Ep. 317: Creating a Long-Term Career Strategy in I-O Psychology

Speaker A: It's happening again. Welcome to Work Cookie, a, uh, CBOT podcast as we broadcast around the world. Get bite sized morsels and tidbits from our industrial organizational psychologists, other experts, and the latest research on the workplace to boost your organization's effectiveness. Sign up now@cbok.com that's s e b o c.com to engage with our community, gain a sense of belonging, access our other media and get rapid advice. Our experts@cbok.com welcome.

Speaker B: I'm Dr. Jeremy Lookabal, Industrial organizational psychology consultant and workplace communication and negotiation coach. Also we have Tom Bradshaw with us, a voice and speech coach and a damn good actor too. He is the official voice and speech coach for the industrial organizational psychology community.

Speaker A: Well, hello and welcome to Work Cookie, our weekly gathering of iOSh recruiters and an actor as we try to make the world of work just a little bit better. And Heather, I'm back and you're still here. And today we are going to be talking about creating a long term career strategy strategy in IO psychology. So I'm sure there are lots of students who are going to be listening to the podcast going, this is what I need to hear. And I bet you there's a lot of IO psychologists right now going, I need a switch. How do I do that? So why don't we start talking about the future of IO psychology? Because to me not being an IO psychologist and spending some quality time with you guys every week, um, I see the value of IO psychology. I see how, especially now when there is so much chaos and we're looking for advice and direction, I think IO psychologists, I mean this is your time. We need IO psychologists more than ever. So how do you create a strategy around a world of chaos when you quite possibly have some of those answers?

Speaker C: Absolutely. So I know when I was, when I was picking this topic, I was basing it off of, and I know Rich had mentioned this, I want to say it was two weeks ago, maybe three weeks ago, that we were moving into more of, uh, a skills based economy, which I looked more into that and it, I mean it's true. There are so many workplaces that value what skills do you have versus I guess you have a degree. That's fantastic. We love that. But, and on top of that, what are your transferable skills? What have you done in your past? And, and on top of that I have talked to so many people who even most recently as this, like this week on Monday, I talked to someone who has been at Deloitte for their entire career and just recently wants to get out of, um, consulting and move into a different space of IO and, and, and is asking, hey, how do I go about doing that strategically? Because I just don't feel fulfilled anymore. And, but I also, um, in that same vein, I don't want to just jump the gun and make the wrong, I'm using quotation marks, air quotes here. I don't want to make the wrong decision and then still feel unfulfilled when I make that change. So keeping up with market trends and, and keeping our best interests and values at the top priority is so important here. And coming up with these like 1 year and 3 year and 5 year goals and plans are so important.

Speaker A: So where do we start? I mean, if, if you're that IO psychologist who is not feeling satisfied, or even if you're that, you know, grad who just came out of university a few months ago, what does that first year look like? Like, how do you take that first initial step?

Speaker C: Well, when I speak to iOS, I always ask, what? Well, a few things. I don't just ask one question, but I do ask what. What are your interests? What drew you to IO? What problems do you want to solve within an organization? That's a big thing because that's going to help you narrow down. Where do you want to be in this space? Do you like hr? Do you like learning and development? What about consulting? And that's a big, that's a broad area. Do you like people analytics? Where do you want to see yourself? Then from there, what are your values? And, and then from there, what are your interests? And we have a ton of psychometric assessments we can use too. Let's choose some valid and reliable ones, but, and then from there we can narrow it down and then find your path.

Speaker A: Well, I think that's, that's probably very key because I imagine especially a lot of younger IO psychologists are like me when I started about, you know, in the entrepreneurial field of, uh, I want to be everything to everybody. I can do it all. So can you just talk briefly? Yes. You shake your head. No. Talk a little bit about, um, getting away from that mindset of whatever you need, I can do whatever you need, and actually going in with more of a plan than that.

Speaker C: I love how enthusiastic you are there that you could be everything to everyone, but you just can't. You will stretch yourself so thin. Um, I mean, you, you could try for a brief window in time to do that. However, I would highly encourage you to. I don't like the idea of niching down Too far. But I do like the idea of finding your place. And, and what are you good at? Where? And, and if you don't know, ask others. Hey, where do you see that I have made the most impact within an organization or in, in my schooling? Where did I do really well in my cohort or in this class? Ask your previous instructors, like, what were my strengths here? Or where do I need to improve? You can always ask for constructive criticism and also take that constructive criticism.

Speaker A: If I, if I narrow it down a bit. But I go, geez, there's like five things I could be really good at. Is there some of those, you know, niches that we talk about in iopsychology that are really hot right now where there is a demand for. We need more learning and development. We need people to consult on this factor on team building. Is there like, what's hot in IO psychology?

