#TBCResults: From customer service for an online game to marketing communications for a NGO in 2 months
#TBCResults - 052 - Regi: From customer service for an online game to marketing communications for a NGO in 2 months
Regi’s Problem:
“I want to establish clarity with what I want in the future (career wise)."
“I think the biggest hurdle I'm trying to overcome is the constant rejection I've been receiving. How do we move on or recover from that?” - Regi’s initial questions from Oct 2024
From our first meeting, Regi was everywhere. He had a lot of thoughts, fears, and problems and wasn't sure where to start or what his end goal really was.
He just knew that he didn't like the situation he was in anymore. Asking him to explain what his root problem was and why we were both here took a while and so I ended up taking over from him.
After 7ish minutes of asking questions on the whole situation, I assessed his real problem.
“He took his current job (customer service agent for an online mobile game) thinking it was temporary until he went to law school. But was now rethinking law school and maybe continuing in corporate.
Problem is, this job was a dead end. No matter how good he gets at it, he won’t get promoted or moved to another position. ”
He knew he wanted to get out of this situation but didn't know how or what to do next. That's when we met.
The Bumpy Career’s Proposed Solution:
We had to look back at his past skills from college and the vague ideas of what he wanted to do next. Then have a hard discussion on what's his prospects considering his lack of up to date skills, both technical and soft skills wise. I gave him a broad idea of what he could do and what are his chances if he improved his resume and interview skills rapidly.
Of course it was hard for him to digest in the beginning, but Regi committed. He wanted to move his life forward and to live up to the high expectations he had for himself.
His goal was to get a job that aligned better with what he thought of himself and of his future skills. My goal was for him to get a job that pushed him to solve new types of problems, meet and collaborate with new people, and get him outside of his head.
Small obstacle we had to work around:
I had a 2 week holiday from Nov 22 to Dec 8. (Seoul with my mom + my partner for my birthday!! I refuse to do work when I could be spending time with my parents. I didn't leave the Philippines to keep up Filipino work habits.)
So Regi had to be done and ready with everything way before then. That gave him a little under 4 weeks to do all the pre-work needed before actually applying to jobs.
Our Timeline and Work Done:
Across 3 weeks, we had 2 1-hour calls and back-and-forth texting to check his progress as we:
Homework from our first call alone
Redid his entire resume and how he presented his past work, especially as a customer service agent
Built his first ever portfolio, primarily so there's 1 place where he can highlight his skills in research and in creatives together
Built a job hunting tracker that made his ideal roles super clear to us both, and what were his major skill gaps to reaching them
Revised his LinkedIn fully
Interview practice
Aligned on realistic salary expectations; I decided that negotiation skills wasn't a priority compared to actually landing something that paid the same but provided better skills and experiences
!! Most important !! Worked a lot on his mindset as he had a defeatist, "woe is me, I am a victim compared to everyone else" mindset that we had to chip away
At some point, he also quit his job so that he could focus on getting ready for this new life.
I don't always recommend that; you have to be the type of person who does well with external pressure, like not having enough money for your daily needs. Some people end up shutting down from the financial pressure more. Regi was able to fuel himself using this pressure, so props to him.
The Outcome:
Everything done and approved, I left him 1 major task before my 2 week holiday: apply to as much as possible and see where it goes. We would review the outcomes when I get back.
The day I got back, I followed up to see what's his progress. And Regi told me he landed a new job handling marketing communications for a NGO who wanted to hire him immediately after his interview.
A pleasant surprise on my end, seeing him move fast to get past his fears and throw himself into a better future.
Even better, his new workplace trusted him to go on field work and business trips right away. He was already networking with all sorts of senior people in the field, and was feeling overwhelmed but happy. Much happier than any point in our earlier discussions tbh.
He better understood why I had set such a specific goal for him and how it was going to affect the next stage of his life.
We did a last 1 hour call to talk through what does the next 12 months look like for him - what are skills he needs to focus on building, what are habits he needs to keep and break, and most of all, what are the signs of his defeatist mindset coming back.
I don't know what else the future holds for him, but I am confident that a year from when we first met, Regi is going to be much better off thanks to all the work we did in < 2 months.
Some words from Regi himself:
So if you're stuck in a job and you don't know how to get out of it, reach out and let's see what we can do to get you out of there~
***
The Bumpy Career is the career coach for the confused high achiever.
Meaning you're the type of person that if you know where to go and what you had to do, you'd be number 1 in an instant. But you're a bit confused today on exactly that: where to go and what to do.
That's where I come in.
We'll work together to give you a actionable roadmap to make your career live up to your expectations. If that sounds great to you, then book a call here and let's talk soon~