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Unlocking Potential: How to Recognize and Leverage Your Skills With Anne Irene Ryan · Expertise Made Real

• 0:00
  What if the most valuable thing you know, professionally is something you've never once.
• 0:06
  Thought to call a skill?
• 0:08
  Former hiring manager turned career coach Ann.
• 0:11
  Irene Ryan talks on this episode about the soft skills that quietly make up 85% of your career success, why you're the worst person to spot your own skills.
• 0:23
  And the one question she keeps asking clients until the real expertise that they have finally surfaces.
• 0:34
  You're listening to expertise made real.
• 0:37
  I'm Kristen N.
• 0:38
  Spencer, and this is where your experience finally gets called what it is expertise.
• 0:45
  I am joined today by the amazing Ann Irene Ryan.
• 0:51
  Thank you, Ann, for being here.
• 0:52
  So let me tell you who Ann is.
• 0:54
  She is a former hiring manager and current speaker and career coach who has the energy of that super fun aunt who always takes you out for ice cream, which I love.
• 1:04
  I have ants like that.
• 1:05
  Ann spent 20 years in tech before starting her own business to guide people who feel stuck find the confidence to go for the job they really want, not the one they think they can get.
• 1:17
  Are you ready to stop hiding your expertise?
• 1:19
  You will find ann@annireneryan.com and we'll talk more about that later.
• 1:24
  But welcome, Ann.
• 1:25
  How are you doing?
• 1:26
  I'm amazing, Kristin.
• 1:27
  Thank you so much for inviting me.
• 1:29
  I'm very excited to be here.
• 1:31
  Well, you know, we're, this is a fast paced show, so we're just gonna dive in.
• 1:36
  The thing that we love talking about is making expertise real.
• 1:40
  And it's, you know, the, the aspect that you have that you're already doing on autopilot.
• 1:46
  And then we want to turn it into something that's visible and teachable, which is what we talk about on the podcast.
• 1:53
  So let's start there.
• 1:54
  What is your number one piece of advice for a client on day one of working with you?
• 2:00
  My number one piece of advice for a client on day one is to think about their marketing documents, like their Resume and their LinkedIn.
• 2:10
  We're writing them like they already have the job they want.
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  It's not a summary of all of their past experiences.
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  It's a marketing document that's going to leverage their past experience to, to get them where they want to go.
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  So it's a forward looking document, not a historical looking one.
• 2:27
  Oh, I love that.
• 2:29
  That's really interesting.
• 2:31
  Yeah.
• 2:31
  I think a lot of folks write their resume like they have the job that they have now.
• 2:36
  Right.
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  But that's not going to get them where they want to go because they have to see themselves there.
• 2:41
  And then if they see themselves there, others will as well.
• 2:45
  So that's that's one of the main things.
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  And I don't think a lot of people, when they decide it's time to get a new job or they're forced to get a new job, they don't spend enough time up front figuring out where they want to go
• 2:56
  in that marketing piece.
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  And if you don't spend enough time doing that, then your job search is actually going to be harder in the long run.
• 3:03
  So it's worth it to spend a little bit of time to figure that out.
• 3:06
  So like, how do you draw that out of them?
• 3:09
  Because they're probably already super nervous by the time you talk to them, right?
• 3:12
  They're like, oh great, I have to apply for a job.
• 3:14
  Yippee.
• 3:15
  So how do you kind of like help them reframe what the whole situation needs to look like as you're getting the information you need?
• 3:23
  Well, usually we just talk about that.
• 3:25
  So usually the initial call is talking about what kind of job you really, really want, right?
• 3:30
  Not the one you think you can get, the one you actually really want.
• 3:33
  And then we start talking about why they want that job and what they're excited about, what they want their day to look like.
• 3:38
  If they have hopefully they've had some job descriptions picked out already that they really like or they have some companies they're really interested in and we kind of start there and then we start talking about like through their
• 3:51
  experiences.
