Transcript – It’s Time to Retire the Idea of Jobs with Guest Hayley Darden

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Jennifer Thompson 00:00
Welcome back to The Deviant Thinking podcast. I’m your host, Jennifer Thompson. And today as always, we’ll explore career advice that breaks the rules. Today’s show is amazing folks. I have with me Hayley Darden. And Hayley is a writer, she has been a recruiter. She works in marketing. This woman has a diverse background, and she is my sister of another mother. I love what she has to say she believes strongly that it is time to retire jobs as we know them in America, and I would guess worldwide. Hayley and I are going to explore that concept. We’re going to talk about resumes, job engagement, finding places to work, swear I think we cover everything. So stick around. Today and enjoy today’s can’t miss episode. But before we get started, I want to share that for the month of May my Hell Yes Resumes Class is on sale, I am offering $150 off bringing the price down to $147. For my resume master class, in this resume class, I will help you write an amazing resume that will help you find a job that you are engaged in, that you’re excited to go to work with. And I’m going to show you all the tips and tricks to really make that happen and put forth a resume that reflects you stands out and is definitely remarkably different. You will see in our conversation today with Hayley she and I talked about resumes and we talk about that need to put yourself out there as an individual and really show your skills and make sure that you’re sharing what you do best and Hell Yes Resumes Masterclass absolutely delivers that so definitely check out the Hell Yes Resumes Masterclass, get that discount. It’s available just till the end of May. So definitely jump on it. And now let’s jump into our podcast with Hayley Darden. I am beyond excited today to have Hayley Darden here on our podcast. Hayley is amazing. She’s held jobs where she’s recruited intrapreneurs. She works in innovation. She is a driver and this idea that it’s time to retire the idea of jobs. And we’re just going to kind of explore today and see where we go, I promise there’s going to be some great career advice for anybody who has felt stuck, stifled, wanting to contribute more to the world and some ideas of how you can do that. So as we begin, Hayley, why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself then and how you got to some of these thoughts?

Hayley Darden 03:07
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Jennifer. Um, I’m just I’m so excited to be here. Even our prep call was a blast. Um, so I’m going to give you kind of my life or my career life in three short chapter titles. So you’ve got some context on who I am, because I have one of those unconventional careers all threaded through talent and innovation.

Hayley Darden 03:29
Perfect. I love that so many people that listen to this podcast, have unconventional career. So I love that you’re, you’re gonna, you’re gonna make that okay, so tell us about your unconventional career.

Hayley Darden 03:40
Yeah, so um, once upon a time It started when I went to my dream organization at Ashoka. And my job there was to hire innovators. So I did a lot of common anthropologist of the workplace, really trying to understand what people have done and what unique, innovative contributions they have made to to their companies, so I did that for quite
a while. And then I moved to an organization called The Future Project that at the time was basically reinventing High School. And making like a lot of public schools across the country, places where people discovered their talents and their passions and what made them awesome. And there, in addition to kind of helping to build an HR team, and then shifted into the innovation team. We’re built curriculum on passion, purpose, meaning and belonging. And what that meant, I call that my fake PhD. So I have a fake PhD in those things. And now I’m working at a company that I kind of consider it’s a tech company. And I think what we’re building is the ultimate job crafting tool, even though that’s not what you’ll see necessarily in our website that’s like the secret story and a big part of why I’m there. It’s called Invisible Technologies. And if you’re trying to get more efficient at what you’re doing, or if you’re trying to love what you do more, we’re cool. We’re cool tool. Yeah, but that’s that’s my challenge. And then all of them, even though they seem so different, are just about people being more alive in their day to day work, and being able to contribute to organizations that are also more or less.

Jennifer Thompson 05:11
I love that. And I love that you recognize that thread of what pulls all of your jobs together. I think that that’s something that we, we miss, we people are so worried about job titles, and kind of what they mean or industry. And so often I find that when you know what you value when you know what’s important to you, that can show up in like 100 different ways.

