Welcome to the Bringing the Human Back to Human Resources
podcast. I'm Tracy Chernoff, and I've
spent my entire professional career in HR.
Each week, we'll explore the delicate balance between people
and business with the aim to reconnect the two and create
meaningful outcomes. Listen in as I share my own
experiences, challenge the status quo, and chat with guests
from various industries about our mission to bring the human
back to human resources. Hi everyone.
Welcome back to the Bringing the Human Back to Human Resources
podcast. Thank you so much for being here
for another week. This episode is very exciting
because we're talking all about career transitions and there are
so many of you who have reached out before about getting into
HR, breaking into HR. It's a topic that we talked
quite a bit about and so we'll touch on that and we'll touch on
other things too, which which you'll hear.
And I say we because I have Karen Worthy with me.
She is an executive career transition coach, helping
leaders define their goals and land their dream role.
Her approach is often practical and tactical, stemming from her
background that includes engineering, operations, supply
chain, recruiting, and HR. And yes, we will work to uncover
and understand how Karen did all of those things and ultimately
got into HR because that is an important part of this.
She has LED organizations within multiple Fortune 50 companies
like Amazon and Procter and Gamble, as well as multiple
startup companies. Her hands on approach with her
clients helps them accelerate their job search, often landing
them roles in half the time of their peers.
And time is money. She specializes in everything
from personal branding to networking for the search,
interview preparation, salary negotiations and more.
Karen, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for being here.
Hi, Tracy. I am so, so happy to be here and
just listening to that intro it. I'm like, I don't, I guess I've
done all that stuff, but it's so weird listening to somebody else
like intro you. Totally is.
This is like the number one thing that guests say to me is
that they're like, whoa, I did all of that.
And also, like, it's really weird to hear someone talk about
what I've done. And I, I always say, and the
listeners are totally used to me saying this, that it's so
important to hear all of the accomplishments that you've
achieved, you know, and all of the things that you've done.
Because it's very hard to remember all of those things,
you know, when you're living your life every single day.
And and then finally someone tells you all the things that
you've done. You're like, Oh yeah, that's
kind of cool. It's so true.
I, I often see that with clients as I'm working with them on like
resumes or interview prep or something, we'll be reflecting
back on what they've done and at the end of the session they'll
be like, wow, I guess I have done more than I thought I did.
And I'm sure you see that as well when you work with folks.
Totally, totally, totally. I mean, when I, when I help
people with their resumes also, it's like, you know, you go
through this exercise of digging more information out of them,
Like what have you really done? Not like what's on your resume,
but what have you actually done? What have you actually achieved?
And so often the things that feel like the minutia are
actually like big deals. And I, I think it's important to
have that awareness at some point and probably throughout
our careers pretty regularly that there, there are so many
things that, that we all achieve and we don't necessarily reflect
on them and, and, and realize all that.
So I think it's a very important exercise.
And so with that, I'd love to maybe start again with kind of
understanding how you got into HR because there are a ton of
industries and kind of backgrounds that I that I read
off in your bio, but if you could walk us through all of
that. Yeah, I'll give you the the
short version to start with and then feel free to dig in as much
or as little as you want or as makes sense.
So I I started very much wanting to, I grew up.
I wanted to be like my dad. He was an engineer.
I went there engineering school, have a very, I have a accounting
mom and an engineering dad. So I'm a very math, numbers,
technical oriented person from the roots.
Knew I wanted to do something with people as well, even at an
early stage though. So I went in and I was a leader
at Procter and Gamble within the manufacturing operations space
using my engineering degree and my desire to work with people.
I did that, absolutely loved it. That led me to a variety of
different roles and companies, culminating like moving from
manufacturing over to supply chain, working at small
companies, working at Amazon and part of their fulfillment
center. Still very much in the core
operations, though not in the HR side.
And if you had asked me then do I want it to be HR?
Was I going to end up in HR? I would have said absolutely
not. I was not in my career path.
I didn't know that I wanted it. I really didn't even know what
HR did at that point. I knew that they were helpful,
but I had no idea what happened behind the scenes.
And what really changed is I moved over into a startup, still
on the operations side, but I moved over into a startup.
And about halfway through my time there, they were having
really, really big growth forecasted.
And we were trying to figure out how we were going to accommodate
that. And part of the thought process
was we're going through and we're doing readiness checks for
all the different departments, all the different teams.
And we were in the spot where we had a very good recruiting team,
but needed more leadership on that team.