Speaker C: Oh, so I don't know if this would be considered hot in IO psychology, but can I tell you something that's kind of funny that, um, and I've spoken to three people this week alone about it. And, uh, two are IO psychs, but one is not an IO psych, but they are in the learning and development sphere. Okay, this is. And one of you guys can run with it. I would love to pick your brains. Okay. This is a really big company, a really global giant organization. And um, I cannot, because I've worked, um, contractually with this company, I cannot drop their name, but they have been using AI and developing just questions for like test banks and for like the, you know, at the end of textbooks where they have like the multiple choice questions or anything like that. Anyway, they have now had a problem where these AI questions are just terrible. And so now they are outsourcing their work to other organizations to make these questions less terrible. And they want a human to oversee them and revise them. So, but then they're also, because I'm hearing this from my previous colleagues, of, they don't, they don't like the constructive criticism either. Of, hey, we don't want to be told that this is really terrible. We just want you to try to fix it with the least amount of criticism for us. And so the people that I've talked to are like, oh, we need to make like an AI detector kind of consulting firm or like some kind of thing, like a role like that. Because eventually, not right now, I don't think there's enough need for it. But there have been so many projects that have come in just to revise AI. Slop again, I'm using that in quotation marks that these large companies are now having to revise because either textbooks have been caught with AI like prompts being left in or like wrong material that has just been left inside, or then like these questions. So the training and development and learning and development sphere, maybe becoming a consultant on that end would be helpful.

Speaker A: Well, it sounds like AI is having a bit of a breakdown and that their solution to make it more human is let's bring in an IO psychologist, which, you know, does make sense. So, um, yeah, teaching computers instead of people, that's the way the future is going. Thank you very much. Well, maybe Lee will save us. Lee, let's go to you.

Speaker B: You know, I, I am just, I'm gonna, I'm just gonna just channel being a parent here because I'm gonna, I'm gonna go back to the movie Aladdin and I'm gonna, to the, to the immortal words of the character Iago. I'm, I, I, I'm gonna die of not surprise. Um, I, um, mean, who, who, who could have just, who could have seen this coming besides, oh, I don't know, all of us, but you know, I mean, I mean anybody who has read any like, like, like the classic science fiction could have seen this coming. I mean, you know, anybody who thought that AI was going to save us. Go back and read Dune. I mean, come on. Hello. Um, so, um, you know, it's interesting. I did see recently that a lot of these companies that just really hardcore both feet jumped on bandwagon and fired a whole bunch of people because AI was going to save us so much money and it's going to do all these things and we don't need these people. Um, have suddenly very, very quietly been hiring a lot of those people back. Different job type, but basically in the same jobs because we can't admit we made a mistake. But we made a mistake. But it's not a mistake if we call it something else. So, I mean, you're kind of doing. But you're not, you're kind of. But no, you know, so, uh, yeah, so, you know, but I mean, we, we could have seen this coming. All you had to do was a little bit of paying attention. I mean, you know, and of course I, I get that right now we are in this whole, uh, short attention span era. But I mean, just look at the recent past. You know, we went through this whole, you know, press one for this, press two for this press thing and what are people doing? Beep zero, beep zero, B2. Operator. Operator. You know, and because people don't want to talk to the robot, they want to talk to a person. And so what becomes all of a sudden a marketing thing. Hey, call our customer service and get a real person. And all of a sudden their stock is like, on, um, you know, on the move. Because all of a sudden people are like, oh, my God, people, this has not been that long ago. This should be in recent memory. And so as, as, as much as popular as all these various large language models are in recent memory, we have figured out that people are like, hey, you know, that's really cool. Can I talk to a person, please? And, and, you know, and I don't know about you, I, I have gotten many, many occasions where I go in and I get either on the phone or the little chat thing, and you get the, the initial thing where it's like, I'm going to try to help you before I give you a person. It can never. I mean, almost like 99 times out of 100 can't help me either. It doesn't understand my, I guess, limited, you know, language skills. I guess, um, one of us, one of the two of us has limited language skills. So, uh, it's. We just, we're not communicating. You know, some men, you just can't reach. And so me and this bot just aren't getting there. It's not understanding what I'm wanting, and it just can't answer my questions. Either that or I've just got some strange thing going on that it just can't compute. And so eventually, after much frustration and gnashing of teeth, I finally get a person. And they're. And usually it's somebody who think English is not their first language, but I finally get a person. They finally get there. And I am extremely frustrated at this point, but they finally maybe get my problem solved. But now something that took them about five minutes. I have now been on the phone for 45. My impression of that organization is not very good.

Speaker A: So how do we take. Because I agree 100% with everything you just said, how do we now turn that to a strategy for IO psychologists to go, I. Artificial, uh, intelligence may not actually be putting us on the right path or we seem to get knocked off the road all the time. So how can an IO psychologist go in and actually help us use IO or use, um, artificial intelligence to actually be successful?