Hayley Darden 05:34
Yeah. And it’s funny, I do a lot of career coaching. And one of the ways it’s funny, I actually started doing this because I was networking with a woman who’s a bit more senior than me. We were meeting for coffee in New York City. And by the end of the meeting her name is Susan, she’s so awesome. But in the meeting, which was like supposedly networking, Susan, just go to me and she goes, are you a coach? I said, I’m not a coach. She said You are a coach. I said, I’m not. She said, Will you be my coach? Yeah, I will. So Susan kind of kicked me off on taking on a really small portfolio of folks I was coaching on, but I’ll share with you on that point on just kind of disrupting the traditional career path idea, the number one kind of piece of guidance I would give people, which is that we too often when we think of our careers get stuck in nouns. So what’s my identity? What’s my name? What’s my function? And the thread I really see is, what are your verbs? So I’ve never met someone, I always ask people, what are your top three verbs that make you come alive? And people are so consistent? Even if they have no idea what they want to do? They’ll come out of the gate and go, Oh, man, I’m still alive when I’m creating, or I’m alive when I’m engaging people. Or man, I just love getting shit done. I’m sorry, that was French. I hope you don’t have to edit that out. No. Anyway. So I find that I’m, you know, really thinking from the perspective of what are your verbs can help you organize thoughts across kind of disparate, seemingly disparate career paths?

Jennifer Thompson 07:08
I, I absolutely love that. I think that’s so true. It’s, it’s the doing right. We all like to do something. And what we like to do can be very, very different from each other. So, so maybe that takes us to the editorial piece that you wrote recently, which is part of how we connected and it’s titled, dear America, it’s time to retire the idea of jobs. Boom. Yeah. So are we not gonna work anymore? Are we quitting our jobs? Like, what? What?

Hayley Darden 07:41
Yeah, yeah.

Hayley Darden 07:43
Well, Jennifer, I don’t know if you’ve seen the news lately, but I’m not a super great time for jobs. And I have a very uncomfortable belief that just because there are not enough jobs to go around at the moment, and there are not that There is enough work to go around. And without, we just need to think in new ways about what that looks like. There are real challenges to that. So I don’t I don’t want to be pie in the sky. I just think Step one is to not think about work in terms of jobs. So let me offer a really high level contrast. I think that when people talk about jobs, what they typically mean is there’s a set of expectations and routines and activities that I show up and I do the same way every day. And my experience is that the people who are most alive at work and the people who contribute the most at work have a much higher level of learning and variation on the job. So they don’t show up and say, How do I do what I’m told? They show up and they go, what can I really offer to advance these results? And I think that kind of mindset tends to unlock a whole bunch of items. So simple, shifting from what are the instructions, I should follow to What is the unique contribution I can offer? is it’s like a ninja move. It’s It’s such a small shift in perspective, but it unlocks a lot. Was that clear? I, you know, when you think about something so much you sometimes kind of get like in your own rabbit hole. Was that clear?

Jennifer Thompson 09:17
That was totally clear. And I think it’s it’s so true. And you’re right on the idea of like, yeah, jobs are absolutely a mess right now. Right. But there’s, there’s opportunity in this chaos. There’s opportunity for job crafting, there’s opportunity for people to say, I can do this. I can contribute this. You didn’t even know I could do this shit. Yeah, I can. And we need to do this shit. Right now. We didn’t know we needed to do it six months ago, because we were on our hamster wheel. We were following those instructions. We were doing the same thing over and over. But somebody just broke our hamster wheel. It’s done. Yes, it’s been blown out the damn window. Let it go. Now that the hamster wheel is not there. Oh, god. What? What can I do? Yeah, it’s a huge opportunity. So I’m with you. It’s not, we shouldn’t paint it all all roses right now. It’s gonna be hard. But I think there’s there’s opportunity in in this struggle that that we’re going through.

Hayley Darden 10:15
The first thing I want to do is like caveat, like, the real problem is immediacy, well, you know, there’s an immediacy of pay thing that’s so important and so urgent for so many people. There’s also an opportunity to have the experience at work that people have wanted for a really long time, which is to show up and feel like you’re contributing, because people are open that right now they’re open to people kind of showing up and saying, here’s what I can. Here’s what I see can be done.

Jennifer Thompson 10:42
Absolutely. And I think there’s an opportunity for realness that there has never been before as well. Like, there’s nothing I’m going to segue to this way like, I was talking to someone yesterday and he was talking about zoom calls and people complaining about kids showing up on zoom calls and his comment was, if this is the first time you’re finding out your coworkers have kids is on a Zoom call Yeah, like something is way more messed up than their kids showing up on a zoom call with you.

Jennifer Thompson 11:12
Yeah. Right. Like there’s There’s a humaneness that suddenly being allowed. And again that that idea of of what resources do you bring? How do you how do you how do you do this? So, so in your in your very first role where you were working with intrapreneurs it sounds like there, there was a lot of opportunity for job crafting with those people. And so now, I see that as applicable to today. So maybe tell us a little bit about that.

