Diana Alt [00:00:01]:
Hey there everyone, and welcome to Work Should Feel good. The show where your career growth meets your real life. I'm your host, Diana Alt and today my guest Gina Riley and I are going to spend a whole episode saying the quiet part out loud about why checking every box on a job posting is not enough to land a job. Gina is a career coach, author, executive search consultant who is transforming the way people think about their job searches and their career transitions. She has spent over a decade working on C suite and other executive searches in corporate America and has used that experience to develop her very, very cool Career Velocity framework, which is a framework with a bunch of little frameworks inside. We're going to talk about that and it's an action oriented system for helping exacts navigate successful transitions. Gina is a UMAP certified coach, a behavioral interviewing expert, which I love when people know how to do that. And the author of the book Qualified Isn't Enough, which she's put the name on her.

Diana Alt [00:01:03]:
If you're watching on video, she's got the name all spelled out underneath her face. Go buy it on Amazon or wherever your books are sold immediately. It's really good. It's a topic I've been thinking about for a while and I was super glad when I found out she wrote the freaking book so I don't have to. She shares her comprehensive understanding of how both sides, sides of exec hiring kind of happen and how you can go from being qualified to chosen and fun fact, this stuff she talks about execs, but it works for everyone at the appropriate level. So don't stop listening because you think, oh, I'm not in the C suite because there's probably something here for you. So welcome to the party.

Gina Riley [00:01:47]:
Thank you. There's something for everyone, diana. Even my 23 year old college graduate is reading my book and applying the frameworks.

Diana Alt [00:01:55]:
Okay, let's talk about this because there's so much, there's so much discussion right now. We're recording this in November of 2025. There's so much discussion right now of what AI and other economic factors are doing to job opportunities for new grads. So tell a little bit about your kiddo, what they majored in, what they're pursuing and how they're approaching this differently. Like what are a couple of the frameworks, not tips that you know is using.

Gina Riley [00:02:29]:
Yeah, I can hit the go button on this easily. So I'm in my mid-50s. I mostly serve people ages 40 to 69 who are typically leaders, people who have, you know, a lot of experience that said, I have two Gen Z old Gen Z sons. My 23 year old just graduated from Oregon State with a mechanical engineering degree. He has one year of experience because he had two six month internships. Here's the thing. Every job seeker has a unique value proposition or a uvp. And I cover this in the micro.

Gina Riley [00:03:04]:
How to develop your unique value proposition in the entire first phase. One of my book, chapters one through five and it's a lot of work because I have included frameworks that help people tease out the language about how they're going to talk about themselves. And I have one really cool story for you, Diana. When, when I was first certified to use the UMAP profile, which includes the top five strengths from Strengths, Finder Values, Assessment, Motivated and Burnout Skills and Personality. I had my son who was then 17, work through the UMAP so I could practice my new certification. Here's what happened. So we pull out all this really cool stuff about him. He starts to apply to colleges that are asking him why you? Why should we pick you to come to our college? And he picks up all the notes from umap.

Gina Riley [00:03:53]:
We did it hard copy back then. And he goes, mom, it's all right here. I know what I'm going to say about myself. I know what my values are. I know how I help people and, and I know how I apply my skills and what I love to do now. He's many more years along now, and now he has an evolved unique value proposition. But he has the base, he has.

Diana Alt [00:04:14]:
That starting point that is so important because like I'm a few years younger than you and like we weren't talking about unique value whatever. And I went to engineering school too. So my bachelor's degree is in chemistry. My master's degree is in engineering management. So I came from that STEM background. My dad was a junior college professor for all things the first two years of engineering. My mom taught English. So I came out like we didn't have a business bone in our body.

Diana Alt [00:04:46]:
So these were not things we talked about. And no one was talking about core values when I was a kid. I don't know about you or even up through high school because high school and college, because it's like you were expected to inherit the values from your parents and not necessarily have your own independent ones when you were younger, right?

Gina Riley [00:05:10]:
Absolutely. And you know what's so beautiful about putting a definition to your top values? So an exercise I do with my clients is when they do the UMAP, they have 10 values. I ask them to assign a Meaning for each of the 10. And then I ask them to sort them into the top three.

Diana Alt [00:05:27]:
And then.

Gina Riley [00:05:27]:
And the top three are the ones we focus on when they have job opportunities and they're confused about which direction to go. So this is what I do. They're like, oh, I've got two possible offers coming in and I don't know what to do. I'm feeling overwhelmed. I pull up the UMAP coaching debrief that we did together in a synthesis that I wrote and I read out loud the top three values to them and I say, which, which of these companies gave you a sense that you can live out those values and in that company and role? And they, it hits them like a freight train. They usually know exactly which one to dismiss and the one to go after because they got that gut check that they weren't going to have that value to live out there.

Diana Alt [00:06:11]:
You know, I love that. Number one, like by the, the Park Association, Professional association of Resume Writers and Career Coaches, which is a mouthful, invited me to actually do a webinar in a couple weeks about values alignment. Yeah. Because so often people just hear, oh well, these are, these are the four words or the three words or the however many words that are my core values. And then they stop. And so I'm actually training a little bit on how to identify values misalignment and help people articulate things better. It's, it's an important thing because you know what? I have been. How long have you been a career coach?

Gina Riley [00:06:50]:
I first started really researching how to make an effective career transition around 2017 and 18. And it was coming out of. I was leading executive searches for a company I'm affiliated with called Talents Group. And as I interviewed candidates for CEO roles and so on, I was seeing the mistakes people were making. And then my friend who runs talent group, Sherry Kid Salon, she said, hey, I have people that want help with their resume. And so someone could you do this little side thing for me and talk with people? And out of that evolved where I am today. But it took a lot of research understanding how to make an effective career transition and you know where people are making the biggest mistakes. Say it 1.

Gina Riley [00:07:34]:
Starting with their resume, which is step 6 of my 9 step curve velocity model, because they couldn't tell their stories and they would ramble in the interviews and, and they would put my brain to sleep.

Diana Alt [00:07:48]:
Yeah, I completely agree. I, I'm. It's really funny because so many career coaches started in resume writing and I did not, I did not regularly offer as a Standard resumes until this year, I did them. Sometimes I would do them on the DL. If I was already working with a client, I would do them right. But because I think the rest is so important. And most of I cover coached. I've been paid to coach since about 2013.

Gina Riley [00:08:15]:
Wow.

Diana Alt [00:08:16]:
And I was doing it before because I came out of like, I started my career right before the tech wreck. Like I was two years in whenever everything went belly up, got laid off twice in six months, was competing with people that were 10 years more experienced for the same money. It was a nightmare. And then again in 2008, I wasn't laid off, but a lot of my friends were. And I was a leader in an association for business analysts here in Kansas City, where I live. So basically, I saw all these mistakes, but people could get a job and they could figure out if you told. If you knew how to tell the story, you could have a resume that was like a C or C plus and get a tech job for many years of when I've done. It's not the same now.

Diana Alt [00:09:05]:
Everything changed. It needs to be more dialed in. But as soon as you can tell your story, no matter whether it's on the back of a napkin, on two pieces of paper or somewhere else, everything gets a whole lot easier. So, yeah, on all of that, I'm going to talk about you, Matt, for a minute. So do you know Shelly Piedmont?

Gina Riley [00:09:27]:
I do know. I don't know her well, but I do. I know.

Diana Alt [00:09:31]:
Yeah, she's fantastic.

Gina Riley [00:09:33]:
I know.

Diana Alt [00:09:35]:
She was Episode two of the podcast. She and I have become friends. We kind of met in the comments in the Pandemic. Like a lot of the career coaches that we all know each other did. And she talked about EMAP. I'm a CliftonStrengths coach, so I invested in. In that whole thing. I want to know what your top Cliftons drinks are.

