Get Your Dream Job in 2020 w/ Petrula Vrontikis

not [Music] me [Music] hello beautiful people what is up donation futurist doers and you crazy people called donuts today we're going to be talking about how to find and land your dream job this is 2020 so special circumstances apply and we're going to cover the state of the creative job market during the pandemic we're going to also talk about how employers are changing and what they are looking for when is the best time to apply for a job and tips on nailing the virtual interview today joining me is a graphic designer and author of many online courses she's a professor at arts center who's covered a range of classes and topics including advanced graphic design professional practice for portfolio development and career management creative presentations and critiques you're starting to see a theme here i think she's also the creative director founder and owner for antiochus design she's also recipient of the ah aiga fellows award and she speaks at conferences worldwide about design inspiration travel culture teaching and learning she scuba dives she does yoga just nothing that she doesn't do really and she's also contributed to the future who am i talking about talking about for true love runtaicus petrula welcome to the show how are you doing i'm doing it all right thank you so much we did that i can't believe we did that and i didn't follow all over myself so okay that's a lot to talk about and i think there's obviously a lot of interest on this topic about how to land your job how to land the dream job there aren't a lot of job opportunities out there so we we want to be careful that we know how to do this the right way and i can't think of a better person to teach us how great because you're that person you're that conduit between all these professional or practicing graphic designers and the professional world you help these young people these graduates do this so what have you been talking about what's the what's the uh the topic or concern that everybody's got on their mind right now as far as the job market is concerned well as you mentioned there are less jobs out there so as a candidate you need to make sure that whatever you're doing is going to be most appealing so when people are looking they're going to find you and the what you're presenting is is excellent so you come to the top of that pile one of the worst ways to look for a job is just answering and filling out a whole bunch of anonymous online applications because that is the least effective way to get um to where it needs to be and that's in front of a talent recruiter or a creative director or an art director building the network and figuring out how to get the right mentorship and really putting in the more social soft skills that are necessary to to secure people to trust you and to be able to recommend you it's gonna it you know it's like 10 times better results than in any way some anonymous you know kind of application form this procedure will get you and you know people say i've been i've been working so hard to get a job i just do everything i possibly can but ultimately what some of these things are are just ineffective ways to get your materials where they need to be okay but what if the application process makes you or says you got to fill out these forms and be an a generic anonymous person can you sidestep that well maybe it is that your network includes some people that might work at that company already so putting them putting a note to them through linkedin or finding out how to get to them either through their professional email or if you have a personal connection to say hey i've i put my application in i just want to see if there's anything i can do to make sure that so-and-so sees this or do you have any advice for me so it doesn't mean that you always have to contact that person that is looking at the application but within the company it may be that you can get some insight as far as strategy how to get yourself seen or to know a little bit more about the job if you get any bit of insight it's possible that you can kind of reconfigure some of your materials to play to that say they're looking for a graphic designer that that is really doing branding and motion but the application you know just really emphasizes the branding part then that enables you to know how much you should emphasize something more that you can offer i think that is the the next step here and that is that somehow you're offering what they're looking for but you're offering more value also so if you have any way to get an in get insight as to what that value is that they need it really helps you that's a great tip that's how you get the inside track if you will and you guys know when runners like when they're running around the track if you can get the inside lane it's the shortest and the fastest and by reaching out to people that are already in your network that you might not even know exists by poking around a little bit they can give you insight on what they're looking for or get feedback on the process or maybe even put a good word in for you and hey all's fair in love and war on getting jobs so why not use the network and make the network work for you and um it it also is building trust within the network because if you start reaching out to people maybe maybe the person you reached out to actually can't help you but they may know someone in a different company that can so the more you get the word out as to what you are looking for and what you want to offer and that you're enthusiastic about you know whatever the industry is your network will work for you you know putting that out there it may not come back in a straight line from point a to point b often it it it comes around because you're creating almost a buzz around like i wanna i'm i'm i'm ready to do this and i need to do it better than i know most people can right so if i'm a student i just graduated and i know arts center graduates people three times a year if i just graduated i might feel that i don't know anybody particularly who am i supposed to reach out to i want to get that dream job easy to reach out to easy easy linkedin is just astonishing i do a search for the company say the company is collins in new york or san francisco so i do search for art center college of design and collins poof all of a sudden there are probably at least a dozen people that have graduated from art center that have affiliated themselves with collins so some still work there some maybe worked there in the past but all of a sudden i mean how easy is that so this is not all that mysterious and then testing it right now no testing it right now knowing what to ask them um unders yeah really reading their profiles and seeing whether they're still there what their role is there when they graduated from art center and and just you know because you're in a network and it doesn't have to be art center it could be you know cal state long beach it can be you know whatever design school you go to or in the case of the future it may be that i find that somebody there actually is um you know has has the future in that they're watching and you know they're they're talking about how they're learning and you know you might actually find like-minded people in this network of yours chris hmm so you know you know what i'm gonna do this this might be a little scary but i'm gonna actually log in and do exactly what you're saying and show people how how to do this great so you guys hang tight for a little bit because i had to move my computer around here a little bit so petrula keep going on and i'll be a little distracted right now okay okay so i think um one of the other things i can offer to job seekers now is to take some time to do it the right way like how you're you're learning the fundamentals say of typography or color or layout as as a designer you really if you didn't get that in school you're having to step back and really understand how these things work you're a designer so you employ the design process and that's what i think you need to do in job searching there's no easy way about it there's no quick way you're going to do it it's actually something that takes rigor practice structure and and knowing it as a design process knowing your goals specific goals knowing who your audience is knowing where their pain points are i mean i'm just asking people to do what they do professionally for themselves so i don't i mean i know people get really freaked out about it but we have the tools we use them all the time right okay i'm ready you guys let's do this live i'm gonna switch over to my computer here and hopefully you guys can see what's going on i'm logged into linkedin right now and the first thing i'm gonna do and it's just it's not coincidental i just search for you petrula so here we go we're going to type in collins like that's how you would find it and this is a company and i'm going to do it the way i know how petrula but feel free to correct me if i'm not doing it the right way and then if i click on people i can't see nope just go up in the search and put collins and then put art center wait wait i just want to show you this part first and then yeah yeah okay and so there's 85 employees at collins and if i type in here art center okay and then i'm going to find look at this here's who i know look at that so i already know brian in this case okay this is a fair advantage but if brian weren't here i could look at this and i can read a little bit about them see if there's a point of connection and perhaps just the old art center alumni network might work for me okay so that's one way that's the the simpleton christo doesn't know how to look for a job way now you're saying if i go into search up here right yeah i should type in collins right and then in this case uh art center without a space between art and center like this collins art center and the results here will be different because this is people that may have worked with collins in the past so ultimately your your method chris gets people that are there but this method will get people that even had worked freelance for collins mm-hmm should i click on see all results sure why not all right live dangerously here we go ladies and gentlemen so all right so you do you see any names in here that we should click on or now i'm getting a lot of columns that are not the right columns unfortunately okay well maybe your method then um maybe your method's a little bit more effective then it yeah it it probably is that collins is a more common name so you're getting yeah just different columns okay but i know you did it was terrific we should try to maybe do something less like nobody has the name facebook so if i'm looking for a job at facebook right let's try that i mean there might be john facebook and i just insulted you i'm sorry but let's try that let's try your method i want to see how this works okay now we have facebook an art center with no space well there's 111 000 results which is bananas this is a good thing though i think because that means that art center people have been around a lot of places so this is the power of the network of art center probably yeah right okay maybe uh maybe then any one of these people uh i i'm because i'm in the booth i can't really see okay let me zoom in interesting okay is this is this better uh so i have kenneth yeah go with kenneth uh he's in my class now he is uh