E. 4 - Maximizing Your Strengths with Colleen DelVecchio
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[00:00:08] Melissa Vining: If you're a high performer looking to grow and make an impact, but feeling stuck, underappreciated, and burned out at work, you're in the right place. I'm Melissa Vining and this is the Job Search for High Performing Misfits podcast. I help high performers leave draining jobs behind, reclaim their careers and land roles and organizations where they can thrive. Tune in for tips, insights, and inspiration for your journey to fulfilling work that fits you.
[00:00:38] Melissa: Hello and welcome to the job search for High Performing Misfits podcast. My name is Melissa Vining. I am a certified career coach and certified resume writer, and today I am talking with Colleen DelVecchio. And Colleen, I am so happy to have you on the show, because I am absolutely in love with Gallup's CliftonStrengths, and you are a certified CliftonStrengths coach.
[00:01:00] Melissa: And you are the Founder and Chief Maximizer at your company, Maxady, where you transform individuals and businesses to prevent burnout, foster strengths-based leadership, increase belonging, and manage organizational change. And you also co-host your own great podcast, Embrace the Squiggle, which features authentic career stories of women who have made big squiggly career changes. So thank you for being here, Colleen.
[00:01:27] Colleen: I was going to say, including you, you were a guest on our podcast last year at some
[00:01:31] Melissa: Exactly.
[00:01:32] Colleen: yeah, yeah,
[00:01:33] Melissa: Exactly. Yes. And I'm sure that'll come up in our conversation today too. So it's great to have you here.
[00:01:39] Colleen: It's great to be here.
[00:01:40] Melissa: So can you start off just by telling us a little bit about yourself, and your background, and what you do?
[00:01:45] Colleen: Yeah, so we started Maxady six-ish years ago now, and before that I have worked in, I would say, every place that you could do some sort of career coaching, I've been there. And even when career coaching wasn't part of my job, I managed to make it part of my job. I ran a volunteer program at a hospital for four years, and I started a high school school volunteer to career program.
[00:02:09] Colleen: This whole, how do we help people have careers that make sense for them is just, it's like the invisible string that connects everything that I do. So I love doing it. I love talking about it. And like you said, we have our podcast, my co-host, Christine and I, where we just talk with women about their squiggly careers and how they've landed where they are. Because rarely is the story a straight line.
[00:02:31] Melissa: Exactly, and I think that's true of a lot of our listeners here as well, because,inherently, to be a high performing misfit, you're not fitting in, and I think we can tie this kind of directly to them right away with a little bit of my story. And you know my story from talking about it on your podcast, but, I was a professional musician and music teacher when I started my career, and I really loved it, but it was just hard to make a living in that space. So while I was doing that at the beginning of my career over this eight year timeframe, I was, at the same time, trying to figure out how can I transfer my skills to something else that is going to be more sustainable, more fulfilling?
[00:03:12] Melissa: And what I found was that nothing was working for me. I ended up having more than 20 jobs before the age of 30. And at that point I was kind of confused about why was this happening? Is it me, is it them? And I can skip a big chunk of this, but when I eventually landed in career coaching and I found that not only could I use my strengths really fully in the job that I was in, but the strengths that I have were also really authentically valued and appreciated in that workspace.
[00:03:45] Melissa: So when I realized that, then I look back on it, and I see that in all of those other places, my strengths were misaligned. So I think it's so important to start here, and really being able to use your specific strengths and understand them, and use the self-awareness to really figure out how can I make a successful career change?
[00:04:09] Colleen: Absolutely, right, and if we jump right into strengths, the whole basis of CliftonStrengths is not just the what, it's the how. How do we do things? How do we approach things, and how do you approach things that might be different than how I approach things? And, also to me, the other big part of that is this whole idea that that's okay. We can all approach things differently, and truthfully, when we approach them in the way that it makes sense for us, all of a sudden things fall into place. When I think about this with careers, I'm constantly saying to folks, I want folks to have careers where at the end of the day, they feel energized to go home and live their lives. And that they don't have careers that suck every drop of energy out of them. And Gallup talks a lot about when you are doing things that align with your strengths, you feel energized. You have way more energy, and it's like this perfect fit here, because if you're doing a job that aligns with your strengths that you enjoy and gives you energy, well then the rest of your life is going to feel a lot better.
[00:05:09] Colleen: And you can also be more successful in that job too, because you're working in your strengths. So there's so many great benefits to it. So for anyone who's not as familiar with CliftonStrengths, can you give us a little bit of background?
[00:05:22] Colleen: So CliftonStrengths, was started, gosh, I don't even know now. I mean I think it's 40 ish years ago
[00:05:29] Colleen: at this point, maybe 50, by Don Clifton with this whole idea of why are we constantly looking at people's weaknesses? If you look at performance evaluations, they're almost always along the lines of "Here, Melissa, here's a few things you did well last year. Oh, well, here's all the things you did wrong, and here's how we're going to fix them." And so much of our lives are our lens on things is what are we doing wrong and how do we fix them?
