Are you feeling stuck with your job title? Ready to move ahead? Do you feel like you might be at the midway point of your career? But not where you want to be, where you need to be. Our guest today knows how to fix it. That's his expertise. And he's here to tell us how John Tarnoff is an executive and career transition coach, speaker, and author who helps mid career professionals land better jobs and build more. Meaningful and sustainable careers. John works with a lot of mid career professionals, but I think this episode is going to be especially helpful for those that maybe aren't at a mid way point in their career, because this advice might help you avoid some of the pain that is faced once you get there. Fired 39 percent during his 35 years. As a film producer, studio executive, and tech entrepreneur, John learned how to turn setbacks into success in a volatile business. He reinvented his own career at 50, earning a master's degree in counseling psychology to share his career lessons with others going through similar challenges. Since leaving entertainment, In 2010, John has built a global career coaching practice serving both individuals one on one and groups. He has also led career workshops for MBA alumni in career transition. Including UCLA's Anderson school of management and Cornell's SC Johnson college of business. Corporate clients have included bank of America, Bridgewater, Levi Strauss, soft bank, TD Ameritrade Eastman and thrive global his proprietary three elements, career builder framework and powers clients to define their niche value, build a referral community and use thought leadership to enhance Their own professional brand and attract the right opportunities. Things that you, the listener should be thinking about. And I think we'll be thinking about today, learning this framework. Empowers clients and listeners like you to never have to search for a job again. John is also a TEDx speaker and the author of the best selling book. I love the title. Boomer reinvention, how to create your dream career over 50. His four LinkedIn learning courses have reached over 200, 000 learners, which is huge. It has been translated into nine languages. John, welcome to the job interview experience.
john-tarnoff--he-him-_1_04-05-2024_090310Thanks, Matthew. I think we can go home now.
matthew-sorensen_1_04-05-2024_110312Yeah, it's starting to run out of breath. Your career has had ups and downs, and I appreciate you sharing that with our audience and your audiences, because we can all relate for anyone listening that say, hasn't been let go. It happens. Can you share some highlights from your career, the highs and the lows, and what led you to where you are today?
john-tarnoff--he-him-_1_04-05-2024_090310think that there's this old saying that we teach what we want to learn. So the work that I'm doing now and have been doing for the last 10 years really stems out of my own experience. Being in a volatile industry and having a volatile career and the realization that the rest of the world has gotten just as volatile over the last 20 plus years and that we are dealing with a very disrupted business, climate and economy from a pre disruption mindset for the most part. And this is something that we find in the way that HR handles employees and the hiring firing process, the way most career coaches advise their clients and the way candidates roll because of this inertia around you lose a job, you got to get your resume, you got to get your resume out there. There's this whole prescription and it doesn't work anymore. So that's what brings me to this conversation, trying to make sense of it and try to come up with some solutions for people to address these problems and questions.
matthew-sorensen_1_04-05-2024_110312Why'd you get fired so much?
