Each week, we interview proven leaders from our network, to learn from their experiences, and share their Talent Attraction and Candidate Experience stories with you.

• Our mission is to promote the accomplishments of our guests
• Highlight the companies where they work and the services, and products that they offer
• Share success stories from their experiences and, most importantly
• Provide strategies for job seekers and advice to talent seeking to accelerate their careers.
  

Today’s guest is Tracey Zimmerman, CEO – Robots & Pencils. Tracey is the true definition of hustle!  She is the CEO of a successful digital transformation consultancy, she has raised 8 wonderful children, she is constantly flying across the country, and she is as self-made as someone can be.   Tracey’s story is fascinating and we are excited to share her career journey.

• Tracey taught herself to code while taking nursing classes and working as an administrative assistant.
• Working in industry propelled her business acumen, which accelerated Tracey’s entrepreneurial pursuits.
• For technical talent, it’s imperative to understand the business problem in depth.
• Embrace curiosity and don’t waste the opportunity to ask questions of other people to continue learning.
• Proactively offer value to others, before asking for something from them.
• To be most impactful, understand how your role improves your company’s success

Bell Falls Search Focus on Talent Podcast Tracey Zimmerman, CEO Robots & Pencils

[00:00:06] Ron Laneve: Hello and welcome to Episode 21 of the Bell Falls Search Focus on Talent Podcast. Today’s guest is a proven executive in professional services as well as in the higher education space. She’s built an extensive career in architecting digital solutions for growth strategies and for solving key business problems for her clients. She’s on the “invite-only-super-secret-frequent-flyer” list for multiple airlines, meaning she flies a lot! And on top of all that she’s the wonderful mother of eight amazing children. Yes. I said eight! Welcome Tracy Zimmerman, President and CEO of Robots and Pencils. Tracey, thanks for being here. 

[00:00:48] Tracey Zimmerman: Thanks for having me Ron. And thank you for the kind introductory words. Except the frequent flyer thing is, that’s a mixed bag.

[00:00:54] Ron Laneve: Obviously you’re home today, so that’s a good thing. You’re not gathering those miles. So as I ask all my guests, I give my really brief and rough introduction, but I’m fascinated in watching individuals career paths because they’re not linear and most people don’t stay in the same place throughout their career.

[00:01:13] Ron Laneve: Could you talk about your career path, how you got started? You could even go back to college if you want and where you graduated and how you got to the place you are today is, running a pretty good size consulting organization. 

[00:01:28] Tracey Zimmerman: Yeah, I’d be happy to talk about it, Ron. It’s really easy to write your bio and you write like a kind of shiny, linear, very logical, version of what actually happens. But honestly, I stumbled my way to where I am today with kind of maybe just a little bit of light on the path in front of me, understand there was some sort of opportunity. But never thought I would be in the role I’m in today. And so I think that’s also encouraging, right?

[00:01:50] Tracey Zimmerman: Anyway, my story started young. I guess one thing I would say is like following interest is a bit of a common theme. I had a little bit of interest in business and I had an interest in technology. Actually petitioned that I wanted to take some classes in the business school. Which was really meant for people that were going to go into the job market right after high school graduation, because I wanted to learn more about business.

[00:02:11] Tracey Zimmerman: And so through that, I took an introduction to business class, and I got that introduction to business class to recommend me to take computer programming classes. And I started taking computer programming classes in high school. It was just something I was interested in. I was able to take a few years of programming at that time. 

[00:02:28] Tracey Zimmerman: I actually thought I wanted to be a nurse when I was in high school. And just because I thought that’s who helped people. I wanted to help people. Again, like looking back, it just seems like it’s a very narrow view, which you don’t know what you don’t know when you’re, 14, 15, 16 and making major life decisions. And although I took the programming classes and I thought about a career in computer science, instead I chose nursing and I started two year associates to bachelors program right out of high school. 

[00:02:51] Ron Laneve: I didn’t know that. Wow. Fascinating. 

