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Hi, it's Suzy. Though you probably know that if you're tuning into this podcast, it's Susie Welch. I'm a professor at NYU Stern School of Business, and this is the Becoming youg podcast. Becoming you is a tool, a methodology that helps you answer the question, what should I do with my life? But it's also a lifelong tool for self discovery and career planning. That is what Becoming you is. And it's soon to be a book about. Not soon, I lied. It's not soon, it's may. Okay? But I wrote the book, it's done. And I handed it over to my publisher and she said, well done, Susie. And then I cried softly into my hands. Anyway, I'm really glad you're here in today's episode. We're doing a lot of different things, but one thing I want to talk to you about is interviewing. You're going to learn about interviewing in this podcast because I have been interviewing people for a new job on the team, on the Becoming youg team. And so we're going to talk about do's and don'ts of interviewing. And my favorite interviewing question, which goes right to the core of Becoming youg in many ways. But I will say we had our first Becoming youg 3 Day Intensive. This is the first time that Becoming you as a class was offered in the wild, I would say, outside of NYU. 50 brave souls came to New York City and took Becoming youg in three days with me. And I want to say that for me, and I think for many people in the room, it was a truly transcendent experience. I didn't know what to expect. I've never taught Becoming you in three days before. It's typically a six or an eight week program. And coming up soon, it's going to be a 12 week program at NYU. But we gave it a whirl. And it is possible to teach Becoming you in three very long intense days and really have the outcome which again is either figuring out what you should do with your life right away. And that was the case for many people and for others it was just okay. Here's a process that I've begun of self discovery to draw, to paint a self portrait of myself so that I can figure out who I am and what way and what direction to go. And it was very gratifying. Although I will say at the end when people were very generously and very kindly showing their gratitude for the class and clapping, I just wanted them to stop. And it made me think, why can't I accept this Beautiful, warm praise. And I'm gonna put that on the list of things to discuss with my therapist, because I have no idea why. And it was. But thank you. If you're listening to this and you were one of the people who were there, you know how great it was and how much we all ended up loving each other and trusting each other and learning from each other. Okay, let us turn our attention to interviewing. So I'm interviewing for a role. I've interviewed so many people in my career, and interviewing is a skill. I actually have a line. If you are a person who does a lot of interviews, which is to never interview alone, you always need a second or a third. Third opinion. And I've been interviewing, and I want to say that I was struck today when I did many interviews, and I'm actually after this podcast, interviewing yet another person by one person in particular. And I would like you to learn a lesson from her, and that is that she was so freaking prepared, it was frightening. Okay. She came to the interview with a slide deck of what she would do in the role. Okay. A presentation she presented. Who does that? Well, not the person before her, that's for sure. So what she did was she entered into the content of the job. She gave it a huge amount of thought. She clearly prepared by looking at all of my social media, reading the syllabus of my class. I mean, if. I think. I think that if I had asked her my dog's names, she would have been able to answer, okay. But she really imagined her role fully and gave an incredibly robust version of how she would handle the job. And then she handled all the sort of very spontaneous questions about how she would handle a crisis and so forth and so on. Not that we have crises around here at becoming you media, except for every day. But I would say that she was incredible even in that way. So I was so impressed. And I want to say that I did not ask her my favorite interview question. Why? Because I did not need to. And here's my favorite interview question. It is this. What did you do to prepare for this interview? Okay. I love asking that question because a person. I've heard every answer to it, by the way. I've heard people say, well, I looked up your address on the Internet kind of thing, or other people. I. One woman, I remember, she said, I actually drove here last night to make sure where I could find parking. And I thought, wow, that person is extremely resourceful. And, well, I like that kind of preparation on my team. I like that kind of grittiness. And she was actually applying for administrative role where that would really, really come in handy. You know, it's a very good sign to the interviewer about how invested you are in getting the job and sort of how you might actually hit the ground running, how much preparation you do. So I one time did a video about this particular interview question for cnbc, and it got a lot of views, like several million views, I guess. And one of my kids was interviewing for jobs right around that time, and he went in for his interview, and at the end of the interview, the person asked him, what did you do to interview them for this job? And he was like, okay, I know how to answer that question. I don't think he got the job, though. We all lived happily ever after. Okay, so look, if you're in the process of interviewing, there is so much tactical advice out there. And, hey, I've