Career Leadership 02-08 Trust, In person
===

[00:00:00] 

Donna Serdula: . Hey there, Isaiah.

How you doing? 

Isaiah Hankel: Hey Donna. Good to see you. 

Donna Serdula: How's everything going in your life? 

Isaiah Hankel: Going well. Just trying to keep up with everything. How about you? 

Donna Serdula: Doing, I'm doing great. I'm reading a book I wanted to talk to you about because it's it's a little bit different. And it was recommended to me through a LinkedIn comment exchange.

The guy said, it's called it's it takes what it takes how to think neutrally and gain control of your life. So what's your mindset? Are you a positive or are you a negative type of person? 

Isaiah Hankel: That's a good question. I would say I'm probably equal parts of both. I really am.

I like anything that's neutral. I really gravitate towards a lot of the stoicism stuff that's been out over the past few years, like everything stoicism. So when I think of neutrality, I think of that, but I'm probably the part that like drives me to do new things [00:01:00] is somewhat negative.

It's you're not good enough yet. You got to do this. This needs to be better. I don't know if most people say that out loud, but I definitely have that. And then there's also this part of you like, I would say there's more of the envisioning part of me. That's this can be better. It's, solution focused.

Here's how we can do it. Here's the best case scenario. We got to strive towards neutral. Neutrality is a challenge for sure. 

Donna Serdula: And to me, I myself I hate to admit this, but I tend to go negative. I always do. I tend to go negative. So it's always this, for me, it's this fight to think positive to go that positive route.

And it's something that I do challenge myself to do. And I force myself because it is important, I think to have that positive mindset. 

Isaiah Hankel: Yeah. 

Donna Serdula: But in some ways it is such a huge leap. And what attracted me to this book was this idea of. You don't have to necessarily go positive to get such amazing gains, but it's really to look at a situation very neutrally and not infer, [00:02:00] Oh, this is great, or this is terrible, but just to take it as it is, which again, I think goes back to your stoicism comment, it, it's something that it really resonated with me with job seekers.

No one: Yeah. 

Donna Serdula: Because so often when you're talking to them they're definitely not going up the positive path. They're going through the negative one, but to to realign them rather than say, look let's not even, let's not even assume that everything's going to be rosy and wonderful, but at least can we just course correct to that?

It is what it is. It's going to take what it takes and let's take it in a neutral type of way. And that to me felt very empowering.

Isaiah Hankel: Yeah. I think I definitely feel only positive empowering things when I'm able to step back and get rid of the emotional tie to it, detach as far as decision making goes in particular, I think for job searching, that's what it is because I see a lot of people that they're in their job search.

They thought they were going to submit three resumes, get hired. They don't [00:03:00] immediately crash into this like sense of rejection, et cetera. Or they try something new. They learn something that actually is correct. They hear from one person who's a friend of a friend, Oh, my God, don't do that. And then they freak out.

They question everything. And it's because they have no framework or knowledge base school doesn't teach them how to do a job, nothing to go on. So they're just roping around with their emotions. 

Donna Serdula: Yeah. 

Isaiah Hankel: And they're not thinking wait a sec. This, if I wanted to get hired, I could actually get hired.

This is what I always tell them. If you really wanted to get hired, you already know the answer, right? You would contact 50 people a day. You'd call on the phone when you could, you'd actually go drive by maybe some organizations. To introduce yourself, whether they're, maybe meetups or whatever, you already know the answer.

Everything else is just you trying not to do that because your emotions it's tough to reach out and cold contact people and go and introduce yourself for the fear of rejection. So if you step back neutrally, it's actually okay what it takes is really simple. I just, it's painful to do it.

Donna Serdula: Yeah. It [00:04:00] is. It is for them. It is. And which, which sort of goes back to I've been having this, the same conversation of late quite a bit and clients will call me and, just getting started to work together and they'll have, what brought them to my doors, of course, because they found themselves displaced and I've been hearing it more than I, I think ever before and it's this, I'm scared.

I am scared, Donna. I'm really scared as to what I'm going to be dealing with, what it's going to look like. I feel it. I feel this sense of fear. And what I've been saying of late, which seems to really help them is isolate that feeling, find that feeling and let's rename it.

Let's rename it because is it really fear or have you just named it fear? Because these feelings, they're just feelings, right? There's no, there's really no name to it. You are the one that determines what that feeling is. So let's name it excitement. [00:05:00] Let's name it enthusiasm. Let's name it hope.

Let's 

name it something more positive than it's fear. Have you done that? Are you good at naming your emotions? 

Isaiah Hankel: Thanks. I think when you get them down on paper, it's good. There's something that I think it was Tim Ferris gave him the phrase fear setting instead of goal setting. So I really like thinking of the worst case scenarios.

