Networking for Job Seekers: How to Build Meaningful Connections and Land Your Dream Job

Krissy: Good morning everyone. It is almost the weekend. which is why recording these podcasts is always so exciting because I know that the weekend is upon us and I am excited for that. It’s Thursday for us, but if you’re listening to this, it’s Friday for you. So I’m looking forward to.

Krissy: Tomorrow, or for everyone listening, here today. But excited for another great episode of the Talent GTM podcast I have with me today. One of my favorite people, started off as a client, but now I would consider a good friend Cara Isaacs. Cara is an HR business partner at Invoca. She’s been there for four years and she’s been involved in many facets of HR at the company, recruiting, L and D, general HR, and currently, you know, is the HR business partner for the go-to-market team.

Krissy: Cara, welcome to the podcast today.

Cara: Thanks, Krissy. So excited to be here and I will have to, echo your sentiment. I also view you as a very good friend now, and I’m so glad we met each other and got, brought together through a client relationship, but,
Krissy: Yeah.
Cara: I’m so excited to be here. Thanks for having me.
Krissy: Yeah, no, of course I am. I’m ex, I know we’ve talked about doing this. I, I feel like I probably say this on every podcast we’ve talked about doing this for a while, which is normally kind of how it goes, right? Just finding the time, but also wanting it to be really authentic, and so I. Today what, you know, the, the podcast is appropriately titled Maximizing Talent: Strategies for Development and Retention.
Krissy: And so, you know, kind of setting the stage here of what we’re talking about, what problem is going on, what challenges. So I think hiring right now is really hard in a different way than it was a year ago or, or even five years ago. And it’s, it’s not necessarily in just finding talent or the right talent, ’cause there’s a whole specialization piece that I think is taking off.
Krissy: But people are really afraid to hire because they can’t afford to get it wrong. It feels like there’s no room for error. Right. And there’s a lot of accountability and eyes looking at, if you hire, you spend money to bring someone on. And pay a recruiter, you know, this person needs to work out and we can’t afford for them to be seven months in and they were the wrong fit.
Krissy: Right. And which, which I totally understand. And, and that’s, that makes sense. Right. And so it’s creating a lot of anxiety and uncertainty of how people hire, what they, what they think that they need. and then there’s the other side where, you know, the saying of you need to do more with less, right?
Krissy: So, hey, I can’t hire, I, I laid off some people, but like, I can’t hire, we don’t have the money to replace and we need to, you know, make what we have work, but, you know, developing employees and creating career paths and all those things in order to retain them feels like, I think a lot of times it’s looked at as a nice to have and also feels like that’s great, but we are in survival mode right now.
Krissy: It is not a priority. And even if I wanted to be a priority, I don’t have the time because I’m, we’re in survival mode. And so like, I don’t have the time to develop someone and create a career path to check a box for them. I feel like they should be just grateful to have a job and I, and you know, that might sound a little harsh based on how some people feel, but that’s, I think, Feel like kind of a lot of what’s going on the current environment.
Krissy: Right. And so with a lot of conflicting views, but curious, you know, your thought on if, if you’re seeing that, you know, as a whole just with other companies, let alone your own.
Cara: Yeah, no, I think you, set the stage really well for how the current environment is within just the economy , within just the state of the world at the moment. Right. Um,and I think. That, how that’s impacting our businesses, especially like you’re saying, maybe the smaller ones, the startup that are in that startup phase, whether that’s mid stage, late stage, et cetera.
Cara: And like you mentioned, I’ve been in Avoca for four years and, it is constantly changing. It What we are trying to work toward is changing, the landscape is changing and so we’re constantly having to juggle and shift and be agile with those, changes.
Cara: But as you mentioned, what is so important and like you say, you know, people feel like, oh my gosh, I don’t have time because I have all these things I’m trying to juggle. I have all these changes that are happening that I’m having to adjust to and potentially are thinking that, like you said, they don’t have time to really invest in their employees or develop their employees, but your employees are your number one asset at your company and your lack of investment in them is just going to be more of a, hindrance isn’t the white word, it’s gonna be more of a, An issue in the long term.
Cara: And I would argue that a manager’s number one priority is to manage their employees, and that is managing them in the state that they’re in now. Performance management, but also coaching and developing them to get to that next stage as well. And really, like you’re mentioning, like retaining their top talent through that support in their development.
Cara: And we are in that position where we’re having to do more with less. And there is little time in the day, right? But I think the more that you invest in your employees and develop them and support them. You’ll be a more well-oiled, efficient, effective machine rather than having to feel like you have to take that all on as your own, as a manager perhaps.
Cara: Cause I know we, we run into this a lot at these smaller companies where managers are player coaches and so they’re doing both the work of an individual contributor and the work of a manager, which I think is when we run into that, more of that concern around like, I don’t have the time ’cause I have to carry this, this workload as well.
