Navigating the Tech Job Search: Insights from Caroline Wong – Tech.Strong.Women. EP42

Hey everybody. Thanks for joining us for another episode of Techstrong Women, where we feature amazing women doing amazing things in tech. I'm Jody Ashley, executive producer here at Techstrong, and I'm here with my co-host, Tracy Reagan, creator, and CEO of Deploy Hub and busy, busy lady working with the Linux Foundation.

Before I introduce today's guest, I just wanna give you a quick update about what's going on on Techstrong. com, so be sure to go check that out. We have some virtual events coming up.

We're gonna be at RSA, we're gonna be at CubeCon in London, so we got a busy start to the year, so please be sure and check us out there, stop by and say hello, or reach out to our team and maybe we can do an interview with you. com and be sure to tune into techron TV every day for great shows and interviews. Alright, Tracy, what's on your mind today?

Well, first of all, I think the platform engineering is gonna be a very interesting topic. So, uh, I think I'll be watching that, um, for a while. Now, this, you know, we get new topics all the time, but I think the platform engineering one's an interesting one, but that's not what's on my mind.

Um, I, this is from an article that was on DevOps, um, I think Mike Baard may have written it, and it's about fake stars on GitHub. So I can't tell you from being a, being in a, an open source, uh, contributor and a community organizer around orus, we worked really hard for the, you know, just shy of 400 stars that we have really hard, every single one of them we worked for. So it's really irritating to think that somebody would just buy stars and that there's ways to buy stars.

So what I wanna say about that is sometimes if you look at something and it's too good to be true, it probably isn't true. So if there's a, if there's a open source project out there that you're thinking, well, this would be really cool to use or download and use this package in my code, and it's got thousands of stars on it, and one or two, uh, contributors, it's probably not real Buyer beware. So we have fake news now, we have fake stars and it really makes me sad that this, this culture that we find ourselves in has infiltrated into the open source world because the open source world is, in the past, has been a place where people are sincerely writing code that they want to share, and the stars are like likes.

And it gives us an idea of if maybe we should or shouldn't use that code. So buyer beware, download or beware. Fake stars exist.

I don't know. That's crazy. It's like people buying views on YouTube and all that kind of stuff and Exactly.

And you jump on something 'cause you think everybody else liked it, and then you get in there and you're like, meh. Yeah. And in the case of open source, you download it and all, there's a bunch of nefarious code in it.

Well, yeah, that's the thing. Nefarious code. Yeah.

Yeah. All right, well we got that in for today. I agree.

That's, that sucks. It sucks to whoever's doing it. If you, um, if you're doing fake stars, you suck.

You suck. Alright. Uh, I'm ready to introduce our guest to all of you today.

We're really excited to have Caroline back. She's been with us before, but we're gonna have a great, uh, kind of start of the year conversation that I think is really important for us to have. And, um, I'm looking forward to it.

Caroline Wong, why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself to us and, and we'll get started. I'm Caroline, I'm a cybersecurity person. I've been on in-house security teams, vendor security teams, startup consulting product.

Um, and that's given me a really sort of well-rounded view on cybersecurity and the problems that we face. I think the most important and most interesting part about cybersecurity is the people. Um, I have hosted a, a podcast called Humans of InfoSec.

Um, and yeah, I'm also a writer. I wrote a book called Security Metrics, A Beginner's Guide. That book was inducted into the cybersecurity Canon Hall of Fame in 2022.

And I'm currently offering a new book with Wiley about AI and cybersecurity resilience. Ooh, that sounds Awesome. Tracy's gonna be putting that on her to read this.

Her sheriffs will, When, when are you gonna get that finished? So tentatively scheduled for publishing in the spring of 2026. So Beautiful.

Just a few short months away. And by the way, Textron is picking up Caroline's podcast. I'm gonna be producing that for her shortly.

We're in the process of getting that rolling, so I'm pretty excited about that. We're all pretty excited about that here, so, yay. More fun stuff coming.

