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00:07 Paola Granati: Hello, everyone and welcome back. This is part two of The World of Work live event. This live event, which took place in October, and it was really wrapping up the first season of The World of Work where the focus was on what to do if you are out there in the job market, which we do realize it is a complicated market out there. It's probably much more supply than there is a demand at the moment. So based on that, what are the some job strategies that you need to rethink, redo and maybe reset your expectations. So we continue the conversation with the guest panelists and in particular now, it is with Sunita Malhotra, talking about practical tips on what to do when you're repositioning yourself. Let's tune in.
00:53 Sunita Malhotra: So the first is, preparation. Preparation has three aspects to it. The first is figure out for yourself what your skills and competencies are and I call this bucket or circle, if you will, can do. "What can I do? So, what are my skills and competencies?" Because now the market is looking much more at skill sets. They're not looking at jobs. They're looking at skills and experiences. One very, very simple way to do that, very simple... Take a blank sheet of paper, write your list of accomplishments, things you're proud of, things you've done, literally from your childhood. My earliest memory is six, when I did something good and I was proud of. It sounds weird what I'm saying, but trust me, if you'd... And I've done this, so I know it works. If you write this list of accomplishments, from that you can pull out those skills and competencies, you will be surprised. You will think, "Oh my god, this was so obvious to me and oh there it is, "so it's a trend.
01:50 SM: So first, things you can do, many other ways to do it, but figure out your skills and competencies. Second, what is it that you want to do? This is that perfect moment to say, "What inspires me? What drives me? What's my passion?" Simple, blank sheet of paper, I love blank sheets of papers. Left column, what I love doing, what I can do 24 hours a day. Right column, what I absolutely hate doing and I will not do it, I'll never want to do in my life. Something to figure out what you want to do, that's a second. And the third is, "Who am I?" And I'm not gonna give you long lectures and value propositions and personal brands, there's loads of stuff on Google but, "Who am I? What is it that I am bringing to the table? Why me versus somebody else?" Thinking about that, and there are many, many ways to do that. But also, "What are my constraints" and we have to be realistic, sometimes it's a geographical constraint. Nowadays, there could be a financial constraint. So, what is it that if am I the only breadwinner in the family? Do I need to think about certain things? So, that third bucket is about who am I, but also what are my family and geographical, financial constraints, if you will.
03:01 SM: So what I can do, my skills and competencies, what I want to do, what my constraints are. The beauty of it is, that's the sweet spot. If you find the intersection of these three circles, if I picture them as a circle, that's the sweet spot. Once you figure that out, then you can just begin to build scenario. So, a scenario could be, I've been in the corporate life, I wanna continue in corporate life in the same industry. Another scenario could be, as Paola, I think very nicely said, she's at a stage in her life where she says, "I wanna be an entrepreneur and I'm testing up the market, and I'm trying something different." I know of somebody in my family who said, "I wanna do a startup, let me try that out." And it's endless because the market has flex things, virtual jobs. There's again, loads and loads and loads of research of... How the world of work is changing. So think of scenarios. Once you've done that, you're prepared. Okay, so that's first step, done. Check. Not so easy of course, it's hard work. It will probably take you a lot of time to actually do that, so invest, invest in yourself.
04:09 SM: The second step is targeting, and when I say targeting... Let's take a concrete example. If one of your scenarios is, "I'm in corporate life, I'm somewhere in the mid of my career, and I wanna continue in big corporate," then your scenario, your targeting starts with three things. Again, I love three things, as you can see. The first is target the list of industries. So what are the industries that you want to work in or might like to work in and what do you not want to work in. Now the not sometimes it's fascinating because it's very easy for us as humans to know what we don't want. Some people may say, "I don't agree with a gun industry, so I don't wanna work there", so simply again, what you want, what you don't want, but a target list of industries. Then from that, you can draw the target list of companies, very concretely saying. If I wanna work in the fast-moving consumer goods, I would like to work for Coca-Cola and I definitely would not like to work for P&G. So, target list of companies.
05:07 SM: And then most importantly is the target list of networks. Now networks, and there's a whole podcast on that. You can watch that... Watch part one and part two, right Paola, done by Paola, me and Susan. But simply networks is people you know. The obvious ones that are around you, recruiters, we have some already online, so all these... How many people are online now? Irina? 23, 25, today?
05:34 Irina Bouras: We have 28.
05:35 SM: Yes. 28. So that's my call to fill in that Excel sheet because you just have 28 people multiplied by however many people we know. People you know, recruiters and social media, I mean that's a world out there. I know Irina is the millennial generation so she'll share more about it and Andreea. So there's LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, you name it, telegram, and I'm losing track myself. So, targeting industries, companies, networks, so that's the second step. Now you're prepared. You know your target. Hard work, hard work, guys and ladies and gentleman, I say because this is half the work and there will be moments where you will pull your hair out and you will say, "Oh my God, I'm not getting into the sweet spot." That's cool, because from chaos will come confusion, but you need to prepare, you need to invest because if you go slow, to go, you will go really fast. Trust me, and I'm saying this, having done it myself, having seen many of the execs but also younger people that I work with, having done that. So that's step two.
06:42 SM: And then the third, networking. I won't bore you with all the details, but again, three things. First, be very clear on your outcome and your objective. Networking is not about, "Oh, I wanna find a job." Be very clear on what you want from the network. It's a give and take. Paola is today, a friend of mine. I worked with her in Philip Morris. She's a friend. She's become my network 25, 30 years later. Did I know that at the moment? No. But there was a lot of give and take in the relationship along the way, so that's second. And third, remember, a network is not one person. So, I might know, I don't know, millions of people. Irina knows another million. That's your network. So it's not the four or five people that you choose, it's the people they know. So, be clear on the outcome, give and take, and again, it's a much broader network then you have. And now that you have your preparations, you know your target, you have a sense of your network, what do you actually do with the network, and th...
