SHRM Conference and Unlocking Resilience with Bob Goodwin

In this episode, we talk about resilience as an employee superpower, look ahead to the SHRM Annual Conference and Expo in Chicago and much more!

The guest today is Bob Goodwin, a LinkedIn Top Voice and the Founder of Career Club. 

Career Club serves individuals and companies by providing career services for job seekers, Talent Acquisition, Talent Development, and Outplacement.  The common thread running through these services is a fundamental focus on mental wellness.

Most recently, Bob has launched Radical Resilience, a curriculum designed to address the chronic workforce issues of burnout and disengagement. 

Bob is also the host of two popular podcasts, Career Club Live and The Work Wire with Johnny Taylor, Jr., CEO of the Society of Human Resources Management.

Tune in and discover how Bob transitioned from a successful corporate sales and marketing career to creating a platform that focuses on mental wellness in career services. We'll explore his unique approach to job searching, treating it as a sales and marketing exercise, and his "making your own weather" methodology.

Questions for Bob include:

• What is the vision and mission of Career Club ?
• Tell us about the Work Wire podcast with Johnny C. Taylor Jnr 
• What are you looking forward to at #SHRM24? 
• Why do you see resilience as the superpower for the future?

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

Welcome to the HR Chat Show, one of the world's most downloaded and shared podcasts designed for HR pros, talent execs, tech enthusiasts and business leaders. For hundreds more episodes and what's new in the world of work, subscribe to the show, follow us on social media and visit hrgazettecom and visit HRGazettecom.

Speaker 2: 0:26

Welcome to another episode of the HR Chat Show. Hello, this is your host today, bill Bannam, and in this episode we're going to talk about resilience as an employee superpower. Look ahead to SHRM 2024 in beautiful Chicago and a whole bunch more. My guest today is Bob Goodwin, a LinkedIn top voice, founder of Career Club and host of a couple of very cool podcasts. Career Club serves individuals and companies by providing career services for job seekers, talent acquisition, talent development and outplacement. The common thread running through these services is a fundamental focus on mental wellness. Most recently, bob has launched Radical Resilience, a curriculum designed to address the chronic workforce issues of burnout and disengagement. Bob is the host of two very popular podcasts Career Club Live and the Work Wire, with none other than Johnny C Taylor Jr, the CEO of Sherm. Bob Goodwin, it's my absolute pleasure to welcome you to the HR Chat Show today. Hello Welcome.

Speaker 3: 1:39

Bill, it is an honor. Thank you so much, and I love your energy.

Speaker 2: 1:42

So listeners, bob and I had a chat a few weeks ago and I am incredibly impressed by this chap and it's my honor to have him on the show today. Bob, why don't you start by taking a couple of minutes and telling our listeners a bit about yourself and what you get up to?

Speaker 3: 1:59

Sure, thank you, bill, and again, it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me. So, as you said, I'm Bob Goodwin. I'm the president of Career Club. Career Club is something that I started three years ago. I left my corporate career where I was mostly focused in the sales and marketing realm, actually working on clients like Coca-Cola, procter Gamble, walmart big names that people know. My clients were marketers.

Speaker 3: 2:24

I was a sales guy and sales leader and learned a ton about sales and marketing, as you would expect from world-class brands like them. But separately, I've always enjoyed networking. I know we might talk a little bit more about networking in a bit, but I just enjoy networking. And when you're a networker you end up meeting a lot of people in job search because that's what they're doing and people would say call Bob, he's nice, he knows a lot of people, he'll help you. So for 15 plus years just in networking, helping people in job search, you know, the observation was that it's really a big sales and marketing exercise.

Speaker 3: 3:02

Your career is, but particularly in job search, and your brand is. What's your unique value proposition? How do you contribute at a company? How do you communicate that in a clear and compelling way? Who's the target audience for what you do and how do you reach them. Those are things my marketing clients would think about all day with their products or services, and the same holds true for individuals in their careers.

