You are techY podcast

Ellen: 00:02
You are listening to the You are techY podcast, episode number twenty-one.

Intro: 00:11
Welcome to the You are techY podcast where it’s all about growing in your techy-ness so you can find the tech job of your dreams and now your host technology learning coach, Ellen Twomey.

Ellen: 00:32
This podcast is sponsored by our all new course, What Tech job is Right For Me? Visit us at youaretechy.com/start to check out our new course and find what tech job is right for you!

Ellen: 00:50
Hey you guys, what’s up? I’m going to talk about a topic today that it’s really important but it’s also really overlooked and I made the mistake of not doing this early on, so I’m like when I was first starting my career and it cost me big time, like in ways I didn’t really think that it would, I don’t want you to make that mistake and that’s why today we’re going to talk about defining your dream job because you really don’t want someone else telling you what your dream job is. Okay. So let’s go through the why of defining your dream job or it will define you.

Ellen: 01:39
Right? Because why do we even do this? What is the point and what is the benefit of defining our dream job? And I’m going to be the first to admit, it always feels kind of weird to write about something that isn’t yet there, right? So it makes me think of JK Rowling and how she must be so funny and creative and a little dark to, to write Harry Potter. It just has so much of all of that in the books. So how does anyone have all of that in their head? Um, and then I’m going to tell you about the mistake that I made in a little bit here so that you can understand why this approach is a much more successful way to do it and how I did it wrong before. Um, the reason that I think it’s interesting to think about JK Rowling is that I can’t imagine the things that she imagined.

Ellen: 02:38
So oftentimes if you just think about it from that perspective, we all kind of have some things in our head that are similar and then we all have things that are just totally different. So I’m going to walk you through the components of a dream job description, but part of that is going to be just what’s to you and, and what experiences have you had that you definitely don’t want to have again, and what experiences do you just really want to have? So I’m going to encourage you that while this is a guide, it’s so important that you use your imagination and when you start to hear yourself say things like, that doesn’t exist or that’s not out there or whatever, I want you to really stop yourself and just let yourself imagine like a little kid. And if that doesn’t help you, then imagine like JK Rowling because the way that you get through to creative ideas and creative solutions, which all jobs in tech need a lot of creativity, a lot of, a lot of creative solutions.

Ellen: 03:44
You’ve got to practice that imagination, um, muscle. And I know it doesn’t seem like that. Like when you’re in the middle of coding, you know you’re writing a Java JavaScript algorithm. You’re like, what does this have to do with creativity? But if you don’t practice that muscle, you’re actually going to lose a lot of your solution finding strategies. You’re just going to think that you can go find the answer instead of creative. So I really want you to own this process as a creative, imaginative process. Okay? So now for that mistake and how I learned it, you guys are going to totally laugh at me. So when I received job offers, like at the end of college, graduations of senior year, um, I created a spreadsheet and then I evaluated each job and a series of categories. Okay. And I don’t remember all the categories. I wish I had the spreadsheet, but it was things like this culture, which honestly, I don’t even know if I definitely did not know what that meant.

Ellen: 04:48
Okay. And then pay, what was the compensation and then opportunity for advancement, the people, things like that. Okay. That I kind of. I think I don’t know more than 10 categories. I’m pretty sure it was like 12 or 15 categories. All sorts of things in regards to the job and how it related to my life. And, and then before I tell you this next part, I’m going to caveat it with that. You need to understand that my dad was a math teacher. Okay? And so weighted average, you guys are like going to make fun of me. And weighted average was used on everything from like calculating our school grades to purchasing a baseball glove. And if you don’t know what weighted averages that is because you did not have a math teacher as a parent. So no big deal. Here’s what it is.

