Your Dream Job Is Within Reach: Don’t Downplay Your Skills

Mardi Winder-Adams: 00:00:05

Welcome to the D-Shift podcast, where we provide inspiration, motivation and education to help you transition from the challenges of divorce to discover the freedom and ability to live life on your own terms. Are you ready? Let's get the shift started.

Mardi Winder-Adams: 00:00:23

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the D-Shift. And today, we are going to get educated on how to use the skills that we have to get back into the workforce or to get paid for a job that you love doing. And so my guest today is Myriam-Rose Kohn. And Myriam-Rose is a multi lingual career coach. And she does a whole bunch of work with people on how to recognize the skills that you have, and create a job opportunity to put yourself in front of employers that you really want to work for that job. So, Myriam-Rose thank you so much for being here. This is a very important topic for a lot of people listening to this podcast.

Myriam-Rose Kohn: 00:01:10

Well, hi, Mardi. And thank you very much for having me, you know, I'm honored that you'd like me to work with you, considering all the work you're doing

Mardi Winder-Adams: 00:01:18

well. We all have to support each other. And I think it's always phenomenal when we can when we can help each other out. So Myriam-Rose , I know what you do is, like I say is really important, because people's income determines your quality of life, your ability to go on vacations, your ability to get free of financial stress and problems. So tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, and what got you excited and passionate about helping people find a job they love.

Myriam-Rose Kohn: 00:01:51

Okay, well, I'll have to go a little back in the past for that. But when my children were grown, I always thought I taught at University for more than 20 years. I always loved to teach. And so I thought and I discovered I was a nurturer. And because of what happened in my life, I had nothing and I had to rebuild my career. I decided once master dad to pass it on and help other people accomplish the same thing. I educate, which is another form of teaching, right? Which are my clients, when clients come to me, I take them from beginning to end and I'm there with them. It's not going watch this webinar, we'll talk about it or that, although I do have a course. But I still am on a personal level with my clients. And I hold their hands as it were. From the moment we start working together till they reach their goal, because having gone for a career transition twice myself, I know the fear people experience. Yeah, and you know, the fear to dad and what will happen. And so I'm there for them as a confidant, I'm not the other half or partner or spouse say you have to go out and get a job. It is much more important for me that my clients find a job they love to do that truly enjoy doing, and they get paid for it. And the reason it's so important is because if you do what you enjoy, you lead a much more harmonious enjoys life. Yes, yes, I and that means fewer headaches, lower blood pressure. And while I'm not a doctor, I know that this means fewer diseases, you know, you can enjoy life. So that's why it's so important to me. So when people come to me and they say I need to find a job. First of all, I don't like the word job, that implies you have to get up and you have to go in and do it or you don't really want to know, we find a position, a position you enjoy. And if you don't know what that is, then we do a career exploration first. And then once we're set and I guide you through the process, once we're set on what it is you've decided what you like to do, then I will write your resume and LinkedIn profile while I have and I also teach you how to conduct a job search. So I do those documents while you're conducting your job search. And then, you know, we make sure it addresses the position you'd like to have. And that to take some time because a lot of people think that just you know fill out an application online then you wait you or you can wait till doomsday, right? To be a lot more proactive. And I teach my clients how to get in touch with the hiring manager who's behind it because yes, you have to send it resume to HR. But they're really a black hole, right? They're not gonna do anything until somebody upstairs in the company says HR.

Mardi Winder-Adams: 00:05:10

So I want to I want to I know you've got I know you've got other steps, but I want to if you don't mind, I'd like to circle back to something you said one of the first things you do with your clients is career exploration or exploring a position that would suit them. How many times do you find that people? Because like you, I change careers, I've changed careers a couple of times. And, you know, I had a really good corporate job working for a meatpacking plant when I got out of university. And it was a good job. I mean, it was very well paid, I was an upper kind of management, left that got my teaching degree, taught school for years and years, got my Master's was a consultant left that. And people kept saying to me, like, why are you in? Especially when I had the masters? Right? Well, you're just going to go into another teaching degree or another teaching job, right? And I kept saying, No, that's not what I want to do. What is it that gets people stuck in the fact that I took this degree program, I have to stay in this, this lane.

