How to Get Hired as an Agilist in 2024 with Stephanie Cully

Unlock the secrets to landing your dream Agile role with expert insights from career coach Stephanie Cully! Join us as Stephanie shares her extensive knowledge on navigating the challenging job market and transitioning into Agile positions, even from non-tech backgrounds. Learn practical strategies like freelancing on Upwork and Fiverr, and effective networking at local Chamber of Commerce events to gain the experience and visibility needed to stand out.

Discover the art of optimizing your resume and LinkedIn profile to boost your job search success. Hear a compelling story about a client who transformed their lengthy resume into a winning one-page document that led to an interview from a pool of 700 applicants. We emphasize the critical importance of consistency between your resume and LinkedIn profile, and offer tips on how to maximize your resume space by leveraging LinkedIn for detailed information like certifications.

Build genuine relationships and stand out in the competitive job market with our thoughtful advice on authentic job search strategies. Stephanie and I explore the frustration of feeling used by acquaintances and how to foster genuine connections through casual conversations and showing interest in others' careers. Learn how to differentiate yourself through unique experiences and showcase your expertise via blogs or LinkedIn posts. We also provide targeted job search tips, including identifying top companies and using LinkedIn filters to find the perfect fit. Tune in for an engaging discussion on agile methodologies, team dynamics, and creating a culture of continuous improvement. Don't miss this episode packed with actionable strategies to enhance your Agile journey!

Connect with Stephanie:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephanie-cully/
https://www.instagram.com/cullyandco_careers/
www.stephaniecully.com

Resources from Stephanie:

FREE "Discover your Purpose" (Ikigai guide)
https://www.cullyandco.com/ikigai

FREE "LinkedIn Strategies to Land the Job" (outreach guide) https://www.cullyandco.com/OutreachGuide

Get 20% off the "Get Hired" ebook
FREE for a very limited time, afterward use code: TheAgileWithin
https://www.cullyandco.com/offers/U4vSNWsz

Get 20% off career coaching
Mntion TheAgileWithin in the "other" section for discount https://calendly.com/d/3pm-jp4-7n4/discovery-call-with-steph

Join the Alliance! 👇

Transcript

Mark: 0:06

Welcome to the Agile Within. I am your host, Mark Metze. My mission for this podcast is to provide Agile insights into human values and behaviors through genuine connections. My guests and I will share real-life stories from our Agile journeys, triumphs, blunders and everything in between, as well as the lessons that we have learned. So get pumped, get rocking. The Agile Within starts now. Welcome back everybody to the Agile Within. As always, this is Mark Metze. Today for our episode, I have career coach Stephanie Cully. Stephanie, how are you doing?

Stephanie: 0:48

I'm great. How are you, Mark?

Mark: 0:50

Oh, doing awesome. All right, Stephanie, so why don't you introduce yourself to us?

Stephanie: 0:55

Sure. So my name is Stephanie and what I do is I help people to land their dream job. I spent about 15 years in tech, and what I noticed as I rotated around in different companies is that a lot of people had a dislike for the work that they were doing or they didn't have a lot of fulfillment, and so I wanted to change that for people and help them so that they could actually find something that they enjoyed doing and they could have more impact.

Mark: 1:22

That's a great service, because it can be rough times and rough waters out there for those that are looking for new jobs, so I want to start off with our general icebreaker that we normally do. So, stephanie, where are you from?

Stephanie: 1:36

So I'm in Mount Laurel, New Jersey.

Mark: 1:38

I have never been to Mount Laurel, New Jersey, but if I were coming for a day, what's one thing that Stephanie would say that I couldn't miss doing?

Stephanie: 1:46

There are actually a lot of great things in New Jersey. The things that I would recommend would be either visiting one of our local wineries it's beautiful with all of the gardens and the vineyards or I would recommend visiting one of our local Main Streets. We have tons of Main Street areas around here with cute little boutiques and restaurants, so it's a great place to walk around.