All right, ladies, let's dive in. Caroline's had a fun end of year, start of year. You wanna tell us a little bit about what happened?

Sure. I have been job searching. I have spent about three months or so at the end of 2024, job searching.

And you know, Jody and I were talking the other day and I was saying I am the primary breadwinner in my family. Um, I've got kiddos, uh, the way that our household constellation works. I've got in-laws, um, and we've got dogs and cats and chickens, and there's a lot of literal mouths to feed.

Um, and I take my role in our family as a provider very, very seriously. Um, and so naturally job searching, there's a lot of anxiety, there's a lot of stress, there's a lot of pressure. Um, and for folks who work in cybersecurity, for folks who work in tech, the experience is you see a job posting and within 24 hours there's 500 applicants.

Within three days, there's 1500 applicants, and they've shut down the job posting because it's just full recruiters literally cannot go through that many resumes. Um, and it's tough, you know? Um, and I think that for me, going through an experience like that, it taught me so much about myself.

It gave me some really important time to reflect and think about what's truly important to me. Um, getting a break is also a gift. Um, and yeah, so I'm, I'm thrilled to be here sharing my story.

Um, I think that fortunately and unfortunately, job searching is something that many of us, uh, can relate to. Um, and so I'd also really like to share some different practices that I used during my job search to try and take care of myself. You know, this is an interesting time for this topic.

Um, just at the end of the year, last year at our last, uh, Orillia outreach, um, meeting, we talked about what we might wanna do in 2025. And the number one thing that came up was a job seekers webinar series that goes what it's like to be a job seeker in this climate that you just described. The tooling, how to use keywords, how to try to basically beat the system.

And I feel like as you described, there are so many people applying for these jobs that they use AI to filter it out. Yeah. And basically they're just doing, you know, matching on keywords.

So people are having to add keywords to try to make it work when they shouldn't be. There's gotta be a better way to do this. We heard a little bit about this when we had the woman from manpower on.

Um, we chatted a little bit, and that was early last year. But I think over the course of this la this, this year, more people have complained or more people have struggled with that. Can, can you tell us a little bit about when you first started, uh, noticing this trend and you were sending out resumes, what were the kinds of jobs that you were sending resumes to, you know, at what level you know of, and do you think that you, that you may be targeted jobs that were under what you were able to do and you were overqualified, did that come into the play?

Because certainly a person with your skills, I would've thought would've been picked up almost immediately. Thank you so much, Tracy. You know, I, I am so fortunate to have had such an incredibly rich career.

And my most recent role prior to the new job that I just started, I was a C-level executive with 20 years of cybersecurity experience. And even so, it's tough, you know, and I felt so fortunate. I was able to engage in a lot of different interviews.

Um, at least five of the interview processes that I engaged in, several of which I made to the last round. A recruiter or a panelist or a hiring manager would just look at me and say, Caroline, let's just address the elephant in the room. Why are you applying to this job?

You are overqualified. And the actual reality is, my first responsibility is to my family. And I also, I don't have a ton of ego about the work that I do.

One of the things that I admire in people that I've worked with, that I really respect is that when stuff's gotta get done, stuff's gotta get done. And who cares? Who's got what sorts of title.

You know, as long as you're delighting customers, creating value, making a positive impact, whatever needs to get done, I'm happy to do. The, the way that I phrased it in a lot of these conversations though, was I said, and this is true as well, I said, you know, it's been a little while since I've been Anne's on keyboard and really close to solving the problem. Um, and I really got into a mindset where I thought I could do this, you know?

Yeah. Um, and sometimes I'd go through an entire, uh, series of interviews and make it to the end, and then you kind of wait, you know, to get a callback from a recruiter. And if it doesn't happen sort of right away, then you wait another day, you wait another day, you know?

And, and it's just tough. You know, at the end of the day, there are thousands of people, many of whom are extremely qualified. I can't tell you about the number of friends and colleagues and people that I've met who are extremely qualified and on the market right now.