Diana Alt [00:09:55]:
Yes.

Gina Riley [00:09:57]:
Activator in order. Activator, focus, individualization, significance, and restorative.

Diana Alt [00:10:09]:
So I have none of those.

Gina Riley [00:10:11]:
I have three rare strengths in my top five. Three rare ones. So activator, focus and significance are all in the fourth quartile, making me quite the oddball because that's a lot. And my favorite is individualization. I think individualization makes me a great career coach.

Diana Alt [00:10:33]:
Individualization is my number 10. And my top three are input, learner, and intellection, which I call the overthinkers trifecta. Yes, it is. One of my business coaches made me a sash that says overthinker, and at the time, he gave It to me, in2021, it was like an identity. It was, like, very tight. And now it's kind of like an identity. I'm releasing through a lot of work, because in the cliftonstrengths, kids, if you do. If you take the cliftonstrengths and you don't have anybody like me or Gina to tell you about it, I like people to get the report.

Diana Alt [00:11:12]:
That's all 34 of them. Oh, yeah, you use the top five most of the time.

Gina Riley [00:11:17]:
Time.

Diana Alt [00:11:17]:
But I use the full one. And people will say, oh, the ones at the bottom, that's my weaknesses. That's the ones I suck at. No, sweetie, not necessarily your. Your weaknesses defined by Gallup in this model or anything that gets in the way of you getting what you want. And it's usually like, the ugly side of your top five.

Gina Riley [00:11:35]:
Yes. The shadow side of the strengths.

Diana Alt [00:11:37]:
Yes, exactly. So my overthinker is like the shadow side of all my top.

Gina Riley [00:11:42]:
Absolutely. And my activator, you know, it goes both ways. I, you know, I am the first one to get started and jump in and make things happen, but sometimes it creates jumping the gun, not getting enough information, you know, and things like that. So I think the beauty of knowing our top five strengths is knowing is. Is if we have high EQ emotional quotient, that we can adapt and adjust in different situations, and we can also explain to each other how we're different. You and I are very different. With our top strengths. As an activator, I'm going to maybe move quickly.

Gina Riley [00:12:21]:
You might need a little think time, knowing that about you without knowing you deeply. You and I can at least contract out loud like, hey, you know, I'm ready to get moving on this. Do you need a day or two to, you know, go and think about that, and then we'll come back together and go for it, and then that helps us build a better relationship. Because I'm honoring you and your talent.

Diana Alt [00:12:41]:
It's really important. It's one of the best vocabulary. It's so funny because so many organizations do, like, disc or modern strengths or whatever, and every assessment has its purpose. But my two favorite, because they say about you, are cliftonstrengths. And then the enneagram, which at some point, I'm gonna go dive really deep in an enneagram and maybe get some certifications in that because it gets into what's the actual motivations behind all the stuff, you know. But do you. Have you ever done anything with a neogram?

Gina Riley [00:13:18]:
If I did, it was back in my corporate days a long time ago. So I can't speak to that one at all.

Diana Alt [00:13:23]:
Yeah, I feel like that is one that I hear about from entrepreneurs a lot and people that are entrepreneurial. Like, I haven't run across anybody that's a client that said, oh, yeah, I did that hit work.

Gina Riley [00:13:37]:
Yeah, for me, the UMAP gives me a quick hit because while I could be a leadership coach, I have chosen a different path for how I apply my education and whatnot. So I don't want to ideate and spend a lot of time. See, here's my activator. I don't want to spend a ton of time just ruminating on like, you know, what makes up a person. I need that as the springboard to build that foundational, unique value proposition language.

Diana Alt [00:14:06]:
Because.

Gina Riley [00:14:06]:
Because my clients are not going to show up in an interview and say, I'm an achiever, I'm strategic. If they do, I just will want to, like, you know, retch. I want them to show how they apply their strategic. How they do. How.

Diana Alt [00:14:21]:
Yeah, I call it talking about the thing without talking about the thing. And I spent many years in tech where dodgel software development was a thing. And there's so much dogma around a thing that is not intended to be dogmatic. I've been guilty of this, but I had a light bulb go off at one point when I was a scrum master and I'm like, this goes better. When we talk about why we're doing the thing or why don't we just do this? You say you're frustrated with this, like, can we try this? Just ripping off. And then I've worked with some business and executive coaching clients, a couple of which have said, agile is the stupidest thing in the world. I don't ever want to do it. And then I basically worked with them to implement Agile in the company and they don't even know that they're doing that.

Diana Alt [00:15:04]:
I trick them. So that is individualization at work, among other things. So. Well, thanks for sharing that. Is there any specific strategy like your son is finding useful? Because that's kind of where we started this. Is your son on the market?

Gina Riley [00:15:22]:
Yes. Other than kind of developing language to speak about himself and his experiences. And a lot of the conversations we've had have helped him create a resume that he can speak to and tell those stories. So there's that. But you know what I'm finding rewarding is like, he texts me regularly, screenshots of responses. He'll get to cold outreach or to warm Introductions, you name it. And it'll be offers to, hey, I'd be happy to meet with you. You know.

Gina Riley [00:15:50]:
And so he'll send me a screenshot back and say, how's this for a response? He's learning to keep it short, keep it direct. Gratitude, humility, and asking directly for what he needs and wants other than asking for a job. And he. We've had these conversations. He's like, mom, everyone knows I'm looking for a job. I'm a graduate. And I said, yeah, but we don't ask for a job. We ask for informational so we can get advice and information that helps us advance our job search.

Gina Riley [00:16:22]:
That's the language he's now using. I would love to meet with you. You may hold information that's going to help me advance my job search.

Diana Alt [00:16:29]:
Okay, so that is the best language I've ever heard. And I like. I've had some other ways to dance around that because people like, no one wants to be hit up for something that's transactional. But the top thing that, you know, so many people talk about, add value, add value, value. Which becomes trite when you hear it for the 535th time time about networking in particular. But when you show something, I like to tell people a lot because they won't network. They're like, I don't have anything to offer a chief, whatever officer that would hire two layers down for the job that I would actually do. I tell them that appreciation is one of the top values ways to value someone.

Diana Alt [00:17:16]:
And so just this is beautiful. There's. Because you're basically saying, I appreciate you as an expert and as a leader and oh, by the way, I'm not going to pretend that I'm not hoping that I can use it in a search that I'm doing.

Gina Riley [00:17:29]:
Absolutely. Before you and I got on the call, we were talking about applying frameworks and not just consuming tips. As a job seeker, and here's the thing, I love to talk about a couple of my favorite frameworks. You literally can have them on a note card, pull them out of your back pocket. When you hold informational conversations, you are trying to gather information. The most useful information you can get is around what challenges an organization is having and what is stopping them from being successful. Because that is the intersection of where you could potentially position your unique value proposition. So there's two frameworks that I recommend.

Gina Riley [00:18:14]:
One is a swot. What are the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of the organization? But getting past strengths and weaknesses, when you're asking a person about what are you trying to accomplish here, what are you hoping to do in the next year, what market share are you trying to take over, what customers are you trying to beat out, etc. And then you find out these are all the things that are threatening our success and getting in the way. And you pull out all the stories that you're ready to share because you've done the UVP work, you, you've done the interview prep, you have your stories now you're not in sales mode, you're in investigative mode. You're a consultant. You're asking questions that matter, that help you get what you need. So you land and stick the landing with the right stories. The second framework comes from the two hour job search.

