36: How to be more confident with your career change

You need confidence to make a career change. Public speaking and confidence coach Sammie Walker Herrera  shares how you can be more confident with job interviewing, networking and negotiating.

In this episode of Career Switch Podcast,  we cover how to look and sound confident when answering some common interview questions in-person or virtually, how to ask people for their salary range without cringing, and how to use silence to get the upper hand when negotiating a job offer.  

As the founder of Speak Y'All, Sammie works with senior leaders at companies such as Amazon, Oracle, and Microsoft. And she coaches these executives on their impromptu speaking and interviewing skills to build confidence. 


Episode Highlights:

• How to be more confident verbally, vocally and visually 
• Look and sound confident when answering interview questions 
• Tell a story to show you can change careers
• STARR method for storytelling 
• Appear more confident virtually
• Improve eye contact
• Network with new people confidently
• Ask others for their salary range 
• Use silence to negotiate a job offer

Find Sammie Walker Herrera at:

Website: www.speakyall.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sammiemlwalker

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/speakyall/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/speakyall


Find Sammie's seminars at:
Latina Professionals LinkedIn Group: https://www.linkedin.com/company/latinaprofessionals

Music credit: TimMoor from Pixabay

Podcast info:
What's your career switch? What do you think about this episode and the show? Tell us at careerswitchpod.com. Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Transcript

Lixandra: Hi, everyone. I'm Lixandra Urresta, and this is Career Switch Podcast. This show is here to encourage you to take action with whatever career change you're considering or working on. Maybe you're trying to switch industries or professions or break out on your own and start a business. In some episodes, I talk to people who've made their own career switch, whether by choice or circumstance. They share the good, the bad, and the truth about their journey, including what worked for them and what didn't. In other episodes, I speak with experts who offer their best career advice on challenges that can come up during the process of making a career change. After all, it takes guts to switch things up, and it's not easy. However, it is possible. 

So, I hope you hear something in this episode, an idea, a suggestion, a piece of advice that'll spur you into action with your own career switch, whether it's taking that first bold step or trying something new. Welcome. I'm glad you're here. 

When making a career switch, you can have a top-notch resume and score plenty of interviews, but convincing a hiring manager that you can do the job in a new industry or profession, that's a whole other ballpark. That's where confidence comes in. My guest today is public speaking and confidence coach Sammie Walker-Herrera, founder of Speak Y'all. Sammie helps her clients build long-term confidence through personalized practice, expert feedback, and accountability. She works with senior leaders at companies such as Amazon, Oracle, and Microsoft. And she coaches these executives on their impromptu speaking and interviewing skills. 

Today, Sammie shares how you can be more confident with your career change when it comes to job interviewing, networking, and negotiating. We cover how to look and sound confident when answering some common interview questions, either in person or virtually, how to ask people you're networking with for their salary range without cringing, and how to use silence to get the upper hand when negotiating a job offer. 

Hi, Sammie, thanks for joining us today. Let's dive in. What do you do as a public speaking and confidence coach and who do you work with?

Sammie: What I do when I work with clients is we usually work one-on-one to really focus on the foundations of strong public speaking, which includes a lot of delivery, a lot of polishing that's really personalized. And so I mainly work with folks who are executives, folks at the vice president, CEO, CFO level, for example, to really build up their speaking confidence and their speaking skills because even folks at that higher level or folks aspiring to that higher level really do recognize that the block between them and higher levels of leadership is their communication skills. And not because they don't have the expertise on what to say, it's because they lack the confidence or they're not exactly sure how to really engage folks with their message in a concise and impactful way. And do you work with career changers? I also do work with career changers. So for example, I've seen folks make shifts from the nonprofit industry to the technology industry, from finance to entrepreneurship, as well, more in the operations, more in the project management side. So it's not even just an industry change, but it can often be that career role change as well.

Lixandra: Sammie, part of making a career change to another industry or profession, I think anyway, is convincing someone, like a recruiter or hiring manager, that you can use your skills to do the new job that you're switching to. You basically have to sell yourself, which takes confidence. So what's your advice when it comes to job interviews so you can come across more confident and are able to sell yourself?

Sammie: I teach impromptu speaking for the most part. However, when I'm coaching folks on interviews, we focus predominantly on preparation. That sense of how do you get prepared, both in feeling confident to speak out, but also what is your content? That content needs to be highly structured. It needs to have strong impact. And there needs to be strong evidence as well. So going back to what you said regarding career changes and that sense of persuasion, is the persuasion comes a lot in the content. and the transferable skills, highlighting specific stories of being in a different industry, without highlighting 100% that's a different industry, and highlighting how you can do that specific role in a new company, a new role, a new industry as well. The other part is the confident delivery. Do you sound like you believe what you're saying? that you absolutely can translate your operations experience in non-profit arts management to logistics and perhaps procurement at an organization that is hiring speakers, for example.