Myriam-Rose Kohn: 00:06:21

A lot of people think if they've only done one thing, most of their lives, they can't do anything else. And nothing could be further from the truth. We all have abilities and skills that are transferable. Now, you can't be a surgeon overnight, or an architect or an engineer. But if I may, let me give you a couple of examples. of my past clients, one lady was an administrative assistant. And she just wanted so badly to be a scuba diving instructor. Okay, but she couldn't afford the lessons. So first of all, start getting an administrative assistant position at a scuba diving school, which we accomplished. And then the people get to know her and she can take the classes at a reduced rate, or whatever. And eventually she became it that again, not overnight, right. But she accomplished it. I had a gentleman who was a project manager inside and when I asked him to make me collage, everything was outside, and then go, what are you doing? Why are you inside when you want to be outside? It turns out, he wanted to be a motorcycle racer. But by the time we met, he was already married with two small children. So you know very well, his wife was gonna say no, not bad, we find him a position at a motorcycle racing track. So he worked in the aftermarket and could apply his ability and skills there. And he probably got to raise some of those motorcycles, but nobody needed to know. He was in an environment he enjoyed and he liked and, and I had another lady who was laid off in her mid 40s also happened to be administrative assistant, but she says, who's gonna hire me now. And you know, I'll never make this kind of money again. So we did our career exploration work and turn that you would have been a very good entrepreneur. So okay, what would you like to do. And at the time, your market was feasible as something she enjoyed doing and dragging with people, she decided to become a real estate agent. And from there, she built up her own company, which freed up her time. First of all, she was making a lot more money she ever would have, as an administrative assistant, she had retired to take care of her elderly mother. You know, these are just a couple of examples. And I know your audience is mostly women, but it would apply to them to the gentleman 57 years old. Who worked who worked excuse me in a narrow field technical recruiting, and is am I going to find another job now? Well, we did due diligence. And within it was within eight weeks, yeah, the position closer to home, making more money. And as happy as a climate, you know, because people think age is a factor. And look, if you're in your 50s, you don't go apply to the gap. You know, that's a young generation, right? That, you know, that's really bad. But there are plenty of other places you can go and work and do. And, you know, the term has been overused reinventing yourself, but it's just thinking differently about how you can use your skills or what makes you happy, right? You know, so many people says, well, first, my parents said, then my spouse Yeah, but what do you want? Right? Right. What do you want, and in today's market, if you're unhappy in your work in a position you have, or you're out of work, or your life seems to be floating aimlessly, you seem to have no direction. There are no excuses for this in today's world, because since the pandemic, so many opportunities have arisen that most people don't know about, you know, it's easy to guide them, there is no more reason to be unhappy or miserable at

Mardi Winder-Adams: 00:10:28

work. And you know that that is something very true. I know, the pandemic initially knocked a lot of people out of their jobs and caused a lot of stress and financial hardship for people. Right. But I know that even where I live in a small rural area in Texas, most companies are hiring now. Like their signs like you can drive around her little community. And there's big banners outside businesses like hiring or looking for people. And, and so I would you agree to Miriam rose that the, although people seem to really resent the, the newer employees only staying for a few years, and then moving on to a new career, that actually frees up positions in companies, more than it used to when you kind of went in, like at 20 years of age, and you work there until you retired and you just slowly moved up the corporate ladder, because there was positions in those upper levels.

Myriam-Rose Kohn: 00:11:27

Right? Well, that what you just described is that that's gone. That's a thing of the past. And most people in, you know, in today's world will choose at least five or six different types of careers before they find a one they land on. Right now, what you described aware of people move around, it's not only good for the employer who gets fresh talent, and maybe a fresh perspective on things, it's also good for the employee because they acquire a lot more experience. And again, more flexibility in finding something that gets you towards your goal. Right? Right. Right. This is just the absolute thing people need to think about work as a job. Now, it's a position where you enjoy the work, you get paid for it, you acquire experience, and you can do other things with it. When you work as an employee, as an entrepreneur, it doesn't matter. Besides, people are missing out on one thing, they don't understand that whether they're an employee or not, we're all entrepreneurs today, because I have to teach my clients that if they don't take care of their career, or wherever they want to be, even if they don't want to do a career transition. If they don't manage their career, nobody else will. Exactly. That's just like being an entrepreneur and you keep track, you know, I teach my clients, if they work for someone had to keep track of what they're accomplishing. And it's not just the work itself. The other things are the factors that come into it. So the one is performance review, hey, yeah, this is ovaries, Mr. or Ms. Boss, because look at what I've done here. Yeah,

Mardi Winder-Adams: 00:13:11

yeah. So let me ask you a question that I get quite often as, when I'm talking with women who are going through the divorce process, a lot of these women may have been out of the workforce for, you know, raising children. And they have this attitude. And I had another guest on the show Jackie Cote. And her her and I were talking about this, a couple of guests and I have talked about this, but it's like they don't feel that they have anything of value to offer. The employees as a lot of times are the employers a lot of time what they will say to me is, but I've only been a mom, or I've only been in the house for the last eight or 10 or 12 years. How do you deal with that kind of limiting belief that I'm only a mom or I'm, you know, I'm only a wife or whatever they may think.

