Landing a job after being fired

I was fired, and it was so emotionally taxing. And then to turn around and have to do a job search, it was overwhelming. I thought, what do I say to these other employers? Will this tarnish my job search? How do I get my confidence back? But I ended up landing my dream job. It was so much better than I could have ever imagined. And so I want to walk you through the journey. The offers I got, the negotiation, the hoops I had to jump through with these companies, the highs, the lows, and then how I was able to identify the opportunity that I chose as, as the perfect opportunity for me. And then just had the most amazing experience of that company. If you're new here, hello. This is Self Made Millennial. I'm Madeline Mann. I'm a human resources leader and job search strategist. You may have seen me in these places. New videos on Thursdays. So I was a poor soul who was fired from a corporate job. I'm not going to get into that whole story. There's a lot in there. Make sure you watch the video that I put out about that. And what I realize is I am so not alone in this experience. Read the hundreds of comments of people who have experienced similar. I will link that video down below. So picking up where that video about me being fired left off, I got fired. I was down in the dumps. The first thing I did was, well, cry. Cry me a river. And then I thought, all right, this is embarrassing. I feel embarrassed, but I need to tell people. And so I called my mentors. I reached out to loved ones. I reached out to one of my professors from grad school. What was really amazing about that was these were people who have seen me at my best, who believed in me, and it was really important to hear their thoughts and opinions of me because it helped me to get out of this funk. It helped me to see myself in a new way. Your girl was applying to positions and, like, reaching out to companies and really making herself known. I knew that if a company sensed that I was deflated, that I didn't think I was good enough, they also wouldn't feel that. Because how can a company have confidence in you and if you don't have confidence in you? So I knew I need to suit up, get my head in the game, High School Musical style, and get that confidence back. This all happened quite a few years ago, so I had to go back into the archives of my email and see what happened. And reading these emails, oh, my gosh, all of this came flooding back to me like I was Noah's Ark. So let's dive in here. I was interested in 10 companies. I landed interviews at six of those companies. Now, if those numbers seem at all unusual to you, it might be because you're not used to doing a low volume job search. A lot of people, their strategy is to just apply generically to as many places as possible. Whereas I take an approach where I'm not as focused on applying, but instead doing other methods where you're able to get way more interviews because you are more targeted. Now, this is what I teach my clients. This is what I've obviously been doing my whole career. So if you want more information on that, you can join my live for free 5 day masterclass. Upgrade your career. I'll link it below. If it's closed right now, just get on the waitlist for when it opens back up again. Also, if you're interviewing right now, you need to know your answer to tell me about yourself. Seems like every company asks this, so I've created a really easy worksheet that people go absolutely bonkers for. I've linked it down below for you. Okay, so when I was looking back at some of these emails about these interviews, there was a lot to remember here. I was looking mostly at HR and learning and development roles. I have one here that was from just a tech company. It was more of an admin job. So I was interviewing for it. But I could kind of tell it wasn't something I was really passionate about. Next, I interviewed at a really cool subscription box company. You probably know it, they're pretty famous. But the manager of this role was so someone who worked in legal. It wasn't someone with a human resources background. And so they kept hammering in compliance, compliance, compliance. I can't even read IKEA directions or anything to assemble anything. I just. It's not that I can't do compliance, it's just that compliance does not lift me up, it does not energize me. I did go through that interview process, but I think her and I, we both knew I was not the person. The third company I interviewed with was a fintech company. I was interested in that, but they kept canceling and rescheduling at the last minute. Has that ever happened to you? Leave it in the comments. You don't really want to do that. Either way, candidate shouldn't be doing that company. It's just lack of respect, folks. They had a lot of steps, but I actually did well. And so I made it through the different rounds and then they said, for your Final round. To beat the big boss, you have to do a project. And it was extensive. I understand why companies have you do projects and assignments and I agree with it. When a company is evaluating your resume and hearing you talking about your experience, there's nothing quite like you actually showing your work product and then getting to see the way you think and work. And I actually think that projects can help give the underdog candidate a leg up. Because instead of making judgments about them having the right pedigree, being the cookie cutter candidate, someone can say, yes. While I don't have the same number of years of experience, look at my work quality. But all that to say this project was a bit elaborate. It would definitely take me a while. I need to also present it, which to rehearse, to create slides. All that also takes a lot of time. And they scheduled it for way out for many, many weeks. So they kept canceling, rescheduling. Also. I liked the company a lot, but the role was more focused on training for customers, not for employees. And I wasn't as interested in that. The fourth company was a tech startup. And let me tell you about this one. They were great. They had a very extensive interview