Cara: So that’s really where I would argue like the manager should first and foremost be a manager. And the better they manage, the better they delegate and,manage their team, the more they’ll be able to offload some of that individual contributor
Krissy: Yeah. I could do a whole
Krissy: podcast
Krissy: on player
Cara: I know. I was gonna say,
Krissy: but we won’t do that
Cara: we can go down a long, a long path there. Yeah.
Krissy: Okay. I think that if you were to ask anybody, you know, Hey, do you think that employees appreciate and it, it helps them, with if you are helping develop their skillset and helping show them career path pathing and figuring that out.
Krissy: Do you think that that has a positive or negative impact? I would say 99%. Cause it’s ever a hundred of, pretty much anyone you talk to would say yes. So why are people so maybe hesitant isn’t the right word to do it. Why is it not a priority do you think?
Cara: I think it comes back to what, what we started this podcast off of with is, lack of time, lack of resources, perhaps lack of funds, you know, that fall into resources. But, and and to be honest, considering I’m kind of in the height of some of this work myself, it’s a really large undertaking and I actually don’t think people fully understand how big of an undertaking it is, to develop like a really well thought out, developed career path.
Cara: But what I would argue is, that shouldn’t deter managers or anyone from having those career growth conversations with their employees. Again, I think especially people that work in these like startups, we are typically pretty scrappy, right? So like we will kind of work with what we’ve got. We will work with, we’ll find a solution.
Cara: We will try to figure things out ourselves. And that is actually something I encourage our managers to do a lot like with their employees around specifically career pathing, which I’m kind of also calling career growth because I kind of view career pathing, right? As like a, a well-defined, laid out trajectory for our employees, which that is the, that is the type of work that is a really large undertaking that, That takes time and, and a lot of, a lot of backend work, but the not having that should not be an excuse to not have those career development conversations with your employees.
Cara: so I would say that’s, that’s my guess is probably why there’s hesitation is just because it feels like a really big thing to undertake and like, you know, biting off more than you can chew kind of thing where. That just seems like too much. That’s overwhelming. I just like, don’t even wanna touch it. I don’t wanna go there like, eh, I’ll, we’ll deal about that.
Cara: We’ll, we’ll think about that another day. We’ll deal with that another day. So really just thinking, I would encourage like managers to think about their sphere of influence and kind of what they can control when it comes to that, career pathing. And perhaps it’s also maybe another hesitation is, you know, maybe you work at a company where you don’t feel like you have that decision making power or that you have that sort of influence on the larger scale of the organization to like drive for this career path.
Cara: But again, if you kind of think about your own sphere of influence, you can think, okay, well I have this one employee. For example, let’s say this is a sales manager. I have one employee on my sales team who’s really interested in going to customer success. If we don’t have open positions in customer success right now, we don’t even have like an entry level position right now that they could go into.
Cara: But what could I do as their manager to get them either in front of people in customer success or help them develop their customer service skills or, you know, that sort of thing. And so those are things that you can like bite off like really small milestones to, to start to address some of those concerns because I will say that, Like you said, Krissy, 99.9% of employees like want to know that there’s a path for them or want to know that there is like a light at the end of the tunnel, that they’re not pigeonholed in the position that they’re in.
Cara: And there are things within that that we can control and there’s things that we can’t. And so I really kind of wanna focus on like what each person can control. That goes for both the employee controlling and advocating for themselves, but also the manager, leaning in and supporting where they can.
Krissy: Yeah. No, I mean, I think that’s great advice and it, it kind of leads into my next question, but one of the things I was gonna say is, It’s always interesting to me sometimes when I, ’cause we, at Blueprint, we work with a lot of early stage companies and so obviously, you know, the, the type of AE you need at a Series A is very different than at a Series B.
Krissy: Even if it’s both of them are asking for an enterprise AE as an example. But one of the things that we, you know, have to have conversations around a lot is making sure that clients understand just because someone asks about career. And development doesn’t mean that they’re not ready to be scrappy.
Krissy: Doesn’t mean that that, but also on the other hand, making sure candidates know, Hey, if you say certain things, this is what it’s gonna be translated to, that you are a big company person and you need structure and organization that. A small company doesn’t have. And so it’s funny ’cause like you can’t, it, it’s a really delicate dance during that interview process of people trying to figure those things out.
Krissy: But what I always try to remind clients of is you’re interviewing human beings and regardless of what stage your company is at, human beings care about purpose. Like, I don’t care who you talk to, they want purpose and they don’t care if you’re a seed stage or trying to figure out product market fit still.
Krissy: You probably shouldn’t be hiring if you’re trying to figure out product market fit, but they don’t care. They want purpose. That’s what’s gonna keep them fulfilled. So, but kind of leading into the next question, which is something that you’ve already kinda started talking about, but what are strategies that companies can use to retain talent regardless of size?
Krissy: Right.
Cara: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think, and this is where I kind, again, we kind of get scrappy and I think the first thing to remember, or one key takeaway here, I just wanna make sure like emphasize this is every employee is different. There is no one size fits all strategy to retaining one single human being or one single employee.