Mark: 2:08

All right. So when my wife and I come up there, I'm definitely going to put some spending limits on the credit cards.

Stephanie: 2:15

Definitely.

Mark: 2:16

All right. So, Stephanie, our topic for today is how to get hired as an Agilist in 2024. And that's a pretty broad statement. Help us to understand what you mean as far as an Agilist in 2024?. And that's a pretty broad statement. Help us to understand what you mean as far as an Agilist and how you help those.

Stephanie: 2:30

That's a great question, because Agilist is a really broad term and there are so many different roles. When I say Agilist, I'm referring to people that are scrum masters, product owners, agile coaches. I know there's tons of other roles, like program managers, but really in that type of realm, when I say Agile, Do you focus on helping people that already have Agile roles and they're looking for their next Agile role, or otherwise?

Stephanie: 2:58

So there are a couple of different categories that the people that I help fall into. And one of the first ones and I would say this is probably the most frequent is people that are transitioning from a non-agile role or a non-tech role into agile. And then the second type of person that I help as you've noticed, in today's economy there are a lot of layoffs going on. It's been a really tough job market. So also helping people that they may have five, 10, maybe even 15 years of experience and they're having a difficult time trying to transition into a new role after their company went through some layoffs. And then the other type of person that I'm helping is someone that's trying to find more alignment, so someone who's not quite sure what exactly they want to do. So I help them in terms of what would bring them the most fulfillment and how did they get to that.

Mark: 3:52

What kind of timeframe are we talking about here? I know the magic answer is it depends. But if someone were to come to you and ask you, just on average, how much time should I expect to find my next role?

Stephanie: 4:05

Yeah, I love the fact that you said that it depends, because that's so true For someone that may have been laid off, even that can vary a bit. There are some folks that I'm helping right now and I've been able to help them land new roles between one month to, let's say, six months. I have also seen some, let's say, scrum masters with 10 years of experience and it's taken them over a year to land a new job. Just because the difficulty and how competitive it is, I would definitely say for someone who's just starting out, expect somewhere between six months to a year, because there are a lot of different things, a lot of different components that go into transitioning from a new role wherever you were previously into that role, whether that's gaining new skills or learning how to market yourself. So it could take a bit of time.

Mark: 4:54

So somebody who's a primary breadwinner for a family and they're looking for this new role. What kind of advice do you give them or how do you steer them if they tell you, well, I don't have a year to find my next role. How do you help them fill that gap between where they are today and finding the new role?

Stephanie: 5:12

Yeah. So there are a couple I would say at least three different ways that I would suggest to get into a role sooner, and one of those ways would be to try to get some experience, even if that's doing freelancing. There are some opportunities out there on Upwork, there's Fiverrcom, there are nonprofits. Another really great way to try to do this is I actually just went to a Chamber of Commerce event yesterday and it's amazing how many opportunities are out there just by having a conversation with someone.

Mark: 5:44

So how would you get in touch with somebody the Chamber of Commerce? Do you just look up the phone number on the internet and give them a call, or what does that look like?

Stephanie: 5:52

Yeah, great question. So if you want to get involved in the Chamber of Commerce, it's up to you, if you want to become a member or if you just want to attend as a guest. What I would do is, let's say you're based in New Jersey, go to Google and type New Jersey Chamber of Commerce and you may actually have it based upon county. So I know we have at least three chambers of commerce, but what you're looking for is at least in my case, I was looking for what has the most members, what has the most events, and they should be events that are relevant to you Because, for instance, yesterday I went to an event and there were 150 people there. So 150 opportunities not even enough time to try to talk to all of those people and they host over 100 events per year. So think of how many great opportunities there are to meet people and to learn and get connected, to land that job that you're looking for.