It is a simple supply and demand situation. Just are less jobs on the market at this moment. I spoke with the recruiter in Q2, Q4 of 2024, a CSO recruiter.

Um, something that happened to work really well for me, which I know is hard for others, is that I never wanna be a cso. That's a job. That's a job that I'm simply not interested in.

Um, I'm very interested in all sorts of adjacent jobs to the ciso, but CISO is not the job for me. I spoke with a recruiter and this person said, Caroline, typically in Q4, you'll see 20 to 25 big CISO jobs on the market. And this person said to me, and this was for Q4 2024, right now there's 10 to 15, significantly less than usual.

And I had been in my previous role for eight years, which in tech is like multiple lifetimes. I mean, we're talking like Mesozoic era, time of being at the same company. Um, and it was actually so much fun because one of the things that I love to do is I love to learn.

And so for each and every single company that I was interested in, I did so much research and I watched so many videos and I learned so much about what these organizations are doing. Um, in some cases, you know, a lot of my search was gonna be in cybersecurity, was gonna be in tech, but I also branched out to pharmaceutical and healthcare and, um, energy, uh, renewable energy. Um, and there was just so much to learn.

And that was really fun. And I actually really did enjoy the exercise of imagining what my next career chapter could be. That was really, really fun.

And did you, when, when you were going through that imagining, um, did you work with a, a recruiter that helped you imagine that? Sometimes it's hard to see ourselves. It is so hard to see ourselves, and I just celebrated my 10th wedding anniversary, and I remember when I was dating on the apps, and I think it's really hard to write a profile for oneself on a dating app.

Similarly, I actually think it's kind of hard to write a resume. I think it's kind of hard to write one's LinkedIn, uh, page. Um, and as far as these things go, I have throughout my career in been intentional about my brand and about my sort of external presence.

And even so, I knew that I wasn't quite hitting the mark. Um, and I spoke with many different recruiters, um, and I happened to come across one extraordinary recruiter. His name's Darren.

And if anyone's interested in being contacted with Darren, uh, just shoot me a note on LinkedIn and I'll connect you. He helped me to really refresh my LinkedIn page in a way that I felt was very meaningful. He also helped me write my resume.

Writing a resume can be, there can be these emotional and these mental blocks to doing that type of an activity. It's a hard thing to do. Um, and I really found, and I'm the type of person whom I just love coaches.

I've worked with personal trainers, I've worked with nutrition coaches, I've worked with finance coaches. You know, why not work with a resume coach, a LinkedIn coach? Um, I've been in therapy for more than 10 years, you know, so I'm all about the coaching.

Um, and for me that helped enormously because I was in a position where I could tell my story to this person that I trust, and they could help me tell my story to others. Well, and we don't, we don't, as women, you know, lift our own self up when we write resumes and, you know, talk ourselves up necessarily like we see our counterparts in the world do. And I also think it's, it's really tough to to be you don't, like, I, when I kind of looked at mine last year and I was like, wait, there's this, I talked with, with someone that I knew and it was like, well, you could be doing this and this and this.

And they were things I never even thought about. I'm like, wait, I guess I, oh wow, I could do that. I do have qualifications for that.

And it, it was super duper eye-opening and as, as part of just kind of evaluating what that would look like. So I think we also, it's always good to get someone else with a clear picture of us into the conversation, to, to give us, you know, a very objective look at things, both positive and negative. And I would imagine after nine years, I mean, resume writing is totally different.

It's totally different. It's just different What you know. So to put the right words in and not too much, you know, the right, it's just totally different.

And what Happens, right? Do you, do you write it in first person? Do you write it in third person?

What tens do you use? You know, these are all things that yeah, we spend relatively little time in our careers doing these activities, right? And we don't often have time to become experts at applying for jobs.

