582: Finding Your Ideal Career Path: Uncovering Roles You Didn’t Know Existed

Caity Noonan 00:00

I don't even know what I want to do. Like, let's back up. Because, yes, there's all these great companies across industries I'd love to work for, but what am I actually going to do there?

Introduction 00:14

This is the Happen To Your Career podcast with Scott Anthony Barlow. We hope you stop doing work that doesn't fit you, figure out what does, and make it happen. We help you define the work that is unapologetically you, and then go get it. If you feel like you were meant for more, and you're ready to make a change, keep listening. Here's Scott. Here's Scott. Here's Scott.

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:39

What happens when you're in the place where you want something different, and you know that for sure, but what else could you do in your career? What else is even out there? Or how could you find out? We hear this dilemma from people all the time. We call it the restaurant with no menus. You're ready to leap into the job market, you want to find something that fits you better, there's so many possibilities, but where is the list of jobs to choose from? Wait, there isn't one. The possibilities are endless, cue, and existential career crisis. But wait, before you spiral, I want you to listen to this episode. Caity was in the same place that you might find yourself, and she found a career that she didn't even know existed, that it turns out, was a perfect match for her.

Caity Noonan 01:27

I just got really excited. I didn't even know this was a dedicated field that people did. And I knew this was something for me because I got excited. And like, it was the first role and area and field that I had felt, for the first time in a really long time, excited about something.

Scott Anthony Barlow 01:45

That's Caity Noonan. Caity was a successful VP of marketing in the tech world. Her career was going great, but she began to realize she was no longer excited by her work and knew she needed a change. She took the time to explore her strengths, her passions, what she was excited about, she really dug into the questions of "what's next?" Eventually, her self discovery, combined with extensive research, led her to discover change management, which is an area that she didn't even know existed, and ultimately realized that this could be the perfect match for her. This didn't just happen by accident, though. She didn't just take an assessment and out pops change management for her. Nope. Caity did a lot of work with her strengths, defining what we would call must haves, and experimenting, and she was able to uncover her ideal fit after researching, experimenting, connecting the dots with those strengths and potential careers. I want you to listen as we walk through how she identified her ideal career. Here's Caity explaining why she first decided to step away from marketing.

Caity Noonan 02:56

In terms of my career, I started off in account management and sales. That led me to product marketing, and that really was what I loved. It was okay, this is it. This is right where I need to be. I love every aspect of this. I then grew my career as a product marketer from junior all the way up to senior level management, and I sort of have gotten to the point where it's just not the same anymore. And so about a year ago, I finished up at a company, and I just very deliberately was like, "I don't want to do this anymore." There's, you know, Product Marketing just isn't as exciting to me as it used to be. The role, the job has changed the more senior I've gotten. There's aspects I love about it, and there's just a lot of stuff I really don't like about it. And so I wanted to have a very proactive approach and saying, "I'm not just going to get back on the market, fall into the next PMM job." A recruiter sends to me. You know, I'm just going to take the time. And I had a partner who was really supportive of this. He just was there to say, you know, "We're okay financially. Why don't you just take some time and figure out what you want to do next?" And so throughout all of last summer, you know, we did lots of travel, I just took time off. I wasn't really thinking about any career moves. I just needed the time off. And then kind of earlier of this year of '24, that's when I was like, "Okay, I need to start digging into this." And being a product marketer, research is, like, one of the biggest things that you do. Like, it's one of my strengths. And so I'm like, I can do this, right? I'm on Google. I'm searching. I'm reading books. I'm doing all the things I think I need to, right? I'm sort of talking to some close friends and coaches and mentors, and I'm just not getting anywhere, right? I'm just thinking, okay, I see all the pieces to this process. And I think you've mentioned this on a previous podcast of people just kind of jump from step A to, you know, R. They just think, like, "Okay, I think this is it. I'm just gonna go target this role or this company, rewrite my resume and just go for it, right?" There's not a lot of exploration, education, learning, experimenting, right, and testing. And I didn't know that's what you need to do, which sounds kind of silly now, but it seems obvious, but you really don't know it.