Hayley Darden 11:42
Yeah, and I think before before shifting the thing I should mention on like, why I think hamster wheels are bad is that they train you to think you can’t do anything else. And the truth is that you can, yeah, so job crafting and intrapreneurship intrapreneurs Excel above all else. So an intrapreneur is somebody Who comes inside an organization sees something new that needs to be done and tackles it. And they are in charge of asserting what’s happening right? In the stories that you’ll hear are like, once upon a time I was at big company they did. They worked in one way. And then I like change the supply chain and made it better. Or I saw an opportunity to start a different department and probably easiest actually, to get my own example here. I ended up starting a fellowship inside an organization because we needed the senior talent needed a lot more access to junior talent, and there were a lot of like, hoops to jump through there. So anyways, job crafting, what’s important about job crafting, basically, the key message in both intrapreneurship and job crafting is the same, which is that you need to be in charge of your own work experience. Instead of having someone else be in charge of your work experience. intrapreneurship is like the expert level of that where you’re really actively shaping the organization. But job crafting is kind of entry level of that and anyone can do it. So what Job crafting means and they’ve done a lot of research on this comes out of Yale’s like, it’s all this sort of thing that I could say this is statistically validated, right. But there are three ways to kind of change the job that you’re in, in the context of job crafting. One is to change your tasks. So if you have like one task that you really hate, you can hand it off to someone else. Because sometimes that little loss of energy is a really big deal. Another thing you can do is you can change your relationship. So let’s say you’re in a product team, and you’re only interacting with like operations, but you love marketing. If you build like a tiny inroad, to someone in the marketing team, you start to collaborate there, even if your job changes only a tiny bit. It can like skyrocket your engagement. And the last thing and this is like the most empowering thing to me, is that I’m changing the way we’re changing what your job means to you can have fundamentally enormous impacts on your outcome. So I think a really, there’s some cool studies on this, I can send you later but One of the most interesting books I’ve seen that speaks to this point is called The Dream Manager. And what it talks about is janitors and some public high schools, who had like crazy levels of engagement, because the story they told themselves about the work that they were doing. And they were, by the way, super productive at their jobs like because they kind of consider themselves like the keepers of safety and keepers of cleanliness. And they started to like, love the kids. And it’s this. It’s this story of like, how the story you tell yourself about the meaning of what you’re doing, can have a transformative impact on how happy you are, and how much you contribute. So I think there’s a kind of a way that jobs tend to leave people feeling powerless, or that some sort of corporate overlord is dictating their destiny. And that’s just, that’s not true. So take control back by taking control back of your story.

Jennifer Thompson 14:56
I so relate to this and I still love on so many levels. So okay, let me let me capture a couple things. So the book that you said, Can you say that book again?

Hayley Darden 15:06
The Dream Manager

Jennifer Thompson 15:08
Yeah, The Dream Manager. Okay. So I’ll be sure to link to that in the show notes so that people can check it out. I have not read it. So I am a book junkie. So I cannot wait to read that as well. So that’s super and then talking about the story part. I, I just so agree with you. And I’m going to share my personal story of this when when I worked at at Target Corporation, as I’ll share where I worked, I made, you know, I helped in the process of creating clothing for women. And I remember one day sitting around and I really had this attitude. I gotten stale, and I gotten frustrated with my job. And in the back of my mind. My job was to make cheap clothing for women. Hmm, that’s not really inspiring. Right? And yeah, no, no right. And so so I sat back and I changed my attitude. And I talked to my team and we actually came up and we crafted a statement, that it was our responsibility to help women feel beautiful and confident every day.

Jennifer Thompson 16:11
And it was amazing. The team was engaged, I was engaged. And that was my own little team. But suddenly, like that message got sent out beyond my little team. And then it was like the division had this vision of this and it kind of kept growing. And at that time, we were up from a market share standpoint, I would say, 4 to 5% when women’s apparel overall was down 3% and I think some of all of us changed our vision that we made women feel beautiful and confident every day. And should I want to go to work that like that was exciting. So so it’s not that it has to I guess I’m sharing that because it doesn’t have to come from someone external telling you that you can decide that your work matters. Want to you know, and I love the story of the janitors and you know another one there in Minneapolis, they change the street cleaners jobs to ambassadors, was one of the most brilliant moves I think ever made. Because suddenly someone who used to pick up garbage was suddenly this person who was an ambassador to the town, and they saw themselves as responsible of making everyone feel welcome. You want the town clean? Because you’re making sure they think, you know, everyone wants to be welcome there. So great. Oh, I love that. I love that. So I guess that’s the first piece of advice for folks change your story about your job to be more engaged.