It's a different thing. And I, and I, you know, something's occurring to me that's really important to share, which is that there were people in my network who were so kind and so generous with their time, with their, um, generosity in terms of, sure, I'd be happy to introduce you to this person. I'd be happy to provide a reference for you.

Um, and just for me, going through some of those mental and emotional challenges that are natural in a process like this, I will never forget each and every single person who reached out to me and said, Hey, if you wanna talk, I'm here to listen. That's awesome. That was really meaningful to me.

Tracy, what were you gonna say? So, resumes Traditionally Have been written to say what we have done in the past. Yeah.

It, and it doesn't tell us, a resume doesn't tell us what the person can do, right? Mm-hmm. It doesn't give a good insight on what they can do.

Now, in reviewing resumes, I can say that guys are much more willing to cater a resume to what they can do, where women want to outline what they have done. Interesting. So for example, first, so for example, let's say that you, um, you were a, you know, you've been outta the market, or you hadn't looked at putting a resume together for eight years.

Uh, you've been a, you know, a cc plus plus programmer and you know, you know how to write Java, but none of your jobs ever required it. 'cause you, they had you doing c and c plus plus. Well, you're gonna, you, you're not gonna get an a job because JavaScript is what everybody's using, or Python.

But I can promise you if you have written code in C or c plus plus, Python will be a breeze, right? So resumes have to be able to reflect what our abilities are, and they don't. And this is the, this is the struggle that so many people are having.

So you begin seeing resumes with a lot of bullet points, a lot of keywords, because these new ways of finding, um, you know, going through a job board, which most of us would have to do, they're gonna look for specific keywords, and they wanna get like an 80 to 90% match on the keywords they have in their job description to what you have in your resume. And They're using an AI tool. They don't even look at it themselves.

It doesn't even get a human viewing it. They use the ai and then if it's not at like 80%, then poof, it's gone. So, for example, you know, building AI code, right?

How many of us really have out, out there working on LLMs? Not that many people, but how many developers and people who are technical could achieve it if they have the opportunity to work on it most, right? But they, so somehow you have to get this kind of experience on your resume, and you don't have it in a job description.

So how do you go about doing that without embellishing on your resume? This is the problem with the tools. It's not what we have done, it's what we can do.

So bullet pointing and being involved in, um, open source communities, um, putting together, let's say you, you start working on an open source community and you say, I wanna focus on seeing how an LLM will work with TIUs, for example. Then you can add that to your resume because it's what you are looking at doing, and you're contributing to the community at large. So we have to get a lot smarter about how to present ourselves in resumes.

And it's all about the future, not the past. And resumes reflect only on the past. This is a hard thing for women to get over, is how do you embellish, how do you work on that?

How do you build that, that, uh, that profile and that brand without having to had a wor a job that had you do it? Which is sort of ridiculous to be quite honest, Right? And there's a lot of great people out there you can hire to help you, but not everybody has those resources.

So a lot of people jump in and AI their resume, and you can just tell when you read someone's resume that they threw it into AI and let AI do all the work. So that's not helpful. It's Not a good Idea.

It's, it's gotta be hard. And I think, you know, you can't, can't forget how important networking is. And obviously Caroline spoke to that.

Knowing people is so important, right? Being connected with people and, and, and being willing to, like, I know you Caroline pretty well. I know your story.

I know I know a lot about you and, and you're, you gotta be open to not be like, I don't have a job. You gotta be like, Hey, I'm looking for a job. Because you, and, and that's hard to do when you leave that place.

I've been in that place a couple times, and you just kind of wanna be like, Ugh, I don't wanna tell anybody but you, but you, you gotta, because that's what's gonna get you to the next job. People can only help you if they know that you need help. Absolutely.

And we live in this super weird culture where so much of our identities are tied up in having our jobs. And so if there's a moment where we don't have a job, it's jarring. You know?

And that is not because of any of us as individuals. That is because of the culture that we live in. That is because of the society and what society has deemed to be valuable.

