00:00:00: Introduction
00:01:06: The four areas chosen…
00:04:42: … 1: relationships
00:12:31: … 2: coping with change
00:17:35: … 3: emotions
00:26:35: … 4: LinkedIn
00:34:59: Final thoughts
Sarah Ellis: Hi, I’m Sarah.
Helen Tupper: And I’m Helen.
Sarah Ellis: And this is the Squiggly Careers podcast. Every week, we take a different topic to do with work, and share some ideas and actions that we hope will help all of us navigate those Squiggly Careers with that bit more confidence and control.
Helen Tupper: And for a bit more extra Squiggly Career support, don’t forget to sign up for our weekly email Squiggly Careers in Action, where you’ll get all the links to the podcast and all the tools that go along with it. You’ll also see some behind-the-scenes stuff that happens in our work and get some extra tips and tools, like Sarah’s borrowed brilliance and my how-to videos.
Sarah Ellis: So, today we’re talking about four AI prompts to accelerate your Squiggly Career.
Helen Tupper: It’s the AI episode that we get asked for all the time.
Sarah Ellis: Well also, we haven’t told each other our answers.
Helen Tupper: Which could look like bad preparation, but it isn’t, it’s intentional.
Sarah Ellis: No, it was very intentional, which we have prepared. There are other episodes that we’ve been way less prepared for than today!
Helen Tupper: So, you decided the four areas of focus for this, because you could ask AI anything, but you decided four different areas that we were going to use AI to help us in Squiggly Careers. Which areas did you choose?
Sarah Ellis: So, I tried to choose areas that weren’t too specific to any one situation. So, obviously, AI can be brilliant for a career conversation or an interview. But then I thought, “Well, if that’s not you right now, probably not as useful for everybody”. We’ll perhaps come back to some of those things. So, I went for relationships; being stuck, or having a feeling about your career that you want to explore. So, it doesn’t have to be stuck, you could be feeling motivated, energised, lost. So, a kind of a feeling.
Helen Tupper: Am emotion.
Sarah Ellis: An emotion-based question, yeah, that’s a good way of describing it; coping with change, because it’s so standard now, but also I think it means something people can find hard and probably we can all get a bit better at; and then, this one is specific, but I think it will be relevant for everyone, LinkedIn.
Helen Tupper: Just LinkedIn; anything in particular about LinkedIn?
Sarah Ellis: LinkedIn and perhaps what your LinkedIn profile might be telling other people about you. And I also think LinkedIn is an interesting one, because when I talk about confidence gremlins to people and one of the confidence gremlins is comparison, LinkedIn often comes up as like, “LinkedIn can work against you”, it can make you feel bad about yourself and you see all these people winning awards or sharing their promotions, and you’re like, “Oh, that’s not me”.
Helen Tupper: Having lots of followers. If you’ve not got many, you’re like, “Oh, wow”.
Sarah Ellis: Yeah, it’s almost become a bit of a divisive place, I think. And actually, it prompts a real reaction from people in the workshops that we do. Whereas when I say to people, “Oh, I use LinkedIn for learning, for curiosity and often for reconnection”, you know, if I’ve not seen for a while, probably for me as an introvert, it’s a good way to try and find that person to get back in touch. In a much more informal way, everyone’s like, “Oh, yeah, that’s fine”, that feels better for people. So, I’m like, just have a good enough profile and then use it in your own way for your own like learning. So, I just think it’s a topic that keeps coming up. So, I was like, let’s have a go.
Helen Tupper: “How can AI help us?” Well, we should say, because that was actually the one that I did. So, the way this episode will play is we’ve got these four different areas, and Sarah and I have got curious about some prompts that you can use for AI. And as we were working out what was going to be most useful for you and your development, I think one of the things that we realised is you’ve got to have a really nice clear prompt. Actually, sometimes I asked AI to write me a better prompt than the one that I’d written.
Sarah Ellis: That’s one of the things that Reid Hoffman, who’s written Superagency, tells you to do.
Helen Tupper: So, I was doing that.
Sarah Ellis: He’s like, “Get the AI to do the work for you”.
Helen Tupper: I sort of wrote it out and then I thought, “Oh, I need to give people this prompt; mine’s a bit waffly”. So, I just asked AI, “What would be a better way of using prompts for this?” So, you’ve got to have a good, clear prompt, and you’ve got to personalise the prompt. So, it’s not just, “How can I cope with change?” because you’ll get an okay answer with that, you’ll get some generic stuff about how to cope with change. But it’s much more useful if you put a bit more personal context in, maybe about where you work or how long you’ve worked there or what industry you’re in the types of change. So, for each of the four scenarios we’re going to talk through, we will obviously share the prompt, but there is this element of personalisation in there that will apply specifically to you, what you do.
