There’s often a ‘lack of entitlement’ among young women when it comes to cold messaging for networking, says entrepreneur Sarah Stockdale. But with humility and curiosity, it’s possible to reach out to anyone.Jacob Wackerhausen/Getty Images
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Ask Women and Work
Question: I’m a recent graduate looking for that amazing job that will propel me forward in my field. But I’m feeling a bit “stuck” in my job search. How can I get to where I want to go?
We asked Sarah Stockdale, founder and CEO of Growclass, to tackle this one:
One of the great advantages of being a young person is that people who are later in their careers want to help and connect with you. We want that energy, and we want to learn from you, too. So, I think a big part of your early career is to build a warm, professional community with a lot of great relationships. That is where your most interesting opportunities are going to come from.
I think that when we exit school, a lot of the time the assumption is that we’ve learned what we need to learn and now we have to go prove that we’re great. But when you graduate from university, you often have almost no usable professional skills. A sense of humility and curiosity is very useful in any young professional. If you can leave school knowing that academically, you’re still fresh, and you have this huge, incredible opportunity to learn and grow and meet people, that curiosity will make you someone that people want to connect with.
Since my early 20s, I’ve been very focused on making my professional heroes my friends. For example, I saw leadership author Drew Dudley speak at TEDx Toronto and I reached out and said, ‘I loved your talk. I have three questions for you, and I’m happy to ask them over e-mail.’
I think when people are trying to network, they often ask, ‘Can we go for coffee?’ I’m a business owner and a mom of a toddler; I can’t go for coffee with strangers unless I know what’s going to happen. So, it’s about being very kind and empathetic and putting yourself into the shoes of the person you reach out to. Ask yourself, what is the work that I’m asking them to do? What can I take off their plate and make easier for them, so they will more likely say ‘yes’ to connecting with me?
There is often a lack of entitlement with young women. I get cold messages from men in their 20s all the time! I want to get cold messages from women and non-binary folks. I want to get cold messages from under-represented people. Those are the people that I want to spend my time helping, and those are the people who often don’t feel a sense of entitlement to reach out.
Be more entitled. Be ‘Kevin.’ Reach out like you’re ‘Kevin’ and you’re on the same lacrosse team as I am. It’s hard to do that in your 20s unless you grew up with a lot of privilege, and most of us haven’t. But when you couple humility and curiosity with an entitlement that says, ‘I can reach out to anyone, I just have to figure out how to add value for them,’ that combination is dangerous, in a really good way.
Submit your own questions to Ask Women and Work by e-mailing us at GWC@globeandmail.com.
This week’s must-read stories on women and work
Building a personal brand, even if your employer doesn’t want you to
Before she became the head of marketing at tech startup Fellow.app, Manuela Bárcenas felt that she had “nothing to lose” by posting her thoughts and insights on LinkedIn.
Today, Ms. Bárcenas has more than 14,000 LinkedIn followers. Her posts about leadership, career and workplace culture have led to opportunities that she says she never imagined, such as emceeing major tech conferences like SAAS North and INNOVATEwest.
“People see my posts, and I’m top of mind for them when an opportunity comes up,” Ms. Bárcenas says. She adds that her employer is supportive of her promoting her personal brand alongside posts about what’s happening at her company; as an AI meeting management platform, Fellow.app’s services align well with her content.
If you are able to balance the requirements of a corporate job with what you want to communicate through your personal brand, “you can become an ambassador for your workplace, rather than those two things crashing [together],” Ms. Bárcenas says.
Learn about the pros and cons of building a personal brand alongside your corporate identity.
Redefining success: Millennial entrepreneurs and work-life balance
“Growing up, I was told that if I went to school and climbed the corporate ladder, I would be viewed as successful. I believed that advice and followed the path of ‘the norm,’” says certified coach, facilitator and speaker Kadine Cooper.
“As I coach more and more millennials, it appears that mentally is no longer the case. Gone are the days when success was defined by staying at one job for decades and steadily climbing the corporate ladder. For previous generations, a long tenure at a single company was a hallmark of stability and achievement. These days, many millennials are challenging this traditional notion of success. This generation is increasingly turning away from conventional career paths and embracing entrepreneurship, leveraging their distinct skills, values and perspectives to forge their own paths in the career world.
“According to a recent study by the bank BNP Paribas, millennials are starting businesses at nearly twice the rate of baby boomers.”
Read Ms. Cooper’s tips for millennials contemplating entrepreneurship.
Gail Vaz-Oxlade on how her first job taught her tenacity: ‘Once I passed that spot, I could smell the money’
“I was 18 and a fresh immigrant to Toronto from Jamaica. I’d never worked before, never even had a sense of what kind of job I might do if I had to work. My family’s financial circumstances were markedly different here. If I wanted money, I’d have to find a way to earn it myself,” says finance guru and Til Debt Do Us Part host Gail Vaz-Oxlade.
“I had an uncle here, a real hustler who’d spent his early life piecing together an income for his family while he completed university. He had a job as a telephone surveyor and said, ‘You can come work here.’ I didn’t think at all about whether it was a good job – just that it was a job – and I wanted it because I wanted money.
“I’d show up every day and be handed the political survey questionnaire of the day with a long, long list of telephone numbers to call. I had that, a very small space and a phone.”
Read why Ms. Vaz-Oxlade says this summer job was the genesis of her “thick skin.”
In case you missed it
Why some companies are actively recruiting an ‘untapped market’ of neurodiverse workers
Having been diagnosed with attention deficit disorder (ADD) in childhood, Lauren Martin grew up knowing that her neurodiversity made her different, and it was especially difficult once she began her working life. (Characteristics of ADD, also known as inattentive attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, can include being easily distracted, having difficulty following directions or focusing on a task.)
The Winnipeg resident says that for years she faced challenges in the workplace, particularly when navigating the nuances of communication with co-workers and bosses.
“I remember getting into trouble for e-mails all the time,” Ms. Martin says of early jobs. She says she might interpret a single e-mail five different ways and may need to ask several times for clarification. “I’m often misunderstood as being curt or having a tone, but that’s often because I’m in my own head.”
Read the full article.
From the archives
Could ethical AI help under-represented groups get ahead at work?
It’s no secret that the pandemic resulted in women and marginalized communities being ousted from the work force in record numbers. Though many demographic sectors have since bounced back, the gains remain unequal among traditionally under-represented groups.
For example, employment in the accommodation and food service industries, which are traditionally staffed primarily by women, are still 17 per cent below prepandemic levels. And while the unemployment rate for racialized workers has returned to prepandemic levels, it’s still higher than that of non-racialized workers. Youth, Indigenous people, women with children under 6 and many other vulnerable sectors have experienced similar disparities.
“We’ve gotten back to a prepandemic level and this is something to celebrate, but is it good enough? If we want an inclusive economy, we have to put in the effort,” Kaylie Tiessen, economist and policy analyst at Unifor, said recently to The Canadian Press.
The question is: How can we raise these under-represented sectors to an equitable rate of participation in the labour market?
Artificial intelligence, or AI, might be the answer.
Read the full article.
Interested in more perspectives about women in the workplace? Find all stories on The Globe Women’s Collective hub here, and subscribe to the new Women and Work newsletter here. Have feedback? Email us at GWC@globeandmail.com.