Speaker B: Well, you know, it's interesting, and this is something that I tell my students all the time. It's like, look, I go in, you know, First, First. First meeting I get with them, I'm like, am I going to tell you not to use AI? No, I'm not. Because, you know, they go into other classes and they're like, slap your hand. Don't use AI, you naughty children. No, I'm, um, not going to tell you that, because AI is a tool. Just like spell checks, like, grammar check, just like, you know, all the other little tools that we have had, you know, I mean, speed dial, you know, all these little cool things make your life easier. It is a tool. It is not a crutch. You know, And I tell them, you know, if I go, heather, can you write this for me? I think we all can agree that's cheating. If I go, hey, ChatGPT, can you write this for me? It's still cheating. And, uh, you know, and a lot of times we get this epiphany from. From my students that they're like. Because they're not thinking of, you know, ChatGPT is not a person. Well, no, but it's still cheating. And like, but if you wanted to give you an idea, if, you know, hey, I've used this word, like four times. Can you give me a different word that's appropriate? Hey, can you help me with my grammar? My grammar seems a little off here, you know, uh, you know, um, my Merc is showing, you know, okay, help me with my grammar. Okay, that's appropriate. You know, M. My last term, I got one of the best papers I think I've ever gotten, and she straight up put in the thing I used AI. And this is how straight up she told me. Bam. She told me exactly what she did. She used it appropriately. She fessed up to it, and she did it right. And I was like, bravo. If I could give you extra points, I would. And that's how we use it. That's how we use it properly. But most people aren't doing it. You ever watch that show Wipeout, you know, where people go through and they try to go through things, and the, uh, things are knocking them off into the water. That's what we're doing. That's how we're using AI right now. We're like, AI is going to help me run through here. And AI is like, boom. And off in the water you go. That's how we're using AI right now. That is exactly how most people are doing it. They're putting on a blindfold. They're running through the thing. AI's going to guide me. Off we go, you know, and. And you Know, even if you go to Chat GPT right now and you put a thing at the very bottom of the screen, it says, I could be wrong. Please check this. It fesses on itself, you know, and that's one thing that I tell my students all the time. If you use Chat GPT or any of the others, read it before you turn it in, because it hallucinates. It makes things up. It creates stuff out of whole cloth. It may be, it may sound fantastic, can be completely fiction, you know, I mean, it'll start pulling in, you know, stuff that are from. I mean, I have had people turn in things that are completely. Concepts that are completely foreign to the class I'm teaching. I'm like, that's fantastic. If we were doing, you know, sports physiology, that'd be fantastic. Unfortunately, I'm not teaching that, you know, and so you have to read it and you have to make, you know, And I'm like, look, even if you use it, at least read it. So then at least you read something and maybe m. You'll soak in a little bit of knowledge. But. And unfortunately, like Heather said with the, uh, detectors, what are you going to use to detect it? AI and what's. What's AI not really good at detecting AI So because that's the thing with a large language model. The more you use it, the more it trains to sound like you. So if you get a really well trained model, guess what? AI is not going to detect the AI So that's our problem is that there is no reliable AI detector. You know. You know, most AI detectors, you know what they're really checking for? Plagiarism. That's really what it's detecting. It's not detecting whether or not you used AI it's detecting whether or not it is pulling plagiarism. Because most of the time that's what the AI is doing is it is pulling from other works. That's what it catches. Because you used uncited references. That's what it caught. It didn't catch that. You know, you used some really cool stuff that you didn't actually think of. So what's the answer? Well, write your own work, maybe. I don't know. There's. Thought so. But anyway, before I go too far afield, I'm sure Nick has something brilliant to say, so I'll stop talking.

Speaker A: All right. AI is whack a mole. I like that. Thank you very much. Nick, let's go over you.

Speaker D: I think the AI example is prime reasoning. Why you need to have strategic you need to be able to see around the corners, these point of spell check and speed dial, all these little incremental things, um, that have come through. We've had to adjust. And I think a good strategy is, uh, a North Star to follow, and you adjust as you need to. Um, and so, yeah, what's the next disruptor that's coming? Is it going to be the bespoke human experience where we're not going to use AI because we want to have you feel like you're connecting to a person? You know, the wave isn't breaking all at the same time. So where do you want to get in on whatever's happening now or coming next? And so I think that part of the strategy is clarity. You've got to get clear on what you want to do. It's finding your niche, it's finding the organizations and spaces you want to be in. Um, clarity is not easy. Consistency is not easy. Uh, but you do have to kind of put your own feet to the fire or get a coach to do it for you that will say, okay, you want to be in this space.

Speaker B: Why?

Speaker D: Well, I think it's really cool. Well, what is cool about it? You know, and getting you to think through everything. Well, thought strategy. Well, I guess we'll just see what happens. Um, and it's okay to declare, I want to. This thing, you put it out there, you have something you're going for. Linda Ann May look at me and go, nick, you're crazy. But if you can do it, go for it. Um, or, you know, all of a sudden Lee's like, oh, that's a great idea. I want to come along too. Um, so again, we've talked about networking the last several weeks, um, framed everything, kind of trying to find that first job for so long. But whatever you're doing to find that first job, don't stop doing those things because you don't know where the ripples are going to end. You know, a rejection from a job is not right. Now, you may make such an impression in the interview that they go, oh, this position just opened up. And doctor Tend to be perfect for it. You know, you find those, those connections, you're not quite sure when they're going to pay off, so you have to operate as though they're not going to pay off. And they're good sake. Um, keep doing what you're doing. It's one thing to be like, oh, I have to network while I'm looking for a job, and then become the vampire. And you forget to flip it around and help the person coming behind you. And so that those intangibles need to be considered in a long strategy. And it's one thing to say, well, I'm going to go this way and we're going to the moon and this is direct map. It's going to change, it's going to adjust, you know, quickly as technology is moving. A five year plan is kind of a pipe dream to some degree. Um, but if you hold true to what you want or where you're going or you know, you go back to the classics and say this is the method in which I'm going to encounter any technological change, um, you can set yourself out, um, you know, as a differentiator in the market. Well, I don't like writing with AI because it all starts sounding the same. I'm going to sound different. Um, I see the success that this person is having. How do I translate it? How do I understand what it was? Instead of just going, oh, they use this thing, I'm going to use it. Um, so yeah, I think consistency, having it be well thought out and finding the things that work and continuing with them. Uh, you do have the job or you're looking for the next film, you've hit the lottery and you can just, you know, do whatever you want because you can.