• 3:52
  And then that helps build the marketing piece which is the Resume and the LinkedIn.
• 3:56
  And I usually do resume first because so much of that translates to LinkedIn.
• 4:00
  And then we do LinkedIn which is kind of an extension of a resume, but in the first person and like a lot more fun.
• 4:08
  So not like, yes.
• 4:10
  So so basically you're rewriting what's on the resume so they sound like a human.
• 4:14
  Exactly, I love that.
• 4:17
  So how do you, like, how do you help them go from like this is the job I have, this is the experience that I have to realizing like what their expertise is for the future thing they want.
• 4:29
  Because there, there seems to be a pretty big chasm there, I feel like.
• 4:33
  So I think, I personally think, and I've seen this a lot over the 10 years that I've been doing resume workshops in the almost six years I've been in business career coach, a lot of people already are the
• 4:45
  expert, but they just don't know it.
• 4:47
  And so just to give you some statistics, so like 85% of your career success is your soft skills and that's from a hundred year old study and Those soft skills are, as like a friend of mine likes to
• 4:58
  say, people skills or human skills.
• 4:59
  Right.
• 5:00
  Would be communication, negotiation, grit, project management.
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  Like, all of those skills that are not, like, deep technical.
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  So 85% are those skills.
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  So that's one thing to keep in mind.
• 5:11
  So a lot of things translate that you would not necessarily think of.
• 5:16
  And then I think we also.
• 5:18
  A lot of times we're the hardest on ourselves.
• 5:21
  Right.
• 5:21
  So we remember our mistakes more than we remember our successes.
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  And so part of me working with the clients is we have at least like 2 to 4.
• 5:30
  It's usually 3 to 4 Zoom calls where I just talk to my client about their experiences.
• 5:36
  Right.
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  And we space them a little bit apart because, you know, when you're magically, like, walking around or you're doing dishes or do, you know, like, you're just, like, kind of sitting there thinking stuff.
• 5:46
  You.
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  You remember things?
• 5:47
  Yes.
• 5:48
  Stuff comes in your mind.
• 5:49
  Yeah.
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  So I think that's what happens.
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  And as.
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  As I start to talk to people about their experiences and I just ask them questions.
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  And my favorite question, by the way, is what else?
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  What else?
• 6:00
  I just keep pushing, which is like.
• 6:01
  Yeah, nothing else.
• 6:03
  It's like the five whys.
• 6:04
  Right.
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  You have to ask five why five times.
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  Which I was talking about in another episode with Jeff Matlow, but he was like, you just have to keep asking because they.
• 6:13
  They like you.
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  You have to push past whatever your automatic answer is.
• 6:18
  Yeah, yeah.
• 6:19
  And so as we start to talk, people remember things, or I'll ask them to get metrics, or I'll ask about impactful projects.
• 6:26
  And that's how we start to kind of craft the narrative and what we're gonna put on those marketing documents.
• 6:33
  And then it also sets you up for the interview later.
• 6:35
  Right.
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  Because then you remember things that you can talk about or answers to common interview questions along the way.
• 6:40
  That's true.
• 6:41
  And you already talked about it with Ann, so you don't have to be nervous to talk about it for the first time.
• 6:46
  True.
• 6:50
  That's amazing.
• 6:51
  So tell me, I'm curious, because you had a huge career shift where you went from being in tech to realizing, like, I want to help people live in their best career space.
• 7:05
  How did that happen?
• 7:07
  So that happened by accident.
• 7:09
  Thanks for asking me the question.
• 7:10
  So in my previous tech life, I was a hiring manager for about three years.
• 7:15
  And so I've read thousands of resumes and interviewed hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people, probably in the thousands, but don't have a hard number on that.
• 7:24
  And I realized that most of the resumes I was reading were really bad and we were desperate to hire.
• 7:31
  We really wanted to find people.