Hayley Darden 17:39
Yeah. And put yourself in. You know, I think a lot of times, people are part of the supporting cast and their own story about about their job. And you need to be like the lead actor in your own life and decide what purpose you’re giving to it and you know, hear what I can say. Also, Jennifer I love your story. And I wanna hear more about it. Here what I can say is like Ashoka, if you haven’t heard of it is a really like in some circles, well known, very, very well reputed NGO that a lot of people associate as one of those places that you can go to work and have an experience of purpose, right. And I interviewed thousands and thousands of people and what they wanted was to go to an organization that had a sense of purpose. And you know, what I learned in like about, you know, frankly, 10 years in kind of the world of purpose driven jobs. I was also on a board for an organization that matched people is called called rework and it was later acquired, but they matched people with meaningful jobs. You know, what makes a meaningful job, the meaning you give to a job, you can be in a purpose driven organization and be deeply engaged. Or you can be a janitor who decides that what it means to pick up trash is to create a sense of welcome. And I think that is it who is in charge of the purpose is it you purpose is not an attribute only of an organization, it’s an attribute of the people within it.

Jennifer Thompson 19:06
Wow. That’s, that’s pretty huge. And I think I’m kind of curious with that, you know, we see these statistics of people, you know, what to 13% or something, people are engaged in the work that they do, which is so low. So low, right, it’s, it’s gross. But I feel like so often people are looking for the organization to engage them. And what you’re saying
is no, no, you, you person, you are personally responsible to choose to be engaged. Yep. Some folks are gonna have some soul searching to do on that one, huh?

Hayley Darden 19:45
I mean, look, I think it’s great that managers are asking the question, how can they make people more engaged and here I would offer an insight from of my, from my fake PhD. The language is wrong, like you can’t make someone more engaged. You can make an environment, a place that someone can be more engaged. There’s a great book called Why We Do What We Do. Autonomy support is the thing I would say is really important on the manager side in terms of engagement. And that is communicating to your employees, that they have opportunities to make choices. And that can be big or small, but it’s a management posture that’s really empowering. And that’s what that’s what managers can do to help create a culture of purpose. But what what really that’s in charge of the people like a purpose driven organization is an organization where individuals bring their own sense of purpose.

Jennifer Thompson 20:35
I love that because it kind of goes back to where we started with like, what, how our jobs changing and how and with all that’s going on in the world right now and this Yeah, lack of security around job is it really says to me that managers should trust themselves and the people that they work with, to look at those people and say, What can you contribute? What can you do differently? What can you bring to the table that can help us right now.

Hayley Darden 21:02
100 100% I wonder how many people know what they can contribute? I guess I’ll just say that I wonder how much soul searching has been done on like the neat thing, unique thing you can offer. And that that’s not the same thing as your job description. It’s the equivalent of like, I don’t know if you’ve ever like had one of those life events, like, the thing that comes to mind is like when someone when someone dies, it’s a really hard time for your whole family. And everyone wants to help but no one knows what to do. And so they show up and they go, what can I do to help and what they’re doing is they’re putting the person who needs help in the position of having to direct them. And you know, it feels so different when someone shows up and says, I made you a casserole. I organized your six best friends to get on a or having a baby. Another great example not even just grief, but people show up and they know how to help when people have done a level of self reflection on the unique perspectives, gifts, talents, motivations, that they have. They start showing up to work that way. And instead of just saying what are the instructions I should should follow. They say, here’s how I understand our business objectives. And here’s how I can help. And it changes everything.

Jennifer Thompson 22:12
Absolutely. And I want to add, I think you have to know what to say no to as well.

Hayley Darden 22:16
Oh, yeah. Tell me about that

Jennifer Thompson 22:18
because, because I think it’s easy that when you offer that up, and someone says, Hey, you know, oh, Jennifer, you run a small business, we need some help with our small business, accounting, you know, yeah, help help me with that right now. I have to know to say, you know what, yeah, I kind of do that and I’m capable of it. But I am not the best person for that. What I’m really good at is you know, helping you come up with your branding, helping you tell your story, helping you build a culture that’s innovated, helping you just like I can, if I can tell you all the things I can do I have to also be able to tell you that you know, yeah, if you’re going to port if you really need it, if this is the one thing you need. I yeah, I can lift this rock for today, but It’s not the rock I want to lift every day because it’s going to exhaust me. And I’m not going to be the best help where I do the best help is this and and i think good, good people know what, what they can contribute the best. And you know, it’s often that feeling of what’s in your body when someone asks you to do something, again, if your body floats and you’re like, Oh, yeah, I can help with that. Take a note. Notice that because then it’s offered that more. And if it’s when someone says, Hey, can you can you do the accounting for us? And you’re you want to sink into the chair and just cry?