john-tarnoff--he-him-_1_04-05-2024_090310Really good question. So my mom at one point said to me, why can't you hold a job? And I'll tell you the end of that story is that I used to just obsess about this. And I was I mean, look the truth is. A lot of it was not my fault. A lot of it had to do with the politics of a very political business and being at a particular place, the administration changes, there's a clean sweep, you get fired. But other times there were conflicts and and I made some wrong decisions. I took a couple of jobs, which I never should have taken. And I took them out of desperation. I will say, I wanted to get a job. I mean, one job I was recently married. I had a baby daughter., I really needed to put money on the table and I had come to the end of consulting for Arrangement with two friends of mine who had started a talent management company really wasn't for me. So we came to a good parting of the ways after a couple of years. And then I got rushed by a talent agency. Problem was the guy who wanted me in the talent agency was the CEO. He worked out of New York. The guy who ran the LA office had no interest in me coming into the company. I was there six months. It was terrible on a Monday morning. The LA head calls me into his office and almost without looking up, he says, today's your last day, pack up your desk. You're going to be escorted out. You'll get your check on Friday. And I was shocked. Humiliated, having to do the perp walk out of the office. It was like silence in the bullpen, as you might imagine, as I walked out trying to avert my eyes from everyone, I'd never had an experience like that. That's classic, right? That's TV show, classic perp walk, get fired. And for years, I never put that job on my resume. I was so ashamed of that experience, but what I realized was it was my own fault. And it really was that I was not standing up for myself. And I really didn't believe that what I had to offer at that time. And look, I'd been in the business, maybe 15 years at that point, 20 years at that point, I had some skills, right? I had some connections. I had valuable. Awareness of how to get things done in the entertainment business. And I wasn't able to market that I had no idea how to market that. So I put the job back on my resume to tell this story and to explain to people, because as you so well know from your background, one of the questions you're going to ask the candidate is, so tell me about a difficult experience. Tell me about how you handle the challenge. And I think most candidates are afraid of this question because they don't understand why it is being asked or they think it's being asked as a kind of a trip up question. They're trying to get you to, tell you something bad about yourself, really what it's about. And tell me if I'm wrong about this as a former recruiter, it's to see how you handle the situation and what your mindset is and what your attitude is. If you can learn from an experience and be really clear about it and be. Able to take the responsibility for it. You could be a good candidate for that position. Does that make sense?
matthew-sorensen_1_04-05-2024_110312That's so true, and some people think that recruiters are looking for perfection, and they're not. They know that you're just a human. Everyone makes mistakes. I think what Helps candidates stand out and professional stand out and get further in their career. What did you learn from it? First off, do you have the humility to self reflect and say out loud that you did make a mistake because you can't learn from anything if you can't even identify it and then two, how, just like you said, what's your thought process? People will learn different lessons from different people. The same experience and move forward in different directions. Not that one's right and one's wrong, but when you ask that question, it's exactly, you're not looking for information on this date at this time, this happened. And this is why it's here's what I learned from this. And here's how I can help your company. And maybe myself and your company avoid the mistakes that happened here. So we have a better outcome together. Here's some big roadblocks that I've learned need to be Avoided because if I do this right, you're going to avoid some pain that neither of us want to have based on, your business model and priorities, by the way, for the listeners, I'm a pretty nice guy. I normally would never ask a question like, why were you let go? But, John and I think we had a pretty quick rapport at the beginning of the podcast, and this is an important question to ask yourself, and maybe I won't ask this again, but. When you think about it, and I know there's a lot of pain involved with being let go, I've been let go. Sometimes the company thought I would be good at something and I wasn't. I didn't know if I'd be good at it either. And other times I just didn't perform. I just didn't meet the mark. But each time it's learning, okay, maybe it, was it the industry? Was it just my skills don't align? Was it personality? If it's personality, what could I have done to adjust to the corporate culture or whatever else? We're moving forward to talking about now how to get jobs, but I think that self reflection is important to know and avoid patterns that you might see in what might lead to being unsuccessful in a certain type of role or industry.
john-tarnoff--he-him-_1_04-05-2024_090310tell you an interesting story about that. There was a certain point, I think this was after my startup crashed and it crashed in the bubble, 2001, five good years, raised the money, got the clients and then everything collapsed. And I felt, here I am again, back at the bottom, having to roll the boulder up the hill again. And I ran into someone that I had known for years. I think he was a talent agent at one of the big talent agencies and had been there for a long time, had a great practice, very consistent. And at one point in the conversation, he said, John, I just have to say something to you. We've known each other a long time. And I just want to say, I'm, I've really admired the way you've handled your career over these years. And I thought, what the hell is he talking about? If only he knew the heartache and the difficulty and the, all of these lessons that I've had to learn that I didn't want to learn and the, all of the ups and downs. And of course I said thank you very much to be self effacing about it, but I realized after the conversation, I'm thinking about what a crazy comment. I understood what he was talking about, because he said, you never did the conventional path. You were a executive and then you were a producer, but then you got into technology, and then there was that period where you ran that Australian company and you're going back and forth to Australia. And, you've always been on the leading edge of trends that were happening and you never hesitated to jump in and explore them. And I thought, Whoa that's an interesting perspective. I never really thought of myself as an explorer, but maybe that's what I am. So there's always this growth, I think that happens in your career. And if, in a funny way, if you don't know who you are at the beginning of your career, hopefully you're going to know by the middle or the end of your career, who you are. And if you think about career as an opportunity to gauge and to seek personal growth through the work that you do, I think it makes the career and the process of the career a lot more enriching than just, Oh, I need a job. I need to make money because I need to support myself and my family, blah, blah, blah. Particularly today, when we're thinking about these questions of meaning and purpose at a much younger age, I mean, this is something which certainly millennials started talking about and Gen Z is all over this, and I think which is, this is great I think this is revolutionizing, hopefully, the workplace where we can create this more integrated Environment that benefits everyone. It's a productivity boon for the worker. It's a productivity boon for the company. So I think all of these questions need to be addressed and need to be made transparent for everyone's benefit.