And they tapped me on, I was the fix it girl.
I was the one that like ran towards whatever was broken and
whatever needed help. And they tapped me on the
shoulder And they were like, I know you've never done
recruiting, but could you just come help us out for three
months and jump in and help fix some stuff?
And I did that. I had no idea what I was getting
into, but I'm so glad that I did.
I did that and I fell in love with recruiting and I fell in
love with the HR team because the recruiting team in our
organization was part of the HR team.
And so I started learning more about HR because I was in more
meetings with them. I was talking with them.
I started picking up pieces of HR and what started as a three
month, hey, come over and do a temporary role turned into a
pivot in my career. It turned into a transition
where I figured out that I really loved the ability to have
a positive impact on the employees both from inside the
company from an HR point of view, but also the candidate
experience and the pre employment experience and the
onboarding experience. And there were so many really,
really fun things that we got to do that I never got the chance
to do from an operations point of view.
And so three months in recruiting as a helper turned
into eventually AVP of HR for this organization and kind of
running the whole gamut. And that has been a very pivotal
turning point in my career for sure.
Wow. I mean, it's, it's really
amazing to hear your story and it doesn't always happen that
way. You know, people often want to
break into HR and they don't know how or they don't know
where to start. And I think what's cool, really
cool about your story is that someone you know saw in you
these effectively these transferable skills, like what
you were capable of doing outside of recruiting in HR and
how they were able to have you apply those skills to recruiting
and then ultimately HR. And I think for some, you know,
the question might be, Oh my gosh, how do you become a VP of
HR when you didn't have any background or school, right?
Like all these things always come up.
I mean, we see job posts all the time.
I'm sure you do, where it's like, you know, an HR job
someone's hiring for you must have, could be an entry level
role, must have five years of experience.
And it's like, well, how does someone get into HR if there's
no real true zero to two kind of expectation?
And I do think it's important to note that so much of what I
think makes for a really strong HR leader is the ability to
learn on the job and to take each new experience as a
learning opportunity. And so I can only imagine all
the things that you learned throughout your career once you
made that, that final, that ultimate pivot.
Yeah, right, right. So I think it's, I think it's
really inspiring, actually. And, and so many HR leaders say
that they just kind of fell into their HR careers and they didn't
expect it. They didn't plan on it.
But really when we say that we're talking about like career
transitions and pivots as you, as you put it.
And so to kind of give that a little bit of life.
I'm curious like when you're working with, you know, your
clients and things like that, if, if people are saying, well,
I want to make this career transition, where do you start?
Do you look for those transferable skills?
Do you help them to identify how they talk about their skills and
how they like, you know, kind of depict like their ability to
make that pivot? Where do you start That's.
Such a great question. I think it depends a little bit
on where they're at. So if you are it's I will say
it's easier to do if you're still inside of a company, still
employed. Not that you can't do it the
other way, but it is easier to do like I did that way.
What I would start with is I would start by having a very
open conversation with somebody who is doing the role that you
think you might want to go do. Maybe this is somebody inside
your company, Maybe this is somebody at a different company.
If you don't have that person inside your company, but if you
think you want to transition into HR, find some people who
are actually doing HR and go ask them what they do day-to-day.
Ask them what they like about their role.
Ask them questions that you might have.
Because if you're not actually in it, you usually see only a
one piece of it. You don't see all the other
pieces of it. And so go learn a little bit
more about how they got there and about what it takes to be
successful in that role. And that can help you to start
to piece the puzzle together a little bit around, OK, they're
when they are talking about doing this role, they're talking
about doing this, this and this. Here's how my skills transfer
into those types of things. And so it no longer is an HR
generalist or an HR specialist or an HR business partner and
said it is I'm doing this activity and I'm doing this
activity. I'm doing this activity, one of
my best and favorite recruiters ever.
And even some of our HR folks, they came from other areas in
the organization because they had the same transferable
skills. So one of our best recruiters
came from our sales organization because it's a very similar
funnel and process. As you go into the thing,
instead of selling company products, you're selling the
company to individuals. It's a very similar process.
Wow. And so think about those
transferable skills. Yeah, I, I love how you put it
in and I totally agree that when you are doing this within an
existing company, it is so much easier.
I've worked with a lot of clients who have been able to
successfully pivot through their, you know, current
employer. In fact, it's how I started my
HR career. I started, I was working at
Target, I started in like the kind of like the customer
service space and it was like guest experience was the title.