[00:05:55] Colleen: And Don Clifton kept saying, it's kind of like, you're swimming upstream all the time. You're always doing things that just don't feel right. And somewhere along the way, it almost feels like a badge of honor. Like, here are the things I'm not good at and I'm going to fix them. And his take on it was, what if the opposite was true? What if we actually put our effort into the things we do well? Because if we put our effort into the things we do well, then we can become exceptional at those things.
[00:06:26] Colleen: And it's been interesting to see the research because CliftonStrengths is owned by Gallup, who are the same Gallup poll people. They do all of this research mostly around work, but have also through the years, been the main political polls from many countries. They do so much research, and so their research keeps coming back and tells us that people who get to work in their strengths are three times as likely to be engaged in their work.
[00:06:50] Colleen: And this is why I always think companies love this. You have some really big companies out there that every employee takes CliftonStrengths. You know, I think of places like Southwest Airlines, all of their employees take it. Accenture. The Kansas City Chiefs use this, the Super Bowl winning Kansas City Chiefs, right? They use CliftonStrengths, because they know that when people know their strengths and know the things that they should be leaning into and putting more effort into, they get better.
[00:07:15] Colleen: And the other thing for me, I always tell folks like, that's great. We all want to do well in our jobs, of course, we all want careers that feel good to us. But the stat that always blew my mind was that people are six times as likely to say they have an excellent quality of life when they know their strengths and get to use them at work. And quality of life in their whole life, not just work.
[00:07:38] Colleen: So all this research keeps coming back over and over again. People who get to use their strengths are more productive at work. They have 81% lower absenteeism, which is an astounding number to me. They end up having more confidence in themselves and the work that they do.
[00:07:54] Colleen: And, again, you can take that same strength and move it anywhere. I think of folks who've had squiggly careers where they've done a whole bunch of different things and been really successful in a whole bunch of things that feel really different. But that ongoing thread might be that they're like, my top strength is Maximizer. As a Maximizer, I love to take things that are good and make them great. So I tend to do really well in roles where there's room for growth.
[00:08:20] Colleen: So, you start leaning into your strengths, you're going to start to find, there's this common thread that takes people through things, and, low and behold, you're going to start loving your job more. You're going to have more energy, and you're going to want to do things outside of work in a way that you probably haven't in the past.
[00:08:39] Melissa: I love that idea of the common thread, because that's something that I think a lot of people who are trying to make a big change struggle with sometimes, because they might be thinking just about their skills, which may or may not be transferable into the next step for them. But on the other hand, strengths, they're always going to be transferable because it's at the core of who you are, right?
[00:09:03] Colleen: Right. And it's, it's how you approach things. I always talk about your strengths are your kind of lens on the world, and that it's almost like we all have this massive zoom lens. And our strengths are that thing that we can zoom in on and take and translate it to a whole bunch of different places, regardless of what the actual task is.
[00:09:23] Melissa: Yeah, totally. And I think that what you said before just really makes such a big difference here because it's about the how. And a lot of the times we're thinking only about the what, and when we bring in the how, it changes everything. It changes how we look at this. It changes how we're communicating in our job search, even. So it is really so valuable in that way.
[00:09:47] Colleen: A hundred percent. Because if you can start thinking about, this is how I approach things. If we bring it back to even careers and job search, there's the dreaded question at the beginning of every interview that goes something along the lines of like, "Tell me about yourself." I mean, I've interviewed hundreds of people in my life and so many people, when you say, "tell me about yourself," they're like, "Oh, I was born in New York, and I went to this high school..." I'm like, yeah, nobody cares. That's not what we're looking for. Unless you're born some really cool, exotic place, nobody cares.
[00:10:17] Colleen: But what they do care about is you as a worker, and you as like what you can contribute. So if I go in and say, listen, the thread that goes through everything in my career has been, I like to take things that are good and make them better. And I can look back to my first jobs of working as a waitress at, um, Friendly's in high school and college and changing, like if anyone remembers to be able to get like the clown ice cream cone head. I used to make Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle cone heads, because that was like the thing at the time. And we would have people coming into the store just to get their Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle cone head because that's what their kid wanted, as opposed to the clown cone head.
[00:10:59] Colleen: I didn't have any brilliant marketing ideas. I just always like to take things and see can I make them one step better? And so it doesn't matter if it's the cone head or now if it's me doing a keynote to 4,000 people, these are the things that every time I do that keynote, yes, it's the same story. I talk about embracing the squiggle in my keynotes of how do you embrace change, but I change it slightly every single time, because the audience is different every time, and I want to make it better for them.
