Juliette Boone is the managing director and co-founder of an executive recruiting firm. In this episode, Juliette shares her advice for those looking to advance their careers. She also gives pointers for drafting a resume, the importance of LinkedIn, and how other social media channels may play a role in hiring decisions. Juliette also talks about interview preparation strategies and her advice to candidates and hiring managers in the hospitality industry.
Juliette Boone is the managing director and co-founder of an executive recruiting firm. In this episode, Juliette shares her advice for those looking to advance their careers. She also gives pointers for drafting a resume, the importance of LinkedIn, and how other social media channels may play a role in hiring decisions. Juliette also talks about interview preparation strategies and her advice to candidates and hiring managers in the hospitality industry.
I am Rachel Humphrey on behalf of D e I advisors, and our mission is empowering personal success, and I am incredibly excited for our guests today who is going to give us some incredibly practical advice on helping others to empower their own personal success. So welcome Juliette Boone, managing director and co-founder of Ethos Consulting Group.
Juliette Boone:Thank you, Rachel. It's great to be here.
Rachel Humphrey:Juliette, we're gonna spend about 30 minutes together today. We wanna jump right in cause I know you have a tremendous amount of knowledge to share. If I'm correct, you started out your personal journey in the hospitality industry working in a resort, and most recently are the managing director and co-founder of Ethos Consulting Group. Share with us a little bit about yourself and your path to leadership.
Juliette Boone:What got me to the resort, Rachel, is I credit my grandfather, my French grandfather, and I think I got his d n a in terms of a love for food and cooking from a very young age. It was something that I always did growing up. I worked in catering business all through middle school, high school and college. And while I didn't study hospitality as an undergraduate, It was always with me. And when I graduated we were in a recession. It was the Gulf War was going on and I ended up being able to get a job in the hospitality industry after trying some few short internships. And I really enjoyed it and after some time at a resort in their culinary department, cuz I was really fascinated with that. I got a job in catering sales. and with a company called Sodexo. And I've really enjoyed my time there and said, I think I need to go formalize my education in business and hospitality so that I can really pursue a path because this is what I've, I'm really enjoying doing. So I went to graduate school and after that got a great I would say a dream job with Aramark Corporation. Working in their concept development group, creating restaurant concepts for their different dining operations around the country. I spent several years doing that. Loved that. I had a short period where I taught at the University of Denver in their hospitality school for one of my former professors. My parents were both college professors and I felt like it was something I had to try because they were so passionate about it. Checked that box and realized I love these young people, but this is not for me, And then I joined a company called hvs, which I had interned with when I was in graduate school. And I wore multiple hats in that company trying out different consulting practice areas and ultimately ended in the executive search practice, which was really a culmination of a lot of the things that I loved about the different experiences I had previously. And in 2013 I left that organization. Several of my colleagues left at the same time, and we started a company called Ethos Consulting Group which is about nine years ago, focused on the hospitality industry in our practice areas. Human capital consulting, executive search, psychometric testing and assessment, some performance management and advisory work and compensation consulting. and that's what I'm doing today and I love it.
Rachel Humphrey:I love how your path has really woven through a lot of different areas and as you said, really culminated in the role that you have now giving you an incredible. Diversity of background and information to be able to perform In your current role, you mentioned you help client companies hire key executives into their organization looking to you to share some ex advice from your experiences to help those listen and really maximize their chances of advancing their careers to the next level. Nothing particular. Just if you would share with us. you're seeing what you love to share with others who would come to you really for guidance and advice.