[00:02:53] Tracey Zimmerman: Yeah well, and it’s a crazy story that, but then that benefited me later. Also the same time I was in high school, I also had a mentorship with what was supposed to be an outside professional, but it was actually one of my classmates who was already working as a computer programmer when we were in high school. And so I got a lot of tutoring from him, a lot of job market advice, a lot of really pragmatic advice because he was already working in the career.And so he continue to serve as a mentor to me in that time and then afterwards.

[00:03:15] Tracey Zimmerman:   I wanted to be a nurse. As you mentioned, I have eight kids. I had my first one in high school, actually. I was already a mom.  I was juggling. I was working full time because I had a kid. I had to support her. I was going to university. And my first year in my nursing program, I got a D in anatomy and physiology lab and had to repeat it. And I did not successfully do it.  I was basically unable to continue in the nursing program. All I had, all A’s and B’s otherwise, but the anatomy and physiology lab you have to memorize all the bones and parts and connections. And I was terrible memorizer who was also working full time and had a baby, just crazy. 

[00:03:51] Tracey Zimmerman: And so that caused me to go to my fallback career of computer science which is crazy. But then when I went to matriculate into that program, they were trying to teach COBOL and all these things that I was like, I knew from like my mentor friend, like people aren’t using this stuff anymore. It’s on the way out. And he had given me advice a long time ago of he was again, he’s super smart, right? he’s all programming languages are basically the same.

[00:04:13] Tracey Zimmerman: I’m going to date myself, but he said, look in the classified ads and see who’s paying the most for whichever skill and just learn those languages. And what I did is I dropped out of this matriculated program with the community college, and then I took few enough credits that I didn’t have to matriculate so I could pick my classes. Otherwise, if you start to matriculate, they go you have to take these other things. And I didn’t want to take the requirements. I wanted to take what the market was paying for. Then I realized that I liked the nighttime teachers because they were adjuncts and they were working in the field. I started taking classes only at night.  I worked during the day; that led me to my friend contacting me. I was working in a temp job, actually in the healthcare field. I’d gotten my nurse’s aid certificate. I was in healthcare because I wanted to be a nurse, originally.

[00:04:55] Tracey Zimmerman: Then I ended up taking a temp secretary job in pharma. Again, adjacent to nursing. I ended up going to a job fair with my friend because they ended my temp assignment. This was my friend that was like my mentor.

I go to this thing and it’s all about software jobs. I get to the door and they tried to turn me away. They said, you have to have a bachelor’s degree in four or five years experience. I just said, look, I came with my friend and really need you to let me in. They said, okay, fine go and don’t talk to anybody. I went and talked to everybody.

And I didn’t try to apply for jobs. Remember I’m creating my own program.

[00:05:23] Tracey Zimmerman: I said, which should I study? What kinds of things do you hire for? Honestly, 75% of things they said didn’t even make sense to me. I would just write stuff down and talk to people. And I gave them my resume to just think like maybe there’d be an internship or something. And I ended up getting call from one of the hiring managers and I got my first software development job through going to that.  I was 20 and I was obviously not done with college. It was with what was Shared Medical Systems at the time. 

[00:05:48] Ron Laneve: Did you go find the person who wouldn’t let you in the front door and tell them that you found the job? 

[00:05:53] Tracey Zimmerman: I’m sure they were on to organizing. This is, as some people got jobs before there was LinkedIn where you would go into like a convention center hallway, right?

[00:06:00] Ron Laneve: Yeah. With paper resumes. Yeah. 

[00:06:03] Tracey Zimmerman: Yeah. And then there would always be like this career advice print your resume on the best paper you can afford, which I’m sure mine was like copy paper or whatever. Anyway, that’s how I got my first job. I went and I interviewed actually when they called me, I said you don’t have my degree yet, and they’re like, yeah, we know. Again would you do that now? No but I had enough programming experience cause I had taken these classes, and they test you for acumen and things like that, and I had the healthcare experience.

It was interesting because it was definitely my industry experience that helped me to get into software. 

[00:06:32] Tracey Zimmerman: Anyways, I was fortunate to be, in now a software development job. But we were using pretty old technology. And so I still had to teach myself stuff. It was hard to take classes. I just started buying books at Barnes and Noble and using CD ROMs from the back, do the programming again, like all this, I feel like I’m a hundred years old. Technology has changed so much in our, adult lives or whatever. But you would slide the CD ROM and in the reprogramming activities. And I’d be trying to learn how to these new languages that my friend Josh told me paid more right from the back of the classified ads. 