Jennifer Thompson 23:32
Yeah, yes. Say no to that. Because that’s not that’s not the thing that’s gonna keep you engaged. Hayley Darden 23:38
So what I’m hearing from you is that, you know, I was saying, take charge of your own purpose. And what you’re saying is take charge of your own engagement. Like there’s, you know, offer your yeses to things that are gonna really engage you and offer no when that’s like not going to be something that works for you.

Jennifer Thompson 23:55
Yes, completely. And sometimes your no is someone else’s. Yes, totally. And I think you know, your example of you know, organizing people around the baby shower thing, you know, I, I am definitely not the one to organize everyone to figure out what day of the week they’re going to bring meals. Now I may be the one to organize the party for the baby shower, because that’s, that’s kind of my jam. I love a good party. I love to put the things together, I love to do the food, I love to do the catering, um, don’t ask me to send out the invitations, though is they’re probably going to go out at the last minute and they’re going to be half done. And I’m, you know, I’m going to forget 10 people on the list. So kind of, you know, owning that and knowing what it is that you do is just it is it’s important because I’m, you’re gonna do better when you love it. And then and the more you do things better, the more you get to elevate yourself because they’re like, Oh, she’s pretty awesome at that, you know, and yeah, yeah, that’s how you move your career up. The line is doing things you’re good at.

Hayley Darden 24:58
That’s a really, really Important point, and it’s not something that everyone knows. And I think it’s one of like the very happiest facts of modern organizational science is that engagement and productivity increase together. And and that’s one of the reasons why it makes a lot of sense. Like, why your boss cares about you being engaged, is because the more engaged you are, the more productive you are. So the stats are something like, you know, people who are not satisfied are like, minimally productive. The people who are inspired are like 115 times more productive than they are. It’s like, it’s like a cloning machine. Like, you become like you have the force of four people when you get more engaged.

Jennifer Thompson 25:40
Probably the most popular podcast I have ever done thus far, is a podcast that’s entitled The Myth of Work Life Balance. And part of that podcast is all about the myth that you work too much that you have this balance that goes back and forth. What I find is that people who love what they do, and they’re engaged, never come to me and tell me they need more work life balance, never had that conversation. If someone is engaged, they never feel that way. But someone who’s not engaged and is not aligned with the work that they do. They are constantly telling me I need more work life balance, and they might not even work nearly as many hours as that person who’s who’s not telling you that who is engaged like it’s it’s kind of, again, the self fulfilling prophecy of like, you find the balance when you’re engaged, because you don’t you don’t care the number of hours you work you don’t it’s not work it. You’re you’re loving what you’re doing.

Hayley Darden 26:35
I want to take a second and double click on something I tell the people I work with from a coaching perspective. It’s really brief, but I’ve probably looked at like more resumes than most any human should ever need to look at ever. So many thousands of resumes. And way too many of them are like, a very like detailed history of everything you’ve ever done ever. Like, you know once upon a time, I like you know, bought a laundry machine or in truly like every task you have ever successfully completed is listed. And one of the things I find is people fail to edit for their own engagement. So just want to offer that what I’ve noticed is, it looks really great when people make really strong edits, to leave the things on there that they loved doing, and to leave the things off that they didn’t like doing. And even if it’s a small project that you loved, and you found like so for me, I’ve recently stepped into a marketing leadership role, even though it’s not my background. And part of that is because I found I so loves telling stories, and I’m great at it. And so I put more of that on my resume, even though it was a very small part of my job, because it was a really big part of my future job that I knew that I was that I was going for. So I think, you know, our society is just designed to hire people to do things that they have already done, and yet people have a deep and intrinsic need to keep Learning and evolving and and one very simple way to hack the system is to make sure your resume shows what you love doing that you’ve already done that you’re great at. And what are the signals like what’s the where are the seedlings that deserve more growth the stuff that you just started doing but you were really great at and you want to do more of instead of just if you didn’t love doing it, like just don’t list it. Anyway.

Jennifer Thompson 28:23
I you are speaking my language girl I I say that over and over to my clients. Just because you’re capable of it doesn’t mean it belongs on your resume. If you don’t love it, there is not enough space on that resume for it to be there because if you tell people that you can eat sushi, but you don’t actually like sushi guess.