And so this is something that's really, I think, important for any of us to consider. Whether we're job searching, whether we're happily in a role. There's, there's a book that I really like that I listen to quite a lot during this search.

And it's called Strength to Strength. And it talks about, uh, for folks who at one point in their careers have been extremely successful professionally, and then what happens next? And it kind of gives these ideas for other parts of one's life to invest in things like family, extended, family, friends, spirituality of that sort kind of thing.

You know, different exercise and nutrition and just all these different parts of our world that are our real lives that exist in addition to work. Yes. And we know, again, if I go back to the resume, we used to look at some of that, you know, I used to always make sure, um, and I still do for the most part, that any profile I have, I point out that I have a black belt.

Why? Because it makes you a more interesting person, right? How did I miss that?

I'm gonna be nicer to you and I'm in person, You know, or that I like to ride big horses. You know, just what is it that makes this person interesting? And you know what?

Our resume systems now, they don't even care if you're an interesting person or not, which is horrible. It's, you know, because it takes the human out of the equation. We have taken the human factor out of the, the, the job, the, um, the head hunter's job.

And all we're doing is looking to match keywords. So Carolyn, did you use any kind of tool to Uh, absolutely. And I have, here's, here's one thing that I recommend for every job that I applied to, I would take my resume and I would take the job description and I would say, chat, GPT write me a draft cover letter.

And I would use that as a starting point. And I would look at it and I would take the bits that I liked and I would change the bits. Um, but I would use it as a starting point.

I know that for me, sometimes it's awfully intimidating. I'm facing this a lot lately, lately. 'cause I'm writing a book about cyber security and ai, but there could be something so intimidating about like a blank word document.

Um, but a draft, I can do something with a draft. I can, you know, get my eyeballs on a draft and immediately iterate. Um, and that's, that was something that I found to be really helpful.

I'm the same way. The blank paper just terrifies me before I have something to, but I could have something to start from. It makes such a huge difference.

Yeah. Yeah. There was a tool that my niece was using and I was watching her use, I didn't, I don't remember the name of it, but you could put in a job description and it would look at your existing resume and enhance it to match the job description.

Now, is everything accurate in what you did in the past? Maybe, or maybe not. But the problem, the point is, everybody's doing this now, right?

Right. So we don't, we, we have to get past what we used to think of as embellishing on a resume. And I'm not telling people to lie, but you've, you have to be able to pivot yourself.

When I first started, you know, when I, I was a California girl and I graduated from college, and five years later I decided I didn't wanna be in California anymore. And I moved to New York and decided to become a Wall Street consultant. I had never, ever, ever worked on OS two before, but everybody needed OS two consultants.

So I sit down and I read the big IBM red book on OS two, and I put it all over my resume, and I got a job almost instantly. I became one of the IBM's primary OS two consultants as a result. But again, it was what I could do.

And I was marketing myself. And marketing is never completely honest. And I just wanna tell women out there that you, I don't wanna take, I, I don't wanna say just lie and create up jobs, but you have to be able to express what your abilities are.

And you ha go ahead and start using those bullet points to say, here are some of the tools that I know I can use. Here are the skills that I have. So that you start matching on those, uh, those jobs.

It is, it is, it's unfortunate that we've gotten to this point, but this is where we are. This is, this is where we are in this world of AI matching, you know, humans to jobs and taking out the human factor. So it's okay to say what you can do, not just what you did, And ask people for references and recommendations.

Um, this time around, I was not shy about reaching out to folks that I'd worked with before and saying, Hey, would you consider taking a few minutes to write me a recommendation? And I would read through them myself when I was having a tough moment or a tough day. Nice.

Um, and it was actually just a beautiful gift to be able to see myself through the eyes of somebody that I know, or somebody that I've worked with. Um, and that was really helpful for me. Um, and I encourage folks to do that, you know, and I think that it doesn't matter how much time has gone by, you know, if you worked with someone 10 years ago and, and the two of you did really great work together, reach out and ask, you know, the worst they can do is say no or ignore you.