Gina Riley [00:19:06]:
Steve Dalton, I'm a huge fan. I buy his book for all my clients and now they get qualified isn't enough. And the two hour job search. And so Steve has t ara what are the trends happening that you see? What insights do you have for me? What advice do you have for me? What resources do you recommend? The last part of TR is called assignments. That's great for early career. He wrote the book initially for MBA graduates coming out of Duke. I don't recommend that for my 56 year old clients per se. You're not asking other people for assignments.

Diana Alt [00:19:41]:
These are gold.

Gina Riley [00:19:43]:
You almost have. You may not even have to do a ton of research to ask these questions.

Diana Alt [00:19:48]:
No, you don't. And I think it also changed. I love what you said about investigation because one of the biggest mistakes, there's having a goal for yourself in mind and then there's walking in with a totally you focused agenda. And the latter does not work. So these types of frameworks will help you get out of yeah, I know I need a job. But it gets you out of making it about you and into making it about them. I just had a sales training with our friend Angie Cowan yesterday. So she's doing a program this fall.

Diana Alt [00:20:26]:
She calls her fall Sprint and there's like a sell it month which is. And she was talking about how sales is coaching and that the main reason people feel weird, they get the pit in their stomach is that they have made the sales about them. And all I need to make this revenue so I can pay for XYZ or what the hell ever instead of making it about the client. So that's another good tip for people if they're looking. I don't necessarily, I'm not necessarily the coach that's like, how do you feel in your body? No. Yeah, but there's something to that when something doesn't feel right, it could be because your orientation is wrong.

Gina Riley [00:21:09]:
I think that's a really valid point. That's really interesting that you. You put it that way. And what it's making me think about is recently I wrote an article for the Forbes Coaches Council and it's called your elevator pitch may be costing you opportunities. And here is why. I know it's a hot.

Diana Alt [00:21:26]:
Can you send me a link?

Gina Riley [00:21:28]:
It is on Forbes Coaches Council under my name. There's 25 articles and it's one of my recent ones. Here's why I wrote it. I have seen a lot of coaches, marketing and branding experts and salespeople say you've got to get your elevator pitched together. As a job seeker, what happens when you have an elevator pitch or speech? You are now a salesperson. You now are embodying push, push, push. Hire me. Here's what.

Gina Riley [00:21:56]:
Here's what I have to offer instead. What I have and by the way, an elevator ride situation. 60 to 90 seconds. That is something where you're doing a song and dance and you're getting someone maybe excited or interested in you. Like, tell me more. That is not what the tell me about yourself answer is. So what happens is in every single interview you're going to be asked, tell me a little bit about yourself.

Diana Alt [00:22:20]:
I want to hear your take on this because I didn't get to read the details in the book and I want to compare notes on how you think about it.

Gina Riley [00:22:26]:
Absolutely. So the whole idea of elevator pitch makes me go a little inside out.

Diana Alt [00:22:31]:
I get really, I don't ever use.

Gina Riley [00:22:33]:
That really wrapped up about it. So what I've done in the book is the chapters one through five by the micro are helping you build up to the answer of tell me about yourself. And the way that I have helped construct it with my frameworks is I've created a table, simple table with three columns. If you have a really complicated career story, it might be four columns. But I like threes. So what I'm having people do is go back to chapters three and four and lay out in bullet point form the top things that were happening in each of the thirds of their career. And then usually it's way too much when we first go through it. But my job is to help them cull it down and reflect back to them as their mirror or jar label reader reading their label.

Gina Riley [00:23:20]:
Here's the things that I think your ideal decision makers need to hear from you. So is it going into the weeds about your childhood probably not. Right, right.

Diana Alt [00:23:29]:
But.

Gina Riley [00:23:29]:
But I still ask my clients their entire career story. I spend two hours having them tell me everything from start to finish, where they came from. But then we start dropping it all out. We call it out and we clean it up. And then we look at the target and then we say, ah, here's the connectors across the three columns that you should probably hit. And oh, by the way, in the first column, you're talking about that for probably 30 seconds. The middle column, middle career is going to be two minutes max. You get to the third column, you're in that two plus minutes range.

Gina Riley [00:24:05]:
This is ish. I'm not perfect on this. And then what I want my clients to do is pivot with the interviewer and say, based on all of these experiences and the themes and patterns throughout my career, the reason why I think I'm a good fit for what we're talking about today is xyz. This helps build that high level clarity about what the heck you're talking about in the first place. You're connecting the dots for the people listening and you're not doing a little song and dance like here, you know, here.

Diana Alt [00:24:33]:
It is not anyone else's job to connect dots about you besides your own. It's not a recruiter's job to connect the dots. It's not the hiring manager's job to connect. It's damn sure not the board's job to connect the dots. And you work with people that have to go before the board. So I love that point. I look at it a little bit differently and I think part of it is a demographic. So I still have people that end up with a 30 minute interview slot because I hate a 30 minute slide.

Diana Alt [00:25:02]:
I wish nobody would ever interview for only 30 minutes, but necessarily have five minutes. So I try to get people to like two, two and a half. But I challenge my clients to do Tell me about yourself without referencing either a job title or a number of years of experience, because that forces them to think about what do I do. And I have a little tool that I use with them where we develop a one sentence, a two sentence, and then like the full version of it. And so a lot of the connecting the dots and the things like that are in there. There's a little bit of the motivator behind something too, but it's an interesting way. But what I like about your model is that like, I've worked in product management for a long time and so I might interview with a cto, a cpo, and like Somebody over in marketing or in engineering, something like that. So if, you know, like, here's the three bullet points or four, however many bullet points for each of those phases, you can tell a slightly different story to each person.

Diana Alt [00:26:13]:
But because you internalized all the stories, you're good. And internalizing the stories is where it's at. Memorizing is for amateurs.

Gina Riley [00:26:22]:
Oh, yeah. It makes me crazy when people think they need to. Yeah, yeah. With my framework, what people can do is literally take a document, create a couple of bullet points to remind them about the key things that they may want to speak about. And I'm. When I say bullet points, not prose.

Diana Alt [00:26:37]:
Not long sentences, you mean like, oh, this. The rescue project story from.

Gina Riley [00:26:43]:
Exactly. Rescue, you know, VP of something. And three bullet points under that. These were the main things I was doing. They can print out the one pager and tape it right above their zoom or, you know, the lens on their laptop and just glance up at. No one will ever know. One of my clients. Like, five years ago, when I developed this, she.

Gina Riley [00:27:02]:
She texted me. She goes, I don't even. I don't even need my Three Thirds document anymore. I got it. You know, that's how we refer to it. You know, one thing, though, I wanted to mention is I have a story in my book about one of my clients. Three Thirds. Everyone's anonymized, but it's all true stories.

Gina Riley [00:27:20]:
So this is about Carrie. Not her real name and Carrie's original why for where she is today. And her. Her career is still evolving. She's now working on PhD. She's on a second job since we work together. But her why, when she walks into every room and her space is technology and healthy data analytics, she's like 11 years old. Her father passes away, and so her mother is left as a single parent to parent her and her siblings.

Gina Riley [00:27:50]:
But what they found out when her father passed away, he died from aids. He was a closeted gay man. And so now what her thread is. And this is dramatic. Not everyone has this, but every word, every room she walks into now, she can articulate very crisply her why she's there. I'm all about accessible data and health care information so people can get the health care that they need. And back then in the 80s, because she's the same age as me. He didn't have that.

Gina Riley [00:28:24]:
Remember the 80s? 80s was crazy with, like, AIDS epidemic. So I love that story because it exemplifies what I'm talking about. But not everyone has that. Some of my clients were raised on A farm. And so a lot of their value system and their why and their hard working ethic comes from maybe being a farming family. That's an example. We all have something in our background that help inform where we are today.

