0:00 there is never been a more unique opportunity to network with more people using video technology like zoom and my clients are having four six sometimes eight networking meetings a day i'm sorry that's hilarious because you're not trying to pick up the girl you're trying to pick up the girl's boss and that's just precious who are you and where are you going what do you want together we'll find the ideal path
0:35 on the way to wow show with your host kevin bemel welcome to the way to wow show my guest this week is tom kent a graduate of the us military academy at west point who has an mba from the university of texas at austin and is a former consultant for pwc after spending time as a cmo in silicon valley tom founded career nerds throughout his 18-year professional life tom has mastered the transition process
1:10 now he works with executives needing to make that next career step last summer during one of the worst job markets in over a century tom had 25 clients hired for executive roles we're going to talk to tom via zoom but first i'm going to make myself a cocktail now in my neighborhood i'm known for making martinis and so i'm just going to whip myself up a quick martini here i make them
1:45 usually about five to one so just two and a half this is just nice tangerine gin and i like my martinis dry so i use extra extra dry vermouth doesn't want to come out of the bottle here this is a chinzano and just a half and we're just gonna get some ice go [Music]
2:21 ice on the floor i promise not to trip on it one of the things i learned from all the bartenders on the show is to stir your cocktails and really let some of the ice melt let the flavors blend together so hopefully my martini skills are improving [Music] i'm just going to grab myself a martini glass here get ourselves a strainer [Music]
2:59 and voila i'm not a i'm not an olive guy so we're ready to go i'll see you over on zoom [Music] so tom it's it's good to see you face to face glad we got this opportunity you know i wanted to start out because it it seems to me that for the foreseeable future finding a job is going to be top on the list for a lot of people whether it's getting a job you know after having lost
3:34 a job or or having to find a different job because they see that that what they're doing now is on a path to nowhere so you're really kind of the ideal person for me to to talk to let's start out tell us tell me where do you think things are going in the job market right now what what what are the trends that you're seeing well what i see is that you know we it's a k-shaped recovery certain industries and certain uh companies are doing really well the stock market uh consistently hits records but if we
4:11 think about you know certain areas of the economy like hospitality or tourism then they're on the downward uh slope of that k so it's really looking at what where are the growth of jobs uh what what's essential tech of course is uh booming and a lot of the stock market is due to tech jobs and so where i see opportunity is for people to really refocus on those areas that are growing because what i see in the in you know as a result of the pandemic is that there is a lot of growth you just have
4:47 to you know go after those industries that are growing rather than uh thinking hey i i lost my job in a restaurant and i'm not going to do anything about it it's really being proactive and really seeking where the growth opportunities are so so let's take that person in you know coming out of hospitality they were working at a restaurant maybe they owned a restaurant and the restaurant is has has closed permanently they've never probably never been involved with technology very much what does that person do in order to
5:22 take advantage of where grab where job growth is happening um well one of the things they can do is look online all the knowledge you want is online for free go to youtube google anything and really taking ownership and really finding that that their next job or their next um opportunity to upskill themselves is online so really it comes down to one word curiosity being curious about the world being willing to learn
5:57 and and uh and really get out of your comfort zone and explore where the opportunities are and where you can up skill so you know today's it's a digital world i've created a coaching business entirely by doing sales calls and coaching people virtually and and i think that you know that's a big opportunity where people can sell products or services online rather than relying on a face-to-face um interaction like hospitality or
6:32 restaurants so you know it's interesting as you're as you're talking i recall um when i was coaching people coming out of the military so one of the most common statements i would get is especially from marines by the way i'm a trigger puller there's nobody in the civilian life who who wants that and i would joke with them well there's probably a few but i'm not sure it would be legal to take those jobs um but but people seem to have a barrier to to getting that curiosity
7:10 is is can you suggest some ways that will help people you know trigger their curiosity get kind of get it going jump started if you will yeah that's a good question kevin i uh i think that a lot of it comes from uh you know not thinking you know when we grow up and and when we're very young we're very curious about the world we learn a lot of new things we learn how to speak languages how to crawl walk and then run and then as adults we
7:46 think oh we're that's beneath us you know i'm not going to learn a new skill i'm not going to learn something new one one thing that i uh teach and coach a lot is networking the process of how to connect with a lot of people that you haven't talked to before and uh and do it really at a big scale well you know the guys that have the biggest trouble or the vps of sales and the high level execs and and the reason why is that they've been doing things in a certain way and they think that that's the way to do
8:21 it in the future and i tell them well the past isn't the future and here's the way that works that you get massive amounts of results and i'll give you an example one one belief people have about networking is that it's all about going to events where you have people uh at a conference or something like that i said yeah that's one way to do networking but people aren't going to events so i show them how to find the right kind of people on linkedin send them a message a very short message that is you know very uh well-defined and scripted
