Nikki created a job for herself by networking strategically and leading with her expertise before the role officially existed. Michelle Perchuk talks with her about how personal branding and seizing opportunities shaped her career path.
So, Nikki, can you please share congratulations on this amazing feat, but can you please share how in the beginning you networked in and how you led with your expertise? Because I probably talk about leading with expertise till I'm blue in the face, but how did you lead with expertise, identify this opportunity, and actually got yourself into this realm before the job was even created? Can you just walk us through that?
Yeah, absolutely. So I had been doing some research on LinkedIn and noticed a role being posted by a Chief Product Officer at the Wealth Manager. It was an interesting role. I wasn't exactly sure what it was, but. So what I did is I noticed that I had a former colleague that had now moved. This was like three moves later, but she'd moved and she'd been on my marketing team at my old shop. I reached out to her to network. Didn't mention anything about the role. I just said, hey, I. I want to get together with you. I'm interested to hear how your journey has been. I'm so glad to see that you have found something that you're really enjoying. Because I could see some of her LinkedIn posts. She and I got together and I. I hadn't worked with her for several years, so I needed to, you know, after catching up and hearing how well she had been doing, told her about what I had been up to in the last several years, told her some of my new areas of focus, which were not some things that she was aware of, and asked her if she knew of anything going on at this, her. The wealth management shop that she was now at. And she said, I really want to introduce you to the Chief Product Officer. And I knew he was the hiring manager, so she introduced me to him. My initial conversation with him was introductory. I just went into it as, I'm so excited to meet you. I knew some about his journey, asked him about why he landed where he had landed, because I knew he had left a much larger shop, so was more so focused on how did you make those decisions, how did you know what size shop you wanted to be at going forward? I let him know maybe just some personal anecdotes about how I like to operate, who I am as a person that really stuck with him. And I think that is what planted the seed of this is a somebody that I want to work with. He hadn't even seen my resume. He had no idea about my experience. He just liked how I spoke about what I was passionate about. And he said, he's just the kind of person that was like, I would love to help you find anything. He was more thinking about outside of his. Of his company until he was then thinking about his role. He thought about it and thought about his role, thought about wanting to work with me, and then he kind of molded the position based on how I could be a compliment to him and what he does every day. So that. That was how we got started on that path.
So you're basically a testament of. You truly created the role for yourself by leading with expertise, by connecting with the right people, by connecting the dots, by showing your strengths, by sharing your successes, your stars, all of that. And when people saw that he didn't even have a role when he met you, he either refurbished a role or he created a role for you, went to bat with HR pride this job away from their grimy little fingers because they probably wanted to post it or open it up to internal candidates, went to bat for you, got you more money, and, you know, this really was a full cycle of how things are supposed to happen. So congratulations. I love your story, and we wish you amazing, amazing success in this role. I know you're going to be great at it because he really wanted you there. So that's wonderful.