beautiful he there you go okay okay so it's it looks like i'm a second connection so i'm uh two connections away from him he's an art director at ace at facebook and he's in pasadena right so what do we do next can you walk me through this part um send message you could you could actually connect with him first and it's possible that he may not be monitoring his linkedin account which is just fine right you can send him a message here that says you know i'm you know i i'm trying to expand my art center network and i'm specifically interested in being a something something at facebook so make sure that your request is specific and i'm looking for some guidance from you about the process there okay right so let me square that up okay so my message is a little funky and funny obviously i'm not looking for a job and i don't really want kenneth to help me with finding a job there but i just wrote hi candace was just chatting with petrula during a live stream and wanted to connect with you that's all okay is that okay yeah okay yeah sure but you guys would write what petrula said so maybe and again let me let me say that again you're going to introduce yourself and let them know let's say you graduate in december let them know that you're going to be available and looking in in january and your what specific things you're looking for and if you can have you can ask them to help with you to guide you through the best process and you can you can also say give them a link to your website so they know and let them know you're just expanding your network okay so these are these are you know you you may not be getting the job from kenneth but kenneth may then go to the hiring manager at apple and say oh by the way have you come across chris doe's application because i think he could be really interesting for the something something team so you're helping facebook identify their connections and this is building trust on your end and on their end so it's again all about instilling and building that trust okay so i'll read to you what i wrote okay okay i wrote hi kenneth i graduated from art center in 1995. i was hoping you could guide me through the interview process at facebook as i'm applying for the open internship position i'm the 40 year old intern okay go send it i'll talk to kenneth next week should i send it absolutely he's gonna go are you kidding stranger things have happened chris all right all right so there we go i'm sending it boom all right i hope kenneth will connect with me and we'll see what happens i don't know if you're qualified chris double check my uh my cv here okay that's beautiful that was great so i know there are a couple of people watching there's 240 people watching us live i think this number is growing as we do you guys go ahead and drop in your comments and i'll be sure to read through them along with mark and jonah who are in the booth helping us to make all this happen okay fantastic i have a few more unless you want to ask something specific i wanted to share a few things to get some context going that are more covid related no i want to hear a lot more thoughts so please continue on so i just um i think people's careers are going to be slightly different than they have in the past i think those of you who are starting your career or if you've just started maybe in the last two to five years you're going to be working more nomadically so it's it covert forced this but i think generally you're going to be working more virtually and nomadically and what i mean by that is that you'll probably have shorter gigs let's say full-time gigs but those gigs are only going to last maybe 18 to 24 months and that's common in the past it used to seem like that wasn't enough time but the real go-getter kinds of designers are really moving around a lot and what happens is they're moving and building those networks and finding opportunities and the interesting thing is some of those opportunities are within the same company so you may work with this particular team at google for a year and moved to this team for a year and a half because that company wants to find out where you are going to be the most valuable and productive so sometime you're sometimes you're working nomadically within a larger company or you're actually going to leave that company and go to another when you tend to leave jobs more you'll tend to be your salary will tend to be higher than those that stayed in one job if you compared them over a 10-year period if you moved around let's say three to four times in ten years versus staying in one place in ten years your salary level will be higher is this also true if you move around the same company but different offices or do you need to leave this company go somewhere else it depends on on the title because usually large companies have salaries that determine or dictate a tile just like you would chris in your company a junior designer you know gets paid x amount an art director would get paid x amount more so if in that movement around google you go from a designer to art director then probably your salary will go up within that okay that makes sense and i think learning prototyping tools to be as effective as possible working virtually is a must so if you've got time on your hands and like like get out of the rabbit holes of of you know doom scrolling and you know get on to learning some really great prototyping tools if you find you've got more time on your hands do some experimental projects or some projects for people that might not be able to afford them some for good projects that you can feel good about both passionately and also you can use them as examples of what it is that you believe in and um and examples of how you can do what you do best let me see if i understand this correctly i've heard the term doom scrolling before but what is doom scrolling what happens is the news um and the sources that we get are so so much about uh creating um persuading us to to to to dive in more and and they're so um divisive and negative it becomes you know you're just scrolling trying to find information but it just gets very depressing and it's um it's some it's a term that that just means how current news sources are sometimes just taking us down paths that are so negative and upsetting that it you know at the end of just a half an hour of of looking you're just in the worst mood possible and the worst mood to be actually going hey i'm i'm a great candidate i'm positive and i want a job so you've got to really keep your positivity up you've got to keep your health in check people will will want to know that you take good care of yourself that your time management skills are good that you that you can be relied upon in the time that they're going to be needing to connect with you that you've got you've got you're available and you're responsive and you're positive and you know when you're communicating with people over zoom it's like it extracts the humanity out of our communication so you've got to make extra effort to keep positive you know keep looking at the camera and and not keep distracting and and looking down and you've got to actually you know consider that this is meaning you have a particular authority about about you people will listen to you if you talk to them like you're having a really good positive conversation about problem solving and you're bringing your expertise to the table i just okay sometimes i see people interview and just the set behind them looks terrible like i don't want to see your bed you know i don't want it i don't want to see you know that your place is dirty and you've got dirty laundry in a corner like come on you know if this if this is your office you got to get it together so uh right after this call i'm going to go and clean up my room i promise but i want to let everybody know in the interest of full transparency full disclosure everything here what you see in camera looks pretty organized everything below and around me is a total chaos fine total disaster zone right just letting you guys do it that's absolutely fine you know okay uh you're wearing you know like superman shorts fine chris i don't want to see them and then you didn't show them to me that's great well as a matter of fact okay there's a couple things that you're mentioning uh in in this kind of conversation that i want to highlight and kind of draw out a little bit more now what you do in your free time in this kind of doom scrolling and it does seem like the social feeds these also so-called news networks seem to prey on the negative news and it's all we're served up and they curate this stuff because it gets us all riled up and then we stay on it longer that's why i think john krasinski's some good news has been such a breath of fresh air i hope i said his name correctly and it's kind of nice to see that for a change but now more than ever i think how you manage your time when nobody's looking is even more important because we have so much of this unsupervised time right where we're working from home like i'm literally at home right now you're in the studio the team normally is elsewhere but they're also in the studio somewhere so now we have to kind of develop different habits and you're talking about okay look take a step or take a break away from the the bad news and let's do something and you said four good projects and i'm not sure everybody is familiar with that term can you ex can you explain that and can you help us who may not have access to the programs that you have or the people in the network how do we find a for good project that we can feel good about participating in so we're using our time better so will you determine what it is that you care about say that you're really interested in taking responsibility for bringing more people um out to vote okay so this is really timely and there's there are organizations that that you can contribute your time to that are doing that or you can reach out to your network with your skills as a designer and do something um maybe it is create a particular community or make sure that people you know know the facts about mail-in ballots how can you as a designer identify a problem and commune and create the communications that can help solve that problem even for a small audience as your own network so find a need a need that's that's important to you it doesn't have to be about voting it could be about any social environmental cause project it could be that you could uh contact one of a particular organization let's say the surfrider foundation contact them and say hey i'm a graphic designer i'm doing a little bit of freelance but i think i can contribute x amount of time over the next two weeks can i do something for you or i would like to do this for you because i think i didn't get the information i wanted to when i came to your site to find out about the something something in regards to the coastal waters um in santa monica okay so you're identifying problems because you know because you're passionate about that what did you what did you try and find that you couldn't find what need do you have um or what need can you identify that could facilitate that and then make sure that when you're investing that it actually is going to yield you something that you can put your name on and use so sometimes it's it's easier to come to them with a proposal for something versus ask them what they might need out of the gate because it could