Speaker 3: 3:28

The sales piece of it is you have a quota. When you're looking for your next role, you have a quota. It's one. You need exactly one new job, but you need a pipeline of opportunities to hit your quota in a timely fashion. And then you also need to learn how to run a sales call, which is essentially what a networking call and, for sure, what an interview is. And so we codified all of that Bill in something that I call making your own weather, where we cover attitude branding, how to do networking and outreach, interviewing and then ultimately negotiating or closing the deal. And so, at the beginning of 2021, I left my corporate job and started Career Club to help individuals find their next role. And then there's some B2B aspects of that, particularly in the realm of outplacement or, as I like to call it, next placement. Let's focus on what's next, not who's out, but that, in a nutshell, is what we do at Career Club.

Speaker 4: 4:35

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Speaker 2: 5:09

Earlier on today, bob, I was looking over the Career Club podcast. My goodness me, there have been a lot of episodes, Congratulations. How many so far Do you know?

Speaker 3: 5:18

Episodes? Gosh, probably. Well, it's 50 plus for sure. As I think you know, I've actually got two podcasts. One's called Career Club Live with Bob Goodwin, where we've been really blessed to have amazing guests from the CEO of Procter Gamble, chief People Officer of McKinsey, the leader of the Future of Work Project at Harvard Business School, chro, spotify, kroger, people like that which has been amazing. The second podcast is with Johnny Taylor Jr, the CEO of SHRM, and we've got a podcast called the Work Wire. So that's been a huge blessing and really kind of taking me to school in all things HR and people, which has fed a lot of our philosophy here at Career Club, beyond just getting me introduced to some amazing thought leaders.

Speaker 2: 6:18

Okay. So, as regular listeners of this show will know, we have had various folks on from SHRM over the years, including the marvelous Johnny C Taylor.

Speaker 3: 6:30

I could listen to Johnny Taylor read the phone book.

Speaker 2: 6:33

He is such a good speaker. Oh man, I met Sherm a couple of years ago. I was such a fanboy, I got a photo with him and whatnot. It was great. What was that conversation that led to you guys doing a podcast together? Tell us more.

Speaker 3: 6:46

So so I cold called Johnny. He was somebody that I'd been following and thought that he would be a great guest, and also Joe Fuller Professor. Joe Fuller at Harvard Business School has a podcast and he had Johnny on and I was kind of going through his catalog and I'm like Johnny sounds super interesting. So I just I literally cold called him and Johnny came on a couple of years ago and then we just hit it off. That was like the first time I'd ever talked to the man and, for whatever reason, he felt comfortable talking to me and we had a couple meetings after that and he had the idea of what if we did a podcast together. So that's kind of how that came to be.

Speaker 2: 7:31

And that's part of the beauty of this medium. Listeners, this is one of the reasons why I love it. You'll have lots and lots of conversations with people that otherwise you wouldn't get an opportunity to chat with. Because there's a purpose. You're recording something, you're going to spread that to the world. Um, and very often you hit off with that person. Not always, but very often you hit off with that person and there you go, you've got an amazing new relationship and, and sometimes you get on so well that you end up doing loads of cool stuff together.

Speaker 3: 7:58

Um, so well, and I would put you and I in that category. I mean, you know, like know, like you say, you just, you meet interesting people, you learn something new, you're growing your network, which is always a good thing, and then, like I said, heaven forbid you actually learn something too. And, um, you know, I've just learned so much from our guests. It's cool having them, but like I want to make sure I'm not missing the opportunity to really kind of milk as much as I can from their expertise. And then how can we use that to inform what we do and make Career Club better?

Speaker 2: 8:36

Okay, so I guess the next question then is who else? You listed a whole bunch of amazing guests on the various podcasts. You spoke about the unique relationship that you and Johnny had from from the start. Any others, any, any other guests that you've had on the show? You'd like to highlight who you just had that connection with straight away, and you'd love to mention their work?

Speaker 3: 8:57

Yeah, I should probably get the the the catalog in front of me. But again, katie George from McKinsey I mean, how do you do better than that? She's their chief people officer, really good. Tim Massa, who's the CHRO at Kroger I just remember he talked a lot about authenticity, vulnerability as a leadership quality and you know their organization is almost half a million people, which is crazy. I mean it's a good size town or city. Dory Clark, who's one of the top you know 50 thought leaders. You know Harvard Business Review author, etc. Steve Cadigan, who was LinkedIn's first CHRO and wrote the book Workquake that came out during the pandemic. That was phenomenal. Gosh Bill like I said, there's just been a ton. Some really really high quality folks. I would encourage people to go dive into the archives. We've had the CMO for MasterCard on, raj Rajamanan. The CMO for Target has come on. The CEO for Procter Gamble, david Taylor. Three-star general Ben Hodges he led the US Army in Europe for years. So just some people with phenomenal backgrounds.

