Facebook: Carrie Zhou

Carrie Zhou grew up in various communities where she never felt like she was part of the majority. She took the non-traditional path, pivoting out of her career into a role in tech.

Today, Carrie is a Talent Acquisition Lead at Facebook, and in this episode, Carrie explains how to bring your authentic self to your professional life by having real conversations instead of feeling the need to say "the right answer." Also, Carrie talks about who is the best to reach out to when networking, and the answer may surprise you.

Show Notes & Transcript: http://vyten.us/high-carrie 

Join Vyten Insider (free forever): http://vyten.com/insider 

US or Canada? Text Vincent: +1 615-667-8433 

‍

Automated Transcript

‍

Editor's Note: We provide a transcript of each episode to make it easy to search and read. Since robots are not ready to take over the world yet, the artificial intelligence isn't perfect. There may be some typos in the automated transcript.

Carrie Zhou (00:01):
I remember really kind of pushing myself to stay in roles in a role that I frankly was not, was not happy. It was not motivated, was not, did not feel like I was, I belonged. And I stayed there because I felt like I needed to because I can't afford to start over again. I didn't get to express the creativity that they thought I would. I didn't get to. I didn't learn. I stopped learning things

Vincent Phamvan (00:30):
From Vyten Career Coaching. It's how I got here. A show about business leaders, their resilience, and the stories behind their career boobs. I'm Vincent Phamvan, and I've interviewed thousands of job candidates over the years in both recruiting and as a former corporate executive.

Now I'm on a mission to help you take the next step in your career. A corporate job opening attracts an average of 250 resumes and just one person is going to get hired. It wasn't all that long ago that I was nervous and frustrated by my job search, but it doesn't have to be this way.

You can navigate your career with confidence, spend every day learning and drive to better yourself. You can be excited about the future.

In today's episode, we meet Carrie Zhou, who is a recruiter for data engineers at Facebook, after she pivoted out of other industries into tech, growing up, Carrie and her family moved to a few different cities in a few different communities. And this ended up shaping who she became as an adult. After she grew up,

Growing Up As a Minority and Feeling Like She Had to Compensate

‍

Carrie Zhou (01:33):
I was born in Salem, Oregon. So the Pacific Northwest, my parents are both immigrants from China. And after leaving there, my dad actually followed his professor down to Reno, Nevada, which was very interesting. It's so strange when I tell people that my I'm from Reno or childhood's Reno.

It's a very I look back on that time, very fondly when I look back on that time, like, wow, that was, that was a very homogenous community that I lived in in that, like, there was hard, not a lot of minority representation in school. And so I think I remember being one of three Asian kids in my, in my class of like a hundred or 200 people.

And I remember that that felt a little isolating. And I remember I, I stayed in Reno until I was like around fifth grade and I always remembered feeling, just feeling different from the others and kind of recognizing that I wasn't necessarily a part of the majority community.

Carrie Zhou (02:35):
And I didn't really know what that meant. I think my parents had this, you know, I think it's just at the time, those types of neighborhoods where the safest and had the best schooling and following that kind of trend, we wound up in Roseville, California. So it was when I look back on my time as a child, I think it's like, it's hard not to think of my life also as a minority, as a first generation Chinese American and kind of feeling a little bit like whenever people would compliment me, it'd always be, it would always have the qualifier like, Oh yeah.

For an Asian, like, okay, you're good. You're good at sports. Or like, yeah. Yes. I, I real, I was like, it's so weird that like, that seems so trivial, right?

Like when I look back on that now, and like this, this feels like it shouldn't have any weight, but when I look back on that now, and I think about, you know, I think last year or two years ago, at this point we crazy rotations came out and it was this huge fanfare and just like kind of sigh of like, Oh, wow, this is what representation feels like.

