In this chat, Dan and Liz discuss what makes a company a great place to work. Sometimes the very structure of the company lends itself to becoming a potential great place to work. Next they talk about how job titles are often just creative suggestions and the real job is in the description -using skill and industry matching can often lead to a better fit.

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Iowa Emci Skills Assessment

Simon Sinek talks trust between Employer/Employee

All right. Good morning, Liz, guys and girls,

Eastern Iowa, how we doing another episode of careers and

coffee.

It's a great day in Cedar Rapids.

Another great day, summer day, it's hot. My

plants are dying in my yard. So I got to get some we need some

water. We need some rain. Hopefully it comes soon. But,

you know, it's summertime. What can I expect? Yeah. Well,

today, let's just go ahead and dive right into it. Let's talk

about what makes an employer a great place to work. Yeah. And,

and I know I've worked at, I think I'm on my seventh or so

employers since college. But, Liz, I want to know from you

what you think makes an employer a great place to work?

Yeah, I can't even count how many places...Okay, so

good places and bad places. I think the bad ones are easy to

pick out right? Like, trust, there's no trust. And there was

a great our leadership CEO sent around a training yesterday,

that was great from Simon Sinek about trust and how important

that is, in a workplace. If you don't, if you don't trust that

your employees are going to do their jobs, or vice versa. More

importantly, the employees don't trust that the managers are

going to follow through or feel like they're being watched, you

know, If there's just no trust between leadership and the

general workforce that a look at a company that is definitely

going to be a downer place to work. And one of the examples he

shared was like the same employee working two jobs. So he

was working at a coffee shop.

And was just like, the greatest employee at the coffee shop, was

super engaging, was great at his job and just was a joy to be

around. And then he said, you know, do you like your job, and

he's like, I love my job. And here's why. And then he told him

about his other job that he had, where he didn't love that job.

And it was like, he felt like the managers were always

watching him to make sure I always tried to catch him doing

something wrong, and just was not a positive work environment.

So trust. And that's difficult in the job interview, I think to

figure out what do you how do you think you would know that

you could trust an employer when you're interviewing with them?

Yeah, I mean, for me, that's a really good

question. I think I go back to it was probably much easier to

kind of get to know somebody and get to see their body language

before all this, you know, zoom, and everything when you could go

in and you can see the physical work location, you know, maybe

meet some other people that were in the office as well. But yeah,

I think, I think for me, it just comes back to do you, could you

see yourself getting along with those people? Like, Are those

your people? And do you feel some sort of like energy? When

you go to that location? Or when you're talking with those, you

know, somebody who's interviewing you, you're your

future boss, potentially? Are you inspired? Can you see

yourself maybe moving into their role someday? Do you like what

that company does? So I think, yeah, some of it comes back to

your own goal setting too, right. And we got some resources

for, you know, finding your skill set, which I know you want

to touch on. But I think kind of having a good idea of what you

want, beforehand is huge in determining like, if you're

going to enjoy that workplace, and if that employer is going to

be a good fit for you.

Yeah. Um, like, I think maybe one of those pointed

questions you could ask during the interview, like when they

say, you know, do you have any more questions, at the end, a

good question, maybe to ask, like, what's the expectation for

employees work? You know, how do you know, how do you hold

employees accountable? And a question like that could kind of

illustrate their management style, or like the company

management style of how they monitor work? That might be

helpful and understanding just like the process of, you know,

how do you know? How will I know I'm doing a good job, and how

will you know that I'm doing a good job? Because those are

gonna be questions you have that first day when you walk in. And

you're like, Ha, new job. What, what is expected of me? And

those other kind of good questions to ask in that

interview, especially if it's kind of a second round interview

and you feel like okay, I feel comfortable with these people.

Yeah. And then obviously, like, stay away from the obvious,

like, if they make wild claims, like you see around town right

now, like the signs like make $10,000 in two weeks, you know,

like, that is not legit.

A little bit of a red flag, if that's Call this

number and make $10,000 this week,

Right? Any red flags that you get - you should

pay attention to those red flags, because they're there for

a reason, and talk it over with another person say like, Hey,

what do you think about this? If you don't know what the location

is of the employer, that's a big one. Sure. Even if you're

working from home, you know, even if it's a remote position,

and probably especially if it's a remote position, you need to

know where is that company located? And where's their

corporate corporate office located? Is it legitimately a

company you can google company locations to see, you know, Is

this legit. And occasionally, we've gotten some posting on

Corridor Careers, which we've turned down because we're like,

because we check and see like, this is not a familiar company

to us. And it doesn't sound right. Anything that sounds even

anything that gives off like, just the feeling of like, I'm

not sure about this, we'd rather not post that job to our board.

Because job seekers are vulnerable. I mean, they're

looking for some kind of solution to their next career

path step. And sometimes, if it's too good to be true, it

probably is.

