Ep. 8: Why I Quit Amazon

Career Design Podcast

Episode 8

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I'm Lindsay Mustain, and this is the career design podcast made for driven ambitious square pegs and round holes type professionals who see things differently and challenge the status quo. We obliterate obstacles and unlock hidden pathways to overcome and succeed where others have not stagnation feels like death. And we are unwilling to compromise our integrity and settle for being average in any way. We are the backbone of any successful business, and those who overlook our potential are doomed to a slow demise. We do work that truly matters aligns with our purpose, and in turn, we make our lasting mark on the world. We are the dreamers, doers, legends, and visionaries who are called to make our most meaningful contribution and love what we do. So I am going to be talking today about the biggest story that I get asked about, which is why in the world, I would leave Amazon. So we're gonna talk about that today. And as part of the career design podcast, it's important for me to be really clear about my integrity, and the things that I do to ensure that my alignment is always in what my purpose and my passion is around. And so that means that when things don't serve me, or when things are no longer

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beneficial for me, I walk away. And that is what I want to empower jobseekers to do that same thing. And it may and I would say, anybody who is employed, whether it's in your own business or not, that you should always consider that as being a huge part of this. Okay. All right. So I want to tell you the story about why I would leave Amazon. So let me tell you the story. This is back in 2016. And I had been courted by Amazon for about four years at this point. And they had been asking me about opportunities for a while here. And I was really flattered. But I knew that based on my experience, that Amazon was a place where you kind of dreams go to die, to put it lightly. And that's my impression was I was like, I don't want to cry at my desk, and I don't want to sleep under it. And that was my belief. And I decided to take an opportunity there that was contracted. And I thought I would just see, I would just see if it made sense for me to go there if I would even be a good fit. But I definitely wanted to know it was just I took a contract there. And I fell in love. I fell in love with Amazon, it was so different on the inside that I worked with an incredible group, but I was doing amazing things. And then they asked me to come on board. And so I joined them. And I got really, really well known for telling my story about job searching and being the most visible employee of Amazon. Before one day, I just walked away from everything. So why would I do that? Now, I've been asked this so many times, why would you quit Amazon, you were the most visible employee. And what that means is on LinkedIn, and I think there's a lot more people who are more visible than me now than I was the time but that there was more engagement for me as a person than Amazon as an entire company and more than Jeff. And so they use that to their advantage to help continue the success of what I consider being matchmaking and talent acquisition was trying to find the right candidates, align them to the right positions, okay. And I really did love my time with there. But I think we need to go back a little bit. And understand that, as a recruiter, I've already been in the place where I've also been an employee. So when I deal with job seekers, I'm not just talking from place like, Oh, this is what you should do as someone across the table. It's also I was in that same place in your same shoes. And I understand what it's like to be unemployed, to be worried about losing everything. And to be totally fearful. I understand that place. Because guess what, in the Great Recession, I was there right with you. In fact, I sat in the unemployment office, and I listened to a woman who had never ever, ever actually hired somebody Teach me somebody who's a seasoned recruiter how to job search. And the part that killed me was that I was doing everything she said, and it still wasn't working. That's what I knew something was wrong, and in desperate times desperate measures, okay. And so this is just a repeat of a past story that I actually had from when I was eight years old. And now I'm going to go back and I'm going to tell you a story about my life. And I'm going to say, it's very important for me to consider what in the in the light that I try to share in the world is to create a safe place for job seekers, where they don't identify that their past success, their scars, their failures are somehow part of who they are. Those are parts of your story. They're really interesting plot twists, but they are not who they are. That's not what defines you. That's not who you are. And so you really need to think about that. And so I'm going to tell you a little bit about my story because understanding where you come from understanding what someone's origin is, is a really important part of understanding who they are today, and who, what they've been through to become the person they are. So I want to go back about 20 years, 30 years ago, sorry, 30 years ago. And it's when I was eight years old. My dad was laid off of a job that he worked out for more than 20 years. And he went to work every single day. And he wore this gold watch, they gave him as a celebration of his tenure, they don't really do that anymore. And then there's like these words that kept like floating through our house, things like pink slip, I was eight years old, I had no idea what a pink slip was, okay? overqualified was this other word. And even fact, till this day, that word makes me feelsick.