Carrie Zhou (03:42):
I think it wasn't until then that I realized that those little things back when I was growing up, kind of influenced my way of thinking and thinking that I needed to compensate for not being a majority, you know, not being a part of the majority

Vincent Phamvan (03:56):
When she talks about feeling like you have to compensate feeling like you have to fit this mold of what other people want you to say of what the quote unquote right answer is. That's one of the biggest takeaways that I had from this episode with Carrie later on in this episode, she talks about how to have authentic conversations, where your personality actually shows through in your interactions with others.

This is the difference between talking to coworkers or potential coworkers and trying to put on a face of who you think you have to be in order to be successful in the professional world versus simply being who you actually are,

Carrie Zhou (04:41):
You know, carrying yourself with confidence and, and the way that you, and the way that you kind of articulate yourself is really important in any kind of setting. But it's also just speaking the language of your audience. And, and it's almost like, I think coming from someone historically, who has not spoken up in any meeting, because I felt like I was afraid of what to say.

I felt like if I didn't have something groundbreaking or philosophical to contribute, then I just shouldn't say anything. I think realizing that we're all kind of just figuring it out and no one has anything groundbreaking or interesting to say all the time.

And it's okay to just use that space to really, to really just kind of connect with people. And I think, you know, looking back on when I was applying for jobs, I actually applied to the UCLA career center a ton as well.

Carrie Zhou (05:40):
And I thought that I needed to go into every single interview with that same mentality of saying something groundbreaking saying something that is like so innovative that they can't say no, but what I've come to realize is it's more about how you, how you can kind of express who you are and your work ethic and your commitment and your dedication than it is necessarily about saying the magic phrase or like the buzz words that appeal to people, I think, unless there's true, like, unless there's true substance behind a philosophical statement that really doesn't get you too far, what I've come to realize, like I said, it's just that as long as you show up and you're authentic and you can truly demonstrate your work ethic, that that's most important rather than spending a ton of time, trying to curate a version of yourself that says all the right things.

Vincent Phamvan (06:36):
A lot of the advice that you hear in as you're going through a job search is for yourself. And I know for a long time, I was just like, well, what does that mean? Like, how do you actually be yourself?

Like, who else would I be? I am myself. So, you know, check I'm going to definitely do that in a job interview. And it wasn't until like years later after I had done phone screens for like a thousand people that I really understood that in some of those conversations, I got a sense of who the person was and what they're passionate about and how they are as a human being and others.

I didn't, the only thing that I knew was I was like, okay, yeah, this person can code and react. But other than that, I don't feel like I actually know who.

People Are Incredibly Good at Detecting Authenticity So Be Who You Are

Carrie Zhou (07:25):
Yeah. And I think that's one of the things actually. So I studied anthropology at UCLA. And one of the things that I just remember that as you were kind of sharing that anecdote is people are incredibly good at detecting authenticity. And, and as much as, you know, there, people can be fooled or deceived or things like that at the core. When you, when you talk to someone and you have a real conversation that that's tangible, and I think that's, what's important.

It's being, being genuine to that. And being true to that, as opposed to the blanket view yourself, you shouldn't be trying to curate yourself to belong in a role you should be looking for roles that belong to you. And it's, you know, I, I started off my career.

My first job was actually in Tokyo, Japan, which was amazing. I actually did find that, that opportunity through the career center somehow.

Carrie Zhou (08:23):
And I remember, you know, I didn't know what I wanted to do. I just knew that I, when I was in school, I wanted to travel abroad. I wanted to study abroad, but it was incredibly, it was incredibly expensive. And so it just didn't make sense for me to invest in that at the time as a student.

And so getting the opportunity to work internationally was really exciting. Plus I always remember people asked me why I chose Japanese as a language when I would never use it in America. And so, you know, definitely in handy with my first job, but I didn't know what to really what I wanted besides the fact that I wanted to travel.

And I had that classic millennial itch that needed to be scratched. And and then after that, when I realized, I think as things kind of got stressful and I realized that I was, I was kind of swimming in over my head in that I didn't really understand how to be a professional.

And I was one of 12 for the American branch of this company. And I was looking for advice, but no one could necessarily give it to me because of the language barrier. That's when I realized I kind of needed to start over.