Ellen: 05:38
It instead of with normal average where you just add up the numbers and then divide by however many items there are weighted average, you multiply each number by a percentage. So let’s say in my pay category, I’ve multiplied that by 0.4 because I wanted that to be 40% of how I weighted my decision. Okay? And then you add up all of those numbers and then you end up with a percentage. And so that is literally how I compared jobs and I ultimately selected one. I can assure you that’s not a good strategy. I know you’re thinking I made this up, but I remember sitting in the coffee shop with my now husband and we were like looking at the spreadsheet and evaluating it and giving everything a number, you know, putting a number to it like that would make it more concrete and give me the best possible answer.

Ellen: 06:33
Well, what happened is that the work environment that, that, that strategy led to was just completely cut throat and it had expectations that in my opinion were not realistic. And that was really hard for me. I was used to over-delivering on people’s expectations. But the really big problem was that I wanted to sleep and that was like contrary to what the job was about. And you, I don’t mean sleep on the job, I mean just like get, you know, six to eight hours a night and I just, I hate, I hated lack of sleep because I really struggled to function with it. I mean, now that I’ve had four kids, I totally know how to do it, but I still don’t recommend it. I still think sleep is really important to maximizing your brain functionality and making it, you know, being the best that you can be.

Ellen: 07:23
And I was a developer at that time and I mean, I just, I can’t imagine how much better I would’ve been if I would’ve been sleeping that night. So, um, that is, but I don’t really have regrets. I do want to make that very clear because I learned so much about myself, um, from that job and that led me to go into education. And really that marriage of technology and learning has just stuck with me my whole life. And that is what I do and what I’ve done. So I think that it all worked out, but it does lead me to strongly steer you away from the weighted average selection criteria of picking a job. Okay. Well, what was the real problem in this strategy? It’s that the, there were a bunch of isolated categories, but I didn’t really know which one we’re going to have the biggest impact on my life.

Ellen: 08:16
I now know that sleep is non-negotiable and if a company asks me to forgo sleep, I’d be like, uh, no way. Um, so maybe that’s like an 80% weight, but I know that by having a dream job description, what you’re really doing is we’re aligning our dreams or goals, desires, whatever it is to an uncertain future. But then when that future presents itself, we know it because we’ve already defined it ahead of time. It’s like we know it when we see it, but also when we don’t see it, we will have the courage to say no. Because think about it. When you get a job offer, it is really emotional and it’s so exciting because you know, you feel validated. You feel like people understand you, they know your worth, they appreciate you and you come. We want to say yes to that, but what happens is that a big name of a company or a big payday or a fancy office, these things are very distracting because we’re in the moment, the moment of an emotional reaction.

Ellen: 09:32
And so when we have our dream job description to look at what we can do and what my students have been able to do is to look at it and make a great decision whether that’s yes or no. So they have been able to say no to like big name companies because they’re like, that just isn’t the role that I wanted or that just isn’t, that’s not a pay I’m willing to accept. And I want to be clear here like just because someone offers you great pay and that could be your dream job. Your dream job should be the pay that you want, but you shouldn’t take a horrible job because it has the right pay. So I don’t think you should believe that you have to compromise and are there, especially when you’re writing your dream job description and you’re just using your imagination and what of what up would it now when it comes time to the job offer, do you need to be realistic?

Ellen: 10:25
No, I don’t. I don’t think that’s a great way to look at it. I think you need to look at your dream job description and say, is this my dream job? No. Okay. Is it on the path to that dream job? Yes. Okay, great. Then you’re getting there. You’re moving in the right direction and by defining it ahead of time, sure you’re going to be wrong. I know you don’t know, but if you write it down, you’re going to start gathering the information to refine it, to tweak it, to make it even better. So I seen it work and it’s so helpful to have this done ahead of time and it’s a much more effective strategy than looking at indeed doing the indeed death scrolls, what I call it, when you’re just searching for what everyone else is saying is a good job. Instead of looking at what you really want first, look at what you want, then go to see what’s out there.