[00:11:26] Colleen: So you can start to see that thread that ties things through your whole career. When you start to think about when are the times I've been really successful? So that's the question I start with, tell me three stories about times that you were really successful. And we can probably start to see your strengths coming out.
[00:11:44] Colleen: So if you don't want to pay for the assessment, it's, I think it's $25 now these days for the top five. But if you don't have the ability to pay for that, or you don't want to pay for that, there you go. Start thinking about the stories that you were really successful, and start to think about, okay, what's the common thread here? Why was I successful in all of these situations?
[00:12:04] Melissa: This is why I think it's so important to start with your strengths before you dive into all of the other pieces of the career change or the job search. Because like you said, now you can see this differently. You can see your whole career path with the thread. It makes more sense to you, and that means when you communicate it to someone else, it's going to make more sense to them too.
[00:12:26] Melissa: So I really want to talk about this idea of why is this so important to start here? Because what I find a lot of the times is that when someone wants to make a career change, they're like, "Okay, I need to do something different, but I have no idea what," and they just jump in to start brainstorming, and then they often get really stuck because either everything sounds good, or nothing sounds good, or they're just confused and overwhelmed,and they're not really sure like, what can even be a good fit for me?
[00:12:56] Melissa: That, or even worse, I think, is people like, let me go back for my 18th master's degree. Like, let me just keep going. Yes. Which I did.
[00:13:03] Colleen: Oh, I forgot about that too. Sorry for calling you out there, Melissa.
[00:13:07] Colleen: That's something that a lot of people do. It's like, okay, we skipped so many steps. Let's go back to the beginning. Let's think about our strengths and our values, and now we can have something that we can tie this into and really evaluate it by. So what are your thoughts on why it's so important to start with strengths?
[00:13:26] Colleen: So I always think about it from two levels. Like one, I want to start with strengths because I also want to think about how are you going to approach your job search? Because how I might want to approach my job search and how you might want to approach a job search can be totally different.
[00:13:42] Colleen: So I think for myself, I've said I have that Maximizer. I also have Strategic in my top five, I have Communication, Achiever, Individualization, and with all of these strengths, one of the things I love doing, the common thread through all of mine, is the people.
[00:13:58] Colleen: And so when I think about if I'm going to start a job search for myself, I'm going to look at my strengths and be like, you know what I'm really good at? I'm good at connecting with people. I'm good at talking to people. And when I think of my Maximizer, I'm good at helping people take something good and make it better. When I'm being strategic, I'm good about figuring out what is some good strategy that helps people do things better?
[00:14:19] Colleen: And so when I think of my strengths and I think of a job search, I'm going to be a very people focused job searcher. I'm going to talk to tons of people. Well, if I'm sitting here saying, go talk to tons of people, and you're thinking, oh God, that's my worst nightmare. Maybe you're someone who is really analytical and really loves to think about things. Well, I'm going to start showing you the data. Let's look at the data. Let's think about how you can approach a job search from a more data-driven standpoint. So when I think about strengths, let's think about how you want to approach your job search, because some of it is also about how do you learn new things? Doing a job search right now today in 2025 is different than it was even in 2022, thanks to AI.Three
[00:15:02] Melissa: Yeah.
[00:15:03] Colleen: Three years, completely different ball game. There are so many different tools that you can use now. Uh, somebody who I'm currently working with is a retired teacher, and decided she needs to go back to work, and she has never touched AI. Limited computer knowledge. Has been a kindergarten teacher, so they're not using a whole lot of computers in kindergarten.
[00:15:22] Colleen: And as we're talking about this, it's a completely different way. So we start talking about how do you learn new things? So let's figure out how do you learn new things? When are you successful? Let's start with that as the basis, so we can build a plan that also now your job search isn't going to exhaust you. And now you start to think about, okay, now that we know how I like to approach things, what are careers that you can approach things that way?
[00:15:47] Melissa: Yeah. And I see the Strategic showing up in your strengths as you talk about this, because all of this is very strategic. And I think your example about how everything you do is related to people is also so important because it's not just about the strengths themselves, right? It's about how you're actually using it, how you're applying it. What does this mean for you? Because someone else might have similar strengths, and maybe not the exact same top five, but they might have some similar ones, and they just really like to use them in a much different way.
[00:16:20] Colleen: Right. You could be a Strategic Maximizer, which are like my top two. And you could be a Strategic Maximizer completely around data. That might be your thing.
[00:16:29] Melissa: Yeah.
[00:16:29] Colleen: To me, like I said, it's about people, and problem solving with people. You might be a data person. I can be a Strategic Maximizer and really focus around, I don't know, software development. I can find those things and make them better. So you could take this and go anywhere. I even think back to childhood. My mom to this day is still like, do you think you could be an engineer? I'm 54, I don't think I'm going to become an engineer at this point. But when you look back at like elementary school and middle school and high school and the things that I did really well, I could solve really complicated math problems as a young child.