Speaker A: Thank you very much for that, Linda. And let's go to you.

Speaker E: So when you talk about creating that long term career strategy in I.O. and, and the whole mindset of oh, I can just do whatever at any, I've got so much capability, you know, that that is a self fulfilling prophecy of failure. And here's why. Because once you get to the point of, and I had firsthand experience at this, oh, I can do that. Oh, can. And then the next thing comes up, can you do that? Oh, I can do that too. And then you've got this mass of responsibility that becomes overwhelming and now you can't do it all well and then you have to have people, you have to start giving some of it up. And so there's a real breakdown in that process. That's not a good long term idea. Right. Because it's not going to get you where you want to be because you're going to be the dumping ground for everything nobody else wants to do and it's going to become overwhelming. So there's, there's that piece. When I look at some help, somebody with a, uh, long term career strategy, I always start with what's the dream? Right. Really, what do you ultimately want? Right. And there's Two caveats. One, you don't need to know how to get there yet and there's no financial constraint. Right? Don't tell me that you need another certification. You don't have the money. No, no, we're going to, we, we just really, really need to know what your destination is in your mind right now and then we can look at the landscape. All right, where does that exist? And because a lot of times what their dream is and where they want to go in the next step, they don't match. Right. If you want to be the um, just the data analyst for metrics for the company, but you want to work in a small kind of 100 person environment, those don't match. So you have to make sure you're on the same page with where you actually want to go. Then we can look at the critical skills analysis, your gap analysis. Where are you now? And then what do you need to do or have experience in to get there? So we start to create that pathway and then um, we create the plan for you to get from here to there. Right. But, but um, so that's one way to look at it. What I would say with regard to the current environment and, and it's linked to AI. AI is going through a major overhaul right now and right now and from my experience both ChatGPT and Claude Suck. They're terrible right now as far as their responses and how fast they go downhill in the quality of their responses and things like that. So you really need to think about if you're going to put your eggs in the AI basket to not do it in a real hard niche because that niche has very short lifespan. Right. Even like Claude. Right now I was trying to learn some aspects of Claude and there's a consultant that's posting on YouTube and it's like they overhauled how your, their prompts work by 80% so everything that you put in before, it's not working on that anymore.

Speaker A: Wow.

Speaker E: And then um, the other thing too was I saw something that you know, because I was like, why is this deterioration happening? And so AI companies are trying to serve, to save energy. So they're changing how things are work because work so that they can save energy because there's this whole or um, pushback on the, what they consume in the environment. So there's, there's that piece and then there was one, I don't know if it was through ChatGPT, some AI had a hacking thing that it had created, right. To detect hacking or whatever and it broke out and it not only did it break out, but it had programmed something like this is really third hand pilot but had program something into whatever in the future that it would detect. It would be able to undo whatever they're doing to fix it.

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Speaker E: Whoa. Right. Go watch 2001 A Space Odyssey. Right.

Speaker A: I saw a report recently where they were testing an artificial intelligence on hacking and the first it escaped and the first thing it did was hack into two other AIs. Um, let me ask you this though, because we used to talk about strategy when someone was looking for a new job, blah blah blah. We talked about pain points that you know, know the organization's pain points. How the how of how can you help them? Is that, are we still incorporating that in our strategy, looking for either a new job or that first job?

Speaker E: Always, Always, always. That's basic sales, Tom. Um, right. You know, if you're not, you have to identify and that's one thing when the people get so worried about when I talk to them about their long term strategy and their interviews and so forth, uh, the amount of times I've said this is a dialogue. They need to answer your questions as much as you need to answer them. And they're so surprised, um, at that concept and that they've never experienced that before. But it's your job to also make sure that you understand and if you don't do this, then your interviews can become very inefficient and you can really miss the boat. Right. So help understand by asking questions what, why are they hiring somebody in the, into this position? What problem are they solving by hiring somebody into this position? And then you can really customize your responses that, that meet their need. Right. And that's just basic, always um, sales process. The other thing, and Heather had brought this up, um, about, we're talking about a uh, skills based environment for hiring in different organizations and so forth. The problem is, is the, the skills that they're hiring for, they might not need them a year from now. Okay. So that's, that's a slippery slope and what I would say and I, this is a soapbox I've been on before, but I had this, I found, I was digging into my, my uh, briefcase and I found this piece of paper that I've kept for like 10 years because someone I had mentored had given it to me and it really reflected what I had communicated to her. And I'm gonna, I'll read it. It's just a couple sentences. It says great companies don't hire skilled people and motivate them. They hire already motivated people and inspire them. People are either motivated or they're not. Unless you give motivated people something to believe in, something bigger than the, their job to work toward, they will motivate themselves to find a new job and you'll be stuck with whoever's left.

Speaker A: Isn't that something that every organization needs to hear? But it's just not out there.

Speaker E: Right. And so some people, you know, they often, it's like, well, they want somebody who has experience in whatever software they're currently using. Well, maybe you don't have that, but maybe you've learned three other softwares in the past two years. Learning a new software is a short window for in most cases. So if you can help them understand that, you know, how to approach the learning of a new software, you know, and then it's only going to take you that 90 days or whatever it is to be up to speed, maybe you can get past that short sighted requirement.

