Hi, and welcome back to the awfully quiet podcast. I'm so glad you're here. I'm glad you're tuning in. Let's spend some time together in this wild pre Christmas holiday season. It's December and we know that things can get a little wild in December. We're not always at our best during this time, yet it is such a festive, such a, warm, cozy time that I really hope you get to spend some quality time, not only with family and friends, but also with yourself.

If you're anything like me, I know you need it. So, that's what we're doing right here, right? This is quality time. This is our December, our little December getaway, which I'm loving. I also want to welcome anyone who's new to the show, who has just been tuning in or is tuning in for the very first time.

Welcome. And today's episode is one that I feel is really at the core of what the awfully quiet podcast is about of. Yeah, of my, of my, you know, the main message of what I want to bring across and it's all about this sentiment and this feeling of being overlooked and being underestimated and It's certainly a place that I have experienced in my career and keep on experiencing, if I'm honest, but at least in the corporate space, in my corporate job, I feel like it's one I cracked over time and it's one that I I overcame to an extent where I do not feel overlooked anymore.

So it feels like this is something that I can speak to. If we were to talk about the whole podcasting space and building an online business and, you know, creating content online, I feel like I'm at a very different stage. In that journey. So, I don't feel the same level of confidence there than I do in my corporate job, but that is also testament to the fact that I am almost 10 years into my corporate experience and I have merely started.

this whole other journey of like hosting a podcast and, building an online business. So, yeah, we're going to talk about the things that I do feel confident about. And then I do feel like I can, I can add value and I can potentially, yeah, help you resonate and give you a couple of points or pointers off what has helped me, overcome feeling overlooked, feeling underestimated and what I found helpful.

In my career journey. So it is a little bit of personal story time today too. I guess where I want to start is the time in my career when I did feel overlooked and underestimated. And that was right at the beginning of my corporate journey. where I felt like I was always known As someone who does a good job and who, you know, does great work, who performs really well.

I've always been this very ambitious achiever type gal, so that has always sort of been on my side and I knew I could count on, you know, when somebody believes in me and trusts me to do a good job. I can do a great job and I can over achieve and I can exceed the expectations that people have on me.

So, and I, and I feel like this is a place where a lot of introverts come from. So yeah, that's a great foundation and that's a great basis, but regardless. I would often feel like there is a ceiling, there is a certain environment, a certain kind of close team or a few people who work really closely with me who have that daily perception of the way I work, the way I perform, they believe in me, they, have higher expectations on me.

They really do think that I'm, you know, a great talent and about to go places. But beyond that, beyond the immediate team, I would always struggle to get the right visibility. And people didn't really know me. People didn't really, yeah, have that experience of working with me. So it would often feel very hard for me to prove myself to them.

And I think it's testament to the fact that I am obviously an introvert and I have always been. You know, rather quiet. I, you know, somebody who does great work in silence and then who opens up within the team and gets really personal and outgoing within that team. But beyond that, you wouldn't see me brag about my achievements in the company kitchen or at lunch or, you know, talking about, my work.

Too loudly or presenting at huge town halls and things like that. So it would often feel like people outside of my immediate team. They didn't really know, anything about me. And, and so I often was overlooked.why is that a problem? If you're somebody like me, I always wanted to go places. I never just wanted to be promoted within the team.

At that point in time, I was in HR and I really wanted to go into marketing. And to go from HR into marketing, you need people outside of your team, trust you, believe in you, give you, you know, you know, a huge leap of faith in you too. yeah, just so that you can make that pivot and do the job. And I didn't have that at the time.

I remember I, had reached out to the sort of marketing function in the organization and the P the, HR person there. And I asked a couple of questions and I said, look, I would really love to pivot into marketing. What would this look like? And she was like, well, first and foremost, you'd have to take a step back.

You would need to, start at a lower job level than the one you have right now to really like learn the ropes, lay the foundation, do the ground work. and then you could, you know, work your way up.why was that the case? Because she had never worked with me a day in her life. She didn't know that. I learn extremely fast and that, so often in my life, I have started something new and then this is going to sound bad, but literally crushed it within a couple of weeks.

I am very quick to pick things up. I am highly ambitious. I know that whatever I put my mind to, I can do and I can do it really well. So.that kind of felt really bad for me in terms of like, you know, having to take that step back, people not really believing in me and just realizing that. These people that I would have to always convince people outside of my immediate team and prove myself to them.

And I hate to prove myself to anyone who I'm not working with because how, how do I do that? Like people I work with, I can do that through the quality of my work and through the interactions I have on a daily basis. But if you need to prove yourself in front of somebody, You don't have these touch points with how are you going to show them?

