Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Ask The Coach Week 4 with Nick Sellers. Thanks again for taking the time, Nick. How's your week been?
[00:00:06] Speaker B: My pleasure, Andrew. It's been a good week, busy week this week and lots of good positive things going on and the sun's shining as well, of course, and that always helps, doesn't it?
[00:00:15] Speaker A: Yes. Looking like it's going to be a good weekend.
So topic this week, Nick, it's a strange one with the positive news this morning coming out about the economy is now out of recession and backing growth. It's a strange. We've had quite a few senior finance professionals contact me over the past week working in financial services in Edinburgh who've been either just recently taken redundancy or are now in our redundancy consultation process. So really keen to seek your advice on some of the questions I've been getting.
What general advice would you give as a standpoint? I appreciate it's a broad topic, Nick, to professionals have been made redundant on how they can navigate this challenging time and prepare themselves for the next position.
[00:01:06] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a huge topic Andrew, as you know, I think the first piece of advice I would give, and I won't dig deep here because I think, I think there's more that could be done but the first thing is, whilst it's something that affects you personally, my advice would be don't take it personally. It's your position, your role that's been made redundant and not you.
So whilst it's easy to say, my advice would be observe the situation in that light that the job has gone and you're being offered either the opportunity to go find another position within the same company or to take redundancy and leave the company.
So try and view it as positively as you can do. Even if you feel, feel positive about it, I would say you are going to go through a bit of a roller coaster ride of emotions.
You know, you might be on top of the world feeling positive, everything's going well and then the next day for no reason, actually you might wake up feeling negative. When that happens, ride out that roller coaster during those negative moments, go do something, take a walk, you know, talk to a friend, do something that will just get you out of that low spot and be very purposeful as well when made redundant. One of the pieces of advice I've given to a lot of clients over time has been your full time job is now finding your next full time job. So you've got to take what happens after redundancy very seriously. It's not good to actually kind of kick back on the couch and just play video games 24 7.
[00:02:51] Speaker A: Just, just great advice like just on that point about your full time job is now to find a full time job. I definitely agree.
However, one thing just to ask you about is that I think there's also a risk of, and this sounds strange given that they're not working. I think there's a risk of burnout during a redundancy period because I think finding a job can become more than a job, it can become all consuming. And like, what advice would you give so that someone in that position can keep the balance so it doesn't, you know, take over their life and become a stress and potential burnout?
[00:03:27] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a perfect question that you've really got to treat yourself. You know, your full time job doesn't occupy you 24 7. It occupies you maybe 40, 50 hours a week. So I would say approach finding another job along the same lines except you've now got a bit more flexibility and about how you spend your time so you don't have to be in the office 9 till 5 or whatever it is that you've been used to. You can actually spend that number of hours getting yourself ready, going out, networking, doing whatever you need to do. And we can come on to more details around how you go. Place yourself out there, but take time for yourself as well. Look after yourself. You've now got time available to spend when you wish and how you wish.
My advice about the video gaming was really geared towards don't fritter the time away.
But you're right, you do risk burnout if, if you're actually just going to keep going and going and going and going and not take time out to go recharge the batteries. I would say get fresh air, you know, pursue hobbies, interests, you know, if you like going out for a, for a run, on the cycle, on the bike, then go out and do that, get the fresh air while you can and maybe do the job search stuff in the evenings.
You can be flexible at how you do it, but your question is perfect because we do risk.
And maybe it's more a question of how our personalities lie. If our job defined us, maybe our job search then becomes the thing that defines us. But actually that's not the complete person that's getting looked after. So I would say take great care to make sure that you balance things.
[00:05:13] Speaker A: Absolutely. Yeah. But there's also a positive sometimes to come from redundancy and often recently I've been speaking with professionals who see it as A chance to reevaluate the career goals and step back and see where they're at. And what advice, Nick, would you give to professionals who are feeling reflective about the opportunity and how best can they identify positions that align with their values and long term ambitions?
[00:05:41] Speaker B: Yeah, of course, we've talked about values, haven't we, in previous weeks. It is a great opportunity and I think that's part of that kind of going into redundancy with a positive mindset that's really so important that whilst this is going to affect you personally and it might make life difficult for you, it is also an opportunity to be able to sit back, evaluate what's important to you and to start maybe investigating, researching, figuring out what you want to do next. You know, where do the opportunities lie, where do the skills that you've got and the certifications that you've got, the qualifications, where do they help you, maybe in going in a different direction?