Juliette Boone:Yeah, and I get that question a lot. How do I get from where I am today into these more senior roles? And the best advice I have is difficult advice to hear, which is it requires someone to get out of their comfort zone. And it's, it feels very unnatural sometimes to. Not so much to look around, but to see, look for others who you might aspire to be like, or who are in roles that you aspire to be jumping into at some point in your career. And then seek out those individuals that's the uncomfortable part and ask them if they'd be open to sharing some advice. Could they tell you, could they tell you a little bit about the path that they took to get where they are today? What advice do they have to you? About how you might advance your career or what steps, what do they wish they had done that they didn't do? What was great advice that they got along the way? What were some of the mistakes that they made and what were the, some of the things they wish they had done differently? What did they learn? People are generous about giving their advice most of the time. And I would say this is a form of networking. People don't realize that they're doing it, but that it is really what networking is. It's building relationships. And one of the ways that you can do that's quite easy is asking for advice, especially from people that you wanna be like, that admire. I would say as it relates to networking, it's something that should be mutually beneficial, and a lot of people think that networking has a negative or transactional connotation to it. the word itself can feel that way. I see this in a lot of young people. They don't like the idea of networking, but really it's more about relationship building and learning. If you shift your mindset into advice is shift your mindset about what networking really is. It's seeking advice. It's learning, and it should be mutually beneficial. And what do I mean by that? I help a lot or I network with a lot of young people and they'll say if I'm networking or I give them the advice that they should start networking. We talk about how to do it, how do I help someone who is more senior than I am in a more powerful position when I'm just a college student or I'm just a couple years out of my career? And I think the answer to that is pretty simple, is you make sure you follow up with that person if they've shared your advice. Yeah, their advice with. Follow up and say, Hey, that was great advice. And then follow up again and say, Hey, I wanted to let you know I tried this out and it really worked well for me. I'd love to talk with you about something else, or I'm just thinking about you, and I really appreciate that time that you spent with me and stay in touch with that person. Because I would say from my standpoint, hearing back from a student that I've supported in a networking capacity, some advice or connection that I made for them was super helpful to them. Is all the reward that I need to get mutual benefit from a networking relationship with someone like that. So thinking about it that way would be the advice that I would give to someone.
Rachel Humphrey:And I think that's fantastic. I love the idea of the mutuality being just in the recognition and appreciation. Both to show that the time was valuable for the person that you asked, but also then they know those pieces as they're passing them on to others may also have some value. You touched on networking, which is so incredibly important and it, I learned Maybe a little bumpier in my career that everybody networks differently. Everybody builds relationships differently. And so finding what worked for me might be very different from what worked for you. But it is putting yourself outside of your comfort zone. I'm not someone who's gonna walk into a room of people I don't know and start working the room, and somebody else may do that very successfully. So I love that advice for sure. In turning to some of the specific aspects of the search process, We've heard many times that women think they need to check every box to think that they should be considered for an opportunity while men maybe not quite as many of those boxes. Do you encounter that? Is that a myth? And if you do encounter that, what do you tell women, especially in response?
Juliette Boone:Yes I love that I think there's probably some actual data behind and some statistical information behind that. But I, and I will tell you my, for my anecdotal experience, and this is confirmed with other leaders across various industries that a woman or a man typically, if. If he checks 60% of the boxes the items in a job description, he feels that he's qualified enough to apply for the job. Most women feel that they need to check a hundred percent. That's pretty consistent across many people that I talk with. And I, and it's what I see in my own practice. So for women what I often tell them is, you're not in. a hundred percent only matters when you're in school. And a lot of women there are more women in col enrolled in college than men right now, and women tend to get better grades and they're very focused on getting a hundred percent, getting those A's. And when you put your head down at school and you do great work, you get an a in business. If in the workplace you can't just put your head down and get recognition, you have to advocate for yourself and you have to. Point out what your successes are. You can do it in a way that's still humble and you can do it in a way that one, one great way to do it is to share point out the success of others on your team that have maybe supported you in achieving success, because that demonstrates leadership in terms of giving credit to others. But humility that you're willing to share success with a team and it builds loyalty. Obviously it has to be genuine and true but but I, that's the advice that I give is we're not in school. And here's another thing. People don't always give credit to their non-paid work as experiences that have some kind of value to. So if you're a parent and you're managing, you're working full-time, but you're managing your kids' sports team as a team parent. Or if you're volunteering in a community role as a leader or a board member or an advisory member or some other capacity, or if you're caring for others in your neighborhood whether it's an elderly neighbor or an elderly parent, those are all. That have value, even though they may not, we may not societally place any economic value on them, but they have merit and they are skills that are transferrable. So don't discount the other skills that you've developed and figure out a way to showcase those.