Speaker 5: 10:18

Thanks for listening to this episode of the HR Chat Podcast. If you enjoy the audio content we produce, you'll love our articles on the HR Gazette. Learn more at hrgazettecom. And now back to the show.

Speaker 2: 10:34

Those are impressive folks. We had Steve Cadigan on the show I think it was last year. He's a nice guy, nice guy show. I think it was last year. He's nice guy, nice guy. Um, hey, you and I don't only get to hang out uh through through uh, the marvels of technology by uh recording something through the interweb, but we actually get to hang out in person at sherm in a couple of weeks as we record this particular episode, sherm in chicago. Uh, there's going to be tens of thousands of attendees there, loads of exhibitors, lots of cool parties. One of those is is Jennifer McClure's with Disrupt. You and I were chatting about that before we hit record today. Uh, what are you looking forward to at SHRM this year? Any sessions you want to highlight, any conversations you're looking forward to? What's, uh, what's attracting you for this year?

Speaker 3: 11:16

Well, first of all, um, the first time I ever went to sherm was last year and I was just blown away. There were like 25 000 plus people at this thing and it was crazy good. Um, this is going to sound quasi self-serving, but I thought johnny's keynote at the end was just phenomenal like that was one of the best speeches I've ever heard. Uh, listening to bill cl last year, you know, irrespective of your politics, you know he was really really good. So, yeah, I mean, what is this? Jason Sudeikis, ted Lasso is you know this year, jay Leno, kelly Clarkson that sounds like fun. They give a leadership award and I think I might know who's going to be winning it this year. Last year was Ed Bastian from Delta. I got to sit down and talk to the CEO of Delta for 45 minutes. That was super cool. So I'm just, you know, very relationship oriented. I love meeting new people and I'm excited about, uh, you know, the opportunity to just, you know, interact with some really, really interesting people. Uh, yeah, you included.

Speaker 2: 12:28

So I think this will be fun I have got a couple of cheeky days after the conference finishes between me, you and and all of our listeners, um, so I'm hoping to get a few ball games in.

Speaker 3: 12:39

I don't know if I'm gonna get.

Speaker 2: 12:42

I think the cubs are out of town after the conference, um, but white socks will be around. They'll be pretty easy to get a few ball games in. I don't know if I'm gonna get. I think the cubs are out of town after the conference, um, but white socks will be around. They'll be pretty easy to get a ticket for that, and um, and I've never been up to the brewers, to their stadium either, so it's not a long you wow very cool.

Speaker 3: 12:56

You're having a good time. The weather should be gorgeous. It's a perfect time of year to be going to baseball games in chicago, milwaukee.

Speaker 2: 13:03

So this is, of course, an audio-only podcast listeners, but last week I was in Houston and I'm wearing my Houston Astros hat from the How'd you get to be such a big? Baseball fan. Well, I lived in Toronto for a decade and they had the only Canadian baseball team two times World Series champions. Thank you very much, the amazing Blue Jays.

Speaker 3: 13:26

Here's the irony of this is I'm a giant football slash soccer fan, so I'm repping my Liverpool kit today.

Speaker 2: 13:35

Liverpool. I think I've heard of them, I'm not sure. Okay, moving on Resilience, let's talk about resilience, bob. Well, why do you see resilience as the superpower for the future?

Speaker 3: 13:47

Yeah. So when we're working with our clients again, many of whom either come to us through our outplacement services or as individuals, the emotional toll that it takes on a job seeker is really high. And so a couple of years ago, we partnered with a clinical psychologist, dr Andy Garrett, who really taught me a lot about this quality of resilience, which is the ability to adapt and thrive in the midst of change, midst of change, and so we've seen great success with that, with our individual clients, and now we're seeing that on the corporate side. The reality is and this is a SHRM study that came out a couple of weeks ago 44% of workers are burned out. Mckinsey's got a study out right now that talks about 50% of employees feel disengaged, and they've even got a calculator for what that disengagement is costing companies. Ai is coming to take my job.