be like something that takes you away from your job search because it's going to last 6 months because it has to go through 16 committees right just make it easier for them to say yes too because sometimes they're like well i don't really know your skill set and i don't have anything right now and it just might close more doors for you so if you propose something it shows that you've done the research you're thoughtful and you have a plan and you know how to box it in so that you don't over commit to something right okay that's excellent i'm curious though what you see in terms of the advantage of doing spec work because we're doing this for free for a company right a cause that we believe in and this is good it makes us feel good and it's good for the world versus just saying i just want to do something for the surfrider foundation without actually even having to reach out to them i'll just work on my own spare time and just use that as a as a case study on on what i think they should do you could do that are there benefits to one or the other the by doing it without them being the client you have more control over it um so but and and you might be able to deliver it to them and say this is what i have done can you use this so all that's fine but i am not really a proponent of spec work for graphic designers i think it's really detrimental to our field and i think it's really been bad for the motion design industry so spec work really works if you are getting a long-term project like you're an architect and you're gonna do this work get that award and it's gonna keep your firm busy for three years so when you do it to get like an account like ad agencies do or a large project like an architectural firm it works but per project spec work the designer it it's it's just it's just a poor business practice and it will deteriorate the industry and create a series of expectations that that bypass what is a a process of working with the client to figure out the right solution and it turns the process into a little bit more subjective like i like that i don't like that kind of things and anyway that's you and i can debate about that in another in another time yes yes i'm no fan of spec work either and just so that i'm clear and we're using all the same terminology spec work is short for speculative work which is when you do work in hopes that you'll get work for money and i probably have misused that term here in that whenever i do free work or work that i don't get paid for i just will put it all in this giant bucket of spec work but when it's a self-initiated project when you volunteer to do work for a company or an organization like the surf writers foundation how do you describe that spec work isn't the right term but what is the work term that you would use then um the word pro bono doesn't mean for free it means for good so people could say that's a pro bono project because ultimately you could sell it to them um but it's ultimately a project that is for good and i would say for social or environmental good um is that does it did i answer that i think so okay i don't know i i wasn't going to make a case out of but then you're like saying go ahead and volunteer to do work for cause companies i think were you saying volunteer or no volunteer in this case would be a good term but you have limitations around it if you do that it isn't just like oh i'm going to work for you for nothing and we'll see how that goes it's really it's really structured and it's really exercising both your visual design your your design skills but also your professional skills to make sure that whatever agreement you have is clear okay i don't want to split this hair too finally here i think we understand that if you have some free time you can elect to begin a relationship with somebody for money for free but you're initiating and this is really important versus them initiating it or forcing you to go through some kind of test animation test storyboard or test design before they consider hiring you neither of us are proponents for that it does exist in some industries unfortunately sadly and i'm glad i'm not doing client work anymore because of that but it works in some industries so yes it's not always bad um just to to kind of go on a a more kind of a positive tangent there um one of the things we're finding is that companies are hiring interns so if i don't usually say that interns you should take an internship once you've graduated i usually believe that our students are able to really achieve at least junior design or designer positions right but what we're finding is that if you can can say okay this internship is lasting two months at least it they're using it kind of as a trial period and most of the jobs that are coming up at that at that level that high level um meaning high not within the company structure but at that little level that there are opportunities interns are being moved up into those positions before anybody anonymous okay so interns have the best shot at getting those opportunities so if somebody did an internship in the past let's say in their sophomore or junior year they may want to knock on that door kind of update them about what skills they are they've they've acquired have a conversation because their chances of getting a job if it's available are significantly more than somebody just showing up and saying here's my resume right okay let's get back to that though okay since it's a very competitive job market out there because i don't think there are a whole lot of industries that are hiring right now in fact they're going the opposite way as far as i can tell and there are a lot of people who are hurting right now going months without a job we happen to know somebody in common i'm not saying she's hurting but she's an art center grad she's a super talented person and she told me that she was very close to landing a job at one of these really big tech companies i can't say which one and covet hits and everything is frozen right so you just kicked everything down the road like we're not making any decisions right now and so now you're just stuck in a tailspin or holding pattern right okay what should somebody do in that case well i think it's important to understand where the opportunities are and where they're not a lot of things that designers love to do let's say work in music industry or work in editorial or book design the opportunities just are not there so you have to understand as a job seeker who's doing well what industries are actually thriving and how to find companies that are in a very active growth mode or or at least a stable mode so you know going to look for something that doesn't exist doesn't make any sense so you know you've got to make sure that you have a better understanding of the economy and opportunities that this difficult time may may actually be having for for designers especially designers that are innovative thinkers you know if you have a portfolio full of things that are just a bunch of artifacts you know like luxury packaging luxury retail packaging and a bunch of posters when you go to show that people are going okay well i understand the design skills but where's the thinking about how those can be translated into something that can be appreciated by our customers or client base in a virtual environment what are the what are the things that are going to facilitate that in regards to social media or ways to promote it that aren't going to be about showing up in a high-end retail store and seeing it there on display so it's really educate get get out of the you know get out of the the things that are the doom scrolling and get into figuring out who's doing well what industries are doing well and i'm trying to identify whether you have any connection to people in those industries going back to what we talked about when we first started this conversation i know man i don't want to make it sound that it's super easy i know i'm you know i've got that calm yoga voice right but i i you know i i'm actually just using kind of logic and the logic part is just being really objective about about something that people want to be get really emotional about like i want this i don't know how to get that i'm not sure and i'm you know and there's a whole bunch of difficulty wrapped around it because when you're a job seeker and you're having to work really hard it can really deteriorate your your mood and make you feel like you're not going to get what you want but just having a better idea as to how to organize yourself how to organize your materials know what your audience is looking for and that old adage like skate to uh to to where the puck is like that's that's where you want to go um so this is really important that you're not looking for jobs that that in industries like i did a lot of restaurant design especially fast casual restaurant design years and years ago in my business if i was still doing that it would not be going very well because they're really having a tough time and it's not just oh they need a rebrand you know it's i don't know when it's going to be better and they're going to really be in a situation of completely restructuring the last thing they're going to need is you know heavy-hitting outside branding help right hey you touch on a bunch of things okay it seems very logical and and and obvious almost that don't go chasing after opportunities that don't exist it doesn't matter how good you are finding them they just don't exist right now but i i want to ask you this question in a second but i want to follow up with the the idea of like what industries are doing well but i just want to point out something i think since uh the beginning of this year you have graduated two classes from art center right in this covet environment and normally graduation is a time of a lot of celebration there's a grad show and you put this together and you have industry professionals which i know you're deeply connected to for many many years you're the person who's like wrangling all the people who have all the jobs of the best companies and you're saying i wonder if you're a good fit for our grads and they come a lot must have changed so can you talk a little bit about the things that have changed like are people now dreading graduating and are the recruiters not even showing up anymore are they showing up in a different way everything's changing okay i want to know all the juicy details our grads used to get jobs very easily our grads are still getting jobs but the number of them of the jobs are less but they're still getting the ones that are there so in some instances that's the best we can do as a school like if there is a job they have an understanding because many times other art center grads are in there working and they know what to expect so there's that trust and the knowledge of the process and the expectations so we're getting the jobs that are there is just a lot fewer um companies are taking less risks there are things that are valued and i i brought this because i i've reached out to um the alumni network and said okay what's going on um i just going to read this candidates need to to go into more detail about how they'd make decisions than just walking through a portfolio i'd inter in i'd encourage interviewees to focus more on the why and the how of a design project not just how it looks being able to talk about impact and provide context is so important to hear and this