Myriam-Rose Kohn: 00:14:01

Yes, I was one of those. Because when while my legs obviously decided to leave and he didn't allow me to work. During the marriage. What was I supposed to do? How was I going to pay the mortgage into children and feed the children? I didn't have that came out wrong. Everybody knows what you back there. Okay. So what people don't realize it we used to call them family financial officers fmoS. Because the murder keeps stack. She keeps track of schedules she gets if she has more than one child, she gets the children wherever they need to go on time, and plan for the dinner and make sure everything runs smoothly last door and does all the work. How can she say it's only your mom, that is a man's fault. That's not a woman's fault. She was everything that she does. It's a question of presenting it and how do you do it? If she's part of the PTA? If she's part of the community, you know what a residential blocker they do something? Or if it's watch, I don't know if it's all over the US or not, but we used to have neighborhood. Excuse me neighborhood watch. Yeah, I think quite

Mardi Winder-Adams: 00:15:20

in the bigger cities, I think it sure that sure exists. Yeah,

Myriam-Rose Kohn: 00:15:24

yeah. Yeah. So you know, all these things. Being a teen mom, you know, providing snacks and all that there's a way of rephrasing that. That is so much more than a mom. I think it's terrible. That is so denigrate. Well, we do everything and it's 24/7. Right. Yeah. Because your child gets sick. You don't get to sleep. Yeah. And I think

Mardi Winder-Adams: 00:15:49

Jackie was saying she sat with a client one time and totaled up if if you would have to hire somebody to do all the things that just the mom does, it would have been over $60,000 a year?

Myriam-Rose Kohn: 00:16:02

Absolutely. Absolutely. So women need to start putting themselves down, think about what they would love to do, starting and what they can do towards that. Or you know, what skills they could use, or what they need to enhance to accomplish their dream, because there is no such thing as just a mom.

Mardi Winder-Adams: 00:16:21

Yes. I love that. I love the way you said that. That's so strong. There's no mistake, and that one is

Myriam-Rose Kohn: 00:16:27

good. I hope I get through to some people.

Mardi Winder-Adams: 00:16:32

So So what do you want? Do you think? And this is I'm kind of putting you on the spot here. Why do you think people get stuck in a job and stay in a job that they hate? They get up every morning. And they're mad because they have to go to work. They're mad at work. They're mad when they come home from work? What? Why do people stay in those kinds

Myriam-Rose Kohn: 00:16:58

of jobs? Number one is fear fear of losing the paycheck number one, and not think about something could be better around the corner. Number two, I think it's still a leftover from the previous century, where you started to work for a company and you stayed there till you were ready to retire. And that's gone. Yeah. I know, it's scary to do when you don't have a little nest egg or some savings. Yeah. That look, just a mom like me, I managed to do it would add anything and survive and move on. So it's just how you approach it. Right? Right need to work on your attitude a little bit. You know, it's just don't be so dumb. Moms have plenty of skills. And you know, if you go back to the fall, like I was out of the workforce for let me think 12 years, 12 years before I could get back to it. So there was and that's the time where all this computer stuff came up, you know, like, Oh, my goodness, how am I gonna handle that? Right? So I had to go and learn about you know, how to work with a computer because it was a while ago, obviously, I want to say that I date myself, but it's the same situation for so many women today. Yeah. Oh, they've been kept under the thumb. Yeah. And they believed everything their spouse said, ya know, like, I gotta hear every day has to but I was I couldn't do anything. Right. How illogical how in carpeta was any kind of variation thereof? And then I started to think Well, if that's true, why is it that I'm doing everything?

Mardi Winder-Adams: 00:18:40

Exactly? Yeah, yeah. And I Do I Do I agree with you. And the other thing because I'm from Canada so when I came down here to the United States, I was always amazed that people would stay in their job for the health insurance because of the cost of you know, having to deal with private health insurance. But now there's even options for that you know, where where there are programs for people that maybe don't have a really high income at this point in time where they can get reasonable cost insurance for themselves and and their children if they needed to. So once get people and we're almost at a time I can't believe how fast these these Connery leads go already. Once you get people in, under thinking outside the box, and thinking of the possibilities, and you get them on the job search, what are some of the things that you would recommend for interviewing because I know that's always something hard for people is to prepare for the interview, whether it's zoom or in person or what are some of the tips that you give people Miriam rose to help them get prepared for that