Diana Alt [00:28:50]:
I think the motivators are really interesting because number one, they are the thing that like, they're the. Out of this whole like, why are you here? What are you doing? It's the thing that's the least likely to be bullshit because so much of the way people are trained to answer these questions or talk about themselves is thinly disguised bullshit. If it's even thinly disguised.

Gina Riley [00:29:17]:
It's just textbook.

Diana Alt [00:29:19]:
Yeah, yeah. This is what. It's this gross. I can rant about that all day. I, I really like it because when you get into your own personal motivator, it starts to be memorable. And you don't have to say, my dad had aids. You can say that my father, you know, my family members healthcare was impacted by lack of data and it ultimately cost him his life. And so now that's why I am passionate about this topic.

Gina Riley [00:29:46]:
So absolutely.

Diana Alt [00:29:47]:
So cool. I have a woman that I work with that I've worked with who made she. She retired from a big company and then she got early retirement package and then found out she sucked at being retired and she wanted another job, but she wanted a less pressure job in health care because of personal experiences with the health care system. And it's a really powerful story. So, okay, the Career velocity. We've wandered all over and I love this, but one of the things I want to talk about is can you briefly talk about these three key phases of the career velocity system? So like developing your story, marketing and thought leadership?

Gina Riley [00:30:33]:
Sure, absolutely. Phase one, chapters one through five is about developing your unique value proposition. And we've touched on it. You're doing the UMAP to tease out your uniqueness. Chapter two is teasing out language about how you lead people and teams during times of change and transition, regardless if you've had a team reporting to you or if you are in the center of an ecosystem collaborating and influencing others. So that's step two. Step. It's all work, Diana, because my frameworks are in there.

Gina Riley [00:31:03]:
You have to do the work or else you don't get the outcome. Step three, you're teasing out the themes and patterns of your career story. Step four, chapter four is creating your career data vault so you don't have to go back and redo it every time. And pulling that into your resume, you have it forever. So my kid, 23, if he starts doing a data vault now, can you imagine he's like 55. He's not going to have to think about it. It's all going to be there. Okay, step five, pulling together the tell me about yourself narrative with my three thirds exercise.

Gina Riley [00:31:35]:
And there's examples about all of it in the book steps.

Diana Alt [00:31:39]:
Oh, go ahead.

Gina Riley [00:31:40]:
Do you have a question?

Diana Alt [00:31:40]:
I love how clear you are in the steps too. Do you have a companion workbook for this?

Gina Riley [00:31:47]:
So I have a 29 page Word document where I've taken all the exercises and put them in there and I have yet to quite figure out how I'm gonna use it. What I have is a private LMS learning management system with like video content and I am in the process of like overhauling because it's five years old now. I'm gonna redo everything to align perfectly with the book.

Diana Alt [00:32:10]:
I have thoughts about this.

Gina Riley [00:32:11]:
I will love it.

Diana Alt [00:32:12]:
Let's figure it out if we have some time. Okay, so, so basically you get people in phase one all the way to where they have this amazing story, all the data to back it up. It's like their repository of awesome.

Gina Riley [00:32:28]:
Yes. So we call that they have their unique value proposition shored up and they have the answer to tell me about yourself. And then I, what I call, I call this milestone. Not in the book necessarily is they have their business solution. They're a solution to someone's problem. And unless they think about themselves as positioning, as solving a problem, they are going to feel like the pushy salesperson and desperate to. Yeah, Phase two, three steps. I have a triangle model.

Gina Riley [00:32:56]:
It's all outline. So step, step six is develop your resume and your LinkedIn profile. We're not going to talk a ton about that here today. And I don't in my book either. I quote 16 other people who are branding marketing experts. All of that I interviewed the two top people from the NRWA National Resume Writers association and the career thought leaders, people that you and I probably both know. I interviewed them and I have their thought leadership in there. I have a ton of people you and I know are quoted in that, that chapter.

Gina Riley [00:33:29]:
Okay, chapter seven are my frameworks for interview prep. And I am, I am so fortunate to be married to a now former corporate executive. He was a CEO of a small company during the pandemic. He's been the VP at multiple like tech companies and over time he has helped me develop all the things you have to research to, to land like a VP level job. He would go into a coffee shop and Hole up for three days in a row listening to investor reports, coalescing all the information. We have AI now. It's going so much faster.

Diana Alt [00:34:01]:
Research.

Gina Riley [00:34:03]:
40 hours is my quote. 40 hours of prep to win a significant global VP job. That is what it takes. So I have my frameworks in there. And he kind of fussed at me because I pulled out a little bit of the detail because it was so much like honey, you know, let's do it to the masses.

Diana Alt [00:34:22]:
Right.

Gina Riley [00:34:23]:
So I call it the rare candidate framework. Research. Align your stories, Read the room. Everyone's a decision maker, Diana. And the last part is evaluate the offer. And this could be a whole show. Is just preparing for interviews. But that is my first framework and I put that in the book and I describe how to do it.

Gina Riley [00:34:46]:
And you can lay out your own stories using the SOAR model. I use SOAR S O A R. What was the situation? What were the obstacles, actions and results? And the reason why I use that for mature job seekers, not the star model, is because I don't want my leaders talking about their tasks that they did. If they're talking about their tasks, it's probably on their flip flipping resume. Also, you know, these, these outplacement companies, whenever I see coaching clients come to me because they're frustrated and they're not getting traction. These outplacement companies are writing task oriented.

Diana Alt [00:35:25]:
Yeah. If you're spending under, particularly if you're getting a free resume from an outplacement firm. Right. Or you're spending under, then I mean, I don't see a decent resume very often under $700.

Gina Riley [00:35:42]:
Oh no, my friends are all 1500-22. Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:35:47]:
You don't get one for me at all for $700 because. I know. But you're going to get the ineffective kind of resume if you are not willing to invest in it. And it does absolutely make a difference even in the age of AI applying tools. And like all the craziness.

Gina Riley [00:36:04]:
Oh no, it's terrible. So, okay, so that's, that's seven. And the last part of, of phase two is job search strategy, which is broken up into different segments. 1. I refer to a series of seven articles I wrote called how your next executive role finds you. I interviewed seven executives and all had very cool stories about how they transition transitioned into jobs without the use of job boards. And then after that I identified five themes that ran through the seven stories. I have since created a little tiny micro nano course that's on my website now with all the downloadable interviews and A little tiny video series and a workbook where people can start to like identify how they could move the needle without having to to apply through job boards.

Gina Riley [00:36:54]:
Things like consulting when you're in between to get seen and heard. Volunteering professionally so that you get seen in the right circles. Those are two examples. I have one awesome story about how an executive went from the head of United Way non profit in the Pacific Northwest to a CXO role for Dutch Brothers before a big transaction. Like a couple years later they went through a transaction. He was a part of that. Amazing stories. So these seven stories are highlighted in the book.

Gina Riley [00:37:23]:
Not in super great detail, but giving the highlights. And then the other half I'm featuring. Thank you Steve Dalton for letting me pull in some of his approaches. But how do you create your target list? I use the two hour job search and, and then pull in his TR method of holding informationals alongside my SWOT methodology. So you get all those job search frameworks and strategies all in one chapter and. And then phase three is thought leadership. You cannot be found in the future. And the reason why most of our clients, Diana, feel stuck is they're not known widely for what they do.

Gina Riley [00:37:59]:
They're not seen as an authority and they're not getting what they know out there to be helpful to their professional community. And so I talk about that and I have frameworks for teasing out topics so they can kind of hit the road.

