How Manny got hired as a Senior UX Designer at Fidelity in 77 days

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General Intro

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Sarah Doody: We invited these three to share about their experience because I think it’s really valuable to hear, number one, from people at different stages in their career, but also at different stages of their experience with Career Strategy Lab.

And one thing you might be wondering is. How does career strategy work?

If everyone is following the same process, but one person has 10 years of experience and one person maybe has one year of experience or three or something like that. And one question we’re asked all the time is, how does this work if I, and then insert whatever unique thing might exist about you.

Like you have a lot of experience, you don’t have enough experience, you feel like there’s just all these unique things about you and you wonder how does this consistent process, really our sprint process [00:01:00] that we teach in career strategy, lab work, if you. Insert the blank, right? Insert the thing about you. but

Many Intro

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Sarah Doody: I wanna introduce Manny, who is from the Boston area manny has 10 plus years of experience.

General Q1

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Sarah Doody: but I wanna give you a chance to tell us a little bit more about you, what you do and where you’re at in your journey with Career Strategy Labs. So

Manny A1

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Sarah Doody: Manny, tell us about, tell us about you.

Manny Ikomi: Hi everyone. Happy to be here. My name is Manny Koy. If you were wondering how to pronounce my last name.

I’m a senior UX designer. I have five years of UX specific experience, but like Sarah said, I’ve also been a designer for 10 years. So the first half of my career was actually more so in graphic design, marketing and print land. Where I’m at in CSL right now is actually like towards the end mostly focusing on my portfolio.

If And actually today I just signed a job offer. I haven’t wrote about it yet, Sarah, but yeah, I signed a, I signed a job offer with Fidelity today, so, I’m doing great and happy to be here.

It’s a little [00:02:00] convenient that that happened on today, but even better for CSLI guess so.

Sarah Doody: It’s perfect. I, I got a little message from the team in Slack right before this call, ’cause I couldn’t make the q and a call today, but they were like, Manny, go hired. So yeah, we’re super excited for you. Excited Anna.

I know you probably have a lot to say about your experience in the interview process and, and all that stuff, but major, major congrats to you. It’s well deserved.

Manny Ikomi: Yeah, thanks everyone

General Q2

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Sarah Doody: I wanna switch gears a little bit and like rewind time and think about like, what was the state of affairs when it came to your job search and, or, you know, your career in general before you join Career Strategy Lab? Because just kind of to clarify some people join Career Strategy Lab, like proactively because they’re in a job search and they need help right now.

And other people join, they’re, they’re [00:03:00] happy in their job or they’re not actively looking for a job, but they join proactively to get stuff in order now so that if an opportunity came their way or if a layoff happened or something, they would be ready to go.

Manny A2

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Sarah Doody: So I’m curious maybe, Manny, what was happening in your world, in your career?

Or your job search before, you know, you joined Career Strategy Lab or when you came into the orbit of Career Strategy Lab, let’s say.

Manny Ikomi: Yeah, so for me it was actually prompted by layoffs, like you said. So I was laid off from the company that I had just started working for. I was only there for like six months, unfortunately.

And so they did layoffs in February. About half of my team went, including myself. And then I spent like about a month or so trying to navigate the job search, like by myself. I was, probably where a lot of you are right now, like maybe spinning the wheels on your resume and like your portfolio and trying to like, iterate on your materials and apply to jobs that you think are open [00:04:00] and maybe network with some folks.

And so it, for me, it just wasn’t really working the way that I expected. And also the, the job market has changed significantly since the last time I had to go through the hiring process. I was kind of getting stuck, spinning the wheels. And then I had met someone actually who joined CSL and I had done like a one-on-one coffee chat with them to like get a better sense for the program.

And then they kind of like were helpful in that decision of, of me deciding to eventually join in April. So I spent about a month and a half doing it by myself and then I joined in April. You know, now here we are. So, I think really what prompted it was just seeking structure and information about the job market and how hiring and recruiting works now that it’s been like almost four or five years since I’ve had to do that in a serious way.