Hayley Darden 28:47
Yeah,

Jennifer Thompson 28:48
you know, yeah, you can choke it down. But if it’s not your jam, like don’t don’t put it on there because that’s that’s where the disengagement comes for sure. So that is absolutely fabulous. By it is fully in alignment with the Deviant Thinking Way for sure. Because it is it’s it’s super, super valuable to put what you love on your resume. So okay, so So you said you’ve looked at more resumes right? This is so many of my clients that’s why they hired me in the beginning was was the resume. Have you ever found anything on a resume that you? How do I say where someone maybe put themselves out there and was a little risky? That was too much.

Hayley Darden 29:29
Never have I seen it ever.

Jennifer Thompson 29:31
But you’ve seen a boring I bet.

Hayley Darden 29:33
I have seen too many resumes that try to impress instead of communicate.

Jennifer Thompson 29:41
Oh, tell me more about that.

Hayley Darden 29:44
It’s kind of an obsession with qualifications and very few resumes bother to just say, to focus on the who you are and the unique impact you’ve made on the businesses that you’ve been in. Usually the communication goal is also resumes are miserable. Let me just take a pause for a second and say I have read, you know, I think I’ve read in one year, like 5000 resumes. And when I had to make my own, I was a mess, I was a mess. Because you kind of feel like you have to prove something to the universe and sort of, you know, justify your existence like hello world, here’s why I’m valuable. And it’s quite vulnerable. And my roommate at the time, like, had to walk me through it, even though like I offer this play with people all the time. So I just empathize with what like a weirdly existential experience it is to try and justify your value on you know, an eight by 11, which is like kind of what the exercise sometimes feels like, especially if you’re in a job transition, because again, hiring functions are not organized to see what you should do next. They’re organized to hire you for what you have already done. And that’s probably not great for you in terms of, so there’s just a little bit of a failure sometimes to really dig deep and communicate, what businesses the results are that you have driven that you want to drive again, and and kind of this insecurity that comes through, that’s just like, here’s why I want you to think I can do the thing I think you want. So don’t, don’t tell them. Don’t write a resume, that communicates who you think someone wants to hire. Write the resume that only you can write. Because really person that’s had your experience it’s

Jennifer Thompson 31:29
Amen, which also, I would say leads me to believe you’re not one of those folks who think you should tweak every resume your resume to every single job that’s out there to post and pray that you’d get a job

Hayley Darden 31:42
post and pray. Oh my gosh, that’s so funny. Such a Hail Mary, um, post and pray is, so I’ve seen this, I’ve seen people. I’ll give you my perspective, and I bet we’ll find some alignment. I’ve seen people skew way too far on two different ends of the spectrum so one spectrum is the one resume to rule them all. This requires no context and I you know, I ship it off into the universe and like hope zip recruiter loves me. Do you know and like, that’s like a Britney Spears idea model of fame but like I am I am equally interesting to like everyone in the whole world. And it’s a failure to understand your audience and it’s sometimes a failure to understand yourself. Because frankly, you don’t want everyone hire you. You want some people to hire you and not other people to hire you. Cuz like, turns out there’s such a thing as a job that is better or worse for you. And it’s your job to know what that is. Anyway, I’ve also seen people over index on getting too specific. So feeling like they have to write a unique resume for everything that could ever be interesting and it can be really overwhelming. So to summarize, there’s the one size fits all on all things to all people resume, and there’s the hyper oh my gosh, I have to pitch you exactly for this. My take is that they’re usually three different, meaningful things you can do at any given time. So let’s take, let’s see if I come up a good example. Well, let’s just take me as an example. I have worked always in roles that require engaging people doing a lot of communication, doing a lot of analysis. I love and I’m creative, right? I could write a resume that explains why I would be great at business development. I could write a resume that would explain why I would be great at communications. And I could write one that explained why be great in like, let’s say recruitment capacity. Those aren’t super different from each other. And there are only three, right? It’s a limited set of things I might want to do next. So I always encourage people to think of three next versions of yourself that feel authentic, you get excited about and write, write three resumes, one for each of those future use that have something to do with who you’ve been and something to do with who you’re gonna become. And then get that to someone who cares. I’m like, Yeah, but it’s it’s three. It’s not infinity and it’s Not one is my approach.

Jennifer Thompson 34:03
I love that. And I’m gonna bet that those three resumes look pretty close to each other.