Cara: Right? Like for example, I mean, well, we are all driven by, like you said, purpose. And we are all driven to either look for a new job or stay at our company for whatever at that time is most important to us. So for example, if. Like I can, I can say, you know, four years ago, so prior to Invoca for me, I needed, I was looking for a job that was closer because this is pre [00:13:20] Covid.
Cara: When we couldn’t be remote and we were in office, I was looking for a job that was closer to where I lived. but also one that had a great company culture. Like those were the two big ticket items for me when looking for a new job. So that meant that even though my old company tried to retain me and tried to give me a promotion and tried to gimme more money, that was not what was motivating me at that time.
Cara: And so I, I passed on that right? There was really nothing they could do to retain me by that point because the culture was not where I like. The culture at that company was not where I wanted to be, and especially the culture on the team that I was on was not what I wanted to be in. And that was having a really bad effect on, or impact on me mentally, emotionally, physically, to where I said, this is the most important thing to me at this moment in time.
Cara: So I, I need to leave this and find something that fits for what I’m looking for. And so I share that as an example because, as I just mentioned there, every person is motivated by something different, and I would say that this is a manager’s responsibility in a way, again, to invest in your employees to really understand what it is that motivates each individual separately.
Cara: And I even had this conversation with a group the other day where, you know, I was trying to be very upfront that like, we don’t have opportunities available right now at the company. We’re not really hiring. We don’t have like people really leaving the company, which is great, right?
Cara: Like we’re, we’re, we are retaining our, our employees, but because of that, there is a lack of opportunity. And I had shared, you know, we don’t want like, but perhaps what you’re looking for is not add Invoca. Right? And I’m not trying again to push anybody out. I’m just trying to be very honest that I can’t promise you that this position or this opportunity that you want is gonna be here in six months.
Cara: And one of the questions I got in response to that was like, okay, well then what are you doing to retain us if you’re telling us to kind of go look at for jobs elsewhere? And my response was, well, we have a lot of things that we’re trying to do to retain you all, but if all that motivates you or what’s most important to you is that promotion and we can’t give that to you.
Cara: I don’t think there’s anything we can do to retain you. I share that as an example because even though we have the best of intentions to retain, right, and we have talent rewards or we have like total rewards in place, like fair compensation, a great amount of benefits, things like that.
Cara: That might not be what motivates that individual at that point in time, and that might not be something they, they care as much about, about other than having a promotion. So that’s why I share that, that like, it’s very individualized. And so I would say the key takeaway for a manager is to really dive into that with each one of your employees, to understand A, what motivates you, what is like the number one and top two, three things that would keep you at a company.
Cara: And then additionally, really just exploring what interests them from a career progression perspective.
Krissy: No, that makes sense. That, I mean, I think that’s great and it, when you really kind of look into this one, you have to be honest in those types of situations. Right? But also two, this obsession and it, it’s with a younger generation just because of win Tech boomed, right? I’m not saying that it doesn’t happen as you get older, but when tech.
Krissy: When SaaS got, I feel like really big in the sense of just, it started really, you know, having lots of hiring and everything around 10 years ago, it was before that, but you know, really started maximizing at another level where even in Tennessee we started seeing SaaS opportunities and we weren’t seeing those before, right?
Krissy: Where they were originally just out of Silicon Valley or New York. And so, But there was this like fast promotion, like, hey, if you go to a startup, like you could be the director, the VP of sales in like a year, and it w it, and that was the stage that set people like, this is what success looks like, this is what growth looks like.
Krissy: When, you know, the ironic thing is the higher up you move, you, you, if you’re actually getting real opportunities, you’ll start to go, I don’t wanna go up any faster
Cara: Yeah.
Krissy: I, it’s not even just a responsibility like, I’m gonna get cut and have to deal with a lot of like, oh, I didn’t realize I have to deal with all of this.
Krissy: Like, it’s a lot more stressful and there’s a lot more risk in it to some extent. Right. And so, but you know, when you have, let’s say you’re an AE as an example, like you’re a mid-market AE, let’s say you have segments and you’re like, man, I want to be an enterprise AE, but there’s, looks like there’s no opportunity because of the economy or whatever for the next two years.
Krissy: That’s just what it feels like, right? You. Being in a position is only stagnant if you make it stagnant. And, and it even goes for being an sdr, which I know SDR is, it’s harder, more monotonous work. so that can get old a little bit faster. But
Krissy: if for being a mid-market AE, if, if you’re telling me you’ve mastered that because you hit your quota, Like for a year or two or a quarter, I’m sorry, but like you, you need to like sit down and really recheck that you understand sales because you could be in that position for five, six years and continue getting better.
Krissy: I’m not saying you need to stay in that position for five or six years to get to what you want, but you know, it’s looking at opportunities I think a little bit more objectively, and I know that’s from the candidate side from a development, but I think when it comes to managers, that’s always something where.
Krissy: When I was on the management side, and even now with my employees, right, we are very thoughtful of how can we help you grow, right? And do better at what you’re doing now, because that’s development like that is those skill sets that you don’t need a promotion in order to develop that, that’s gonna make you stronger.