And when I, I don't know, I was maybe 4 or 6 months in, they
were like, oh, you know, there's, you know, you should
really think about HR. You really think about HR.
And I at the whole time I was like, well, maybe I'll think
about store management instead. And, and it was this whole thing
and I always cite my dad who was like, you should really think
about HR. It's going to like open up all
these opportunities for you, even though obviously being in
retail management, that also opens up opportunities.
But he was like, you can go outside of retail with HR, you
can do anything that you want. And it was really great advice.
And I was like, OK, yeah. And it was because my manager
and my HR colleague, to your point, like, you know, working
and finding someone who is in the job that you potentially
want, they were like, you'd be really good at this.
And that was how I ended up in HR only like 4 to 6 months after
my first, you know, experience outside of college, you know,
and it's. Fairly common.
Yeah, Yeah, it, it is. It is.
And I think I think that the more people are willing to like
put themselves out there like you described yourself as the
fix it girl. And to me, that's like really
being able to go above and beyond for cross functionally
for any part of the business, whatever that might mean.
And when people see a team player, they're like, oh, we
have to invest in this person. So I do think that there is
there are a lot of elements there that listeners can walk
away with saying, oh, yeah, I, I, I do that or I can do more of
that. And maybe I need to be a little
bit more kind of in the weeds with everybody rather than just
sticking to my own thing. And so kind of coming back to
this, you know, transitioning and, you know, within our
careers and making these pivots. I, I do want to spend a little
bit of time talking about this challenge that is getting into
companies when you don't have the experience and you want, and
you're looking, you know, to apply from the outside in and
you're trying to get into a particular company.
What, what would, is your advice to people if they're trying to
make a career transition, maybe they're even trying to
transition outside of HR and they want to, you know, go into
a different industry, let alone a different type of career.
How do they how do they climb that mountain?
So the very similar concepts really apply here.
So like if you think about the patterns that both you and I
experienced as we made our career transitions, our career
pivots, somebody believed in US and that somebody helped open up
the door. And so you can have that even if
you don't, even if you have no job right now, even if you're in
transition, you're not 100% sure what you want to do.
There are people out there that believe in you.
And so the first thing I do with my folks when I'm working with
them is we will typically sit down and make a list of
everybody that you think believes in past bosses, past Co
workers, family, friends, mentors, what doesn't matter
what they're doing or where they are right now, Start with the
list of everybody. They're your champions.
Start with your list of your champions.
They can open doors for you. It's not that you can't do it
without this list and without these people, but it's so much
easier if you start with these people because they made.
And most of the times people will say, oh, well, like I have
this list of champions. Maybe you have 5-10 people on
this list, but none of them work at places I want to work.
And so I'm out of luck. And so usually what they don't
understand is this list of champions cannot just open doors
for you at their company. They can introduce you to other
people. They can open doors for you to
other companies, to other people.
And almost always it's not actually your champions that
hire you. It's your champions that
introduce you to somebody who then introduces you to somebody
who hires you. But that transference of trust
and that transference of respect keeps going through the chain,
and it helps so tremendously. You don't know where it's going
to end up. Yeah, I love this idea of list
of champions. That's such a great kind of like
bookmark to make in our minds. And, and I hope that all of us
were thinking like, oh, as you were saying that, oh, who are my
champions? Like who can I call tomorrow or
today and say I really need your support or this is what I'm
looking to do. Do you know anybody, is there
anything you can do to support me?
And the reality is, is that your list of champions, they're going
to say, yes, they're going to find somewhere there somehow to
support you. And I also think about the
reciprocal effects of this is that like, you know, meaning
that hopefully one day we can be on that list of champions for
someone else and, and part of their kind of network.
And, and when I think about something that is an important
topic for you, which is this idea of building community, and
that community is a big part of how people can successfully
pivot in their careers. I think this is underpinning
that, that when you do invest in the relationships that you have
or that you, you know, work to maintain, there's symbiotic
relationship to be had that they want to support you and you have
a way to support them potentially in the future as
well. And so when we think about
community, where do you see community having an impact,
especially, you know, maybe it's maybe it's twofold like in in
one particular organization, like if you need a community
while you are actively working for a company and or the
community that kind of lives outside of that particular
organization. Yeah, I think that like human
being, as human beings, we are social creatures typically.
And so you want to find your communities because it's going
to help from so many different aspects.
So a lot of times, like I was guilty of this too when I was
working in corporate and in startups.