[00:07:04] Tracey Zimmerman: I use that to parlay into doing like temporary and contract work In the newer skills, which was the web. this is the beginning of the web, generation of web development. This is pre dotcom boom, or boom and bust. I was the beginning of the boom I guess and so I started, you know working as a web consultant. I did that sort of like nights and weekends. I had my full time job and eventually I quit my full time job because I had enough contract work. I was making more money as a contractor and I really always wanted to start my own business. So you’ll see that as another kind of common thread. 

[00:07:35] Tracey Zimmerman: What ended up happening to me was I had all this contract work, but I didn’t know how to manage cashflow. I had no idea what I was doing about anything with running a business.  I ended up taking an opportunity, which was a great opportunity. I was very fortunate to go work for Fleet Bank, Fleet Credit Card, which was later acquired by Bank of America doing a temp assignment. I always plan to keep my business going and have like lots of clients and have them be a temporary client.

[00:07:56] Tracey Zimmerman: I ended up falling in love with working there. I was really fortunate. I got pulled into an e-commerce team. Again, this is a bit back in the day, but it was a cross functional group of designers from a design agency. A bunch of consultants from Mitchell Madsen in New York city helping to create new business models and then a bunch of it contractors of which I was one. And then they brought in some core bank employees and they put us all together in a tire warehouse. And we were the e-commerce team. 

[00:08:23] Tracey Zimmerman: I ended up staying there for five years. But, the cool thing was we’re now, we were doing all the latest technology. Everything was very cutting edge. The business models were new. I learned so much and I learned a lot about business in that role. I always say I learned business through like the back door. I would just ask questions. Why would we do these? How does the profitability of card work? How do you run these testing campaigns? Bank of America acquired fleet. There shutting down my office. I was unable to relocate. And so I, worked out a transition. 

[00:08:52] Tracey Zimmerman: It was funny cause I was like the last woman standing, like I had a big team and they were laying more people off every month because they were consolidating the tech stack basically. And at some point, there was 15 people and I was literally just typing in scripting commands. They had told me to run to keep things going until, they migrated off that technology. 

[00:09:09] Tracey Zimmerman: After I left there I again picked up freelance work and started contracting. Because again, I always want to start my own company. And I worked with a lot of previous friends, that I knew from my network and I was doing freelance work. But then we decided buy a house. I needed like a steady income. Mortgage lenders love to see, W2 income, right?

[00:09:28] Tracey Zimmerman: And that was actually when I became a business analyst working for an education holding company. I had been a hands on keyboard developer up to that time. Now when you’re freelancing, you do a little bit of everything. But I was writing code until that job. I came in as a business analyst as a contractor. I thought I’ll check out this industry, see what I think, see if I like being a B. A. And then a few months later I took on leadership of the department and I became the director of web strategy. Then I was essentially promoted.

[00:09:56] Tracey Zimmerman: That’s when I took a full time role working for them. Then I had a small team of designers, developers and analysts working for me. I was really fortunate in that role.

It was very operational, meaning I was on the hook for business results in terms of how digital and how technology would help to meet those goals. I had a great career there and, I learned a lot. I learned the education industry there.

So I didn’t know education industry at all. Remember I didn’t even graduate from college. And then I’m here with all these like PhDs and stuff. But the thing I could bring to the table is I knew how to get tech work done.

[00:10:29] Ron Laneve: And the cross functional nature of again, not just the tech work, but the product management part, the business analysis part, the business side of things is usually where people begin to accelerate their careers because they’re multidimensional at that point. 

[00:10:45] Tracey Zimmerman: I think that’s true.

There was a set of skills I had that I could repurpose. But then I had to learn the industry. It is important for technical people to learn the industry that they’re in or they’re consulting to or whatever.

Coming out of financial services and coming out of particularly the teams I worked for, we were very progressive, so when I came to the education space, I was like, “Whoa, like this, is so behind.” But it also was really inspirational because, it’s like you could make relatively small changes and have a big impact.