Not like you spiral downward in life. Go down this doom pathway, but if you think okay, I don't have a job. The first thing I like to set is look, it's not that you can't get a job. You're just trying to get a very high level job with most of the people that we work with. So if you wanted a job, you could probably get a job tomorrow at a McDonald's upload a resume to a kiosk. You're hired. So it's not that you can't get a job, Starbucks, et cetera. If what's your worst case scenario I think back in, when I needed to work. And I know this is impossible for everybody, but I went to a company called labor ready.

You wake up every morning, go down there. They'll tell you where a job is and you go do the job. It's usually more manual. I'm just, I try to set some this is your worst case scenario. Do you know what [00:06:00] your worst case scenario? Do you know what the payout would be for unemployment, et cetera? What does the timeline look like?

What are your bills look like? Have you looked at the numbers on when you would, so if you actually define the fear, like it gets rid of it and you know what your one runway is, where you are instead of just the uncertainty is what causes the fear. 

And 

then you can do it. People have done amazing things, like you could, you can decide.

I've seen people decide to say, okay, I'm going to make this happen. I've seen people decide I'm going back to school and I'm taking these two extra jobs. Because I want a better life for my kids. I've seen them just decide to do that and make that happen and take two or three part time jobs while they're in their job search and then get into an executive role just because they decide.

So the uncertainty of not knowing what they want, not knowing what the worst case scenario is not knowing when the money's actually going to run out. I think that's what causes the fear. And once they define that, then they can focus on enthusiasm. 

Donna Serdula: Yeah. Yeah. I love that. I think it's very true. It's let's open your eyes, open and really take account of what's, [00:07:00] what.

What's going to wreck you? What's going to lift you? What does it all mean? And then make some really good, hard decisions. But it always comes back to us, doesn't it? It always comes back to that person. And you can decide how do you want to, how do you want to take it?

Do you want to be the victim? Do you want to be the one who's sad, or do you want to be the one that really takes that step forward and says, I can do this? 

Isaiah Hankel: I agree. And I think it's not the lack of emotion. I think when you detach and you step away to figure that out, I do think you got to come back with that kind of can do urgency.

A lot of people, they have a love hate relationship with urgency. They like to hurry things when they want them and not when they don't. But I think you have to apply pressure to yourself because I do talk to a lot of people who they have been let go or whatever else. And they're, Like they're just missing that kind of spark to, to get going.

It's you have to you do have to imagine how bad things can get. You don't want to go on a timeline where you have a gap that's extended three, four months, where it's harder to get hired. Like you have to see that and face it. So you have to have [00:08:00] courage to, to face that and say, okay, now I'm going to take steps to avoid that.

And I'm going to do so with a sense of urgency. 

Donna Serdula: Yeah. And I keep thinking there's. You've mentioned it before. No one learns how to look for a job. It's not taught in school. And it's a different world in that I wish people would get more comfortable with that experience. Because maybe if they were, they wouldn't be, just living in a, in these unhealthy, toxic type of roles.

I think it's one of those things. 

Isaiah Hankel: I think people are, I think we're in the wild west of, I think we're in certainly a big change or awakening of job searching. I think it was still like travel. We used to book travel. You'd have to go to a travel agent and they'd do all this for you.

That's what it was like for the longest time with when all the unions were the biggest and everything, the teamsters, everything there used to be like an agent you would go to, to get hired or find the next job, [00:09:00] like an actual office. And then. That went away. And now there's all these tech companies where they find roles and everything, but because of AI, it's made it really hard to differentiate yourself, because of just the massive amount of people.

And I think a lot of factors with tech, people can't find other people. They can't differentiate who's a better candidate. Who's not. And a lot of them are being replaced by AI. So I think we are in the wild West where something's going to emerge. In terms of the, job coaching, the job market job searching, but certainly nobody's prepared for it.

There's not a curriculum in high school. Teachers don't know how to, most teachers have been in academia. That's all they've ever been in. They have no idea how to even tell people to get a job outside of academia. 

Donna Serdula: And LinkedIn just put out that stat 80, I think it was 84 percent of people are open. They would love to leave and find something different.

That's a huge stat. 

Isaiah Hankel: It's a huge stat. The numbers are not great right now. So if you have that stat and you have interest rates [00:10:00] still really high credit is maxed out. So people are, they're like in freeze mode, right? Not just fight flight or freeze. And so people are frozen. Like I'm talking to a lot of people who are like, I got to change my situation yesterday.

Okay, let's do this. No, I'm just going to think about it some more. And these are people that have thought about it for not, it's not been two days, like they've been laid off for six months and these are high level people. And so I think once you get into that freeze mode, it's really hard to unfreeze.