Lixandra: Okay, so it's a two-parter, telling the story and selling the story. It's much like when you tell a friend a story, right? You're giving them the details, but you're also getting into it. You can get animated, excited, so that your friend gets into the story too.

Sammie: Yes. And like you said, too, when we're telling stories to our friends and we know they're 100% true, our tonality is highlighting that confidence. But when we're still not 100% sure about our career change, our tonality can betray us and make it seem like we're not completely sure of ourselves and that we haven't even persuaded ourselves, which makes it very difficult to validate that experience to other folks.

Lixandra: So how can people sound more confident when they're telling their story?

Sammie: There is a tonality of confidence. One can practice sounding more and more confident. And like I tell everyone, I'm not teaching people how to lie. But remembering that you have, every person listening, has a very confident tonality, and practicing with things that they know 100% to be true, and practicing saying with that same tonality their interview answers regarding their career change.

Lixandra: And how does this apply to answering some common interview questions?

Sammie: One thing that is a very common interview question, the most common, and sometimes the most dreaded, because it's one of the first, and it's very general, is tell me about yourself. Oh, yeah. I dread that question, too. Yes. So with tell me about yourself, again, content is very important. Structure for answering that question is very important, especially for someone who hasn't interviewed for a while. Many folks who are toward that senior level or haven't career changed recently perhaps have been in the roles for a long time, so they haven't interviewed recently. And there are new or more updated ways to answer that question, new structures, ways to be impactful, ways to answer that question in a shorter time frame. But one of the most important things is sounding 100% confident about who you are, because that's exactly what you're telling folks. So practicing that multiple times with that confident tonality of a story that you perhaps told your family or told your friends recently.

Lixandra: Yeah, that question is so broad. And like you said, it's usually the first question, so it could even set the tone for the interview based on what you say. So yeah, whatever you say, you need to sound confident. Now, other career coaches we've had on the podcast have said that there's no need to say that you're changing careers. You can just dive into how you can do the job that you're applying for. Do you have any thoughts on that?

Sammie: I completely hear you, and I completely agree with the other career coaches that you've brought on to your podcast. It's making me think of a client I just worked with recently named Gia, who framed herself as, in her Tell Me About Yourself, when we were working together on interview coaching, as, I am a non-profit professional with experience in logistics and operations. The issue is Gia didn't want to work in non-profits anymore, but right from the bat was telling interviewers telling her network, telling folks that she was meeting at conferences, I'm a non-profit professional. That is both communicating to the world that that's the area that she quote-unquote should be in, but it's actually also subconsciously telling her that she can't move past that, that that's where she gained her experience. And perhaps instead of being, hey, this is where I gained my experience and now I'm shifting, the experience became her identity in the way that she was talking about it. So a simple reframe in her answer that I noticed really shot up her confidence was, I am a operations and logistics professional who has worked with many organizations such as nonprofits. Because she's worked with other organizations, she's had freelance experience, contract experience with big companies as well. And so really highlighting, who do you want to be now? It's not lying. She's absolutely a rockstar logistics and operations professional. She happened to build that rockstar experience at many nonprofit organizations, but that's not how she has to tell her story.

Lixandra: Another common interview question you brought up when we first spoke is what is your preferred leadership style? How can we answer that question more confidently?

Sammie: I always find questions that don't start with, tell me about a time, give me a story, describe an experience. These questions that don't start with asking for a story can be really tricky, because every single interview answer can be answered with a story. But if we're not given the directions to tell a story, oftentimes we forget to. And it's very easy to answer a question like, tell me about your leadership style, with generalities. And interviewers, recruiters, hiring managers, even future colleagues, they want to hear specific instances. A lot of job descriptions, they have the generalized tasks as well. So folks may move from a general philosophy, oh, well, my leadership philosophy is that everyone should get along and we should have a collaborative environment. That's hyper generalized. Slightly more specific, but still not specific enough, What I find for leadership that's important is regular one-on-one meetings with my staff. OK, well, that's in your job description. That's kind of expected. We want to get even more specific. Last Tuesday, three years ago, the most recent experience I can think of that really sums up my leadership philosophy is getting to that specific is important because we need to have the story to tell the evidence of what you believe and what your actions are as well.

Lixandra: So pretty much any question can be answered with a story.