Stephanie: 6:43

So with the current economy, I know that a lot of people can't just wait around and hope that their next job is going to magically appear next week. So what a lot of people are doing is they have bridge jobs and that could be a skill that they already have. I have someone that is working as a production manager, so they may find a job that, if they were just laid off, they would find another relevant role to hold them over while they're looking for that Scrum Master role. So I think it's important for people to know that it's okay if you need to get a bridge job before you get into a Scrum Master or a product owner job.

Stephanie: 7:20

I have a lot of clients that can't wait for three or six months, maybe even a year, if they're transitioning from a current job into a Scrum Master job. So what I recommend is take the skills that you already have, potentially take the job that you already had, even if you were laid off, and try to get a role similar to that. Another interesting one that I've seen, too, is even it may not be the most ideal job, but I have some folks that will drive Uber. They'll do things like Grubhub. It's just things that can help them to pay some of the bills until they're able to get into a role that is truly their dream job.

Mark: 7:59

If you have a family to support, you don't have an option. Sometimes you have to provide for your family. So I get it. So I imagine our listeners now saying this all sounds great. Stephanie, I hear what you're saying, but I need some strategies. So can you give us some strategies for how can you get hired as an agilist in 2024?

Stephanie: 8:19

Yes, I have quite a few strategies that I use with my clients and I think if you're being more strategic instead of just mass applying for jobs, you'll land a job a lot more quickly. So the first tip that I give people is to use a more modernized approach in their job search. So that means modernizing your resume, modernizing your LinkedIn, and what I mean by that is today's standard is you want to have a one to two page resume. I know some folks, a lot of folks, that have five to 10 page resumes, and the honest truth is people are not going to spend a lot of time going through a 10 page resume. If you look at LinkedIn, a lot of these Scrum Master Jobs have 700 applicants. So to expect a recruiter to go through and look at 700 applications and spend time going through 10 pages is just not realistic. So, sticking to some of the modern or best practices when it comes to your resume having a professional summary that tells a story and shows why you're the perfect fit for the role, focusing on what are the actual accomplishments, rather than just.

Stephanie: 9:31

As a Scrum Master, I facilitated meetings. Okay, well, what did you achieve by doing that? Did you save the company money? Did you make things more efficient? Did you help your customers in some way? You really have to focus on those types of things if you want to stand out, and the same thing goes with your LinkedIn. Your LinkedIn is not just a copy and a paste of your resume. It's really another way to showcase your talents, and, because you're limited to about one to two pages for your resume, this is where you can showcase some other things that might show why you're unique and why they should hire you. One of those examples would be, for instance, I have a client who also runs a scrum coaching program, so she doesn't have a lot of space on her resume to put information about that, but it shows that she gives back to the community and how excited, enthusiastic she is.

Mark: 10:24

Well, I can speak from experience. So my current job, I feel like I wasn't able to land that unless I had a very crisp resume. There's nothing with admitting that you need help, because I needed help. I'll be honest with you. I was the person who had that eight page resume because I've I've been around for a while and I thought it was very important to include everything that I had done so that people wouldn't miss any of the details. But what was happening was they just weren't even reading it.

Mark: 10:54

So I had to pay someone who was a professional to review my resume and be able to pare it down, to tell a story of who Mark is and make it easy to digest, because this is a reflection of you. So by having a 10-page resume, what message are you sending to this hiring manager? Is it that you're going to give lots of information and expect them to be able to distill it down and understand, or are you the one that can actually summarize and be able to get down to the major points? So my advice to our listeners is don't feel bad. Everybody needs help and it makes a huge difference to get a professional to help you with your resume.

Stephanie: 11:37

I love that you brought that up, especially the point about is this someone who can break down concepts into simple statements rather than you know? As a scrum master, you have to be able to do that. You can't sit there and give them give, let's say, leadership a ton of technical detail. They're busy, they have other things that they're focusing on. They may not even know all of these major details that are related to technology, these major details that are related to technology. So if you can keep it more high level and you're able to showcase that in your resume, it showcases another reason that you're such a great fit, and I love the fact that you talked about your resume and how you updated that.