Ellen: 11:23
It comes in really handy when we want to just make this logical decision down the road when we’re actually given an offer. And so a lot of people will say, Oh, don’t worry about it when I get the offer. And I just want to really emphasize that I couldn’t disagree more. It’s very important to go through the exercise of writing things down to look at what you actually think is important and what you actually want to be doing. And then when it comes time for the offer, you’re just having, you’ll have your, you’ll have your head in a totally better place. Okay, so I know that this begs the question like what if, I don’t know, and I’ll be honest, when I was 22 doing my weighted average, I didn’t know what I wanted. I didn’t know what was out there. I’d had a few jobs and some pretty cool internships, but I was 22 I get it. We didn’t really know.

Ellen: 12:18
But when you write it down, even if you aren’t sure, even if you think it’s pie in the sky, even if you think you’re kind of making it up, you can have a baseline from which to learn from and grow and tweak and change. And if you don’t write it down, then you aren’t going to be in that position. You’re going to really be, um, kind of talking about it and thinking about it, but not really making it concrete, which is why it’s so hard to find the dream job. But let’s talk about what the components of a dream job description are, because it’s one thing to start, but where do we even begin with this? What do we even think about? Okay, so we know we’re going to write something down and we know we’re going to change it, but I want to give you a resource just to kind of help you through this so you can download the dream job description resource for total for free when you go to youaretechy.com/dreamjob so just go to youaretechy.com/dreamjob print off the dream job description resource and um, you’ve got a great starting point from where to go from. Okay.

Ellen: 13:37
But I’m going to walk you through the process now so you can either go download it now or just take notes and go download it later. But the first thing that we were going to want to do is write down the role what, what’s the role that we’re seeking. And this can be tricky because sometimes the role is called different things by different people. I want to encourage you to write down the role the way you want it described with as many adjectives as you feel you want. So you might write down user-focused full-stack JavaScript developer or product focused UX designer or people oriented scrum master or whatever you feel is true to you. Just kind of think through how you would describe that role. And it’s okay if it’s kind of more unique to you. Like, if you’re a scrum master and you’re great with people, but you think you’re bringing maybe a more analytic or project management aspect than other people buy, great.

Ellen: 14:33
Then lean into that to that description. Or if you, maybe you have a psychology major and you think you’re bringing more of that aspect to it, then great. Then lean into that. Whatever it’s true for you for your interest and experience, then put that in the job description. And that’s kind of just are. That’s the first thing that we’re going to do. But that’s not even the first question. We’re just gonna start off with the role. Kind of consider that question zero. And now what we want to ask is with question number one, I want you to ask yourself, where do I physically want to reside when I work? Okay, so when your, do you want to work from home? Do you want to be in an office? Do you want some hybrid of the two? Where do you physically want to be? And this also includes the location.

Ellen: 15:22
What city? Okay. So this is the time where I want you to really think about what do you consider moving to a new location. Maybe you’re ready to um, be open to new ideas of where to live. Maybe you want to try a bigger city or you want warmer weather. I know I did, but I want to push you to just say is there any place that you would consider moving? Because I think that if we don’t take the time to ask ourselves this question, we get really comfortable in where we are and it can be challenging to think about our life in, in another area. So maybe just consider is there one other area you would consider? But wherever you stand, I just want you to use this opportunity to kind of think bigger and push herself. Okay. That’s the way to really open yourself up to new possibilities.

Ellen: 16:16
So that was question one. Where do you physically want to be? And then number two, this one is I think more important than the name of the role. What are the three to four main job functions that you are looking forward to performing? So you might have to perform other, you will have to do other job functions. But if you can name the top three to four things that you want to spend time on during the day, and then when you get that offer, you can look at the job posting regardless of what the name is and say, Hey, you know what? I think that the majority of my time is going to be spent on these three to four tasks. Then you’ll know like that’s really good alignment. So be as specific as you can be. Okay. For a scrum master, you might be a leading daily stand ups doing project management writing.