My community was my Co workers for the most part.
And I was really not very good back then of how do I go meet
people that are not my Co workers?
How do I go Like I had I had friends and family and I had Co
workers. I didn't have other professional
contacts that were outside of my particular company and if I
could go back, I would have done it differently.
I urge you if wherever you are, it's not too late to do it
differently. If you're starting out, your
career started on the right foot and start by meeting people and
finding your communities that make sense for you.
If you are 3040 years into your career, it's still not too late.
I work with folks who are 5-10 years from retirement in some
cases and they're still just finding their communities and
it's not too late and it works really, really well then too.
But the earlier you start, the better.
And so like thinking about, I will usually tell folks that you
want to have at least two to three communities that you're
part of at any given point. So you want to have one that is
very functionally focused. So you in for our listeners
here, like you might have an HR community that works for you and
there's a lot of really good ones out there.
So pick one that makes sense for you.
You probably want to have something that is speaks to
either who you are and who you identify with or what some of
your passions are. So this could go a lot of
different ways. This might be a location based
thing. So like if I'm in, I'm in the
Dallas Fort Worth area in Texas, I might have a local Dallas Fort
Worth community that is multi, multi industry, multifunctional,
or I might have something that speaks to like I'm part of a
women's community or I might have something that speaks to a
passion of mine. So like I really love vegan
cooking. So I might join a community
around vegan cooking. It really doesn't matter.
It hasn't have to be professional related, but it's
something that is meaningful to you.
So that should be your second community.
And then your third community is usually about what it is that
you are, what transition or what transformation you're going
through right now. And this will change over time.
So if you're job searching, you should join a community that
really speaks to the skills you need as you are learning how to
job search and learning how to transition and pivot.
If you are trying to learn AI, you should join a community that
helps teach you AI. If you're trying to up level and
go from a director level to AVP level or VP level to AC suite
level, you should join a community that helps give you
those leadership skills to help you up level that particular
thing. So whatever it is you're trying
to learn or grow at right now, you should have a community that
helps you do that thing as well. So that's your third community.
I love that that's it's great advice.
I I was thinking like, what communities am I in?
I'm like, does my podcast go? Why not?
Why not I guess Except I don't. I don't know the names of my
listeners so I can't connect with them unless they reach out.
OK, so if you are listening right now, send Tracy an e-mail
or a LinkedIn message or something so she knows who you
are. I.
Want to know who you are? Comment and I'll know your name
that way, too. Yeah, I know.
Exactly. I want to know who you are.
It's funny. I mean, it makes total sense
that in these spheres where we, you know, find meaning
professional, personal or, you know, interpersonal and then
naturally the kind of the future state like what we want to do
that there's so much possibility there and so much growth that
can come from those, you know, relationships and I mean.
The listeners are probably used to me saying this at this point
that relationships to me are fundamental to career success.
Like the better we are, I think at developing trusting
relationships, Not just any really they have to have some
depth to them, but trusting relationships, the more likely
we are to be able to achieve whatever it is that we want to
achieve. Maybe it's just like that next
thing or maybe it's the big thing, right?
Like maybe it's being like a chief people officer one day,
like whatever that might be, having those trusting
relationships can really help. And I think to your point, when
someone's just starting out, and as you said, even in your own
experience, it starts with kind of the community that you're
within, like the the team that you're on, the company you work
for. And hopefully in those initial
moments within our careers, we are taking the opportunity to
branch out. But I think it's kind of a good
call to action for not only just myself, but really for everyone.
Like how are we putting ourselves out there and, you
know, investing further in our in ourselves and our own success
by being a part of these communities where other people
are engaging. And then you never know.
It's really it honestly is all about who you know.
You never know. It's all about who you know.
So I guess two things for your
listeners too, like 1 is if you were listening to us and you're
like, Oh no, she said I need 3 communities and I don't have any
communities. Don't try and get all three at
once. Start with one, pick one, it
does not matter which one and start there.
The other thing I would say is really like it.
Really, you do not know how impactful your relationships are
and how they will impact you and who is going to be that person
that's going to help you land that next role or help you with
that next opportunity. I had one client once who really
wanted to work at a particular organization.
It was their dream organization. They had applied, they had not
gotten an interview, but they were still very focused on
getting into that organization and that role.
And we were going through both of our collective networks
trying to figure out if we knew anybody at this organization.