So, yeah. Does that answer everything?

Sarah Doody: Yeah, it, it definitely uh, answers everything. And, and one thing that stuck with me is, you know, you said it had been four or [00:05:00] five years since you had been in a job search, and I think that’s such an important point to kind of pause on for a moment because what worked in, in getting hired, you know, four years ago, five years ago, 10 years ago, the hiring landscape is very different.

Not just because of volume of people, but also what people are looking for, et cetera. And we have to consider, the workflow of recruiters and hiring managers, right, in the same way that candidates feel, oh my gosh, there’s so much competition on the flip side, like the, the volume of people that recruiters and hiring managers have to deal with is a lot.

And so it’s really important that we as candidates are doing everything we can to help them also, which means communicating your skills and value and experience in your story as clearly as possible so they can quickly identify this is the person I need to bring [00:06:00] to the interview. So, yeah.

General Q3

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Sarah Doody: I’m, I I feel like we could keep talking for like three hours here. We don’t have three hours unfortunately. And we’ve, we’ve talked a lot about mindset and, and confidence and feel free to, to add more points to that.

But our next kind of official question, maybe we can talk about like, thinking back to your initial maybe. Four, six weeks in career strategy lab. Like what are some examples of tangible things you did that you really in hindsight, feel like were very impactful or very memorable or, you know, helped you feel more confident?

I’m not sure what, but of just switching from like mindset stuff to more, you came into CSL, there’s these five sprints.

Manny A3

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Sarah Doody: what stands out to you as you think back to kind of those initial sprints?

Manny Ikomi: Yeah, so I think for me, and when I talked to, when I talked to other people about the [00:07:00] program the thing that was most valuable for me, and maybe arguably most surprisingly, I think was the compass statement exercise, which is like the first thing that we’re supposed to do in the first sprint.

And I think for me, like what helped was I had like.

I had never, I’d always had a pretty good sense of direction. I think like in my career, like I’ve known, like the kind of work that I do like to do, the types of work that I don’t like to do how I like to organize with other teams and collaborate and stuff like that. But I never really actually put it into writing.

And I remember like very distinctly, like, I think you had reached out to me on like LinkedIn like way before I even signed up and I had like written to you this whole thing about how like, I wanna do this in the public sector, financial service, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you had said to me like it seems like you have really strong compass for like where you want to go and what you want to do.

And so what I came in to CSL actually did the compass statement exercise. I kind of just like took that and like ran with it. So I think the compass statement was arguably like one of the more valuable things I’ve gotten out of it. It’s a very versatile [00:08:00] piece of like writing in terms of like, it’s helps you answer like the tell me about yourself question in the interview.

I use it in my LinkedIn bio now. I’ll probably use it on my website moving forward. I’m gonna adapt it for my speaker bio when I do other speaking events like this and other things. So I think that was probably the most, the most helpful thing ’cause it kind of helps you articulate like who you are, where you’ve been and like what you wanna do next.

Hmm. Without feeling, and you can kind of like practice it without feeling like you’re also like speaking from a script either, like it’s very flexible and adaptable the way that it’s formatted. So it can be really short and concise, or it can be super lengthy like a bio. I think just the process of writing and going through the exercises just also helps you reflect on those three things too.

So that was, I think, arguably the most valuable thing that I got out of it, because then as you move into like the other sprints, what I started to notice is like you gain, you gain a lot of like momentum because the clarity is there. And so even [00:09:00] like my portfolio, like it was much easier to select projects that I did and not want to show based on the kind of work that I wanted to be doing next, and being able to articulate like specific stories within my case studies that align to the kind of work that I wanna be doing next or what I’ve done in the past.

So the compass statement kind of really sets you up, I think, with a lot of clarity. And then from there, like it kind of has a snowball effect on all the other exercises you do, like your resume as well. So that was probably the most, like the biggest mindset shift for me was actually putting down into writing and being able to like articulate beyond just like, oh yeah, I know which industries I wanna work in and what kind of work I wanna do and don’t do.