Ellen: 17:07
You might be reading stories for a developer, you might be, um, planning and assessing requirements. You’re, you’re definitely going to be coding. But more specific, even more specific than that. Like how often are you writing an API or calling [inaudible] or, um, create a writing an algorithm or solving a new problem? Like how often are you doing things working on the interface, uh, UX design, wire framing. What are the tools that you wanna do? Um, how are you doing user testing? I hope you are. Um, you know, what are the rules and uh, what are, excuse me, what are the duties that you are performing? Write down three to four of the main job functions that you’re most looking forward to performing. Okay. Number three, it’s money. You guys are going to love it. Money, money, money. What’s your ideal salary or compensation? Okay, here we go.

Ellen: 18:00
I’m just going to tell it to you flat, whatever number just came to your head. Add 20%, please because you’re normally wrong. Most of you are wrong. You all undervalue yourselves constantly. So add 20%. Um, you definitely want to be this of course depends on where you are. I always tell my New York and California friends, even my Chicago friends I’m in, I’m in, uh, you know, North Carolina. Now it’s a lower cost of living. You gotta just take the range that I’m giving here and increase it cause I’ve just talked to the averages. But you definitely want to be 40 K to one 20 K. I can tell you that right now. Now your experience, your knowledge or can up you of course. Okay. But you want to return to the workforce or if you’re already working, Oh my gosh, there’s a course and you’re going for that.

Ellen: 18:47
I get a lot of people who are like, they know if you’re going to be a developer or you’re going to go in, you probably can’t start at six figures, but you’ll get there fast. You’ll get there really fast. So just, I wouldn’t be too worried about your starting salary. Of course we’re going to start way higher than 40 for that. But uh, you know, with development experience, you can have one to two years of experience and gets about six figures if you’re good, if you really know you’re good and you’re good at it. Um, so that’s my advice on that. UX designers, average UX designer makes 60 K, um, and just get their average. So if you’re starting out, don’t worry about it. If you’re starting out at a little bit less, but remember that the number you ask for it, they don’t usually give you that.

Ellen: 19:28
So just ask for that number, know your value, and if you need any more information. These are just general numbers, but I go through this in detail and podcast #13 know your value. So just go over to your youaretechy.com/13 and I go over how to know your value. That’s really, it’s not just a number you want. Okay, what do they say? Like what’s your house worth? Your house is worth not what you want it to be, but what someone is willing to pay you. Your skills have nothing to do with who you are as a human. Just go to glass door and find out what people in that area make for that salary. That’s what your value is. And then get comfortable saying that amount. Because if you know those skills and you’re good at those skills, that’s what you’ll get paid. So I think the more you can detach the salary from your human value, the more comfortable you can get with those bigger numbers.

Ellen: 20:19
And I just want to encourage you. If somebody, if you give someone a number and they laugh at you, I will say, I will high five you. Okay, you awesome for you that you pushed and somebody was really shocked. But I have to tell you that rarely happens and I know what you’re really afraid of. You’re really afraid that they’re going to be like, Oh my gosh, this lady is crazy. Get out of my office. I’m not going to interview you. We’re not going to hire her. We’re not giving her an offer. She’s got this crazy high end high value that could happen. It might happen. It isn’t what I hear mostly though, what I hear mostly is disappointment from companies that they can’t meet your expectation and they’re like, I’m really sorry we’re going to be closer to this range. Is that something you’d be willing to consider?

Ellen: 21:02
And they’re probably just gonna think that you have a high, you know that you understand the value of your skills. So I get it. It’s easy for me to say I’m not the person in the room, but what if you did it three times and only one person said yes to you but you got that, you know $90,000 salary that you’ve wanted. Wouldn’t it be worth it? Wouldn’t it be worth it to hear two people laugh at you or two people throw you out of their office? That’s never going to happen. Come on. I think it would be worth it. I think you would find the right company in the right organization. So whatever your number is, write it down. What’s your ideal compensation?