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:04

How would you know? I mean, it's not like this is a standard class in college or anything else along those lines.

Caity Noonan 05:11

Yeah. And I think, and I just wasn't getting the hands on direction and education around what I needed to do this process. And that's kind of when I discovered HTYC, and really bought in and just understood your approach, right? I read your book, and I saw that you have the short, sort of trial bootcamp, and I thought, "This is so different", right? Like this is hands on. There's a blueprint, and it's very methodical. And as me, I'm very much like a doer and executor. Just tell me what to do, and I'll do it. And that's what I needed.

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:46

Well, here's one of the things I'm curious before we get too far along here. Because, you know, fast forward, and let's say that one of the things that you did incredibly well is you've went into this very intentionally, you were willing to invest the time and energy in yourself to make sure that your next change is a good match and a good fit, and it's setting you up to for anything in the future too. And you had learned that areas of what many people might call change management are really great for you. So we're going to come back and we're going to talk about this. But before we do, I'm really curious, was there a particular moment or event that made you realize that product marketing in, at whatever level, in whatever organization was no longer a fit?

Caity Noonan 06:41

Yeah. I think, you know, I think the moment for me when that was happening was I wasn't excited about the profession anymore, and I didn't want to educate myself anymore. I didn't really care about furthering my education in it, going to conferences, networking with other PMMs, like, just... that's where I kind of knew I've lost my curiosity and my passion for this job. But I think what was tricky for me was that there are parts that I really liked about it, and I know we're going to get into this, I think with, you know, some of the strengths work, but it was hard for me to blatantly walk away, because there were parts that I really did like, and so that left me a struggle of, "Okay, how do I keep the elements of Product Marketing that I really that I really enjoy, but not be doing this job?" So yeah, but I do think that was the moment when I knew that that career or that profession and that role wasn't going to be the right move moving forward.

Scott Anthony Barlow 07:35

That's interesting. And you also talked about, you just mentioned, the strengths pieces. And I think one of the things that you did really well was going into strengths and viewing that, let's call it a process. It's not technically a process, however, you're viewing it much like a detective. Okay, what were the pieces that you were utilizing over your past roles? So I'm really curious, what did that portion of the process? As you started to get into discovering, here's what my strengths are, here's what they actually mean. And I think coming into this, you already had a pretty high self awareness, at least that was my perception, since you and I got to chat. And I guess just take me through a little bit about what that section of going through, understanding your strengths and then beginning to relate that information to the real world. Would that look like for you?

Caity Noonan 08:25

Well, I had first... So I had been familiar with StrengthsFinder a while ago. I think the first time I did it, about 10 years ago. I was at a company and my findings were actually different then, no surprise, probably, but there was no real application of what those strengths were, and I didn't really do anything with them at the time. And so fast forward 10 years, we're here. I redo the StrengthsFinder testing, and I'm just blown away by the findings. Like my top five, I was shocked how accurate it was. I mean, and I could literally look at the five and say, "yes, in all my career, I can point to these things with each of these five strengths". So first I was actually really shocked about how accurate that was. So and then the process of diagnosing your strengths, which is a really in depth system where you're going through each and every one of your roles throughout your career, your responsibilities, your projects, everything you've done, and then applying your strengths to each of those jobs you've had. And I think that was a real aha moment, because I started to find these patterns and these threads throughout each job that I was starting to tie together, but in relation to my strengths. So one example was that maximizer is my number one strength, which is really about you love to optimize things, you always want to make things better, you really like systems and processes. And one of the things that was threaded throughout my whole career is I've always gravitated towards operational projects. Always raise my hand to make a process better, institute a new system. And it was really operational and more people based and less so just launch this product or go do this audience research. It was very much focused on making the company operate better. And so that was, like a big aha moment. It was like, "Yeah, all the projects I actually really enjoy doing are spot on Maximizer", or, if I think about in product marketing, I really liked the element of doing competitive analysis and market research, and intellection was my number three strength. And so all of these like little patterns of the parts that I like about product marketing kind of reveal themselves. But also part of that work in looking at your past roles and responsibilities is figuring out what you didn't like to do. And I know this is a great exercise with the grid, where you really have to force yourself to plot your strengths of what you like, what you don't like so much, what you're good at, but you don't want to be doing, right? So you have these sort of different buckets, and I think that's sort of a forcing function to really look at everything you've done in your past roles and really think about were you reluctant to do it? Did you raise your hand to do it? Did it give you energy? Did it drain you? Really had to think back through that whole, each role I ever had, doing that diagnosis. So I spent a lot of work on that, and that's when things started to emerge to me around the power of strengths, of finding your top five strengths.