[00:17:04] Colleen: And it wasn't the numbers that excited me, it was solving the problem, because I felt the same way about chemistry, where I didn't love bio as much. Where bio felt like it was much more of a like memorization lecture piece where chemistry, we did so much lab work that it felt like it was solving problems. I was solving for answers all the time.
[00:17:26] Colleen: And now when I look at my career, I'm like, oh, I solve for problems and answers every day, all day. No, it's not as an engineer. I'm not solving the answer of how to build a bridge, but I'm solving the problem and the answer about how does somebody get where they need to go in their career. Or, I do a lot of leadership work with organizations. How do we help people be better leaders? I'm solving those problems, and that's where it all made sense to me.
[00:17:49] Melissa: And it sounds like that's bringing you energy, right?
[00:17:52] Colleen: Right. It's the things that excite me. I love using public speaking as one of those examples. If you're thinking what do you mean by my job giving me energy? I always think back to one job I had where a coworker and I used to present at a conference together almost every year. We'd apply together, and every year when we'd present, I would finish and be like, woo hoo, like, you know, we're going to go out to dinner tonight. We're hanging out with all the people, isn't this great? I was so excited for this.
[00:18:18] Colleen: And after we presented, she would go back to her hotel room, shut the door, order room service, and not leave till the next morning. Thoroughly exhausted from it. And she would always say that she did this once a year. She liked it. She felt like she kind of should do it, but it was once a year for her. She's like, if I ever had a job where I had to present like that every day, I would never be able to get out of bed in the morning. I'd be exhausted every day. to me, this is what I love. So I've built my business around the fact that I get to be on stage talking a lot. I get to do podcasts like this. I do all the things that I get to be front and center speaking, because I love it, and it energizes me. Whereas if she had to do that, it would be a nightmare for her.
[00:19:03] Melissa: This is a really good example of digging deeper, by connecting these things that you love to do that bring you energy and how do they relate to my strengths? So I also wanted to ask you if you have any tips for people, after they take the assessment, it can be tempting to just be like, okay, here's the assessment, here's my strengths. Yeah, maybe I relate to these. Maybe there's something on there where I'm like, I'm not so sure about that. But either way, what do you do with this once you have it? How do you get past just seeing them and reading it, into a space where it's deeper and you really can connect it to yourself?
[00:19:36] Colleen: Yeah, so one of the first things I have people do is I have them grab a highlighter and a sharpie. And print out your report, because this is way better on paper than it is online. And I tell folks, grab a sharpie and cross out all the things that don't feel like you, and highlight the things that feel very much like you. Because although this is a wildly accurate assessment, rarely have I met someone who's taken it and been like, ooh, this doesn't feel like me. And even when I do, I'll say, all right, let's talk through it. And then when we talk through it, they're like, oh, wait, it really is me. I just wasn't, I wasn't reading it that way.
[00:20:10] Colleen: But again, it's a computer generated, so there's going to be lines on there that you're like, yeah, not me. Cross them out, get rid of them. Highlight the things that feel like you. And then start to think about times that you've been successful.
[00:20:22] Colleen: And often I find this is almost easier with a partner, because if you can say to someone, here's my story about when I've been successful. If you're struggling, your partner is often going to be able to say, oh, I can totally see those strengths. I can one hundred percent see your Communication strength coming in, or your Achiever, or your Arranger, like whatever it is. So you tell the story and they're able to see that. That can be really helpful.
[00:20:45] Colleen: If you don't have a partner for that, think about those times you were successful and see if you can tie them to your strengths, because now you can start to see, okay, when I've been successful. I've actually leaned into those strengths.
[00:20:58] Colleen: So now when you come across something as you go forward and you're struggling, so I don't care what it is, like maybe you're struggling with a PowerPoint presentation, or you're struggling with a particular part of work that you're doing.Oh delegation. That's one that I feel like every leader I work with is always like, "Ugh, I struggle with delegation." Like great. When have you been successful in the past? Doesn't even have to be around delegation. Let's hear that story. What did you lean into? Okay, so these are the things, that you were successful.
[00:21:26] Colleen: Let's say, we realized that Communication was that thread through all of them. You're really good at communicating. Okay, so now we think about delegation. Let's think about how are you communicating to others the work they need to do? Let's really push into your Communication strength. And getting folks to start thinking about can I purposely aim my strengths at something?
[00:21:45] Colleen: Gallup calls this name it, claim it, aim it. Where it's like, you name it, you read your strengths, you know them. Claim it, you can see when they've helped you be successful. And then aim it, how do you push them out there in the world and purposely use them to be as successful as you can?