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  But I didn't have a thousand hours to call up everybody with a bad resume to see if they might be like one of the two to three candidates.
• 7:40
  I was really looking for the magic bean.
• 7:42
  Right?
• 7:42
  Like, yeah.
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  Right.
• 7:44
  Yeah.
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  And the hiring manager was my side gig.
• 7:47
  Right.
• 7:47
  I was a team lead 100 hiring manager was my side gig.
• 7:50
  So I didn't have a lot of time.
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  So I decided I woke up one day and I said, I've never spoken in anything, but I'm going to go speak at a conference.
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  That'll be fun.
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  So I just decided I was going to do it.
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  And I got rejected the first year, but revamped the proposal and then got accepted the next year.
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  And that kind of started things.
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  It just kind of snowballed.
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  The talk went really well.
• 8:12
  I just kept giving the talk at conferences and then I started giving it at colleges.
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  And I really, really liked it.
• 8:18
  I started to get phone calls from people, like friends of friends asking me for help with their resume.
• 8:24
  And I would give them like half an hour on the phone.
• 8:27
  But that was really all I could do because I have a full time job.
• 8:29
  Yeah.
• 8:30
  And then, you know, like Covid hit and I just decided I was going to give it a try because I really, really enjoyed it.
• 8:36
  And here we are almost six years later.
• 8:39
  Amazing.
• 8:39
  I love that.
• 8:41
  So let's say that someone is listening to this right now and they're like, okay, I really understand that I need Ann in my life.
• 8:50
  Okay.
• 8:52
  How do they get a hold of you?
• 8:53
  Like, what's the best way to reach out to you?
• 8:56
  Oh, well, you can find me on LinkedIn.
• 8:58
  It's just, just search for an Irene Ryan.
• 9:00
  You can find me on my website.
• 9:02
  You can book a discovery call there.
• 9:03
  That's an Irene Ryan dot com.
• 9:05
  Or you could always email me @anne anirene ryan.com.
• 9:09
  And by the way, it's an Irene Ryan because I needed to use my middle name to differentiate myself.
• 9:13
  So that's why it's so long.
• 9:15
  I understand that's why I'm Kristen and Spencer.
• 9:17
  But now they're.
• 9:19
  Because Kristen Spencer was a very, and is a very famous wedding photographer.
• 9:24
  And so if he's an Ann Ryan florist.
• 9:27
  Right.
• 9:27
  So like we're like, okay, we gotta do something about these name doppelgangers.
• 9:31
  But now there is a very successful doctor named Kristen Ann Spencer and there's also a very successful lawyer named Kristen Ann Spencer, and I'm like, what can you do?
• 9:40
  Sounds like all the kristens are an excellent company.
• 9:43
  It's.
• 9:44
  I mean, they're.
• 9:45
  They're way more sciencey than I am, but.
• 9:49
  All right.
• 9:49
  Well, thank you for being on the show.
• 9:51
  Thanks, everyone for listening.
• 9:53
  If you want more of an she's going to be on two other episodes and I can't wait to ask her these other questions because like everyone who's been on so far, she is an expert in expertise.
• 10:07
  Thanks, Kristen.
• 10:08
  Thank you.
• 10:10
  And now if you liked the episode, I'm going to make an ask because I wouldn't be a sales expert if I didn't.
• 10:16
  Would you please leave a rating and review and hit subscribe.
• 10:21
  In exchange, I'm going to give you.
• 10:23
  My find your wonder work system.
• 10:26
  It's five prompts, five minutes and names.
• 10:29
  The thing that you're already excellent at but don't know to call a skill set.
• 10:33
  This is basically a what do you do on autopilot Except I've created it as a tool.
• 10:38
  So leave your review and then go claim your reward at bit ly expertisemr.
• 10:47
  That's bitly expertisemr.
• 10:53
  And I hope to hear you or my guest, I guess, in the next episode.
• 10:58
  Thanks.