There’s been a lot of dollars and a lot of investment in education technology, particularly post pandemic. But that was not always true… so what passed for user experiences in tech in that industry was not very good. We got to build a lot of stuff, a lot of first of its kind work done there as well. And it’s really fun as a digital product person, being inside of an organization versus like today where I’m outside.

Being the person that owns the results and can drive the projects getting done is really fulfilling. Because you have to contribute KPIs to the business, but then you also have more ownership over the customer, the end user. So you can make the final decisions. 

[00:11:56] Tracey Zimmerman: It was really fun in that regard. But while I was there, I was working with a lot of outside agencies. We had all kinds of different firms we’ve worked with. And what I noticed is when I went to build out a product, I would have to go to like the marketing agencies to get design talent. You wouldn’t get developers there. They either didn’t have any or they had very few. And then you have to go to these more tech firms to get staff or staff all right of engineering talent.

[00:12:20] Tracey Zimmerman: And then a different firm, if you needed help on the strategy or analysis side, right? And then I had my own core team that worked for me. And then I would extend them out. I had a vision while I was there, thinking about what’s going to be my next thing. I’d like to create a firm that brings all those things together. I could bring them together. Because I’m technical, I had an unusual skill set. I thought a normal person can’t do this. If there was one firm you could go to and it would be turn key. Then I met the founders of Robots and Pencils and, they had basically started to build something with a kind of a different background, but a different view on it that was very similar to the vision I had that I felt the market really needed. That’s how I ended up at Robots and Pencils.

[00:12:59] Ron Laneve: Can you tell us more about Robots and Pencils? I get the multi dimensional focus of the different skill sets. We haven’t actually defined it, but I know the robots imply the technical part of the business and the pencils imply the creative part of the business (I got to work with you for a little bit over there). But can you tell us more about what R&P is focused on? Maybe a case study or two? You don’t have to mention any clients and kind of solutions you guys have built. 

[00:13:25] Tracey Zimmerman: Yeah, I would love to. Yeah, you properly, identified the key players at Robots and Pencils. The company was really founded with the premises that it takes the humanities and the sciences to solve the world’s hardest problems. Our humanities people, as you mentioned, are pencils who are UX, design, information architecture, product owner type of people. And then, the scientists, are the engineers, the developers or as you mentioned, we call them robots and we also have ampersands. We see these ampersands are people that help to bring the teams together so that’s more like the analyst the account management team myself, you know now i’m a no longer robot now I am an ampersand. 

[00:14:05] Tracey Zimmerman: Tech is moving so fast. Design even moves really quickly too. Even just think about your consumer expectations change all the time. It becomes really difficult to keep up. And now the latest and greatest thing, of course, is all  AI and LLMs. You’re running some other type of business. How are you supposed to keep up?

Our firm is about, harnessing that fast moving design and technology and applying it towards the needs of different businesses. 

[00:14:31] Tracey Zimmerman: What that has looked at like across different types of businesses is everything from the opportunity to build out full fintech platforms like essentially “neo banks.” We’ve had the opportunity also inside the financial services domain to work with a couple of different mortgage clients to help them to build out really like industry leading mobile user experiences for, their consumers.  You want to pay your mortgage. You want to refinance your mortgage. You want to see what’s going on as well as their loan officers to make sure they have visibility to their closing. Even real estate professionals that are working with those customers to see visibility like you’re trying to sell me a house and you can see whether iIve done my loan paperwork so you can actually get your deal done??

[00:15:14] Tracey Zimmerman: We’ve had the opportunity to build some really innovative platforms for education clients. That’s been everything from again, building out mobile apps, helping to implement salesforce. We also do a lot of customer journey design workshop type work. The interesting thing about a lot of organizations is it can be hard when your head’s down doing your job to really look up and see what’s happening across even your own organization. Much less, the outside world. We do a lot of transformation work, helping people understand their opportunities.

[00:15:46] Tracey Zimmerman: But then importantly, it’s not just about what could be. Then we like start to bring it down to earth and go, okay, this is what could be, what are the two or three things that your company should really do? What does success look like from a business KPI perspective? And then iterating our way to, impact there. That’s been fun. 