matthew-sorensen_1_04-05-2024_110312To lay a foundation for the rest of our conversation I thought I'd start with your three elements career builder framework. Can you walk us through those elements and how they help job seekers land their dream jobs?
john-tarnoff--he-him-_1_04-05-2024_090310Right. You have a episode where you talk about not being a job seeker, being a solution. And it really starts there for me. And I would say, don't be a job seeker, be a job magnet in the sense that what you want to do as a job seeker is not try to fit yourself into some job descriptions out there, because truth be told a lot of job descriptions. Are completely off wall and are written. And I'll just say from my own personal experience as a manager and having to fill a position and HR says, okay, I need a job description written up by Wednesday for this position. I'm thinking, Oh God how do I. How do I describe this position? I have no idea. I have no idea how to talk about this and there should be a course in job description writing because managers need to learn this and particularly in a volatile economy, just the thought right for HR out there, start teaching people how to do this because it's incredibly difficult. It misses the mark more often than not. So if you're a candidate Reading a job description for a job that the manager is not really quite sure that's the right description. It's a, it's broken, right? So rather than trying to tap dance your way through this process of going up for a job that you think, you know what it's about, but it actually not, it might not be about that. Start inside, start with who you are. What do you do? What do you love to do and what does your world need? I mean, these are the so called icky guy questions, right? What do you love to do? What do you do? What does your world need? What can you get paid for? If you start with those questions and start to really, and start making lists about this and start refining this process so that you can develop your own value proposition. And instead of trying to compromise yourself and think I could do this. I could do that. I could I could do, I could maybe they could hire me for this. You're wasting your time and you're wasting their time. And as I mean, the stats are different about this everywhere you look, but if you assume that the average job gets 250 applicants for one hiring decision, the odds are not good. You may as well try to apply to an Ivy league school, then get that job on average. So instead of trying to chase that, uh, hard to track evanescent post job opportunity, focus on your value proposition and sell that value proposition, and then find the people through your network who can connect you to those positions. So that's the core of the three elements process. The first element is define your superpower, right? What is that very niched, narrow set of skills, talents, abilities, preferences, experiences that distinguish you from your competition. Sure. A lot of people do what you do, have done what you do. Have the same kinds of titles in their resumes as you, but no one does it quite the same way because of your background, your education, your interests. We are not widgets. We are people, employers hire people. They don't hire skills or job descriptions. And I'm sure you've been in meetings where you have a final round of candidates. And the person who is hired is not necessarily the person who fits the job description the best on paper, but it's that person who can learn the skills they don't already know because they've got a growth mindset who fits in better with the team because they are expansive and imaginative and gregarious and, or maybe because they're introverted and more thoughtful and reflective. And that is a quality that the manager is looking for to round out their team. So define your superpower. Is that number one? Number two is build a community, build a referral community of like minded shared interest people. I like to say that a network will stand by and watch you fail while a community will pitch in and help you succeed. If you look at all of the people that you know, if you're one of those people who's got 500 plus LinkedIn connections, it's a lot of people within that cadre, that cohort, there've got to be 50, maybe a hundred people who really vibe with who you are, what you believe in, how you do your work, how you show up, what the problems are that the industry is facing, focus on those people. Really make strong connections with those people and try to find through those connections, more people like that to build this community of shared interests, because that community will market for you. If you have a really clear definition of your superpower and your LinkedIn profile, particularly your headline and your about section really function as a mission statement for what you do and who you are, it makes it easy for your community to sell what