8:57 and set up a one-on-one 20 or 30 minute call that's the new age of networking and they're getting massive results so really being able to be open-minded reframe what you thought um you know success was in the past and looking being open and humble that hey i can learn something new i think humility is also a big thing with curiosity uh arrogance is the number one thing that i see that holds people back from being able to to you know take in um a different point of view and new ideas again you know this something you said
9:34 sparked this thought on my mind at the beginning of the whole covid thing you know when we weren't going to be doing face-to-face events and all that and and i was struggling with wanting to keep in touch with the people in my network right and and how am i going to do that and so i just started a simple thing of of each week sending them a text message sending them an email just and it was it was short a lot of times it was i hope you had a good week have a restful weekend or something like that um and what i found was especially for the people that i was
10:09 getting to know and and and you know bond more closely with my network i started after about three or four months i started getting emails back saying things like you know i really love getting your email every week and to me it seems kind of weird like it's so inconsequential just like a single line but people really appreciate those connection points i think i think we underrate ourselves in networking especially when we think we don't have something to offer other people and and this is giving us a unique
10:44 opportunity because sometimes all people need is just that connection and and and that that all by itself draws them into us more closely i mean i'll add on that and you said you know i think you implied this uh look for opportunity in the situation and you know i tell my clients and and people that there has never been a more unique opportunity to network with more people using video technology like zoom and my clients are
11:20 having four six sometimes eight networking meetings a day per day and think about that could they have that if they were going to a coffee shop if they're going to an office that wouldn't be physically possible and they're networking with people all across the country uh let alone all across a major city and so uh the technology and the new way of doing networking is just i think just so much more advanced and lets you get a lot more done than the old way
11:55 so a lot of times you know getting that mind shift will help you actually be far more productive yeah absolutely so i think we've sort of hit on if you will kind of the first two steps of making a pivot which is get the knowledge right be curious and find out where you can go next and then step number two is meet a lot of people who are in the area that you want to go into right and start building that network so if we've done those two steps where
12:30 where do we go from there how do we go from i know where i want to go i'm talking to the people who are already there but i still need a job how how do i sort of if you will close the deal so i'm asked this question all the time by my clients and and today it was uh three people asking the same question okay when am i gonna find a job and usually get people who have just started the networking process right so i i actually have a very specific answer that i've told them i say once you do 50 networking calls
13:06 that's when you'll start you can expect to start seeing it it might come sooner after 10 or 20 but i give them an interval 50 to 100 is the sweet spot that you should be finding opportunities if you're targeting the right people having the right message and you know doing the right things in terms of following up and so i think that's a pretty good number 5200 i that's worked in my career if by the time you're doing 100 and you're not getting some good leads and maybe you know that interviews that lead to job overs you're probably doing
13:41 something wrong you're probably targeting the wrong people and your message needs some major rework so i think 5200 is a good number to say hey you'll be closing the deal by then so the so it sounds like and correct me if i'm wrong throughout these networking calls you're not actually asking these people for a job you're talking to them about the industry learning about what's going on and that sort of thing and then through that process people start to understand who you are as a potential job candidate and then reach back to you when they hear about an opening is that
14:16 is that the dynamic we're dealing with yes that is exactly correct what what we're doing is we're having a discussion with like-minded people to gain information and advice and also ask for contacts so instead of asking for a job uh what i tell people is you you tell people what you're trying to do so invite them on your journey of what you're trying to do in terms of your job search and allow them to help you by giving you advice information and recommendations and
14:51 through that if there is an opportunity at their company or through somebody they know then then they'll bring it up but the biggest mistakes i see people make early on is they ask for a job why is that a mistake it's a mistake because most people don't have jobs and it's a very desperate move and you're and you're minimizing the impact of the networking from what it could be 100 to less than five or maybe one or two percent because that's how many people will have jobs but what you're getting throughout the process is really expanding your
15:26 information being able to understand about the industry about the company and about the other person and those by the way are the questions that you ask about industry company and about the other person and it doesn't have to be all it can be a variation of them and really gaining more information and then asking always on every single call do you know one or two people that you think i should contact and again this is not people that i have openings but i just want to learn more and uh these are the kind of people that i'd be