is something you're teaching all the time chris um many startup companies are looking for senior positions or have or people that have diverse experiences design plus motion design coding design plus design analytics business and design research and design so those of you that just have this one you know graphic designer mode may find that you're a little stuck because that there's there's a big pool of people that are in that looking for the same jobs so it may be that if you can raise your education level to be able to add more value especially for visual design user interface user experience and motion and branding is just still you know golden because you're bringing more value to somebody they don't have to hire two people to do that because you're the person that can do both does that help chris it does i'm just making some notes here okay so you're saying that there are opportunities for people who have multiple skill sets or multiple disciplines i don't know if you call it cross or trans discipline but so design is good you need that that's the foundation and if you do design and coding or design in motion and business or marketing or something else you present all kinds of opportunities to your prospective employer and that they're getting better bang for the buck but they're also getting somebody who can speak multiple design languages if you will or creative languages and i think that's really really cool so you're saying that there are more opportunities right now for senior people than there are junior people is that correct yeah yeah because um there are a lot more junior people too so the competition is greater in that in that stoop of people looking for their first job but i have to say there's so something i think a job seeker um doesn't think a lot about and that's actually leveraging what they might have been before they became a graphic designer like say you were in uh import export business um before you decided that wasn't where your passion was and then you got some graphic design education how can you leverage your knowledge of the import export business in a startup culture as a graphic designer so if you can start to triangulate these really interesting background expertise that you have not sort of saying that was me it is me now and now i do this therefore i understand the business more and i can again create more value in this in in in this opportunity makes a lot of sense to me okay so one of our our friends and sews on uh well before i get to ann's question okay i want to read two comments really quickly great first comment is petrula you look great you look like you're at an intimate dinner i'm having tapas with you so people are commenting on the lighting but they're thank you jonah thank you jonah that's yeah you know what you guys you guys have to realize something i'm supposed to be in that booth and i i got kicked out because petrula is here so damn chris the sacrifices i make for our guests okay um now the other thing they're saying is you have an incredibly soothing calming voice and they listen to you for hours or days and should you walk us through some sun salutations or downward dog i gotta walk myself through some sun salutations about now because okay we'll do that later that's a different episode okay the question here from and so is this is or annie so she's like okay what are the what kind of advice you have for people who are in that senior place and it seems like companies are imploding right now what i've been out of school for five ten years what am i going to do right now so are you saying that you are worried that you're you're going to be laid off is that well i'm already laid off oh okay let's just assume that i've lost my job i'm a senior person i've been in the industry for 10 years let's say and i have multiple skill sets what should i do what kind of advice do you have for me um i think it's it's pretty much the same thing we've talked about like figuring out in your network what's going on having really good conversations about the things that you learned at this job the things you that you felt that um created value and differentiated you in the experiences you had with your teams and your co-workers what could they rely if they rely upon you for so you're really figuring out how to articulate and differentiate what it is that you have because those are the things that we're going to leverage as we're looking for a new opportunity and make sure people know you're in a bad you're in a bad emotional place when when you get laid off it it's so difficult it's debilitating but and it's a tough time to deal with the self-reflection because you've got you know this this difficult emotional state so sometimes you have to ask others like what do you think i asked somebody that was on your team like help me understand what things did i do right what do you think was the the the best thing about working with me and i know that sounds really weird but if you don't have a perspective on it it's easy to ask others because they can be more objective because they're not in that place and you might find a whole bunch out about yourself that's going to help you be able to position a good cover letter um or to be able to really figure out what important things on your resume um to highlight because both a cover letter and a resume are are ways of storytelling and their exercises and hierarchy of information so you may have the same facts right but positioning them differently in on a resume or carrying someone through in a revealing um [Music] way in a cover letter it makes all the difference in the world because if you send out a whole bunch of canned cover letters people read them and they just they look they sound generic they sound generic you really have to craft these things to real people if you expect to get real jobs so it's not at all about templates it's about thinking and and designing communication that solves a problem it's what you do best as a graphic designer right in theory in theory theory in theory well if this person was was at a job for five years they must be doing something right right how are their competitors doing is it the entire industry like then why did it happen did it happen because the this company had trouble or the whole industry had trouble so it's a little difficult to try and help ann because i'm not sure what's going on enough to be able to at least have a conversation about what i'd recommend the next steps would be okay so here's the note from my live editor jonah don't cut to my face when i'm doing something else will you please it's pretty obvious i'm not even looking at petruva right now this is what jonah did jonah you know i thought you just i thought you're ready to go back no you're a little jumpy that's going to be your new nickname jumpy jonah this is perfect keep it on patrula she looks good she sounds great this is just like leave it alone okay i had to do a little digging around because there's some chatter inside the comment section and i also want to say hey hey everybody in case you're just joining us let me just tell you who we're talking to we're talking to protruder fronties among many things she's a professor a long time standing professor at our center college for design and she teaches many things like professional business practices so we wanted to have her on today because there's a lot of us looking for work right now yeah and i i can't think of somebody else who would be better to have as a guest on today's show she's also authored a number of online courses on linda now linkedin learning dot com so you guys can look that up in a second okay patchouli is talking about there are opportunities now in the senior spaces for people who are cross or transdisciplinary and she talked about these things and so immediately in the chat they're like well chris always talks about specialization isn't this going against that and i do want to say something here now this is where i cut to my screen so jonah can't mess up this part so i looked at this thing because i remember seeing this thing a while back this is an article on wired magazine about how john mayda was doing a presentation at south by southwest and he's talking about the different kinds of design he comes up with this little thing i'm sure you've seen this petrilla but i was trying to zoom in and wired is like fighting with me right now because i didn't collapse this thing but i'm going to jump into it and it's like he talks about there are three kinds of design at play and then we don't need to be that specific but the three kinds of design what most of us most of you guys that are watching right now would fall under the traditional classical design that there's a right way to make things that are perfect and that we we want to work on our craft and that there's a sense of completion the thing that we talk about a lot on this channel i think is his business and the design thinking because execution has outpaced innovation and experience matters and then also truly has mentioned this about coding and using technology using design with coding to create tools apps platforms networks that could potentially change the world and this is a design in scale for billions of people and in real time so he's like you don't you're not going to be successful anymore if you just slowly focus on classical design you have to pick two of these three if you want to have a shot at this and i think this goes to back up exactly what you're saying right petrula yes and i want to not really contradict your idea of specialization if you're a freelancer if you're if you're looking for freelance work i still think specialization is an edge okay and if you're starting uh a small firm i think specialization is really good but i think having uh being more of a swiss army knife in uh employment situation will add value and differentiate you from others you know but you know that these things it depends because you know it may be that the team needs a specialist and then they're looking for that but i would say um now if people can provide more um skills and value they will they will be able to be utilized better in a compromised market um i wanted to share something that another alum said to me when i was asking these questions and she's um a hiring manager she she works with a hiring manager and she said before meeting meaning if you do get an interview prepare with the questions below for both parties to have more context where do you see yourself in five years what are some of your design goals business goals and goals for your skills and impact how will you trackle how will you tackle trade-offs in a cross-functional team and how do you build relationships so this is for the groups that have been out for a while what she's telling us is that is that it's not just about the design it's about how you worked in teams what your goals are how a company can can get the most out of you and how can you give the most to them in a compressed period of time these are and and you know how do you build teams how are you a valuable team member or team leader what are your leadership skills how did you get them did you get them on the future channel possible possible oh you're done i'm done i mean i'm not done done but i'm done with that right okay i want to i want to respond to something moderator may i have two minutes to respond please put me on the clock and okay let's see how we how we do