Real Job Talk

After a longer-than-usual break, Kat and Liz reunite to talk candidly about what happened behind the scenes—and what they’ve learned from it. Kat shares a personal update (including a surgery and longer-than-expected recovery), and Liz opens up about a major career transition: a nine-month job search, a short, wrong-fit role, and the emotional residue that can linger long after you’ve moved on. Li...

Welcome Skye Waterson, coach for people working with neurodiverse teams and partners helping them to excel in the workplace. Skye is the founder of Unconventional Organisation and the ADHD Skills Lab Podcast, and she has dedicated her career to helping neurodiverse professionals manage their challenges and bring their superpowers into focus while at work. We thank Magic Mind for their support and...

We welcome Leanne Elliott, an organizational psychologist, to talk about how to manage fairly in our current divided world. We thank Magic Mind for their support and help with clarity, focus, and sleep. Our friends at Magic Mind are giving our listeners 45% off their products (they have both clarity and sleep). If you want to try it, get 45% off the Magic Mind bundle with our link: https://www.mag...

Our final episode in our series on employee experience is about helping people who are leaving the company have a positive experience as they move on. Helping someone leave gracefully, providing a great last few days, and transitioning their work smoothly does just that. (If you’re the person leaving, listen to RJT Episode 55: The Art of Quitting ) When someone gives notice unexpectedly, what do y...

Exciting new idea: we are doing a series on employee experience! Today’s episode is number 3 talks about the employee experience of every day life as an employee. This is about understanding what each employee needs and wants and providing the training, tools, mentorship, and guidance to help them be successful. And for employees, it means showing up and being the best you can be. Generally, peopl...

We're doing a series of podcast episodes on employee experience! Today’s episode is number 2, which talks about the importance of the onboarding process. This episode is for EVERYONE AND ANYONE who is involved with the onboarding process -- managers, leaders, candidates, and interviewers. "Onboarding" is the term used for the plan and process for welcoming someone to a company and getting them tra...

We had an exciting new idea -- with today's episode, we kick off a series of episodes looking at the employee experience from many different angles. Today’s episode is number 1 in the series. We start by talking about the very beginning of the employee experience: the recruiting process. Future episodes will include onboarding, being an employee, career development, and leaving a company. This epi...

A special episode: Liz and Kat are guests on the Truth, Lies, & Work Podcast, where they talked about difficult conversations at work. Check out this episode with Liz and Kat on Difficult Conversations at Work , epsiode 137 of the Truth, Lies & Work podcast . Listen to the episode right here or listen to this bonus episode right here in your Real Job Talk feed. Episode notes Welcome to Tru...

We have a letter! A listener asks us what they should do if everything is just good. They’re restless: work is good, they make good money, have work/life balance, but they're wondering if this is it. Our listener’s name is “Restless” and we explore how they should approach this mid-career moment. First - everything is relative. The grass can be greener on someone else’s hill, but your grass may be...

We’re talking from experience about red flags, especially in the job search process, where your gut fits into decision making and how to listen for those flags. Kat tells her story from 20 years ago about her first HR Leadership role where she joined a company working for a husband and wife team. The offer was lower than her comfort zone with a bonus to get her there. She then needed to clock in,...

We have a letter! One of our listeners wrote to us with a question. They are stuck with what to do with their golden hancuffs. Their current employer was acquired by a larger company. The company wants them to stay, and has given them a year-long series of bonuses and severance if they stay long enough. But they'd also like to look around to see if there are other opportunities. They don’t know wh...

Today we’re talking about all things Company-Paid. We're here to help you understand and navigate the world of expenses. Here are the Real Job Talk guidelines for using your company credit card. Guideline 1: Look at your company handbook/rulebook and familiarize yourself with the company’s policies around expenses. There may be limits on hotels, guidelines around flights, and per diems for meals a...

