Your Misfit Identity & Your Career, with Steph Gillies

Episode Transcript

Julianna:

Hello and welcome to the Daring to Succeed podcast. I’m your host, Julianna Yau Yorgan, and I’m joined by Steph Gillies, a career story coach focused on helping people gain the confidence and strategy they need to land a career they love.

Having had 32 jobs in 15 years, she became really good at applying for and finding jobs. After being laid off from her nonprofit job in 2020, she started resume writing and career coaching. Over the past several years, she has written over a thousand resumes and coached hundreds of people through a career transition.

Now she focused on helping individuals embrace their misfit identity and land their dream job. Welcome to the podcast, Steph.

Steph:

Thanks so much for having me.

Julianna

Yeah, this is so exciting. So before we get into some of your misfit identity stuff that I’m really excited to get into, I asked the same question of all of my guests, which is, do you consider yourself more introverted, extroverted, or a bit of both?

Steph:

I’m definitely an introvert, but have extrovert qualities as well. But I definitely like in terms of where you get your energy from, it’s definitely from being alone. So I’m definitely an introvert on that. But I would say I’m like right in the middle, you know? Just a little bit on the introverted side.

Julianna:

Yeah. I do find a lot of people are a blend of both, but they kind of lead more towards where they get their energy from.

Steph:

Yeah, my husband is an extrovert and he’s like, he just like can’t imagine that I spend all day like working by myself and maybe having meetings with people here and there and he thinks it’s so strange. I love it, I love it.

Julianna:

Opposites do attract.

Steph:

Yeah.

Julianna

So you have me so curious about the concept of a misfit identity. Can you talk a little bit about that and how that works into your coaching?

Steph:

Yeah. So I work with a lot of people. I mean, over the years, I’ve noticed a lot of people who just really didn’t feel like they fit in to the corporate world or into whatever job they kind of landed into. So many of my clients kind of, you know, they, they went about their life, they fell into a job and then they just kind of stayed there because that was what was expected of them, that’s what they should be doing.

And so they got stuck in these jobs and they really weren’t doing what lit them up, what made them excited, what made them passionate.

And so really what embracing your misfit identity is, is really embracing what you want, instead of going into what your parents might have told you to do, what society tells us to do, is really taking the time to listen to ourselves and really decide what we want our life to look like, and then going after that in terms of a job or just a lifestyle.

It doesn’t even have to necessarily be your job, but creating a lifestyle that you’re really excited about, one that you don’t really need a vacation from.

Julianna:

That’s awesome. I think as introverts, some of us feel like misfits because we live in such an extroverted society where we’re expected to do certain things and want certain things.

Um, what would you say to our listeners out there who feel like they’re that odd person out in a world of talkers and extroverts?

Steph:

Mm hmm. I think that everyone, um, you know, brings something unique to a team.

And I think that when you can really like, even if you are introverted and work quiet, you have a superpower, whether that is like a lot of people that I work with who are introverts, you know, they, they’re really good at like thinking about things, you know, they like you know, everyone has a big meeting, everyone shares all the ideas, but the introvert takes it away, thinks about it, comes up with a great plan and brings it back to the team later, right?

So like whatever it is that your superpower is, is to really embrace that. So instead of focusing on like, you know, cause I was never a talker in meetings either. I hated that so much, but, um.

You know, instead of focusing on your lap, like, oh man, all these people are sharing their ideas in this meeting and I’m not able to do that. Like, I don’t know, what do I share? And getting all nervous and judging ourselves for it.

Instead, think about what your superpower is, right? Like taking that away, coming up with some really good ideas and then presenting it to the team later or presenting it just to your manager. Um, whatever that is to just make sure that you are tapping into what makes you different and what makes you unique. Because every team needs, you know, a diverse array of people.

And if everyone speaks at a meeting and everyone shares their millions of ideas, not nothing’s going to get done. So we need those people who are going to, you know, either get things done or, you know, think about things and come up with solutions.

I mean, I’m sure you can relate to this. How many meetings you’ve been in where everyone just talks, but no one actually like does anything about it. Then you leave the meeting and you’re like, well we know there were no action items. Yeah, there were no action items. Nothing happened.

So I was always that person. I was like, okay, those are all really great ideas. Now who’s gonna action on them and what are we gonna do about this? And the other people were all extroverts on the team and not one of them even thought of that.

They’re like, oh yeah, I guess we should sign. Fantastic. I’m like, yes, we should. So just keeping in mind that whatever your superpower is, is very valuable to the team and you don’t have to be just like the other people at work in order to make a difference.

Julianna:

Yeah, that’s such a great reminder. And I wonder too, because you talked a little bit about how you help people discover what they actually are passionate about doing.

How do you kind of link that with their skillset and the things that they’re good at?

Steph:

Yeah, well, typically the things that people are excited about generally are something that they already have a skill in or something that they’re knowledgeable about. And so, but they just might not always see it, you know, so I’ve worked with people who, you know, are like have a background that’s maybe not totally related to where they want to go.

I was talking to someone yesterday who works as an admin assistant, and she wants at a university and she wants to move into a career coaching position like an academic advising position at the university.

And she’s like, I know I’m really far off. And I was like, you’re not actually that far off. All the skills you used as the admin assistant are the same. You just need a little bit of that career education, which is taking a career development professional course right now. So I was like, I don’t actually think that you’re far off at all.

So I think a lot of the times it’s just seeing, having that third party perspective, look at your situation. I’m sure you’ve experienced that as well, is people just don’t always see what they have, right? They don’t notice the skills that they have. They don’t notice, you know, the things that they do every day. And they’re just like, Oh, that’s just normal for me.