Stephanie: 12:13

One of the services that I offer is resume and LinkedIn optimization and I had a client who this was just a month ago he had been applying for jobs as a new scrum master for three months. I gave him some tips to optimize it. We actually ended up going through and revamping it and he was one of the ones that had a five-page resume and he had a lot of great experience in there. But he was talking more to those things that we had discussed before. Like, I'm really great at facilitating events. I lead the daily scrum and I had to ask him how does this add value to the organization, how are you helping your team? And when?

Stephanie: 12:51

We were able to break that down and also showcase some unique things about him. For instance, he runs a podcast that's about Agile and also talks about some audio engineering. So that was a way to showcase why he's so excited and what he has learned over the years. And it was amazing to see the results because after searching for three months, never hearing back, it was one week later. He messaged me and he said hey, steph, you're not going to believe this. I applied to a job that had 700 applicants and they called me back for an interview. So I think that just goes to show what a difference it can make if you have an up-to-date and a relevant and impactful resume.

Mark: 13:34

That's a great story and a great win. Tell me if you agree with this, stephanie, but I think your resume and your LinkedIn profile support each other, and so I don't think there's anything wrong within your resume, making sure that that's like your summary, that's like your elevator pitch, and you can point to additional details in your LinkedIn profile, such as for your recommendations. You don't want to list all of your recommendations that you have, but maybe put your top one, the person that you feel like gives you the strongest recommendation and just say, hey, if you're interested in additional recommendations, here's a link to my LinkedIn profile and you can look at all of them. So the two kind of support each other, I think.

Stephanie: 14:19

I love that. I think one of the most important things and this came from a lot of hiring managers that I worked with was double check that your LinkedIn matches your resume in terms of the jobs that you have listed and the dates on there, because if they see any discrepancies, it's a red flag to ask whether or not this is legitimate, and it also shows your attention to detail. So if you're not paying attention to those types of details, what details are you lacking when you get into the job? And then that was a great point, too, about how you can put things on your LinkedIn that you don't have on your resume.

Stephanie: 14:55

One of the clients that I worked with last week had a five-page resume, and part of this was they have 12 certificates, and I understand they took a lot of time. It spent a lot of money to go through and get those certificates, so she was really proud of that. But when that's taking up almost an entire page of your resume, that's taking away from other key things that you want the hiring manager to notice. So what we were able to do was she was going for a scrum master role and I said, hey, why don't we take some of these other ones, product owner focused or developer focused. We just keep these on your LinkedIn. We highlight them there and on your resume you can say these are the top certificates. For more certificates, see my LinkedIn page. Same thing she had a lot of great honors from companies, but that was taking a significant amount of space on her resume for things where she could be showcasing why she's a valuable asset to the company.

Mark: 15:49

Wow, I love it. So the more we talk about this, Stephanie, I keep bringing it back to it's almost. It's not a time box, but it's like a text box, if you will. So I can imagine you say, okay, you've got two pages to work with. What are you going to include in those two pages? You can't go beyond that Kind of similar to how we approach our work. Right, it's like we have this huge amount of work. How do we break it into something that's more manageable? So I love that. So we've talked about resumes and we've talked about LinkedIn profiles. What other strategies do you have, Stephanie?

Stephanie: 16:25

The other and I would say this is the most important strategy is your outreach, and this can be through LinkedIn, this can be through other social media or some of the events that we talked about, like visiting your local chamber of commerce. But a really mind-blowing statistic right now is that for the jobs that you apply to in 2024, there's only about a 2% acceptance rate for those applications. So if you apply for 100 jobs, you're likely to only hear back from two of those. So you really limit the amount of interviews that you get, and then think about the fact that not every interview that you go through you may get a job offer for. So why not take matters into your own hands and go out and network with people, talk to people that already know, like and trust. You build off of those existing relationships, and then it's important to find new people as well, networking within the companies that you're interested in working for or companies that might be similar, that have values that really resonate with you.