Krissy: So when you do go out for that other job or go up for the promotion, when it comes, you have. You’re not just qualified, but you are gonna just rock and roll in there, right? And have way less risk in transition. And I think people underestimate how important that is in a market that’s a little bit more cutthroat, right?
Krissy: Where, and, and also, you know, enterprise opportunity can look great at another company, but what if you don’t understand all of those aspects and really know what to dig into to see if you’re gonna be successful? You could be setting yourself up for failure. And so I think. Managers taking advantage of, you know, even with your company where there’s not really opportunities available right now,looking at how do I grow and get better at my craft and mastering these skills and, and even for enterprise, you don’t have to be an enterprise AE to work on enterprise level skills,
Krissy: you know, so just, just,
Krissy: something kind of thinking of that.
Cara: Yeah, and I think you bring up a really great point that kind of made me think about a few things, right? Where you’re kind of talking about what I call readiness for each employee to get to that next step that they want. And that’s one of those things that I would say managers and employees alike can really control and, you know, drive forward without, with, with a lack of opportunity at the end of the road, I guess I’m trying to say.
Cara: So basically, what can I do right now? In my position to get me ready for that next step. Well, first let’s back up to what I shared earlier, which is, a, you need to figure out what motivates your employee. B, you need to figure out what they are interested in, like what that path is because. Not everybody, like if I’m thinking SDRs as an example, like not every SDR wants to continue the path in sales.
Cara: They may be in SDR and think, oh, I’m actually interested in customer success or marketing. And I actually have a really great story I can share about that in a minute. So, so I would say managers don’t assume that you know what your, what your employee wants to do next. Have that open conversation with them.
Cara: And then three is really like you’re talking about Krissy. investing in their readiness, and so getting them ready for that next step, whatever that is. And so if it is an sdr who wants to become an account executive, okay. They probably, my, one of my, you know, throwing this against the wall kind of thing, like skill gaps that I’m imagining they might have as closing a deal.
Cara: Like they haven’t really gone through that full sale cycle as an sdr, right? Like, so as an AEthey will be expected to close a deal and go through that full sales cycle. So what can you do while they’re in the s D R role to prepare them for closing a a deal cycle? Is it shadowing an AE on all their calls?
Cara: Is it like, you know, having an AE as a mentor to really talk them through like what, like, you know, whatever that specific sales cycle is at your company. Like there’s, there’s a lot of different things we can tap on that actually don’t really cost anything unless you count, you know, payroll head count. I mean, yes, I count something, but I think.
Cara: That doesn’t really cost anything additional. Right? And those are areas that you can tap into. that would go a really long way for the employee because that even if it seems small and minimal in your mind, That might be like one of the mo like, yep, that will make the employee feel, oh man, they really are invested in me.
Cara: They’re really supportive of my growth. I really appreciate that they’re letting me take the time out of my day and for my day job to do X, Y, Z. It really goes a long way and it does continue to make people feel motivated to stay where they’re at. ’cause I hear it all the time at Invoca. People love invoca.
Cara: People love working at this company. I love working at this company.
Krissy: I love it too.
Cara: Yeah, I know. It’s the best. Like it’s the best. And I’ve been there for four years and I’ll still say that, right? Even on the hardest days when I’ve had a lot of them, I’m like, I’m so grateful to be at this company because, you know why?
Cara: I feel like I have a supportive manager. I feel like I have supportive team members. I have, we have a supportive executive team and that’s what motivates me. And I have heard that across the board. And so people don’t wanna leave Invoca, they wanna stay, but they’re like, what are you doing to retain me?
Cara: What are you doing to keep me here because I want to stay here. So again, so going back to getting your employees ready for that next step, whatever that looks like for them, and also I kind of a fun segue or fun segue, but what you also bring up, Krissy, is this like idea of like instant gratification where people, and like you said, you probably experienced it on the candidate side too, where you’ll probably interview people that are like, well, how long is it gonna take me to get promoted?
Cara: Like, I’m sure that’s a question that like, you know, I’ve heard it. You’ve heard it, and that’s, that’s honestly in my mind, it’s a fine question to ask about, like what are my career growth opportunities at Invoca, or sorry at Invoca. What are my career growth opportunities at this company? Because that’s a question I asked right when I started at Invoca.
Cara: But it wasn’t, I didn’t have myself on a ticker. I didn’t, I wasn’t like, okay, well if I hit six months and I’m not promoted that I’m leaving, like I didn’t go in with that mentality. I was just more curious like, what are the opportunities that might be available to me? And I think that’s a perfectly fine question to ask.
Cara: Where you get a little bit, you know, maybe this is more of like a sidebar for candidates interviewing,
Krissy: Yeah.
Cara: but like asking the question of how long it’s gonna take me to get promoted. It’s gonna make someone think you’re not, you don’t wanna be in this job, you wanna be in the next job?
Krissy: Right, right,
Cara: That will, you know, that might just, just, just a heads up on that.
