Expert tips for career pivots, virtual job hunts, and remote work

Making Moves: What Comes After Your Best Job Ever, our final event for 2021,  took place on December 7th and featured two experts, Will Post and Macy Tanking. 

Will and Macy, who are great friends with an immense amount of respect for one another, walked us through their career paths and the pivots they made after departing from Facebook recently, the lessons of the virtual job search, and the adaptation to remote work.

If you missed the event, we got you covered. You can check out the recap below, and tune into the recording right here 👇

Changing careers

Co-workers at Facebook for years, Macy and Will loved their time and the organization. Macy shared, “...the ethos was very much like nothing is someone else’s problem. If you see something and want to spearhead it, go for it.” 😍

For Will, as he thought about the next step, he wasn’t necessarily looking to leave Facebook but rather looking to be challenged, stretched, and uncomfortable in a new way. He was considering what he would want to incorporate into the next position that would help him achieve those goals. He called this an “energy hunt,” and a lot of it came back to the leadership and team of an organization too. 

Macy really started thinking about her values and her nonnegotiables. This takes self-awareness and getting to know yourself. “Everyone should get someone that you can have honest conversations with and say, ‘What do I want to do? Where do I want to spend my time?’” Macy recommended.

Virtual networking + job hunting 

Both Will and Macy left and started new positions during the pandemic, something that many of us have done or will do. But it’s been a different kind of job search, a fully virtual one. 

For Will, he really tried to focus on an organic job hunt, meaning he just started connecting with people and connections to jobs came from there (that’s how he and I got connected). 

Macy affirmed this strategy when she shared how she’s ended up with a consulting business on the side: “A lot of that has come through… applying to a job and they say, ‘You know what, you’re not the best fit for this particular role, but we have this contract position open’, or, ‘I’d like to connect you with someone else.’” 

Advice that really stood out to me, especially as it pertains to making these connections (or networking, to use the term that makes a lot of us anxious), included: 

• “leading with curiosity”

• “making human connections before trying to make a work or a corporate connections”

• just being human (an important theme throughout the chat) 

Don’t go into a networking chat rigidly or transactionally. Be genuinely interested in the other person and what they’re doing. Build your human connection first, and then everything else will come pretty naturally if there is an alignment. 🤝

They also had some great tactical advice: 

• Get over the awkward dynamic of virtual interviewing (whether calling it out directly or making a joke about). 

• Take the time to intentionally think about how you’re showing up to a virtual interview (i.e. video / audio quality, your space, lighting). 

• Optimize your LinkedIn (i.e. check the open to work box, ask peers or managers to give you an endorsement). 

• Be agile with the online stuff. You can’t control everything, whether that’s your hyper puppy losing their sh** at the most inopportune time or the contractor knocking on your door. Just roll with the punches. 

Working remotely 

Once you land that new job, there’s a darn good chance you or some of your team will be working remotely. Welcome to the pandemic (and hopefully soon to be post-pandemic) world. 

While Will and Macy see the push to remote work as overall net-positive, there are still a few things we’ll be figuring out and working at for a while. Will called out an important note on the commute: “The commute did a specific job for us beyond just getting us from A to B… Even if you don’t have a commute and physical distance to cover, how do you incorporate things that do that same job for you?” It’s all part of a routine, and routines can really help with both setting an end to your work day as well as helping get you in the right mindset and stay motivated. ☕

Along the self-reflection and getting to know yourself theme of the conversation, Will also shared the following about remote work: “It’s given everyone the space to try some pretty interesting strategies and tactics...it invites getting curious about ourselves about how we work best, and I’m of the thinking that a lot of what holds people back in their career is that they’re not quite sure what they’re best at and how to get the best out of themselves. And so anything that invites us to get curious about that, and introspective, I think is for the better.” 

With remote work comes physical separation from our teams. Will hasn’t met all of his team in-person, yet he’s still been able to build positive relationships to the point that he has to take a moment to think about who he has or hasn’t met in-person. Macy shared that trust and vulnerability are important factors in moving the needle forward in building relationships with your remote co-workers, though she advised that some vulnerability often needs to come first. 

When asked about how people leaders can best support their remote or hybrid teams, Macy was quick to recognize Will’s works as a remote people leader. Will shared that trust, vulnerability, and empathy and some of the biggest steps our leaders can take. Leaders can’t be afraid to say “I don’t know”. 

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