Episode Transcript

Elvi Caperonis 00:00
You need confidence. No matter how hard you try, you need confidence to approach this job market and you need to tell yourself out loud that your value does not depend on having a role or a title.

Chris Villanueva 00:16
Welcome to the Let’s Eat, Grandma Career Warrior Podcast and welcome to the Let’s Eat, Grandma Career Warrior Podcast where our goal is not only to help you land your dream job, but to help you live your best life. Today we’re talking all about rejections, ghosting, and how to build confidence here in this time. I’m so excited because I know that the job search is not easy. A lot of you are being faced with rejections and the ghosting and they’re really tough things that come with the job search, and I want you to use this episode as encouragement to move forward and really to forge that path as you get that job you’re so excited about. Maybe you want to stay in your current position and maybe you want to move on up with a promotion and maybe you’re meeting rejections that way. Either way, this episode is going to serve you and be so helpful for you today.

Elvi Caperonis 02:09
Hi, Chris. Thank you so much for having me.

Chris Villanueva 02:11
Awesome. I am so excited to have you. I think this is a long conversation that I’ve been waiting to have with you for a while now, so I think this is going to be great. I felt like the best question I could ask you just to open things up is that you yourself, you faced rejection yourself. We talked about this before we even met over a hundred rejections when you first came to the US before landing roles at Hartford and Amazon. Could you just take us back to that time and what kept you going?

Elvi Caperonis 02:42
Great question, Chris. Being rejected is not something that we are used to. It’s hard. I’m not going to say that it’s not hard, but I will say is that sometimes companies reject you not because of you, and I’m going to rephrase that back. Sometimes companies reject you not because of you. It could be that they miss something in between the hiring process that they didn’t have enough information to make a thoughtful decision and sometimes they even reject the best and top candidates because they cannot afford just paying their salary range. So I highly recommend people not to take rejection personally. So if I were to give an advice to my younger self is learn from every rejection, take them as an opportunity to improve yourself, but at the same time I will take my anger self apply to jobs strategically

Elvi Caperonis 03:38
Because if you send 300 job applications with the same resume and you keep getting rejected on and on and you don’t change the direction of your strategy, you are going to continuously be facing more and more rejection. So I recommend people take every rejection as an opportunity to improve the best version of yourself and don’t take it personal, it’s just they’re not saying no to you in certain ways. They’re probably saying keep going for your next opportunity and your next opportunity could be better than the one that you just believe you miss. Maybe that was not meant to be, but by any means, never take it personal.

Chris Villanueva 04:16
Yeah, there’s that feeling that I get whenever I’ve been rejected and it’s just like that feeling of your heart drop, especially if you care about something, say you’re really applying to something you really care about, it’s like that warm feeling at the bottom of my stomach. It just kind of that dropping feeling and might feel my chest start to get tight. I might start to feel emotionally upset about what happened, but the more you realize it’s not about you and the more you can remove your ego, I think the better and just keep moving on, keep realizing that this isn’t you. Just keep moving forward. Love that. And I want to talk about the whole 300 jobs thing, and I’ve heard that so many times people have applied over and over and not getting the responses they want, but talk about ghosting for a second. I think ghosting is almost worse than rejection because we’re not getting any sort of feedback. We don’t know whether our resume or our applications are even getting through. It’s really frustrating for a lot of job seekers. So why do you think ghosting happens so much nowadays and how can job seekers move past the ghosting?

Elvi Caperonis 05:20
There are a few reasons why recruiters are ghosting candidates. In some cases it’s because they just have a pile of applications and they don’t have time to get back to every single candidate, but I believe that at least they should be sending a rejection email, an automated rejection email that they just click a button and just get sent out because people need closure. Even when you’re facing rejection, rejection, we can accept the reject the fact that we were not selected, but the fact that you are in the middle of waiting for a response to move forward, it’s just disheartening. Chris, I believe ghosting is a problem in the hiring process that companies must address because it’s actually hurting the reputation When you get ghosted by a company that you could potentially be a customer of that company that actually doesn’t give you the feeling that you want to become a customer of a company and companies are leaving that reputation on and on