just spent the first. What, Jorge, how many minutes? Five, six minutes? Giving you tactical advice. But I want to say this. One of the key premises of becoming you as an. As a methodology and one I want to leave you with before we go on and do other important work here on the Becoming youg podcast with Susie Welch is I want to say if you want to get the job and you really want to have the life you want, you have to get existential before you get tactical, okay? So you can prepare all you want by looking at YouTube videos about what to say when they ask you, what are your greatest strengths and what are your biggest weaknesses and what would you do on day one, and what are your questions do you have? And I have answers for all those questions because I had a show for three years on CNBC where all I did was talk to you about interviewing, and I loved it. And then they sold that show into cabs. And every single person in New York who's ever been in a cab has seen me talking about interview tips. It's weird. You know, Briefly was famous for being in cabs. So anyway, I would say that it's all well and good and you should prepare. You should be as prepared as that woman who blew my mind today with her slide deck. I was very impressed. But then I got very existential on her and I asked her, you know, why would you want this job? How does this job match your values and your aptitudes? You know, what are your areas of interest? All the stuff we talk about in becoming you, and that is your pre work also. Not just to prepare for the interview questions and come up with your sort of loaded. What you're good at and what you're not good at and so forth and so on, talking about yourself. But really, have you done this work that we should really do all our lives long, and we want to do it before it hits us in the nose when we're 60 years old or 85 years old and we wonder, was this what it was supposed to be for me? Is this what I was supposed to do with my life when I was doing the three day intensive with this incredible group of people? And again, thank you for coming from Singapore, coming from France, coming from Portland, Oregon, coming from Atlanta. I just. I love you. That I was saying to them, you know, we've got to do this work of figuring out who we are. And one of the ways we do it in the Becoming youg Method is we ask this question. What would make you cry at your 85th birthday? And when we go through this exercise in class, you could hear a pin drop. What would make you cry? I want you to go to your 85th birthday and say, okay, I'm blowing out the candles on my cake. I'm sad because I have a regret about something. What is the unfinished work? What is the unaccomplished goal? What is the piece of undone legacy that is making me cry right now? And this takes a lot of true candor with yourself. A lot of hard emotional work and a lot of looking forward to the life you want to lead and the legacy you want to leave behind. To answer that question. And frankly, that's the pre work for an interview. Okay, Am I interviewing for the right job because of the life that I want to create for myself? You've only got one, okay. And so you have to get existential. Start with those kind of questions. That's what Becoming is all about. It's to prepare you existentially before you can be prepared tactically for the interviews. And look, I'm super happy to be in a position because of the work I've done in my career and what I teach and so forth. I. To be able to sort of go up and down between existential and tactical. You kind of got to be both at once. Just like you do have to be that way every single day. But don't just cede to the tactical. Be great when you got to be tactical like that woman was today, but do the hard work of the existential. And that's what this show's all about. So keep on coming back if you would. I think you could even subscribe. Can you subscribe to this show? Yes. Okay. I'M being told by my team that you can be. So please do that. That is my rant for today. I also want to say something else. Okay. I know this rant is going on and on. Jorge, how long has this ramp been going on? Oh, good, good. You know, I want you to know, Jorge, something very important. At the three day people asked after you, they were like, how is Jorge? Because I talk to you all the time during the podcast. Is he okay? And I was like, he seems to be okay. Right. How's the pregnancy going? It's going well. We're in the third trimester, so my wife is very pregnant at this point. It's so exciting. But it's. It's going very well. Oh, my God. We will keep everybody up to date on Jorge's exciting arrival. What's the due date? November 13th. Please, everybody, put it on your calendar. Okay. All right. So I wanna say one more thing. Everybody has. Not everybody. Many people have expressed their deep concern over Susie the swan. If you've been listening to this podcast, you know that Susie was my swan, or she was a swan who lived on my pond, who followed me around. And I named her after myself because she's alone. And swans are typically in pairs. I was in a pair. I was actually visited by some friends just this weekend, and I was saying I had this single swan and the husband is a scientist. And he said, well, swans are never alone. And I. Susie was. And he, for one minute there, he thought I was talking about myself in the third person. And anyway, so Susie was my swan. And after the fireworks this summer, she disappeared. I felt grievously sad about it. And people write me all the time and ask me all the time, has Susie come back as I had hoped? I reported to them that I do have a. She has not come back, but I do have a new pawn resident who I've named Emily after Emily Dickinson. Emily the.