Vincent Phamvan (09:33):
So tell me a little bit about, you know, you, you make an, when we fast forward this story, you made a pivot into tech. What were the things that led to that decision? What were some of the considerations? Was there a moment where do you remember like where you were at the moment that you decided that you wanted to make that move?

‍

Starting Over In Her Career Twice Within Seven Years

‍

Carrie Zhou (09:56):
Yeah, so I started over twice, I think in my, in my career so far. And I've only been a working professional for like seven, seven ish years now. And I remember there was always a stigma around, I mean, there still is. I work in recruiting, so I know this, but around job hoppers and people who kind of start over who kind of seem like they're aimless. And I remember really kind of pushing myself to stay in role in a role that I frankly was not, was not happy.

It was not motivated, was not, did not feel like I was, I belonged. And I stayed there because I felt like I needed to because I can't afford to start over again. And my second kind of, like I said, alluded to before, I kind of felt like I needed to start over after that job in Japan, I moved into commercial real estate after that

Carrie Zhou (10:53):
And, you know, felt the same exact feeling of feeling like this. Wasn't I didn't get to express the creativity that they thought I would, I didn't get to. I didn't learn. I stopped learning things. I think eventually it became a matter of maintaining and I felt like I was getting, I was starting to get stunted. And that's when I felt like I, I feel like I need to start over again.

And so my second star, my second wave of having to start over really was just quitting my job and not having one in line because I knew that if I rushed that decision, that I would probably do the exact same thing again, where I was running away from a bad situation and not running toward an opportunity because I think that's how I kind of wound up in commercial real estate in the first place was I had a job offer on the table and I was like, you know what, anything is better than the current environment I'm in.

Carrie Zhou (11:48):
So I'm just going to take the first offer. And I think it's I think people always say like, don't take the first offer, but at that time it's like, if you're running, if you realize, I would say, if you're running away from anything and that's the reason why you're choosing a career, then that's the wrong reason just to kind of gut check with yourself, like, be honest with yourself, is this the truth? Am I really running towards this opportunity?

And at that time I wasn't. And so I knew I needed to take some time off. So I quit my job again without having anything lined up. And it was also around a time when, you know, going through a lot of personal, personal changes. One of my really longterm relationships was, was falling apart. And it was just a lot of things happening at the same time that kind of forced me to break away from autopilot.

Carrie Zhou (12:41):
Cause I think up until that point, I kind of just made the decision that on paper seemed like the right move and seemed like an incrementally better situation than the last. And that's when I realized that it's not, I guess, like I had to really check with myself to say like, what do I actually like to doing? And even if it's not necessarily like my lifelong passion, like what do I enjoy doing? What am I good at?

And I remember talking to the, one of my friends from, you know, one of my former colleagues and he was telling me about, you know, about the tech world. And at that time it was, it was already pretty booming in the Bay area. And I was already set in the Bay area. So it was pretty saturated with it. But I think I, I avoided it under the guise of like, I felt like it was the thing that everyone wanted to do.

Carrie Zhou (13:30):
And I just didn't want to be a part of that. And I wanted to think that there was, I wanted to think that there was ways that I could contribute even outside of tech. So to start, I actually like actively avoided looking in tech and I started looking in education as a, as a sector. It wasn't until one of my friends really told me some of the projects that he was working on.

He's working in recruiting as well at the, at the time. And, and it wasn't until he started talking about the culture of work there and the types of conversations they had with each other, that I was like, wait a second. This is work like you, like you are talking about diversity and inclusion at work. Like you're talking about politics at work. Like these are all things coming out of commercial real estate and corporate Japan that were pretty taboo topics.

Carrie Zhou (14:17):
And, and the concept of bringing your whole self to work was like not really existed. And to hear someone really talk about that was really, was really exciting. And just something that I was like, you know what, maybe I'll give this a shot. And honestly, I, I kind of fell into recruiting because I just, I knew that kind of in relating to the career search that I was going through and networking and going through a ton of different meetup groups, trying to just meet people, messaging people on LinkedIn, to try and get a coffee chat and potentially a referral into a company.