here okay let's talk about specialization just for a second i don't want to interrupt you but i was thinking about it there's very few live streams that are going to go by where i don't mention my friend's name blair ends and he talks about this that there are two phases that designers go through are created people that the beginning of your of your life you want to try as many things as possible and be as broad as possible and this is how you create opportunity somebody asked you to design the letterhead you're like okay somebody asked you to do an animation their intro reel you say okay so you get yourself into lots and lots of things and that will get you to the level of success but after a while you're going to find that you've been spread very very thin in terms of your skill set you've not gotten really deep at anything so the second phase of your life is when you have to just just be maniacal about editing it down to saying to yourself i think i really like photography and interactive spaces and then i'm going to go really deep in that and that begins your second arc but so many people don't quite get there so when you're listening to this you kind of have to figure out where are you in your career and your journey so if you're at the beginning of your career you're probably gonna need to be very broad and try lots of things because let's just be honest you don't know what you don't know yet and you need to try lots of things and school is a great place to to dabble in things and they offer many kind of courses especially at art center where you can experiment in different things and kind of figure out what you want to do for yourself and i want you to look at it like this so you can remember this really well okay you guys know what a like a dna helix looks like right it goes in it goes out and it goes in and it goes out like that right so i imagine you're at the bottom of the helix if there's such a thing and you're going to just try lots of things and you're going to go really narrow and then you're going to find lots of success and where it opens up is when you go really deep you learn that there's so many things to learn just in that area of specialization but you still have this broad skill set there's a lot of things you still know and when you become really successful you're going to find out my gosh people are now saying you're really good at this can you also do that and then you're bringing it in so it's this constant state of going out expanding narrowing things in expanding out yeah okay that's it for me that's almost like yoga is it okay all right there's a question here and i think it's a pretty good question from diego cuevas and he asked if i can find the question now there it is he said i'd love to ask chris and petrula imagine you're in the middle of a career you don't like in his case and recently discovered that he loves something else he loves art and photography should he ditch this whatever career he's at to do what he loves what do you think petrula i'm going to be really pragmatic and say the market for art and photography is compromised so the idea of it being the source of your income it depends on how much you need to make [Music] that being said to figure out how people are making money with art and photography might be your next step like who's actually making a living doing that and how and why i just feel like it is really difficult when you discover after all this experience that you've gained somewhere else that you really want to be somebody else and i and i don't i don't want in any way to for to say people shouldn't follow their dreams and follow their passions but there's a responsibility you have to doing something that is going to sustain you as a designer as an artist and a photographer and finding a financially sustainable career in those at this time is um is it is a very very tricky decision finding mentors that are able to do that and seeing how they do it and by um i don't mean by likes in social media i don't mean by you know just doing free stuff and posting it up i mean actually making a living because i i think it's important as a designer that you're doing something that is not only satisfying from from your heart but but it actually is valued and compensated so you can continue to do it otherwise you're going to be in a cycle like oh i tried this at being an artist and now i've got to do this other thing again and then i got to go here you know how can it you know it may not be that you can do that art photography now but there may be a stair step up if you can figure it out um what is the market for still photography maybe you'll find that videography is act and storytelling is actually much more valued and therefore more compensated so you may want to think about ten tangents in those areas that may be more sustainable for a career does that sound depressing i know i try not to sound depressing i'm just trying i'm just trying to like solve a problem you just keep it real real hashtag real real okay good well i do want to provide a slightly alternative answer to this and an approach which i have to caveat is completely reckless so petrula gave you the pragmatic practical thing you probably should do and if you have miles to feed you you'll probably want to make that kind of decision but here we go you guys ready fasted your seatbelt we're going to do this i think life is short your time on earth is very finite and i think all of us are searching for meaning and purpose and things that we love i don't want to tell you to go and be an underwater basket weaver as they would say in high school when i was going to high school because there's no market for that the challenge usually is to find what you love and a marketplace that values it which is the hard part i can't give you broad generic advice right now because i don't know exactly what it is that you want to do you talk about our photography and if you're saying that an industry that is is no longer expanding and it's on the decline that's just me saying based on anecdotal evidence from my friends who are professional photographers then you're probably setting yourself up for a lot of pain but you have to make that individual decision as to what your financial obligations are how many people depend on you and whether or not you want to do this thing but i do think it's really really important that as we all kind of embark on our own creative journeys that you do what you are meant to do that you have a gift to and once you find that gift you have to honor it and do what you can to figure out a way to make it work that's the challenge so to say like i want to do photography right now you're probably going to have a lot of heartache and financial strife as you pursue that because it's just it's not happening but if you say to yourself photography is just a thing that i use to express my creativity and not the end product itself it may open up your eye and your mind to other options and possibilities you might say to yourself well where is there a demand for photography well if you take a bunch of photos and you put them together we call that video or film and there is no better time i think in the history of our civilization to be a filmmaker because there are huge multi-billion dollar trillion dollar companies that are fighting each other to have the rights to your film especially if you make documentaries you talk about netflix you talk about hbo hulu amazon and apple they're all just they have a voracious insatiable appetite for content right now for even for youtube you could do this point of reference here most of us could probably live a decent life not a great life but a decent life if we make a hundred thousand dollars a year and if you break that down that's not that much money relatively speaking to make per month so point of reference our little youtube channel that you guys are watching right now after having built it up for the last six years generates on average a little bit more than ten thousand dollars a month in ad revenue for us so if you approach it like i want to be a photographer like i'm gonna be a celebrity photographer i'm going to be a nature photographer you might have a really hard time find a different application for your your craft and your gift and the thing that brings you so much joy and use a modern context when you look at it and i think you're gonna find the answer and if you have a hard time figuring it out i'm gonna recommend you do this scrape some pennies and nickels together hire yourself a business coach and have them spend some time working with you so they can help you see what you can't see and that's my reckless irresponsible answer i don't think it's that reckless and irresponsible i think the tough part now is that people are very dissatisfied with their jobs yeah it's a you know the zoom extracts the humanity out of our communication we're just we don't we can't collaborate in ways we can't learn in ways we can't mentor in ways that we used to so it is a very depressing time and so you have to figure out we kind of parse out what the problems are are the problems in the job or is the problem in the situation is the problem in in what's really going on here and and it it if you hang in there um and you still have a job when things open up will it get better or you know it it won't so i don't know that much again about your situation but be careful now because we're all in a very compromised place and and it's it's important to pinpoint where the problems really lie yeah ultimately what chris and i are are trying to recommend is is look for places where there is growth because where there's growth there's opportunity and where there isn't growth it's a contraction and um it will be hard for you to get a foothold in what it is that you want and i don't want you know it may be just that this time in your life is not the time to be scrapping whatever you were doing and starting a new career in a in a time that's going to be the most difficult to actually get a foothold mm-hmm also i i know it may sound counterintuitive to some of you but nature abhors a vacuum so when you see industries and collapse where everybody's looking over here for the opportunity if you're looking for industries that are just imploding there's opportunity there too it just takes a little harder or a little bit more effort to find what the opportunity is so when when restaurants go out of business well that creates a new problem the landlord the person who owns the building has a new problem and then the people who live in that community have a new problem so what we want to do as my friend brian collins would say is like we we don't want to just be problem solvers we want to be problem seekers and so i like to look for a problem now i want to say this this has been fantastic petrula so far because when we started this live stream was 140 people and now we're over 400 people watching live i do want to say hello to some of them people are tuning in from india washington san francisco oh my gosh it's scrolled by so fast toronto pakistan san diego mexico yorkshire uk norway nigeria we have lots of friends in in nigeria philadelphia toronto denver okay welcome everybody now petrula back to the topic at hand i have another quote i wanted to to say from us a design friend at uh png procter gamble we are moving in a digital world really fast so brushing up on how we can reach more consumers via