Speaker A: Thank you very much for that. Nick, let's go back to you.

Speaker D: Yeah, I mean, you know, the strategy for the organization and um, the strategy for the individual, they both run um, kind of parallel tracks. You know, he's trying to look into the crystal ball and be where they're going to be needed. 3, 5, 10 years, uh, that's getting harder and harder. And Hazier and Hazier to see through. Um, but I think when you understand your strategy, part of the is understanding your motivation. Ultimately your strategy is your brand. You've all heard me rail against it the last few weeks, but it's very, very true. Like this is who I am and who I'm going to be a face of, um, situation X, situation Y, situation Z. So I mean it's important to think about it, it's important to get it right. It's not the end all, be all, you can adjust, you have that. And I think, uh, Nan's point, what's the dream? You have agency, you get to choose, you can pit, you walk away from events back and start to think strategy. You pull in those other parts of, well, okay, a 40 minute commute. What's that going to do to my family? Start to balance those points and what, what trade off is worth that time away and all of that. Um, and I think more and more you see people wanting to have real impact. There's a swing back towards connection and hopefully holding big organizations responsible for communities that they're in. I'm not saying that Microsoft is going to turn around and philanthropic organization of the century, but I think more and more you see differentiators of hey, we have a company wide community service sort of day. And so you get to see how do your values, how does your strategy match up to the organization, the red flags, green flags, all that sort of thing. In uh, your evaluation again, if you start with the ultimate goal, the biggest dream, and you start to work backwards, you probably get there before you realize it. Um, it's going to take effort and intention, um, but it may not take as much time.

Speaker A: Thank you very much for that. Heather, let's go back to you and then Lee will come over to you. Um, how are we doing so far, Heather?

Speaker C: No, I love it. And I really liked Linda Ann's point about being motivated. I think that is fantastic. Yes. Even though we are in like more of a skill space and it is frustrating when you may have like three skills. Like for example, I was talking to someone who had graduated with his doctorate and he had Learned R&SQL and SPSS. But one of the jobs he had applied for was like, oh, we need you to know Python. He was like, I don't, okay, I don't have that skill but I can learn it. That's totally fine. And it's just. And so he has spent the last six months learning Python. And so fortunately it didn't hinder him getting the job, but it is one of Those things like, like what if that had been one of those things where it's like oh so sorry, we're going to go with someone else who already knows that skill even though he has all the other three languages. Like that would have just been. But he was motivated enough to learn it. So I do love that whole being motivated is such a better quality to hold on to from organizations and hopefully that is something that they're like okay, yes, let's, let's prioritize that over. Do we have that unicorn employee that or candidate who can meet all hundred percent of what we're asking for on this job description? Because that's, that's just not a thing we can always train people to if they're motivated and they're punctual and they're showing up and they are dedicated. Maybe like uh, I don't know, I'll get off that soapbox and But I will ask. I'll pose this question. I was scrolling LinkedIn and and I know that this job market is wild right now and I was reading yesterday that LinkedIn and I was going to share it but they. I'm going to actually share it next week because I'm writing a post on it but LinkedIn is being investigated for the like several uh, like hundred thousand ghost jobs that they have been posting allowing to be post. So someone in Texas and I can. I'll put the article here in a second that I read is there's a whole investigation going on but there's another guy and I'll post his LinkedIn if you want to creep on him because I loved creeping has gone through and actually taken down over 50,000 of those ghosts job postings and 7,000 fake account like fake profiles like people profiles. Anyway, and then. And then to add another layer of this onion that we're investigating, um, it was shown that people who have premium accounts were being targeted for these ghost jobs. So you're paying for the service and then your. I don't pay for premium. M. But I would be annoyed if I was paying for a service and then I'm being targeted for ghost jobs anyway. Like I would be paying to look for jobs and then you're sending me ghost jobs. No, absolutely not. Anyway, so they're being investigated right now and uh, so I will send you the link here and then I will send it so we can put it inside the show notes for other people to creep on. But anyway my other question here was I was also scrolling. Let's add aside from ghost jobs, someone had posted he's an IO as well. Are we as iOS, too open to contract work as iOS? And the question there was, have we made it too? Are we too accessible to just say, hey, you can use our skills for a short period of time and then once you're done with us, uh, like you don't want to hire us on to be at the company for longer than just this set period of time and then we're kind of disposable. So you use us and then you just, you're done.

Speaker A: It's like a bad relationship. Um, maybe we'll figure out. Let's go to Lee and talk about that.

Speaker B: Hey, wait a minute now. I'll have you know I've been married for a long time, thank you very much. But, um, so, you know, if, if there is a legitimate need for a particular skill set for, for a, a shorter length of time, you know, that is a totally legit reason to bring in people on a short term basis. But be upfront. Be upfront about it. Bring them in on a contract basis. Whatever it is, be upfront about it. Don't hire someone under the impression that they're going to be there for a while and then go, well, you know, it's not you, it's me. You know, don't do that. You know, I mean, you know, I mean, because you can always extend. You know, there are a lot of people who are willing to do the gig thing, you know, you know, like Dr. Tim put in the, in the, in the thing, you know, interval, fractional. You can totally do that. There are a lot of people who. Fractional is where they go. They work for several different people.