[00:21:59] Melissa: I also wanted to ask you about strengths showing up differently in different environments in different places. And I mentioned this a little bit at the beginning when I was talking about my story, because you can see that there are going to be situations for people when it is misalignment. So I'm wondering if you can talk about how strengths can be maybe misinterpreted or undervalued in a certain context, but then in another context they're seen as the thing we need, like that's the superpower.
[00:22:30] Colleen: Two come to mind to me. For myself, I can say Strategic and Maximizer together tend to make me move really fast. My Strategic is my gut instinct. I feel like I know the right way to go down a path. And my Maximizer is I want to take things that are good and make them better.
[00:22:46] Colleen: And what has happened to me, in many occasions, and I will say like when I think about performance evaluations throughout my whole career, I've gotten many lines on my performance evaluations that say something along the lines of, Colleen has really high expectations for folks. Colleen sets the bar sometimes too high. Colleen thinks everybody works as hard as she does.I've seen those types of lines on my performance evals, and in the wrong group, that could be super negative. Because I'm constantly looking for ways to improve things and make them better, where everyone else is like, okay, can we just slow down? Everything's good like it is, like we don't need to change.
[00:23:23] Colleen: So I feel like I've come up against that in a few different times. But one of my favorites is, there's a strength called Activator, and it's somewhere in the middle for me. It's probably in the teens somewhere. Um, it's an influencing strength. So if you're a strengths person, it's one of the orange strengths, and it's one of those strengths where I think like your superpower as an Activator is you're really good about getting people excited to get started. So you're really good about kind of saying, okay, time out. We've talked about this enough, time to move on. Let's go. And like getting people excited to start.
[00:23:56] Colleen: And so I had a friend who, she's Activator number one, and she is an Activator. She's always excited to get started. She's somebody who has 19 projects going at the same time in her house, all of which are started and never done. Now that's not all Activators, but many Activators, depending on the strengths that are around it, you might be really good at these ideas and getting excited about started but not finishing. And so she really struggled. And had actually been fired from multiple jobs in her lifetime, because she would never kind of wrap things up with a bow at the end. Things were never fully completed.
[00:24:29] Colleen: And after she did strengths and kind of learned about them and dove into them a little more, she actually said one day, like, oh, now these jobs make sense why I didn't do well. These were all jobs where I had to do like final reports for things. I always had to button up projects, and that's why I was never successful.
[00:24:49] Colleen: Fast forward, she works as a consultant for one of the big top consulting firms in the US now, and she is wildly successful, because she's so good about going into a company, assessing things, getting everybody excited to get started, then she leaves, and they have to run the project. So her job is not about buttoning it up at the end. Her job is to get people excited to get started, and now she's seen as a wild success. She has moved up three or four times in a short period of time at this company. Because they see her as like, what an amazing employee. Like you're doing such great things with the exact same strength that had her fired from many jobs in her lifetime.
[00:25:31] Melissa: I feel like I can relate to that so much too. And especially with your story, because I know you mentioned you always love to go in and try to improve things, and you're using, you know, your Strategic and your Maximizing strengths. And I'm doing the same thing, but I'm using my Analytical and Discipline strengths, because I go in and I want to analyze like what's happening here. How can we do this better? Where are things going wrong? And then I want to create a system. Because that's what I do as a Discipline person. I'm going to go make a system out of everything. I'm going to tell you step by step what we can do. And it turns out a lot of people don't like that.
[00:26:05] Colleen: I was going to say I would feel like a bull in a China closet to you. Because it's going to feel like I am just willy-nilly throwing things up left and right and being like, let's try this. And that's how I work. I'm always like, let's pilot. If it doesn't work, oh well, we'll try it a different way. We can try it this way. And I often need a partner like you who tells me, okay, can we take a deep breath and slow it down?
[00:26:26] Melissa: Yeah.
[00:26:27] Colleen: But until we actually know each other's strengths and can have that conversation, we're never going to partner well. We're just going to make each other frustrated beyond belief.
[00:26:37] Colleen: But when we can work well together, then all of a sudden, look at the magic that can happen. Because I can be the 900 ideas, let me tell you all these things. And then you can analyze them and say, look, this is going to be the one that's going to make the most sense. So we can bounce back and forth together. But until we know each other's strengths, we're probably going to, like I said, frustrate the hell out of each other.
[00:27:00] Melissa: Exactly. And that's where I think having this language is so important, because I had my team at work take the strengths assessment too, because I just love everything about it. And the people who have Strategic, I see that exact thing where I'm like, oh my gosh, you're jumping into the strategies before we have all the information. Let's take a step back. We don't even have enough information yet.
[00:27:23] Colleen: And again, like if we know that about each other, then it's a lot easier to say, okay, you know what, Melissa, go find that information for us. Let's come back and pause. Because if we do that, we're probably going to be better together.