media in an ethical inclusive respectful way is a priority candidates should show us the digital skills they have through different programs different experiences and be able to talk about company values you know what never in a live stream before have there been so many strange and interesting pregnant pauses because i'm never sure if i should say something when when you stop because i think it's a pregnant pause and you're going to fill it up something so i want to give you space and i'll send jonah cuts to my face yeah that's what's going on throws me off too so jonah do not cut to me once again if the trula is just talking even if it's just silent just stay on her stay on the pregnancy yeah stay on the pregnant pause you know sometimes you've asked me to put you in the hot seat and that's not what you did today right right but i'm usually mentally prepared for those kinds of moments and not like this where jonah just randomly cuts to me i'm like what it's my turn to talk okay all right all right uh so let's see oh lots of other comments coming here okay from egypt and everything else so the topic we're talking about today is how to find and land your dream job when there are fewer jobs to be had everything has changed can you share with us another one of your golden nuggets or tips pearls of wisdom if you will i i'm gonna i'm gonna do one that's that's current okay you're gonna have multiple sources of income so it used to be as a designer in the past you could just have one thing going on you had your full-time job and and then whatever but most designers that are making a difference and enjoying what they do have multiple sources of income they've got some gig on the side they've got their main gig they've got something in the works they're collaborating on something else and they're learning something else and i know this sounds um exhausting but it's also really exhilarating because through these multiple sources of income you can actually get a a good chunk of income that might not have been able to be expected of just any one of them it also opens you up to a number of unexpected opportunities because your network is bigger so it could be at one point you're able to shift and do something that actually is about exactly what you're looking for because you've been cultivating that for a while so this is just stuff that we're finding it it's not just one gig it's a collection of gigs and it's hard you've got a lot of energy you're gonna need a lot of energy you're gonna need a lot of time management but it can be really exhilarating and profitable like i've i've gotten a number of gigs right i'm a teacher at art center a full-time professor there i run a design office i have these courses on linkedin that create revenue and i have an airbnb okay so this is this is just how it is in a you know when you're figuring out what opportunities you can get involved in and be able to leverage those opportunities by being able to expand your your sphere right i love the idea of teaching at art center it's been one of the most meaningful amazing things i could ever have imagined but i love teaching everybody that that can't get there i love being able to teach people overseas i love being able to share things globally and and i found that teaching and trying to to find to find the potential in people is is one of the most rewarding things for me so i'm finding the best places to do it and that's why i'm here right okay that's a pregnant pause that says right i love it jonah you're reacting and responding finally in real time i love it see you see how awkward that is you stay on picture little and she just waits i had to always restrain myself so so bad yes yes you need to restrain yourself jonah go jonah i'm done just stay on petrula okay okay i want to make sure we've answered this because we promised at the top of the show i want to make sure oh this is great people understand when is the best time to apply for a job okay okay i cannot wait to tell you this [Laughter] please tell me um first i'm going to tell you the worst the worst time to look for a job the worst time to look for a job is december especially after the sec after the first week of december okay because everybody's gearing up for the holidays and if you start making um all kinds of trying to to outreach people are really busy just trying to juggle things by the second week they're figuring out just how to get things ready to maybe take some time off in between the holidays it's a really compromised time and you will not get someone's attention the worst thing you could ever do as a job seeker is to start sending letters out on december 18th okay don't bother do not bother it will you know if you want to waste time that's great okay but i would get a better strategy in december and go for the best time to get a job and that's the second week of january okay because people leave their jobs but they're not going to leave their jobs before they get a holiday bonus or all those days off so there's a whole bunch of benefits that people have in around the holidays that they don't want to let go oh i'm going to leave my job i think i'll leave my job right before i get all these benefits so they'll stay and then drop the bomb like the first monday in january and then all the teams are scrambling to figure out what they're going to do they've got tons of work to do and then this extra layer of finding somebody so i want your stuff if you're looking for a job to be on their desks probably two to three days after they get back to work i don't don't make it the day they get back to work because there's going to be a big pile but then they'll know they'll know more what they're looking for and there's a lot of activity there's there's a lot of people moving around and that's the best time in the whole year that's it jonah now to chris thank you see i was about to say something and then and then patrilla said in the whole year so okay all right couple things to talk about you had mentioned earlier that you have multiple streams of revenue where you're a full-time teacher you you run your own design practice you also author a number of courses and you also have an airbnb would you say that your experience and how many different revenue streams you have is typical of teachers these days or is it atypical because are we looking at an anomaly or how most teachers kind of are diversifying like that i i don't i don't actually know you don't i don't i don't i don't know how i i really haven't asked those questions to my to my peers you guys don't sit in the lunch room and say you know how you holding up i heard about the furlough what's going on i think it's it's it may be different at art center because a lot of us do have our own smaller practices or contribute to larger practices whereas maybe in a university or community college teachers don't necessarily have a separate practice but it's also for economic reasons or opportunities i find that skill i use the most in all of them is persuasion and sales you know figuring out how to communicate to people how to instill trust how to build relationships how to be a good listener and learner these are the things that that are consistent throughout all of them and i didn't learn that stuff in school you know i was a lucky person young person where i learned that from my family and so you know i just i had that as the superpower that's enabled a number of things my dad was a really great salesman and i used to listen to him you know sell he could sell ice cubes to eskimos really so you learn stuff you learn about human behavior you can observe things that where people fear things and how to how to calm them down how to really listen um how to learn and how to use your translation skills um so they're really you know dazzled by your ability to just see things from a different perspective you know that's those are i don't i know that was a lot of topic but i'm done chris okay fantastic i like how you let us know after every time now yeah you should just go like this or something and then we'll know like cut okay i have maybe i can just one more one [Laughter] so joan has no choice then so we're gonna get to this one about your tips on how to nail the virtual interview because we want to really talk about that i know you have a lot of experience teaching and training people on how to nail the interview but before we do that zach thompson has asked this question so for recent grads with industry experience do you think it's wise to get a non-design job until the job market is at least somewhat recovered from what's going on right now i don't see why not if you if you need the income um and you have the time you know and and you can continue your job search um i would be careful about the commitment you're making to the non-design job that they they aren't now depending on you and then you're just doing it you know in the meantime so as long as there's kind of clear communication there um then i think ethically it's it's sound and economically it may be a necessity yeah you have to eat first you have to eat first so all of the things that we say have i think an assumption that you're okay like you're you're not going to be living on the street tomorrow because that's your primary concern just to make sure you could feed yourself and you could pay rent and whatever else okay now if you have to do a non-design job because there's no opportunity out there and as petrula has cautioned you the window of jobs that you can have is closing really fast as we're shooting into november december right so i don't know i i kind of think about this a lot where i think we're always chasing the next thing and we're not ever present to what's happening right now what do i mean by that well when you're in a job you said well when i have free time i'll work on some self-development and then you get laid off and there's no jobs to be had then instead of doing that self-development acquiring those skills that you need reading the 10 books you said you were going to read this year but didn't then you go and get probably a labor job one where it's not really utilizing your skill set and if you do this kind of work and you have no energy left when you get hired again when the job market swings back up you're kind of just you haven't really made a lot of progress so if you're at all remotely in a position where maybe you can move back in with your parents or eliminate a lot of your expenses so that you can live for a little bit while the job market is sorting itself out and i think a lot will happen after the election because generally because there's so much uncertainty people don't make any decisions right now that once it picks back up maybe you could you could enter in the marketplace with all the skill sets all these tools added to your belt that you didn't have before like you wanted to take that coding class but you never did you wanted to sit through and get your mba program but or degree and you didn't i don't know i i just feel like there's no better investment that you can make than to invest in yourself and you're never going to get a better opportunity in terms of time we're all going through this together most of us haven't left our homes and if we have it's uh using social distancing why not just use this moment to catch up on the things that you've always promised yourself you would do that's just my take on it again probably a little