Unlocking Your Career Potential: Building Beyond the Technical

Caitlin Parnell is a seasoned Customer Support Specialist at YNAB with a strong background in leadership roles throughout her career. Her unwavering passion for personal and professional growth and development shines through in her work, making her a valuable asset to her team and organization.

Check out this video featuring Caitlin Parnell our upcoming speaker for October’s Expo where she discusses the importance of building resumes beyond technical skills, emphasizing the value of storytelling and character-driven qualities for job applicants and employers. Get a sneak peek of his compelling ideas before she takes the stage in Las Vegas, NV.

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Charles: You're over at YNAB. What have you been up to recently? How are things?

Catalin: Yeah, YNAB's great. We are plugging away, we are making budgeting easier for people.

We've had some really cool releases lately. Just some little updates to the app that hopefully makes things go smoother for our users. And I work on our direct import team. So anytime somebody's bank connection to their budgeting app is having trouble my team and I are the ones you talk to.

 We do everything we can to get your transactions imported again.

Charles: I used the YNAB app for a little bit. And after our last conversation, I was reinvigorated. I gotta get in there, check out YNAB one more time.

Because I always see really positive things about YNAB. You are hosting a workshop at the Support Driven Expo the title of which is, "building your resume beyond the technical." There are two audiences. You've got the applicants, somebody applying for the role.

You've got the hiring, the people who are putting together the role. If people build the resumes and hire incorrectly, what are the consequences? What are the benefits of building beyond the technical?

Catalin: Yeah, I think this topic is so important for both of those groups in the audience. I think we've all been on the recipient end of a bad hire, whether it was us, maybe we weren't a good fit for a role, maybe we hired someone who wasn't a good fit for a role, maybe we've worked with somebody who wasn't a good fit for a role.

And so I think that when people go to hire, they want to make good hires. They want to hire people who are good fits for their culture. People who are good fits for their teams. And sometimes it's really hard to suss out who somebody is as a person, just by looking at their technical aspects on their resume.

And that's the purpose of this workshop, helping people understand how to tell their story of what they bring to the table for a [00:02:00] new role beyond what's listed on their resume. The technical skills are easy to list. And if you're hiring somebody, it's easy to see what technical skills somebody has.

But it's much more difficult to convey the soft skills, if you will, on a resume. And so if you are lucky enough to be accepted for an interview, or if you get to write a cover letter, those are your chances to really showcase who you are, the growth you've experienced through your career, and what about your character and your personality do you bring to a role that is going to make you an asset to this company. We talked about those soft skills; soft skills are hard. They're hard to learn, they're hard to come by, and then they're hard to communicate. But those soft skills are often what will make somebody a great fit in your company and by understanding what those sort of soft skills are that they've acquired, that's really where you want to be able to speak to [00:03:00] those as somebody who's looking to grow. And if you're somebody who is hiring you need to be able to pull those out of somebody in an interview and really understand what their character is and where does it come from.

Charles: Totally agree with you. There's a good question that I ask and encourage my team to ask during interviews which is, "Would you trust this person in a room with our most important customer?" That question unlocks a huge part of that, which is, yes there's the technical aspect, which may get somebody in the door, but how can we reframe how we think about, "is this somebody whose background could lend to us checking the box for that question?"

Catalin: I love that question. When I look at my resume, it goes up and down and takes left turns and right turns. And I've done all sorts of different things through my career.

And so I know when somebody looks at me on paper, they're like, what? I was a teacher and then I waited tables and bartended and then I worked in retail and now I work for YNAB, and without the story that goes along with all that, I think people just to be like, okay, next move along. Because even though my resume looks sort of not a straight line. I know that my growth has been a straight line. I can go through each one of those jobs and tell you what I learned, how I grew and why it's important and what it did to make me better and more equipped for the role that I'm doing now. And it also has helped me know, what do I want to do next?

When I can go through and look at the jobs that I have and I can know what did I like about that job? What did I really excel at that job? And I can see that there's a common thread throughout all of these roles that I've done in my career. Then I can really tailor my searches to those things that I know suit me well already.

I'm hoping with this workshop, we're going to spend some time thinking. I'm going to give you some quiet time to think and to write about some previous roles that you've had. [00:05:00] What did you like and then what did you learn from them? And I'm also going to give you a chance to talk to some people about it to get that practice, which I know is so uncomfortable.

But in this kind of safe space and a practice role, this is exactly what you're going to get from this workshop is that practice of telling your story and talking about, why am I a good person to leave in the room with your most valuable customer? Why would you trust me to do that?

Charles: That's such a good coaching opportunity for everybody. And you may have happened to be on hiring teams in the past. And it's something good to keep in mind because you as a candidate, maybe you're making that jump from support to program management or from program management to billing or accounting or something like that.

You have somebody who needs to give you that opportunity, that chance. And if we instill this culture of let's look past that part. Yes, somebody should have a few of those skills. We can't hire a software developer into a role who has never done any coding before. But there are so many skills that overlap when it comes to this, we can teach to the technical to some extent and if somebody has to tell us, yes, I'm coachable I can learn, I can do these things. And I also possess these really good storytelling skills, communication, and written, vocal, I can be a good person on that team.

Catalin: So good. And I think so many times when you're interviewing or when you're being interviewed, those questions are like, tell me about a time when... You needed to be coachable, or maybe you didn't have all the technical skills. What is it about your character? Can you tell me a story about when you were tenacious about learning something new?

