Here is the complete transcript of the podcast
Welcome back, and happy Wednesday morning to you. Today’s podcast episode is motivated, or in a way inspired by a conversation I had with a friend of mine last night. So this friend of mine is going through some carrier issues and career challenges. He was trying to pick my brain. And there are certain things I told him that I want to share with you today here on the podcast. So today’s podcast episode is for you, if you are a career-minded individual, you’re looking to make changes to your job, you want to grow up the ladder, and all that. But this is for you. Also, if you want to create a better equation for yourself. Regardless of the problem you have today, you may have a problem in your career today, you may not have a problem doesn’t matter, but you want to really, you know, kind of work on the foundational elements of building a good career, then this podcast, there is a message here, I think you’ll love this. So this is one of my last nights, longtime friend listens to this podcast. Shireen if you were in my shoes, what would you do? His story is that he is looking for a job. The hiring managers don’t take him seriously. And somehow his resume is not making it through. He doesn’t have a lot of connections. And he’s worried that he’s at a point in his life. If he doesn’t do something now, then he may miss out on the biggest promise that he had for himself at the beginning of his life, which is to get to a certain level. So here’s what I did. I asked him how many relationships he has today in the marketplace, in the job circuit, specifically with recruiters. And his answer was none. He focused on hiring managers and companies and brands and forgot that he has to develop people who are plugged into these bigger entities. And he never could understand why it is important to build relationships with recruiters. 25 years ago, 30 years ago, when I was actively 25 years ago, actively in the job market, I built up some friendships with recruiters.
Interestingly, some of those friendships have survived the test of time, even today after these many years, when I ping them when I text them, they respond to me, we became friends over these years, I don’t have any job requirements, I’m not looking for a job, I don’t have a resume. But that relationship is intact. It’s interesting because some of these recruiter friends of mine have even called up companies when hiring managers or are having issues. And they are somehow conflicted in their thought process on who should really be the right fit for the job they have. Or they have difficulty defining the job. And they’re working with these recruiters. These recruiter friends of mine are telling these hiring managers you got Dr. Srini on this. I was explaining the concept of this relationship dynamic with recruiters to my friend. And I ended up saying this, I said, if you want to buy a house, you can go to the court step. And can buy a house and auction. If you want to buy a house on which the taxes the property taxes have not been paid, you can go to the county office and look up all the properties that have a tax lien. And you can call and get hold of, or even the county does sometimes some auctions so the tax liens, you can buy those. And that’s how you can buy a property. If you really want to buy a house in pre-foreclosure, then look up all the people who have defaulted in the last 90 days from the properties and call them up and get the properties or, you know, whatever, whatever they have, whatever the asset that they have defaulted on, you can get that asset for very cheap. Now, that’s rare. It’s hard work. It’s rare, but you really want a house tomorrow morning.
Go into the ecosystem, the ecosystem will have a house, a legitimate seller trying to sell that house to make a profit. You have a legitimate broker in the middle, trying to find a buyer for the property and everybody’s working for the outcome and you plug yourself into The outcome, when you’re not working with recruiters, you are not working towards the outcome. You don’t value those people, but they are plugged into the ecosystem, called respect them. For the work with them. The main discussion from last evening was that I was making the point to my friend that he has waited too long. And he’s having difficulty in defining himself, not necessarily because the market has issues with him. It’s not that the managers of the positions have issues with him. But he has issues with how he sees himself because he doesn’t see himself or he doesn’t value himself, or at least the collateral, the resume and everything he has the languaging the words that he says, the way he comes across all that doesn’t add up to who he is, because he doesn’t believe anymore what he is, and what he has come to what level he has come up to, because he doesn’t believe that’s why he has a hard time selling himself to whoever wants to buy him, for lack of better words, to put it. And after like, good 30 minutes, conversation, 45 minutes. And, you know, I told him that, you know, if you don’t think that you are relevant, everybody around you will find you to be relevant, we have to get into the scheme of things, the scheme of things is not going to work towards getting us them. So you got to work on yourself.
You need to maximize your capabilities, and your strengths, you will need to have the voice, the representation, the values, and the beliefs of that professional, who you really want to be. That means you just can’t be superficial about it, that you start to believe that you matter that you start to believe that yes, you bring something of value to the marketplace. And that you’re yourself and you see yourself in a mirror. You can’t sometimes people cannot recognize themselves, they can’t see themselves because they have been so out of sync with what’s happening around them, that they know the same job for 1014 years doing the same thing. They don’t see themselves as professionals, even though they are working very hard. They have had the same office, same cubicle, same balls, and similar structure for such a long time that they can’t find newness in them. So when you wake up in the morning, you can’t find newness in you. Why do you expect whoever it is to find newness in you? And then I wrapped up by telling him that you need to be assertive of his worth. Otherwise, you will be defined as somebody else, and you don’t want the definition for yourself. So the reinvention of you will involve you start taking yourself seriously, that’s step number one. Step number two, you bring in all that you know, and also have an acknowledgment or understanding that you do not know a lot of things, what’s the gap? What can you do to bridge the gap? And then you start planning, where will you be? Where do you see yourself, you know, three, five years from today, if yourself 10 years to retire? That’s what he was giving himself and 10 years? Where do you want to see yourself? And what do you have to do today to get to that level in the next six months, nine months a year, whatever the timeline is, what is the one year goal what is what is the two-year goal? What is the three-year goal, all these things have to be identified. So you have to really work before everything that you say and do automatically reflects you in the conversations.
The reason I’m sharing this with you is that people set goals, this is a time of the year and I was talking about it yesterday is very important that as you are stepping, into and you’re getting closer to the goals that you want to accomplish, and the time is condensing on you. You’re in your 40s or 50s. The timeline is very tricky timeline to work with. You got to be very, very serious. You got to really the energy levels that you probably had in your 20s and 30s. They do not exist today. And a lot has to happen also physically, mentally, and emotionally for you to get there. And then you are working with a very, very difficult timeline. And also a marketplace that is more open to all different kinds of possibilities. So I want you to take this seriously. And I want you to start to think What can you do to make yourself relevant? What has to happen? And how can you? How can you work on yourself? And how can you become more assertive? So that you can get to what you are expecting and what you’re desiring so that you don’t get what others are expecting of you. You get what you’re expecting of yourself what’s very important.
Okay, I want to stop here. If I have to summarize what I said, on today’s podcast, you know, it’s not good to be having this feeling where you feel like you’re irrelevant, that you’re losing your relevancy. So, three big takeaways. Work on yourself. Tell yourself that you exist and tell yourself that you are relevant and become a bit more receptive to your worth. That’s all for now. Wherever you are, be safe, and I’ll be with you. As early as tomorrow morning, keep listening.