Scott Anthony Barlow 11:20

That's awesome. And I want to ask you about the work that you did. You said, "I spent a lot of work." So first of all, just help me understand what kind of timeframe was this for you? Was this, you know, a couple hours in a day? Was this spread over months? Help me understand as you were doing the strength specific work, what kind of timeframe was that?

Caity Noonan 11:40

You know, I worked, you know, I worked on and off on it for that whole kind of module around strengths, probably a couple weeks, you know, but quarters at a time. So I'd come to it, I'd come back. I'd have fresh eyes the next day. I'd be like, "Oh, actually, let me..." I also did that. Or I didn't quite like that as much as I thought I did. So you're constantly re-looking at that work and reevaluating it throughout doing that module around your strengths. And I really like the system where you sort of look at all the work you've done, you start to highlight the things you love, you start to look at the things you don't, you start to do, I think, the scoring was brilliant, where you look at the number of times you usually each strength. And then you can see of your top five, which ones emerged as your strongest.

Scott Anthony Barlow 12:25

How frequently is this showing up? And you can start to see the different types of patterns.

Caity Noonan 12:30

Yeah, whereas, like three of mine were pretty well, you know, in the same range, and two were a little bit lower down, but it was just sort of interesting to take more of a kind of such a fine tooth comb and applying your strengths to your career. And I had never done that. I didn't even think to do that on my own. I never would have.

Scott Anthony Barlow 12:48

So I think a lot of people I found are surprised about how this tends to work. I think many people that I've interacted with over the years sort of have the perception that, "Hey, I'm going to go take an assessment, or we're gonna do this exercise, and then a few hours later, I'm gonna have an absolute understanding of all my signature strengths and everything goes with it, and then we're gonna be able to talk about what this means. Am I gonna be a beekeeper in Zimbabwe, or am I going to do something else?" And so I find that there's a lot of surprise around what it takes. I heard you say this was spread over weeks where you're spending hours chunks at a time and then have reflection or allowing things to simmer in between. But what did you find surprising as you were going through that section of the process?

Caity Noonan 13:31

Yeah, I started to see patterns emerge around my values. So the biggest one for me was I really care about how things are done, and not so much the what. That was a big one for me. Where I was at so many companies, a lot of them startups or small size companies, where just getting things done with speed was more important. And I realized how much I internally thought that and I really cared more about having operational soundness, because I'm kind of a perfectionist. I think things can always be done better. I like to optimize those. I like to take time and presentations and make sure they're spot on. You know, where I'd be in these environments where speed was the priority for the company. And so I started to see these patterns of my own values, like what really matters to me in the workplace. And I could start to see where I was finding these areas of unhappiness because my values around what I do at work were not aligning with the role. So that's just one example, and then sort of reflecting on your strengths after you do all this is really interesting as well. So relator was one of my strengths, which is very more focused on sort of people to people right, kind of more individual and more supportive. And I could see how that was a strength because as a product marketer, you really have to get buy and cross functionally, across the whole company. You have to really influence others, influence your peers, influence your leaders. And so I can kind of see how that emerged as a strength. And thought about, "Okay, well, how can I take that with me into the future as well into a different role?" But, you know, from here, I could kind of go into how I discovered change management, you know, from that.