Diana Alt [00:38:12]:
So interesting. And I actually have a client who was, was in a very extended job search and you know, a lot of the time that he was in this, it took him almost 18 months to land something and a lot there were, you know, reasons that that took place that like some personal breaks and things in there that he had to take. But he came to me and said, you know what, I don't ever want to have this happen again. Can we talk about thought leadership? Because he's so good and he doesn't know how to be an authority. And what I love about this, and I read more of this chapter or this section of the book than I did anything else, which isn't saying much because it's been crazy. But I like it because you are so clear that it doesn't just have to be bullshit on LinkedIn. So this client that I talked about, one of the things that he's a software engineering leader and one of the things he's very passionate about is the developer experience, meaning how to make the workplace a good place for developers to create. Since so many companies misunderstand and they want to treat software like it's a factory instead of like it's a creative endeavor that you're never going to repeat, which is what it is.

Diana Alt [00:39:28]:
So he's like, I'm thinking maybe I'll start a meetup. And I'm like, oh, my God, so good. It's so. It's easy, it's in person. And he's a really relatable person. It doesn't require a lot of overhead. Like you're going to start with just a bunch of developer nerds getting together or developer leaders getting together for coffee at a Starbucks. And that's how it can start.

Diana Alt [00:39:52]:
And it's networking and thought leadership all at once. But just the fact that you're the one that owns the freaking meetup on the app automatically conveys authority.

Gina Riley [00:40:02]:
Automatically 100,000 million percent. That is putting yourself in the center of an ecosystem where you are now building contextual. Contextual. I can't say it. Relevancy. You are now relevant to and helpful to your community and you are going to be known for the content expertise, whether you're a deep expert about every minutiae of it or not.

Diana Alt [00:40:24]:
I love this because it also, like, this is giving me alarm bells to literally work with him in a strategy session on. On Monday of next week. Because another aspect of it is I'm a bit, like I said, I'm a big strengths nerd and I think and or other personality models, whatever people want to do. But for me, one of the reasons I do the top 30, the all 34 report for people is that that is where you learn what your dominant quadrant is. And the four not familiar with CliftonStrengths number one. I talk about it quite a bit in episode two with Shelley, with Shelly Piedmont. But also, like, it changed my business. It changed everything for me.

Diana Alt [00:41:07]:
The quadrants are strategic thinking, relationship building, influence and execution. And you're an influence girl, right? Well, with activator, do you lead with an like, do you. You've seen your 34.

Gina Riley [00:41:24]:
I have seen my 34. I don't spend a lot of time ideating on the rest of it. I focus on.

Diana Alt [00:41:30]:
Because you're getting to it and I'm the overthinker.

Gina Riley [00:41:33]:
I'm getting to it. Yeah. And I think there's beauty in all of that.

Diana Alt [00:41:37]:
Yeah. Where I'm going with that is I'm a strategic thinker and so. And I'm also very high on. I'm high on relationship building too. So for me, maybe a meetup is the right answer or maybe a Podcast is the right answer for some of my networking, which I told you is 83% of the relationship reason that I started this is to talk to cool people. For somebody that's high on influence, it really could be. I'm gonna go for it. I don't know.

Diana Alt [00:42:06]:
I will make the TikTok channel that turns into 250000 and I have no problem with that. I think that you can pick forums, venues, sizes based on all of this. It doesn't just have to be being yet another person nobody wants to listen to on LinkedIn.

Gina Riley [00:42:25]:
Absolutely. And I give ideas about all what those spaces could be and it's certainly not exhaustive. That's the beauty of AI. I was writing this book when AI was just barely a thing all of last year. Like we weren't really using. I don't know about you, I wasn't using AI as I am today, as I was a year ago certainly. And you can run some of those ideas through ChatGPT and get more ideas, flush it out. And even now when I'm working with my clients, one of the things to get seen and heard is to attend conferences and intersect with other professionals that are like minded on, on topic.

Gina Riley [00:43:02]:
So we're using ChatGPT to even source. But what are the top conferences in America or what are the one top? Right. So there's all these great ways to leverage AI to do this, but thought leadership could be the catalyst to you getting the next job and the next.

Diana Alt [00:43:18]:
Job and the next with. I think it's really interesting too. It's so fun to listen to people, different people talk about how they use AI because there's I, I use it to help with resumes. I'm working on a resume right now, it's due today. So.

Gina Riley [00:43:32]:
Oh dear.

Diana Alt [00:43:33]:
We get off this call is finishing this resume and what I do, I don't like forms. I think they're terrible. They're a terrible way to, to do resume intake for me at least. Yeah. So I do an extended call, kind of like you said, you have your two hour career story call. I do like 90 minute two hour resume intake call and I wander all over what they already have.

Gina Riley [00:43:57]:
Sure.

Diana Alt [00:43:57]:
And then I take it, I take the transcript and I start asking CHAT GPT to help me synthesize. Now I have a million notes and I can synthesize it, but it does it better. And so the other day I was doing that part because I'm trying to figure out what is the narrative, what is the story arc that we're going to do based on this conversation, based on past experience. Experience. And I was exhausted after it. And then I'm getting into like actually turning it into writing, which is a whole different way to use chat gbt. Fun fact. I didn't just say write this client a resume and do it.

Gina Riley [00:44:30]:
Oh, I'm sure you did not. Yeah. And you can't by the way, run.

Diana Alt [00:44:33]:
It all through at once.

Gina Riley [00:44:34]:
It's in China.

Diana Alt [00:44:35]:
I actually did do that. I didn't use it, but I just wanted to see what it gave me and I was like, oh, this is why we tell people not to do that. But I, at one point I, my chat GPT and I are pretty good friends at this point and I asked like, why am I so tired? Like I did this and now I'm starting this and I'm tired and it's like number one, take a break. Number two, you just did accelerated mental synthesizing for however long we took to do that. Like of course you're tired.

Gina Riley [00:45:08]:
So it's exhausting because what you're doing is you're ingesting someone else's story. I mean you're literally like inhaling it, processing it and then you're reflecting it back in a clean manner. And that takes a lot of thinking effort.

Diana Alt [00:45:25]:
When people are doing this for themselves, whether they're working with a coach or not, it is a lot. That's why I always say like if you are working on a career transition, if you know what you're going to do, the Resume is like 60 of the way through in terms of your effort. Like all the applying for jobs and stuff is a different beast. But if you're making a pivot, it's like 80% of the way through, if not more because you have to do the figuring out what the pivot is and it's hard work. It's hard work if you're going to do it right anyway. So what do you think is the top thing people get wrong about the thought leadership side though?

Gina Riley [00:46:03]:
One, not doing it at all.

Diana Alt [00:46:07]:
Other than not doing it.

Gina Riley [00:46:11]:
I, I think perfectionism gets in the way of most of the people I work with. In fact, I just got off of a call, a catch up call with a client from two years ago and he is part of one of the success stories in the book where he did the what I call write and pitch your own job description. He essentially was in the ear of the senior two level skip VP in his manufacturing organization and he was only running a team of five people of continuous improvement folks and when his GM left, he got handpicked to run the 50 person plant because he was already, I know, generating these really strategic, thoughtful ideas. He was also posting a little bit too.

Diana Alt [00:46:53]:
Not a lot.

Gina Riley [00:46:54]:
Well, it's been two years and I, we got on, I was like, oh man, I'm not seeing you on LinkedIn. What, what are you. He's getting itchy and he's like thinking about maybe making a change. I was like, you need to, you have to go back to basics and get that, you know, thought leadership out there.

Diana Alt [00:47:08]:
He goes, I know.