Ellen: 21:40
We’re on question number four now and this one is I think kind of interesting or fun and so different than when I was 22 and work started, but how much vacation or PTO are you seeking? We just had, they just would give us two weeks and then you could earn up to four and that was seen as like amazing. Now people have like unlimited vacation, what? That is unlimited vacation, but there are companies out there that do that. I would say just a few. So I don’t know if that would be, but Hey, that’s what you want. Go for it. Um, the typical range is two to five weeks. I would not, if this is your ideal, do not put two weeks put more, you know, strive for four people. Say you have to earn that. I get it. But I think that our society, especially in America, we’ve seen the value of downtime and rest and more and more companies are on board with vacation and, and PTO.

Ellen: 22:35
So include PTO in there too. Okay. Number question. Number five I want you to look at is what type of health benefits, um, or, and, or parental leave. So some of you are like past the parental leave stage. Okay. Then that’s not a focus area for you. But if you’re not past that stage, then that might be a serious of serious interest to you. Like how do they handle that? Okay. And um, of course we want, we want to look at some type of health benefits if we’re, if we’re got a 10 99 employee, if we’re not a contractor. So think about what that would look like to you and then think about even a more comprehensive program. You know, what about access to workout facilities or nutritionists or trainers or yoga studio? Just think of what an ideal situation would be like for you.

Ellen: 23:29
Okay. Moving on to question number six, I wish, I wish someone would have told me this one a long time ago. What do you want your manager to be like? Listen up. This is totally to affect every aspect of your day to day. So I want you to think about the environment that you will be in on a day to day basis and list out exactly what you would like this lovely lady to be like, okay, is she fun? Can you learn from her? Does she help you grow? You want to know who this manager is and how they’re going to help you in your career. And so write down exactly what that person should be like. I think that is a great, great aspect of your dream job description because it will have so much impact on your life and it was most definitely not nice.

Ellen: 24:24
Okay. Question number seven and we have, we have three more, seven, eight, nine. What types of opportunities for growth do you want? And I want you to think about both your technical growth. Okay. You’ll probably want to go to conferences or take courses to kind of up here a technical field, whether that’s UX or dev, but you’re also gonna want to look at your overall career opportunities. So do you want to be trained in speaking? Do you want to speak about what you do? Do you want the management training cause you’d like to move up into the manager rule. Like what exactly about your overall career opportunities do you think you want to develop and it would be great for you to learn from. I think a lot of organizations are excited to hear that their employees want to grow and be better because that adds more value to the organization.

Ellen: 25:15
Number eight, flexibility, what type of flexibility do you want? And I think it’s really interesting because I got into and went back into technology as opposed to being in the classroom where I was before because of the flexibility because I wanted remote work that was flexible and I was happy to travel a little bit. Like that was fine with me as long as most days I could be in um, working from home. But I know that after talking to hundreds of women about this topic that in mostly moms, you guys all define flexibility. We all define it differently. Like for real, we do not talk about it the same way because it just means something different. Like I know a bunch of you who are like remote. Working from my house is the last thing I want to do. I want to get out and I want to be in an office and flexibility to me means I don’t miss the fourth grade show or I can get my kid to a doctor’s appointment.

Ellen: 26:16
Okay. For other ones that you, you’re like, I just don’t want to travel. As long as I don’t travel, everything is fine. I just can’t travel. And then there are others who of you who are like, I don’t want to work from home every day, but like one day a week would be nice or I want to work a 30 hour work week, whatever flexibility means to you. This was something I spent a lot of time kind of worrying about instead of just saying what I wanted. And as soon as I said what I wanted and I mean literally one meetup and it was done. I think if you can define this clearly and just write down what you want out of a flexible arrangement and if you’re like, Oh, I don’t need any flexibility. I can’t imagine any of you are out there, but then that’s fine too. You’re like, I’m just at a point in my life. I don’t need the type of flexibility. Um, or I need a manager who just really understands that I have a one year old and that’s hard. So whatever flexibility means to you or write that down.