And so that was the dilemma I was in. I really wanted to pivot into marketing, but that really seemed unattainable. Fast forward to today, I have not only landed a job in that exact marketing function that this lady told me, you know, I need to go back, start from the ground up. But I have one of the most desirable positions in that function today.

I just got promoted this year. I work on one of the most iconic brands in that business. And I ended up at a very senior position and I'm not saying that to brag. It does feel, I keep saying on here, you need to, you know, Don't not shy away, but it still feels like bragging when I say things like that, but I'm saying it for the purpose of lending this message today is that I came a long way.

I absolutely made it and I crushed it. I am not overlooked anymore. I made it to one of the top positions within that function. And I want to talk about today, how I made that happen, because. It is not through following some of the conventional career advice. I guess looking back, the only pieces of advice I did follow, or the one thing I did actually do was take a step back and start from the ground up in order to get a foot in the door.

So I did end up accepting that lower job level to do an entry level position in the, you know, sort of marketing function. Um,which I've also talked about in one of the previous episodes, but other than that, there were, there was a whole range of things that, you know, I was being told to do that in didn't end up working for me.

So I really wanted to do an episode to talk about what you can do if you feel overlooked and underestimated and how you can, you know, end up. Getting one of the most prestigious roles or, you know, really being seen for who you are, for what you do really well without having to be overly loud or to push, or, you know, to, to follow all these strategies that you're being told to follow, from a very conventional extrovert perspective.

And where I want to start is that feeling of being underestimated, you know, being underestimated. is not a bad place to be. Let's embrace that for a second. There is a lot of potential in being underestimated. And I certainly was. And I have a couple of data points to prove that I was in fact underestimated a couple of times.

I once had, a coworker again, like somebody I worked really close with. he was, he is an absolute extrovert works in sales, knows everybody in the company will have coffee chats with everyone, you know, great person to be around to make some connections to. And I really enjoyed working with him.

And he was once asked, whether I am Any good at what I do?and I thought that was really funny because, he was asked by a person who has no touch points to me, but will have likely seen that I, you know, had moved around in the business and that I was, you know, doing all this, all this stuff. So he kind of reached out to him and asked, you know, is she any good?

How is, you know, how's she doing? And then he obviously said, she's totally crushing it. She's great. You know, she doesn't, you know, Great fucking job, which is important, by the way. So this is the first kind of clue here, to have like the people around you who are witnessing just how good you are.talk about that.

So that positive word of mouth is one of the things that really helps, when it comes to, you know, moving from being overlooked to being seen for who you are and what you do really, really well. And I was also never one of, well, I guess the popular girls or one of the obvious talents in the organization, you know, that when you're at the company, there's almost like this understanding of, you know, who is really, really good.

Like who are some of the top talents, like who is on, you know, on top of the talent list, who is really going places, who's really going to make it. And I feel like that these are always the most visible, the loudest, I would just say the most obvious candidates for like, you know, for growing and, and making it.

And I was never that person. I was never somebody still, I'd say, still not one of the people who everybody would be like, I think she's going to, you know. She's, she's definitely going to make it. she's, you know, such a huge talent. but fun fact, because I spend so much time working in HR, it's not the people on the top talent list that are going to make it.

Most of the time, those people are being told, you know, what you're on top of the talent list. You're really, you know, something you're really going places. And because they build up these people's expectations so much when that doesn't happen immediately, I often. Experience. These people are most likely to leave and go somewhere else.

So I'm not too sure, you know, being on the talent list is, is the place you want to be. I'm fine being where I am because I kind of figured out, you know, how to do the crazy cool killer positions without having that kind of attention and without everybody knowing. That I'm this crazy fucking talent.so underestimated is actually not a bad place to be.

And the biggest realization I had was that what most people think it literally doesn't matter, like you, you know, I don't need to give a fuck. what the whole organization thinks about me. And I know that with, especially with corporate places and especially with, you know, huge organizations, you, you kind of do worry about what people think about you.

You know, when you're going to an office, you kind of want to have a good reputation. I get that. I have been that. And I have certainly felt bad for not being somebody that everybody thinks. is doing as great as I was doing. I hope that makes sense. But that realization was so, so powerful. It doesn't matter what everybody thinks it does matter what a handful, you know, maybe five to 10 people at the organization think about you.

I think it really is a handful of people at the end of the day.and these people are. People you report to senior leaders, senior managers, stakeholders across the business, but it's certainly not everyone. You do not need to be visible to everyone. You do not need everyone in the organization.perceiving you as a rockstar talent, you need a handful of people witness how good you are, how dedicated you are, that you perform well, that you pick things up quickly.

You need them to witness it, and then you need them to talk about it. And this is where I really want to start with a couple of tips that have really helped me on my journey. Number one, we already talked about, do a killer job. You need, obviously, this is the baseline. You need to perform well. You need to do a great job.