There's, there's really no downside. So this is so such an important conversation because, um, when we spoke with the woman from Manpower, she talked about how women really lost a substantial amount of traction in the tech industry during Covid. Yeah.

Because they were the ones who had to leave their jobs because the kids were at home and they had to do homeschooling, or at least babysit them as they sat in front of a, a zoom session for school. And they could not do both. They couldn't do an eight hour job and take care of their kids as well.

And what happened was that those, you know, in four years time, or two years time, or even a year's time, our industry changes so quickly that if you're out of work for that period of time, you probably would look at yourself and say, I'm no longer qualified for these jobs. I don't know Python. Right?

I've not had an opportunity to code in Python, so I can't talk about saying that. I do know Python. And that keeps women from going back into, and even not just a three month break as you had, uh, Caroline, but an eight month break, you know, after having a baby.

How do you get back into work after time off like that? And how do you start pivoting yourself and rebranding yourself as a person who is relevant for today's market? Not the market that you left eight months ago or even three months ago.

We had another person who, um, Jodi and I love very much, um, she was in the dev rail space and lost her job. And I don't think she found another job for Al I think it was close to six or seven months. You know, we were all just sweating it out for her.

'cause she's also the primary breadwinner in her family. And it was shocking to me that this, you know, that this was happening. And when I started looking into, you know, watching a a, a college graduate go through the process and how the tools now are matching people to jobs.

It is not, uh, uh, it is not good. It does not find the best, uh, most qualified person. It only finds the best match of words.

And how is that helpful for anybody? How do you know that person's gonna be decent? How do you know anything about that person?

If you really want to interview them, you don't. So it's, I get, it's sad to me. It really is that we can't find a better way to do it.

If AI is supposed to be so great, how come in this specific particular area, it's making our lives harder, not easier. There were a few, um, interview processes that I engaged in that I thought the company did a really cool thing. The company said, we're doing a case study, Caroline, here's basically an assignment for you.

Um, we expect you to put together, you know, X number of slides, you know, to write, you know, y number of words and to present it. Um, and I thought that was really cool, you know, because in the job interview process, um, in those cases, I, and any of the other candidates would've really been given an opportunity to kinda show our stuff. Um, so I thought that was pretty cool.

And I also wanna say, you know, when you're job searching, of course you want a job, but it's also extremely important to pay attention to what it feels like when you're talking to these people. 'cause say you get the job, then you're stuck working with them, and hopefully you like them and hopefully you respect them and hopefully you can learn from them. Um, so make sure that you are evaluating the company as much as they are evaluating you, and don't hesitate to ask any questions that you have, Which is so much harder to do remotely.

Right? You get pulled into an office, you maybe sit around a table with people. You, you know, that physical in Personness is very different in an interview situation.

You know, It's, I'm curious, Caroline, how many of your interviews were in person? Zero. Yeah.

Zero interviews, you know, and it's really funny because some of the companies, their HR interview processes, they're virtual, but they've got these like, uh, names that were clearly from a couple of years ago. So, you know, such and such organization would say, and for the next stage, you're gonna do a virtual onsite or for the next stage you're gonna do an onsite. And I was like, okay, well, you know, do you need me to fly somewhere?

Are we gonna do 'em all in one day? And they said, no, you know, it's, it's virtual and we can just space 'em out, you know, depending on people's availability. And it was just, it was just a fascinating thing, you know?

Um, but, you know, one of the things that I think has become very important, uh, is being able to effectively communicate like this, you know, to really be able to, uh, demonstrate, uh, one skill via a Zoom video. Um, and that's not easy for everyone. That's not natural for everyone, you know?

But if, if any of us, um, have any troubles with it, you know, it's, it's worth practicing. It's worth asking for advice. It's worth, you know, getting a little bit of support, uh, 'cause that that is a really big part of it.