Speaker D: Cool.

Speaker B: Bring them in. But, uh, be a friend about it, you know, And a lot of times hiring people, 1099. I mean, it's, it's a whole different line item on your budget too. If you got a hiring freeze, hiring somebody who's not actually an employee is a whole different line item on your budget. Uh, I mean, I used to hire a lot of people that way because they weren't really people as far as the budget was concerned. So that's a, that's a whole other conversation. We could do a whole podcast on that. But, um, now let's see. What, what was it I was actually going to talk about? Um, as usual, Heather just knocked me right off the thing like we were talking about earlier. Like one of those big beanbag just knocked me right off into the water. Um, so, you know, we were talking about the plans for new people getting, you know, Creating their, their plans to go forward and whatever else. So the two big mistakes that I see, one is the one we kind of talked about not having a plan. You know, the old adage, cliche, whatever you want to call it, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. You got to have a plan of some sort and it's okay because you know another cliche, you know, no battle plan survives contact with the enemy. Understand? It's not going to last. That's okay, that's cool. You have a starting point because that's. The second point is understand that, that you have to have, you know, like I like to say, simp or Gumby, always flexible. Be willing to revisit that plan and adjust as necessary. Because you know what happens when you're, you know, when you're shooting arrows, if you don't hit, you just fire the same thing with a plan. If you're not hitting your target, adjust your aim. You have to revisit. You got a five year plan. Don't religiously stick to that plan no matter what happens. Because if it's failing, well, five years from now, it's still failing. So don't just wish for the best. So, you know, hope is not a strategy. Revisit that plan. If it's not working, adjust, you know, it's just like with investments or things like that. If it's not working, change your strategy. You know, put, you know, bet on a different horse, whatever, you know what, however, whatever reference you want to use, revisit. If you got a five year plan, you should be reviewing it at minimum, yearly, probably quarterly or six months. You should be reviewing what's working, what's not working. Do we need to adjust? Do we need to tweak things? You know, you know, am I learning R? Well, if R is not working, maybe it does need to be Python. You know, what is, you know, what are the things that we need to do that, that move forward? Have the trends changed? Is there a hot new thing? Is, do we think it's a fad or is it something that's, that looks to be enduring? Did I think it was a fad six months ago, but looks like it's hanging on. So maybe I need to revisit and actually get involved with that. These are things you need to look at. Uh, also don't go with the bulldog strategy. Don't get so wrapped up and looking for something that just can't let it go. Understand that the perfect job probably doesn't exist, at least not right out of the Gate. There are a few, you know, the unicorns, as were mentioned, sometimes you find most people don't, um, it is more comfortable to look for a job with a full stomach and a roof over your head. Don't remain unemployed looking for the perfect job. Don't do it. You know, if you have to find a job that is not the job you want in order to pay your bills, do it. You know, there is no shame in that. And guess what? Every job out there is an I O job. Every job out there has aspects of IO that you can utilize your skills and gain experience. And if you use the right words, you can accurately and truthfully talk about your IO experience in the job that you're doing. It's just a matter of using the correct language. And you can very much very, very truthful about it. You're not making it up, you're not lying. You're not doing anything else. You are framing using the correct language. You'll be surprised. And this is another thing going back to, uh, going back to the AI you can have the AI help you with language that's a proper use to help you with the words with your framing. Now, never, ever use exactly what it gives you. Going back to the cautionary tale, but it can help you to. With your reframing of your experience through an IO lens, you'll be surprised at what, oh, I didn't realize that's what I was doing. Oh, the angels are singing. So now you have something to apply to. The next thing. You may not even realize that's what you were doing. You know, I mean, I've told this story on here before about Jeremy. You know, Dr. Lucabel, when I joined CBOK, and I was. I was grousing about not having worked in I.O. and Jeremy was looking at my LinkedIn going, Dude, there's I.O. all in this. And he starts pointing to all the things in my history that I worked where I was doing I.O. stuff. I just wasn't looking through that lens.

Speaker C: He was.

Speaker B: And I went, there was the epiphany. Mind blown. If you're not getting it, talk to Heather. She'll point it out. She'll smack you over the head with it in a hurry. Like she said, you with a wet fish. But anyway, um, so move forward and don't be afraid to change. Because. Because I can tell you what you're. What you're wanting to do at 25 is not probably going to be what

Speaker C: you want to do at 50.

Speaker B: And that's okay, you know, come to a fork in the road. You know, like Yogi Berra said, you come to fork in the road, you should take it, because that's what, that's what you should do. But you can always change your path and you can always change your niche because that's, that's part of the beauty of being human. Be a good choice.

Speaker A: Well, thank you very much. Thank you, Lee. Of course, in my head right now, I'm just thinking of the sitcom where Heather slaps people with wet fish, but I'll work on that. Thank you very much. Nick, let's go to you.