I realized that, you know, there's a lot more people in that situation. And if I could be a part of their story to help them find a career, the way that my friend who was the recruiter at the time helped me that even though I have other passions and hobbies and things like that, that's something I could get good at and something that I would believe in.

Carrie Zhou (15:16):
And regardless of what industry I wanted, I knew at least that I wanted to be part of the recruiting org. Part of helping people find a career now, tech in and of itself kind of overlays into the story because, you know, it happened to be my first recruiting job, but it also was kind of the instigator, like hearing how people truly did value other's opinions. Like when I think about even working or working at Facebook during everything that's been happening around social injustice, my one-on-ones as a manager now are centered around having difficult conversations about race and justice and systemic systemic racism.

And when I look back at what my life would have been had I not come into this industry, I don't think, I think that a lot of those conversations would have been, well, this is work. And we want to, we want to make sure that we respect the workplace and, you know, dissociate anything outside of that.

Carrie Zhou (16:16):
And so to be in an industry that really values and says, no, we're gonna, like, we know that your personal life is part of your life, which ultimately in her intersects with your job, we want to give you space. And it's my, and it's actually my responsibility as a manager right now to give people a space to process and to have these conversations.

And so again, I think tech really started appealing to me because of that, because we can have these honest conversations because we can be transparent with each other. And we may not always say the right things, but at least there's a space to say him.

Vincent Phamvan (16:52):
It's kind of an incredible journey, just understanding and hearing your thought process behind those decisions. So as you narrowed in, on an industry and a function within that industry, how did you go about thinking through different companies and behind the scenes? Like, tell me about that process behind the scenes for what it looked like from your perspective on how to get into Facebook?

‍

The Biggest Mistakes Carrie Says to Avoid When Applying to Facebook

‍

Carrie Zhou (17:16):
Yeah, definitely. I mean, for me, I have a relatively unique situation getting into Facebook. It actually directly as a result of networking, but I actually followed my boss. This is my third company working with them. And so he was actually my boss at, at like Medallia, which was the first company tech company that I had, I had joined at the time.

But when I think about what companies to join obviously the mission is important and I think we can all agree on that, but I think what's also important is just how the people that you interact with show up to a conversation. So if they're like not just your interviewers, but also your recruiter.

Vincent Phamvan (17:58):
So over the course of the past time that you've been recruiting candidates at Facebook, tell me about as you've been recruiting candidates at Facebook, if somebody is early in that process, what advice would you give to them in terms of common mistakes to avoid?

Carrie Zhou (18:12):
Honestly, some of the most obvious ones are obviously around, under preparing. So every single conversation, even if it's a conversation with the recruiter, you should prepare for that. And I think some people make the mistake that the recruiter is just kind of there to push people along. Honestly, think of them as like a consultant. Yes, they are.

They are definitely there to push things along the process, make sure that you're prepared, but they're also kind of your, your partner, they're the ones navigating your conversation between the business and you, and making sure that there's clear and equal alignment there. And I think there's a lot of value in creating a strong partnership with your recruiter and making sure that those conversations, that those conversations have, you know, that you take advantage of those conversations if you will. And I also think that what I've seen a lot is when people, when people show up to an interview and they, and they try to come with all the right answers.

Carrie Zhou (19:15):
And I think I kind of alluded to this before kind of bringing your whole, bringing your authentic self is, is critical. But beyond that, I think for someone early on in the process, yes, like reaching out to people over LinkedIn is, is important and trying to create those connections is important. Although I will say as somebody who does work at a big tech company, I probably get a couple hundred of those messages all the time and that may not always get you to the right person.

And so trying to also just curate relationships within the business that you're interested in, not just a random recruiter who works for a company that you're interested in, I've gotten a lot of, you know, I try to make my LinkedIn profile very curated to the audience or to the business that I support. So my team is hiring data engineers.