Scott Anthony Barlow 15:05

Yeah, let's definitely talk about that here in a moment. I think one of the things I'm interested in first is like I heard you allude to the values piece, and it sounds like that was way more important for you than what you perceived it originally. What I'm also curious about is, if we talk in terms of what we would call an ideal career profile, and for context for obviously, that's a tool that we use here at Happen To Your Career, and where we can begin to on paper, on purpose, define, you know, what a profile of the most important elements, whether it's values driven or anything else, and what you need, and then that allows us to be able to start relating that to the real world. But here's what I'm curious about for you, what were some of the examples of the must haves that you identified for your ideal profile, and why were those so important to you?

Caity Noonan 16:00

Yeah. It's funny because the ICP work, yeah, ideal career profile, it's sort of this other, sort of, parallel path, right? That's happening at the same time as the strength. I know you like to use the puzzle analogy, which I think is great, of like, you know, you sort of have your edges pieces, right? Your sort of anchors. I sort of see the ICP as the sort of macro, your sort of, macro view of what your career should be, and what those, not constraints, but directives look like. And so for me, the ICP was so helpful because I actually went through a lot of reprioritization. I think the prioritization of the ICP is super important. Like, to begin with, I had finances pretty far down on the list. I was just like, "I just want to be happy and work life balance, and I have to love my job." And, you know, a very kind of not as a practical view. But then when it came to doing a budgeting exercise, where, okay, "What do I absolutely need minimum to stay where I live in the Bay Area?" Which is a high cost of living. We aren't moving, so that kind of eliminates certain things to just maintain a lifestyle of travel is really important for us, and doing all the things we love doing and our hobbies. So I really had to actually think about that first, right? And so where I had finances kind of further down on my ideal career profile, it quickly kind of got bumped up. I think it was at like a number six. It then became a number three. But for me, my sort of real prioritize, like my one and two, was really around health and wellness and work life balance. So, you know, those were really important for me. I didn't want to be on the road, commuting every morning and every night. That's important for me. It's important for my health. So that was a real big one. So finding a job where it's not going to require five days in office and the budgeting process also helped me sort of narrow down the fact that I can't go be a travel agent or go work in a nonprofit for animal conservation. There's just certain things that I'd thought about at the very beginning, this really wide scope of all these fun things I could be doing. You know, it kind of got more narrow. It was like, "Okay, I'm gonna, I have to stay in kind of a corporate job or corporate environment, which is fine, because all these other things in my life matter and they're important, they come first." And so that was a really, kind of, not a forcing function, but it's almost like a nice reality check, but it helps you. It's a funnel, and it starts to get smaller and smaller, and you get more clarity the more you start really forcing yourself to prioritize what matters in your life. So I think that, and then combine with the strengths. So here I was kind of on the ICP side. I was like, "Okay, I know sort of what I want my daily life to look like. I want to be able to work out potentially during the day, be out in nature as much as possible, and be able to go into an office a couple days a week. I'm totally fine to get on a plane and travel at least once a month." So I had kind of all these, you know, it kind of probably needs to be in a corporate job with this minimum budget. And then over here, on the strength side, I'm starting to figure out what makes sense in the actual role in the company, and so you kind of combine those two together at the same time, and the whole picture starts to come into view a little bit better.

Scott Anthony Barlow 19:10

Interesting that you used finances as an example. Tend to take the view on finances that if we're talking about money as a tool, and ultimately, money helps you build the type of life that you want to build, right? So then what I hear you saying is that you're looking at, okay, what is the type of life that I want to continue to live, and what do I want to build, and how much does that cost? And then it sounds like that's influencing where that falls in priority. Because to accomplish the type of work that you want to do within the scope of the life that you want to build, then there's certain financial costs that go along with that. So really nice job on that. And then I think one of the things I'm really interested in here is you did all this work to create that ideal career profile, and it helped you begin to make clear what those priorities were and are. Can you walk us through a little bit how you combine your strengths, your insights from the ICP, and began to articulate what created, or what would create an ideal career for you?