So it really is, it really is an opportunity to just sit back and actually decide what you want to do next.
[00:06:31] Speaker A: Great advice.
I think some people in their careers, their company, something, often in a job. Prof. The company will give you a platform and you can leverage the platform of that company to raise your personal profile. But when you're made redundant, you lose that platform of having the company behind you, but you're still an industry leader.
How do you stay top of mind in the industry without that, that traditional role behind you? And what can people be doing to stay at the forefront of their industry between jobs?
[00:07:11] Speaker B: I think when we, when we do, when we do jobs, when we become very experienced, when we become very senior in a role, we have accumulated lots of skill sets, lots of experience, and we can share that knowledge with others.
So there are different ways. It might be that you might take on mentoring, for example, somebody younger who's in a different company, a different kind of industry maybe, but you can help them using the experience that you've gathered from the role that you were in. It gives you a few hours of interaction with another person. It might open your eyes a bit to some other possibilities. And LinkedIn is a great professional social network and, you know, you can use LinkedIn to actually join in some of the conversations that are going on out there, use your experience, bring your insights, even use it to ask questions and, you know, engage with other people. So there's lots of things that we can, we can do to kind of start to build our profile. I think, though, it's really important to recognize that when we've been submerged in Working for the company. Our personal profile may not have matured outside of the company. And so being made redundant is an opportunity to reevaluate. As we've already said, it's an opportunity almost to kind of go start repositioning yourself. But repositioning doesn't take place overnight. You don't finish finish on a Friday and on Monday you've got a new profile and it's all perfect. It takes time.
You know, there's that whole thing about know, like trust and you know, people that have got the best profiles are ones that are really invested in working through getting to know people, getting people to like and then to trust them.
[00:09:03] Speaker A: Absolutely, yeah. Just to pick up on your point about LinkedIn, I speak with a lot of professionals who are hesitant to use LinkedIn for networking and they feel it's a bit too self promotional, promotional. Are there ways that professionals can use LinkedIn effectively without feeling that they're self promoting?
[00:09:25] Speaker B: Don't use it that way. And the social network is there. You can use it in whichever way you want to. You can be, you know, I don't know what you call it, a lurker, Somebody that actually is there but actually doesn't participate in anything, just watches what's going on. Or you can be somebody that actually uses it to totally promote themselves, their business and everything. Or you can be somebody that actually genuinely adds value to conversations. You can get conversations started so you don't have to use LinkedIn just simply to shout about yourself. You can actually share a lot of really valuable insights and knowledge there and people will start to engage with you. I use LinkedIn a fair amount. I know that there's people that do a lot more than I do, but I use it a fair amount. But I don't use it to, I don't use it for the purposes of self promotion as such. I actually just enjoy joining in with other people and the promotion if it.
[00:10:23] Speaker A: Comes through that, yeah, that's good advice, I think. Yeah. To try and use it as naturally as you would outside of LinkedIn is probably a good suggestion.
How would you suggest that professionals initiate conversations, both on LinkedIn and more generally through other channels with their network about potential opportunities without them having to explicitly state that they're job hunting?
[00:10:49] Speaker B: Okay. So at some point the conversation is going to turn. If you get into a conversation with somebody, it will turn to what you, what you're experiencing now and, and being ready for that is key, even before you actually start reaching out to people, because you might be surprised when you do Reach out to people that actually somebody says, oh, hey Andrew, great to hear from you, let's catch up, we'll have a coffee or let's get together on a, on a video call. And that might happen very quickly in one or two cases, in which case if you're not ready with your story, then you know, it could actually feel a bit awkward for you and it doesn't come out the right way. So think about how you're going to talk about your changed circumstances before you start reaching out to people and then practice it now. Reaching out to people, you can do it several ways. You can use LinkedIn to actually just type a little text message, you know, just like you would do if you were doing WhatsApp to somebody.
I find that using an audio message or a video message is much stronger for actually getting people to take notice. So you can, from your mobile phone, in the LinkedIn app, you can actually record a little audio message that says something like, hi, Andrew, it's Nick here. You probably didn't expect to hear from me and my circumstances have changed and I would love to spend a few moments talking with you. If you've got time, let me know and we'll see what we can, we can do to get together.