Elvi Caperonis 06:20
With thousands of thousands of candidates. It’s a bad marketing. I believe there is something that needs to be fixed in the hiring process because ghosting is just unacceptable. Candidates deserve at least a rejection email because they spent some time to put in an application. They probably went out of their way to prepare for a job interview and then they are here. They are waiting for weeks and not getting a response. It comes of makes the candidate lose confidence. That is so needed to keep going in the job search process, but I do recommend that my mentees to follow a plan three weeks. If you didn’t hear anything from a company within three weeks move on, I recommend you to move on even before, but if you want to give some time, three weeks is kind of a good time to hear. After a job interview, within three weeks, they already have made a decision.

Chris Villanueva 07:15
Okay.

Elvi Caperonis 07:16
I highly recommend people to move on.

Chris Villanueva 07:18
Yeah. Sorry. What is the follow-up process like? Am I reaching out during those three weeks? Am I following up? What does that look like?

Elvi Caperonis 07:25
Yes, of course. In the first three weeks, I recommend you to follow within the first 24 hours of the interview, we want to send a thank you note, a very thoughtful thank you note letting them that you are so grateful for attending that job interview. Perhaps take that opportunity to reposition yourself as the best candidate for the job. Maybe sharing something valuable that the hiring manager or the recruiter is going to say, oh wow, that person even thought about that. Try to think outside of the box on that thank you note, you need to separate yourself from the rest.

Chris Villanueva 07:59
Yes!

Elvi Caperonis 08:00
On the second week, if you haven’t heard from them after that thank you note in the first week. On the second week, you can send a kind follow up. You can send another kind follow up after the third week. If you haven’t heard anything from them, I recommend you to move on because they already made a decision. Companies typically take one week, maximum two weeks to make a decision. In some cases, they can take longer than that, but that also means that you were not the top candidate because the top candidate is going to be contacted within the first two weeks maximum three weeks. After that. It could be option B, C or D, and it gives a bad feeling for you to join a company that actually didn’t consider you as the first option.

Chris Villanueva 08:47
I love that advice. I think just people mentally it’s just a mental game because ghosting, there’s uncertainty. There’s already so much uncertainty that we’re dealing with as job seekers. I wanted to kind of take a really quick almost tangential thing, but I know a lot of our clients and our potential clients are looking to get into project management and technical project management. Do you have any advice for those folks who are either looking to either get into it or move on? I mean, you’ve just built this amazing career and you’ve had this background even before reinvent yourself, so just would love to hear a bit about that.

Elvi Caperonis 09:22
For those people who are thinking to pivot into the program management career or the technical program management career, I highly recommend them to analyze their strength. Sometimes we do have transferable skills that we haven’t even thought about, and the way you do analyze your strength is that what do you have passion for? Do you have passion for communicating? Do you have passion for connecting the dots between technical and functional? Do you have passion for leading teams?

Elvi Caperonis 09:54
If you have passion for executing and delivering technological projects, then probably a TPM career will be a good move for you, but if you don’t have passion for these things is not recommended that you go into a career that you don’t have passion for. So I typically recommend all my ment techs. You need to think if this is actually going to make you excited about going to work every day because making a career move is a very important decision and we need to think of that very thoughtfully before making the move.

Chris Villanueva 10:29
If I’m a project manager who got rejected 300 times, you talked about changing up your strategy a bit. Is it the resume? Is it maybe how I’m applying? What do you think? If I’ve just been rejected so many times.

Chris Villanueva 11:27
Yes, it’s like a marketing course, but for the individual, maybe I’ll go in university and I’ll start pitching that to my own school here. But I love that I listened to some of your content and I’ve heard you talk about personal branding. I think that’s a really cool thing that we could hit home on this podcast, but I think personal branding is so hard for a lot of people. I think it’s something that people, maybe they just glaze over the thought of personal branding or what does that even mean? But you’ve grown remarkably on LinkedIn, so I see from zero to 160,000 followers on LinkedIn in just four years. So just tell us how personal branding, what kind of role it can play for mid to senior level professionals and any tips you have there would be really helpful.

