Latest / Breaking the Timeline by Shana Francis / You're Qualified. So Why Aren't You Getting Hired? | A Michaela Coel Career Diagnostic

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You're Qualified. So Why Aren't You Getting Hired? | A Michaela Coel Career Diagnostic · Breaking the Timeline by Shana Francis

• Shana: If you have ever sat in an interview, knowing you were prepared, knowing that you could do that job, you still didn't get it though. Or if you've had ever looked at someone else's career and thought, how did they get there so fast? What do they know that I don't? Now, in today's episode, We are going to give you some answers, okay? Because today we are breaking down one of the most strategically brilliant career pathways of the ⁓ last decade, stage stage ⁓ and extracting every you can use. Because the decisions this woman made, the mindset she had, and the moves she chose at every stage of her career are just a masterclass in what actually building a career that lasts actually looks like. So by the end of this session, you will have four principles, four diagnostic questions, and one clear action you can take this week. That is what we are doing today. Right. Before we actually get into it, I want to name what we are doing today because this is something a little different to what we usually do. And it's something I'm going to be bringing back once a month. This is what we call the career in focus. Once a month on breaking the timeline, I'm going to take one person. And I mean one person, someone whose career trajectory is worth studying. And we are going to pull it apart together. The extract, the exact principles that made them not just talented, but strategically unhirable on anyone else's terms. Because here's what I've noticed. And I say this as someone who works in career development, who has coached early career professionals, who sits in rooms where all the hiring decisions actually happen. The people who build the careers that last are not always the most qualified. They understand something about how careers actually work. That most people they've never even been taught about. And that is the gap I want to close. So, once a month, a new person, a new blueprint, a new set of principles, you can apply directly to where you are right now. And today, for our very first career in focus, we are starting with. Michaela Cole. Now, for anyone who actually doesn't know who Michaela Cole is, let me give you a quick version. She is a British actress, writer, director, and producer. Born and raised on a council estate in Tower Hamnets, East London, Now she started off performing poetry at Open Mic Nights, and as a teenager, going by the name Michaela the Poet, before being encouraged to apply to the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, one of the most prestigious drama schools in the country. She was the first black woman ⁓ to be admitted there five years. Yeah. Her graduation project was a one-woman autobiographical play called Chewing Gum Dreams. And it actually went on to run in the Bush Theatre and the National Theatre. That play that became the Channel 4 sitcom Chewing Gum, which she wrote entirely herself and won a BAFTA full. Then came I May Destroy You in 2020, a show she wrote. Produced and co-directed and starred in, inspired by her own experience of sexual assault. She turned down a million dollars from Netflix, okay, to make it on her own terms. It became the one of the most critically acclaimed television series of the decade. She won a primetime Emmy, the first black woman ever. To win in that category for writing. She has also written a book, delivered for Kino at the Edinburgh Television Festival, the first black person ever to do so, and be named in Time's 100 most influential people. Council Estate in East London to Emmy Winner on her own terms at every single stage. That is who we are studying today. But before we get into it, I want us to get one thing straight first. Because this is the mindset shift that makes everything else in this session land properly. Being qualified and being hireable are two completely different skills. Now, one is about what you know. The other is about how you are known. One gets you into the room. And the other, it's what keeps you in it and what gets you back. Now, most of us have been trained really well in the first one. The degree, the experiences, the CV, the references. Nobody teaches you the second one. Nobody sits you down and explains how hiring decisions are actually made. What a panel in a room is really feeling. What separates the candidate who gets it from the equally qualified candidate who doesn't? And Michaela Cole's career is honestly one of the clearest examples I have ever seen of someone who understood both. Now from performing poetry and open mic nights and evening. To winning a prime time Emmy, from being told she didn't fit to becoming one of the most sought-after creative voices working today. That is not luck. is a set of decisions, and we are going to go through every single one of them. Because if you are sitting here wondering why your career isn't moving as fast as you know it should be, if you are applying for things and not getting them, or getting to final stage and losing out, or just feeling like you are working hard but somehow still invisible. Now this session is going to show you exactly where the gap is. Okay, so I want to start with something that I don't think gets said enough career conversations. What do we do when the opportunity goes to someone else? Someone who, from where you were standing, didn't do anything more than you did. Maybe And you just sat there like. What am I missing? Because it doesn't feel like failure. Failure you can work with. This feeling, it feels more like a conversation happening somewhere that nobody told you about. A room you weren't given the address for. Something everyone else seems to just know. And you are trying to figure out where you were supposed to learn it. And then. And this is the bit that gets me. You start turning inwards. You start wondering if a problem is you, not your qualifications, your preparation, something about how you come across. Something you can't quite name, but you are convinced other people can see it. Now I just want to say ⁓ feeling is so real. And it is not a you problem. It is a gap in what you have been taught. And this is exactly what we are fixing today. the traditional career advice we get work hard, be reliable, keep your head down, put in the time. It's not wrong, but it's incomplete. It teaches you how to be good at your job. It does not teach you how to be known for being good at your job. And in a competitive environment, in a hiring process, those two things, they are not the same. Now the