Carrie Zhou (20:06):
So I try to make that pretty unequivocal. And that way people can kind of use me as a medium to connect with data engineering. But despite that, I still get a lot of things that are very unrelated to data engineering into the business that I support. So I wind up trying to, I wind up trying to sort through all of that, all of those messages as quickly as I possibly can, but I am one person.

And so as someone on the candidate side, making sure that you're doing your research into the company, into the, like, try to get to know the org, like the org that you are interested in, participating in and engaging with those folks directly is, is pretty critical. I would say I

Vincent Phamvan (20:44):
A lot of really good advice there. So I want to sure, a summarize for anybody who's listening. So what I heard was, you know, prepare for every single conversation, make sure that as you're talking to even recruiters, that you're not taking any conversation that you're having with anybody at the company for granted, and you're really putting the preparation and effort into all those conversations. Number two, I heard bringing your authentic self and not trying to put on like this face or this mask of what you think the company wants to hear, but rather bringing your actual self.

And then the third one that I heard was being really, really clear if you're reaching out cold to a company that you're doing the legwork to try to figure out the best person, which a lot of large companies, some people hire for sales and marketing roles, others hire for corporate SGNA, like finance roles and others hire for technical roles or for you specifically data engineering.

Vincent Phamvan (21:42):
And so with such a large recruiting team, I'd imagine you don't know everybody who does every, you know, every rec Facebook. And so, you know, doing your legwork on LinkedIn and really looking at profiles can, can help there. So I think one of the really exciting things about these large technology companies, especially in data engineering is the vast amount of data, which, you know, for somebody who is a data engineer, data scientist, it's like a dream come true to be able to have a data set where you can actually learn so many incredible things about the world. Tell me a little bit more about the types of roles that you're focusing on a Facebook.

The Role Carrie Focuses on at Facebook, How to Prepare and What They Look For

‍

Carrie Zhou (22:22):
Yeah, for sure. I mean, within data engineering, there's a whole lot of different subsets and organizations that roll up into that general pool of talent. So we try to, we're looking for people who are just generalist, great data engineers who have a core skillset. We don't, we don't necessarily force them to choose a team that they would support yet because we want them to have the choice to do so and to stack rink once they are here.

So there's, we do recruiting in a slightly different way than, than probably traditional recruiters, but outside of data engineering, I think what's really interesting is that we are pretty decentralized or technical organization. And what that means is for any product that you're familiar with on Facebook, there is an entire dedicated suite of software engineers, data engineers, researchers, analysts, data scientists who all work together to promote that, promote that product, or to make it a better experience for our users.

Vincent Phamvan (23:21):
You're talking about products because I know a lot of people are listening and they're like, well, I don't understand. Facebook is a product you're talking about newsfeed as a product groups, as a product pages, as a product, you know, where you can go shopping on Facebook, where I start selling almost everything in my house on Facebook now, marketplace as a product data engineering is a really neat area.

If somebody wants to get into data engineering, the future, what are the skills? What are the qualifications? What are the things that they should do to start working towards that in the future?

Carrie Zhou (23:53):
Definitely. So I would highly recommend actually checking out the book, Designing Data, Intensive Applications by Martin Kleppman. You can find it anywhere online, but it is. I've gotten a lot of feedback about this specific book that has been very helpful in, in basically helping data engineers understand the full life cycle of data in an ecosystem. And I think that's what it has been a huge differentiator for companies like Facebook.

And again, data engineering comes in a lot of different flavors depending on the industry that you work in and in tech and in Facebook and a lot of startups actually, you are owning the entire life cycle versus just being kind of like a centralized org where people send in a ticket or request, and then you run, you know, you code a pipeline and then send it back.

Some data engineering does work that way, but I would say a lot of, you know, a lot of the roles that we have at Facebook and also a lot of roles in other product focused companies really are looking for that skillset of being able to not only actually create the data pipelines. We, you know, I'm not sure like how familiar people will be with some of these concepts, but I would say ETL extract, transform load is a process in which we move data from, from one place to another to help perform.