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overqualified is the most bogus reason in the entire world tell somebody they didn't get the job. What it is, is if you tell somebody that you need to give them better feedback, first off, all you've done is basically said, I'm going to discriminating against you for being too qualified without really talking about what their true issue is, which most of the time, it's around some other story that this person believes about themselves. that's causing them to get that overqualified tag. But that is the worst possible way we could actually give somebody a story about being really good at your job and having consistency in your in your employment. My dad was the kind of guy who prided himself on being the breadwinner. He protected and took care of his family. And then it was all gone. Yeah, how many of you have been there? where everything was going fine. Your life was totally on track everything. What would we consider a normal, successful life was going right? And then everything falls out from underneath you. Suddenly, he had no place to go every single day. And day after day, life got really tough at home, my family, we ended up separated. My dad became my primary caregiver. And every day, he took me to school. And I watched how he struggled in his job search. Every day, I had a front row seat, to watching a man who prided himself on his ability to provide and protect and take care of his family, erode any self worth because of a story that said he was overqualified. Because when you lose your job, you're not just like, I lose my entire identity. And somehow, we've identified that somehow our worth changes because we're employed or not employed. And this is a story that you need to knock off. First off, because who you are, is not diminished by your ability to to get a paycheck right now, you will have ample opportunity to earn lots of money in your life that does not distinguish whether or not you are a good person, you are a good human, that your life is meaningful. Those things do not matter. That is not what they're going to talk about. When they read your obituary at the end, they're going to talk about the things that you did that were amazing. It's a North American thing, really, truly to say we identify as who we are as our jobs, whether when people have most time when we meet each other. We're like, what is it that you do as if somehow that's part of your self identity? I it's actually something I deliberately don't ask people what they do unless they're working with me, because I don't care. I care about what matters to them. Who are they about? What are they about? What are they passionate about, okay. We don't know how to uncoupled ourselves from our work, we seem to see them as one of the same. And when you have a big sense of pride in your work, and you don't have that anymore, you tend to feel like a failure. So it was really, really hard to watch a guy who had prided himself on being able to provide for his family, you know, absolutely not be able to do that anymore to go from, you know, this huge provider and manly man to becoming Mr. Mom and I lived off of things like grilled cheese, really good in spaghetti. And then I have a lot of pink socks. My dad was not the best homemaker. But he did the absolute best. And it was also very scary. One of the things we don't realize when we are job searching, and the stories that we tell in our houses has a really direct impact on the children and the spouses or partners that are in our lives. That means that when you are going through a job search, the people who are watching closest are the ones who love you. They want you to be successful. When they see you struggle, they struggle. Okay, guys, this is a really hard story for me to tell. So I'm just gonna tell you that my family split up we couldn't pay the bills. Our house went into foreclosure. And one summer I went to visit my grandma. And during that time, my dad got really, really sick about an employee for a couple years at this point. And he'd had terrible headaches, he was having terrible headaches, use a musician, and he played guitar. And he was having a hard time, his fingers would not play the, the notes that he wanted to. And he kept asking himself, he was already a cancer survivor and said, I hope it's not in my head. He went into the emergency roomwith a headache.

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And he walked outwith a scar from where they cut open his brain his skull, and found an operable brain tumor.They said they couldn't do anything. It was too far too far. brain surgery has come a long way, since then. But the kind of cancer he had still kills most everybody.

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But the part that really kills me is that he never found a job. He was laid off after 20 years on an employer. And he did everything right. And he still couldn't find a job. Okay, there's a reason my team told me to put two shoes here. So I'm, it's really important to be authentic into who you are. So I'm going to share with you my pain, because it's important for you to know, I'm not just a recruiter, and not just a dream job coach. I am a person who is the daughter of someone who was unemployed, and lost their life being unemployed, because of a system that is broken, because the things that we think we need to do to change our job search are not the right things. For example, I remember my dad, we went to like this discount, I don't know, it's like a, like a TJ Maxx for business or something. And we ended up there and he needed to what he felt he needed to do was buy a briefcase. And so we picked up the lease and beat up a briefcase that he could have. So he could be the perfect candidate.

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Folks,your padfolio and your briefcase and your resume are not going to get you your job. And when I look back now, I think and I see this from the lens of an eight year old girl, and all I wanted to do was help my dad.

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And soI'd like to any See, the things he focused on are the things we focus on 30 years later, still, it is still the same issue. It's the same issue I faced in 2008. It is 2021. And we still haven't fixed the problem. And somehow the people who are on the other side of this who are agree justly affected, believe something is wrong with them.