Cara: But either way. So I think there’s just this idea of like, you know, and as you mentioned, like in SaaS and in startups, it seemed to be. The, the growth trajectory was really quick and it would happen fast. perhaps putting people in positions that they weren’t exactly ready for or maybe in titles that , wouldn’t translate well to another company and wouldn’t have prepared them for that.
Cara: And I do think just that and generation generationally speaking, I think we, or, and culturally speaking, like we are a culture that is used to like having things. Done quickly and at our fingertips. And I would say that translates as well to career growth. People are like, I think I’m doing a fine job in this.
Cara: I’m ready for the next step. When am I gonna get it? And if I don’t get it right away, I’m gonna be disappointed. So it’s also just tempering your own expectations, right? Like you gotta work hard to, to show that you’re ready and to show that like and, and that also, the third thing is means you need to be doing the job that you’re in really well as well.
Cara: Like, you need to be performing really well in your current role to even be like, considered for that next position. So it’s a, it’s a combination of making sure you’re performing well in the world that you’re in, being open with your manager about what it’s that you eventually, where you want to get and where this person, where your manager can help you kind of close those gaps.
Cara: The skill gaps, performance gaps, what have you, to be ready. But you also have to be sure that you’re performing. In your current position as well cause that’s another big thing that I see people breeze over a lot, right?
Krissy: Right, right. No, a hundred percent. So we’re talking about, you know, employee readiness, right? And getting them ready and career pathing, all those things. But it kind of leads me to are when the company is uncertain, you know, we’re in uncertain, unchartered waters. You know, challenging economic times are layoffs the only option when it comes to conserving cash and trying to get by during challenging times.
Cara: Short answer. no. I at least, okay, so I’ll be, I’ll caveat this. I don’t, I don’t run a company, I’m not a CEO. I don’t [00:26:40] make those decisions by any means, so, and I’m sure that’s different across. It’s dependent on whatever company you’re in and, and what the landscape is and all of that. Of course.
Cara: But I would love to share a story actually, on how we got creative at Invoca when we were facing layoffs, back during Covid. Just to kind of give an example of like sometimes maybe just a little creativity can help, can go a long way in this sort of scenario. So, you know, as we recall three years ago when we were in the.
Cara: At the beginning of Covid or kind of in the midst of, of what we thought was gonna be two weeks, that turned into months, that turned into years, you know, we unfortunately did have to go through a sh a small, reduction in force a couple of months into covid, and it mostly impacted our sales organization and so naturally.
Cara: You know, SDRs were some of those positions that were kind of, we were needing to, to cut back on. But what, and I have to give credit to a couple of other wonderful colleagues of mine, that were on my team PR around this time as well, that came up with this great idea where we took a few SDRs. They went through this kind of like application interview process, but essentially we opened up like, I can’t remember the exact number, maybe four or five of entry level positions into other parts of the business that we still needed help with.
Cara: So for example, customer success marketing, like those were still areas that were like chugging along. We needed to, to kind of throw a few more resources at. And so we opened up these. Kind of entry level positions for the SDRs to apply and be considered for. And essentially what happened was we moved again, I think four or five people into these positions.
Cara: So I think there was a couple in customer success, one in marketing, some into account management on the sales side. And I would say every, we still to this day have three people. So this is three years in. We have three of those SDRs. Who are now, who have both, who have all three been promoted at one point since moving into that entry level role within those organizations and are still here today.
Cara: And are, in those parts of the organizations that interested them to begin with. So they started out in sales. They wanted that, that was the route they were thinking at first. This opportunity presented itself. This opened doors for. The employees who are interested in customer success and marketing, and those three are still here today in the fields that they wanna be in, continuing to grow and be promoted and doing a fantastic job.
Cara: And so I just love that story and I love sharing that because it is such a testament a to like how freaking awesome invoca is, and B, like showing that like there are ways to be creative if you’re smart about it. And you know, you know, again, I, I wasn’t involved in those conversations from like a money saving perspective. But like, I trust the leadership in our company and I trust that they knew that like, this was a, a, a good solution in the face of having to lay people off. And, you know, and I wanna caveat that saying like, we still, we still did have to do layoffs, right? But we were still able to retain a few people that we otherwise wouldn’t have.
Krissy: Right. I, I love that. But for multiple reasons. So one, if you were, if you’re listening to this and you just, you know, if you’re this far, and I’ve gotta imagine that you are listening intently to what we’re talking about, but if for some reason you kind of glazed over that rewind and listened to that example that she just shared, because that is something that any size company can do, any industry can do.
Krissy: So my question, you know, maybe you call it a trick question, but the answer is no. Co layoffs are not the only option. Now, I’m not saying that they aren’t an option. But I think a lot of companies do layoffs prematurely. there’s no, they look at things very linear, very like tunnel vision. We have this much money, we need, you know, if we can’t raise any more money and they, we talk about worst case scenario, then this is how far it will get us.