Yeah. You don't think about that. Like the three of us, we do this all the time, so it, it's not a big deal to jump in, but people who are coding all day and, you know, they're doing their thing and their heads down and they're not interacting on Zoom calls unless it's like a company meeting, having an interview situation would be very different.

Absolutely. I think About that. I was just gonna say that, Jody, not everybody's on, you know, a text on gang or doing presentations like Caroline and yourself were doing.

Right. Um, it's a, it's a different world, the zoom world, and to be able to come across and be comfortable and be yourself is really, really challenging for some people. Again, the human factors being taken out.

I'm surprised you didn't get EE even after your offer. They didn't have you come in and meet you in person. That's amazing to me.

It's wild. I, I literally thought, you know, I kind of assumed, um, like, okay, like we're gonna do this. Like, naturally I'll, I'll fly to you or you're gonna fly to me, or we're gonna meet up and we're gonna hang out for a week and we're gonna, and it just wasn't like that, you know?

And part of it is travel and expense budgets. Um, and part of it is, you know, one of the things that I love about my new job is everyone is so remote competent. It is amazing how remote competent these people are.

Um, it just, you know, everyone just gets it, it all just makes sense. Um, and that is, that's really, really nice. And after we've developed all these remote competence skills, you know, we have a potentially a new administration coming in and saying, everybody needs to go back to the office.

And, you know, I heard, I heard, heard that Amazon was having folks come into the office. Mm-hmm. And, uh, and then I read a newspaper, um, article that said that the offices weren't ready to accommodate everyone.

So I think they had to, I think they had to delay it. So that's also been a really interesting thing, you know, and I think that for any job seeker, you know, there are ways in which you can broaden your search and you can design, you know, uh, for folks who are really intent on a cso CSO job, you know, maybe consider a job where you are reporting to a CISO or adjacent to a ciso. You know, for folks who are okay with going into the office, you know, if you happen to live near an office and they want folks in the office that will, um, expand, uh, your possibilities.

So it, it's really so much about whatever people are looking for in the moment. And I do think that right now, one of the things that I noticed is they are looking for deep expertise in a particular area. It was, it was interesting for me 'cause I'm a little bit of a generalist.

Um, some of my superpowers are not straight engineering, they're not straight sales, they're not 20 years of product management. Um, but, you know, I just want folks to know, just like, keep on going, keep your head up, keep on going and, you know, just keep going because, uh, you know, it's, it's worth trying. Um, and just learning along the way.

I can't discount though how important your LinkedIn profile is though. It's a big one. People, People do look at it.

People look At it, it's the first thing they go to. Mm-hmm. They see your resume and they go right out to LinkedIn and then they Google you.

And see, that's why we have to teach our younger generation about what they put on the internet, because employers aren't gonna find it people and it may not do you any service for them to see it. So Yeah, I mean it's, it's super important. I think LinkedIn is, LinkedIn has become the online resume for so many people.

Absolutely. And the problem because is as you're trying to apply for these different jobs, you're gonna tweak your resume for each of those jobs. So how do you have a LinkedIn profile that matches exactly what each of those different jobs you've applied for represents?

Because as for the game we're playing, right? We don't just have a one resume and a LinkedIn profile that reflects what that resume would say. Instead, what we have are multiple resumes, like the tools that you can use.

It says, here's my original resume, here's the job description, rewrite this, uh, you know, to match this and get my 80% or 90% match in order to get my, to get maybe a, a phone call, right? Because that's what you're hoping for is a phone call. So that, that, that becomes a challenge too.

So in your, in your endorsements and um, in LinkedIn, your endorsements are important, your skills are important. If you're looking for work and you're seeing something that continues to come up as potential, um, a a scale that you need, be sure that you reflect that in LinkedIn. So you may have a lot of stuff in LinkedIn that you're like, wow, I, I guess I could say I could do all that, but yes, you can, women, you can do this.

This is something you can do. So Carolyn, I I have another question before we, we have to wrap up. But you go through this process and obviously, you know, you and I talked about it while you were going through it, and, um, you know, what do you do for yourself?

