go slowly, but also all that framework stuff that we did at the beginning of how I wanted to approach people who weren’t just like the people who hit the ground running and just got things done...

Mel: Independent. Yes.

Becca: Yeah, less independent. That has been really helpful. It’s helped me approach the team in a much more constructive fashion, build trust, and also give me a break from having so much anxiety over every single one of their missteps.  So not having to prove myself and just really being focused on how I can facilitate these people—those framed my mindset shifts were really helpful in me getting here and feeling I was in the right spot.

Mel: What do you think are the biggest lessons you've learned about yourself and how to manage your career? It could be about you and your abilities, and what you're capable of. It could also be lessons learned about how to manage your career from here on out. What are some of the biggest things—maybe it's advice you want to give or things that you've learned—that you think would be helpful to other people?

Becca: I mean, I think we think emotional intelligence is about self-awareness or is about being aware of... I'm like giving the punchline here before. We think emotional intelligence is about seeing other people's reactions and understanding those, but emotional intelligence is actually being aware of yourself and how you're showing up and how that impacts other people, and actually other people's behaviours and whatever else. If you are self-aware, like there's a distinction there, right? 

I can see that this person is upset, but if you can separate a little bit, you could be more aware of what's going on with your reactions. And that is what actually shows up to people as emotionally intelligent. So I think that's something I have realized is my energy—both in good and bad moments—staying self-focused on that energy is really essential for having some kind of control over how situations play out and how you feel about outcomes at the end.

Mel: I was just going to say, I totally agree. Like, it's the only thing we can control, really.

Becca: Yeah, exactly. The other thing that I think has been helpful, that we've talked about early on in my role here, is I'm very motivated by all these great things. I love to joke around with people. It's not that I don't take things seriously; I do. I love to have fun. We're all here for many hours a day; we might as well have a little bit of a laugh while we're doing it. And I'd always felt bad about how I had done this because I felt like, "Oh, it's not very professional." People are like, "What is going on?" sometimes when I'm making these jokes. 

You and I talked about actually reframing this at this job, and actually, my ability to have fun—even in moments where we're dealing with something serious or something highly impactful—is actually an asset. And I need to stop framing it in my head as this thing I hate about myself that I have to change. I guess that's another learning for me that I try to keep top of mind: everything that's good about us is bad in some ways, and everything that we might think is bad is really good. We're talking about labelling—same, different—other people interact in other ways like "Oh, I do that too," or "I don't do that," and that's really interesting. Maybe I'd want to do that in these situations, but not in these. 

Just being less judgmental of ourselves and of other people allows you so much more headspace for yourself and for the work. I think that's something I've been thinking a lot about recently. Joining this job, you get so comfortable with the people you're working with at jobs you've been at for a long time, and then you go somewhere new, and everybody's like a new character you've got to figure out, and you're a different person too. And reframing how you see stuff, I think, has been really helpful for me.

Mel: Would you say that's one of the main benefits you had working with a coach? Is learning to have that self-awareness, or was there something else that you think was one of the main benefits of this journey of getting this job?

Becca: You and I have come to some of those conclusions—like talking through some of the hairier problems and feelings and things that I've had along the journey, old job, new job search—that kind of self-awareness and how you show up. Whether it be the search or whether it be someone who is really frustrating you and not getting the work done that you need to get done, you need them to get done. I think that comes hand in hand too with seeing everything as having two sides to it, the good and the bad. And job searching really sucks, but you have this potential, right? You get to the next step, which is going to be exciting, and you get to chart the path, and you have a bit more flexibility and free time. So it was like trying to dial in take everything in both hands and try not to be so judgmental. I think we've worked a lot on that together.

Mel: But one of the things that, when you're talking, it just inspired me to think was job search—I think a lot of people think it is a “struggle.” But the way that you experienced it, I think there was the mindset struggle around it—a little bit of you trying to be intentional and use your brain to create space for yourself and be kind to yourself. But the actual tactics can be quite easy. It doesn't have to be hard. Like you said, churning out resumes and applications for jobs on LinkedIn or whatever. The way I like to think about it too is it can just be a lot of fun if you're connecting with people. You're just planting seeds, a little bit—the place of what you're looking for, you're meeting new people in interviews, you're taking care of yourself. It doesn't have to be as much of a “struggle” as we think it needs to be. It actually can be quite easy if you just start planting seeds early enough in the process.

Becca: I think that's completely right. At the end of the day, it's not brain surgery. It just takes time and patience. And again, you just do what you can, and you try to make the best of it outside of that. I have so many friends that are looking—and every single friend that I've had, myself included, that got a job, did have a moment right before they started where a lot of people were unemployed. Where they had to say a tearful goodbye to their unemployed life. I think not the uncertainty and the financial worries and all that other stuff, but more just the, "Oh, okay, I'm actually taking the next step now, and this is what it looks like." The free time, the possibilities, and the meeting new people and all that stuff. So, there really are two sides to it. It's crazy. I've seen a number of people go there.

Mel: That's interesting. Okay, so no pressure. You can say no, but is there any sort of last piece of advice that you would give someone who is either job searching or looking to get promoted or wants to get great professional opportunities brought to them? What kind of advice would you give someone like that?

Becca: I think asking is something that is really hard for people. That could be asking for an introduction, asking cold reach-outs on LinkedIn, asking your boss what it takes to get promoted, and asking your team for feedback. They say stuff about you that you don't see—all that kind of stuff. The more you can put yourself out there, the better. It really truly is uncomfortable. You feel vulnerable even though you're not. You do feel vulnerable. 

But the more you can put yourself out there, I think the better you will be. What I've found in my career because I switched careers and I was pretty senior at one point and moved over and had to kind of restart, people actually really identify with other people when you're vulnerable. That's not a secret these days. I think we all know that, but I really haven't had people in my career who are advocates for me, who I truly feel like in my corner, because I have had the ability to be vulnerable and to ask them for help, ask them for feedback, or ask for them to be my mentor.

Mel: …with you in mind if something comes up.

Becca: Totally. I think one of the ones we were talking about before the call was right when I started looking, I reached out to someone at a company I would have loved to work with, and I felt like the conversation was so awkward. What I was trying to say was, "If you have a role, think of me." And at the end of the conversation, he was like, "Oh, I get it. You are asking for a job." I cringed in my mind, but he was like, "Oh yeah, totally. We don't even need anything, but if anything changes with you, reach out to me and we'll see what we can do." We feel so nervous asking, but if you can be vulnerable and ask, people are actually pretty...

Mel: People want to help.

Becca: Totally. Yeah. And you're missing out on all that if you don't just get over it and ask.

Mel: I think the last thing I'll add there too, is that so many people tell me like, "Oh, but I haven't reached out in a couple of years and I feel like I'm just reaching out to get something for myself." I'm like, no. First of all, they want to help. They want to see you, even if you haven't talked to them in two years. And you're not just going to call up and say, "Hi, give me a job." You connect with people, you have catch-ups, you talk about stuff and you plant the seed. "Hey, by the way, if anything comes up, keep me in mind." Just like that.

Becca: Yeah. And if those people reached out to you, you wouldn't be like, "Well, you haven't reached out in four years. I'm not helping you." You'd be like, "Oh my God. Yeah, I want to help you."

Mel: Absolutely. All right. So we can leave on that. Don't forget, everybody wants to help you. Thank you so much, Becca, for taking the time to share your wisdom with anybody who's listening— all the folks who are in your position or were in your position. And I want to congratulate you on all your success and how well you're doing in your new role.

Becca: Yeah. Thanks, Mel. I would say to anybody who's listening, who's looking for a job, keep the faith. You’ll get there.