Krissy: Which there’s nothing wrong by the way with planning that out. So let’s just cut people so we can just make sure. And, and by the way, I wanna highlight. That is anxiety. That’s the definition of anxiety. Thinking about the worst case scenario that hasn’t happened and doesn’t even like, may not, may not only not happen, but actually may not even be as high of a probability as you think.
Krissy: And then acting on that right now versus going, this is one scenario. Let’s remind ourselves that this is the worst case scenario and let’s look at other things that could buy us time or. You know, allow us to maybe never hit that and grow. Right? And so I just wanna highlight that because something that Invoca has always had that’s been very impressive to me, and I think I’ve said it to you all before, and I’ve said it to everyone that’s interviewed and talked about is the leadership is like something I’ve never seen. And what I mean by that is you have great leaders at every company, but it’s a leader or two leaders. It’s not the leadership team as a whole. And that is what is so, so you have this great VP of sales, but the CEO, you know, is making decisions that are very un leader-like, and they are not putting their people first and just they think they’re doing, you know, making hard decisions, but they’re really just making the ones that make their fear feel better. Right. Versus it’s hard a leader role, right. Is, hold on, I’ve gotta pause for a second. I’ve gotta get my emotions in check.
Krissy: Because emotions and feelings are suggestions. They’re not facts, at least not right away. Like they are suggestions. That’s so important to remember.
Cara: Make big decisions when our emotions are heightened.
Krissy: Yes. And so, no matter how much those investors that are telling you to conserve your cash that they also told you earlier, go hire, hire, hire.
Krissy: I just can’t get enough of that ironic conversation, that’s been happening in the past six months, to go, hold on. What can we do to look at how, you know, we can utilize our talent here? To actually bring real, like there are some skill sets of folks that could actually be in these roles. And look, it’s not, like you said, it doesn’t always prevent, you know, some of the layoffs or whatever, but there’s a real opportunity there to use.
Krissy: You have and go, our people are what make our business. Right. And I think, you know, people, everyone talks about that, but they still don’t believe it. That’s why, that’s why people are freaking out about AI. I’m not saying AI shouldn’t be serious and looked at, but it’s, it’s. It’s a view of we’re still underestimating freaking human beings.
Krissy: We’re still un, we’re still not valuing people. So of course you think that it’s gonna take over the world in two seconds. And again, I get that we’ve gotta watch this.
Cara: Yeah.
Krissy: you all there are just with any technology, it might re remove some jobs that are no longer efficient with humans doing it or people doing it.
Krissy: But now that’s gonna create new
Cara: Exactly.
Krissy: That for us, just like you think about, you know, the industrial Revolution and, and people working in factories and on assembly lines in a way that we don’t anymore, right? We have technology to help reduce the amount of jobs that are needed there. But guess what we didn’t have back then?
Krissy: We didn’t have tech jobs, we didn’t have account executives. CS, the CS department is like roughly 10 years old there. There’s an article Gainsite wrote about where. I think it was in 2013, you know, don’t quote me on this, but something around this time there was like 400, or maybe even less than that.
Krissy: It might have even been under a hundred CS jobs, like globally, worldwide. And now there’s like, you know, tens of thousands, right? And so that, that role in and of itself is new because of the advancement of technology or SaaS companies in particular, right? So I say all that because we always. Have to continue creating these jobs, but it’s just an element of how we just under, we we’re so quick to underestimate and undervalue our people and put stuff into things that we think will make us feel better.
Krissy: Right. There are so many companies that will lay off people and they’ll literally go take that money and go invest it in marketing. Like it makes me feel better. Right. And it’s just, you just went and wasted all of that versus going, how do I get. Some of these employees, it’s not all of them to really step it up, right?
Krissy: And, or go into something that we, we can be more successful in some, I commend that effort, which is great and it’s a great success story, but it’s not a unique, it doesn’t have to be a unique success story. That’s something that anyone can do. And just because it feels hard or uncomfortable, you know, we’re, we’re creatures of habit, and.
Krissy: If it’s not something that we’re used to doing, it’s gonna be hard. Even if we know it’s good, it’s gonna be hard to implement. Right.
Cara: Well, going back to even what you shared in the beginning, which is like, it also just takes more time and effort,
Krissy: Mm-hmm.
Cara: Something that people, again, kind of going, pulling it back to instant gratification too, right? People don’t wanna invest that time and effort because they are so overwhelmed with all the other things they have to do that it’s easier to just say, let’s cut this and then and reinvest it here versus. What if we sit and think about this and be creative? What are some other things that we can do? And that’s, I don’t think enough people take enough time these days to just slow down, think things through,
Krissy: Yes,
Cara: Make sure you’re making the right decisions.
Krissy: yes. It’s the pause and I will, I will say while it’s a lot of work, it’s not as much work as people think. Like it feels bigger than it is so, You know, once you, once you give yourself the time to focus with people, to come up with these ideas, you, you can figure it out pretty quickly. you don’t have to actually allocate near as much time as you think and you’ll start to actually feel better, even though you don’t wanna start that process, right?