And I think culture today allows for a lot of freezing because it feels very great. It feels like you did something when you scroll through and read a bunch of stuff online. 

I feel like I did something right. And then I, I didn't actually. Talk to a human being, but I uploaded some stuff, click the easy apply button, change my preferences, said I'm interested to a few jobs on LinkedIn.

Okay. Now I just can wait. Like I did my part and that's just not the case. 

Donna Serdula: And you said something earlier, which is so old school, but do people still do this? And if they don't, they should, but show up like physically show [00:11:00] up you're absolutely right. I used to say success on LinkedIn is getting off LinkedIn, not necessarily meaning, Oh, I got a job.

I can get off LinkedIn, but rather the way I looked at it was more like, let's stop hiding behind the send button. Let's actually stop. Pick up the phone and call somebody. Let's get out of our office and go meet with a group or go, like honestly walk in and talk to the, talk to that person at the front desk and say, Hey I'm here.

I'd like to talk to somebody. I've got something to offer. It's something, I think we just don't see that often anymore. 

Isaiah Hankel: No. And if you do, it really sticks out. And at first people might be like, whoa, that's Crazy. But then you're like, that's also impressive. And so there's a thin line between something being a little bit weird and also being like, Oh man, we need that kind of show up energy.

Donna Serdula: And that's a go getter, isn't it? What a go getter to do. 

Isaiah Hankel: And if you can draw, that's where the distinction between connection. And networking comes in, I, we used to talk about, [00:12:00] we talked about this for years, at least from like our point of view with the people we worked with is, if you go to a conference, this was like pre pandemic, go to a conference, you meet people, you get their business cards, you feel like I'm networking, but then you do nothing with those business cards.

You don't follow up. You don't build a relationship. Nothing happens because that you were actually connecting, not networking. Yeah. So the networking is when, what happens afterwards, LinkedIn's great for the actual networking and the followup process. But what people are not doing today, they're not actually connecting.

They're not going, it's the opposite problem today. So they're not going to events to meet people in person and having that real connection. They're just following up without ever meeting the person. And so the connect, it's never strong enough. 

If you would even just get on the phone with them and talk to it, get on the phone and actually hear their voice live back and forth or zoom at the very least.

Yeah. Take a bus somewhere, walk to an event, a meetup, any, anything and realize it doesn't have to be a meetup that says, A lot of people are waiting for a meetup that says I will get people just like you hired at these companies meetup that doesn't exist. You go [00:13:00] to a meetup and just meet people because they're likely secondary connections to people who are working at the companies you want to get hired at.

If I want to get hired at a Pfizer, if I go to a meetup on architecture, there could be somebody that's married to somebody at Pfizer and you're like the only person like you that's like their spouse they've ever met at one of these meetups before. So there's value in going to any of those. I, yeah, it's a good point you brought up.

I don't think people connect anymore. Yeah. 

Donna Serdula: Yeah it's an in person. It's live in that type of way. I think it's I think we're going to start to see a little bit of a switch, right? When everything becomes AI driven and it's getting there. 

Isaiah Hankel: Yeah. 

Donna Serdula: What is going to differentiate?

It's the real human being, especially, did you see that article, LinkedIn had it on their trending posts. I might have the number wrong, but some guy at some organization, I think it was in China. He gets a video call from the CEO. And a few other of the chief, yes. Of, and they said, we need you to transfer $263 million.

[00:14:00] And the guy was like, are you sure? And they're there on video saying, absolutely, we need you to do this. Here's the account number. And the guy did it. And it turned out it was all deep fakes. 

Isaiah Hankel: Oh geez. That's wild. I knew where you were going with it when you started saying it, but I was, that's still crazy.

Donna Serdula: Yeah. A huge amount of money. Insane amount of money. 

Isaiah Hankel: If it's that amount of money, they would have, they would pay for the deep fake because the payoff is so good. So 

Donna Serdula: amazing. But at the same time, how good this deep fake must have been to have, to have tricked this guy. And he said afterwards, he said he had no idea, none.

It seemed very realistic. So again, I go back to, I think we're going to find that. 

Isaiah Hankel: It's a trust issue. Yeah. You're going to have to be in person. It's always been that way. The most recent stats I saw in an article, I'm going to have to try to dig it up. It was something like a, it was actually comparing the amount of trust in a in person networking event afterwards with somebody versus meeting them online.

It's 70 percent compared to 30, which is what you would think. But I [00:15:00] bet today it's even more because of AI. If you can talk to a real person, not just by video, but actually see them, You're going to know that you talked to them. They're real everything. So I think you're right.

That trust gap is just going to keep increasing. 

It was great talking to you, Isaiah. 

Great talking to you, Donna. See you again soon. I'll talk to you 

later. Bye bye