Vincent Phamvan (25:16):
Okay. So you pick up this book, use this book as a starting point. What are the other things that you should know and focus on in terms of building your tool, your tool belt?

Carrie Zhou (25:27):
Yeah, absolutely. For, I mean, for data engineering specifically, I think some primary concepts that you should have a fundamental understanding and is obviously SQL structured query language because that is the language that almost all databases use and speak in being able to understand how to create optimized pipelines through ETL and having some like pretty strong competence in any object oriented programming language.

So I would say the most common would be like Python, Python, maybe Java Scala, or C-sharp, and being able to, you know, architect some data models and some elementary experience playing around with BI dashboards like Tableau Looker. Those are some common products that are out there, but just having fundamental understanding of data visualization.

Now those are all things that I think are important on the technical piece. But the one thing that is very Elissa we index pretty heavily on at Facebook is what we call product sense, which is basically the idea of being able to work on a product team and look at a product and ask the question, how can I make this a better experience for my users?

Carrie Zhou (26:42):
How can I make this a better product? How can I make it more successful? And then it's ultimately using that question and defining the metrics that would actually track that and would actually indicate or informed inform your team whether or not you're tracking on that goal of making the product better.

So when we think about a product like Facebook, like the actual application itself, or Instagram or WhatsApp, common, you know, metrics that people attract is daily, active users, monthly active users, that's a situation where you can look at the trend over time and say like, am I, you know, are we servicing our users in the way that, you know, are we seeing peaks and trends and why, why are we seeing some dips in activity versus, you know, high activity and others understanding that metric and being able to come up with the, with the metric itself in the first place and something that really differentiates a lot of the data engineers at Facebook versus, you know, any other company it's being able to identify our product, understanding what metrics are important to, to leverage in order to understand, am I making this product better? Am I making it a better experience for my users? Right?

How they Decide if an Engineer is a Fit at Facebook and The Important Task Only 40 Out of 500 Candidates Do

‍

Vincent Phamvan (27:52):
How do you go about screening candidates to be able to understand who has the interest aptitude ability, desire, passion, to be able to do that versus, you know, the traditional software engineer?

Carrie Zhou (28:06):
Yeah, absolutely. It's a great question. And I think, you know, we get a lot of people who come in through the door who are really competent coders and you know, they can code all day, but at the end of the day, as I mentioned, you know, alluded to earlier, our, our structure is decentralized in that we expect data engineers to have a seat at the table when it comes to determining like, how do we make our product better?

So when we look at, you know, the feature changes that have happened on Instagram over time or messenger rooms, which is currently being promoted quite a bit lately why did we create that? Like why did we create messenger rooms?

Well, our data engineers work hand in hand with our product managers and our data scientists to understand like what kinds of engagements are people having on our platform and how can we make them more meaningful? How can we serve them better? You know, are we seeing people click out of Facebook a lot for links to videos and things like that. So how can we incorporate video into our platform?

Vincent Phamvan (29:05):
So what's an example of a question that you would ask in an interview to understand if somebody has the aptitude to be able to succeed in this type of environment.

Carrie Zhou (29:15):
I think it's, if people can look at a or understand where to find important metrics for a company and how to influence those, that's, what's important. So a lot of what we actually do in preparing them for the inter their final interviews is we will tell folks to look at, you know, quarterly business reviews that are published online, have look at that, look at what metrics are important to the business to track and understand. And ultimately I think you know, there are a lot of hypothetical scenarios, but basically asking pretty point blank.

You know, if we have a product that is, that has this purpose, what, how would you define success? Like what metrics would you use to define that, that product success and granted for the confidentiality, obviously of the interview itself? I can't disclose like what exactly we ask, but I think having the, having the general concept or understanding of what a product's simple purposes, and then defining the metrics that will, that will help quantify success, even if it's not on the interview.

Carrie Zhou (30:24):
And I know every interview has like a preparation call for the most part, with a recruiter. Even if it's something that's not a question on the interview, try to come prepared with something that you think might be valuable for the company. So I always when I look back on my interview, I would always actually create a small little PowerPoint based on what I could find about the company that is public and Googleable.