Krissy: Like, you’ll start to feel better. I’m like, okay, I’m glad I’m doing this right. But I think that’s, that’s one thing if you’re talking about how do I retain employees? And grow, you know, career path and all those things. Like the first thing you need to do is just pause and stop for a second and figure out what you are going to do, what plan you’re gonna put in place in order to commit to trying, versus just letting the overwhelmingness of, I don’t even know if that’s a word, but just the overwhelming feeling of.
Krissy: What’s going on? Take over and you just keep going, you know, a million miles an hour. And I get it. Look, managers and leaders are asked to do too much today, right? They’re asked, they’re, they are told manager people, but they’re asked for 50,000 reports and all this stuff that honestly, half time doesn’t matter and they’re in meetings.
Krissy: I, you know, I remember it. I was, I literally had had to stop. I had started declining meetings because, At a previous company. I was in then like seven hours out of the eight hour workday, and they were like, we’re gonna come in here to brainstorm. I’m like, no, we’re not. You come with the plan and what we’re gonna do, and then we can talk together about how we do it.
Krissy: But I’m not here to brainstorm for your job. Like I’ve gotta go work with my people. You do the brainstorming, if you wanna call this meeting with an agenda, action items and a clear outcome that we’re driving to, and then I’ll attend.
Cara: Can have a whole other podcast about that too. Right? About
Cara: efficient meetings.
Krissy: a lot of topics that we could talk about a hundred percent,
Krissy: but I guess what are, what are some things that managers and leaders can do to invest in their talent regardless of available resources or funds?
Cara: Yeah. So I think kind of going back to you know, what I was sharing earlier is, and like to your point, Krissy, it, it’s a lot simpler I think, than people think it is, where it’s really just, it’s having conversations, it’s paying attention, it’s listening. Like those, those, those skills that, you know, we, we, I feel like we’ve hu as a human kind of progressively gotten worse at, given the like,
Cara: change in technology and things like that.
Cara: But that really is. What you can do as a manager without using any additional funds. That’s something you could have set up an every one-on-one with your employee, whether that’s weekly or whether it’s you, you, spend one one-on-one a month talking about career development, you know, whatever that is.
Cara: But it’s, and it’s also asking the question. So again, like back to listening, ask your employees, what do you want to do? It’s a really simple question. It may not have a simple answer, right? Like there may, like, the employee may be like, oh man, that’s a loaded question. Like, there’s a lot that I wanna do.
Cara: But it’s like, think of it as like a, you know, like sales people do discovery calls all the time, or like, It’s the same thing like with your employee, like do a discovery call with your employee. Like what is it that interests you? What is it that you wanna do?
Cara: And in a long term, right, where do you see yourself in five years?
Cara: That question. But so really setting aside that time and being intentional about having those conversations, because again, in the remote world that we’re in, you do need to make time for those conversations, you need to be intentional about that. Yeah. one other thing that we do at Invoca as well, which, you know, this would [00:40:00] require a, a, a bit of more money or resource, but we offer, each year a professional development allowance to each of our employees.
Cara: And that’s a standard amount that doesn’t roll over year to year, but it’s like one standard amount each fiscal year that employees can use on. Basically whatever they want. Like, I mean, obviously within reason, but like for example, I’ve seen people use it on. going, you know, signing up for a LinkedIn subscription or, or LinkedIn learning subscription.
Cara: people going to conferences like some, like people like Latinas in Tech or women in tech or anything like that, that is of interest to them, that also helps them develop professionally. There’s a lot of different things that people can use, use it on, and they can be creative. You could even use it on like a podcast subscription or whatever, which ones cost money, but like a book, whatever it is.
Cara: And that is essentially like at their discretion with their manager and, and another, and that’s another easy thing that I would say, like it doesn’t even matter what the amount is. I think even just sharing that, that’s an option with the employees will make them feel like, Oh wow. Like, ’cause we’ve had a great response to it.
Cara: You know, like, people, like, I’m so glad, like, this makes me feel like my company’s investing in my success or investing in me as a, in my development. And so that’s something also that you could explore, that managers or even companies can explore is around like offering something like that if they don’t already.
Cara: Then really like, again, coming back to that different motivation for each employee again, that’s, I think, part of that discovery conversation with them. But then really thinking about as a manager, controlling what you can control. because we can’t control everything. We can’t control opportunities within the business.
Cara: We can’t control when somebody gets promoted. Like, I mean, that is back to your point about people, Krissy like. People are the most unpredictable resource that we
Cara: have, right? Like, they are so unpredictable. You never know what you’re gonna get. And I can speak from a lot of experience being in HR that this is like my day, this is my day to day, right?
Cara: And, again, it’s not a one size fits all. We are not all robots. We are not all ai, you know, robots, but we are individuals who are motivated by individual things and have our own perceptions and our own opinions and et cetera, et cetera. And so, really like, again, dig into what that motivation is for each of your employees, but also don’t worry about the things that you can control.
Cara: Only think about your sphere of influence as a manager. Like what can you control? What can you do to both support them in the job that they’re in now, ensuring that they’re performing to the expectations that you, that you have set in place, but also what can you control to get them developed for the next step that they are interested in.