Sammie: Yes. And so we want to answer the question directly and then go into, for example, the best example I can think of this. Very recently, I, in my last role where, makes it a lot more easy to dive into that story. And a lot of people, they know the star method, for example, for answering interview questions. And that is situation, task, action, result. And I like to add another R in there for relevance. And that relevance is, OK, well, they ask this question, what's the relevance to the organization? Well, based on this experience, this is how I translate it to this organization. Using that structure can be really helpful and build into the storytelling.

Lixandra: Now, we're recording this podcast episode on Zoom, and I see that you're giving me a lot of eye contact, Sammie. Are you looking at the camera or are you looking at me on screen?

Sammie: I am 100% looking directly at my HD 1080p Logitech webcam.

Lixandra: So at the camera? I'm actually training myself to look directly at the camera. It doesn't come naturally. My tendency is to look at the person on screen, but then they're not getting the eye contact. Since so many job interviews nowadays take place virtually, I'd assume that's another way to look confident is to look at the camera. Because if a job interview was in person, you would be giving the eye contact, or you should. So do you recommend that people look at the camera when they're interacting on video?

Sammie: Yeah, one thing I'll say overall is for some people, giving eye contact feels unnatural, no matter whether it's in person or on camera. And for some folks, they don't really want to build that skill. But for folks who do want to build that skill, who recognize, hey, I want to be giving more eye contact. For some folks, it's looking at the middle of someone's forehead, which can be really helpful. It's getting a sense of, OK, balancing eye contact between taking notes and looking at the person. And if it's a panel interview, looking at each person for a little bit of time. For connecting with folks virtually, I recommend folks look fully at the webcam. Because like you said, looking directly at the webcam simulates looking someone in the eye the most. Now, What I hear constantly or hear is the biggest objection to that is, well, if I'm not looking at the screen, I'm not looking at the interviewer, or I'm not looking at my audience, then how do I know if I'm speaking well? How do I know if I'm engaging my audience? How do I know if people like what I'm saying? How do I get that feedback in the moment? And what I tell people, and it's often considered unpopular, is it's more important to feel good about your speaking on your own without seeking validation in that moment. Because what I see more than not is that folks' attention moves around whether or not we're speaking very well. And so depending on people's reactions in the moment, via a Zoom call is actually not effective feedback and can often create a loop of feeling way too self-conscious about speaking as we go. So I think looking at the camera is a really great buffer to not worry as much about what people are thinking or how they look in the moment. And to also, as I said, simulate that eye contact as much as possible, because that makes the viewer feel a lot more comfortable.

Lixandra: How can we train ourselves to look at the camera? I've just been forcing myself, just practicing whenever I'm on Zoom. What techniques do you have to help us out with that?

Sammie: I want to share on your podcast two strategies for building up more of that eye contact when on Zoom. And that first one is, and I'll ask you, what happens to be your favorite color? Red. What I recommend you do is find red sticky notes. and place it above your webcam. That can be really helpful for just bringing your attention back. Because when we're building eye contact, just like any skill, it's about building the awareness and recognizing, OK, the gap between me using eye contact, OK, last time was 10 seconds. Now it's 5 seconds. Now it's 2 seconds. Now it's consistent. So the idea is building the awareness back to it. So for some folks, I recommend not only including a sticky note, but for some folks who feel like, I feel like I'm emotionless when I'm speaking, put a smiley face on it. For folks who speak really fast, write slow down. Trust me, I had a sticky note on my webcam for about two and a half years that said slow down on it to help me remember.

Lixandra: I have a sticky note with a happy face. I love the happy face. I keep it right next to the little black camera hole on my laptop.

Sammie: That's great. So that first one, it's for the sticky note. The second one, it's a Zoom technology. What you can do is you can turn off seeing other folks' Zoom boxes to where the only person that you could possibly see on the screen is yourself. And so it's a lot easier to look more at the camera. And you're not seeing people's feedback. It's easier to not be tempted to look at the screen to elicit more of a sense of what people's feedback are in the moment.

Lixandra: But I just thought of this. If you're doing a virtual job interview, right, wouldn't it be better to have the other person showing on screen so you can see their body language and how they're reacting to what you're saying?

Sammie: That can be helpful in some measures. So for some folks who it's very easy for them to switch their eye contact between the webcam, back down, back to the webcam, that can be very helpful. For someone who they're not looking at the webcam very often, and their perception about an employer or recruiter interviews body language is inherently in the negative side, oh my gosh, that person yawned. That means they're bored of me. Well, maybe your interview is at 8 in the morning and they woke up 20 minutes ago. If there's more of that sense of, if I'm watching and I'm expecting only negative reactions, that's where it can be negatively impactful. So there is the benefits of checking out that body language, but it can't come to the point where one is constantly evaluating themselves, then focusing on giving really strong answers.