[00:27:35] Melissa: And it can make it run smoother because I don't have to say, oh, Colleen is making me crazy. I can just say, Colleen, your Strategic strength is taking over right now. Let's just take a breath.
[00:27:47] Colleen: Maximizer on fire. I have somebody on my team who's also a Strategic Maximizer, and we get on calls some days, it, it just happened yesterday. We got on a call, and all of a sudden we were supposed to flush out an agenda for one day of training, and by the time we were hanging up on the call, we had 97 different ideas that were flying off the handle. And all these places we're going to pitch this idea to, and we still didn't have the full agenda, because we had like eight days worth of training that we have brainstormed.
[00:28:19] Melissa: Yeah,
[00:28:19] Colleen: So often I need that person who's like, okay, let's narrow it in. So I know for myself, I have to watch when my Maximizer gets control.
[00:28:30] Melissa: Yeah, definitely. And I can do that with my Deliberative strength, because my number one is Deliberative. I could sit there and deliberate all day forever and.
[00:28:39] Colleen: Slow, careful decisions, right? Which.
[00:28:40] Melissa: Exactly, and maybe never move along. But luckily I have Discipline in there too, and Responsibility. So I'm like, all right, I got to make it happen somehow.
[00:28:50] Melissa: You need an Activator to come in and be like, let's go. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Okay. So we could go on forever, but I want to apply this to job search strategy a little bit, because a lot of what I try to help people with is how can you show up really authentically in your job search? And I think being able to incorporate your strengths helps you do that.
[00:29:11] Melissa: And I know you mentioned this a little bit before in terms of like, okay, if this is your strength, how can we utilize that even in the job search itself? And I'm also wondering if you have any ideas around like how can someone effectively even start to communicate their strengths on something like their application materials? Like we think about resume, cover letter, LinkedIn. Is there a way to include some of that story there?
[00:29:38] Colleen: And people have very different opinions on this. I don't think there's a one way.The Maximizer in me will say, there are many different ways that you can maximize your strengths there in the job search. So I've seen people straight up put top five CliftonStrengths and just list them on their resume. If you're applying for companies that you know are familiar with this, if you're applying for a job at Southwest, who, like the CEO of Southwest Airlines has been a keynote at Gallup multiple times. If you're applying for a job with the Kansas City Chiefs, their Chief Human Resources officer was a keynote at the conference. We know, they know it. Just throw them on there.
[00:30:15] Colleen: If you're not sure if a place is going to have a clue what they are, I like using statements like " Through my Maximizer, I..." and then give an example of how you use it. On my LinkedIn, that's actually how I have it in my about section. At the bottom of my, about section, I have all five of my strengths, and I give an example of how I use them in my business. So I think that's one way to do it, just listing them as another.
[00:30:40] Colleen: The other thing is that exercise where you go in and you highlight all the parts of the report that sound like you. Those are some fantastic lines to use on your resume and your about section on your LinkedIn. I think on your resume that top section where you're writing a summary, or even in a specific job, you can use some of those, and you don't have to use words like Maximizer, that is a Gallup word. You can just talk about, here's something that I took that was good, and I made it significantly better.
[00:31:08] Colleen: To me, one of the other things I love to do with folks is if you're really comfortable with your strengths, it's also a fantastic way to be able to answer so many interview questions. Because if you can think about times you've been successful, and tie your strengths to it, it's great.
[00:31:25] Colleen: It also can answer the weakness question. I told you about my Maximizer can get on fire, where I'm like taking everything good and making it great, and sometimes it's okay if things are good as they are. And so I'll talk about that on interviews and say, this has gotten me in trouble in jobs. I've had people say I have too high expectations, and now I know to watch out for it. And you know what? Sometimes do I still get a little bit out of control with my Maximizer? Yes. I still sometimes get a little too on fire with Maximizer. And having that other person who can remind me, can be really helpful.
[00:32:00] Melissa: And I think the way that you frame that too is awesome, because it shows that you are super self-aware, and that comes across very, very differently than someone else who's coming into the interview, you know, your competition, they don't have that same self-awareness. And I will tell you, as someone who has interviewed people as well, I want to hire people who have self-awareness like that.
[00:32:22] Colleen: And not giving the answer, which I feel like is the standard answer to what's your weakness, is like, I'm a perfectionist, but I work on it. It's like, okay.
[00:32:30] Melissa: Yeah, exactly. And I mean, I want to hear even a tangible thing, like even if you're saying, yeah, sometimes my Maximizer goes crazy, I've set up systems for myself so that if that starts to happen, I know how to kind of harness it. And then if you have that part of the story, now all of a sudden that's an even better story.
[00:32:51] Colleen: And again, it should feel authentically you. I think if you've read your strengths enough times, I have two daughters who are 20 and 21, they're both juniors in college right now, and both of them know their strengths. One of them on her interview this summer, they were asked about them. She was able to give some examples, and that's the internship she got. A pretty competitive one at a bank. Because she was able to talk about things from a level that was more than what they expected.