Myriam-Rose Kohn: 00:19:53

is so how much time do I have left Mari because I had about five

Mardi Winder-Adams: 00:19:57

minutes. So go ahead. You gotta But

Myriam-Rose Kohn: 00:20:02

here's the thing with interviews, what people don't understand is that it's a two way conversation. So it's not going to the interviewer, I hope they like me, I hope I answered correctly. No, you have a conversation, you try to find out what the position is about. I teach my clients the questions they need to pose, so they know what to walk into. I teach my clients how to connect with the interviewer because 85% of a successful interview is connecting with the interviewer. It's only 15%. And the technical know how. So you see if you switch careers. How easy would it be? And then what happens if the interview derails? How do you get it back on track? Yeah, so those are the things to keep in mind, first of all, so that requires a little shift in thinking as well. And then I tell my clients to be prepared research the company, which they should have done first anyway, and you're just not going to work for any company. Oh, and also illegal questions. If they pose illegal questions, what should you do? Which is basically say, we just smile, and you're sure you want to ask me them? Letting them know that, you know, it's an illegal question. Right, right. And then if they pursue it, then do you want to work for that kind of company? Or, you know, you say, yes, and answer their questions were determined. So to be prepared, you have to research the company, tell them you know, what you're working on. And, you know, say, present your strengths with that alignment, obviously. So those are my tips, I can give you specific questions they should pose because I don't know who the person is, or the company is. So that makes it hard. But those are some tips right off the top of my head. I always researcher companies, a lot of people don't do that.

Mardi Winder-Adams: 00:21:58

And that is so simple nowadays. go to LinkedIn, Google, or search the company on LinkedIn. And it'll give you a list of all the people in that company that are online, look at what they're posting on LinkedIn, get some ideas about the challenges that companies Yeah, and I, I love that idea of seeing the interview as a conversation, not them asking you a bunch of questions and you just spitting out a bunch of answers.

Myriam-Rose Kohn: 00:22:23

Right. Another good resource is Hoover's. All right, ours get it confused with a vacuum cleaner, but a vacuum cleaner is Hoover, then this is Hoover's dot com, okay. And they have books or their print books. For people who don't have the internet, you can go to the library, you can look at the books, and I know their books are even in Barnes and Noble. mortar, a brick and mortar building like that near you. And they tell you, who's the president, the vice president, secretary treasurer, and what the company does, yeah. So besides the LinkedIn, you have that too. And then sorry. Go to the company website and see what they have and ask for the annual report. Yeah, they have to be accountable to their stakeholders, stockholders, whatever. Yeah, we'll have plenty of information to get from there. Another great

Mardi Winder-Adams: 00:23:23

resource that I found out about is that website called Glassdoor, have you taken a look at that, and that is a place where current and past employees can rate what it's like to work for that company. So the company you know, now, I gotta tell you, it's only the really disgruntled pissed off employees again.

Myriam-Rose Kohn: 00:23:44

Yeah, that's the same reason I don't trust Yeah. Yeah. Only disgruntled the very few who are happy say,

Mardi Winder-Adams: 00:23:50

right. But but you know, I always say, if you look at a company, like let's say, it's a big company, I'm not going to put any brand names out there, because I just don't want to do that. But let's say it's a big company that that most people in the United States would know. And there's maybe 20 or 30, negative comments on there. But you know, they employ hundreds of 1000s of people. That's probably not a problem. But you go to a little local store in your in your town, and there's 20 problem comments, then, you know, maybe there's a problem with management at that organization. So

Myriam-Rose Kohn: 00:24:22

yeah, that's correct.

Mardi Winder-Adams: 00:24:24

So, Myriam-Rose , you have shared a ton of information. Thank you. This has been really practical and strategic. What do you think is the most important thing that you would like people to remember when they turn off this podcast today?

Myriam-Rose Kohn: 00:24:39

That there is no reason for them to be unhappy at work? That moms who need to get back to work? It's a lot easier than they may think. And it has plenty of skills and abilities.

Mardi Winder-Adams: 00:24:54

More than enough to score position. Yes, I love that. And I think that's such an important take Wait, don't downplay your skills. Don't play them up. So, Miriam rose. If people want to reach you and find out more about what you do or just get in touch with you, how can they do that? What's the best way?

Myriam-Rose Kohn: 00:25:12

They can go to my website, which is reimagine your career now.com. They can use my phone number, shall I say it?

Mardi Winder-Adams: 00:25:22

We can put it in the show notes if you want. Oh, no, no worries. But but your website is probably the best way is that the most effective way?

Myriam-Rose Kohn: 00:25:31

And if they wanted to see my story, how I got back in it's at LinkedIn, of course, linkedin.com. Then you have this poor slash and the end right? Then money, or one world.

Mardi Winder-Adams: 00:25:42

Perfect. Well, thank you so much for sharing all your insight. And it's been fun. Thank you. You made you made a tough conversation. Fun for us to have. So I'd like to thank everybody for listening in to the D-Shift and I encourage you to listen to the next episode.