you do and connect you to other people. If you sit for a job interview, and by the way, pro tip, don't think of your job interview as a job interview. Think of it as a networking opportunity. This is an opportunity to see if this person you're meeting with manager, a recruiter is someone who could be part of that community, because if they can, and you don't get the job, they're going to continue to work for you because. They understand who you are and they value what you bring to the table. The fact that you didn't get the job is meaningless. There may be another job down the road. They may have a friend at another company. Recruiters all connect with one another. They're all trying to help each other, fill their positions, make friends through your job interviews. Don't think of it as a one and done process where you're going in, head down, and hopefully it's going to work out. And then you leave the door and never again, have any contact with that person. No, it's a networking opportunity. Number three, the third element is the element that brings everything together, because the number one question that I get about networking and maybe you do too, is okay. So I've got this person's name in my contact database. Now, what do I do? Do I call them every two weeks? Do I send emails? How often should I do this? How do I keep this thing going? And the third element is branding professional branding through thought leadership. It's an inbound marketing idea. You need to stand up for what you stand for as a professional, you need to let the world know what you think about the issues that are impacting your world, your business, and by concentrating on that through engagement on LinkedIn. Maybe you blog, maybe you do a podcast, maybe you guest on podcasts. Maybe you participate with professional organizations. Maybe you volunteer, you organize events. You get out there to meet with other people and engage with other people about topics that are not about getting a job, but about issues that are very relevant to the work you do, the work they do, and the industry as a whole. And this way you elevate your profile to what the Google algorithm focuses on, which are these three elements. The acronym is EAT, E A T. Expertise, authority, and trustworthiness. And if you can elevate those three elements through your thought leadership practice, then the opportunities begin to come in to you. So this is a flywheel. The more you define the specificity of your superpower, the easier it becomes for your community to connect you, understand you, market for you. And that informs the thought leadership practice, which you provide out into the world, which you publish or engage in through your connections with other people, which gives further feedback to you to apply back to your superpower. So it all cycles through and over time and consistency. Elevates your profile and the uniqueness of what you offer so that when it comes down to the final three candidates for that job, you stand out because you have a consistent, deep, intriguing, personal, and relevant profile that's out in the world. You become a valuable resource for that job. You're not just someone who can do the work. It's not someone who's got the skills to ABC. And by the way, in the age of AI, just doing the work and showing up and, having those skills is a very dangerous way to conduct a business. You want to be more than that. You want to be more strategic. You want to have a perception of expertise, value, trust, end of speech.
matthew-sorensen_1_04-05-2024_110312I think a lot of our listeners, and I relate to this, are going to think about the LinkedIn part, and they see the people with 50, 000 followers who posts 50 times a day, and they're gonna go, this isn't for me, which I get, because your job, your expertise probably isn't creating content. However, and I think maybe with the eat, maybe it needs like a P at the end or the beginning, I think pace is really important, or cadence is really important. I think if you just started. For those who are listening, by the way, I'm saying this because if you're not getting where you want to go, try this. If you're stuck, try doing something new. These three things that John mentioned. But on LinkedIn, I would recommend, even if you have 200 followers, if you just post every other week, when recruiters view your LinkedIn profile, they'll see that activity level. And I think that's good enough. I think that's perfectly fine. Especially to get started. You don't have to write long blogs. But what this does is, Compliments your resume by giving exposure to the way you think, and it could just, if all you did is find articles about your industry and did two sentences, it could be as simple as, I think, and this is to get started, especially too, because this is a muscle, this is a muscle you have to build, it
john-tarnoff--he-him-_1_04-05-2024_090310It's how I started.