But I feel like that is such an obvious one and some, and one of the things that you likely already do. And, you know, I can imagine that you're in a very similar position as I was a couple of years ago in my career where I did do a great job. I did perform well, but it was only ever visible to those I was in immediate contact with and who witnessed my work firsthand.

Now it's about making sure that that perception also travels. It's beyond your immediate team, beyond your immediate manager. And how you do that is you build advocacy. It's essentially making sure that the people who are working close to closely with you talk about you in a way that is meaningful and that is impactful.

for me, what has been really working well is having managers advocate for me. So people I, I reported into. Who I worked really closely with and, you know, I did a killer job and, you know, and they, you know, they noticed that. So that helped me.

get my work noticed beyond my immediate team, especially when it's a manager and they are in these kinds of circles where it is about, you know, next moves and you know, what are we going to do with our talents? How are we going to develop our people? It is extremely important for you to equip your manager with the right knowledge to say in those rooms, Like, I was always super, super vocal about what I wanted to do next, where I envisioned myself in the next couple of years.

And that clarity I had going into, you know, this big pivot that I wanted to make was I am an HR and I really want to go into marketing. And I told my boss at the time, I said, To her, look, this is what I really want to achieve. This is what I want to do. And this allowed her to help me in ways that I could have never helped myself.

I could have never gone up to these people and said to them, look, I'm really great. You should, you know, believe in me, but somebody else, like, especially like, HR director at the time. She kind of letting people know, you know, what, I hired Hannah when she had very little knowledge about HR. I took a huge leap of faith and then she came in and she crushed it and she's doing a fabulous job.

that is a whole different story. Like this is exactly what you need in your career. You need somebody to advocate for you, to mention your name in the interview. Rooms full of opportunities, but you need to equip them with what you want in the first place, because otherwise they don't know how to help you.

They don't know what opportunities are the right ones for you. So you need to tell them, you know, this is what I, what I really want to achieve.And can you support me? The position I have today, the one that I refer to as the most desirable position in that function, quite subtle, I know is again, that was again, a very similar story of like, having to.

prove myself with a manager and in a team to a whole new set of stakeholders that hadn't worked with me so far. So I did a panel, an interview panel, like an assessment day. And I know for a fact that following that assessment day, there were still some question marks that the hiring manager had. And so they reached out to my boss's boss at the time to ask a couple of questions.

And I know that they had a meeting, where they asked them a couple of questions about me because there were, you know, still a couple of question marks from the interview. So this kind of thing in the first place, just imagine your boss. Your boss's boss goes into a meeting to, you know, help advocate for you and talk about their experience working with you.

And that experience was. something that ultimately helped me land that job because they came in and said, look, I see why you have some of these question marks, but you don't need to have them. You don't need to worry. You can hire her. You're good. You're, you're sad. I am so confident she can do this job and she's going to do great.

And that kind of thing. I think looking back. This is the one thing that has helped me go from being overlooked to being seen and getting a foot in the door and getting opportunities that otherwise just by myself, I would have never gotten. So again, it's not about everybody in the organization knowing you and knowing that you're great and you're a great talent.

It's about a couple of people who are willing to put themselves out there and talk about their experience. Working with you and that is going to be such a game changer. Now, I already touched on the third one, which is to lean into opportunity when it comes and to ask for support. Now, obviously, even if you have people who witness your performance, who think that you're doing great and you, tell them, you know, this is what I want to do, this is the kind of vision I have.

You still have to be proactive and you still have to be courageous when opportunities arise. You know, your boss or your boss's boss, they're not going to come at you with opportunities. I don't think, again, that has never happened to me, but, I am hearing that sometimes that does happen. So let's see.

I just think that, especially early in your career. you will have to be proactive. You will have to lean in. You'll have to be a little courageous when an opportunity comes up and it tickles you. It, it, it just kind of feels like, oh, this could be amazing for me. I would love that opportunity. It still feels a little far off.

It still feels a little too good to be true.but it, it interests you. That's when you need to lean in and then you can ask for the right support. You can ask your manager to support you on that journey to potentially have a couple of conversations on your behalf to potentially, you know, put your name in the ring or whatever this looks like, but you need to be the one who comes knocking with the opportunity.

Raise your hand and say, look, this is what I want. A fourth thing that has always really helped me was meaningful connections. And this is essentially networking. I know we don't love the word networking, but, I'm still on a mission to kind of change the narrative of, of what it means to network and. we always have these kind of huge networking events in mind when we talk about networking, but what was impactful for me on this journey was reaching out to specific people on a one to one basis.