Caity Noonan 20:21

Yeah, and I'd say first, like, what was also before I landed on my target role, which is change management, I also was considering the travel industry and being a travel agent. Because I absolutely love planning trips in my free time. It's one of my most exciting hobbies that I absolutely love doing. And I thought what a career could look like in this. And I sort of, you know, went down that path and explored that my career coach totally different, right? Just to see what could this look like. Those requirements that just weren't going to match my ICP, and that meant working really hard hours and slogging if you're going to start your own business as a travel agent, or the budget requirements just wouldn't have been met, right? It would have required some other major life change. But so that's just one example of how I did go down another path, exploratory mapped it against the ICP, and had to go in a different direction. But...

Scott Anthony Barlow 21:15

Hold on, can I ask you about that? I think that's such a great example. And I think sometimes when people hear those stories about, "Hey, I pursued this and decided it wasn't quite for me." I think it's really easy for people to understand that. But also, on the flip side of that, when people are going through that themselves, I think sometimes the tendency is to get all the way to the end of that exploration and say, "Oh, now I have to start over this thing I thought I was interested in is not actually, you know, not actually something that is going to fit in one way or another." And sometimes when you're in the thick of it feels like you're being set back, not for everybody. And it also depends on how you're looking at it and how many things you're pursuing at the same time. But what was that like for you, and what did you perceive as the benefits to finding out that didn't work?

Caity Noonan 22:04

Right. Well, first I'll say, I'm so glad I did this during the program. Because before the program, I started exploring being a travel agent on my own, and I started this program, and it's going to cost X dollars, sign up now, and I got so close to just launching into it, right? And saying, "This is what I want to do", without having stopped, you know, evaluated, understood the roles within the industry.

Scott Anthony Barlow 22:24

Being a travel agent.

Caity Noonan 22:25

Yeah, any sort of networking experiments talking to the right people, and that's actually where it came to, where I figured out it wasn't going to work. I think, you know, I was able to make a few critical connections of people I didn't know, who have recently either become agents or were new to the field, or people have been in the business for 30 years and found out a lot of things I would have not known otherwise of just, it's extremely difficult to get your business started. It takes a lot of, you know, self promotion, and business promotion, a lot of the stuff in marketing, I just didn't know I didn't want to be doing looking over at my strengths, right? Like going over there and seeing, okay, it's actually a lot of this job that's not quite what I want to do. The part that I love doing was the planning. And so then I was trying to figure out, here's there a role within the travel industry that is just the planning piece. And the role doesn't... I didn't find that the role exists in the space that I wanted it to. So I think there was this discovery that the piece that I love doing so much about travel doesn't exist in a profession unto itself that would have paid for a full time job, that would have sustained my lifestyle. But it made me feel so relieved that I did the work. Because had I not figured that out, I always would have been thinking in the back of my head, "Oh, I should go do this." Or, "Why didn't I?"

Scott Anthony Barlow 23:42

Why didn't I pursue this one thing? Like...

Caity Noonan 23:47

Yeah, and I did all the work and education required to be able to rule that out and feel good about it, like, feel no hesitation that this isn't right for, not only is it not right for me, but it could actually also hinder my hobby, right? I also don't want to hate travel planning, because I'm doing it day in and day out in a role that isn't quite the one I want. So I also had to weigh that against it too. Do you kind of want to be doing this 8 to 10 hours a day, and you're not going to have any room to do it on your own when you love it so much, right? So that was kind of interesting discovery.