people who are getting the roles, the opportunities, the rooms that seem to be moving faster than yours, they are not necessarily more talented. They are they just learn consciously ⁓ not. A set of principles that most career development conversations they don't even bother cover. Now, Michaela Cole's career, it gives us these four of those principles in the clearest possible form. in today's office hours, we are going through every single one of them with a diagnostic question at the end of each stage. But I want you to actually go away and sit with and answer these for yourself. So let's open. The office. So here is where Mikada Cole's story starts. And it starts earlier than most people actually realize. Now, before drama school, before Channel 4, before any industry recognition at all, she was performing poetry at Open Mike Nights in Ealing at 18 years old. She was releasing music. She was building a body of creative work entirely on her own terms, with no platform, no agent, no industry door opened to her. She was not waiting to be discovered. She was creating proof. Now, when she actually got into Guild Hall, and we'll talk more about that in a moment, but She didn't arrive as a blank canvas, hoping that institution would make her into something else. She actually arrived with a body of work, a distinct voice, and a graduation project already forming in her head. That graduation project, it was chewing gum dreams. It was an autobiographical one woman play that she wrote herself. It ran at the Bush Theatre. It ran at the National Theatre. And it called the attention of Channel 4 executives, which is how Chewing Gum, the television series, actually happened. Now think about that. She built the proof. The proof opened the door. Not the other way around. This is the first principle and it is the one I see early career professionals get wrong ⁓ more consistently than almost else. Most people are waiting for the opportunity to prove themselves. they think when I get the role, I'll show what I can do. When I get the promotion, I'll demonstrate my capabilities. When someone gives me the platform, then I'll use But the people making hiring decisions are not looking for potential. They are looking for evidence. They want to be able to picture you in the role before they offer it to you. And the only way to give them that picture is to have it already created. Through the work you are doing right now, independent of your own current. Title. Now, what does this look like in practice? It looks different depending on your field. But in teaching and in education, it might be a project you led, a resource you created, a workshop you ran outside your contracted hours. In any professional field, it might be a piece of writing, a talk you gave, a community you built. A problem you decided to solve that wasn't technically your job to solve in the first place. The point is not for format. The point is that you are building visible, referable proof of your capability before the opportunity arrives to use it. Now I want you to ask yourself this. What are you building right now that demonstrates what you are capable of, independent of your current job title? If someone asks you to prove your capability tomorrow, before an interview, before an application, what would you point to? Now, if the answer is unclear, that is your first action. Not applying for more things, building more proof. Right, so you've got your answer to that first question. Hold on to it because what we are about to go into is stage two, ⁓ determines whether the proof you are building ever gets taken seriously ⁓ the first place. Now stage two is harder because it asks you to do something that goes against a lot of the social conditioning that ambitious women, particularly black women, and particularly women from working class backgrounds, have been taught from very early. It asks you to stop sanding down the edges that make you different and start building from them. When Mikada Cole arrived at Guildhall, of the most prestigious drama schools ⁓ the country, she was the first black woman to be admitted in five years. And I need you to hear that. She racist verbal attacks from fellow students. She was described by the head of the school as the elephant ⁓ in room. Now she didn't disappear into that. Instead, she wrote from it. Chewingong was rooted in the specific world she came from. The council estate in Tower Hamlet, the Ghanaian immigrant household, the Pentecostal faith she grew up in and later moved away from. At a time when the British television industry would have preferred something say more pleasing, more familiar. More universal. She wrote something that was unmistakably unapologetically hers. And the audiences who saw themselves in it, who had never seen themselves on screen before, respected it with exactly the kind of loyalty that cannot be manufactured. Here is the principle. The thing that makes you feel like you don't quite fit in the room, the thing you minimize in applications and interviews, the thing you gloss over or soften because you are worried it will make you look less professional or less serious. Is very often your sharpest differentiator. I see this constantly with early career professionals. They walk into interviews and they perform the most conventional, most platable version of themselves. They answer questions the way they think they are supposed to answer them and they present a version of their experience. that has been filed down to fit the job description exactly. And they wonder why they came across as interchangeable. You are not interchangeable, but if you present yourself as though you are, that is what people will see. The things that make your path nonlinear, your perspective specific, your experience distinct from the ten other candidates in the process, those are not liabilities. They are the things that will make a hiring panel remember. They are the things that will make someone say ⁓ you've left the room that candidate, they Brought something nobody else brought. Now, this does not mean leading every interview with your most difficult experiences. It means not apologizing for the fullness of what you bring. It means being willing to speak specifically about where you came from, what you've observed, what you understand about your field because of your particular point of view. Rather than giving the generic answer that could have come from anyone. So ask yourself, what do you keep minimizing about yourself in applications and also interviews? The thing you gloss over or leave out because you are worried it will work against you? And what if that thing is actually your strongest differentiator? Okay, so stage three is the one I think is going to hit the hardest for a lot of you because this