matthew-sorensen_1_04-05-2024_110312your industry and say, Hey, I think this is important. And maybe the future or another article, this is probably the best way for accounting firms to save money next year. I've seen how this can, help. Yeah. Current firms I have exposure to. You don't have to have, in use the people with a lot of followers, I think John is probably one of them. I never post on LinkedIn, by the way, I'm terrible. But they, he didn't start with that many. And I, my guess is his old posts were not as good as his current posts.
john-tarnoff--he-him-_1_04-05-2024_090310Sure. You got to start, you got to start somewhere. You got to start slow. I started in 2012, 2014, really new to the space curating articles. And I did it maybe once a week and I put a little comment on it. And you're absolutely right. It's not about the volume of the material. It's not about the number of followers you have. It's about the quality. Of what you post and the quality of the people that you're connected to. And this is true and inbound across the board, people with, 10, 20, 000 people on their mailing list. I mean, so what there are people who are doing very well. I mean, I've got 2000 people on my list. That's where it is. I'm fine with it. I mean, that's a very committed group of people who. To read what I write on my blog. That's fine. That question should, I agree, not prevent anyone from dipping their toe in the water and engaging. And you can repost, you can start by reposting stuff. And I agree the consistency is the most important thing. And I do this when I meet someone, I look at their if I've someone who's looking to work with me as a coach, I'll look at their LinkedIn and see what they're doing. I will say most people do not post. Most people will post sporadically. And I think it's a good thing. If I see someone as you're suggesting, who's posting once a month and I see the little tag one month, two months, four months, five months, six, fine, that means that they're visible, right? They understand that there is something to do here.
matthew-sorensen_1_04-05-2024_110312I think knowing what your goal is important to, I know people who run businesses very successfully where I don't know the exact amount, but most of their leads come through LinkedIn. So their goal isn't getting a job. Their goal is sharing their knowledge and that knowledge intriguing potential customers to work with them. That's fantastic for our listeners. Think about what your goal is. So that is to, I would say, short term, attract recruiters, show activity, and share, you can share how you think and what you think is important outside of your resume, it complements it, but tailor that to potential employers. And obviously that wouldn't include weekend pictures of you having fun with your friends. That
john-tarnoff--he-him-_1_04-05-2024_090310It's not Instagram.
matthew-sorensen_1_04-05-2024_110312content. One of the things I want to jump to for your three elements, and one of the reasons I wanted to have John here is. Surprisingly, I wanted to have John here because he said something I agree with believe it or not, and you talk about I read, or listened to a speech of yours, or read somewhere, you talk about, And forgive me if I say this the wrong way, I'm going to word it in the way I think it. Don't follow your passions, follow what you're good at. And a lot of people, there's different ways to operate. And you can work for a non profit or do whatever, follow your passions, that's fine. But if you want to drive your career and not exhaust yourself doing something that you enjoy but aren't good at, it's interesting, I think the way John says it is find your super power. He doesn't say find your super passion. And that made me think of Clark Kent. Clark Kent, his passion, I don't know what it is. I'm not as big superhero person. His passion might be woodworking or gardening. What he's good at is saving people. And so that's what he does. And that's what makes him Superman. Whether it's your band or starting a company that you're passionate about, but has no real market value. I think that's important when you're looking at jobs. And I think you can learn a lot more from John's content outside the podcast, because this is probably a conversation just here or a topic here that takes more time. Figure out what you do that the market values. What skills you have that someone would pay you to do, right? That's what a job is. But when you try and do the things maybe that you enjoy that you're not as good at, that's exhausting. You're going to have to use way more capacity than you have, or if you want to do something that you enjoy that has very little market value or you haven't figured out the right market for. That's when you start finding that you're let go because the company doesn't find the impact from anyone in this role important, or you just don't, I think more. Commonly, you don't find many opportunities for what you want to do. The market is very small for that skill set. Maybe for a reason, maybe it's because the skills are incredibly unique. A lot of times it's because the skills just aren't that necessary for most businesses to perform.