I think she's a heron. And I named her after Emily Dickinson because of the beautiful line in one of her poems, which is that we grow not older with the years, but newer every day. So I named her after a poet. Anyway, Susie's not back, but I want to tell you that one of you listeners, and I hope it is a listener who is listening right now, actually moved by that story, sent me a beautiful swan of Oz of a swan, and she found it. It's a one of a kind. I was moved to tears when I opened the package with a beautiful note about the story of the swan and how it touched her and you know what? People ask me why I do a podcast. And that is why. Because there are beautiful people out there in the world, and you can reach them, and you can meet them by reaching out to them on a podcast. So if you're out there listening, I don't want to identify you because I don't want to violate your privacy in any way. You touched me very, very deeply, and I am so grateful. And I will put a flower in that vase and think about Susie the swan every time I look at it. And, oh, speaking of animals, here come the dogs. The heavy breathing you hear is not me. That's. Sir, here comes Audrey. Did you miss me? Okay, they've been going on their walk, and up here is drinking my water out of a cup. This. We're so professional around here. But thank you very much for the swan and for entering my. My story the way you did.

We have questions from the community. All right, speak up, Eliza.

All right, the first question is, you have a video talking about the importance of stamina at work. What would be an example of a stamina mismatch in a job?

Yes, what a great question. So I have a tool which I hope you all will have access to soon, because yet again, I'm going into the. Into the mix with my developers to get a tool that everybody can use. I have a tool that's called the Career Traits Compass. And. And it has four traits that I think really track differently with different jobs that you need to know about yourself. And if you think about a compass, of course, it has four coordinates. North, south, east, west. And the four elements of the compass that I have are nerve on the north, soundness on the south, elasticity to the east, and wonderment to the west. And we will talk about all of these over time. But nerve is actually the combination of three traits. One is stamina, the other is candor, and the other is edge. And stamina is just endurance. Okay. It's just kind of. We all have different levels of endurance, and for some of us, it's just born into us, and we are either high energy or low energy. And for others, it's related to health issues. I have a person who's in my extended family who is an absolutely marvelous, talented, beautiful, wonderful human being. And she was struck by Lyme disease when she was in 10th grade, and it went undiagnosed until she was a junior in college, and it wrecked her. Okay. And she finally got the help she needed, and she. It was very intense for a year with all sorts of treatments, but she'll never truly be the same and her stamina is low. And she was able to find a terrific job that allows her to work remotely and to take breaks during the day. She is a basically a travel agent. Agent. And that she able to work right at her computer lying in bed. Okay? So there are jobs for everybody with every different stamina level. But some jobs in certain companies, because companies have cultures around how much stamina they want and need, okay? We just can't lie about it, all right? There are some companies, especially entrepreneurial companies, where it's go, go, go, go, go, let's go. And it's, there's never lights out, okay? And some people can sustain that. Some people, people feed off of that energy. And for other people, it's just not a fit at all. It doesn't work with your personality. It doesn't work with your values. You may value your family or your private time or your well being or your a hobby so much that having the kind of stamina to devote to work is not tenable. I am trying to focus with the dogs having something of a cage match in the room. Just bear with me here. The dogs have too much stamina, that's for sure. All right, so really the question, Eliza, just to remind myself here, the question is what jobs would be a mismatch with high stamina? Look, if you have medium or lower stamina, you know, just go into a job with your eyes open. I mean, you might even ask during the interview process, you know, on the stamina scale, what kind of stamina does this job involve? I mean, I myself have blank amounts. I don't go into a high stamina job when you know that's not your, that's not your. I don't want to be judgy about it. So I don't want to say strong suit because I certainly know people who are lower energy blood relations of mine, just by personality, lower energy. There are jobs for you and then there are jobs that require a huge amount of go, go, go, do not stop. And some of this is just purely genetic, okay? I mean, I am a high stamina person. Apparently so is Audrey. And the growling you hear in the background are two dogs are very high energy and I have super high energy. And you know what? Sometimes it's too much for people. And actually in one of my many interviews today, one of the applicants quoted me in one of my many, many CNBC videos, or I actually think I might have done a LinkedIn post about it where I said a great question in a Job interview is, what kind of person should not work at this company? So she asked, what kind of person should not work with you, Susie? And I said, somebody who does not have a lot of urgency and, you know, just is lower on the energy continuum because we work all the time. I love work. Work is my joy, and I'm best surrounded by people just like that. So there you have it to the answer to the stamina question. Thank you for asking it. Thank you very much. Great.