Elvi Caperonis 12:21
Building your personal brand could be a game changer in our careers. I highly, highly recommend people to think of that because the market is very unstable and your personal brand is basically you. The reputation that you have in the network, how you are known for what we are known for. Do people know that you are very good in leadership? Do people know that you’re very good in program management? If you don’t share that with the world, that expertise, people will know that you are good at that. So your personal brand is basically being known on the social media or the value that you can deliver to others.

Chris Villanueva 13:01
Yeah.

Elvi Caperonis 13:02
If I were to give advice to somebody who’s starting to build, thinking about building their personal brand or just starting is think about what are the problems that you can solve for other people that other people will be coming to you for advice? What are the things that you can help others on and start sharing your advice with the world. Start sharing tips or sharing strategies, start telling people that they can do this, and you’ll realize sooner than later that you’re going to start building that whole leadership on that given topic that you are an expert on that you may think that there are other people doing similar things, but nobody’s you. Nobody’s going to do it like you.

Chris Villanueva 13:43
Because sometimes when we’re on LinkedIn, we make it too much about ourselves. We’re thinking like, oh, I’m going to look stupid if I post this, or what do I even say? But I like your mentality and philosophy. What advice would I give somebody else? What value do I have to share with the world? And that’s all it is.

Chris Villanueva 14:03
Yes.

Elvi Caperonis 14:04
If you don’t share value, people don’t connect with you.

Chris Villanueva 14:06
Yeah, I mean we’re a little bit different. I think because we’re entrepreneurs, we’re building something that might be more company related, but how many times would you recommend people maybe post or stay active on LinkedIn if they are looking to just further their personal careers?

Elvi Caperonis 14:23
If I were to get started, I do at, I will post three times a week, three times a week. I will pick for instance, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Friday. That’s as an example. If you decide that these are the three days that you can post, then three pieces of content for that week and post that consistently every week at the same time, that’s what we call consistency, because the LinkedIn algorithm will get to know that you post this kind of content on a regular basis and it’ll continue to show to people who express interest in those topics. And I also recommend that you identify at least 10 other people, other creators that you want to engage with their content on a regular basis, maybe the same three days, but you comment on at least 10 other people’s posts because that’s going to help you build trust. That’s going to help you build community

Elvi Caperonis 15:19
That’s going to help you to share your expertise, share value within every single comment, share value within every single post share value. And I cannot stress that enough. It’s not about you, it’s about the value you can deliver to others.

Chris Villanueva 15:32
Yes, again, that makes it so much easier to post when we realize it’s not about us. God, I love that. And this is coming from LV everyone, so you should really take this advice seriously. She’s built this amazing brand. So thank you for that. And I’ll pivoting on over to the interview. You have some good advice to share there. I think about interviews, maybe salary negotiation and things like that. But when it comes to the interview, what are some top pieces of advice that you typically gravitate towards when it comes to interviews?

Elvi Caperonis 16:07
My five favorite tips for anyone looking to go into a job interview. If you have a job interview coming up, pay attention.

Elvi Caperonis 16:15
I’m going to share these amazing golden tips with all of you. So if you are preparing for an interview or are planning to prepare for an interview, the first thing that I recommend you to do is to build the confidence. And the confidence is that you need to tell yourself that you can do the job. And for that, I recommend you to go through the job description and analyze what they are looking for and make sure you can do the job. You need to tell the story to yourself first. You need to convince yourself that you are the candidate that they’re looking for. Once you have done that exercise to go, even if you don’t meet all the criteria, you still could be the top candidate for that company because they’re looking into other factors. They’re looking for company fit, they’re looking for somebody who is a good communicator. They’re looking probably for somebody who is just a good team player and can actually be flexible and adaptable. So make sure you are what they’re looking for. That’s my number one. The second piece of advice is do a lot of research about the company, and I cannot stress that enough. Yeah, company research. 90% of candidates according to a research, go to an interview without researching the company,

Elvi Caperonis 17:26
Which is a mistake in my opinion because you lose a lot of advantage once you can use that to your advantage. If you don’t do that, you lose a lot of momentum that you could be for yourself in the interview because once you research the company, you can come up with awful questions during the interview and once you share that you are enthusiastic about the company because you did the research that actually gives you a competitive advantage.