Rachel Humphrey:I love that. I think both the idea of advocating for yourself critically important but also I think we tend to. Downplay that world, and I know I see it a lot in colleagues or others that come to me where they might say their description of what they do is based on their title. And I would say what about your strategic planning? What about your managing your team? What about your crafting communications relating to what you're working on? But it. They have a very narrow view of what that skillset is until they're really forced to sit down and look at more of it. So I think that's great. I wanna talk a little bit now again about some of the specifics. So here we are in 2022 the resume, the cover letter, the bio. Do we still all use all of those in the recruiting process? What are the biggest dos and don'ts when it comes to this area?
Juliette Boone:Because of the search practice that I'm in, we're a retained executive search firm. So my colleagues and I typically don't ask for cover letters or bios. We're recruiting passive candidates rather than active candidates who are out there seeking jobs on their own volition. So we don't, I don't particularly use those. And I would say, resumes definitely If someone is going to create a cover letter, they should be very intentional about it in terms of making it custom, customized to the role to the company. Really craft. Its to show that you've done your homework in researching the organization and what the role is and why you're excited about it. Some hiring managers read the cover letters, others don't. you never know what you're gonna get. So if you're gonna do it. Make sure it's free of errors. I have seen people co copy and paste where they just you know, plug and play for different jobs and they leave in old company names and things like that. And that's just a terrible mistake you don't want to make. I would say most people know this, but it's worth saying, make it very customized. And bios are nice to have. It depends on really on the role. Dos and don'ts as it relates to resumes. Sometimes I see four page resumes and I'll go back to the person and say, I need this to be two pages but I've been working for 25 or 30 years. I know. But it doesn't need, you will lose people's attention. So I would say that's a big don't, and said do trim your resume down to two pages. Sometimes. people will have short stints at various jobs or it looks like that. So I prefer the reverse chronological format to a resume where you're starting out with your most recent experience. And it may look like you've spent two years in your current job, two years at the last job, two years, et cetera. For the past eight years you've been at four different companies. And you that may be the case, however. It may be that your company was acquired or changed names, or your leadership team transformed or went to another organization. So what I advise people to do is to make sure you write a little transitional sentence from one role to the next, explaining what led you from one place to the next. And that shows the continuity that really you're part of the same organiz organization for eight years and. for organizations across eight years. So that's another piece of that's a nitpicky thing that I have. And I always walk people through that when they send me their resume so that I understand it. But I would say be careful to highlight your achievements. When I look at a resume, I'm looking for, what was your title? What was your company, what was your tenure, and what were your accomplishments? And accomplishments can include, the size of the team that you over saw how big it was, who you reported to, what your financial achievements were, or the scope of your responsibilities. Those things should be highlighted. Make it succinct and easy to read. And also recognize that there's a lot of software out there now that uses optical character recognition, pulling keywords out of a resume. So make sure your keywords are in there to highlight the kind of experience that you want to. Make sure it's getting picked up by the software. Wow, that's great advice.
Rachel Humphrey:Thinking about LinkedIn a little bit, I have heard recently the critical importance of LinkedIn in the recruiting process. I've heard consistency with resumes having a point of view in what you're engaging with serving as a lead for recruiters. How important do you find LinkedIn in your process and how do you recommend that people maximize their use of the LinkedIn tool?
Juliette Boone:I would say I, I've been a LinkedIn user since 2007, which is hard to believe 15 years ago, and not many people were on it. When I first started, it was a novelty, but now I, it's gotten critical mass. It's pretty ubiquitous, and I would say many of my clients use it as a first point of research on an individual. It's easy to just Google somebody's name and pull up their LinkedIn profile. You can get that faster than you can get a resume sent over via email. So it's critically important. It's your professional brand and I would say it should be comprehensive. It should mirror your resume. It should. Be highlighted with keywords because a lot of people do keyword searches, especially some recruiting companies do that or in-house recruiting. Teams will use keyword searches to try to find, pinpoint different skills or geographic locations or titles when they're searching for people actively on the internet. So that's important. Your photograph should be professional. So that again, you're representing yourself well and it should be comprehensive. I would say steer clear of key ta like a hot button issues like, your, maybe your political persuasions or your religious persuasions or just commenting on things like that, because those are, those can be a little volatile and you really wanna keep it neutral and professional. Keep that stuff off of there.