[00:33:19] Melissa: Do you have any other tips on integrating this into any interview?
[00:33:24] Colleen: I always tell folks for interviews to have about four stories ready to go. And with those four stories, you should be able to answer most of those "tell me about a time when" questions that you get asked.
[00:33:36] Colleen: So if you have your top five strengths, think about a story that shows each of those. Can you think about a time that your Relator really showed up for you? Can you think about a time your Woo showed up for you? And many companies, even if they don't understand CliftonStrengths or don't use it, for you to say, I took this assessment, it told me these were my strengths, and because I know this now about myself, right, that self-awareness piece, here's how I have applied them, and here's how they've helped me grow in my job.
[00:34:05] Colleen: So even if they don't know CliftonStrengths, maybe they know DISC or MBTI or Enneagram or one of the other millions of things that are out there, they at least understand that you've put some effort into knowing yourself, and that self-awareness, which, like you said, is such a big part of hiring. You want to hire people that are self-aware, and know their blind spots, and know the places that they may not be as good as others.
[00:34:31] Melissa: How can someone evaluate potential opportunities and find alignment through the job search process, through the interview process, before they even accept a job, to really better understand if their strengths and values are going to be aligned with that job and that company?
[00:34:49] Colleen: So I think from a values standpoint, one exercise I make all of my job seekers do is write down their top five to eight values are important to them, like things that are important to you in a job. And so let's say flexibility is one of yours. Well, then I make them define it. And this is before the interview, because once you get to the interview, it's almost too late to do these things. So I want you to write down what does flexibility mean to you?
[00:35:13] Colleen: Because I got a job one time that I asked if they had flexibility in the workplace, that's when my daughter was in preschool, and they said yes. They're like, oh yeah, we're flexible. And on the first week I was like, okay, I need to leave a little bit early to pick her up. And they were like, oh yeah. So flexibility to them meant you could start at 8, 8:15, or 8:30 and work till 4, 4:15, or 4:30, and that was it. That was their look at us being wildly flexible, and I was like, oh, that is not at all what I meant by flexibility.
[00:35:45] Melissa: So I make sure that people really define these things for themselves, because if you haven't defined them, then how are you going to be able to evaluate them? Yeah.
[00:35:55] Colleen: Often I will tell folks, some of those things you can ask on an interview, on the first interview. Some of them you probably don't want to ask until second or third interview, depending on the level of the job.
[00:36:05] Colleen: But I find my favorite part is, when possible, is if somebody can give you a tour of the office. So on interviews, particularly if I've gotten to that final round, I will ask can you walk me through the office? Now, this is obviously for in-person or hybrid positions. Because I want to see what people look like in this office.
[00:36:24] Colleen: And I don't mean like what they look like, you know, as humans. I want to see, do people look happy or do people look miserable? How are people dressed? Do they have any decorations on their desk? I had somebody who, I worked with them a couple of years ago and they got a job and they were told no family photos were allowed in their cubicles. And I was like, I might not even have put one, but now I want one. And so,I think it's those little things that help you see that.
[00:36:53] Colleen: And then from an evaluating it from your strengths standpoint, like we said before, you can literally use your strengths in almost every job out there. You just have to decide, is this a place that I can really lean into my strengths in a way that feels right to me.
[00:37:08] Colleen: So it's asking those questions. It's making sure on job interviews that if so, I don't know if you have a strength called Woo. Woo is "winning others over." So people who have Woo, love to just interact with lots of people. So if you are someone who has high Woo, I would ask about how much team interaction do we have? How much interaction do I have with our customers, our clients? Let's make sure that if you are someone who has strengths that crave human interaction, that your job allows for that.
[00:37:40] Colleen: Now, if you're someone who has Deliberative, I would be asking questions like, how quickly are decisions made around here? Because if they say we make decisions super quick all the time, every time, someone who has Deliberative is going to be like, Ugh, no one's thinking about what are the possibilities here? Whereas someone who's a Strategic Maximizer like me is like, yes, that is the team. I want to work on the team that's like running a hundred miles an hour. If they break, it's no big deal, we'll fix it. Whereas the deliberative person's like, let's try not to break anything.
[00:38:10] Melissa: Yeah.
[00:38:10] Colleen: So let's ask those questions. Make sure you understand what a good atmosphere is for you, because you work in the job that's, you know, bull in a China closet, or I work in the job where everybody has to research every single thing. We're not fitting in that's not going to feel good to either of us.
[00:38:29] Melissa: Right, exactly. And like you were saying, it's partially about the values, and what is important to you in the job and the company. And then it's partially about the strengths, but not only that, how you actually want to use them.So knowing that in advance and then being able to evaluate based on that is so crucial.