Hayley Darden 34:10
Oh, yeah,

Jennifer Thompson 34:11
there may be highlighting some of the tasks and actions that you did in relationship to those different jobs. But like you said, You’re super creative. All of those resumes are going to share that creative part. Because you’re going to be happy when you’re being creative. They’re going to all share that you’re a good communicator, and that you’d like to tell stories, and they’re going to probably all talk about the people side of things. The examples you use might change slightly based on different jobs. But yeah, all three of those resumes. Were going to know you’re the same person.Hayley Darden 34:44
Oh, I mean, there’s at least 80% content overlap.

Jennifer Thompson 34:47
Thank you. Yes. Because it’s you. It’s not because you’re not matching a job.

Hayley Darden 34:53
Yeah, you’ve only lived that one life and you probably have about three different next steps you could take at any given time. That could be right You know, hence like, you know, there’s a limited amount of variation because you’ve only been one person. But like, you know, there is some variation because you get to make choices about who you’re going to become. And the variation represents the choices you want to make about the purposes and gifts you want to apply in the world next.

Jennifer Thompson 35:21
Oh, amazing. Yeah, we all have a choice, right? Which kind of brings us back to where we started was this idea of like that it’s time to retire some of the jobs. And so if someone’s in a job that needs to be retired, what do they do?

Hayley Darden 35:40
Oh, I love this. There are three things I think people can do if they’re in a job that needs to be retired. The first one is to resist and take power back. And that doesn’t mean an overthrow. It doesn’t need leaning rebellion. What it means a lot of times when people are in a job that needs to be retired, it The big problem is usually that they have no, they’re not in charge of it. They have no sense of control. They’re not in charge of the story. They’re living in somebody else’s story. You are never going to do a good job at your job. If you’re in somebody else’s story, full stop. That doesn’t work for you, and it doesn’t work for your employer. So take control of the story. Decide Why is your job meaningful to you. And that is your story for you. And then read some of the stuff on job crafting, and see if there are tiny tweaks you can make to your everyday responsibilities. That meeting you hate can get out of the meeting you hate,

Hayley Darden 36:32
because it might be making your job like pretty terrible. Or maybe there’s one task you’re miserable at. that slows you down every week. Can you just find because Jennifer, this gets to your point earlier when you’re talking about you know, organizing bridal showers, some people like to do different things. Can you make it can you barter with a colleague Can you just trade like the party hate, for the party love. So take charge of small tweaks to your job as it is that can change your experience dramatically, and you be in charge of the story. So that’s point one. So be in charge. second piece. If you’re on the so, that’s if you’re in a job you want to stay in, you need to take control of it. The second thing is if you’re on the job hunt, because your job needs to be, you know, your job needs to be retired. I recommend the sittin method that’s just showing up somewhere and, and telling them how you can help until they pay you. And that’s, of course, if you have like, you know, three months of runway or more usually, but it works like when people show up and they even if they don’t, this is one of the thing I want people to get. Oh, there’s a sadness. The number Jennifer, I wish I could remember the stat but I’ll let allow curious listeners to look it up. The number of jobs that are filled, that are never posted is enormous. So I think there’s no work because there’s not a job posting. That’s not true. That just means like a job posting is so far downstream, that’s like, I’ve been feeling this pain for months, right? But if you show up somewhere you want to be and you start helping out. A lot of times, people who don’t willing to throw throw you on the payroll, because you’re offering something they didn’t know they needed. And you have to trust your ability to see what’s needed and to help.

Jennifer Thompson 38:19
That is so true. It I am totally there with you. So the statistic that gets thrown around
a lot is 80% of the jobs never get posted. And, and I think a lot of it’s true, and I think especially the higher functioning jobs, I mean, okay, we all know the job that McDonald’s is going to get posted, right. We know they need a server, right, that that’s, that’s there, but the real thinking the real engaging jobs, the career jobs are often crafted. And they are because someone showed up, and there’s really neat ways that people can show up today. You don’t have to walk into someone’s office to show up, right? Yeah. I I interviewed Pim D Morree from the Corperate Rebels.

Hayley Darden 39:01
follow his work. I love him. Yeah, go ahead.

Jennifer Thompson 39:04
I interviewed him a few weeks back. And he talked about his most recent hire with someone who engaged often in their Facebook community. So he knew them already. They were already contributing, they were showing up on a daily basis. And he said that he didn’t need a resume. He already shared his value that he can give to that organization. He’d already been engaged. He’d already been having great conversations about the work that they were doing. It was a matter of how do they find a place for him? So, you know, when you say you have to camp out or sit in it, that doesn’t necessarily mean physical, especially our times of social distancing. You know, there. There are other ways to do that. And I also want to be fair, I have absolutely had clients walk up to the building of the company that they want to work for. And granted, this is not like Facebook or Google where there’s millions of employees there smaller organizations that they know. Yeah, and walk up and knock on the front door. and be like, Hey, this is what I do. I’m really good at it. This is what you guys do. I think we could work together and they’ve gotten jobs. So you’re totally right. Get out there and decide you’re going to be engaged and decide you’re going to find work that that you’re you are engaged in and show up in many different ways. Love it. Yeah, great advice.