Cara: It really just boils down to have simple conversations,
Cara: be intentional,
Cara: conversations and listen.
Krissy: totally. I think , you don’t need to be a hero here, right? Like there’s something like, oh my gosh, well this person’s motivated by purses and this person is motivated by this. Like, we’re not asking everything to be unique, right? But it’s one, you gotta be having those one-on-ones if you’re not having ’em.
Krissy: And part of those one-on-ones need to have that part of the conversation. It’s gotta be more than just talking about work day-to-day stuff, right? I think. Regardless of the size of your company, everyone, even if you were like, Hey, I’m gonna pay for a hundred dollars a year, wh which anyone can afford, for your career development, right?
Krissy: or something like that. It’s, it’s a way to refresh employees and also it doesn’t make it all fall on you. It helps them utilize resources that can also help them, right? Like, yeah. Imagine if someone never slept. You’d be like, you need to sleep. This is their sleep, right. Of restoring them and. And helping them go and figuring out and, and setting boundaries, of course, but going like, Hey, let’s figure out ways that, what, what’s one thing that you wanna work on this week?
Krissy: Or this, like, put a smart goal together. Everyone can do that. What’s a smart goal? Something that you wanna try? And by the way, this is helping, I. All those reports and all those outcomes you’re trying to get, this is a part of that. It’s not something you’re doing, you know, as a good, you know, human. It’s actually good being a good human, which will result in positive outcomes for what you’re actually wanting to obtain.
Krissy: Right? And if an employee doesn’t appreciate that, then move on. Right? Like, you don’t need to, you don’t need to win. Win them all over. But doing these things will make a huge difference and it’s a huge differentiator compared to a lot of companies and that, you know, money, and promotions cannot compete with if you are doing these things, that is where we’re, you know, people, what is it?
Krissy: 80% leave because of their boss, right?
Krissy: We know that data. We’ve seen it for a long time. It hasn’t changed. So these are things that matter more than anything else. And you’re gonna create a really solid team that’s, that’s gonna wanna stay and feel, feel invested in. Right. I know we’re, I know we’re at the end of our time, but you know, if there was, if there was one thing you wanted people to take away from this podcast today, what would it be?
Cara: so and I, and is actually is for, inspired by what you just shared too, Krissy, something I was gonna say is, coming back to listening is so important. So listen, listen, listen, ask questions. But also making an impact on one person is better than making no impact impact at all. And I share this because, and I can like kind of end this with like a story again from speaking from my experience as an HR professional.
Cara: I talk with people all day long and. There are days at the end of the day where I’m like, did I even make a difference? Like did I even do anything impactful because it’s something that I can’t touch or feel or see? And I think, again, kind of going back to instant gratification, that’s something that we’re used to being able to do to say, Hey, I checked this off, therefore like I’ve accomplished something.
Cara: Right? And so there are a lot of days where I end my days thinking, did I even make a difference? Like did I make an impact? And. I got this feedback from an SDR actually who I meet with every once in a while. She’s just a wonderful human being. We just have great conversations and she let me know at the end of one of our conversations, she was like, Cara, like you make such a difference and I hope you know that like your impact is huge. And, and she’s like, and you know why it is? She’s like, you listen. Not enough people stop. Slow down and listen anymore, and you actually listen and make me feel like I’m heard. And that was something that was just like, like it still goes to me. They chose, cause I’m like, oh my God. That was like the sweetest thing.
Cara: I like, couldn’t get over how sweet it was because, and I knew she was, I knew she wasn’t like BSing me, right? Like I knew
Cara: she was like, she was being very genuine and then she like gave me some praise in our, you know, private praise in our channel or whatever, where she essentially, you know, reiterated that again, like, you’re really making a difference here.
Cara: And so I just wanna leave people with that because, Like I mentioned, you may not be able to see the impact that you’re having right away on your employees when you do these things as a manager, when you drive these conversations, when you listen, but I can guarantee it. It will have a long-term impact.
Cara: It will have a long-term like positive impact on your employees. And, Get at, get, get after it. I would, I love, I love, you know, managers that always wanna be better and I mean, people that wanna be better, right? And, so yeah, that’s what I, that’s what I would leave this group with today, so.
Krissy: Beautifully said. Super wise words. I, I hope that this podcast or this episode of the podcast resonated with a lot of you. I hope there were some tips that you could take out of it, but you know, very well said. And yeah, it making an impact on one person is enough. It really is. But if you’re making an impact on one person, the reality is you’re gonna make an impact on more.
Krissy: That’s how goodness works. That’s how kindness, that’s how intention intentionality works, good and bad, right? that’s how those, that’s how actions work. They impact the, the masses. And so let that be your motivation today. We’re all in this together. we’re gonna get out of this funk, but use this time to just, you know, step up your leadership ’cause that’s what people need.
Krissy: They always need it. But that’s what people need right now. be strategic. Don’t let the emotions take over. And have a great weekend, everyone. Until next time, we’ll see you later. ​