reckless probably not that thoughtful but i'm just saying that okay chris i think you're always you've always been a a proponent of of physical health and its relationship to emotional health and that is absolutely necessary and one has to figure out what it's going to take to keep you healthy i'm i'm kind of shocked these days because my students have been you know super truthful about spending time like how much time in a week are they playing video games how much time they spend on tick tock like frightening amounts of time and one can rationalize and say oh i'm so depressed and this stuff makes me feel better well it's sort of like eating sugar to get energy it's going to spike it but it's going to come back down so you actually figuring out how to know what's really good for you what really is going to make you feel better and also reaching out and finding communities of like-minded people that aren't just complaining i'm finding a lot of of of people just want to commiserate and say oh a bunch of bunch of crap and everybody's you know like how do you find people that are actually working harder to better themselves you know i think that's one of the good things you do here chris is as you're really helping coach people and make them feel good about learning something that they may have been fearful about before so just being here is really a good thing and finding communities that are positive and trying to make change that's that's where that's where the the the the success is going to be and we've seen that we've seen that in our pro group which is a gated community in terms of you have to pay to belong to our our coaching group when kovit hit i thought for sure people are going to just abandon ship because when when it's tight you don't want to be spending money not on a group but something really odd has happened our our community has actually grown so it went from about 270-ish to almost 400 people as part of our community and i i understand it now the dynamic of needing to be around people who are positive optimistic who have different life experience and skills that that you might not have that you can learn and grow from okay now to the last question last question about tips on nailing the virtual interview petrula what do we need to do to make sure that we don't squander this if we've how do we prepare for this what do we say you mentioned before we all need to be prepared to answer three or four of the questions that you mentioned take me through the process and maybe we can even do a little role play or something i don't know if it's appropriate okay let's let's let's just start with some technical stuff okay okay in the first three seconds they will have an impression of you before you even open your mouth they have decided something so what are they getting the impression of first of all it's what maybe came before like are you on time are you are you um trying to converse with them in an environment that's pleasant to look at you're a designer design your environment so you are you the the camera is eye level okay because if you're sort of down here looking up it doesn't feel very good right or if you're over here or going like that it's odd you know so we want to be emulating a conversation you're trying to say this is what it would be like if if i was standing three feet four feet away from you and we'd be talking that's how it should be you should be able to use your hands if that's if if that's what you should is that if that's what you do and the lighting has to be really good right here because most communication is non-verbal so it's not just what you're saying but how they can hear by your voice being up this is like good posture but for your mouth right so what i'm saying sounds brighter than if i'm like hi nice to meet you my name is petrula i'm really happy to meet you here thanks thanks for your time okay are you speaking from your diaphragm there no i'm speaking about that it's like i'm just trying you know i'm not making i'm not making a connection at all can you imagine meeting someone and they're like hi so nice to meet you it's horrible so you can just be on a lot of botox yeah everything's fallen right your face is frozen so i'm not saying you have to be smiling like this it's not what i'm talking about but know that that's scary if you are articulating your words really carefully these parts yeah there's like a smile in here and it helps my my voice be brighter i think people should really hear themselves speak and practice it almost like an instrument how can your voice instill trust and confidence and authority and it's a very difficult thing for a younger generation that hasn't had this level of communication so if you can do that you will connect with your interviewer so much faster and so much more effectively so the first thing you say is not can you hear me um you want to talk to them like i am so excited to meet you say chris and i okay chris let's say uh which do you want to be the candidate or do you want to be do you want to be the employer i don't know you're the boss you tell me you be the employer you interview me okay okay boy i haven't done this in a while i'm gonna be like a bucket of rusty nails here hmm let me start you know the last time i've interviewed somebody oh my god when is last time okay so i called this week over ten years chris i am yes my name's petrula veronticus and i'm truly i am so excited to meet you i've been following your channel for a while and also we have some mutual friends in the motion design industry and i'm just i'm i'm excited about the opportunity to possibly work with you and i was looking to see about opportunities that you might have um okay well first of all patchouli i love your energy and uh maybe there's an opportunity here you you seem like future material to me are you a fan of the channel have you watched any of our videos i've watched a lot of your videos and i think you are excelling in certain areas um and i might i might uh offer a unique skill set to kind of fill in some of the areas that maybe you guys aren't touching on right now because i you know i i come from a slightly different background um and it it could be that it could be a good compliment so i wanted to talk to you about any of those opportunities and see if i have identified them or if there are ones maybe you've identified that that that i hadn't thought of and we could see if we can collaborate wow that sounds fantastic i'm intrigued tell me more well i think um you guys are really working well on the idea of of business and design but it may be that you actually start mentoring people to teach and not necessarily in a formal way maybe informal teaching you're actually teaching people how to have podcasts you're teaching people how to have channels how to exercise their voice and become fluent in what they know it would be great for you to be able to help people do what you do but that's more authentic to them and i love the idea that you can teach people to teach in non-traditional non-conventional ways because i think that's where you excel and i can bring my experience from formal teaching to maybe fill in the gaps in regards to some of the fundamentals when can you start that was easy well i was like starting to sweat here at the interview okay is there anything that you saw on my resume that you wanted any clarification on i did want to show you some projects coming up but i also wanted to find out if you had any questions in regards to my background i'm going to be honest with you but truly i didn't look at your resume you become highly recommended and i'm impressed with what i've heard so far i think the best way for us to move forward is for me to put you on some kind of trial basis with us where we can see if we're both a good fit for each other how does that sound um i i think that may be where we end up but i think it's really important that i actually understand more about what it is that you are what do you what your goals are because in some instances it might be aligned with mine and so it really has the best chance of working but i think we do need to have a few more conversations because i want to make sure that whatever we embark on has the best chance of success sure sorry am i supposed to answer something or i'm just agreeing okay but just back i know let's let's go back to it's not you and me let's go back to nailing the interview before the interview you want to do as much as you possibly can to make sure that you know what the parameters are around this this interview time you have so you need to ask them how long the interview is because if you think you're going to present something and you think you have an hour but they've only got a half an hour it's going to be super awkward you also want to ask how many people are going to be there because it may be one-on-one or they may have you talking to a whole team and you might want to ask the names of those folks and do your research on linkedin to figure out their backgrounds so you're feeling more comfortable the more knowledge you have about the time you have the people you're going to see and what it is that they're looking for the less fear you're going to have so that's just replacing these unknowns with knowns and therefore the fear level goes down so i would also say i you know i i don't want to just poke through my website unless unless you'd like to do that i'd like to create something custom for you this is before the interview in an email um are there particular projects that you would like me to highlight and give you more information on so the thing that's probably the biggest buzz kill on a zoom interview is for the interviewee to just poke through their website because i can do that myself and it's not the right tool for the job the best thing to do is create like a custom deck either powerpoint or keynote and and actually have curated some this experience for people so they know that you've really thought through that it's for them and but just by asking a simple question like what kinds of things you're looking for what projects did you see that piqued your interest then you can go deeper on those projects than you might had might have been able to on a website besides a website is um you know like the way the text works the way the sound works it it can be an absolute zoom interview disaster to poke through someone's website it's probably the worst worst uh um strategy i would recommend and i've seen some of your students present before they are very thorough at putting together a structured narrative around the work and they they have complete control over it because i think they're doing it in keynote or powerpoint right yeah yeah instead of hunting and pecking around oh i just didn't load and that image isn't working today you don't leave that up to chance now yeah the latest i didn't want to say this is this the sound um i just want to mention that with zoom and with keynote and with powerpoint sometimes what you hear as sound on a video per se is not what they hear so you're trying to talk over something and i mean they just didn't hear a thing so it gets super tricky and i and it's nothing you should should just wing it you need to really practice and figure out how this is going to work right okay now granted i'm rusty like a bucket of nails on interviewing because i don't really interview people and there's people who do that for me but i do want to