Gina Riley [00:47:09]:
I feel like I'm just wrapped up in perfectionism. I'm like, all you need is a couple great ideas. Run it through ChatGPT, make it your own and get it up there. Oh my God. I mean, you and I have to worry about things like hair and makeup. Like the guys don't have to do.

Diana Alt [00:47:25]:
Which tie am I wearing with the same thing.

Gina Riley [00:47:27]:
Right? Like, who cares? I mean, just freaking do it because none of, we're really not judging each other that harshly. Although, although I did do a video this morning on my LinkedIn newsletter that went out to like 4,000 people and the way I shot it was in zoom and it turned my book title backwards. I didn't realize it. And so I, my husband and another friend said, do you know your book titles backwards? I'm like, I did not notice because I was like, right here. And I'm not going to go retract it.

Diana Alt [00:47:59]:
Right. For sure. I totally get that. So I think you're, I think you're on to so many things. My perfectionism one cracks me up. And it's perfectionism with a side of fear of their employer is really powerful. But I can't tell you how many times I've had a conversation with someone either who's an entrepreneur or, or who's in a business and they're like, I'm so afraid, like I'll extend stupid. And I'm like, I don't know how to tell you this.

Diana Alt [00:48:26]:
I'm gonna hold your hand when I tell you this. You have 432 connections.

Gina Riley [00:48:32]:
I mean, and only a fraction of them might even see it.

Diana Alt [00:48:36]:
Your most important thing to do is build a habit. That's. That's it. So you need to build the bravery and the habit to put something out there. Another thing that I think people in leadership need to understand is thought leadership done well, pulls in the right kind of candidates to work for your organization later.

Gina Riley [00:49:01]:
Because is the most valuable executive, the one that brings and attracts a Hot team. Oh, my God. You just. That is gold.

Diana Alt [00:49:13]:
Yes. So if you're trying to figure out why should I do this? That is one of the reasons. And honestly, if that's the only thing that you want to do, it's worth posting once a month on LinkedIn or once. Once a week or once every two weeks on LinkedIn. It's worth twice a year showing up at some user group conference to talk to them about something. It's worth putting some effort in because I gotta tell you, that will keep not being able to prove that you can do that. Keeps you out of the C suite and it also keeps you out of the VP suite.

Gina Riley [00:49:47]:
Like, this is a flipping mic drop. This is one of your clips. I wish I had put that in my book. But you're right. I mean, you've got to write another book that'll be part due. No, my next one is I really want to convert it into palatable storytelling and language for the early career. So the new graduates, you know, like 22 to 32. But you know, gosh, Diana, I gotta.

Gina Riley [00:50:15]:
I gotta do some other things first.

Diana Alt [00:50:17]:
I mean, like, people get used to this book. Have you made a custom GPT of the book yet?

Gina Riley [00:50:23]:
I have not.

Diana Alt [00:50:25]:
Oh, you need to do that.

Gina Riley [00:50:27]:
Okay.

Diana Alt [00:50:28]:
That's something to look into because then people can actually use some of the principles themselves. Okay. To iterate through. And I'm doing this in a kind of a business coaching situation that I'm in right now where the. It's actually Angie. She. She made a custom GPT to take you through, and she adds to it every week as we go through. And I love it because I can speak.

Diana Alt [00:50:53]:
So it will ask questions. It'll be like, hey, I need to know, blah, blah, blah about the offer or whatever you're working on. And I can speak. And then it'll synthesize.

Gina Riley [00:51:03]:
Nice.

Diana Alt [00:51:04]:
And it sounds like you. That's so cool. Yeah. So, yeah, you should. I know a lot of people that are doing this. And do you know Liam Darmoti?

Gina Riley [00:51:14]:
Oh, yes, I love Liam. Liam.

Diana Alt [00:51:18]:
He was also quoted in my Kim and Andy Storch's book, like three times. So we were having a little fan club meeting, but he has a personal brand strategist custom GPT out there that thousands of people are using. Okay. And so you could talk to him.

Gina Riley [00:51:36]:
Okay.

Diana Alt [00:51:37]:
Because he's taken a lot of collateral to make that.

Gina Riley [00:51:40]:
Let me check right now.

Diana Alt [00:51:43]:
Riley here live or. Well, not really coaching, giving her advice. So we have gone all over the place. There's some Places I thought we were gonna go, that we're not gonna get there. But I want to really talk about something that I think is important and that is job search success metrics. Because so many people think the only metric that you're doing well in a job search is whether you get the offer. I don't buy into that because, well, we live, especially the people we work with, they're looking at 6, 812 month on average searches for that demographic. Hopefully we're excited accelerating that quite, quite a bit for them.

Diana Alt [00:52:25]:
But, you know, you never know what's happening. What are some of the metrics that you like to have people track, particularly ones that can help them stay the course whenever they're in that slog in the middle of the search?

Gina Riley [00:52:41]:
Well, your analytical and your strategic thinking is showing up with that question. I have one thing that I would.

Diana Alt [00:52:50]:
Double down on one land on me.

Gina Riley [00:52:53]:
It isn't offers. I agree with you. It's how many conversations you have on your calendar. Because every conversation, if you can get that one to ignite one or two more and you keep your calendar busy and you're talking with people and gathering more and more information, you are going to be the most prepared job seeker as you navigate to the next yes, if. And the one thing that's opposite of landing those conversations and actively getting them on their cold outreach, dormant ties, your network. The opposite is spending time spraying and praying through online applications. Because we know it's probably maybe 1 or 2% or less lesson of getting a callback. And the way Steve Dalton puts it in his book is like, if you're getting 5% callbacks on your online applications, all right, go ahead and do it.

Gina Riley [00:53:50]:
But you're not. I bet you're not. So if. Why would you beat your head against the wall doing that when. When humans are the ones that are going to accelerate your process? So that's the one metric. And when I go to my coaching clients and I'm like, so how many people did you talk to this week? Oh, I just, I didn't reach out. I didn't know. Like, I can't help you unless you get conversations.

Gina Riley [00:54:11]:
I got nothing to work with here.

Diana Alt [00:54:13]:
Yeah, I love all of that. And I never, like, that's a metric that I ask people about it. But I'm, I actually need to do a better job of pulling some trackable things together because it resonates with my people. And a lot of, I mean, I worked in data analytics for years and I've worked like, I have clients that are in the data space. And so being able to prove to them where things are breaking down is really valuable because I think it's critically important above and beyond everything that you said with having conversations to know are you breaking down when you've submitted the app? Are you breaking down after the recruiter? Are you breaking down after this, that or the other? Another thing I love about what you talked about is this whole idea of conversations are the holy grail metric. Amazing. And it reminds me of a recruiting staff, a recruiting firms owner here in Kansas City that I've known for 15 years or something like that. I have been placed by him, I have hired from him.

Diana Alt [00:55:15]:
I've been full time now I advise him. So he does the same thing. And so many recruiting firms it's like what's the cold outreach? How many calls did you make? That kind of stuff.

Gina Riley [00:55:28]:
It's the sales pipeline. You have to have a funnel.

Diana Alt [00:55:32]:
He made his recruiters metric is submissions. Like did you find the person that we're willing to submit? Because their model is not to submit a million, it's to submit like the top one or two, the top couple and his biz dev people. It, their metric is conversations. Kind of like what you say, where we are uncovering them. And this, it's. That's what matters. And he said, why would I penalize. You know, I've got people that have two years experience recruiting.

Diana Alt [00:56:04]:
I have people that have 22 years of experience recruiting. That 20 year recruiter has a Rolodex and a mind like a steel trap and they might be able to make two phone calls to find the person that we submit. Why am I going to tell that recruiter that they have to make 20 phone calls?