[00:16:03] Tracey Zimmerman: We’ve been able to work with consumer retail clients as well. Westjet a long time client. It’s always fun to have more of a consumer facing brand.  But like you said earlier, you’ve got this kind of common set of skill sets. Everyone’s trying to keep customers. Everyone’s trying to get customers. Everyone’s trying to make their talent more effective and happy about coming to work. And of course, especially now everyone’s trying to drive operational efficiency. How that parlays into different industries does vary, of course.

[00:16:37] Ron Laneve: Gotcha. Cool. Thank you for that. Yeah, I’ve seen a lot of the things you guys have built over the years. I think you even did some gamification for a large agriculture company at some point too. 

[00:16:46] Tracey Zimmerman: We did actually built a game for students to learn. You hear about GMOs and you hear about fertilizers and stuff, but what happens if you don’t have them? It’s like it’s a simulation game that, that kids can play to help understand that.

[00:16:58] Ron Laneve: I’m super excited about this part, especially given the introduction you gave. And this is where, ask you to talk about advice that you would give to, students in college or students, thinking about entering the workforce. Both, from a hard skills and soft skills perspective, what would you advise that demographic on how to best prepare, for what’s coming next? Whether it’s, hey, you got to learn chat GPT because AI is going to be everywhere that I would call that a hard skill. I’m just I don’t mean to give you a loaded answer. You mentioned obviously the underlying themes of your background were curiosity, being assertive. I wrote a couple other things down. I don’t want to take them all away from you. How would you guide that group? 

[00:17:39] Tracey Zimmerman: Yeah, it depends where people are in terms of, are they in college? Have they started college? Are they looking for a career change? But I would say like one of the things I think is super cool compared to when I was fumbling my way through things, is that there’s such a myriad of different training and learning options today. If somebody has a good idea of what they want to do, or they’re not sure, it’s great because there’s these bootcamp programs, there’s online, there’s short courses, you can go on YouTube and learn a lot of things.

[00:18:07] Tracey Zimmerman: There’s a huge opportunity to sample that as didn’t really exist when we were younger. The way you’d sample before is like you would talk to somebody who was in the field or you’d read books and I’m still pro both of those things. But there are so many more opportunities today. If you think there’s something you’re interested in, take some time and go to the next level and see if it’s something you like using all those different, things that are out there. 

[00:18:30] Tracey Zimmerman: Clearly fast moving trends. If you’re interested in being this level of responsible, go into cybersecurity. If you like emergencies, if you like waking up at night, if you’re willing to put yourself on the line, if you’ve got that personality, if you’re like paranoid person, if you’re always thinking about what could go wrong, I think that would be a great career for people. We don’t have a cyber security practice. I have a friend who runs that kind of company. We obviously, comply with those types of things of the software we build. But it’s a huge and growing area. Digital is a new frontier for all of us, including criminals. It’s the fastest growing place.

[00:19:04] Tracey Zimmerman: I think that’s one thing that if you’ve got that sort of acumen that I would guide people towards.

I think digital and technology is an awesome career, and I think that, it’s clear at this point, you don’t have to be a programmer in order to be in tech today.

I think it’s really important for people like I’m a strengths based type person. Try to get a good understanding. It could be by talking people. There’s lots of different tests. If you are still in college, you can go work with career services to understand how you lean.

[00:19:34] Tracey Zimmerman: Are you a people person? Do you like to be around a lot of people are, like I said, are you a paranoid person? Are you an optimistic person? Are you a balanced person, and try to understand some of your own strengths and really start there. But don’t let, but that said, I would say don’t let anybody then pigeonhole you either. Because there’s a lot of analogous skills. 

[00:19:58] Tracey Zimmerman: As an example, we were looking at a project a while ago for a potential client and it was a really interesting idea. But one of the things that they pointed out in their demo or their idea is if you take the job of an administrative assistant and you take the job of a program or a project manager, the skill set is like 73% overlapped. This was a retraining idea. As an administrative assistant, you have 73% of the skills you need to have as a project manager, how do you close that skills gap? I think that’s a good example of, take a look at your interests, your skills. There are lots of jobs could be better paid, more interesting, maybe in the geo you want to be in that take the same types of skills that others. 