Lixandra: Okay, let's move on to networking. Networking is also very important for career changing, yet it can be hard to reach out to new people and ask them to take the time to talk to us. How can we network more confidently?

Sammie: It can be very intimidating to reach out to folks cold, whether it's on LinkedIn or via email, and we don't really know too much about them, and they're not exactly sure what we're about, what our goal is, how we want to connect. So what we want to do is make it a lot easier for other people to say, Hey, I am interested in what that person wants to talk about. And so the easiest way to get started is to ask for introductions from your own network. If you have someone in your network and you're looking at folks that they know, perhaps they're in an industry that you're interested in connecting to. It can be a lot easier to connect with that person first. But then also ask them, hey, is there anyone that you think of that would be helpful for me to talk to after connecting with you? And you can even be even more proactive ahead of that and say, hey, I noticed that you know this person. Can you connect me to her? I would love to talk to her about this. And it makes it a lot easier for those warm introductions, not only for yourself, but for that other person to say, oh, this is based on trust. And so it's a lot easier to connect with that person. So I find starting with cold networking makes it really hard to build up that momentum and confidence. But connecting with our networks already to introduce us to people we don't yet know can be really helpful.

Lixandra: Networking can also be helpful when you're trying to find out the salary range for a new role in a new industry or at a company that you're targeting. But probably one of the hardest questions to ask someone who has that role is how much they make. How can we do that with confidence?

Sammie: Yeah, people tend to feel a bit guarded when it comes to sharing salary. One question that we can ask to folks that we're networking with, perhaps toward the end of the conversation, when we get more of a sense of the tone of the relationship, how the conversation has been going is, so for X role, whether it's their role or not, what do you think would be a reasonable salary range for someone with X experience? And so it can easily divorce ourselves from being that person and divorce them from feeling like, oh my gosh, I need to disclose my salary. They may know, they may not know, but getting a sense for multiple folks and kind of collecting those informal data points about different ranges can be helpful. We can actually also show our research and say, hey, I was looking on Glassdoor and I noticed for a role like this, the range tends to be this. Do you agree? And so now we're already bringing in the sense of I already prepared for this question. I'm not asking you to tell me your salary. And the question becomes more of a yes or no, and that person can decide to share more information about that or not.

Lixandra: OK, and another part of making a career switch where you have to be confident is negotiation. So once you get the job offer, how can we be more confident when negotiating the salary, pretty much the whole package?

Sammie: It's very important, even before getting towards the offer negotiation stage, to start getting more of a sense of what is not only the salary that makes sense within that industry or role, but what one's needs are as well. There are people who they hear what the offer is, it's way above than what they ever thought they could get. And so they accept on the spot, but they don't know what they might be leaving on the table in the sense of additional compensation, bonuses, stock options, vacation days. For some folks gaining an extra $10,000 a year, is fantastic. That's what they want. But for another person, having an extra five days of vacation days is worth that or more to them. So getting a whole comprehensive set of what can be the compensation package at an organization, what one is looking for, is very important.

Lixandra: Right. And knowing all that puts you in the driver's seat, so it does make you feel more confident. Something else you brought up, Sammie, when we first spoke was using silence when negotiating. Like when you counter their offer, one of the best things to do is to remain quiet. You said that shows confidence. Tell us about that.

Sammie: Remaining quiet or using strategic silence is a crucial negotiation strategy. And it's also a crucial strategy for public speaking. So the more that one builds their public speaking skills and being able to emotionally and mentally handle silence. no matter how uncomfortable it feels, it's easier to employ that in applied ways, such as in negotiation. Because it's easy to hear the advice, well, just make sure you stay silent. But then questions are like, well, how silent for how long? What should I say next? How do I know what's an awkward silence versus not an awkward silence? I don't want them to think that I'm not grateful. So when we talk about the idea of remaining silent, The idea is to have a neutral emotionality. that you're displaying, both vocally as well as visually, especially if you're on Zoom or you're in person. What I mean by that is if someone highlights what the offer is, including the full compensation, even if we want to negotiate it, if we perceive it to be way better than we expected, we'll show in our body, in our voice, immediately if we start speaking that, oh my gosh, this is amazing, thank you so much, which makes it hard to ask for more. because we're portraying that it's more than enough. So that silence there is to communicate, I'm thinking about it, I'm measuring it based on my research, perhaps I'm measuring it based on other offers I've gotten. It creates this uncertainty for the other person. to say, hey, well, if we're extending an offer to Alexandra, for example, and she's not immediately bubbling over with gratitude and praise and excitement, that means she's really thinking about it. So how do we make sure that we get the acceptance on this offer? And if that means she wants to negotiate and ask for more, well, now we're listening because we really want to make this deal happen. So having that silence and having that neutral emotionality And perhaps saying something like, thank you so much for sharing the conditions of this offer. I really appreciate being part of this interview process. And thinking about the offer here, I would like to request a conversation about how we can balance what your offer is based on my needs. Comes off professionally, comes off neutrally. So you would say that after a pause? Yes, one can say that after a pause. Now, for example, the pause probably shouldn't be like a minute, three minutes, five minutes, right? Pause can easily be five seconds, can be 10 seconds. Folks who are listening may hear that and think, well, that's not that very long. If someone's not used to silence, five seconds feels like forever. Additionally, if you're someone who gets really excited, it's very easy to get excited in half a second and share that excitement, that gratitude. So building up the stamina to hold that silence, to collect your thoughts, to take some deep breaths, to regulate the nervous system and highlight a very neutral and professional response is key.