Scott Anthony Barlow 24:19

So I think that's really cool what you're talking about, because it sounds like in doing that work, not only did you reach a more effective approach, where you're like, "Yeah, I shouldn't spend any more time or money or effort on this", but at the same time, it made you feel better about the decision that you're making and what you're choosing to not pursue as well as what you are choosing to pursue. So how, then, how did you lead towards change management? Take me through, like, what were all the parts and pieces that happened along the way where you get to the point where you're like, "Yeah, definitely want to dive further into change management." How'd that happen?

Caity Noonan 25:02

And what's funny is, I didn't even know it existed. And I think this and how I discovered it was so interesting. So, you know, I kind of rolled out a few other things. My ICPs in a good place. I know what my life priorities are. I have a good sense of like, okay, this is the arena I need to stay in. Part of the process when you're finishing a lot of this work is then deciding, okay, "Are you going to go in a company direction? Are you going to go in a role direction?" And so I think a lot of people go to the company and I actually started going down the company path, and I quickly realized, I was like, "Wait a second, I don't even know what I want to do. Let's back up." Because, yes, there's all these great companies across industries I'd love to work for, but what am I actually going to do there? So I had to quickly pivot over to the role side and just get really specific about what is a new job going to look like for me. You know, I loved all the strength work I had done. I had so many aha moments, connected so many threads there. And then I just started doing a little bit of research. I took all my five top strengths, started saying, like, doing some online research around, like, what are professions, studies, education, around people who have these signature strengths? And, you know, I did a little bit of AI plugging, just to see what would pop out there. And I landed on discovering organizational psychology, which I didn't even know what that was. And it was like, "Oh, this sounds really interesting", and it's the first thing that popped up that I was actually excited about. And so from Organizational Psychology, I started to learn a bit more about the people side of how companies are organized and how they go through transformations. Then I sort of from there, discovered change management, which also kind of popped up in that whole space. And I thought, "Whoa, what is that?" And I remember one of my last jobs, a couple companies ago, I had done a two day seminar from HR around change management, and not really knowing that that was an actual profession, was more just change. Like, how can employees go through change, adopt change? And I was very fascinated at the time about that, I was really into it, because I had been through so much change throughout the course of my career, small companies, I've been through three acquisitions at three different companies. Change has been a constant and in every place I've been. And so I just got really excited. I didn't even know this was a field that people did, and I knew this was something for me because I got excited and, like, it was the first role and area and field that I had felt for the first time in a really long time, excited about something in a corporate space, right? Like a role still within a corporate environment, business environment, that I was excited to explore because I was looking at other kinds of adjacent fields, right? There's project management. I had done tons of project management throughout my product marketing career. Okay, that's kind of an option, but I wasn't super excited about it. It's very executional. I had done a lot of that already. Then there was sort of operations roles, which, again, kind of adjacent, but not focused so much on the people's side could end up being very heavily, like numbers related, right? Sort of company performance related. So there was the space just missing that was sort of operations focused and people focused, and project focused. And change management, as I discovered, is sort of like the role that takes all three of those into one space. And so I just kind of randomly discovered that. And then I just started looking into it. I jumped on LinkedIn. I just watched a couple really quick courses, just to quickly familiarize myself with it. I landed on some of the sort of industry de facto companies that are the standard, you know, the change management, training standards, you know, the ACMP, the industry's body, right? The main kind of body, and everything. So I just started going on there and learning about the whole field, the different roles in the space, yeah, and so that's kind of how I discovered it. And really what kicked off my decision to have that be my target.

Scott Anthony Barlow 28:58

So I'm curious then, as you were doing some of that research, what are some of the examples of where you were getting that feedback that caused you to reinforce that, "Hey, this is actually a direction that I should go." Where were you getting those little tidbits of information that, from an experimentation standpoint, caused you to think, "Yeah, this is actually an area that I should further experiment with or further dive into."?