So, you know, I would put together a presentation that would say something to the effect of like, well, this seems like, it seems like in a recruiting organization at a company I'll use bright edge as an example at a company like bright edge, about 250 employees globally, still budding company problems that you might be looking at, or potentially issues that you'll run into or challenges around scaling the talent. And so here are some of my proposals and some softwares and tools that are out there in the world that could potentially help you solve this issue.

Carrie Zhou (31:20):
Now, again, it was an assumption based on what I could find about bright edge as a company and what I could see about their company online, but just coming to the table with a quick proposal of like, Hey, you know, before this interview, I looked up your company, these are some really interesting things or projects or, you know, things in the news that I found about your company. And I thought I'd put together some of my thoughts and reactions to this.

Like even something as simple as that, that didn't take an incredibly long amount of time, but having something like that in your back pocket that you can reference is usually is pretty useful in that it demonstrates your willingness to look at a problem in a certain way and come to it with a potential solution. And at the end of the day, I think that that's what sets apart. Some folks over others is coming to the table with some, with a proposed solution.

Vincent Phamvan (32:12):
I think what's incredible is over the past 10 years, I think I've been a hiring manager for, I don't know, maybe 200 roles and I've been on an interview panel for, Oh my gosh, I don't even know how many interview panels I've been on, but I think out of five, let's call it 500 people. I think I've seen that maybe 30 times out of 500 people.

And you take a look at any of these roles if applying for a role, chances are, I mean, statistically on average, there's 250 people that apply for every role. I'm sure at a company like Facebook and the competitive companies, that number is going to be much higher. But if you're wondering what the top candidates are doing, it's extra effort. That really goes a long way. I mean, we're talking 40, 40 people out of 500 where I saw that. Yeah.

Carrie Zhou (33:02):
Ask them the question you think they should be asking you most and prepare for it. I think that's, that's, what's been really important in, you know, that's evolved my interview strategy personally, when I look for jobs, like I didn't start doing that until I think until I started interviewing in tech and it was only my second job in tech that I, that I started implementing that method where just understanding that at the end of the day, you're interviewing for your job because you want to help this company be a better company. Like if we're going to talk, like strip it down to the layman's terms, hopefully that's like what you wanted to do, because if you really, if you don't, if you really believe in the company, you want it to succeed, you want it to be a better company.

Vincent Phamvan (33:48):
You know, when I tied together, what you're saying, you know, you mentioned earlier recommending reaching out to the business instead of reaching out to the recruiter who might get hundreds of messages a day, like what an incredible way, where you could reach out to somebody who potentially by your future peer, they're not getting as many messages on LinkedIn and likely you can grab a conversation with them.

But like that, that context I can even see putting into this kind of mini project sure. Would give you both the public, what you can Google as well as a little bit of a slice of working on. I love it. I love it. It's great. Thanks so much for joining us today. Where can our listeners connect with you online?

Carrie Zhou (34:31):
So I am on LinkedIn. That's pretty much like my only public forum. So definitely, you know, shoot me a message. If you have, you know, want to chat a little bit more about finding a career and navigating, having to start over again and feeling like you have to pivot your career. I definitely resonate with that and I'm here to support however I can and give any helpful advice that

Vincent Phamvan (34:57):
Well, thanks again so much for joining us on today's episode. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening to the show this week. If this podcast was helpful to you, the best thing that you can do to support is please consider rating and reviewing the show on Apple podcasts.

This helps us help more people just like you move towards the life that they desire. Visit our podcasts on Apple podcasts, then score to the bottom, tap the rate with five stars and just leave a sentence or two about what you loved most about this episode.

You can subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts, or you can write at hello@vyten.com. I'm Vincent Phamvan, and you've been listening to how I got here.

‍

Links and Resources

‍

Designing Data, Intensive Applications by Martin Kleppman - BookShop (Supporting Local Business), Amazon