Lixandra: Something you just said about voice reminds me of a friend who gets plenty of interviews, but she has yet to receive a job offer. I think it could be her voice, because I hear a quiver when she talks. Is this part of the tonality of confidence that you mentioned earlier?

Sammie: Yes. And so when I'm evaluating clients, and when I ask them to evaluate themselves as well, because I want them to learn how to coach themselves, so that when they're speaking, they know what to work on next, is that there is a verbal, a vocal, and a visual perspective. And so I look at all those measures to see what is helping someone come off more confident and what's impacting their confidence. Because for example, someone can have the most solid content and they can sound super confident, but I know that they're a bit nervous because they're doing this. And what I'm showing you is I'm intertwining my fingers and I'm like squeezing the blood out of my fingers as like a gesture. That is like what poker players call a tell. And it helps me get a sense of what are their tells that they're nervous. And for you, you recognize for that friend of yours, it's that vocal shake. And so what we would do is I would see, are there any other aspects to her speaking or the way that she's speaking? Like the content, again, the verbal and vocal as well and visual, that is betraying her confidence. Because what I hear time and time again with the folks that I work with is, I'm an expert, but I'm having trouble having people see me as that. I know I'm an expert. I know I have the content. I know I have something valuable to share, but I'm afraid that I'm not coming across as the expert that I know I am. And that's what I empower people to do is be able to truly communicate that in a way that helps them really rethink of themselves from I have a fear of public speaking to I can do this confidently.

Lixandra: So the three things to be aware of, which we've covered today, are verbal, vocal, and visual. OK, we covered a lot today with job interviews, networking, and negotiation. So thanks so much, Sammie. Tell us about your services and how listeners can find you.

Sammie: My services include a program called 25 Days to Confident Public Speaking, where we work together one-on-one to help you build not only a speaking practice, but a strong sense of confidence within the first week of working together. From that, you get consistent feedback and rapid-fire practice with me live one-on-one. I also host job interviewing success programs, storytelling program, and the ability to connect with me if you have a last-minute presentation, a last-minute interview coming up, and you know, hey, I need some pointers. I need some feedback as well. So anyone who's interested in connecting with me or working with me, you can find me at www.speakyall.com. You can also find me at most socials at speakyall, as well as on LinkedIn under my name, Sammie Walker Herrera.

Lixandra: You also do career seminars on LinkedIn. So tell us about those.

Sammie: Most recently, if you're listening, especially in the summer of 2023, I have been hosting free weekly seminars on public speaking confidence through the organization Latina Professionals. I've hosted different topics such as First Steps to Confident Public Speaking, Fake It Till You Make It, Is That Phrase Helpful, Effective Body Language, and Amplifying Your Voice. So if these are different topics that you're interested in, I really focus on those three Vs, like Alexandra and I have been talking about, the vocal, the verbal, and the visual, so that you feel like I'm building all the micro skills I need to become a confident and competent public speaker.

Lixandra: Thanks to Sammie Walker-Herrera for being our guest today. You can connect with Sammie at her website, speakyall.com, on LinkedIn, and on her social media. 

You can find links to the resources mentioned in this episode and more helpful information in the show notes and on our website, careerswitchpod.com. So what's your career switch? Are you motivated to take action after listening to this episode? Tell us at careerswitchpod.com. We'd love to know, along with any feedback you have about the show. Let us know too, if you'd like to be a guest. Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn at careerswitchpod. And please rate, review, and share with your friends and colleagues. It'll help get the show out there. Thanks for listening today. Till next time.