Extemporaneously: A Job Interview and Careers Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

I sit down with Danielle to chat about her job search during COVID-19 and making transitions in her career. 

🙃 Reframing Experiences

One of the best tips Danielle shared is taking existing skills or experiences and reframing them slightly to make them more relevant to the hiring manager.  

📚 Learning

Danielle shares what her approach was to try and learn as much as possible when you're making a career pivot into an industry or profession that you're unfamiliar with. 

❤️ It's a Human Approach 

As a job seeker, Danielle talks about what were the most challenging parts of the job search and what companies did to make the hiring process as approachable as possible. She shares a ton of personal examples of the emotional roller coaster she was taken on. 

Follow Danielle on LinkedIn 
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Credits
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Guests: Danielle Oakes
Host: Marco Yim
Company: Extempra
Music by Wataboi
Artwork: Ravenfrostt

Follow Emily and Alex 
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Emily Johnstone on LinkedIn 

Alex Bradley on LinkedIn 

Swivel 

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💡 Swivel's Mission

Swivel is focusing on levelling the playing field for students and companies. They also wanted to create a platform that doesn't simply focus on skills, but on values as well. 

📚 A Student's Challenges 

We talk about the overarching challenges that students face on the job search recently graduating. Emily and Alex offer some insights into how we can better support students and share some things they've learned along the way as recent grads. 

💻 The Start-up Dilemma 

We talk about one of the biggest pain points for start-ups and how they are now addressing this through their platform. 
 

Credits
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Guests: Alex Bradley, Emily Johnstone
Host: Marco Yim
Company: Extempra
Music by Wataboi
Artwork: Ravenfrostt

Follow Samantha on  LinkedIn 
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Episode Highlights
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💪 Taking chances

Being a student with internship requirements sometimes forces you out of your comfort zone. Sam talks about how she took chances, applying for a computer science job and ended up getting it as a law student. This experience is something that still impacts her life today. Hiring managers - take some chances on the right people! 

💻The complementary parts of tech & law 

On the outside, it may seem that technology companies and law firms have little in common. As someone who works in both, what is Sam's perspective? 

🧑‍⚖️ The journey of a law student 

We dive into what law students go through and what Sam recommends. (There are a ton of tips that work for people in all industries): 

• How diversity in your experiences is a real benefit to having a fruitful law career 
• How law school has added new ways to analyzing personal problems  
• What OCIs are and her experience going through it 
• How OCIs can be beneficial or detrimental to people on the job search 

🔧 Job Search Tools 

Sam shares a ton of fun stories that relate back to everyday job search tools: 

• Why research is important on the job search 
• Why you never know if an interview actually went well 
   

Credits
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Guest: Samantha Santos
Host: Marco Yim
Company: Extempra
Music by Wataboi
Artwork: Ravenfrostt

Follow Kathryn on  LinkedIn 
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Episode Highlights
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✅ Career Audit & Themes 

Throughout the episode, this idea of audits came through. What questions do you need to ask yourself when thinking about change or where you want to go next? This is something that guided Kathryn time and time again in her career transitions. 

🚗 Transitions into the Unknown 

Kathryn talks about major changes to life, how she assessed risk, and what they meant for her personally:

• Staring in operations to telecommunications
• Moving from telecommunications starting her own  tech company
• Making  the decision to leave her own company and how she felt

🔧 Broken Hiring System 

Kathryn shares, from personal experience, how she experienced some of the blind spots of our hiring system and what she tries to do differently as a hiring manager. 

⛑ Safety

Another theme that came up a lot was the idea of safety: moving in/out of your comfort zone, the feelings of being unsafe as a founder, and creating emotional safety for the team you lead. 

Credits
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Guest: Kathryn Vandenberg
Host: Marco Yim
Company: Extempra
Music by Wataboi
Artwork: Ravenfrostt

Follow Amanda  
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Amanda: LinkedIn 
Design Shop: Website  & Instagram
 

Episode Highlights
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💼 Entrepreneurship

We talk about the differences between being an employee and owning your business.  What gaps will you have to account for? How does the stress differ? Would Amanda do anything differently if she had the choice? 

💡 Standing out on the job market   

Amanda shares a ton of stories and tips about how to stand out and explore your career: 
- How to best find out the realities of an industry or job 
- What kind of details matter on portfolios 
- The best way to use gaps  in industries as opportunities for self-directed projects 
- Following your passion and taking the leap of faith in the job search 

👩‍🏫 Mentorship 

Mentorship has played a huge part in her story: from learning how to build her own business, to now building a program to help boost the next generation of talent in the design world.  

🙏 Trust the universe 

She shares a cool story about how sometimes, things just work out like they're supposed to - you can't control everything, so might as well trust the system. 

Credits
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Guest: Amanda Minuk
Host: Marco Yim
Company: Extempra
Music by Wataboi
Artwork: Ravenfrostt

About Sean Reibeling
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Sean is an extremely talented and skilled marketing project manager that's really found his footing in the consumer goods industry. 

Apart from being able to manage complex problems from a seedling to an idea to troubleshooting what went wrong, he also knows how to rally support and highlight the value he brings wherever he goes. 

Follow Sean on LinkedIn! 

Episode Highlights
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💛 Transferrable Skills

We talk about the #1 skill it takes to make it in project management or marketing operations. But how do we make transferrable skills feel more concrete in interviews? 

📊 Highlighting Impact

For folks who impact projects (e.g. marketing operations or customer success), but maybe don't own them, what can we do to highlight our value, both internally, and on the job search? 

📚 Research, research, research! 

Sean shares an amazing story about how research helped solidify his place as a top interview candidate.  

❓Asking the right questions 

What are a few key questions you can ask that can help leave the right impression while also getting an accurate view of the company you might be working with?

Credits
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Guest: Sean Reibeling 
Host: Marco Yim
Company: Extempra
Music by Wataboi
Artwork: Ravenfrostt

On this episode, I'm speaking with Brittany Ferguson, the senior manager of customer support at Brio systems. 

Here are a few key takeaways from the episode: 
 

(1) Career transitions 🤝

Brittany takes all her experiences and weaves them nicely into how she tells her career story. 

Taking an example of a retail job, she shows how it applies to her jobs in marketing, events, customer support, and more! 

What do you think HOOOT from the Hot Topic training stands for?  👀

(2) Job search during COVID-times 🤒

Her previous job was impacted by COVID, so she shares what it was like to look for a new job during this crazy time. 

She actually said no to a job offer and explains how she came to the conclusion and how she managed to stay grounded during this time. 

Pro Tip: Come up with a list of things you want and don't want in your next move. Don't settle if the job doesn't check off enough boxes! 

(3) The importance of a cover letter as a hiring manager 📝

We talk about the importance of a cover letter as hiring managers. 

• Personalize by telling the story of why you're interested in this specific company.
• Don't be afraid to address gaps and be transparent about how parallel or indirect experience can enhance your ability to do the job.
• Go undercover! Be a secret shopper to find out the way companies speak and help their customers.  Match their tone.
   

Credits: 

Guest: Brittany Ferguson
Host: Marco Yim
Company: Extempra
Music by Wataboi
Artwork: Ravenfrostt