[00:20:38] Tracey Zimmerman: Don’t let somebody just say to you “Oh, you like to talk to people, you should be in sales.” Okay, that’s not a bad idea. But sales is part of your job for sure. It’s part of my job for sure. It’s part of a lot of influencing roles and you can sell lots of different things. Using your core skills to understand the different places you might be able to apply them I think is really important. Clearly, people should know something about AI. If you like to listen to podcasts, if you like to read, it’s so easy to learn now. I think that people don’t always do it. 

[00:21:08] Ron Laneve: You maybe think of something else. You talked a lot earlier in the discussion around your mentor and how much that individual, whether directly or indirectly Ultimately affected your career and the outcome of your career. I’m putting words in your mouth, but I’m guessing that’s probably pretty true. And that’s a common theme across individuals like yourself that I’ve interviewed. There’s always at least 1 or 2 mentors involved that have been instrumental. Did you go find that person? Did they just, fall into your life and you realize that okay wow after several conversations, this is very helpful. Was it natural, is my question, or did you say, I need a mentor, I’m going to go find one. 

[00:21:45] Tracey Zimmerman: I actually have a lot of thoughts about of mentors and sponsors because it’s very common career advice to women, particularly, is go get yourself a mentor, right?

[00:21:54] Ron Laneve: Yeah. That’s exactly the question I’m asking. Like, how did it happen? 

[00:21:57] Tracey Zimmerman: Remember, I was really young. That was my friend, Josh. Remember, he was a fellow high school student and actually he works at robots and pencils now. I’m really fortunate to bring him on board at robots and pencils. Yes, he was really important and influential, guiding me through tech, early on throughout my career. That was the only formal mentorship I’ve ever had in my life.

[00:22:16] Tracey Zimmerman: And it was “formal” because it was in high school and we got 0. 25 credits for it. But that said, informally I’ve had a lot of people that, I would ask for advice. I actually read Never Eat Alone a long time ago. I think that Gary Vaynerchuk‘s thinking has influenced me a lot too. Which is I would try to do what I could to help people and then I would ask them what they knew. I learned a bunch about marketing because I was in this cross functional team and I learned a lot of things in the school of hard knocks, but I wasn’t just “Hey, Ron, can you tell me everything about marketing?”

[00:22:45] Tracey Zimmerman: I got your website updated, what can I do to help you?

I would bring to the table what I had to contribute. Which is how the world works. I would proactively think about, is there something I can offer before I ask? I’m just asking three more questions at the end of the meeting than anybody else. 

[00:23:02] Tracey Zimmerman: I’m not asking them to commit to a mentorship. I’m not saying I need four hours of your time a month because It’s hard for people to commit. I think learn from everyone. And I think you need to look up down and sideways. I’m on a meeting with one of my developers and they’re working on something like we’re working on, say a proposal or something. Then I’ll be like, “Hey, I just have two or three quick, like, how does this actually work?” Now I have to learn from them. I think having that sort of mindset and if you’re trying to learn business and, talk to other business people, but it depends on what your gaps are.

[00:23:32] Ron Laneve: Perfect answer. Thank you. That’s what I was looking for, and I appreciate that.  Last question, similar vein, you’ve done a lot of interviewing over the years. You’ve hired a lot of people. What advice would you give to individuals who are applying for jobs, who are interviewing for jobs, who are experienced candidates, and again, industry doesn’t matter. The skill set doesn’t matter, but in general what suggestions would you give them? And are any anecdotes or case studies from interviews that really blew you away or said, wow, that’s that thing that person did that one time. I’ll never forget. And that’s why they hired them? 

[00:24:04] Tracey Zimmerman: Yeah it’s a great question depends on where people are in the life cycle but generally speaking, I’m going to give this advice. I hope someone takes it. I think very few people do. But, when you’re interviewing somewhere, or if you’re trying to get an interview, or you’re trying to network so that, someone will enter to someone that they know. This is the internet age.