Welcome back to Real Job Talk, Kat Kibben! Kat (pronouns they/them) is the founder of Three Ears Media, a speaker, advocate, and leader in the HR space around inclusivity and job descriptions. We're really pleased to have Kat join us for a second time on the podcast. (Check out their first appearance, Episode 38: Write a Resume that Gets Past the Screeners with Katrina Kibben ) Every week, Kat wri...

Welcome to Real Job Talk Robert Gilbreath! Robert talks to us about his career journey as a solopreneur, entrepreneur, and an employee and how he treats each role like he’s the owner of the company. Robert Gilbreath is an experienced solopreneur and entrepreneur, and joins the show to share his insights on work mindset, ownership of roles, networking, and evaluating side gigs. He has a diverse bac...

Welcome to Kelli Thompson! Kelli is a speaker, coach, author, and HR executive who left the corporate world to pursue her passion for helping women advance their careers. She is driven to help more women make it to the board room, advance their careers, and bring their best, most authentic selves to the office. Today we’re going to be focusing on talking with Kelli about the very important topic o...

Today we're talking about giving feedback at work. In talking with managers at work, Liz encouraged people to ask their people how they wanted to get feedback and how to deliver news positive and negative. Feedback, when given in a timely and kind manner, can be a gift. But often we forget key steps like finding out how someone likes to receive feedback or framing it in a way that makes sure your...

We talk about a topic that has come up extensively over the last few months -- severance packages. What are they? What aren't they? Why do they exist? What do you do when you get them? Our goal is to answer all of the questions we get around them to help you learn and be prepared if you’re faced with them. Question 1: What is a severance package and what is the point of them especially if I’m an a...

Liz and Kat Zoom in with Mpume Ncube-Daka all the way from South Africa to talk about change conversations. Mpume works with people to drive the best decisions in their growth and development. She is passionate about personal and professional development and learning through change. Mpume thought she’d be a doctor when she grew up, but realized she needed to change direction after a failed math cl...

Today we’re talking about job abandonment -- something we’ve each seen a handful of times in our corporate careers. (Kat saw it more with people working in retail.) We want you to know what job abandonment is, how to avoid it, and what the ripple effect can be when someone abandons their job. What is job abandonment? Job abandonment is when you just disappear from work and nobody knows where you a...

Welcome to Real Job Talk, Angela Loeb! We refer our clients who need their resumes done to Angela because she literally wrote the book(s) on resumes and job searching. Angela started out helping people to get into beauty school- she interviewed people and helped them get into classes. Angela got into recruiting by answering an online ad (a rarity!) and worked at an agency for many years until the...

In this episode we advise on what to do when your company gets acquired. Most of us don’t know if our company is going to change structure, ownership, or leadership, so when something big is announced it can be a bit shocking and can cause us to ask, “What happens to me?” What do you do that day? Acknowledge your feelings - you’re going to get flooded with emotion. It’s scary. The number 1 thing y...

Top secret! We’re talking about NDAs, non-disclosure agreements. What’s an NDA? It’s an agreement between you and the company saying that you won’t share information about the company outside of the company. These are shared whether you’re an employee or a contractor. Sometimes you sign an NDA when you’re interviewing, which means that whatever you learn during the process you can not take back to...

Today we’re talking about background checks. Background checks are a standard piece of company’s hiring processes. The company takes the resume and verifies education, employment, and criminal records. Sometimes they also do things like drug tests. Both of us have had to rescind offers or eliminate employment based on background investigations, and each of those situations could have been avoided....

Welcome to Dr. Carrie Root, who joins us to share her book The Other Soft Skill that teaches about intergenerational communication and connection. Carrie has had a number of career twists and turns, breaking barriers as an IT consultant with the Navy and now as an educational consultant. Carrie tells us that she ignored the gender differences she found in her early career by pretending there wasn’...

Welcome to Professional Service Manager and author of the new book Make Me The Boss: Surviving as a Millenial Manager in the Corporate World , Emily Tsitrian! We talked with Emily about being a “newer career” manager, why she wrote her book, and lessons she learned along the way. We asked Emily how she got into professional services (which is a lot of project management, implementation, and custom...