Gina Riley [00:56:22]:
Yeah, that's dumb. Exactly. Effective with their toolkit.

Diana Alt [00:56:26]:
Yeah. The junior one might not know that many people yet. So it might be to their advantage to make more calls. So.

Gina Riley [00:56:33]:
Well, because they need to bolster their Rolodex in the first place.

Diana Alt [00:56:37]:
So one of the things that I keep hearing, oh I did, I told you there's this, there's this narrative that this woman is propagating on TikTok right now that it's unethical to be a career coach in 2025 because there are no jobs. And setting aside the fact that that's completely wrong, there are things we have to think differently about. Because in part of what I heard Lily Fogle, who's a wonderful interview coach, use the term AI dim loop because you have the spray and pray appliers now using the spray and Play apply tools, you have companies that are using scoring mechanisms or assistance with interviewing, all of that. Do you feel like there's anything that's different about how you approach things in the age of the AI doom loop?

Gina Riley [00:57:32]:
Well, now I think that the huge middle of the bell curve of job seekers now has joined the ranks of the people that I'm accustomed to serving at the upper end of the bell curve. The senior leaders. The senior leaders all along need to be have been navigating the hidden job market and tapping into conversations where jobs are just percolating because that's how you get ahead of the line even if it goes to market. And the hidden job market is not jobs hiding from you if they haven't been posted because they haven't been developed yet and or it's private and they don't want customers, clients, whatever to know about search. There's so many reasons why jobs may not get posted, but this is a reality. So now the people in the middle, they have that same challenge because there's so many people looking for jobs, they're clogging up the applicant tracking systems. Bots are auto applying for people. And oh by the way, if you're a job seeker who's using those services, I quote in chapter six, a woman who has two patents for ETS technology and she talks about how your your application, if you're apply apply applying these systems can tag you as a bot and if your name, email and location, the three identifiers get tagged as a bot, you can apply all day long and you're not getting through at all and you'll never know.

Gina Riley [00:59:00]:
And then how do you deal with it? You have to either go change your email, your location, put a middle initial in your name to make it different and or store. How are you going to go find out how to get your application out of there? I, I would never know how to tell someone. So stop auto applying people. Yeah, and ignite conversations. That's how you're going to move the needle.

Diana Alt [00:59:20]:
I think the thing that I talk to people about is number one, the whole thing. Whether you use an AI tool or you smash the button yourself. That is busy work. Masquerading as a job search does not a job searching as job search but the other thing that people, so many people don't have any understanding of a pipeline in general because they've never worked with sales, that kind of thing. But even if they don't use the term pipeline, you'll hear people in a job search, a reactive job search in particular, Say, oh my gosh, well, I don't know what I'm going to do next because I don't have, you know, I ran through all the things that I've applied for where the interview processes that I was going through, where they slowed down applying because I thought they were going to get the job, which is a bad idea. Don't do that, people. But they forget or are completely unaware that excellent leaders build a pipeline of talent. It's the people they used to work with, it's the people they met at a conference, it's the one that had the nerve to DM them on LinkedIn and say, hey, you know what, I'm pivoting into the thing that you're doing and I'm just looking for some advice on what to learn about that as I make this pivot.

Diana Alt [01:00:35]:
And then the next thing you know, three years later, they get a phone call from that leader to say, I'm making a thing. How are you doing on this pivot? How does them building a candidate pipeline is. Sometimes they'll have it just. They refer to it as hiring from their network. And sometimes people say, I know in Q1, I'm gonna get budget, I'm gonna have five openings.

Gina Riley [01:00:57]:
That's the hidden job market.

Diana Alt [01:00:59]:
Be able to interview immediately. And in this environment right now where yeah, a company might have an opening, but they might say, oh, we gave you five, but we're gonna go down to two. Like if you don't, if you're a leader that doesn't get the hiring done, you're very vulnerable to having those, those positions taken away because you don't need them. You don't need them. If you, if you took two months and didn't hire for them or don't have like a good candidate pipeline, that recruiting and you are working through, you don't need it. We're going to take it away.

Gina Riley [01:01:31]:
Absolutely. You triggered a really one of my other frameworks and storytelling that I have and I wrote an article about this for Forbes Coaches Council and as well. And, and it's an out of the box way to ignite your network and tap into the hidden job market, which is the recommendation strategy. So I have a whole strategy around going and creating a list of all the people who've worked for you, with you, who you've worked for, and then 360 customer suppliers, vendors, et cetera, outside the box. So you go and you create this huge list. Pick three in each column, start reaching out, have conversations with those people and also ask them for a LinkedIn recommendation. By the way, good leaders give recommendations as well.

Diana Alt [01:02:18]:
So those way to do this and to get to where you go from zero recommendations to where you have some is to have the people at the top of your list be people that you would recommend and you write them.

Gina Riley [01:02:30]:
A rec first 1000%. Because that's called the give to get strategy.

Diana Alt [01:02:36]:
I'm best friends.

Gina Riley [01:02:37]:
We did BFFs right here.

Diana Alt [01:02:39]:
So.

Gina Riley [01:02:39]:
So here's the. Let me tell you the end of the story. So one of my, one of my clients use this strategy. She reaches out to two former bosses, two different companies, and says, hey, I'm navigating to my next. I have a job, but I want something different. I need some LinkedIn recommendations to bolster my profile. Would you help me out? I would really appreciate it. Both of those people were writing job descriptions for someone similar to her.

Gina Riley [01:03:06]:
One was writing three, two. Now out of the five potential opportunities, she ended up being number two. Unfortunately for one of the roles flown to corporate big brand, we all know. And she came in number two because the other candidate they selected had a very specific skill she had not acquired yet. And they loved her. She was awesome. I mean, it's just one of the things. She tapped into the hidden job market and found five possibilities.

Gina Riley [01:03:36]:
What if you're doing that people go talk to the people in your network.

Diana Alt [01:03:40]:
Right? I had a. I had a job created for me, aka hidden job market. I got laid off in 2012. I was pretty good at finding jobs. Like, I moved a few times in my career at this point. And I went like, we got right management outplacement stuff, which was not great. The lady that ran our group was good. I just went because there was going to be networking and I'm like, I need to look at people.

Diana Alt [01:04:06]:
And I got my next job from someone that had worked two jobs ago at the company I went to work for. And he's like, you should have coffee with this woman who ended up. She knew, she knew she needed to hire one person in her client services team and she made it at the right level as me. And I had not worked in an industry, but I'd worked with some of the types of technology and I showed versatility and I ended up being paid top of range because she would have, she said, I would rather have had you one level up, but you would have had a sales quota. And I set you up to fail on that because you hadn't done sales. So, yeah, I mean this, this stuff works. I want to turn into kind of a Lightning ish round. We'll try work with it today and then we're gonna, we're gonna go, I'm gonna put up.

Diana Alt [01:04:56]:
We've had your consulting site, Gina Rylandconsulting.com up for a while. I'm going to toss your LinkedIn end of your handle up so people can see that too at Gina Riley. At the end of the LinkedIn first one is what's the worst piece of career advice you've ever received?

Gina Riley [01:05:15]:
Oh gosh. The worst piece of career advice I have ever received.

Diana Alt [01:05:19]:
Received.

Gina Riley [01:05:21]:
It's, it's very pedestrian but it's a little bit funny and I'm gonna go all the way. I'm just being entertaining at this point. So I'm basically 22 years old, new college grad. I start my first job. I'm a part time third wheel in an HR organization for a hotel, a really nice hotel in Scottsdale, Arizona where I'm from Phoenix. So I'm, I'm. There's like the head of HR and then there's the, the benefits person and then there's sort of me, I'm doing like recruiting and whatever. So I go in, I've been, I've been told to dress professionally.