So.

Sarah Doody: I I I love that. At the beginning of that, you said, you know, unexpectedly, the compass sprint was kind of the most valuable. And we hear that so much. Like everyone, most people come in and want, I just want the resume, or I just want the portfolio sprint, or [00:10:00] I just need the job search sprint. Right. And they wanna like zoom, zoom ahead to that.

And we don’t force you, but we’re like, you’re gonna regret it if you don’t do the sprint one first, the compass sprint. And it’s, it’s all the reasons you just said Manny, because Yeah. Wi without it, you’re, you’re second guessing every decision. And, and like you said, when it came to selecting projects for your portfolio, it was kind of a matter of here’s the projects I could choose.

Here’s my compass statement. Compass statement is kind of a filter of what to do. And it made made a lot of those decisions much easier.

Manny Ikomi: Yeah, I would agree. I mean, I was definitely one of those, like the, the resume at first was what I wanted help with the most, where I was like, oh, I’m just gonna try and skip to the resume.

But I just kind of like went through the motions. like, I’ll just follow the structure and just see what happens. ’cause I mean, really this, I got to treat it as a full-time job, but I know not everybody gets to do that.

Mm-hmm. So, I just did it in the order and I think, like ultimately I would, I would do it again the same way for the same [00:11:00] reasons.

Sarah Doody: a great tip for anyone who finds themself in career strategy lab at some point.

General Q4

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Sarah Doody: All right, our last question, I think we’ll have time for, I, I think it would be great if we could hear just one piece of advice or wisdom or parting words I will leave it super open-ended.

Manny A4

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Sarah Doody: So, Manny, just like one sentence, what would you say to people as final last words here,

Manny Ikomi: I would say like, I think in hindsight, if I was to think of it, maybe not as like a regret, but like, I think if you’re someone who has a job, right? And you’re just kind of like figuring out what your next steps are and what you wanna do, don’t wait until you leave to do CSL.

You’re gonna have a much easier time going through CSL while you’re employed and have access to all the things you need to in terms of like putting together your portfolio resume, blah, blah, blah. That stuff. It’s like very, I think tactical there. you’re, kind of like me and you got laid off and you’re like, well, it’s too late I would say join sooner [00:12:00] rather than later. ‘Cause I think, one of the things that I was afraid of was getting to the point where like I would spend six months to a year trying to do this, spinning the wheels and start to lose confidence in like, my ability to get a role and do that stuff.

So, like, I think for me, doing it sooner rather than later was also helpful. And it also was the, the risk to me doing that financially was also less because I didn’t wait as long to to do it. So, if you’re still employed, I would say the advice is do it while you’re employed, while you have access to things, it’ll be much easier.

And if you’re like me and got laid off or not employed and are looking for roles, actively try and sign up sooner rather than later if you can, because you don’t wanna wait until it gets super risky to do it. Or you get so burnt out that you aren’t even able to maximize what CSL can offer to you too.

Sarah Doody: Mic drop. I think that was great. Great advice. Great honest advice too. So thank you Manny. And congrats again. We’re so excited for you.

Manny Ikomi: I appreciate it. I’m excited [00:13:00] too.

Sarah Doody: can’t wait to hear more.

Outro

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Sarah Doody: And you know, you, you also don’t just have the Career Strategy Lab team. You have our whole alumni community, which is 650 something or 70 something.

I don’t even know what. And so we, I didn’t set out to create a community, but I guess I am creating a UX community in addition to Career Strategy Lab because our alumni community is so powerful. And these relationships continue long after, long after people end their time in Career strategy lab. And some of them have started to hire each other, which is mind blowing to me.

All right. Manny, you so much for spending your afternoon a little bit with us. All right. all. Thanks for joining us. Have a good day and rest of your day, evening, morning, wherever you are in the world.

All right. Bye everyone. See you later.