process and they again had me do a project. You already know how I feel about projects. When I calculated it, I did over 12 hours of work. And that just seems completely unreasonable. You should never have a project that is that long. It should typically be an hour at most, maybe two hours, the very, very most. I really feel that they had crossed a line with that. They asked for too much work. And also all that work could have been repurposed for them. They should have created a project that wasn't related to their business, but use the skills so that they couldn't be accused of using my work. But it all was in line with what they were doing. And I know that's usually a huge worry for people is am I just doing free work for these people now? They did offer to compensate me for this. They said I could either have a hundred dollar gift card to a few of different select places that they chose, or I could make a hundred dollar donation to the charity of my choice. So I decided to make a donation and they donated it in their name. I mean, of course I'm happy that this charity got the hundred dollars, but that was my work. The money should have been donated in my name. Yeah, that was kind of sketchy. And after all the hoops this company had me jump through, I felt like a circus dog. They called me up to say I didn't land the job, which was fine. It did hurt extra bad because of all of that effort I put into the process. So. So the next company I interviewed with was a tech incubator in San Francisco. I'm in Los Angeles. So they flew me on up there. I felt very special. I remember buying the least expensive flight I could find and saying I would stay at a friend's house so that they wouldn't have to pay for a hotel, even though they would have paid for both of those. It was not my expenses because I wanted to please them and I wanted to show my respect. And it's kind of adorable, especially at that point in your career, you just don't want to rub anyone the wrong way and you want to just be a good person. Those interviews went well. I realized that I would have to be the HR person for the entire incubator, not necessarily a particular company, which didn't inspire me as much. But I don't think I got the job offer anyways. The 6th place I interviewed with is a large tech company. I'll just tell you what it is. It's Amazon. I interviewed at Amazon, and I've interviewed at Amazon twice in my career. Both times it was the same conversation. They were learning about me, my background, and then it got to the compensation question. They told me their compensation range, and it was just so far below what I had been paid before or what I expected, especially for such a large company. Both times we just agreed to move on. I think the second time I talked to Amazon, they wanted to pay me under market, and they wanted me to move. And I said, okay, will you help me to relocate? We help pay for relocation. They said, absolutely not. So I said, adios. Okay, so at this point, you can see I was getting interviews, but there was something a little bit off about each opportunity. I was grateful to have those interviews, but I knew that none of those were my dream role. I was hoping maybe I could get them and then move into my dream role potentially. But I was landing so many interviews because I had a slamming resume and a slamming job search strategy. Now, if you want to improve your resume and see the things that I did for mine, you can go to my resume Revamp Masterclass. It's a free workshop. I'll link it below. Okay, so after a slew of interviews for jobs I kind of sort of wanted, I found an amazing job. The seventh place I interviewed was perfection. It was everything I wanted. It was the right type of role. It was a really cool company. It had the best Commute, the location, everything, everything, everything. Just I get through the interview process. I absolutely rock it when it's exactly the type of role you're aiming for. Like that is when you can truly shine. Then I get to the end of the process. They say you're the final candidate. We are so excited to extend you the offer. And then something happened. The offer was rescinded. It slipped right out from my clutches.

Now if you want to hear the full story of what happened, I will link the video. I did a full story time on this. It was so devastating to feel that you already had the offer. To feel like you already knew you were landing this job and it was the perfect job you have been working towards during this such like long and arduous interview process throughout all of these companies. And then to have that slip from your hands. It was so demoralizing. I've never thought about it this way, but I realized two of my top demoralizing career moments actually happened within a matter of weeks of each other being fired and then getting a job offer rescinded. Happening in such a short span of time. It broke me. I was in a really low place. So low, like Han. And I get an email. I had reached out to this company that I thought looked cool. It was a tech company. They didn't have a job description or anything. But I had reached out to them to see if they were looking to hire anyone in HR or recruiting. And they emailed me back. I didn't know that much about the company and I didn't know if this was even going to turn into anything. So minutes before the interview, I thought, I'm just going to cancel this interview. I don't have the emotional energy to do this. It's just going to be another dead end. I'm just don't. I can't put myself through this again. So I almost emailed them back and canceled. But I took the interview anyways and I just let it flow. I told them I had lost my job. We just had a good discussion. I was really surprised because on that call the hiring manager said, okay, great, can you come in for an on site this week? And I was not used to on the call, someone telling me that I had my next interview, that they were already approving of me. Let me know in the comments, has that ever happened for you? So I was ecstatic. And so we set up a time and I came in later that week. I think that interview was