Mark: 17:30

All of us has probably had those types of people that you haven't heard from in a while and then all of a sudden they come out of the blue and say hey, stephanie, remember me, I see your company is hiring and it's like all about them and makes me feel. Sometimes it makes me feel a little cheap and like they really don't value me. They're just using me to get the job. What tips can you give to to us to just build those that outreach, but not do it in a iny type way or just it's all about me kind of way? Am I making sense?

Stephanie: 18:06

Yes. So it has to be genuine, it has to be authentic and it's important that people recognize this is more of a long game and, whether you already have a job today or not, this should be something that you're continuing to do, because if you wait until you don't have a job to try to use this outreach strategy, it's going to take you quite a while. But I mean, there could be people that you had close relationships with in the past and you reach out to. I would not recommend reaching out and all of a sudden saying hey, I see that you work at XYZ company. Can you help refer me there?

Stephanie: 18:42

I would try to build up the relationship again and just have a casual conversation. Hey, can we grab a virtual or in-person coffee together and can I hear about what's going on with you? You really want to understand what's going on in their life, what's going on in their job and are there any ways that you can help them, because it's not just about taking from the other person. Like you said, it makes you feel cheap when they're just sitting there and saying, hey, I'm looking for a job, how can you help me?

Mark: 19:13

Well said, well said, all right. So you've talked about resume and LinkedIn profile. You've talked about outreach. What other strategies do you have?

Stephanie: 19:22

The other strategy that I would look at is I would look at what makes you unique versus everybody else. I talked about a couple of examples of clients that I've worked with and you don't even have to go to this extent, but I have a client that runs her own Scrum coaching program, so that shows that she has the knowledge, she has the experience and she also has the passion. I also have another client that has their own podcast and she also has the passion. I also have another client that has their own podcast. So these are some things that you can do is you can showcase your experience by going out, create a blog, or maybe you want to keep it simple and just put some of your expertise. Start small, with a couple of sentences on LinkedIn about something that you learned, or even about your current job search and what you've learned in that process or why you want to go into that role.

Stephanie: 20:09

But I think it's important to differentiate yourself because think about it these recruiters are looking at those applications that have 700 resumes and a lot of times you see those professional summaries and it says proficient scrum, master, expertise in XYZ. And then you look at the next one and it looks exactly the same. So, whether it's on your resume, your LinkedIn or you're having a conversation with someone, why would they want to hire you over anybody else? And you can even use some of the personal aspects of your life. Maybe you're really involved in the community. It's non-scrum related. Those are some things that can really help you to stand out and make you an attractive candidate.

Mark: 20:48

Are there other ways that we can leverage LinkedIn to help us in our job search? So you mentioned you look for a job and it's got 700 applicants to it. That's pretty demoralizing. So how can we do better about finding exactly the right fit for us, where we're not just using a shotgun approach and just saying I'm just going to send it to all of them and hope for the best?

Stephanie: 21:14

Yes, I love that. The thing that I help my clients with is we strategize what are the top companies or what are the top values they look for in an employer that they want to work for. And I have a client right now. They've worked for huge international companies and they've gotten to the point where they said I really want something that's more impactful. I like working in a smaller environment and I'd love to work for a company that has 400 or less people. And again, if you're someone who, let's say, you want to work for United Airlines or you want to work for Disney, that's totally fine. But making your search more targeted is going to help you to network with the right people. Focus on what are the things that you're saying in the interview and it has to be in alignment. You can't just be making up things. It's going to come off as unnatural and inauthentic if you're just saying things to try to impress them.

Mark: 22:09

Cooking the books.

Stephanie: 22:10

Exactly so that one client in particular who wants to work somewhere that has 400 people. Well, I said, okay, what are some companies that you know of? So we listed out those companies and he's been working on using those outreach strategies and connecting with people that he may not already know. And then the other thing is using a lot of the great filters that you see on LinkedIn. So, for instance, there's a section I can't remember the name of the filter offhand, but it talks about the values. So, for him, he's interested in sustainability, he's interested in diversity and inclusion, so you could actually narrow it down on there. And then you can also click and look for companies that are currently hiring and you can see ones that have a certain number of applicants. So, especially as you start to look at these smaller companies, if you're looking at, let's say, pepsi, they're going to have a lot more applications than someone that might be a local marketing agency.