john-tarnoff--he-him-_1_04-05-2024_090310Skills are always changing, right? The skill requirements are changing. I thank you for referencing that that idea about passion. It came to me because I watched a commencement speech by a guy named Ben Horowitz, who's a venture capitalist. And this is a, he's a Columbia grad and he spoke at Columbia a number of years ago, and the line in the speech that really caught my attention was he said, because of course this is the charge to graduates. And very often the rhetoric is about, follow your passion, follow your dreams and the money will follow. And this is something which kind of came out of Joseph Campbell and kind of mythology, the mythos of of the human condition and the anthropology of myth. And so he says, so Ben Howard says, If following your passion were a prescription for success, then every contestant on American Idol would be a zillionaire.
matthew-sorensen_1_04-05-2024_110312well said. Yeah,
john-tarnoff--he-him-_1_04-05-2024_090310my thought is don't follow your passion, but follow your usefulness. If you can define how you can be useful to someone in your field or a field coming out of college, follow that because that's going to take you down a path that's going to lead to success. And eventually what you're going to find is that your usefulness can become your passion. Because if you find success being useful to people and helping them attain their goals, grow their businesses, make profits, improve people's lives, customers lives. You're going to feel good about that because every day you go to work being useful to someone and someone is grateful for what you've done for them. So that can that really describes, I think a functional way of everyone being able to get behind what they do in their career.
matthew-sorensen_1_04-05-2024_110312I think the best part is, and this is what I tell, especially young people that ask for career kind of life advice is if you follow what you're good at, right? If you have a great mind for mathematics or whatever that is, and you have your passions. If you get a good job, trying to make money off your passions, I've done that. It's very stressful because you don't make very much money and your passions aren't, you're not very passionate about them anymore. If you get a decent job, you typically, the things that you're passionate about, you can support those with the money you make from the job. So if you want to be in a rock band and be famous, you Maybe not going to happen, but if you get a great job, you can buy the coolest guitars and gears in the world, and maybe even pay for a space to jam with your friends. Or, if you have coffee and you want to start a coffee shop, I'm not discouraging anyone from doing this. Instead, you can get a job, support that, and buy the coolest coffee gear in the world, leave it at home, and probably scratch that itch. So whatever it is, I like the idea of doing great work, not doing anything you hate. Getting a great income and then your passions become much more fun. Like for me, I love cycling trying to be a professional cyclist would be a very sad journey for me and I wouldn't be able to pay the bills, but I have some bikes I really enjoy and doing the things that I'm good at allows me to go out on the trails and just purely enjoy that passion for what it is and not have to think about anything else.
john-tarnoff--he-him-_1_04-05-2024_090310I would add something to that, which is that there's an integrative element here. There is the opportunity to integrate your passion into your work. Where you don't have to have this dichotomy around. I work in banking, but I have this rock band on the side and we gig on the weekends. I'm sure there are a lot of bankers who are into music. And they would be really impressed by your knowledge of music and your ability to perhaps introduce music culture into the day to day dialogue that are, that's going on in the work that you're doing. You're a cyclist. You might, if you're a cyclist, you might want to organize trips, cycling trips on the weekends for your work group. You might want to do a field trip to us to a bike race somewhere, right? Everyone makes this a kind of an offsite. So there are ways, I think, thematically of incorporating your passions and your interests into your work, because guess what? It makes you a more interesting worker. And it gives you some intersectionality where the themes of what motivate you and interest you about your passion find relevance within the work that you do. And then I think it elevates the work because you don't feel like I got to put everything on hold here while I go to work. And people know you as a more colorful
matthew-sorensen_1_04-05-2024_110312Yes.
john-tarnoff--he-him-_1_04-05-2024_090310person. So there's a great, I think, advantage to trying to integrate those passions and figuring out ways of being enthusiastic about it. Don't hide yourself. Bring yourself appropriately, of course, into the workplace, talk about this, figure it out, do a little step by step, don't just show up with your drum set to work one day and start banging around in the break room, work it through
matthew-sorensen_1_04-05-2024_110312I love that. And it's a way to elevate the company culture and maybe explore things that the organization hadn't like a cycling club, or maybe you have a snobby coffee Friday and you, these are things that you can do. First of all, your coworkers and employer will appreciate it. Obviously you run this through the right channels. You can. Write this on your resume, see it through, track some data and talk about how this was a retention effort or a company morale boosting program that you implemented. Try and find some numbers, maybe talk to HR and say, Hey, I have this project. My hope is to improve retention. It's low in this one department or this one really hard job. I'm thinking I have a couple of ideas, things we could do to bring some life into this based on what I know people here can we track this and maybe try and make this a project that's a win for HR and something that I'd enjoy doing for the company.