Even more powerful than an audio message is a similar video message because the video, there's a little thumbnail there and it works. Believe me, it works. I use it fairly regularly and I've got into some conversations with people that I've not Talked to in 30 years and as I've reached out to them and it's intrigued them in the first case, but it actually opens the door to a conversation. So I hope I've not waffled too much there, but do use, I would say if you can use audio and video, I would do that above a text message and, you know, email kind of gets swallowed up in somebody's inbox. If you don't follow up pretty quickly about it, it'll get submerged. Might even go into spam.
[00:13:03] Speaker A: Good advice, Nick. I like the advice about having a, essentially an elevator pitch ready so that, you know, you can succinctly say to people that you meet or you're networking with, what you're doing, what you're looking for.
[00:13:18] Speaker B: Right?
[00:13:18] Speaker A: Yeah. And practice it.
[00:13:20] Speaker B: Be yourself and be honest. Those are the two things I would say. Don't try and create an image that isn't true because you'll come unstuck at some point. But if you, if you are facing redundancy or have been made redundant or are looking for a change of direction, having that built into what you say. And it doesn't have to be that you read a script, it's just that you're actually understanding what are the three things you want to get across when you do have the conversation.
[00:13:48] Speaker A: Yeah, I think my experience is in general, if you ask for help or you ask for advice from somebody, human nature usually means they'll give you advice or give you help if they can. People are generally have a reasonable level of autism and if nothing else, you know, they understand that you might be in a position to help them in the future. And it swings and roundabouts. So, yeah, I think it's great advice and with regards to video message and I like that. It's something actually I'm not that comfortable doing myself as a recruiter sending video messages. But we've discussed this before and I think it's something that you're right, you will get more engagement from when people see this, a real person.
And yeah, you're much more likely to get a positive response.
[00:14:37] Speaker B: There's something else I want to say as well about reaching out to your network on LinkedIn and it's this, that when you reach out to your network on LinkedIn, you are effectively, if they engage with you, you are effectively reaching out to the network of your network. So when you go talk to somebody, if I reached out to you because you're in my network and you and I had a chat, I don't have to say to you, andrew, have you got a job for me? You know, it doesn't have to be as blunt as that. I could say, Andrew, if you know of anybody or if you come across anybody in your network, now, Andrew might have a job that I could be considered for. He might pass me over to a colleague or something like that. But equally, you've got people that you used to work with that have moved on to other, other companies, you, people in your network that you've come across. And so it's the network of your network. So it's not just the 500 or 1,000 people that you've got in your LinkedIn network, it's the extension of that.
[00:15:38] Speaker A: Absolutely, yeah. Couldn't agree more. See it regular basis jobs getting secured through second connections and then through exactly as you say, the network of your network.
Absolutely. Well, with the positive news this morning on the economy, hopefully it'll be a different conversations later in the year. I'm sure it will be. I'm sure a lot of these professionals, if they, if they take the Right steps, they'll secure the right position in no time, but. Interesting topic, Nick, and again, appreciate you taking the time to speak.
[00:16:15] Speaker B: And can I just mention something that's been on my mind for a little while, Andrew, and that is, I think this is an area that is really quite big. We can't cover it in 15 or 20 minutes of a call like this, in depth.
What I plan to do shortly is to release some resources which folks that are faced with the need to change job, need to change employer, might be able to use to get themselves into the right place. So it might just. I haven't really fully thought it through how it will. Will come, but it'll either be a series of short videos or short webinars or something like that. They'll just take a look at each aspect of getting yourself ready and then moving through to that kind of interview stage and beyond. So, yeah, I just wanted to mention it because if anybody's interested in that, then I'd be happy if they wanted.
[00:17:09] Speaker A: Fantastic idea, Nick, and certainly something I would be keen to share. If you did develop that series, I'd absolutely share it with the professionals I work with. That would undoubtedly gain value from it. So, yeah, it was like a great initiative.
[00:17:25] Speaker B: Thank you. Yeah. So it's been on my mind for a little while and I. I think it's time to. To actually do it. So, yeah, hold me accountable, please.
[00:17:37] Speaker A: Absolutely. Now we can. I look forward to hearing more about it and, yeah, if I can input at all, be delighted.
Thanks again, Nick, and hopefully you'll join me again next week and some brilliant insight, as always. Thank you.
[00:17:49] Speaker B: Brilliant. Thanks very much. Have a good weekend.
[00:17:52] Speaker A: You too. Cheers, Alex. Bye.