Gina Riley [01:05:54]:
This is the early 90s. We're still wearing, you know, the whole pantsuit type thing, the suits. So I go in for my first review, I go in for my first review with this amazing leader. I really liked her a lot and I got dinged because I was not wearing enough pants, like skirt suits in that environment because it wasn't professional. And you know, with pantyhose and the whole thing. Can you remember pantyhose? Oh my God. So was it right? I'm not answering your question exactly, but I would say that, you know what, what I wore did not impact my performance. And I actually changed her mind about.

Gina Riley [01:06:32]:
Because she was older than me and you know, coming from another generation, I said, you know what, I just don't, I don't feel like I'm on the same plane as the men in this organization when I'm wearing a skirt and pantyhose and my little high heels. I feel like a badass when I'm wearing my pantsuit that was very expensive. Came from like Ann Taylor or whatever. I feel like way more confident in my pantsuit. And she's like, oh my God, I had not thought of that. You know, old fashioned ideas that don't work for that day.

Diana Alt [01:07:01]:
Yeah. Um, that's so interesting. I remember being on it. I started my career in technology consulting as a baby consultant. And I remember one of the sites that I got sent to was a manufacturing facility. And so the company standard was business casual, unless your client is business formal, which still was a thing in. In 1998. So we all show up in, like, our, you know, more casual suits or khakis and really nice blouse and jacket or whatever.

Diana Alt [01:07:34]:
And after the first week, our counterpoint at the client said, and we're in a manufacturing facility. We were like, the baby consultants were sitting on the line job shadowing people, using SAP because we're trying to figure out inefficiencies that they were having. And we got told, you either bring jeans next week or don't come back.

Gina Riley [01:07:56]:
Right.

Diana Alt [01:07:57]:
We can't have this. It doesn't work. So what's a personal habit that's helped you be successful? Oh, my goodness.

Gina Riley [01:08:07]:
I don't know if it's so much a personal habit as it is something, I think, inside of me that doesn't shut off, which is I. I'm. I'm driven to succeed. I am driven to make a difference. That's my significance, I think, and my value of making a difference. And so I don't know if it's so much a habit as I feel like there's just something that I. That is inside of me to keep going no matter what the adversity is. It's.

Diana Alt [01:08:38]:
Let me ask you, how does this show up whenever things suck? Because some stuff sucks.

Gina Riley [01:08:45]:
Sometimes things do just suck. Truly. Like, we all have stories about the suck. I mean, you and I both went through cancer treatment, you know, so. Yes, but I. There's this undying, constant sense that it's going to be all right. And I have this thing, like a tape that will play in my head that helps me keep. Like, if.

Gina Riley [01:09:11]:
If I'm faced with, like, going into the doctor and having to do all the blood draws, like, during, like, really difficult surgeries and cancer treatment and whatever. Like, George Michael's faith, like, starts running through my head. I just like the word faith. It. It, like. And it's not about religion. It's about, like, I have faith that it's going to be okay.

Diana Alt [01:09:34]:
Yeah.

Gina Riley [01:09:35]:
And I don't know how better to explain that. And it's not a habit. It's just inside of my.

Diana Alt [01:09:41]:
Listening to yourself, I would call that. But it's good. Not your answer. That's fine. What's something you've changed your mind about recently? Ish.

Gina Riley [01:09:54]:
Well, saving my time. I. I'm a. I've been a helper I'm a female helper. Giver. Don't say no. Right. And.

Gina Riley [01:10:04]:
And I'm 56 right now. And I have given a lot of myself and the past couple of years, like, too much. And so it's time to reclaim. And so, for example, in December, I will have one or two people who show up at my doorstep very desperate. Like, I'm ready to get started with career velocity. I won't be doing that after Thanksgiving this year because I work with people one on one for many weeks to build that story in the uvp. And it takes a ton of my effort. And it's also during a period of time where other these people are now feeling anxiety because it's the holidays.

Gina Riley [01:10:40]:
I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna involve myself with that anxiety because the last couple of Christmases I have allowed people to take that from. I've allowed it to.

Diana Alt [01:10:52]:
It took me a while to do that in my business, but because, like, I worked full time and I built this around. Like, I'm embarrassed at how long it took me to take weekend hours off my schedule.

Gina Riley [01:11:04]:
Yeah, I just wrote a book, Diana, so I can't even talk.

Diana Alt [01:11:08]:
It's just.

Gina Riley [01:11:09]:
And we moved. We moved house. So I still have a lot of stuff all throughout the house from a year ago that I still haven't gotten through.

Diana Alt [01:11:15]:
So I. I basically take two and a half to three weeks around Christmas and New Year's where I don't take client appointments. Yeah, not completely off of work. That's actually a lot of times where I'm kind of doing, like, what's the planning, what is. What am I doing for lead gen in January, like, that kind of stuff. There's some work that often happens because I like my work, but I don't take new people that I. And I also define for existing clients, like, what's in. What's an emergency? If you get an offer on December 28th, like, call me.

Diana Alt [01:11:56]:
It could happen. It has happened.

Gina Riley [01:11:57]:
Happened.

Diana Alt [01:11:58]:
But I'm very clear. This is what is. What is an emergency. This is not an emergency. I will make time for you if it's an emergency. But that's how I do it.

Gina Riley [01:12:09]:
I'll be working all through December. I'll be working with my regular clients that signed up.

Diana Alt [01:12:15]:
But I'm just not. You're just not taking the brand new.

Gina Riley [01:12:18]:
I'm not going to take on someone brand new that I dedicate my soul to. I mean, because I operate off low volume and a very high touch, so I breathe in their story. I'M dreaming about it as I'm helping them do it. Like, they become a part of, like, my tribe. And so I. So that's the thing. That's the thing this year. And my husband said, good luck.

Gina Riley [01:12:39]:
Oh, we'll see if you really do it. Because I'm, you know, I bleed out the helping, but I have two hard stops in the next year, and I'm activating this year. I'm not taking new people after Thanksgiving, so I'm not too busy. And just December, I'm going to do the same thing sometime in the late spring because my husband and I want to take three to four weeks to go on a European trip. I won't be able to do that if I'm starting people in July. It's the same problem. So. And by the way, you know, if job seekers kind of check out a lot of times at that point, so it's not going to kill my business either, because not that many, you know, I'm not sticking around for the one or two people.

Diana Alt [01:13:19]:
Yeah. I've had the conversation with Virginia Franco.

Gina Riley [01:13:23]:
I love Virginia.

Diana Alt [01:13:25]:
She's. She's wonderful. But she talked about she takes the summer off.

Gina Riley [01:13:30]:
Yeah, she, she, she's, she's better than.

Diana Alt [01:13:33]:
Me, like she said. Yeah.

Gina Riley [01:13:36]:
I mean, there's these pros that have been around a long, a long while, and we're all the same, like, like age. So I'm not saying these people are old. They're. They've had their businesses for a long time and they, they know what the cadence is and they know what those boundaries are, can be. And I'm kind of still in the earlier phases, so I'm now learning.

Diana Alt [01:13:54]:
Well, you can also change your mind, you know. Well, I'm so glad you came. This was delightful. And hopefully I'm sure we'll come back soon. I think digging in sometime to that rare model in detail can be a really valuable thing, so.

Gina Riley [01:14:11]:
Oh, yeah, it's so fun. I've done multiple webinars and actually some. I spoke at a conference about it and. Yeah, cool stuff.

Diana Alt [01:14:20]:
Well, thanks a lot and we'll see you next time, guys.