Know something about the company. It amazes me how many people you’ll talk to and they haven’t even gone on the company’s website for a company they’re interviewing for.

[00:24:32] Tracey Zimmerman: Understand how that company makes money. Cause that’s what businesses are for or if it’s a nonprofit, what’s their mission. And then say to yourself, What does this job I’m interested in do to help contribute towards that mission so that you can articulate your value and skill set in the language of business? Because people that hire people like that, they’re trying to fill these roles for a certain .

[00:24:57] Tracey Zimmerman: I read this like advice a long time ago, and it’s definitely been the thing that’s impressed me the most when I talk to people. And again, any part of the life cycle. If it’s a cold outreach, if it’s in an interview, or if it’s internal, sometimes people are positioning to me and saying “Hey, I really want to do this other role.” They’re trying to convince me. Do the job a little bit, do it in the interview, do it ahead of time. Now, of course, and I’m not talking about spec work. Especially when I was more in the corporate world, we’d have press releases about where we’re working. We have earnings calls. There’s lots of places you get information. 

[00:25:24] Tracey Zimmerman: And when somebody would say, I’m a really great designer. I listened on your earnings call, (like I’m already won over by the way)! I listened to earnings call. And I heard you guys are trying to enter the international market. People can even say, I’ve never done anything for the international markets, but I’m super excited to learn. And this is how I would learn it.

Demonstrate some enthusiasm. Don’t put it on the interviewer or the networking intro to go figure out how to help you. I think that’s also really good advice for people, that are trying to network in general too. 

[00:25:57] Tracey Zimmerman: But yeah, demonstrate excitement about the business. And also if you’re, you’re not excited about it, you probably should keep looking. And the career advice in general,

I think is really important is no matter what you do, understand how what you do helps to impact the business. Do you help to get customers? Do you help to keep customers? Do you help to drive operational efficiency? Do you help to make the talent that works there better, more effective, happier, et cetera? If you don’t do one of those four things and you also should probably figure out what you are doing. And then use that when you talk to people about the job.

[00:26:28] Ron Laneve: Yeah, you just gave us the best advice I’ve ever heard. And it amazes me how many candidates I talked to and I talked to a lot. Everyone’s worried about doing the job and focusing on the bullets on the job description. But to your point, companies are just trying to make money and survive and be profitable so they can maybe pay you more or serve more clients or whatever. And if you don’t actually think about how your role impacts the business, then what are you doing? 

[00:26:55] Tracey Zimmerman: First of all, you asked me for general advice. You need to know skills. I think being straightforward about what you know, what you don’t know and what, how you think you could learn, is critical. But just being excited about stuff and, again do the work for the person viewing that. Because, digital people particularly tend to fall in love with solutions. They fall in love with their products and there’s nothing wrong with that, but articulating the business value of what you built, it’s great that you build it in angular. You got to use the latest version of javascript or you got to use mid journey to, accelerate your design, what did you do for the company through that product?

[00:27:32] Tracey Zimmerman: Or let’s say you had a project that went crappy and you didn’t get the impact. What did you learn? Sometimes things don’t work out. What would you do differently? Because now you can come to my company and say you know what I realized? I realized when these cross functional teams weren’t working together and somebody’s working in silo and they go to launch and the other teams don’t know about it, you’re not going live.

[00:27:51] Tracey Zimmerman: I’ve never do that again, right? It’s okay, that’s somebody who’s thinking about stuff.

[00:27:55] Ron Laneve: The only other thing I’ll say is I hope from now on, instead of I listen to the earnings call being the trigger for you to pick it up, it’s I saw your podcast with Ron. That’s a good one, that’s a good one.

[00:28:08] Ron Laneve: But no, thank you, Tracy. Really appreciate the advice and I can’t wait to share it and thank you for being with us today. 

[00:28:14] Tracey Zimmerman: Yeah, thanks for inviting me. It’s been a pleasure. I appreciate it, Ron. 

[00:28:17] Ron Laneve: All right. Good luck and don’t fly too much. Take care. 

[00:28:20] Tracey Zimmerman: I’ll try not to.

[00:28:21] Okay.

 

December 8, 2023