Rachel Humphrey:And then what about other social media channels? Good, bad,
Juliette Boone:dos, don'ts, Oh, social media. I love to talk about. Yeah, so social media despite this idea that it's private it actually isn't private. As private as people think it is, and I have seen. Clients search for people's social media profiles, not just their LinkedIn, but all social media profiles to try to see how somebody's representing themselves on the internet. It's, if you put it out there in a digital format, it is never going to be private, a hundred percent guaranteed. So I would say be very careful. Yeah. I have seen people's careers taken down by, unfortunate posts on some social media platforms, and I have seen my own clients turn people down because of what they've seen on other social media posts, not LinkedIn, other social media. So I'm very cautious when it comes to that and I counsel my own family members to be very careful about what they put out into the digital sphere because it is p.
Rachel Humphrey:It is, it's good advice and it's a changing world. I know when we all entered the workforce, that was not as much a consideration. I can't tell you how many C-suite executives I hearsay. If social media existed when I was in college, I would not be where I am today. And definitely something to think about. Aside from just the resume the cover letter, the use of linked. you have a lot of involvement in interviewing candidates, being the first line for your companies that you're working for, how can candidates prepare for the calls, let's say with the recruiter
Juliette Boone:first? If they're calling a recruiter, so there's two, two reasons why you might be talking to a recruiter. One is, You're soliciting the help of a recruiter to get on their radar screen because you're looking for something new. And I would say if you're in that position, be mindful of the recruiter's time because they get tons of solicitations to connect with them and they can't really spend an hour going over your career history if, especially if they don't have a particular role that would, that they're searching for. But give them a few bullet points about your career experience and. follow up with them, but keep it to a 10 minute conversation at most. If a recruiter's wanting to talk with you about a specific role, I would do your homework as much as you can about the company and in advance of the call the organization, the players the culture, the values, any kind of financial performance information you can get by reading. An annual report. A proxy statement is a great. resource, especially if it's a public company, we get a lot of information about it, an organization reading the proxy, and then it's a great opportunity to ask questions of the recruiter about why is this role open? What is the, what is, what are some of the key attributes that they're really looking for in this hire? What are gonna be the measures of success? what is the culture today of the team and how is the this person going to be viewed within that culture? What do they need to be successful? So a recruiter should have a really good insight into all of those things, and they can help you better understand those kinds of in a more objective way. They can help. They can help you understand. So those internal dynamics that will help you to. Even more for when you meet the executives within that organization. So it's a really, it's a buffer conversation that someone can help you with.
Rachel Humphrey:I love the advice of being prepared. Do your homework, do your research ahead of time. To really know, first of all, we wanna make sure it's a good fit for us, but to really show that you're invested in the opportunity. I would imagine that after that initial either screening call or processing calls there are different stages of the interview process with various people at the hiring companies. Can you give us some dos and don'ts for preparing for those interviews both covering in person. Zoom or other video type interviews that we're finding now?
Juliette Boone:Yeah. Yeah. That's a great question. I would say, aside from doing your homework, so researching the individuals that you're speaking with and looking for points of common and shared interest, now people's information is on the internet and you can say, Hey I did a little research up on you before our call because I wanted to learn about your career path. What brought you here today, and I noticed that you played X, y, and Z sport. I played the same sport. I absolutely loved it. You can make connections with people and build rapport by doing that kind of homework in advance, understanding the org chart understanding all of those nitty gritty pieces. So that's really important as you prepare for and you take what the recruiters shared with you, prepare for your interviews. The other thing that I coach people on is, developing a repository of stories because you will encounter something called behavioral interviewing where an interviewer will want to know how you might have handled a certain problem or situation or business challenge. And so you should have a series of stories. Of a difficult interaction with a colleague a challenging business problem or business case that you were, you had, were tasked with solving. How did you approach it? How did you solve it? How did you implement it? What was the outcome? What did you learn? What would you have done differently? So taking the time to think through. business case stories, challenging, sto challenging situation stories, challenging customer situation. Stories, accomplishments, and crafting that repository of stories because you will get questions like that and you'll be able to relate your experience through that storytelling. And that's a great way to prepare for an interview. They're, they don't wanna just go through your career history. They wanna know the stories behind what you did. They can learn about you as a leader, as a person, and what your judgment is like, what your character is like.