But to someone else or a hiring manager in a position that you want to move into is going to see it differently. And so just helping them see from that third party perspective, the skills that they have, and then what they can use those skills for in the future. And that can be really, really insightful.

And I mean, I have my own coach who does that for me because we can’t always see our blind spots.

We all have blind spots about ourselves. And so when you have a coach that can really point those things out and help you to see, you know, what you can do and what your opportunities are, it can just open more doors that you didn’t even realize were there.

Julianna:

Yeah, absolutely. I think that third party view, whether it’s a coach or a mentor or just like a friend, can really help sometimes because especially as introverts, we get so much in our own heads that kind of psych ourselves out of things that we can actually do that we didn’t realize.

Steph:

Yeah, absolutely. I would relate to that.

Julianna:

You also talk a lot about goal setting, which I think is really key to driving your career in the right direction.

If we have listeners out there who are struggling a little bit with setting goals or trying to figure out what goal to set for themselves, what would you recommend that they do to kind of get some clarity?

Steph:

Mm hmm. Yeah, I think that the biggest, the first step in goal setting is to figure out kind of where you want to go. So I know people are like, Oh, you know, you listen to other people, they’re like, never set, you know, goals that are five years out, because you just don’t know what life is going to look like in five years.

But you still need to know that direction, right? Like you need to know where you’re going. It would be like if you’re planning a vacation, and you’re like, Oh, we’re just going to get in the car and drive.

Well, some people might think that’s fun. I don’t think that’s fun.

Julianna:

No, not me.

Steph:

But some people might think that’s fun. But also they would still have a direction in mind, whether they’re going north, south, east or west, they would know a direction. And so when I say, think about your longer-term goals, I’m not thinking like, okay, in five years, I wanna be a supervisor at this company, leading this number of people, that’s too specific.

I’m talking about a direction of your life. So maybe in five years you want to have a little more flexibility at work. Maybe you wanna be working from home. Maybe you want a certain financial stability so that you can have a little bit more freedom.

So kind of really looking at what you want your life to look like in five years. And then that’s where you kind of start your goals setting from. So like, let’s say you had a specific income in mind for five years from now, is how do you break that down into where you are now. So maybe now you’re making 30,000 less than that.

Okay, is it possible in your field to make more money? That’s a question you need to ask yourself. If not, then what other skills do you have that you can now look at in order to branch out into a different field? If it is possible, you need to move up into a leadership position.

What kind of courses could you take to get into those leadership positions? What kind of opportunities at work could you move into in order to show that you are interested in taking on more responsibility?

So really it is about thinking about those really long-term, like five years out, what you want your life to look like, and then breaking that down into small actionable steps that you can do today to help you move towards that goal.

Because then when you’re frustrated or if you’re taking a course or if you’re gonna go back to school and you’re just like, you know, I didn’t wanna go back to school in my 30s and now I’m going back to school, you remember why you’re doing it, right? Like the long-term goal of that, you know, financial freedom or that job that you really, really want or whatever it is that you want out there, that’s your reason.

That’s what’s going to anchor you to keep doing this every single day. And so that’s really what I found to be the most helpful is to know what that is and then keep that in mind as you get frustrated and as you want to not do this anymore or the workload gets too much and you’re like, I just want to give up. It’s a reminder that this is the reason that I’m doing that.

Julianna:

That’s a really great point because career development isn’t easy. If it was, everyone would be doing it. So I love how you laid that out with setting the right goals and long enough with enough flexibility to kind of keep yourself motivated and moving forward.

Steph:

And then not being afraid to take a break. Right? Like if you’re going through it, you’re like a year in and you’re like, man, I’ve just like, I’ve been working so hard. I’m really tired. Like it’s, it’s your life. You get to take a break if you want to take a break.

And you’re like, you know, I just need to take a few months off of whatever this career development thing that I was doing. Doesn’t mean that your long term goals aren’t going anywhere.

And you don’t need anyone guilting you into thinking, if you’re not working on it every single day, then it’s not gonna happen. Like we don’t need that guilt, right? If you know, if you want it to happen and you’re going to work towards it, then it will happen. It’s just a matter of, you know, timeframe, so.

Julianna:

Amazing. I can definitely see why your clients love working with you. Thank you. Well, you’ve shared so much with us in such a short period of time already, but do you have any resources or where can people find you if they want to learn more about what you do and the coaching that you do?

Steph:

Yeah, for sure. So on my website, Destination Dream Job I have a free resume template as well as

I don’t know if I have anything else that’s free. I think I took something off. I can’t remember. But anyways, I also share a lot of information on LinkedIn.

That’s where I hang out the most. And so a lot of my posts are really actionable. So that’s definitely somewhere where you can check it out.

Julianna:

Awesome. Well, I’ll be sure to have all of those links in the show notes for everyone. Before we wrap up, was there anything else you wanted to say to our introverted, perhaps a little bit misfit-y listeners out there?

Steph:

I think just embrace who you are, right? Instead of, I think like for myself and for a lot of my clients, we spend a lot of our lives wishing we could be something else, right? Try striving towards, be more extroverted or having more friends or doing whatever you notice other people doing and you wish you could do.

But really where the magic is, is when you just embrace who you are and step into that, then you’re really going to feel that confidence and you’re really going to feel that fulfillment in life.

Julianna:

That’s amazing. Thank you so much, Steph. Yeah, you’re welcome. Well, thanks everyone for listening, and we’ll see you next time.