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And that's just not true. We like to do this thing where we say, oh, an HR, realigning resources re allocating, it's just business. Fuck that. Because you know what every single person you have on that spreadsheet and that FTP that is a person that is a heartbeat, that is a family. It is not a number on a spreadsheet, and it isn't just business, it's someone's life. My dad neverfound a job.

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I struggled until I figured this out. I struggled so hard, I almost lost everything. So when I come back to why I do what I do, it's because I don't ever want anyone to ever go through what my dad did. That is my real origin story. And then I don't want anybody to go through what I did as an adult. And then I don't want you to continue to repeat this story over and over again, where you feel like you are not in control of your career. When I know you can be you can do the right things that move your needle, you can correct the places so that you understand how to be in a place of your zone of genius where people will pay you top dollar as soon as you understand how to harness your superpowers. If you do that, you will align into what you were truly meant to do and people will pay you top dollar to do it. How do I know I've worked with 15,000 people now in the last three and a half years 15,000 people I've hired 10,000 people in four years. I To help more people, as job seekers that I did my entire career. In fact, I hire more people for Amazon or help them get hired now than I ever did working inside of that company. Something's wrong with that. Something is wrong with that. So here's what you need to know, you've got one shot in this world. And life is very, very short, we have zero clue when we're going to expire.

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Most of us are just trying to get by. But folks in that space, you're going to miss out on the now.So do something with your life so that when they tell your story, at the end of your days, it matters. My dad didn't get a chance. He was 47 years old.He's 10 years older than I am now.

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He never got a chance. So you know what I am here to do, tell his story, be his legacy and make my difference in the world. And you know what they told me, I couldn't do it. That's what I did Amazon. I got really well known for telling you why you will never even got a call back why you were treated like a piece of paper, a number on a spreadsheet. And it is because you are a number on a spreadsheet. That is not who you truly are. But that is what you are inside of a recruiting process. And this is why I am on a mission to destroy talent acquisition. I am on a mission to destroy human resources. And what I mean by that is not an employee human resources, but stop seeing human resources as a place of managing people's problems and start managing people's potential. How different is that perspective? How different is it when we start to see people for all of their gifts? And instead of saying you did this wrong, you did this wrong? Or this didn't go? Well, we say you know what, you're human. And I know you did all these other things. So how do we win together? And instead, we shut down? People who are amazing and incredible, because they make a mistake. We treat them as if they're nothing as if their life didn't matter. Your ability to be employed does not count against whether or not your life matters. Your life matters. Okay? Somebody desperately needs you. Right now think of three people who desperately need you in their life. It's like,what is the movie? It's one of my favorite movies, the black and white movie.

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Every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings. You guys gotta help me. I can't believe I can't get this one. But the empower of one life. Maybe we're not all George Bailey. It's a Wonderful Life. That's what the movie is. We all make impacts. We all make impacts. Okay? It is too short. Your life is too short not to design your own career, it is too short to let somebody else decide what is good for you. So now what I teach people is how to completely get out of that system. use it to your advantage using the same tools of how I hire 10,000 people over my 18 year career.

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You know, people hate recruiters, I'm going to tell you, your recruiter is doing the absolute best they possibly can. a recruiter is managing somewhere between 20 and 40 requisitions with somewhere between 150 to 250 applicants now for most major companies, it might be 510 times that for the amount of applications. We are managing 10s of 1000s of candidates every single month. So if you feel like you're insignificant it is because you are one of many. So if you want a life that is unlike anyone else, I'm gonna quote Dave Ramsey here, you better act like somebody who is different than everyone else. This is what happened for me at Amazon, I decided to no longer be silent about a system that I had helped create, perpetuate and install at 25 of Fortune 100 companies. I was no longer going to sit by and not tell you the unspoken rules of the game. That is why I started speaking out and you know what? Amazon hated it. They hated it. Because you know what? They said, your LinkedIn profile. That's us. And I'm like, Oh, no, it's not. This isn't China. That is my real estate, not yours. In fact, your LinkedIn profile is the single greatest place of your professional real estate that's in there. It's gonna be on the top for search results. If you go Google your name right now it is yours. And the story you tell on your professional real estate or in your personal brand is your autobiography. It is your brand narrative. It is what creates equity and allows you to demand top dollar for what you do. So you think I was willing to hand that over or jeopardize my values? In order to fit into the mold, No, they didn't want me to tell you the secrets. And now guess what? I walked away from everything after they treated somebody so horribly, there were three of us on the planet to do this job to treat somebody so horribly. And it was one of the one of the candidates, the only woman that said, I would never work for you. And you say that you care about candidate experience. That was me, by the way. I don't think anybody else experiences like I do. And you know what I did, I cried. I cried. So much for that girl, for that woman. Because I watched the same thing that happened to my dad happened to her when she was the candidate of choice. And I realized that everyone is at a huge disadvantage inside of this process. There is a reason why I have gotten so much traction, there is a reason why we have been massively successful as a business. It is because I speak a truth that no one is willing to admit. It's time to recommend feel for their gifts and not as a commodity. That's exactly it. But the truth is, we're dealing with a broken process. So I made it my mission to help as many people as possible. And you know what, I stopped asking for forgiveness, or stop asking for permission to start asking for forgiveness. And it's what changed everything in my career. And when I realized that I can no longer help you guys from the inside of a company after being there and advocating for you. I walked away from everything, folks, I walked away from my stock, I had no money to invest. And I went on a prayer and rested on my laurels, that my values mattered more. And my impact in the world would not be contained. Because somebody else told me it was.