Rachel Humphrey:I love that too. Cause it touches both on the preparation and research aspects again, but also the personal connection and being able to tell those stories is so important. I know we are running short on time, which always happens, and I have a million things I'd still like to talk about. One. I wanna I'm actually gonna read, cause I wanna make sure I get it right. We've talked a lot about how an individual can best set themself up for the recruiting process. But that said, in 2016, a study was published in the Harvard Business Review by professors at the University of Colorado. That revealed some pretty eye-opening results from which hiring managers could certainly benefit. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about that, both in the context of the individuals who are looking to empower their own personal success, but anyone who's watching, who may also have a role in identifying and presenting and ultimately selecting candidates for open positions.
Juliette Boone:Yes. This is a great I love this study and I credit Peggy Berg from the Castell Project for sharing this research with me. Several years ago done by some University of Colorado professors. And what they found, and I have my notes here that I make sure I get it right, is that when companies are recruiting and they have a finalist candidate pool if they have two or more women in their finalist pool, the odds of a woman being selected are 79 times greater than if they have fewer. Then two, and then if they have two minorities or more in their candidate finalist candidate pool, the odds are 193 times greater that they will select a minority candidate. That to me, was I just jaw dropping? And then they went on to say that there's statistically no chance that a woman will be hired if there are fewer than two women in the finalist candidate pool. That's really important for hiring managers to know. Absolutely. You need to have a minimum of two. When that, when I read that research, I actually went back to my own recruiting searches that I had completed and I asked my colleagues to do the same. And we found that data that confirmed where we didn't have more than one, the woman was never selected. So that was in our search practice. And that was a devastating finding for me and also made me much more conscious. So yes, hiring managers really need to. You need to be aware of that.
Rachel Humphrey:I appreciate your insight on that. As we are wrapping up, anything that we haven't touched on I know like I said, we could go on probably for hours with the wealth of knowledge that you have, but any final advice?
Juliette Boone:Yes. So along those lines of the hiring managers thinking a little more creatively or thinking differently. And I think we really need to think differently about and get out of the mindset of there's no one, there aren't enough qualified, you name it for this job, women, minorities, we don't have enough. And ask ourselves, who is coming up with qualifications in the first place? And how can we think more creatively? What those qualifications need to be. There have been some companies that have dropped educational requirements, for example, from their job descriptions because they don't wanna discriminate based on an academic credential. That's a great way of shifting your mindset thinking about transferrable experiences. But I think we should be asking ourselves, who's making these criteria? How do we want to think differently about them? And this is for hiring managers and also, For people. How can I bring my transferrable skills into the picture to to help advance my career goals? And the last piece of advice I'll share was a great piece of advice somebody gave to me when I was starting out my career in the search practice and very lacking some confidence about my skills and abilities and just starting out. And I was getting a little flustered and this manager looked at me and said, Juliet, sometimes you just need to fake it until you. you're not gonna have all the answers. I've heard other people who have gotten very high far in their careers share that same sentiment, but it is true that you just can't get caught up in your own psyche. And you have to sometimes just move forward with the information that you have and have the confidence that you're gonna you're gonna be able to move through it and get the information at some point. Fake it till you make it. It was a great piece of advice. That I got along the way that I'd love to share with others. I
Rachel Humphrey:have heard that a lot as well. Juliet, we are right at time. I wanna say thank you so much for sharing practical advice, your experiences to help others empower their own personal success. Our goal of course, of seeing. Women and other underrepresented groups facing not just career advancement, but as far as they want their careers to go. So I appreciate your time today and everything that you shared.
Juliette Boone:Likewise, it was a pleasure. Thank you. Thank you.