say this you you're a candidate who's interviewed in ways that no candidates ever interviewed with me before obviously you're a very articulate person with a lot of confidence and you you know how to hold yourself as a person who can do public speaking i i can't even imagine some young person sitting in front of me who's going to have the poise and the command of language and the thoughtfulness in in how you phrase things it's just this is like one of those unreal god level interview things right so that's why i have nothing else here's the job why don't you just run the company for me at this point right well chris you can call yourself a conventional employer or business owner right that is that is true that is all very fair and i do want to point out several things that from a prospective employer that petrula did really well and i do want to say this because look where you're at and where patrol is at yeah there's some light between the two of you i get that but what we wanted to show you is if you could have your ideal version of your interview it would look something like what just transpired because i understand our fans and our friends on the internet the first thing they're going to say in the comments was like bob i can't do that this just but she's super experienced she runs companies she teaches at art center who am i right so let's just kind of break it down what happened between petrula and i and i think this is probably a good way to to kind of bring our livestream to to a close here okay well first of all petrula looks amazing she sounds amazing that's because there's a lot of time and attention put into this and it it just communicates right from the jump i'm a professional please take me seriously and i'm prepared she's she's dressed for the for the job that she wants she didn't show up in her pajamas so she's exactly who she wants to present herself to be who knows what her whole life is like but this is a very good first impression it would blow me away if this actually was a real interview because like when do you start like i wouldn't even ask the first interview question right and then she used a lot of questions and phrasing that says to me as a potential employer she's done her homework she's really not just watched the videos she found gaps where we could grow and as somebody who wants to grow my business and i don't know any business that doesn't want to grow their business she's bringing a whole breath of fresh air and a bag of ideas that really resonate with me but i've not been able to act on and then she neatly very carefully wove her skill set with this idea that she's talking about into just this perfect union and it was just like i don't have to do any guesswork right now she has teaching experience and she says formal teaching experience that might help me in teaching people in informal non-traditional ways and then she talked about a market that maybe were under serving she's hitting all the invisible check boxes that i have in my mind and if you can do one tenth one fiftieth of what she's done you're giving yourself a really good shot of getting the job but for sure standing apart from everybody else who hasn't prepared for this moment whatever exercise you have to do mental physical spiritual whatever to show up for this and to be present to be grounded to be connected to this other person you need to do that so that you don't blow the interview i want to say that you guys aren't that far away you're the expert in you and you're the expert in your work so the idea of you just knowing deeply how you have done what you've done what your motivations are how it's relevant to a market that you've created for why it's important to the audience um what your background is like i'm just asking you guys to be an expert in yourselves and you're going to be much better at it than me i don't know how to be you i know how to be me but it's not like i'm asking you to learn something that's so mysterious you just have to do a bit of self-reflection and practice and talk to people about about it you can't just roll it around your head that's like saying oh i'm going to learn how to play the guitar so i'm just going to think about playing the guitar like you've really got to play it and it's going to sound awkward but at some point you will start getting that rhythm and you're going to start reaching out and listening to other guitarists like oh that's interesting i'll try that but soon it becomes your own voice no one is a better no one is more of an expert in who you are what you've done and why it's important than you you maybe just hadn't thought about it before so i'm kind of asking you to reframe what you do in a value proposition but you want to be very careful because you got to maintain humility i didn't tell chris i'm gonna be an asset to your company never ever do that um chris chris has to determine whether or not he needs me he's not gonna i'm not gonna sit there and tell him he does even as a peer it's awkward so certainly as somebody that maybe is coming in as a junior designer or designer it's super awkward you can tell them that you hope to be part of their teams you hope to contribute but i've heard it i've read it so many times in cover letters i know i will be an asset to your company no you don't that's awfully presumptuous it is so be careful yeah be humble but you know you this is it if if you were like if you if you've matched yourself up with a fellow job seeker and instead of doing your own stuff you guys started to promote each other that might be really interesting because you'd do it much more objectively you'd be able to ask the right questions you'd be able to they're like a client and you're trying to learn about them that might be a really interesting exercise because they're using objective ideas and trying to understand the problem the audience the market pain points and create possible solutions okay that's that's it okay okay what you have shared with us today has been really wonderful and i would like to draw an analogy maybe it's imperfect in its presentation but let me just present it the way that you presented yourself was very different than how most people show up for an interview which is i have a menu what do you want what do you pick what would you like just pick anything and i'll deliver it i think what you did was you kind of figured out beforehand via research if you had dialogue or an email exchange that you put out there you found out that they have certain preferences for what they want to eat what time they want to eat the temperature of their coffee and if they have allergies and you came prepared to say based on what i've learned this is what you would like but i'm leaving there i'm leaving some room open for you to choose something else so you're you've created a very tailored curated experience for this person and it reminded me of this uh chapter i read in pat flynn's book super fans and he said back in the day when he was working as a waiter there was a gentleman who came in who always asked for a glass of water and he was very specific in three lemons and then one time this person sat in his area and he said because he he also took up uh made a point to remember the person's name because he looked at their check it's let's say the person's name is johnson mr johnson um i'll be back with your cup of water and three lemons so he did two things right there he called him by his name and he paid enough attention to know that he wants a glass of water and three lemons and then after serving him many times he also recognized he only orders one thing and so he asked them should we just refer to this as the usual so when mr johnson came in with his friends and family and his colleagues he would greet him by name and say well we'll be having the usual today mr johnson and that allowed him to feel like important amongst his friends and peers and that was a great way to stand out and he said every time he came in he knew he was going to win the tip competition that they had with the other surfing staff service staff so there you guys go maybe imperfect in its analogy and its design but i think what you want to do is to spend the time to treat the interview as if your future career depends on it and not just assume because you are who you are that you're just going to get it without trying to be prepared to kind of anticipate questions and to do your homework and do everything you can to give yourself the best shot of landing that dream shop okay i want to thank every single person who's hung out with us our audience has grown and it's not fallen off there are now 451 people watching there's so many positive comments in here for you patrula at some point you may want to go back in and read them all mark are there any highlights in terms of like the compliments they're showering petrula with anybody there's some people just saying that they're glad that they get this information someone said it's a wake-up call and they said that she dropped all this advanced life knowledge and i won't be able to fit back in normal society once once a man a mind has expanded it can never shrink back to its original shape right or something like that okay i always love i always love talking to you chris sometimes it's more stressful than others this one not so much well we can change it we can make it stressful for you but it was fine for me it's it's very comfortable and we're work we're getting you i think to share the best of what you have to offer and i hope we'll be able to do this more i i want to just say before we bounce out of here everybody uh do look up petrula her name is petrula franticas she's been my guest on today's show you can check her out on her website 35k.com and uh on social media verontikas okay and i just want to drop a little hint here the little hint is we've been working on something together it's not quite ready yet but this is a snapshot from our recently remodeled studio a it's got that urban vibe or not the urban vibe the urban cabin vibe going on here and this is what petrilla looks like there so be on the lookout for that okay so before i get out of here i want to thank you once again on behalf of the entire team jonah and mark petrula thank you for doing this and thank you for staying all the way to the end now we're getting ready to get out of here john are you ready yeah that was your warning jonah good thanks everybody go get him but not till january go get him okay not to january okay all right guys thank you very much for tuning in thanks for being a part of the 1 billion minus 1 mission that we're on oh my god okay johnny you're scaring me don't forget to like comment and subscribe and ring the bell for notifications see you guys oops i don't need to do that either there's always something yeah okay thanks guys yeah

Channel: The Futur

Views: 47,969

Keywords: futur academy, the futur, chris do, Petrula Vrontikis, 2020, artcenter, virtual interview, nail the interview, land your dream job, how to interivew, interviewing tips, preparing for the interview, how to prepare for interview, profession business practices, get your dream job, get a job, dream job, perfect job, inside track, get the inside track, prospecting on linkedin, when is the best time to apply for job, what should you do if you just graduated, new graduate

Id: QdCYN9OBM_U

Length: 102min 50sec (6170 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 08 2020