What kind of self care do you do when you're the breadwinner? You have children, you have extended family there, you know, and there's the stress of that on top. What did, what would you recommend as far as just finding a happy place when you're in a really stressful world, especially the holidays on top of it?

Ah, you know, totally. It's like crappy Type of beer on top of it. You know, we have to learn how to take care of ourselves and the time.

I think that it's most important for us to learn how to take care of ourselves is when we're going through tough times. Um, one of the things that I've started doing, and I actually love it, kind of just around the same time that I began my job search, my husband installed a cold plunge, uh, in our backyard. And I love it.

It is not for everyone. You know, not everyone is super excited to dunk their body and polar barefoot, 42 degree, you know, water for 10 minutes. Um, but I, it just, I just love it.

It's exhilarating. Um, so, you know, whatever your thing is, if it's spin classes, if you love knitting, if you love journaling, if you love going for walks in nature, like really make sure you're getting what you need. I really need sleep.

So I prioritized my sleep. I also had a really good friend recommend to me, um, that I should, uh, you know, go on a little trip by myself and for myself. And I'm very fortunate that I have the resources to do something like that.

I booked an Airbnb for myself 25 minutes away from where I live, and I just lit some candles and sat in a hot tub and, you know, did some writing, did some thinking, did some reading. Um, and so we really do have to take care of ourselves. Um, that I think is what's gonna keep us going.

I also think that any, any rejection, any time you are ignored, I really wanna encourage people not to take it personally because there really are just so many factors way outside of your control. And so what we can control is we can keep going, you can keep searching, you can try and apply for the job on the first day that it's posted. You can, you can just keep on going, you know?

Um, but you know, it's, it's okay to be sad and it's okay to be disappointed. Um, but to the extent that we can allow ourselves to feel those feelings and then move through and move on, um, I think that's a really important skill to develop as well. That is so helpful.

Tracy, are you gonna ask her your question? I think she already gave us something to read, but you have to ask it anyway. Tracy always ask about This.

I Think that's a good question. Did you ever did, while you were going through this, did, were there any books that you picked up on on being a job seeker? For me, I read a, so, okay, here's another thing actually.

So I talked about strength to strength, which I highly recommend. Um, and then another thing that I love doing is I love reading for fun. I love reading mm-hmm.

Fiction. Um, and I came across this great Netflix show. So here's something I think that is actually equally important as bleep as, you know, if you have a particular comfort food that you really enjoy, give it to yourself, you know?

Um, but I, I came across this Netflix show called A Discovery of Witches on Netflix, and I just love it. And then so lucky for me, there's three seasons. So there's a ton of really great content.

It's a lot of time to relax into, you know, and I happen to have these three enormous dogs. We've got two English Mastiffs and a Rottweiler mix. And so I'm just chilling on the couch with these dogs.

And then even now, the series was based on a set of books. And so I'm actually in the middle of reading, uh, book number two out of three. So I think that it's also really important just to figure out like, what is it that helps us to feel good and to also take breaks from the hard stuff because our brains need breaks too.

Our brains need a little bit of fun too. Our brains need a little bit of relaxation. What great advice, what a great way to wrap up this episode.

Thank you so much for being here. I just, I think this is so important and, uh, it's, it's a topic we, we need to dive into every now and then for sure. And hear different stories.

So I really appreciate you being here, trace Caroline, Congratulations on the, the new job. I can't wait to hear about it. Thank you.

I love it so much and I'm so happy. Um, and I really appreciate you inviting me here to share my story. Thank you so much.

Yeah. I'm glad you were, you came. Thank you very much.

Hey everybody, um, that wraps up the, our latest episode of Techstrong Women. Thanks for tuning in today and be sure and tune in for our next episode. And again, head to Tech strong TV and check out all of our great content every day.

Thanks a lot. Thanks you guys. It was great to have you today.