Next question is, I love the cowbell syndrome concept, but I'm still wondering, why can't you merge all of your different goals into one?

Okay, so the cowbell syndrome is when you have two completely mutually exclusive dreams of a life for yourself. I want to be. It's called the cowbell syndrome because in honor of a student who said to me, sometimes I just really, really want to be a country vet, I want. I love cows. I want to vaccinate cows. I want to love cows. I want to make them better. But other times, I really want to ring the bell on the NASDAQ when my tech company goes public. And I said, like, well, which one is it? Do you want to, you know, pet the cows or ring the bell? And he said, both. Okay? And so the question in front of us is, well, why can't somebody do both? And the answer is, because you wake up as one person, okay? And unless you're superhuman, you're not going to take care of cows in the morning and ring the bell in the afternoon. And so you certainly can have a life of commas, where you go from one thing to the next, things to another. That's the polyglot syndrome. It's perfectly fine. You can have a ton and ton of chapters in your life, especially if you are have high stamina, okay? And you have a low interest in maximizing wealth, because sometimes when you switch, you have to adjust your income levels, unless you're very, very good at everything. But you can do all of those things, but you can't do mutually exclusive things, typically at the same time. Why do I say that? Because I'm a realist. And I once again am reminded that for years and years and years, my theme song was Iggy Azalea's First Things First, I'm a Realist. Until I found out she was actually saying first things First, I'm the realist. So that was a. That was a very, very sad realization.

All right, we've come upon one of my favorite segments of the show. It's decoding corporate jargon and in fact, I know this theme keeps on coming up again and again, but in the many interviews that I've been doing for this new role here at Becoming a you Media, there was a person who was speaking completely in corporate jargon. And in the course of the interview, several times said the phrase, I think we should put a pin pin in that, which means I don't have an answer right now, by the way. And also said, I'd like to hold space for da da da da da. That's another way of saying I'd like to think about this later. And I think it's just better to say those things. So we are going to decode corporate jargon, which I think the world would just be a better place if we could all just speak plainly to each other. So, Aliza, or is it Maddie who's going to read the corporate jargon to me? I can read some Maddie. Let's do it. We know I love corporate jargon. The first one is, I'll run it up the flagpole and see what the higher ups think about this proposal. Yeah. God, the worst. And sometimes I've heard this. Let's. Let's run this up the flagpole and see who salutes. Awful. Really? Even. Yep. Just even worse. And this is just basically saying, I abdicate responsibility for it. I'm going to see what the higher ups think, and I'm not going to give you. I actually have an opinion about it. And typically when you're saying this, you don't like it. Okay. So you're going to say, I'm going to go into a private room with the people above me, and we're going to agree to tell you that it was their fault, that they don't like it, and we're not doing it. And this is what managers do when they don't want to look someone right in the eyes and say, I don't like your idea. And here are the reasons why. You know what? It's hard to say that I don't like your idea. That a candor that's very hard for people. But the second part is, then you have to explain why. And sometimes when you have to explain why, it's just a gut feeling. Okay. And people don't have the language to say, I don't like it. I've got a gut feeling. I don't like it. I just need a few minutes or even a day to sort out what that gut feeling is. And then let me circle around to you and retest this gut feeling to see if I Still don't like it. And for some reason those words are very, very hard for people to say. So instead of that, they say, let me run it up the flagpole and see what the people above me have to say about it after I pre wire them that I hate it. Okay? So I, I think that this is just a way. You know, I have this theory which I've said before on the, on the pod, is that all corporate jargon is just another way of saying ST F U. Okay? And it's just another way of saying, I don't want to hear what you have to say. I'm going to, I'm going to kick it down the road. I'm gonna just shut you up any way I can and I'm gonna do it with some kind of fatuous, pompous ass hat words. So that's what that one is. And don't use that one. Okay, what else we got? What else we got? The next one is. I think the next step would be to drill down. Okay, this is another one. Exactly. Again, I mean, to be a broken record. Oh, I think that might be jargon, broken record. But I think that this is we want to drill down. In other words, your thinking's not good enough. And I think that my assumptions are that all your assumptions are wrong. And again, wouldn't it be better if you just said, you know, we need to drill down, we need to get more data, we need to get more facts. We need to test your assumptions. Why wouldn't we just say those words? Okay, we need to drill down. I think that we're too surface level here in a way. When you say I want to drill down, the answer's too easy for us here. We need to get deeper. It needs to be messier. This reminds me of when we here at Becoming youg Media were interviewing roughly every single development firm on the face of the universe because we had to make the products we were going to make. These new tools that are coming to you, my friends. The first being the values bridge which so many of you wrote and said you would be beta testers on. Thank you. And when we, we will get it to you. We know who you are. We have put into beta already and tested with my three day intensive, this tool that we're calling the Pi360, which is a home pregnancy test version of the very elaborate, expensive corporate 360 feedback tool. And you'll be able to have it for less than a cup of pumpkin spice latte, which you shouldn't drink anyway because it's filled with calories. It's just goop. You're just drinking candy, by the way. But I. Okay, go ahead, drink it. I am such a scold. But I would say that also. Okay, what's wrong with just straight coffee? Coffee just tastes good. Why would you put pumpkin and spice in it? Why would you do that when you could have coffee, which is God's gift to us? Okay, God. Okay, what was the question? I was drilling down.