Yeah, there's, you should definitely be able to

find a little bit of company information, whether it's on

Google, you can see reviews on there, or on Facebook, I know,

I've done that, I think I was getting some flooring, or

carpeting put down in my old place that I lived in. I hadn't

really heard of this company before they were, you know, in,

in our area. And so they didn't have a website. So I got on

Facebook and look them up on there. I was like, okay, they

had some reviews on there. And they showed a few pictures. So I

was like, okay, like, you know, legit company. So there's a lot

of different ways to be research. Kind of circling back,

Liz, I want you, I know, you want to touch on a great

resource. And we've mentioned it before on the podcast. And

that's the owner resource for kind of figuring out your skills

and perhaps kind of what your tendencies are in the workplace,

and what might be a good fit. What do you have

a couple resources? Um, well, we'll link to this in

the show notes. But like, there's, if you're like, not

really finding a job title that appeals to you, I would suggest

that I had a conversation with a job seeker last Friday, where it

was like, really, a light bulb went off in my head of like,

Hey, this is hard. You know, like, I understand that. I don't

pay attention to job titles so much, I pay more attention to

categories. And the reason I do that is because there's so much

finagling that happens at the HR level of like, job titles will

change over time, or maybe they get souped up by somebody in the

managers team that thinks, Oh, well, we should call it this.

And sometimes your job title is changed. so that it can justify

a we can justify a different salary level or, or a different

a different work skill set, as companies change over time. And

so I, I wouldn't pay too much attention to the job title,

especially if it's funky. And it doesn't really make sense to

you, but pay attention to the category it's in. And there's a

career of resource called the emci assessment. And you can

take it either as a six question questionnaire that just give you

kind of like a brief overview of like, here's where you might,

these are the industries, you might be most suited to, what

you're going to also take the same assessment with a 60

question questionnaire, which is going to be much more in depth

and much more matched to your kind of preferences and skill

sets. And what it spits out at the end is kind of like a list

of here's some industries and maybe some job titles that you

should consider. And then you can take that information and

like, Okay, well, I'm really good at customer service. I

don't necessarily want to be on the phone every day, but I might

want to use those customer service skills because I'm

strong, they're strong, I have strong skills in Customer Care.

And so you might think about, okay, well, how else could I use

customer service, and admin and clerical jobs, always use that

skill set as well. Any kind of teamwork is definitely going to

use those kind of same communication skills. So you can

kind of just kind of move around using job titles or, or I mean,

categories, job categories, and industries to kind of understand

where you might make a good fit.

Yeah, I agree. And I think that's a super good

point about you know, finding that Job industry that kind of

makes sense to you. And I mean, even, you know, I've read some

books in the past that basically said, you know, especially if

you're just getting started in your career, get in to the

industry or like with the company, if you can, even if

it's at a very ground level, right, and you can work your way

into the job. I mean, most people don't have their dream

jobs, you know, fresh out of school. And sometimes not many,

many years after that either, right? But if you can get into

an industry and something that you're interested in, and grow

into, you know, that role that that you may want long term.

That's really, that's really a good way to go about it, I

think,

Yeah, I'm just kind of piggyback to like, what makes

a good company, you know, like a great place to work. Obviously,

benefits are going to be something that you care about,

you know, what, what kind of benefits does company offer

because it kind of clues you into what they find is

important. But the structure of the company is also important.

And I'm biased because I work in an ESOP, which is an employee

stock ownership plan, like an employee owned company. So I see

the value of what an ESOP has to offer. And there are more and

more companies that are transitioning to ESOP or some

level of shared employee ownership because they see that

value of sharing profits with their employees. And it's just a

little bit kind of a different style of company. And then, you

know, just a regular corporate or publicly owned company,

they're just going to have different priorities. So ESOP's

are something to look for, generally, a company that is an

ESOP will brag about it to no end. So it's not going to be a

mystery that their employee-owned, they're going to

tell you. Um, there's other companies called B Corp, which

like New Pi, New Pioneer Coop, I think, is on the road to

becoming a B Corp. And there's some really stringent policies

to become a B Corp has everything to do with, you know,

how they treat their employees to sustainability. And so

there's some kind of like ecological ties with B corps and

things like that. It's a very interesting type of company to

work for as well. And then sometimes, it's helpful just to

kind of understand that you kind of read into a company a little

bit, sometimes in their job descriptions, when they talk

about what it's like to work at their company. It will clue you

in as to whether or not might be a good place to work. Most of

the companies that I would say all the companies that post to

Corridor Careers have a leg up because they're, you know,

they're really interested in hiring local employees. And

that's why they're posting to our job board. So I think all

the employees, employers that post on our board are worth

looking at.

Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, they're,

they're obviously looking to hire for a reason, right? They

have more business. They're good companies, right? Like, that's a

lot of the reasons why our local businesses here need need good

employees, because they're good businesses themselves. So any

parting words,

I would just say look beyond the job description.

So you know, if, like, for instance, there are some jobs on

our board that might be like, there was one that was like a

friend's 'Friends Ambassador' or some kind of a little bit

different type of job title, not quite sure what that means. So

be curious about some of those jobs that are a little bit

different. Read into the job description, and you'll just

scan through, you'll get a sense in the first paragraph. Okay,

this might be for me, that particular job was all about

coordinating a travel group, you know, and so you wouldn't think

ambassador and friends would be, you know, I would title that job

probably differently if it was me, but look beyond some of

those job titles because you might find a really cool job

that's going to match your skillset and be really

rewarding.

Cool, all right. Good stuff was all right that's

gonna do it for us. careers and coffee.

We'll see you next time, guys. Thank you.