Caity Noonan 29:23

Yeah, I think there was a couple things. I think one of them was the more I was reading about the role, the types of projects, who you work with, kind of the different, the wide scope of it, right? So you could be, you could work in change management everywhere from a major firm like Accenture or Deloitte all the way down to a small firm that specializes it, all the way down to a tech company that has an in-house change management team. So first there was, like, a lot of variation and scope. It wasn't too narrow. There were a lot of options here for this role and growth opportunity. I think the second was, the more I was reading about it, the more I was looking at all of my past experience and basically thinking to myself, I've done a lot of change management in Product Marketing already. It just wasn't called that. And it was the pieces that I really liked. So for example, at some of the small companies I worked at, because we were really small in startups product marketing, because it's such a cross functional role, I was often assigned to do these big, sort of company wide change projects, which is everything from like, new processes, you know, an entirely new hire training curriculum, or designing new deal review systems, like all of these things that I loved doing that I didn't know at the time were actually, could actually be considered change management projects more formally. So I started to actually have this aha moment where I was looking back and thinking, "Okay, back to my strengths, all that whole diagnosis I did around my career, what did I like doing? What I not like?" All the things that popped out that I liked were actually related to change management with me not even knowing it at the time, or even what it was called that could fall into that bucket. So that was sort of kind of one internal aha moment, the more I was learning about the field. And then also just going and, like, starting to read JDs, I was like, "Okay, what do these jobs really look like?" Right? Like, everywhere, from a junior level through to, like, you know, a senior consultant level. And I think what I liked about that the most was nothing put me off. Nothing was like, "Oh, I don't know about that. I don't like doing that." Not one thing sort of stuck out as being like, I'm going to be resistant to having to do that. And that's not to say that this field doesn't come with its challenges. I mean, change for human beings is one of the hardest things to do and to work.

Scott Anthony Barlow 31:41

It's going to be challenging, absolutely.

Caity Noonan 31:44

And knowing that too, didn't put me off either. And I think that was like a huge sign. And then I don't know if we want to get into it yet, but then when I started to do the networking piece around finding people who were in change management field, either new to it, been in it 20 years, with all those conversations, nothing really put me off.

Scott Anthony Barlow 32:03

But here's the part I think that's fascinating about not just doing work more intentionally, but living life more intentionally, is, I think that almost everybody, I shouldn't say everybody, a lot of people believe that you're going to be able to shortcut this process. Like, I should just be able to do a couple of assessments or whatever else, and then I should be able to go look at job descriptions, and then I'm going to have the results, like you just talked about, like I'm reading through the job description, and not only is nothing putting me off, but the same time, I'm excited about a great chunk of it. And that doesn't just happen by accident. There's a reason that it is a stereotype now that when you look at job descriptions, everything sounds just terrible for the most part. Yeah, and it's unfortunate.

Caity Noonan 33:00

Yeah. Deliberate process. And I think one thing is, I wouldn't have even known to look for those JDs had I not even known this field existed, which is...

Scott Anthony Barlow 33:08

Needle in a haystack, right?

Caity Noonan 33:10

To even start, right? And yeah. So that was a big part of it, and there was so much work that went into that, right? And yeah...

Scott Anthony Barlow 33:18

Just a moment ago, you mentioned, as you started to talk with actual people that are in this industry, this type of profession, occupation, they're actively fulfilling these roles or have, what were some of the realizations that further reinforced for you that this is actually an area that I'm wanting to make a move into?