I were drilling down. We need to drill down. What the hell is wrong with me? Okay, so I would say that the tools are coming and we were interviewing to make the tools. I knew we. Look, I've developed tech tools before. I've developed an app before, and so I'm very paranoid because I know how hard it is. So hard. If you have an idea for an app right now, go slap yourself. Creating an app is very, very hard. The research shows that people only download three new apps a year, so get over yourself. Ok. Okay. So I walked into that cave, okay, in that tunnel and lived to tell about it, but barely. So we were interviewing every dev firm known to humankind. And in that process, some dev firms present as extremely slick. They're terrific. They've done all their research. And then other dev firms come and they're asking you a lot of questions and they're kind of grunty and technical and actually, to be honest with you, quite unappealing. And. And I was watching my team, which is not actually, they're a young fabulous team, but have not developed tech products before, go through this process. And they, of course, naturally, as I was the first time I did it, very drawn to the shiny, slick dev firms. And then we bumped into the dev firm that we actually did end up choosing. Why? Because I'm the boss. They were grunty and kind of technical and they were really, like, talking about, like, all sorts of stuff that was not pretty or interesting. It was really. There's no better word for it. It was just technical. And they had drilled down and gone below the surface in a way that really, really, really impressed me. And it is necessary to go below the surface and not take the easy answers and not be sold and to really force yourself to drill down. So, look, the jargon, we gotta drill down is not bad advice. We do often have to drill down. But. But if somebody's saying it to you in a corporate setting, they're basically saying, I don't like your answer. I don't want to explain to you why I'm going to put you off by telling you you're going to have to go deeper. But what they're essentially telling you is my gut feeling, my experience is telling me you've not dug deeply enough. And you know what? They might be right.

All right, we're going to end with a quote. Today I have a quote that I adore by somebody who you should be paying attention to, by the way, if you're not already, but you probably are. But we have a few rapid fire questions where people are going to try to stump me. And by people, I mean my beloved team. Go ahead, team, throw it at me.

All right, first question. What's a lesson that you've had to unlearn?

Oh, Elisa, did somebody send that in or did you come up with that yourself?

It may or may not have been chat gbt.