Can you tell me a story about a time when you had to be a really great communicator and cross communicate between teams, and what was that like for you? We don't think about those things on a daily basis, these things from our jobs in the past, but this is a chance to sit and reflect and take an exercise with you out of the workshop that you can do anytime. It's super simple, but you're like, Hey, I'm getting ready to explore my next step in my career. I'm going to apply for this role in my company. Take 20 minutes and write through all these things. Do some reflecting. It's like homework, but it's really helpful homework.

Charles: It's good homework. That's the stuff that I like working on. You applied to be a speaker at the expo. And you got this form in front of you saying, What do you want to talk about? And you ended up at this idea, building your resume beyond the technical.

How did you get to that point, and why are you so passionate about choosing it?

Catalin: I got to this topic because I am new to the support world. I've worked at You Need a Budget for two years. But this is my first foray into support. It's my first foray into basically anything technical.

Sometimes I wonder why did they hire me? I almost quit on the first day because I couldn't figure out how to work one password. But they had already hired me. So now they're stuck with me. But what I do know about, what I spent a lot of my career doing is both focusing on my own growth and development, but also helping others.

I was a general manager at a bookstore in Canada for 10 years, and we were super growth focused, and it was a really amazing place to work. But that was what a lot of the work we did was, how do I help people grow? Those character driven, those value driven leadership roles.

How do I help people grow? So figuring out what are you already good at? What have you already learned? How can we talk about that? And then how can we find activities or how can we find opportunities for you to continue to grow. That was what I spent most of my career doing and realizing that I have something to share with others through my own experience, especially my own story.

And I can, pinpoint these moments in my own career where I can tell you [00:09:00] a story about where things changed for me, where I went from trying to get promoted and, out for myself, to being a really great team player. I'll tell you the story about how that happened, about being teachable and coachable and humble and being willing to, take on something different than I ever have before because it was the right thing for my family at that moment, so I know that I have that story that I can share and then I think that it can really help others because this is the hard stuff in your career.

This is the hard stuff to talk about. It's the hard stuff to communicate. And so if we can learn to be storytellers about it, And, package ourselves as a brand with a story and say, this is who I am and this is what I bring. I think that just helps everybody.

Charles: Very cool. I love this holistic approach.

Here's first, not only this is what a resume should be. It's not that like super do this, and this point, there's a, there's, that's a huge part of this, but the other part is, Let's think larger. Let's think bigger about how you, as a person, can reframe the way that you are applying to roles.

And it's so easy for someone to go through the process, which they may have learned from a long time ago, to highlight the things that they've done in the past and not necessarily the things that they are capable of doing in the present or in the future.

Catalin: Yeah, you're so right. And finding those opportunities, whether it's in a cover letter or if it's in an interview, but you can't take advantage of those opportunities if you don't know your own story, or maybe you know your own story in your mind.

You're like, okay, this is what I'm good at. I know that, but actually taking these, the step of writing it out and practicing telling somebody else about it just really helps pull it out of your own mind, putting it on paper and we'll just allow you so much more Opportunity to share who you are and what you bring to the table when you go to look for a new role.

Charles: I did an exercise a couple of years back with somebody who worked on my team who was going from a junior manager role and was trying to transition into a role within another department. And we looked at the job. Description together and she said, I really want to do this thing because I've worked with those people before and I enjoy what they do.

I want to learn more about it. That's an opportunity for me to get there and then build my career out of that. So we looked at the job description, the requirements, and from that conversation, she realized these are things that I can actually do. It's not a, I've done this thing specifically, but here's an example of how I've approached a similar thing in the past.

Catalin: Absolutely. And that's that is exactly the point of this because I think is as our workplaces continue to evolve, as we continue to find new avenues to connect with people virtually and in this technical space, like I had no experience. With anything technical coming into this, but because I knew my story, I could say, this is why I would be good for your company.

And I think I wasn't wrong. I think I got it right. I think they got it right. I'm so glad they hired me. It's a great place to work but when, those experiences you've had and you can apply them in creative ways, it really does open up a lot more doors. Which I think is such a good thing.

Charles: Absolutely. I look forward to being a part of the workshop when I see you in Vegas. So this is the Support Driven Expo. This is in Vegas, October 9th through October 10th. How can people get in touch with you before then, or even after then?

Catalin: Totally. So I'm on LinkedIn. Feel free to hunt me down on LinkedIn.

I'm also CaitlinP at YNAB. com. Send me an email. And I'm super excited to be there. This is my first support driven expo. And I'm stoked to meet some more people in the support sector of the work that we do. And I think it's going to be a great time.

Charles: I think so too. There's a lot of good conversations.

A lot of good workshops and I'm really excited to be a part of this workshop. And I know a lot of other people in the support driven community are as well. Because this isn't just something unique to a certain subset of X thing. This is something that is across. all industries, but especially in support where we have the unique requirement of finding people who have empathy, good communicators, who are good storytellers, who can do the technical part when that's required.

But people who really have the ability to step outside of just the transactional aspect of what a conversation looks like and get to what's actually going on here in whatever situation is happening.

Catalin: Yep. You're 100 percent right. And I'm excited to talk more about that and dig in.

Charles: Awesome. It's good to see you, too. Bye. Bye.

Check out this video now featuring Caitlin Parnell our upcoming speaker for October’s Expo. Be sure to watch and get a taste of what's to come!