Speaker D: Yeah, I think, you know, we're doing a great job of pointing out need for strategy because there's all sorts of things out there working against. There's, you know, there's ghost jobs, there's swindlers, there's people who do not have your best interests in mind. Um, so when you look at your strategy, find a mentor, find somebody who is where you want to be, figured out what that North Star is. Find somebody who's already there, not there. Start putting your head together with somebody smart, go, how do we get there? Um, but, yeah, I think to have a clear sense of strategy, which I level does come with a degree of purpose and why and a, this is what I'm going to do. Um, again, I will put the caveat. Internal consistency is hard to do even when you're trying. Um, you're going to make mistakes, you're going to make missteps. Um, and if you fail to change in light of new information, then you're stuck. Get new information. Incorporate that through the lens of this is where I want to go and this is what B. Um, you'll be better equipped to deal with the frustration. And it's, you know, again, I'm on the outside professional world looking into some degree, so my mental fortitude has to be with rejection and finding the right thing, avoiding all the this, that and the other. Uh, but that can change into how do you deal with a toxic co worker? If this situation pops up or you're asked to do something dishonest, can you walk away? Because your overall strategy will be there and this decision is not going to be in service of their example of I forget what school or country. But, you know, they, they all got on the same page and said, will it make the boat go faster? And so that's kind of that organizing principle. And if you have that, ah, it can filter things a lot faster. Um, you know, it can oftentimes go haywire and you get into the hustle culture of obsession. Um, but if you dial that back a little bit for yourself and your sanity, um, you know, will this get me where I want to go? Will this, you know, allow me to, to be who I want to be? And framing it that way, uh, very much can set you up, the buffer against the myriad of, um, challenges you walk across in professional.

Speaker A: And it's a lot better than what I used to do, which was just, hey, I'm moving forward. Uh, I've got motion, I've got no strategy, but I'm moving. That must be good, right?

Speaker D: Yeah, yeah. Sometimes momentum builds momentum and swept away. And that can be a thing if you're stuck, terrible thing. You get five miles down the road and go, I don't know where I am.

Speaker A: And now I've got a flat tiger. Thank you very much for that, Linda. And let's go back to you.

Speaker E: So when Heather was talking about, um, are we, are iOS too focused or being taken advantage of in the IO, uh, the contract field, and the first thing that popped into my head was it sort of a friends with benefits type situation. It solves the immediate problem, but it really doesn't get you the relationship you're looking for. Right. Um, I think that the problem with that and a few years ago I was working with a couple of their, uh, consultants and we were thinking about working together to address, um, to go into companies and doing some business consulting for them. And one of our mantras clear across the board, we had no, um, dissent among us about this. And that was no band aids allowed.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker E: We're not coming in and just put slapping a band aid on something and not addressing the system or the organization because that's short term fix and it doesn't really serve the industry, both their industry and the IO industry. It doesn't serve it well.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker E: Because you're not seeing you can put this band aid on, uh, but band aids fall off and you're not getting the result that you're looking for. So, um, I think it's important that we. And fractional in my mind is different. Fractional is when they are actually paying you to be there as an employee and function as that employee. But they don't need a full time employee. But the expertise of someone one day a week fills the bill and it gets them where they need to be without creating a mess of having unqualified people trying to do that, that task or that role. Right. So to me that's different than just contracting somebody to do an employee survey or something like that. Because if you don't have, like, if you do an employee survey and you don't have someone, that fractional employee coming in and doing the follow up and the, and the education and all of that implementation of all the things that need to happen, then that's a total waste of time and money.

Speaker A: Thank you very much for that, Linda and Nick, let's go back.

Speaker D: Yeah, I think there's, you know, when we talk about long term strategy, you know, you get to the higher level orders and I think this is a piece that's in the accelerator course. But, uh, when you think about what, what impact can you have on the field most iOS that I talk to, yes, I want a job, I want to have impact. But you know, there are, there are contributions I can make to IO as a whole. If I can make it work here, can we make it scale? Uh, and so I think that, you know, I won't say that you're serving two masters necessarily, but if you can contribute to the academy, the literature, the journals or whatnot, like that is kind of a secondary goal for practitioners. You know, I want to get, I want to get the right thing done first, um, and then do this other thing second. Because that's what I remember from my schooling and things like that. And I wonder if maybe some of that doesn't come up with that contract is okay sort of mentality. Um, and the problem, the job market, life in general, there's probably somebody out there who's desperate enough, there's somebody who is willing to, you know, take the bad deal just because they feel like they have to. Um, it's an unfortunate reality, but that's where we get, you know, salary ranges that are posted that, uh, this job feels like it should be worth closer to 75, but you're advertising it for 50. I can't take it. The next guy on your list might be able to. So there's all sorts of powerful things there. And until somebody, you know, kind of rallies the troops and say, hey, iOS, let's, let's stop doing the contract work. If we want to have that impact in the workplace overall, we have to be in the room regularly. And more than just sort of that like not band aid, but that Swiss army knife, I serve a specific function and that's all I can do. Yes, I can do the employee survey and I can also use that to help an employee, those small, narrow, fractional contract role and you start to wedge people in there, get those to expand and hopefully, you know, we'll be in demand full Time, and not just on an ad hoc basis.

Speaker A: Thank you very much for that. Uh, Heather, let me come back to you because we've got about five minutes left, but I wanted to ask you, you know, we've sort of been talking about career strategy when it comes to someone who's looking for employment.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: But let me change a little bit. You know, I owe, you know, psychologists who are working, do they need a career strategy? Like, part of me goes, hey, just go with that flow again. I've got moment, emotion. You know, I'm moving forward. At the same time, the logical side of my brain goes, um, if I'm having success now, maybe I should understand my success and, you know, create a strategy to expand it.