Ellen: 27:13
Okay. The final question is question number nine and this is where we’re going to kind of pull in JK Rowling and look at that imagination. I want you to write down one or two things that are unique to you that we have not already named that we have not already covered, but they’re just, they mean something really special and unique to you and your circumstances and that can be a family circumstance. That can be your personality, it can be that you want them to value your previous experience even if it wasn’t in tech, even if it was in something totally different and you want this next organization to just honestly value and allow you to contribute in a meaningful way using that experience. It could be your personality that you have this great sense of humor and you want to be able to just be yourself in this environment.

Ellen: 28:04
And I would encourage you like whatever be yourself means, whatever. I’ll use this, the gag me word authentic cause everybody uses that. Overuses it. But like if you get, the more you can be you at the office and at your place of work, the less you have to worry about pretending and you can just focus on your work. So what does unique mean? Like mean? What does unique mean for you? What does it mean in your, in your dream job for you to be uniquely you? Okay. In all these ways, personality or family circumstance or um, or interest or previous experience, whatever it is for you, I want you to write down one, let’s write down two things that are really unique about you.

Ellen: 28:49
Could be a hobby, could be your kids, travel sports, maybe you have some health challenges that you need to factor in your list, your unique aspects of your life. Okay? You’re done. You’ve got your first pass of your dream job description. That is so awesome because just by putting pen to paper and looking at what you truly want, you’re going to start moving towards those things and you’re going to move towards them in a way that talking and thinking that’s just not going to get you there. Okay? So you’ve put it down on paper and now you’ve really gotten a solid understanding of what you’re going towards. Now most people when they’re asked questions like this, I think they, their first thought is, I don’t know. I do this too. We all do it. And so what I like to do, so if you come across any of these questions and you’re coming to, I don’t know, I want you to use this strategy that I heard.

Ellen: 29:50
I’ve heard Tony Robbins say a number of times and I’ve really been able to implement it in my own life. If I say, I don’t know, then I follow that up with a subsequent question. If I say I don’t notice some question, then I immediately follow that up with if I did know, okay. And I don’t know if this originated from Tony, but that’s where I heard it. So, but if I did know, what would it be? And that kind of, I use it on myself all the time. And I think that just kind of helps to get over the fear of like, what if we’re wrong? Yeah, you might be wrong. Okay. So what, so you might be wrong, write it down. And then when you look at it, you’ll be like, Oh, that’s horrible though. And then you’ll be able to cross it off and then something else will come to mind.

Ellen: 30:30
So I want to encourage you to use that strategy. If ever any of these questions are like really have no idea, um, and maybe it requires more research or thinking about yourself more or whatever it takes, just think, give yourself the time to do that and then just go back to your dream job description and then tweak it and change it. And so in tech, we call this iteration, but I think that this is something that I want you to look at really as a life long process. So Mark up the dream job description, download, Mark it up as much as you need to as you change it. And it just really, uh, you hone in on exactly what it, what makes sense for you and you change it where it needs to change. And once it’s marked up all over and it just looks like a mess or a shadow of its former self.

Ellen: 31:19
I just want you to go back to youaretechy.com/dreamjob and just print off another one. Just print off another one and then start your next dream job description and use it for your next job. Use it now you’ve got hired in tech. Okay, now use it to level up. Go back to it again and again because this really is a lifelong process and you can use it to get hired in tech, to enter a new field of tech, to level up in tech, to become a manager, even to get into the C suite if that’s your dream. Yeah, you, you can totally do that. It’s whatever you want and desire. There are definitely going to be steps along the way. So why not use this as a strategy throughout your career to level up and move through those steps? I think that you’ll find it’s very helpful and significantly more effective than a weighted average spread sheet. Thank you so much for being here to define your dream job.

Ellen: 32:22
Hey, if you enjoyed listening to this podcast, you have to sign up for the You are techY email list. Imagine being in the tech job of your dreams. Join me to get the strategies, training and never ending support to get hired. Sign up at youaretechy.com that’s Y-O-U-A-R-E-T-E-C-H-Y dot com. I’ll see you next time.