So whenever I had this kind of idea, like this idea of, I want to go into marketing, I would then reach out to people who worked in marketing in that function. And ask them, you know, questions about their job and how it is and what they felt was really important. what are the capabilities that are really needed there?

What are the ways of working? What are the right behaviors? What's the right mindset to succeed in this role? Who else can I talk to about this topic? And That kind of thing has always really, really helped me get a feel for, you know, what are the type of things that I need to develop? What are the kind of things I need to bring?

Who are the people that are decision makers and that are really, really relevant in that space? How can I acquire the right knowledge, the right insights to get into it in the long run?I'm not saying that these connects. Always need to be intentional and with an end goal in mind, but they need to be genuine.

Another example, from my career is actually that when I looked into marketing positions, that was a couple of years later. There was a position open in marketing innovation. And somebody told me that there is this lady who works in, you know, global innovation for a big, brand in the, in the business and she was a great.

Connect for me, for me to understand, you know, what is innovation all about? What are the kinds of skills you need, what to look out for? And so I reached out to her, I had like a coffee connect. I asked all my questions. I was genuinely interested in marketing innovation and what it took to succeed. And we had a great conversation and she really helped me a lot.

And so. That was really, really nice. Two years later, I was ready to get into brand marketing and I reached out to her again and I said, you know what, we had such a good career conversation and we really talked about what are the kinds of experiences I should be looking to make? What are the kinds of things and learnings, you know, I should foster and, and, and look to get in this role.

and she gave really good career advice. So I just kind of followed up with her and I, had another connect with her and that felt really, really good. And then I kid you not, three to four months later, that person, changed roles. And became the hiring manager that would eventually hire me in the position I have today.

Now, some of those things were obviously unrelated. I could have never foreseen that. This person would become a hiring manager of a very desirable position. And now I had already made a connection with her without even knowing that, but this is how things go, especially in huge organizations. You never know who you're going to end up with.

And so if you follow your interests and if you. Are genuine with like what you're interested in, the kind of roles we want to learn more about. Those connects are always super meaningful. They are win win situations. The other person, you know, takes away something from it too.so this has, this has been another game changer for me.

I'll say one final thing that I feel like, you know, is, is, is sort of like the groundwork and the basis of what I'm teaching. and what I want to bring across. It's this whole concept of pull, not push. You know how in marketing we often talk about push marketing versus pull marketing. Push marketing is, you know, very aggressively promoting, pushing a product out, making sure that it's being seen versus pulling is getting the audience, getting the consumer to come to you.

And I feel like that is our introvert strategy. For career success and to move from being overlooked to being seen and being considered for the killer positions that you want.it often feels like extrovert strategies. rely on pushing for attention. And this is what you're always told to do in corporate, isn't it?

You know, present at big meetings and company wide emails, spotlight your own achievements, you know, you know, self promotion, talk about yourself, but introverts don't push, they pull, they create intrigue, they build momentum, and they draw people in. By mastering what they do best. So at the end of the day, I'm not telling you to go out and talk to all these people and make sure that everybody in the organization, everybody in the business knows your name, knows what you do best, you need a couple of people.

Who know what you do best and what you're passionate about. So don't look for huge audiences. Look for small groups, look for genuine connections, look for people you admire, look for role models, look for decision makers and people who can, again, mention your name. In rooms full of opportunities. And that is ultimately how you go from being somebody who is underestimated to being somebody who is seen for the right things without needing to be in the spotlight, without needing to push, but, you know, in the very genuine introvert friendly way, there's a lot of pressure that comes with.

conventional career advice of like, you need to go out there. You need to be louder. You need to make things happen. But all along there was this very understated, subtle, low key way of getting seen by the right people. And it is just as effective. Again, I am not here to brag, but that position I ended up in, I ended up by following this exact strategy.

And I am there with the extroverts, like they're, I would not be at a higher position. I would not be at a better position. I would not have a more prestigious role right now. If I were extroverted, I am right up there with them. I achieved the same exact result with. This strategy by being myself, by looking inward, by not pushing, but by pulling by building intrigue.

And I'm so proud of that. And I would love for you to achieve the same thing. I would love for you to experience the same thing. You can be who you are. You can work with intention and you can really, really go places. I truly wish that for you. And if you have any questions about, you know, this feeling of being overlooked and underestimated and how can you, how you can leverage it further, feel Please reach out.

You can always send me a DM or a message on Instagram at awfullyquietpodcast. If you have any ideas for future episodes, if you have any kind of guests you want me to have on and reach out to send me a message, I'd love to hear from you. Thank you so much for tuning in today. If you have three seconds to leave a lovely review or a rating, please do so.

It is really simple on Spotify. Just click the three dots on the awfully quiet podcast, rate the show five stars. And you make me a very happy girl today. Thank you so much for tuning in and I'll see you next week.