on a Tuesday and I came in on a Thursday. I blew my interviews out of the water. I even had a conversation with the CEO where we talked about my philosophy about culture and people, management, all these things. And I think what made him so enchanted by my interview was that I was pretty opinionated. I didn't come in wishy washy trying to echo whatever he was saying. No, I brought a perspective. If someone's hiring for a leadership role, that's typically the time where you don't want to sit in the middle with kind of watered down opinions, but take a stance, show that you've really practiced your craft, you've developed strategies. I think that really got them on my side. And within two hours of leaving all those interviews, I got a call from them saying that they wanted to give me an offer. Yes. Yes. If you know yourself well and know exactly what you want and what you believe in, you will attract the right opportunities and repel the wrong ones. So we went back and forth on negotiations. They asked me how much I wanted to be paid. I said, I guess more than 60,000. And I didn't know what I was saying. I had no idea. I was not a good negotiator at that point in my life. And I got a negotiation coach. We ended up raising that bad boy up to $75,000, which I thought was pretty dang good. Of course, it's been many years since then, so I have become a master negotiator because I've been the one who has extended offers to hundreds and hundreds of people, as well as negotiated offers with people who are looking to be promoted and have salary increases within a business. So if you're interested in coaching, I will link information below. So this is the eighth company I interviewed with, and I was still in process with several of the companies we talked about earlier. I had two different options. I could either take the offer in hand or go for the gold with some of the other opportunities and see if I could get a competing offer. Now, it totally depends on your situation. The other role that I would have considered that I thought was comparable to this one was the one where I got that one rescinded. So I felt okay pulling out of the other opportunities. It also felt pretty good because one of the opportunities I pulled out of was that fintech company that kept canceling on me. So your uppins, they came. So I just said no to everyone else, said thank you, and there was a few other companies that were paying me and I was like, all right, I already got a job, let's hang up my hat, let's retire myself from job searching. And I started a few weeks later. If you even believe in the term dream job, then that term was made for this job. It was perfect. I was elated every day I went to work. Someone asked me at that time, which day of the week is your favorite? And I said, Tuesday. And the person said, why the heck Tuesday? And I replied, because Monday, it can be a little bit hectic. You need to fix things that maybe are more time sensitive. But Tuesday, Tuesday is when you're now in the stride of your week and you have the whole week ahead to accomplish things. And that is the mentality I went into every week. I was working with people who I had admired, who were compassionate and wonderful. I was doing work that stretched me. I felt so creative and strategic. And I was building this culture from the ground up at this company with my bare hands. And I was hiring people. And the people who I hired were the most incredible people I've ever met. And so when we'd have all company meetings, I would look around the room and say, I am largely responsible for this room of people who I absolutely adore. I truly believe that I was able to find this perfect dream job because I knew myself. I did very hard work to make sure that I was in the right career path, to make sure I was pursuing the right types of companies and I was evaluating the right ways. And I didn't let this feeling of desperation get in the way of knowing that whatever I went next, I would be there for years and years and years. Our time on earth is too precious to leave it up to chance or to say, well, I'm not going to soul search before I job search. I'm just going to put applications and see what job I get and hope as heck that is going to be something I like. If you're interested to hear how I was able to get extremely clear on my career path, how I was able to find the perfect career for me, put in the comments, make that video. If there's enough people interested, I'll make it. And also, also I'm interested. Put in the comments. I don't know my path. If that's you, I'm interested to hear how many of you feel like the first step before getting your dream job is figuring out what that is and that's still a process for you, which is very normal. The reason I am emphasizing to you how exclamation point incredible this job opportunity was is because I think a lot of us don't actually believe that dream jobs exist. A lot of us have lost hope that work can be truly elating and enjoyable. Don't get me wrong, work is work. It's not meant to be really fun all the time and really easy. No, I still have to deal with lots of stressful things and lots of challenges. But as long as it's the right type of challenges, you are going to thrive. I would not have the confidence to come on here for four years now and talk to you all about job seeking had I not built up immense confidence in this role that I took and that really set me on the trajectory for my career. So if you're lacking confidence, it's often because you haven't been in a situation to truly fly. So I urge you, if any of this seems revelatory or that you haven't quite gotten to this place in your career yet, definitely come to my free 5 day masterclass. Upgrade your career and we can work through this again. Get on the wait list if it's not running. Be sure to like this video. If you like these story times and you want me to open up more about some of these things I've experienced and be sure to subscribe to this channel so you get notified to work on your career each week. To amp it up, get yourself to the next level. Okay, you've got this wifi high five.