Chris Villanueva 17:53
Agreed.

Elvi Caperonis 17:54
My number three piece of advice is prepare for the interview. My favorite way to prepare for interviews is using the STAR method. Write down your projects using the STAR method. I teach that to my candidates, the star method. Stand for tell the situation, the task, the action that you took to solve that given problem and the results of that given situation. And there is more to that, but I’m just summarizing.

Chris Villanueva 18:23
For the star method though, how if I’m preparing for the interview, you’re saying these are potential things that they might ask or stories that I could bring into the interview.

Elvi Caperonis 18:35
Any interview, you’re going to be asked behavioral questions right now. This is a must have. You need to be prepared to answer behavioral questions, and the best way to answer them is using the star method.

Elvi Caperonis 18:45
They may ask you things like, what is your biggest weakness? What is your biggest strength? But they also want to predict future behavior based on what you have done in the past. Anytime they say, tell me about a time where you had to do A, B, and C. That actually is telling you that they want you to tell them a story, a story that you face in the workplace, and the best way to do that is using the start method.

Chris Villanueva 19:02
Okay, great. What’s tip number four?

Elvi Caperonis 19:14
I highly recommend people to prepare using the start method. So the fourth piece of advice for those preparing for an interview is half to full questions. You want to ask to full questions during the job interview. It’s a conversation, and the more they see that you express interest in the company, the role and their work environment, they’re going to see that you potential, potential fit for the job. So I cannot stress enough the importance of having thoughtful questions.

Chris Villanueva 19:43
So at the end of the interview, I think a lot of people are missing out on the opportunity to ask and to express interest, and I think that’s where your other tip of doing research comes into play because how can you ask a good question if you haven’t done any research about the company or maybe even the person interviewing you, do you have any tips on what kinds of questions to ask that could be thought provoking or valuable?

Elvi Caperonis 20:07
We all love to talk about ourselves, Chris, so that person that is interviewing you will love for you to ask one question about themselves as well because we all love to talking about us. So I recommend you to ask at least one question, are you enjoying your current role? What prompted you to select this company to be the place that you are working for? What are the challenges that you see that somebody will face in this role or in your team? And how can I better be prepared if I get this opportunity? These are very good questions that each should prepare for.

Chris Villanueva 20:42
Love those questions, love those questions. It’s like, show me how to succeed in role that I feel confident you’re going to hire me for.

Elvi Caperonis 20:50
Yes. And that actually puts you in a great position if you build good rapport with that interviewer.

Chris Villanueva 20:56
Yeah, I love that. Cool. I love it. What’s tip number five?

Elvi Caperonis 20:59
Tip number five is never forget to prepare a thoughtful thank you. No, and I love to prepare that in advance. If you can add some insights from the interview and make sure you send that within the next 24 hours right after the interview, never forget sending that thank you note. It’s very important that can separate you from the rest.

Chris Villanueva 21:21
Agreed, agreed. Now, I know a lot of job seekers are sending their resumes, talk about rejection. This is, I think, the way most people are getting rejected. It’s like they’re sending their resume through the maybe Indeed or LinkedIn easy apply or just some sort of applicant tracking system in which they’re getting filtered out. I typically advocate that that isn’t the best approach if that’s the only way that they are applying. I usually say that people should have a mixture of networking efforts with applying online, but what does networking efforts, what do those efforts look like to you and how do you recommend people use that sort of strategy in their job search?

Elvi Caperonis 22:08
The networking strategy is very important. I highly recommend people to look for people who have been hired in the last 30 days. Maybe you can research on LinkedIn about the company when you are doing research about the company, find people who work in the company, especially those who were hired within the last 90 days, because those will tell you a lot about the hiring process if you connect with them. Once you find those people, connect with them personally. So sending a personalized invitation, tell them something valuable that you can share with them so they’re prone to connect with you. It goes back to my initial strategy of sharing value. You need to share value because people are more prone to engage with you if you are sharing value, sharing something interesting even about themselves that you find online and you would love to chat more because you are interested in working in the same company because they just got hired.