john-tarnoff--he-him-_1_04-05-2024_090310And it follows the three elements. Because it really is about enhancing the perception of your superpower. It's about building relationships and building community through that, and then elevating this through this kind of branding and thought leadership aspect of it, where you get props for having taken this initiative. So it all works together to give you greater cred, not just as a candidate, but as an employee or consultant, if you're working freelance. Because look, the, this stuff works really well when you're working and this is when you build it so that you can use it when you need to find more work, right? When you're out of a job, you need to have built this foundation. So don't put this off. Don't put this work off for some future time. I'll get around to it. The work is going right now. I don't need this right now. I'll figure it out when I need to figure it out. No. Now is the time to do it because it's a muscle that you need to exercise. Now, so that you'll use it when you need it.
matthew-sorensen_1_04-05-2024_110312In your experience, what are some of the biggest mistakes that mid career professionals make during their job search and interview process?
john-tarnoff--he-him-_1_04-05-2024_090310The first thing I want to talk about is ageism. Ageism is real. It is unfair, unjust, uninformed. It is the last accepted bias in our culture. People don't, people make age jokes. They don't think about it. They disrespect. And by the way, it goes both ways. They disrespect older people. They disrespect younger people get perhaps just as much ageist bias as older people. So you have to essentially, I know this is tough. You have to basically ignore it and circumvent it. A lot of people get hung up on the age bias obstacles that are thrown up against older workers and younger workers. You don't have enough experience. How am I supposed to get the experience if you don't give me the job? On the other end of the spectrum, it's you're overqualified for this position. You have too much experience. What does that mean? I can do the job. We're afraid you're going to get bored, or maybe you're going to want to take your manager's job. All of these are, complete BS, right? On both ends. And so the prescription for me, again, is to focus on your value. And to focus on building relationships, don't get discouraged by your lack of traction, getting interviews, continue to apply for the jobs. But remember that it's really about focusing on your superpower, cultivating that superpower, finding the conversations with people. Who understand what you're doing. Another thing that happens in mid career is, and this is just a psychological fact, people starting before, after 50, start to think differently about who they are, there's an identity shift that goes on in midlife. Around meaning and purpose and a lot of people get to early forties to mid fifties going, wait a minute, why am I doing what I'm doing? I don't really have the mojo anymore for this and they don't know where to turn and they think there's something wrong with them. And their manager, their company starts to look at them funny and go shouldn't you be thinking about retirement? So there's this panic that sets in around the mid career crisis. And on the side of the worker, you have to recognize that this is a normal part of life. You want to focus on meaning and purpose because you've hurdled all of the other steps. Now you've successfully got your career going. Maybe you've got a family. You've achieved other life goals. What's left. You're also starting to think about legacy. What do I leave behind? What am I, what are people going to say about me? What's my family going to say about me? What are my kids going to say about me at this, as time goes on. What am I, how am I giving back? So those are also important questions that need to be dealt with for employers, I think the mid career challenge is that we're in this very different time of work. It's no longer a 40 year career and you're out, right? It's actually a 60 year career that has periods of employment, periods of reflection, education freelance consulting, employment. It doesn't look like this straight linear pathway anymore. And employers need to recognize that and recognize that a multi generational workforce is a valuable commodity to encourage. And that you want people of all generations working on the problems that you've got. You want the energy and the innovation of youth. You want the wisdom and perspective of age to come together and solve problems. Because guess what? It's going to be a much more complicated world out there. We need all hands on deck. So that's a bit of a rant about the mid career and some kind of perspective about how we should all approach this. Not every employer is going to be so enlightened, but I think for candidates, you want to try to take the high road here, take responsibility. I was talking before about that job that didn't work out, which was very humiliating. all have baggage as we go along in our lives. I think the most important thing that a mid career professional needs to do is reconcile that baggage, right? If you don't reconcile the baggage, you're going to bring it with you into every job interview. And every other meeting that you have and you may not get the job, not because you're too old, but because the person says, they're a great candidate. There was something about them in the interview. There was a hesitation there. They, they answered every question, but I couldn't help, but feeling that they were hiding something. This has to do with your sense of yourself as a mid career candidate. You gotta be resolved. You gotta be reconciled. You gotta clear up limiting beliefs about, who you are, what your advantages are and your skills and your failings are. And when I work with people, I encourage them to go out and have feedback interviews. With trusted advisors do a kind of like a personal 360. Where did I screw up? What did I do? What do you think I should be doing? What feedback do you have for me? Because you need that third party perspective to help get straight about where you could go and what you could do. I offer that.