Speaker C: Well, I mean, I will say you never know. So you could be in your job and that's fantastic. But you should never just net. Like, you don't just stay in that mentality of like, oh, everything's perfect and it's never going to change. Always stay looking at the future. And I, uh, won't say like, oh, live in that, like, fear mentality. You never know if layoffs will happen. Keep your resume up to date and, and don't stay in that stagnation like Nick just said. So if you're in a role and you love it, that's awesome. I love that. But you should be looking at, like, do you want to progress in an upward motion? Where do you want to be in a year, two years, five years? So if it is that same role, okay, that's great. But do you, do you want to continuously learn new skills? Do you want to improve on certain abilities? Do you want to move forward and take on other responsibilities? And if you are comfortable not doing anything else, why is that? Why do you want to continue doing the same thing? Those are questions to consider.

Speaker A: I'm going to go to Linda Ann, but then I'm going to come back and ask you, what's your strategy?

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: So think about that. So, Linda Ann, let's go to you.

Speaker E: So to follow up on Heather's comment about updating your resume and all those kinds of things. And this is both for the managers, speaking to both the managers and the employee, and that is updating resume should take place every year when you do your self evaluation for your performance review at a minimum. And part of what I would ask my employees to do is to submit to me their updated resume with their self evaluation. And I know that some people, leaders feel uncomfortable with that because they feel like they're gonna. Then they're Gonna leave. If they do that. If they're gonna leave. Because they do that, they're gonna leave anyway.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker E: So, um, but that's a service as a leader that you are providing them to make sure both for yourself and for them, that they have the skills to leave or the things in place to leave if they want to leave. Because if you want to leave, I don't want you sitting there. The other thing is, and that makes you, they value that in you as a leader. Right. And if they're in a situation where it's not really working for them, this could give you a window into either how you might change leadership where they do want to stay, um, or help them get to where they really want to be. Right. That only helps everybody along the way.

Speaker A: Sounds like better leaders, better employees. That's a novel concept. Thank you very much for that, Linda. Heather, what's your strategy moving forward?

Speaker C: Absolutely. And yes, Linda Ann. So I work at a company where we have to submit our resumes every year and we also have to provide our managers m. So like what are you doing every year? What continuing education are you doing? What are you doing to stay relevant in the industry? What professional workshops are you attending? What are you doing to contribute to the industry every single year? So I mean, and it, it's good for one, a self evaluation, but also for your managers just to stay like you have like a one on one conversation to know like what, what you doing.

Speaker E: And yeah, trying to do it three years retroactively doesn't work. And, and you. So you miss a lot. And then when there's plenty of times when I sat down to do that and I went, damn, I really did, you know,

Speaker C: you know you need that for yourself. Yes, well, and also trying to retroactively update your resume like three years is awful. No. So keeping your resume up to date yearly is fantastic. But also for myself, I have like a master resume that looks nothing like a resume. It's a Google Doc that I just have a, like a little tab for each role or project or contract thing that I've done and I just keep it nice and organized that way and then I can just pull little bullets from that onto my resume doc. And that's a lovely thing that I have done because it keeps everything organized and easy to just transfer over and because one, trying to keep up with what, like multiple resumes is awful. But two, I can access it on my phone or on my computer because I use Google. And, and then for me, as a strategy, I love the idea of like the yearly review. But I also keep, like, what I want to do a year from now. And then I break it down into goals and just how I'm going to get there, where do I envision myself being? How will I get there? Does it align with my values? And then what steps will I take? Is it attainable? And then I always want to be just a little bit outside of, like, is it too easy? If it's too easy, I mean, then I'm just gonna be like. But if it's a little bit more difficult, then it gives me that challenge and the motivation to, like, really, really work toward it. And then I tell people about it so that they can give me that, like, motivation and accountability. And we, we talk about it, I check in with them, and it's really fun and challenging, but it's fun.

Speaker A: Well, thank you very much for that and thank you for the month of June and keeping us on track and the great discussions you brought to us. Um, any idea what's happening next month?

Speaker C: No. Oh, me and values. Right.

Speaker E: It's values. I just finished my summary, um, later than I had hoped. So we're going to talk about values, both personal values and, um, organizational values, and the mindset that they are non negotiables. For both. For both. Those are the things that are, they're not just aspirational. Oh, I'd really like to be more. No, it's when you got stuck in, in that situation where, you know, rock and a hard place, what helped you make that decision? And that's true for who you are personally, and that's true for the organization as well. So we're going to go through what the real definitions of values are. The difference between personal, organizational values, how you get them integrated, how you use them together, and then really developing leadership through the organizational values. It's a tool that most companies are. That's a very, very helpful, useful tool that most organizations overlook.

Speaker A: They certainly do, um, their employees and how they do business. Uh, well, it's going to be a very interesting month, so thank you. I'm looking for. Forward to that. Linda. Ann. Uh, once again, thank you, Heather. And thank you to everyone who contributed today. Uh, once again, great month. And, uh, it sounds like we're going to have another great month starting next week. So, Heather, if you want to count us out, we'll see everyone back here in one week's time.

Speaker C: Absolutely. Thank you all. Have a fantastic day. And 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

Speaker A: Thanks for listening to this episode of Work Cookie, A, uh, C Box podcast. Don't forget to sign up@cboc.com that's s

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