Chris Villanueva 23:50
And I know for a lot of us who don’t have the paid version of LinkedIn that we do get limited on those personalized invitations. I agree. Definitely send those and use them to your advantage. That might be, I dunno, that was maybe a money play by LinkedIn a while ago when they started doing that, but that could be a good reason to have the paid version of LinkedIn. And I’ve had it off and on a few times. It’s so valuable. It’s one of the most valuable features. I think another way around that I might say is if you engage somebody in the comment section, then there might be some context there and say, Hey, I’m going to send you an invite, by the way, so they see it coming if you’ve run out of those invites.

Elvi Caperonis 24:33
That’s a very good strategy.

Chris Villanueva 24:34
Yeah,

Elvi Caperonis 24:36
Commenting on their posts is very, very a tough way to connect with people.

Chris Villanueva 24:40
Yeah, do it people, you’re doing something very valuable for your job search if you’re connecting with those people. I love that tip lv, that’s awesome. Okay,

Elvi Caperonis 24:51
Thank you.

Chris Villanueva 24:52
Going to ask about reinvent yourself in just a second, but if you can give one piece of advice to a job seeker who feels stuck right now, what would that piece of advice be?

Elvi Caperonis 25:03
It’s probably similar to what I just said before. You need to build your confidence. You need confidence. No matter how hard you try, you need confidence to approach this job market, and you need to tell yourself loud that your value does not depend on having a role or a title. Building your confidence around yourself, around your personal values, around who you are is very important as you are revamping yourself in the job search process. So building confidence is a must have. And the second thing is leverage the power of LinkedIn. LinkedIn is an amazing platform and I cannot stress that enough. I highly recommend give seekers to write if they want to write a piece of content and start writing content to start getting noticed by recruiter to have a LinkedIn profile that is polished. Make sure they fill in the blanks in the LinkedIn profile because recruiters are looking for candidates continuously. But if they don’t see that you have the skills listed in your profile or your title or those areas that are very important, they may not reach out to you. And also, I recommend to have a very professional picture of yourself in your LinkedIn profile file. I know it is challenging, but building your confidence and building your personal brand around yourself, around your value is a must have in this tough job market that we are seeing.

Chris Villanueva 26:28
Elvi Caperonis, everybody. Thank you so much, Elvi for joining us on the Career Warrior Podcast. So I’m going to leave your LinkedIn profile in the description of this podcast for listeners to follow you. I think everyone should follow you who’s listening right here, especially our project managers here. But everyone should follow you here. But let’s talk about just the Reinvent Yourself website, who should get in touch with you and what can I find if I hop on that website?

Elvi Caperonis 26:56
Thank you so much for that. If you go into my website, you probably see that I’m giving away my resume, my resume template that I used to learn a job at Harvard University in Amazon. So Reinvent Yourself is my passion company because I love helping people. I have invented myself many, many, many times. So the best way to connect with me and learn more about Reinvent Yourself is follow me on LinkedIn. I also have an option to apply for my program directly on my LinkedIn profile and connect with me hosting Discovery calls with people who are interested in learning more about my company and my projects, and I love helping people. My dates are brighter when I hear that somebody tells me I landed a job offer.

Chris Villanueva 27:40
Nice. Love it. Cool. Thank you so much for joining us on the podcast and just can’t thank you enough for the words of encouragement and practical advice that can be helpful for job seekers today.

Elvi Caperonis 27:53
Chris, it was a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.

Chris Villanueva 27:56
Awesome. All right, career warriors. This wraps up today’s episode of the Career Warrior Podcast. Today we talked about overcoming rejections, ghosting, and building our confidence. I hope that this episode was useful for you. You know what I’m going to say. I’m going to say go to LinkedIn right now and copy and paste this episode. Tag both Elvi and myself and let us know what you found to be valuable for you in your job search. I like that because not only you kind of emphasize the learning aspect, you kind of really remind yourself and memorize what it is in this podcast that impacted you, but you also help your own network who might be going through the same thing you are today. So post this episode and make sure to hop on the description, show notes to Access Elvi’s LinkedIn profile, as well as her website.