matthew-sorensen_1_04-05-2024_110312Boomer Reinvention focuses on professionals over 50. Do you have any success stories of readers who took your advice and read through the book and how that transformed their career? And then the other side would be, have you had any readers that are under 50, maybe 49, or maybe 29, that have also been impacted by your book?
john-tarnoff--he-him-_1_04-05-2024_090310Yeah. I actually I didn't expect this, but interesting. It started when I did the book tour and people in the audience would come up to me after the talk, younger people. And they would say, I'm in my thirties, I'm my forties. And this applies to me. It's not just for older people and I think that's right. I mean, I, and I think this is what I've gotten out of this idea of boomers specifically, and really talking about the idea of mid career, whether you are in mid career or that you're going to be in mid career at some day, as we all are. And I mean, I'm working right now with someone in their thirties and who is an entrepreneur trying to build an entrepreneurial practice who has burned out on the corporate world. And as trying to develop that superpower knows that it's inside them. And we've been working now for about six months on this process and it's going really well. One person comes to mind who is a client a few years ago, a woman who's a very senior executive in the consumer products industry, who. Whose story is not unfamiliar. You get to a certain level of seniority and in a strange way, you start getting bounced around because the politics are tougher. There are fewer jobs. She was running a particular division. There was new management that came in above her. The company changed ownership. And she went head to head with the the CEO and was out and really took it very hard and was very focused on getting another job, getting back up on her feet. And it was, she was getting knocked down continuously we worked together. She redid her whole value proposition and cut to the chase. What she wound up doing. And I think it's still doing is she connected with a consulting firm in her industry that was helping mid sized companies revamp their retail operations. And at point of sale and director level hierarchy. And it was a very specific skillset that she could do in her sleep, but it really started to gain traction. Yeah. And all of a sudden she had three or four clients that she was working for through this company. And I said to her, sorry, are you still looking for a full time position? And she said, I don't know. I'm having too much fun doing this if the right thing came along, but it would really have to be the right thing. I, I might consider it, but she really found this traction around this particular niche doing something very different from what I think she would have thought of maybe five years ago when she was on this kind of inside corporate track. So that's one example.
matthew-sorensen_1_04-05-2024_110312I love that. Listeners are gonna to connect with you and whether that be LinkedIn or wherever else they can learn more from you, connect directly with you, work with you, what's the best way for them to contact you from here?
john-tarnoff--he-him-_1_04-05-2024_090310I think I'm the only John Tarnoff on LinkedIn. So you can search for me there. I have a website, johntarnoff. com. I also have started a community for mid career professionals called the mid career lab. And you can learn about that at midcareer lab, no hyphen. com. That's just starting to get going. So that's a, I think a great opportunity for people to come together, mid career professionals to talk with one another, meet with them with one another, to really build community around that. Those would be the three touch points.
matthew-sorensen_1_04-05-2024_110312We will link to all of those in this episode's description. Look forward to listeners connecting with you, John. Thanks so much for joining us. Look forward to having you back soon.
john-tarnoff--he-him-_1_04-05-2024_090310Thanks so much.