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I loved what I got to do at Amazon, I really did. But the truth is, you get to either empower your people to be the best they possibly can. Or you take that away, you either act as a bridge to help your people be more successful, or you act as a barrier. I'm going to tell you, 80% of the managers and I don't say leaders, because they're not managers out there put barriers in the way. Almost all organizations have zero clue how to create high performance and look at human resources as a profitability center rather than a cost center. If it's costing you money, it's because you suck at it. Okay, there's your reality check. If you empower people to do work that truly matters that aligns with their zone of genius, guess what? Money. So look at the companies that are doing that right now. Okay. So here's what I want you to know. You are not your job. Your worth is not determined by your ability to create a paycheck for yourself right now, that will come. I know that. I'm not worried about that for you. I know that after watching 15,000 people I work with in my company, I know that you can do this. But it's a very hard shift. And it's something that I'm no longer going to be silent about. I am no longer going to tolerate companies that treat candidates as disposable. I am no longer going to tolerate companies who create processes that actually limit marginalized voices, I am no longer going to endorse or support companies who do whatever they can to get as much money and as much effort on somebody while micromanaging them and disempowering them so that they go home and they kick their dog and hate their life. I'm no longer going to be about that because we deserve it better. Somehow, the human from human resources got lost along the way. And we have lost our way, we have lost our way. We forgot that people matter. And let me tell you, if there's never been a clear indication, this last year should have shown you how much people matter because guess what, at the end of your days, your work is still gonna be there. But your family is the one that's not you only have a limited amount of time with them. And you only have a limited amount of time in this body. Okay? So it is your purpose. You came here for a reason to make an impact and it wasn't just to go in, clock in clock out your work is your birthright is to do what you love to do be paid well for it and change the world that is your birthright in my honest opinion. And those that haven't gotten there, they just don't understand it. And that is why I'm going to ask for you now to go and follow me. Follow me so I can tell you this story. Because I'm here to help CEOs understand how people turns into profitability, not problems. And I'm here to help job seekers figure out how to go into a place of career power. So they go inside of a story and create or create their own story and their own narrative about their brand. So they Go inside of companies to create massive profitability. How is that not a win win? And why aren't we doing it now? I don't know. And that is the mission that I am on now to fix. So that's the story for today. And I want to thank you for listening to it because I know it's a little hard. It's a little emotional. But the truth is, this isn't about business. It's never been about business. That's a bullshit term, by the way. It's been about people always, because I never lost my humanity along the way. And I've watched a lot of human resource people do that. I've liked a lot of human resources, who got into the business of helping people and then disparage people behind their backs. They tell stories, they disempower them. They act as if like being triggered by somebody else's power, and they push people out doors. How many have you been there? I'm sure you have. This is my mission. And it is what I'm going into 2021 to do is to change these stories, because I'm no longer going from a bottom up approach. We're going from a top down, which means those transcendent, transformational high performance organizations, those are the people who are going to win in today's economy. They're the ones that are growing. They're the ones that realize that talent is a finite resource. You can't keep raising the bar and expect everybody not to beat it, and never help them become the thing that exceeds the bar.

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So that's my mission. And I want to thank you for tuning in and listening today.