Speaker 3: 14:52

I'm freaked out on whoever wins the presidential election later this year. What's going to happen with interest rates? Am I the next person to get laid off? People are just freaked out, and If you don't have the tools and when I say the tools I mean like the internal strategy for how I deal with change it all becomes overwhelming and it basically makes us shut down the chemicals in our brain shut us down because it's just overwhelming. And so resilience, the cool thing about resilience is it's something that can be learned. And so resilience, the cool thing about resilience is it's something that can be learned. It's not, oh, those special heroes that you know somehow rise to the occasion, but that's not somebody like me. The reality is is, you know, once we understand, kind of, what our intrinsic motivators are, you know, and that I can look back and see when there were times that I was resilient, that I did, you know, meet the challenge and not only did I need it, but I actually became a better person through it and that I can see, you know, not through rose colored glasses like well, this isn't really a problem, but this is a challenge. But what are some of the benefits that might be coming through this, like in job search, just on that for a second. We call that benefit finding.

Speaker 3: 16:14

People will say, you know, I wouldn't have picked this for myself, but I got to spend more time with my aging parents. All this networking I've been doing, I've met an amazing number of just really nice, generous people. It pressed the pause button for me that I wouldn't have pressed for myself and I kind of realized I didn't love what I was doing, and now I'm consciously making the choice to take my career in a different direction that I find more fulfilling. So resilience is about you know one, knowing who I am, what my qualities are, that I am brave, I am creative, I do have a strong social network, I am somebody that you know can bounce back even when things don't go my way. And drawing on those qualities and then getting creative, being flexible, being adaptive to the change that's happened and viewing it with a positive mindset.

Speaker 3: 17:17

And again, it's not just sort of happy thinking but genuinely working through in your mind what's the good that can come out of this. How can I turn this into something beneficial? That quality is a life skill. Does it apply at work A hundred percent? How can I turn this into something beneficial? That quality is a life skill. Does it apply at work A hundred percent? But when a company is nothing more than the collection of individuals and when we can show people how to draw on their own internal strength and, in some cases, their faith that that propels people to be the best version of themselves, that that propels people to be the best version of themselves and that obviously allows them to be more productive, more innovative, more collaborative, to not quit, to not have to go get prescription drugs to deal with depression. All those things accrue to the betterment of the individual, the company and, I believe, society at large.

Speaker 2: 18:09

I have a whole bunch more questions for you. However, we are almost out of time, which just means that we've got to get you on again very, very soon, bob. So for today, before we wrap up, how can our listeners connect with you, learn more about all the cool things that you do, maybe get a chance to meet you in person? Ie, you might want to highlight some other events that you're going to be at this year. All those wonderful things to get to know the amazing Bob Goodwin.

Speaker 3: 18:34

You're very kind, bill. So SHRM for sure, depending on whenever this episode drops, if we have the opportunity to meet in Chicago at SHRM, that would be awesome. I would love to meet people. That's kind of my main reason for going. Two is follow me on LinkedIn, bob Goodwin at Career Club, and then ding the little bell so that you get notified. I post, if not every day, every other day, and tend to try and encourage people as well as empower them with maybe some ideas. Empower them with maybe some ideas, clearly, subscribing to the podcast. You know that we hope that we're producing like you are, bill some high quality content that people find engaging and helpful to them. And then my email is very simple bob at careerclub. So, however, people would like to engage, that would be amazing.

Speaker 2: 19:29

Excellent. Well, that just leaves me to say for today Bob, I'm looking forward to seeing you in Chicago, but for today. Thank you very much for being my guest.

Speaker 3: 19:37

Thank you so much. Like I said at the beginning, this is really a pleasure that you would have me on and look forward to our next conversation, having you on my podcast, to continue my legacy of amazing guests.

Speaker 2: 19:50

There we go. This is essentially part one of a part two chat between me and Mr Goodwin, but for today, listeners, as always, happy working.

Speaker 1: 20:02

Thanks for listening to the HR chat show. If you enjoyed this episode, why not subscribe and listen to some of the hundreds of episodes published by HR Gazette and remember for what's new in the world of work? Subscribe to the show, follow us on social media and visit hrgazettecom.