Oh, it was chat GPT. Chat GPT told me my swan was going to come back and it was wrong. Okay. It said that she might come back and chatgpt. You were wrong, wrong, wrong. What is a lesson I've had to unlearn? Well, luckily, Jorge is here to cut out the blank space while I think about this, but you're going to hear an answer immediately. Stand by. I've thought of it. You have no idea how long that pause actually was because Jorge cleverly cut it out. But I think that when I was young, I thought that there were things that you never got over. I just thought there were some things you just never got over. And as I've gotten older, I've realized that even the deepest cuts and the biggest wounds and the hardest times eventually become the gold lacquer of your life. And what I mean by that is there's this ancient Japanese art called kintsugi, where broken vessels are fixed by putting gold lacquer in the cracks. And actually the most beautiful and valuable parts, sort of even sort of technically valuable parts of the bowl or the cup are actually where it was broken. And that is just true. Okay. I mean, I went, you know, look, no divorce is easy. None. Oh, I guess. Gwyneth Paltrow, head of conscious uncoupling. I didn't okay. With my first marriage. And I would say that I thought I'd never get over it. And I'm very dear friends with my first husband. He's a good friend of mine. I was just bitching and moaning to him about something yesterday that did not involve the children at all. I mean, that's what we typically bitch and moan about. But I was something with work, and I thought I'd never get over it, it was hard. But the gold lacquer and what I learned from that and how we both grew and went on to have beautiful second lives, both of us taught me this incredibly important lesson, which it all becomes this beautiful tapestry of your life. So I had to unlearn that to be very profound. And there's a shout out to Eric. Okay.

What else you got for me? We got time for one more.

Go ahead, Maddie. I think you have to ask.

All right. What do each of the dogs voices sound like in your head? Oh, my God. Well, Pierre's got a French accent. We know that. Of course. Okay. And Pierre says things like, mama, pets me more. Oh, oh my God. Okay, don't all run over to me at the same time. Okay. I've just been stampeded by dogs. Sir speaks with a deep German accent. And it's usually like, I can't stare at you any harder or I'll burn a hole in your head kind of thing. He's a. He's in charge. And sir is a big German shepherd, by the way, whose head is larger than yours. I assure you, wherever you are, sir, your head is large. Audrey.

I don't know about Audrey. I don't know. I've got to think about that. Audrey, what's your voice sound like? Hi, sweet girl. You know, I have to say one thing about this question. I'm such an animal maniac, and I'm such a lover of animals and such a protector of animals. And. And truly one of my life dreams is that the. I'm on the board of the Humane Society, the International Humane Society. And I. One of my great dreams is that animals lives in my lifetime become less cruel. And I would say I almost. I don't try to humanize my dogs like they're fully animals to me because I generally think that animals are better than humans. But I would say that one of our animals is currently chewing on a wire. So please stop that. No human would do that. Pierre. So stop. So I. But I do know that Pierre has a French accent. Why wouldn't he. Why wouldn't a rescue dog from Fort Worth, Texas have a French accent? Okay. And I wanna just say one devastating piece of news I found out this week. Devastating. I'm deeply upset about it. Some of you know that we often refer to Pierre as being Pierre on a chair. And we take pictures of Pierre on a chair and we. We publicize Pierre on a chair. And I have found out that in New York City there is another long haired, blonde dachshund who's named Pierre and in fact that he has his own Instagram feed that's called Long Haired Pierre. We have to have a collab and a meetup between the two Pierre's and maybe they'll speak French to each other. All right, now time for the Bonjour. Bon you. So and. And then the Internet could truly break. All right, we got a quote. Well, this quote comes from Adam Grant. You know who he is. If you don't go look him up immediately. I want to say that I knew Adam Grant before he was famous. I do, because he was a professor at Wharton, and at that point he was probably an associate professor at Wharton when Jack and I went rolling through the University of Pennsylvania for the book tour for Winning, which was what, 2000 long ago? 2005 or something like that. And there was this young, incredibly smart guy named Adam Grant, and he interviewed Jack and I on stage and he got a lot of cheers and a lot of love. And I did not know it then, but you could have predicted it, that he was going to become this great author and advisor. And so here's his quote, which I love. And actually one of my students in the three day read it in class. If you're considering a career change but worried about taking a step backward, remember this. It's better to lose the past two years of progress than to waste the next 20. And I mean, it's so true. And you know what? It's a really great place to end because it gets right to the point of this podcast, this particular episode, which is that you got to get existential before you get tactical. And you know, you're worried about going backward because you think you're going to lose a little bit of time. You're just being tactical, okay? And you got to go up and be existential and think, what do I want to do with my life, with my one wild and precious life? You've just got that one wild and precious life, and you want to live in. You want to be the author of that life and not the editor. And so I'll leave you with that thought until next time. I'm so glad you've joined the podcast today, and I hope that you'll rejoin next week. Love you very much. Thanks. Bye.