[00:38:48] Colleen: always have those questions. And if you can't think of them, I mean, you can use things like AI for so many things these days. Gallup actually has an AI tool in their app. Not everybody has it yet. It's still in beta mode. But I've even done things like dropped into ChatGPT and say, here's the job description, here are my strengths. What questions would you ask on an interview to make sure that I'm able to show up with my strengths every day? Ask AI.
[00:39:14] Colleen: Now, sometimes those questions are going to be either inappropriate for an interview, or not ones that you care about, but I always ask ChatGPT to give me 10 or 20 when I really only need two of something. So it gives me choices. So use the tools that are available to you out there.
[00:39:31] Melissa: And I've done a similar thing, to put in the top five strengths and say, what are some potential jobs that I might do that align with these strengths? And whatever else you know you want. So whether it's a small company, or has flexibility, or whatever those other parameters are, put it in, and then it gives you the start of a brainstorm, and maybe not everything's right and that's fine, but it gets you going.
[00:39:56] Colleen: And again, remember, just like Gallup is a computer, this is a computer that's spitting them out. You might see all those things on AI and be like, okay none of them are good fit. You're like, great. Try again. Not those. Something different, please.
[00:40:08] Melissa: Exactly. And that's where you can maybe say, I don't like these because, and that way you might get a better generation. Yeah, exactly.
[00:40:17] Colleen: That's a whole nother podcast. We can talk all about how to use AI in your job search these days.
[00:40:22] Melissa: Yes. I mean, I'll definitely have to have you on again because I'm sure we can go on forever. But I did want to talk about your podcast, because every week you're interviewing different women who have non-linear careers and in a lot of cases they've made big career changes.
[00:40:36] Melissa: And I think that in some cases, the people you're interviewing are misfits or high performing misfits like our audience. So I'm interested for you to just tell us a little bit about what you're doing on that podcast, what kind of feedback you've been hearing from people.
[00:40:50] Colleen: We are Embrace the Squiggle. It's been great. We, recently recorded episode 75. So we've been at it for, I don't know, a year and a half, almost now. Every week, every Wednesday, we drop a new episode. Probably three quarters of them are us interviewing a woman about their kind of career trajectory.
[00:41:09] Colleen: And it's been everyone from Sarah Haines who's on the TV show The View, and how she landed there and how she focused in on what she really wanted. And, fun fact, what she really wants is to be on Saturday Night Live, so she's still trying to squiggle there. We've had Melissa on, so you've been on talking about your squiggly career, but we've had so many women in so many amazing careers from someone who helps former NFL players navigate life after being in the NFL as a social worker to the woman who kind of went out with the, Roomba, which, fun fact, that's one of my favorite episodes. If you go listen to that with Nancy, she talks about the original name of Roomba was supposed to be Cyber Suck. Nobody was ever going to buy a Cyber Suck. It was very funny.
[00:41:57] Colleen: So,it's folks who've had these amazing careers. And amazing, I don't mean like they are all Sarah Haines are all people that you're going to know their name of, but they're all folks who, they have squiggled in and out of things, and they've done jobs that maybe weren't the best fit because of a phase of life that they were in, or because they just couldn't figure out what it was. Right. It took them five or six tries, or 20, to get to what made sense for them. So we love it.
[00:42:26] Colleen: And then about every fourth or fifth episode, it's just my co-host and I, Christine, and we talk about something. So this week we are talking about public speaking, how to get better at that. So we try to throw some skills in there every few episodes, but go join us over at Embrace the Squiggle, and if you've had a squiggly career, reach out, and you can find us on TikTok, on Instagram, and LinkedIn, and just let us know, and maybe we'll have you on as a guest.
[00:42:50] Melissa: I think it'll be so inspiring for people to hear that they're not the only ones going through this. A lot of people have this similar situation, and you can be successful. Do you have any last words of wisdom that you want to tell our our listeners?
[00:43:04] Colleen: Yeah. You know, to me it's all about figuring out that career that makes sense for you. And don't worry about what other people think. Find the thing that makes sense for you right now, and know that the job you have right now is not the job that you're going to have forever. You are going to change again. You are going to squiggle again, and that's what makes us all great.
[00:43:24] Melissa: Perfect. So I know you mentioned where people can find your podcast, and if they want to get in touch with you and learn more about what you're doing, where can they find you?
[00:43:32] Colleen: Colleen DelVecchio on LinkedIn. Also our company is Maxady, and you can find us maxady.com. So we're all over the place these days.
[00:43:42] Melissa: Great. All right, Colleen, thank you so much for being here.
[00:43:44] Colleen: Thanks, Melissa.
[00:43:46] Melissa Vining: If you love this podcast, be sure to hit subscribe. Leave me a review and share it with a friend so we can help more high performing misfits find work they love. See you next time.