16:01 interested in talking to oh excellent excellent so i mean the the process sounds very simple right it's it's a it's like there's commercials when we were a kid it's so simple anybody can do it right it's just so simple i mean a kid could do it and i used to look at those commercials as an adult and go yeah a kid could do it but i'm you know 45 i can't do that um so what for for people who are struggling with that um they could get in touch with someone like you right you're a coach so how how will someone be
16:38 served by having a job hunting coach or how will someone be be helped if you will how how does how does that process work so since i started coaching two years ago and even before i had coaches and the number one thing a coach does is help you get to your goals much faster than you do on your own right now i'm working with three coaches and and so i definitely understand the value of an objective perspective and someone who's uh i can look at my business and what i do in a in a very different way
17:14 what i do for my clients in terms of you know getting them to their next career move much faster is provide them structure and really an understanding of how they represent themselves their personal brand on linkedin resume and telling their elevator pitch and their entire story being very concise and direct and very future focused rather than focused on the past and then when we go into networking on really how to do three things really well how to find the right people how to message them and then how to
17:51 conduct the networking meeting with the end goal to connect with as many decision makers as possible that could be in a position either to hire them or refer them to somebody else that could hire them what i find people typically do is they the biggest mistakes i see is they talk too much about themselves they think that the the intro message needs to be a long-winded um script about everything about themselves which they don't really have to and if you're messaging in linkedin
18:26 you actually want very little because most people check on mobile so you want it to fit on one screen and also the advantage of linkedin is that they can click over to your profile and hopefully you don't say too much about yourself so that you get some curiosity and get them to actually look at your profile and if you have a great profile it'll actually make uh an even better impact with the messaging so i think that you know really not fumbling around and and trying to do things the wrong way and actually it's it's you know could people find yeah but it's
19:02 much more inefficient if they're doing things the old-school way of networking a lot of people think about just their immediate network when they think about networking and rarely do they expand to talk to a lot of people where they have some commonality but they might not have ever met that person and that's where i find a lot of a lot of great networking happens is where you have comedy same school or commonality as maybe being veterans commonality of working at the same company say you've worked at ibm
19:38 same industry same geography finding something in that background that's common and that's really a great asset and great way to connect with people all right so i'm going to switch gears up on you here before before our time runs out because i i saw this actually on your profile uh you at some point got to meet uh president reagan right can you can you tell us the the kind of the short version of that story because i'm i'm i'm i'm curious and not very many of us get to meet uh a president of the united states so so i was invited uh well
20:14 uh i was my senior year at west point we went to la and we gave a four day presentation at some academic symposium and um you know the first night at we all went out and uh we were at this pool a pool table and um my classmate and i were talking to a few uh a few girls and uh and i was the one i was talking to told me she worked for ronald reagan uh doing finance for him and and then i said said all these great things and she said well would you like to meet him and i said sure she said so call me on
20:50 monday and i'll set it up i called monday morning and by monday afternoon i had a meeting spent 15 minutes talking to him i actually took my professor because he was in the room when i was calling the office and he drove me there so he got to meet him as well i'm sorry that's hilarious because you're not trying to pick up the girl you're trying to pick up the girl's boss and that's just precious we've actually never met after that it was uh you know the only time we ever met was in the president's office very good so
21:26 so going back to our first subject if i can stop laughing for someone who knows they need to make that that that career shift that that change in their profession or they have to find a job what's what is something that they can do you know right after they're finished watching this interview to take that first step toward that goal what should they do uh i would say true immediate things first you know fix your linkedin profile make it the best it can be and second find 50 people that are in positions
22:02 that could be your hiring manager and you have some commonality and send them all connection requests that stress the commonality and what you like about their profile and then do a follow-up uh what we do when we do 50 initial connections we usually get half people accept and out of those about 40 percent um agree to meet so from 50 we usually get something like um you know 10 or 15 uh meetings set up and that's a really well targeted um group so if you do that with 50 people
22:38 you will get anywhere from 5 to 15 people and then set networking meetings with them and then repeat that go to another 50 another 50. if you do this enough and you have 50 to 100 meetings you will find a job excellent well tom wonderful advice great story i'm still laughing about it in my head thank you so much for coming and talking with us on the way to wow show hey thanks a lot it was a pleasure see you guys that's our show for this week folks
23:13 thinking back about what tom explained to us when we're looking for that next step in our professional journey looking for that next job two things will serve us well curiosity and humility curiosity to find what it is we really want to do and humility to admit that we probably need to learn a few more things if we really want to get there sage sage words indeed
23:48 courage at all times my friends and marie you're still my bow [Music]
24:36 you