Hayley Darden 40:23
Um, the one thing I would add, there is a lot of times, you know, if I were listening to this, the thing I would say is like, Well, a lot of those jobs get filled with people people already know. You know what I mean? Like, oh, I heard my buddy Phil I used to work with and my advice on that would be know who you want to know. So start building relationships with the places that you want to hire you. Because then they will know you, you know, and that’s a great that’s what happened with him is this. I loved what he did. So he starts participating in the community. And Tim notices that he hires him. Absolutely. Don’t let him hierarchies and networks and any sense of like elitism or good old boyism or feeling like you’re sitting at the uncool kids lunch table like literally show up, introduce yourself sit down and like, sometimes it won’t work. But if you try long enough, I think it will.

Jennifer Thompson 41:14
I completely agree. And you know what, when it doesn’t work, usually that person’s just butt, I mean, you know, let’s be serious. Most people who are successful in business, love meeting people. That’s how you get more business. Yeah, how they, how they drive business. They want people who are engaged and excited about the work that they do if you show up as engaged and excited about who they are and the work that they do. They want to talk to you. Yeah, there’s very few people that I know that it’s an inconvenience for them to meet someone. Yeah. So you have to have kind of go with that assumption of it’s worth reaching out that that there’s that you’re worth it, that you contribute enough that you’re not wasting their time.

Hayley Darden 42:01
I love that. And then the last thing I’d say it’s really cool. So we were talking about advice you give for people. Also, there’s a lot of really cool organizations out there. I’m help volunteering with some friends right now in an organization called gather for what to be clear about not super mature yet, but I do think it’s really hopeful story of some ways that people are starting to organize. So it is an organization that forms support teams around people who are looking for work, and are not just looking for work looking for support, and it helps with those short term needs. So like food security, if that’s where the concern is, or housing security, and it helps with the longer term career questions. So I just want to remind folks that there are people out there hustling to provide, you know, different levels support and these times so, like, the recap is take control of your story. second piece, take control who you know, go sit in control, take control of what you offer, go in, sit in. And then the last one is, you know, they’re also people if you if you can’t do that right now, there are People out there helping with that.Jennifer Thompson 43:01
Fabulous. Well, Hayley, this has been an absolutely delightful conversation. I think we went everywhere in the world and all around and kind of back back to a great home base here. I love the idea of people feeling confident that it’s time to retire the idea of jobs. And seeing that that right now might be a really empowering time for that. So I thank you for your insights and genuine enthusiasm about the work that you do.

Hayley Darden 43:34
Thanks so good to have you have me. It’s been awesome.

Jennifer Thompson 43:39
Awesome, awesome. Is there a way that people can connect with you going forward or a place where they can follow your work?

Hayley Darden 43:47
Yeah. I write on on Well, you can google me no. Email me Hayley@invisible.email and visible like, like a Harry Potter cape. Email, Hayley, ha y le y. You can also that’s the best place to follow me and then I can direct you to different social media places.

Jennifer Thompson 44:08
All right, that sounds good. And I think you also post some things on medium and on your LinkedIn profile so they can follow your LinkedIn profile as well. And yeah, we’ll definitely link will link your LinkedIn profile for them to follow you in the show notes. Thank you and have a great day and Be Deviant.

Hayley Darden 44:26
Thank you.

Jennifer Thompson 44:28
Well, I hope you had as much fun listening to the interview with Hayley as I had conducting it absolutely amazing human being and as you can tell, she wants people to be engaged in their work and love what they do. And again as that reminder today that the Hell Yes Resumes Masterclass is on sale for that $150 off bringing the total to just $147 for lifetime access on how to create that great resume, that will help you find a job that you can love that you will be engaged and that you can do great work that has purpose. So don’t miss it. Use the coupon code remarkable to get that deal and we’re going to link to that in the show notes. Now, if you all have loved this podcast or any other podcasts that we’ve done, please take a moment and head on over to iTunes and give us a review those reviews mean the world to us. Also, until next time, be engaged in the work you do have fun and definitely Be Deviant.