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Management Material
Welcome to Management Material.
My name is Catherine Van Der Laan. I started my career at the bottom as an assistant and worked my way up to become the boss’s boss in 8 years. If there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s that what got you to where you are now won’t get you to where you want to be.
This podcast is for top performers who want to be amazing managers. I’ve coached lots of talented people to get them from entry-level to recognized top performers to new managers to seasoned executives. I challenge deeply held beliefs and change how people see the world.
Management is all about leadership. The best managers were developed leaders long before they had any direct reports.
Here's one thing that most people won't tell you: Management is a skill. Management is a skill you can learn, just like the hard skills that got you to where you are now.
Management Material is about developing you into the best manager you can be. Let’s turn YOU into management material.
Management Material
Get a New Full-Time Job: Find Your Full-Time Fit
We're starting a 7-part series entitled "Get a New Full-Time Job."
This series mimics the more in-depth group program called "Get a New Full-Time Job." You can find out more about the group program here: https://www.saverstreet.com/service-page/find-a-new-ft-job-group-coaching-session
Class 1: Find Your Full-Time Fit
Class 2: Create an AI-Proof Resume and Cover Letter
Class 3: Cultivate a Professional Online Presence
Class 4: Network Without Desperation
Class 5: Interview Like a Boss
Class 6: Negotiate Your Salary Offer
Class 7: Set Yourself Up for Success
This podcast episode includes a few stories about finding the best full-time fit for your industry and department.
Finding your fit is about marrying your personality, skills and future skills, and passions. Let's talk about what that looks like and how to find your next best-fit job.
Book a complimentary management coaching conversation at https://calendly.com/catherine-vanderlaan/free-60-minute-leadership-consultation
Email me at catherine@managementmaterialcoaching.com to ask a question or get in touch.
Join our Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/managementmaterialcoaching
Find out more about Management and Leadership Coaching at https://managementmaterialcoaching.com/
is. If you have found yourself in a career that is draining you, then it might be time to find a new full-time job, and it might be time to evaluate what your next best fit opportunity is, to evaluate what a fulfilling career for you would be and I mean you, not your parents, not your sister, not your brother, not your best friend, I mean you. What is going to be fulfilling to you, and does that require you to jump industries and departments? It might. It might. Welcome to Management Material. My name is Katherine Vanderlaan. I started my career at the bottom as an assistant and worked my way up to become the boss's boss in eight years. And, man, I love management. Welcome back to Management Material. I am your host, catherine Vanderlaan, and I am so happy to be starting a new series here with you today.
Speaker 1:In the last episode, we talked about the difference between management and leadership, and how you can become a leader even if you're not a manager, and how becoming a leader helps you become management material. Well, today we're starting a new series in how to get a new full-time job, because there's a lot going on in the world right now. I'm hearing about layoff after layoff after layoff. I'm hearing about companies cutting corners and people having to leave them because of it. I am just for moral reasons. I am hearing about a lot just a lot of not great stuff. So people are looking for new jobs right now and I'm happy to help you. I have a whole group program for it, so I'm going to give you a snippet into that to help you find your next best fit opportunity. So here's how you find the new job that you want to go into. Whether you have a job now or not, this is for everyone. This isn't really just for women or men or leaders or individual contributors or managers. This is a framework that will help you find your next opportunity and make sure that it's a good fit for you.
Speaker 1:I was reading a statistic the other day that said that in 2024, 95% of corporate employees are looking for a new job, and that's a huge. That's a lot of people. That is a lot of people, and so let's get into how you do that. How do I identify the best opportunities?
Speaker 1:I was talking to a recruiter the other day just to get some information, and she knew it and I knew it, and we were having a fun conversation here, but I was talking to her about what she. She was a corporate recruiter. She was working within a company looking at different job applicants and she talked to me about this one applicant who had applied to something like 10 or 12 different jobs at her firm and she thought, well, I'm not sure that I would recommend that person to any of the hiring managers, regardless of whether they fit that position or not, because that person didn't seem to know what she wanted to do. She was applying to anything and I think I. She didn't tell me who it was, but we got into that person's profile and she said it seemed like they were recently laid off in a big layoff at a big tech company and so they were applying to almost anything that they could find and make their own, anything that was marginally connected to what they had been doing. So she rejected that candidate because they didn't have any direction. They didn't seem like they knew what they wanted.
Speaker 1:So that got me thinking how does somebody find their next best fit opportunity? How do you figure out where you go when you have been working in a department for a little while, or maybe not even a little while? What is going to help people find their next job? So in in talking with a few other folks and you might want to write this out, okay I think of it as like a three-way Venn diagram. So three circles, one, two, three. In one of the circles you have all of your skills. In another circle you have your personality and in another circle you have your passions.
Speaker 1:I was thinking about that next job and how it's a marriage. If you want to feel good about what you're doing, if you want to grow in your next position, then it really should be a marriage between or like a nice artsy finding, artistic finding between the skills you currently have and want to build the personality that you have and the passions that you have. And I don't mean like passions as in quilting although you I guess you could make a job out of that if you wanted to start your own company or if there is a quilting company out there I don't actually know if there is but I mean passions. Passions like I love to see the world become a better place, and in this way, like sustainability or working to fix global warming or something like that right Passions that you have, for example, in my own I love to see people grow. I absolutely love to see people grow, grow in there. I mean in many ways. I love to see people grow in their faith. That's part of what I do. I love to see people grow in their skill sets. I love to see people grow as leaders. That's what we do here, right Is help you grow as a leader, develop that EQ, develop your communication skills, develop your managerial skills, your leadership skills. All of that that I love that. I love developing people. So I do that a lot and that's actually pretty much my entire job.