And as we were going through it, one of the things popped up and
that person looked at it and looked like, looked through the
names and everything. And they're like, that name
looks really familiar, but I don't like the last name looks
really. But I don't know that person and
then was talking to their neighbor the next day and it
turns out it was their neighbors son that works there.
And so like you never know how this relationships are gonna go.
I had one person that got an interview because they were in a
workout group at their gym with somebody.
I got somebody who was got an interview because one person
that they were friends with went to a training class 3 years ago
with this person. Had not talked to him since but
connected on LinkedIn. But had enough of our affinity
there that when this person reached out to them on behalf of
somebody else, they got an interview because they were able
to do that. Introduction like weak ties are
still very powerful. Here, Yeah, yeah, that's a great
point. I have certainly taken not
advantage of, but yeah, I guess taking advantage of those those
connections, whether strong or weak.
And frankly, it's how I landed 50% of the roles that I've ever
worked in. You know, it really it, it
really is all about who you know.
And, and I do think that there can be a little bit of an
intimidating factor there and reaching out, especially if a
connection is not super strong. It's like, hey, I think I
remember meeting you at this one party.
That's totally OK. It's like, totally OK.
I mean, we're all humans. And I really at the end of the
day, like they probably have done the same thing or have
wanted to do the same thing. And I I do think that there is
value in putting ourselves out there, no matter how
intimidating or scary it might be.
Yeah, there's, I mean, that's part of where community can
support you too. I have a lot of people who come.
We have community sessions where we talk through different
challenges and people can ask questions and have a lot of
people come here like, I think I want to reach out to this
person, but I'm not sure what if they don't Remember Me?
What if they don't like me? What if, what if, what if, what
if, what if they don't answer me?
Like, and usually we will talk through how to reach out, but
we'll also gently nudge them to go reach out anyway.
And almost every single time it comes back with some kind of
success story how like it's very, very, very repeatable.
But people typically will not get that courage and that
bravery to go reach out if they don't have somebody backing them
up or a group of somebody's. And that's where community, it
could be a career coach, but community also serves that
purpose and it can help you. This could be a small group of
friends. It doesn't have to be a formal
community, but you need something to like, push you a
little bit out of your comfort zone and also share.
Like when that person does that and then they come back the next
week and they share. I did it and they reached out
and I have a meeting with them. Now everybody else in that room
is like, oh, now I'm gonna try a little bit harder to go do it.
And like, you learn from each other.
It's so powerful. Totally.
You're so right. And, and it really does feel
great, like when there is some sort of successful connection
and, and it makes the connection stronger, frankly, it, it really
does, you know, and, and people, I find generally speaking that
people really do want to help when they can.
And, you know, if I'm sure many of us have gone to a LinkedIn
job post, we've seen who works there within our network, or we
look to see who in our network might be a connection for us to
that particular job. Because applying off the street,
quote UN quote, as I like to say is, is almost a terrible
strategy. It's like maybe 5 percent, 10%
successful. So, you know, I, I think
generally speaking, like, you know, you, you put yourself out
there and hopefully they reply. And most of the time they're
like, yeah, I'd love to help. Or I actually have no idea who
the hiring manager is. And this company is so big, I
don't know where to send you. But either way, that's OK.
They try. Exactly.
But Karen, thank you so much for all of these tips and insights.
I think there are a lot of a lot of really good suggestions that
the listeners can walk away with and, and start to apply today
and really think just as a way for them to think differently
and put themselves out there more and challenge their own
comfort zones just a little bit. So for others, for those
listening I should say, who want to get connected and learn more
about you, maybe work with you, where should they connect?
Yeah, there's 22 main places, so I'm on LinkedIn, so Karen
worthy, and you can search me on LinkedIn.
I think I'm the only Karen worthy on there, but you'll see
me on there. And then I also have a website,
it's Worthy career paths with an S at the end dot com.
So worthy career paths.com. And you can find out about my
services, our community job search community.
I primarily work with director and executive level folks who
are looking for their next role. But I am very open to helping
any, any level, any person. So feel free to reach out and
just shoot me a message and tell me you heard about it on this
podcast. And I will do everything in my
power to help you. Amazing.
I love that helpfulness is the key here.
This is the the common denominator to the entire
discussion and we'll have everything, I think, of course,
for the listeners. But thank you so much for your
time. Really appreciate it.
Oh, of course, Tracy. It was a great conversation.
Thank you for having me on. Of course, anytime.
Hey, just before you go, don't forget to subscribe to the.
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