Mark: 23:10

Well, these are some great tips that you've given us, but it's pretty daunting, even with these tips, to go out and try to do this on your own. Not saying that you can't, because you've given us some great advice, but if you felt like you did need some additional help, like we talked about earlier, where I needed help with my resume because I knew that was something that I couldn't really do effectively on my own, if people do want to reach out to you and engage you to help them with their next search, how might they do that, stephanie?

Stephanie: 23:43

Yeah. So I have a couple of ways. The best way to reach out to me, I would say, would be via LinkedIn. I'm pretty active on LinkedIn, I'm very responsive to messages and I have a lot of content that I put out there to help you for free. But I've also recently launched a workbook. It's called the Get Hired Workbook. It teaches you some of the strategies that we talked about today in detail, and even more. And then I also offer one-on-one coaching that helps people to land the job. So everything from how do you brand yourself and market yourself in a way that you're landing those interviews, how do you actually blow the interviewer away so they're offering you the job, and then how do you get the compensation that you deserve, both from a career goal perspective, but also from a financial goal perspective.

Mark: 24:32

And when we were planning this episode, you mentioned that you were going to offer our listeners some discounts that you weren't going to offer just everyone else, only for people here that are listening to the Agile Within. Why don't you tell our guests about that, Stephanie? Only for people here that are listening to the Agile Within.

Stephanie: 24:46

Why don't you tell our guests about that, stephanie? Yeah, so for our listeners on the podcast, I have a 20% discount. That's on the one-on-one coaching and also on the Get Hired workbook. All you have to use is the discount code it's the Agile Within and you'll see that 20% discount. And I did have one other thing that I wanted to mention too.

Stephanie: 25:06

Mark and I recently partnered with a company I don't know if you've heard of it. They're called Simply Agile and okay, awesome. So they're a really great organization. They're focused on community, they're focused on coaching and more of those types of things. I do offer free mentor talks on there. So I realize that the economy is tough right now and that's part of why I put out this workbook is not everyone can afford hundreds or thousands of dollars in career coaching from someone, so that get hired workbook is less than $30. And then for people that are just starting out, or maybe you've been laid off or you're transitioning, I have a free mentor talk that you can sign up to, but you have to go to simplyagileme in order to do that.

Mark: 25:52

Great. We'll make sure and put links to all of these in the show notes to make it easy for our listeners to get there. What parting advice would you give someone that's looking for an agile job in 2024?

Stephanie: 26:08

Yes, the advice that I would have is that you don't have to go at it alone. I think it's important to recognize when you need help and, again, it doesn't have to be from a career coach. I know other people that are using friends within their network to say, hey, I really need to get better at my interviewing skills and I need a little bit more pressure, so I'm not just answering the questions on my own. So, whether that means you go out and you grab a friend and you say, let's interview each other or can I practice my elevator pitch with you, or you decide to get, let's say, you use a workbook or you sign up with a career coach, it's really important to take those steps that you need because in order to land the job more quickly in 2024, you have to have a job search strategy. You can't just be mass applying to jobs and expect to land a job within a couple of weeks.

Mark: 26:56

That's awesome. So I'll plus one that, as far as your interview skills, practice makes perfect, Practice, practice, practice is going to be your number one friend there. All right, Stephanie, really appreciate you coming on the podcast with us here today. It's been a pleasure having you To our listeners out there. Until next time, we'll see you then. Thanks for joining us for another episode of the agile within. If you haven't already, please join our LinkedIn page to stay in touch. Just search for the agile within and please spread the word with your friends and colleagues Until next time. This has been your host, Mark Metz.