Caity Noonan 33:38

Yeah. I would say one of the first big discoveries was targeting, you know, if I wanted to go into change management on the consulting side. So you're kind of, you're an outside company firm, come in, you help a business go through change or you go in house to a change management team that might be at a big company that can afford, they actually know change management. They're growing it as part of their award. And so I started to figure out, okay, within this industry or within this field, which direction do I need to go? And I needed to start targeting that even further down. And I landed on the consultant side only because I liked this idea that I could then be exposed to multiple industries, multiple companies over the course of my career, being able to work with different clients. And, you know, having been at tech companies for pretty much the last 20 years, this would be, like, a nice change, right? Like, yeah, change. But like, for me, just a very different experience to say, and I've never been on the consultant side, so that kind of got me excited to just hear people who I talked to, who work more on the consultant side about how they get to meet with different clients, they get different challenges, they work on different programs. And importantly, the change is very readily, probably more bought into if the company's paying for an outside firm to come in. So that was important because I know one of the struggles can often be adoption of the leadership with change. So that can be trickier. So I think the consultant side was the direction I went in. I was getting more reaffirmed by the people who I was talking to on that side than on the in house side. And yeah, and then just looking at kind of the growth path people have had in this field. And you know, what was really interesting is when I asked them their challenges, you know, what they've come up against, nothing really scared me. It wasn't like, "Oh, I'm gonna have to deal with this like I did in my product marketing and career" right? I think I was nervous that it was going to be too close to what I was doing before where I was going to start to pedal back, or have some anxiety about making this decision of this role. But I never had that which I think was important.

Scott Anthony Barlow 35:43

Very cool. That's really cool. Anything else that your perspective has changed on through the course of doing this work for yourself?

Caity Noonan 35:50

Yeah, I think also just having there's so much more self awareness after this, right? It feels so much better about walking away from certain things that, you know, I have to just, I had to choose, right? Like, what things in my life are most important to me? And it's really, it's self reflection. There's so much self reflection. It's amazing. And stuff you wouldn't know to do this yourself. Just the amount of work, the prompts, the writing, the discoveries that come through that writing and seeing it on paper is huge. Just saying, like, "I wrote that X is more important than Y. Okay, well, what does that mean? That means I can't go do this job over here, and I'm okay with that." Because, you know, I went into this process thinking everything was on the table, right? Like, I want to work with animals. I want to go plan trips.

Scott Anthony Barlow 36:36

I can do anything.

Caity Noonan 36:39

Yeah. But this helped me be okay with coming back to being in a professional corporate job. It was so great to make me feel great about it, and know why I'm still in this space, and it actually shows the things that are most important to me in my life. So yeah.

Scott Anthony Barlow 36:57

That's really cool.

Caity Noonan 36:58

The big learning moments for me.

Scott Anthony Barlow 37:06

Most of the episodes you've heard on Happen To Your Career showcase stories of people that have taken the steps to identify and land careers that they are absolutely enamored with, that match their strengths, and are really what they want in their lives. If that's something that you're ready to begin taking steps towards, that's awesome. And we want to figure out how we can help. So here's what I would suggest. Take the next five seconds to open up your email app and email me directly. I'm gonna give you my personal email address, scott@happentoyourcareer.com. Just email me and put 'Conversation' in the subject line. And when you do that, I'll introduce you to someone on our team who can have a super informal conversation with and we'll figure out the very best type of help for you, whatever that looks like. And the very best way that we can support you to make it happen. So send me an email right now with 'Conversation' in the subject line.

Scott Anthony Barlow 37:58

Here's a sneak peek into what we have coming up in store for you next week.

Speaker 3 38:04

I talked a lot about being versus doing. Our society really emphasizes the doing. Here's what I want to achieve, here's the impact. Do more with less. Like, all just profit, all of this stuff. And it doesn't think about like, "Who do I want to be when I'm doing it?"

Scott Anthony Barlow 38:21

Have you ever accomplished one of your goals or reached what maybe was the pinnacle of success only to feel overwhelmed and unfulfilled? Whether that was climbing up the corporate ladder, maybe even making it to the top, only to look around and wonder, is this it? Is this all there is? The truth is, there is such a thing as fulfilling work, but it's likely not where you've been looking. So if you've ever felt like a cog in a corporate machine and questioned whether there's more to life than just climbing higher, you're not going to want to miss this episode.

Scott Anthony Barlow 38:58

All that and plenty more next week right here on Happen To Your Career. Make sure that you don't miss it. And if you haven't already, click subscribe on your podcast player so that you can download this podcast in your sleep and you get it automatically. Even the bonus episodes every single week, sometimes multiple times a week. Until next week, adios. I'm out.