Episode 37: Dear Hiring Manager (Live Coaching - Your Deep Dive into the Intentional Career Design Pathway)

Lindsay  00:00

I'm Lindsay Mustain, and this is the career design podcast made for driven ambitious square pegs and round holes type professionals who see things differently and challenge the status quo. We obliterate obstacles and unlock hidden pathways to overcome and succeed where others have not stagnation feels like death. And we are unwilling to compromise our integrity and settle for being average in any way. We are the backbone of any successful business, and those who overlook our potential are doomed to a slow demise. We do work that truly matters aligns with our purpose, and in turn, we make our lasting mark on the world. We are the dreamers, doers, legends, and visionaries who are called to make our most meaningful contribution and love what we do. 

Lindsay  00:42

I am so thrilled to have you here today, Abby, and I want to I just want to go back to a moment when I have not a lot of things come across my feet because I have a large network. And I saw a bunch of people that are in my community who absolutely believe in human beings comment on your story. And so I want to go today, we're going to talk a little bit about what's happened in your journey. And we're actually going to do some work today to triage some of the challenges that you've had and help you get past some of the barriers that you've experienced. So can you start by just introducing yourself to me and we will, we'll go from there, and helping you kind of move the dial when it comes to your job search?

Abby  01:29

Yeah, but I'll give you a quick little intro. So as Lindsay mentioned, my name is Abby Mueller and fun fact, my middle name is Lindsay and spelled the same way as yours, so we've got that in common too. Yeah, and just wanted to first start and just say thank you for, for doing this with me, I think this is incredible. And the more I listened to your podcast, the more I really resonate with what you're trying to do. And I think that this is gonna be really powerful. And I'm just really excited to be here and part of this journey. So yeah, just a quick little video on me. I am a newly certified UX UI designer, and subsequently 2021 career switcher, I come from an extensive background in corporate beauty retail. I live in Southern California with my husband. And you know, when I'm not designing and solving problems, solving problems with excellent design solutions. I love to paddleboard and bake and love to try new things, which is why we're here. That's a little about me.

Lindsay  02:34

Beautiful. So you, you wrote this really powerful post on LinkedIn. And you told me a little bit about it. So I want to kind of go back to that moment. You had kind of a forced career change, correct?

Abby  02:46

Yes. Yeah. So my, my educational background is in psychology, which will come into play. But like many who do something completely different. I spent the last 16 years working for a fortune 500 company, advancing my career in beauty retail, which was excellent. And I held many positions with the company and a lot of different departments, but most recently was managing the corporate facilities for the for the business, which is in Chicagoland. And I've always tried to make really smart and strategic moves as I advanced my career throughout my tenure with them and so when my husband took a position in Oceanside, California, in January of 2020, you know, I went to my leadership, and was really fortunate to have amazing leaders who supported my career growth. And, you know, we talked about like, where do we go from here, what's next for me, and we came up with this plan to transition me from a position that was at our home office to a field leadership role in Southern California. So great, next move lined up, let's go. And then of course, as we all know, the pandemic hit two months later, full force, and that shut down all of our stores and our corporate office. And I took a leap of faith. And I moved to California anyway, because that was the plan and that's where we were going. And that's what what I wanted to do. So I moved out to California, and was really fortunate to be able to manage the facilities and manage my team remotely for 10 months, thanks to some excellent support from our leadership and from the company. But I knew that wasn't to last and so I began to look into some other options, because our stores just weren't opening as quickly as we thought they might. So I knew that there there had to be something else out there, which is how I got introduced to UX design, which for those of you who don't know, it's a discipline where you approach things from like a problem solution based approach and you place users are people at the center and you're designing a solution around a person to solve a problem or meet a need for them. It's very cool, and I'm really excited to be in it now. So I went online and I was like, Okay, well, how can I become a designer, and found these boot camps. So that's where I discovered Design Lab. It was a course that I could do at my own pace, you know, in my own time and complete in six months or less, and certify myself to be a designer. So that's what I did. I was working full time, and I needed something that worked around my schedule. So I signed up, I took my first class, and then my company went through a reorganization and my position was eliminated. Day one. So as crushing as that was, and it was like, it was like going through a breakup, honestly, I had been, you know, in this relationship with this business for 16 years. And it was tough, but, but it was also like kind of a relief in a way for me, because I knew that, you know, I was going in a different direction. And it really just opened the door for me to lean into that and you know, really power through this coursework, which I did. And I graduated in June of this year from design labs. So now I can do some UX work and solve some really big problems, which is super exciting to me. And yeah, so I'm just looking for a place to plug in and do some meaningful work with people who are passionate about what they do. Let's go okay, 

Lindsay  06:13

I love that. So huge, powerful reason up-leveling yourself. I love how you look at your opportunity to make a difference now and what you're doing next, and really thinking about how do I make my best contribution. So these are all incredibly powerful, and you've done the right things, but how is that going actually in the job search?

Abby  06:33

That's so great. So that's part of the reason I made that posted that article was, you know, I, as part of my design lab journey, they set you up with a career coach. And she's been amazing. But I haven't had to look for a job for 16 years, because I've been with the same company. So this is all very, like, brand new to me again. So yeah, I've been doing all the traditional things, I guess, like on LinkedIn, and I'm on Glassdoor, and indeed, and I'm searching for jobs that are remote or in my local area that I can do. And I'm qualified for that sound interesting. And I'm creating all of this custom content for each of them write custom resumes, custom cover letters, custom pages in my portfolio, I'm following up with emails to a lot of these organizations afterwards, with varying degrees of success there, sometimes the email doesn't even really exist anymore. So that'll come back. And it's just been really frustrating, because I feel like I'm pouring out everything. networking events, you know, LinkedIn, like I said, you know, putting my work up on dribble, which is a site where designers showcase some of their UI work, and not getting a whole lot of feedback, and in many cases, nothing at all. And that's where what sparked me writing that piece was I was asked to reflect on my journey so far and I was just at this like my wit's end. And I was like, all right, well, I'm gonna tell you how I feel about this. And I'm gonna be really honest, it's not been great. I was fortunate to have Adam Karpiak comment on my LinkedIn, when I shared that article, and he asked everyone in his network to read it, which Thank you, Adam, if you're watching, because it really allowed. It's just insane, make you connections with so many people that I would never have otherwise been able to connect with. And to just find out that this is a chord that a lot of people are resonating with. And yeah, so this is, this is what brought us together as well. So hopefully, we're going to continue furthering this journey, and we'll see where it goes. And maybe we'll, you know, be able to solve this problem together as well.

Lindsay  08:42

Yes. So you are talking about some of my biggest pain points and why I do the work that I do. And so I'm listening to your story pretty much breaks my heart, in listening to out so I wanted to talk to you today was that one just to tell job seekers, they're not alone. This is this is it. So I'll just give a little background for anybody who's listening or tuning in here. Um, you know, funny, you talked about Adam, he's one of the most heart centered people that I actually know. And if you go look at one of the recommendations on my list, he actually started posting content after he saw what I was doing, which is, like probably the most amazing endorsement that I could get, because he's just a really remarkable human being. So I've been in the talent acquisition space for more than 20 years. It's hard to say that these days, 20 years now I started when I was five, I survived. It's probably it's kind of a little bit like the Hunger Games as job searchi