isn't about getting the opportunity anymore. You've built the proof, you've shown up as yourself, and now something has landed in front of you. And the question is no longer how do I get in? The question is should I even take it? Now, when Netflix approached Michaela Cole about I May Destroy You, a show she had written that was deeply personal, that was inspired by her own experience of sexual assault. They offered her a million dollars. They also asked her to give up intellectual property ownership of her own work. Guess what? She said no. She walked away from a million dollars and the biggest streaming platform in the world. She took the show to BBC and HBO instead, on her terms with her owning what she had created. I may destroy you became one of the most critically Acclaimed television series of 2020. She won a primetime Emmy. She won a Bufter. She was named in Time's 100 Most Influential People. Not despite the decision, but because of it. Now, you are not negotiating with Netflix, but the principle applies regardless of scale. early career professionals are often told to say yes to everything. you take every opportunity. You can be picky later when you are more established. And there is some truth in that. Early on, you do need to build experience. You do need to take things that stretch you. You do need to be in the room before you can influence. What happens in the broom? But there is a version of saying yes to everything that is actually saying yes to the wrong things. And the wrong things, the roles that look good on paper, but ask you to become a smaller version of yourself, the opportunities that come with conditions that compromise the work you actually want to do. The positions that are technically a step forward, but are actually a step sideways. They cost more than they give. Because every role you take shapes who you become. Not just in skills, in identity, in reputation, in what you are known for. And once you are known for something, it takes real effort to be known for something different. The question to ask before you accept anything at any stage is not just can I do this? It is, does this role ask me to become a version of myself I want to be? Is this building towards something or just filling time until something better comes along? Both of those are valid situations to be in, but you should know which one it is, because the answer changes how you show up, how much you invest, and how and what you do next. So the next time you are considering a role, or if you are in one right now, ask yourself honestly, is this building towards the version of me I'm trying to become? Or am I here because I was tired ⁓ of looking? answer is wrong, but both answers tell you something important about what to do next. Now, the fourth principle is the one that separates the professionals who are good at their jobs from the professionals who are recognized as authorities in their field. the gap between those two things, it isn't Hallem. It is a voice. In 2018, Michaela Cole was invited to deliver the James McTarget Memorial Lecture. at the Edinburgh International Television Festival. She was the youngest woman ever to do it, the first black speaker in the festival's history. She could have used that platform to promote her work, to talk about what she was making, to position herself within the industry in the safest, most strategic way possible. Instead, she used it to ask the industry a hard question. She disclosed publicly that she had been drugged. And sexually assaulted during the production of chewing gum. She turned the most prestigious platform in British television into a conversation about how the industry treats young women. She said the uncomfortable thing in the most prominent room available to her, she said it clearly. That lecture became a book. The book articulated a philosophy. That philosophy which she called being a misfit, owning your differences, refusing to edit yourself to fit a room that wasn't built for you. That became the lens through which everything she made was understood. the principle here is Is not that you need to disclose something painful in a public forum. is not what I'm saying. The principle is this. Your authority in any field is built as much by how you articulate your thinking as by what you produce. People hire people whose thinking they trust. And trust is not built through output alone, through the work you hand in, the projects you complete, the boxes you tick. It is built through the way you speak about your field. The questions you ask in public, the perspective you bring to conversations that other people are having. For your audience, this looks like writing. It looks like the way you respond in team meetings. It looks like the questions you ask in interviews, not just the answers you give. It looks like whether you have a Substack, maybe a newsletter, a podcast, a LinkedIn presence, a body of thinking that someone could find before they meet you in person. And already know what you stand for. Because here is what I know from being in hiring processes. Before a candidate walks into the room, the panel often knows more about them than the CV shows. They are Googled. They are looked at on LinkedIn. They have read whatever is publicly available. And for candidates who already have a visible, coherent point of view. Who can be Googled and understood before the interview begins? Arrive with an advantage that no amount of interview preparation can replicate. Your voice is part of your employability, not a nice extra, part of it. So where are you currently visible as a thinker in your field? If someone searched your name today, what would they find? And does what they find represent the version of you that you want to be known as? Right. So we have just broken down four stages of one of the most intentional career trajetaries of the last decade. And I don't want you to walk away from this feeling inspired and then do nothing with it. So here is exactly what I want you to do this week. Go back to those four diagnostic questions and identify Which one landed hardest? The one which is slightly uncomfortable because it points at something you already know you need to work on. That is your stage. That is where you are in the journey right now. And your one action this week is to move one step in that stage. If it's stage one, identify one thing you can start building as proof this week. If it's stage two, write down the thing you keep minimizing and practice saying it plainly. If it's stage three, make the honest assessment about the role or opportunity in front of you. If it's stage four, Write one piece of thinking in public this week. A LinkedIn post, a substack note, a comment in a professional community. That really represents your actual viewpoint.