Speaker 1:At this point, actually, let me just tell you a story. Let me tell you a story about a woman that I was working with and we did this exercise. We do this in group coaching and I do this one-on-one with people too. She had no idea where she wanted to go. She was in sales and wasn't entirely sure if she was cut out for sales or wanted to stay in sales. It is a grueling profession. It has changed a little bit, but not that much. There are pretty high quotas and then there's a lot of restructuring and layoffs, so there's a lot of stress and instability and just not really my favorite place to be in the world. I've been in sales a lot. I'm pretty good at it, still don't like it. So I understood her, absolutely understood her.
Speaker 1:She was in sales. Wasn't sure if she wanted to be in sales, but she had all these skills right. She had communication skills. She had organizational skills. She had a degree in finance. She had team building skills. She had organizational skills. She had a degree in finance. She had team building skills. She had appointment setting skills. She listed out all of her skills and then she went yeah, this looks like a sales position. It's not really my gig.
Speaker 1:So then we started talking about her personality. She was naturally more introverted than extroverted, and now you're going to see how this doesn't really fit into sales. She was naturally not as organized. She was naturally more of a storyteller instead of a data analyst. She was naturally more of a community organizer. She had this very big personality and also needed a lot of downtime. So I would have called her an ambivert. She called herself an introvert. I would have said an ambivert, I'm an ambivert. I basically I switched from introvert to extrovert depending on the situation. But when I am, when I'm worn out boy, do people need to leave me alone? So I get a little grouchy and my kids kind of know they're like Ooh mom's tired. So this was very, very close to her personality. This is she put in a few other things. She loves to have deep conversations with people, she loves to see people thrive. And now we're kind of getting into her passions, right. So her passions were all centered around building up low income communities.
Speaker 1:She has some heritage in East Africa. She wanted to explore infrastructure in East Africa, whether it was a community infrastructure or whether it was improving access to a lot of different resources in her home country. I'm not naming it for a reason I don't want to give away who she is. In case you know her or in case she's listening, you can identify yourself. Hello, if you want to, you don't have to.
Speaker 1:And so we talked through those three bubbles. We fleshed them out a lot more, and for anyone who doesn't know what fleshed out means, that just means we put the details in there. So all of those details brought me and brought her away from sales as her long-term gig. Yeah, she could do it, she was good at doing it, but it drained her, and if you're relying only on your skills to figure out what your next job is, you might find that that next job drains you because you're not thinking about your personality and you're not thinking about your passions.
Speaker 1:If your next job switches industries because of your passions or switches departments because of your personality, then you're probably going to find that you're, instead of being drained, you are being filled, and that's what we call a fulfilling career. That's what I call a best fit opportunity. Right, a fulfilling career and a best fit opportunity. It's a job that, yeah, it's work. Don't get me wrong. You're not going to fulfill that old phrase that's like oh, if you love what you do, you'll never work a day in your life. That's crap, that's stupid. Of course you're working. Of course you're working. Work is work and you're not going to enjoy everything you do. So get that out of your head. You're going to be working, great, wonderful.
Speaker 1:I don't like recording podcasts, but I do it because people love podcasts and I'm pretty good at it and it actually it fills me. It fills me, but it is work. So actually I I stopped. I love making courses and I do love recording podcasts. It's just that it is work. There is some work to do in there and not every single thing that I do with podcasts is fun. For me.
Speaker 1:That shifting her industry and shifting her department would help her in those other bubbles her personality bubble and her passion bubble and now she's working toward finding opportunities in those industries. There's a little bit more of a hurdle, like a belief of do my skills translate? Can I find anything? Will it seem like? Is this too hard to do this? And the answer to all of those is yes, your skills translate. Yes, it's going to be hard and you can still do it. So here's the bottom line. Here's your application.
Speaker 1:Bottom line is, if you have found yourself in a career that is draining you, then it might be time to find a new full-time job and it might be time to evaluate what your next best fit opportunity is, to evaluate what a fulfilling career for you would be and I mean you, not your parents, not your sister, not your brother, not your best friend, I mean you.
Speaker 1:What is going to be fulfilling to you? And does that require you to jump industries and departments? It might. It might. I have some resources for you and I'm also happy to have a conversation with you. If you think that you would like to join the beta program or get a new full-time job, then contact me. I'd like to get you signed up, I need a minimum of 10, maybe 15 people to launch the beta program. I don't want to start it with like one or two people. I want to start it with 10 or 15.
Speaker 1:So if you think that you want to find a new full-time job this year and you would like some guidance, some structures, some framework, some resources and a community that is all doing that together, then contact me and we'll see if you're a good fit for that. Otherwise, I also have a quiz that will help you find the corporate department that fits you best. So go ahead and either contact me at the link below or take the quiz and I might reach out at the end anyway, which you can ignore if you want to. That's fine, you can ignore me. So go ahead, click one of those links below. Let's get you to a fulfilling career and your next best fit opportunity. All right, this has been management material. My name is Catherine Vanderlaan and I will see you in the next episode.