Sarah Ellis: We took two each. We haven’t shared the answers that we got back with each other. But what we thought would be helpful is to go through what we did, but then together, to talk about, “Well, how useful did we find it?” So, we might be like, “Well, that one actually didn’t work that well”, or, “We changed it”. I also, for each one, I think we both had to go at a follow-up prompt, because it’s very rare, I think, you do one prompt and go, “Oh, solved, sorted”! So, there’s usually sort of, “And then, where do you go next with it?” and actually, sometimes the value came from that that second question.
So, here’s the first one. So, we started with relationships and thought we’d have some fun with this one. So, let’s see if you recognise this person. I wrote, “Here’s a profile of someone I work with, extrovert, fast paced, can get easily distracted, easily bored, energetic, knows lots of people”.
Helen Tupper: I don’t know who you’re talking about!
Sarah Ellis: No?
Helen Tupper: Absolutely no idea!
Sarah Ellis: So, I just wrote that, and then I went, “Here’s my profile”, all in the same prompt, introverted, reflective, single-minded”, I was being honest, “optimistic, knows a few people”. Then my question was, “How do I build a positive relationship with this person?”
Helen Tupper: Okay.
Sarah Ellis: “It sounds like you and your colleague have quite different working styles!” That’s the first thing it said, “But apparently, this is often where the most interesting and productive collaborations can blossom”. Apparently, we’re going to blossom at some point.
Helen Tupper: Great!
Sarah Ellis: I look forward to that moment!
Helen Tupper: Quickly blossom!
Sarah Ellis: And so then, what’s interesting, and actually I did find this with every prompt that I tried, and I tried some that we didn’t include in the podcast, the answers are long. I got long answers. So, I sometimes found that a bit overwhelming, and I think, don’t forget, you can then ask for a summary. So, I did that quite consistently, or I literally sometimes went, “That’s a lot of information. Can you summarise this into three bullet points?” Or, “Can you summarise this into one paragraph?” But the longer answer here did give me lots of things where I was like, actually, they’re all really useful. So, it talks about appreciating differences, finding common ground. The bit that I found most helpful, there was a section about how I might adapt myself, and it talked about you being fast-paced so, “Be prepared to communicate concisely and get to the point quickly”, and I was like, Helen loves that, that’s so true”.
Helen Tupper: Your voice notes! And I put you on two-speed.
Sarah Ellis: Yeah, I’m surprised you don’t go faster, to be honest.
Helen Tupper: How can I? I can’t.
Sarah Ellis: Oh, it doesn’t work?
Helen Tupper: I’ve trained my brain. Someone overheard me listening to it and they were like, “I can’t understand”. I was like, “I’ve trained myself to listen to you at times-two speed”.
Sarah Ellis: A little alien voice! So, there was something about that. And then, even though I know that and also I know you really well, so obviously I did pick someone I know really well, it did make me stop and think, “Oh, I probably don’t always do that, and that probably is a bit annoying”. So, perhaps I could do something different there. It made me think about being kind to you, because it said that you’ve got lots of potential for distraction. And so, apparently I should be gently steering you back to discussion and staying focused, rather than just saying, “Put your phone down”.
Helen Tupper: You never say that, you just look.
Sarah Ellis: No, I don’t, I just look at you. I don’t ever say anything now.
Helen Tupper: I turned it over earlier, did you see?
Sarah Ellis: I know, I’m so proud of you. Then it talked about you being an extrovert, I was like, “Fine”. Then I quite liked, I was like, “How I can make the most of you?” It was brilliant.
Helen Tupper: Great, go on.
Sarah Ellis: It’s like, “Start leveraging your network for me”.
Helen Tupper: Nice idea.
Sarah Ellis: I was like, “Perfect”, and actually, I do ask you to do that sometimes. I will say, “Oh, I’d like to know that person; can you introduce me?”
Helen Tupper: Yeah, I did that recently and they haven’t come back to me.
Sarah Ellis: “Be open to your energy”. Apparently, your high energy might feel different, but I should be enthusiastic about you!
Helen Tupper: Good to know!
Sarah Ellis: And we should have check-ins. So, actually, when I read the first bit, I was like, “Well, I already feel like I know quite a lot of this. It perhaps prompted a bit of accountability in me to think about, “Am I always adapting helpfully for you, still getting what I need?” What I found more useful was my follow-up prompt, “What could get in the way of us building a good relationship?” And there, it talked about —
Helen Tupper: Talking about, “Having a podcast?”
Sarah Ellis: Well, I mean it did say here —
Helen Tupper: Oh, sorry, it’s not about me?
Sarah Ellis: It’s not about you. It did say we have different needs for interaction.
Helen Tupper: True.
Sarah Ellis: So, it said, “Do you think you’d have a need for social interaction?” which might clash for my preference for more solitary work. And I was thinking, the few times where we’ve got close to falling out —
Helen Tupper: Yeah, have been in a social situation.
Sarah Ellis: — have been in a social situation.
Helen Tupper: Yeah, we’re both conscious of avoiding those now.
Sarah Ellis: And we now are very intentional about that, in a way actually we never were before, which I actually find really interesting.
Helen Tupper: My favourite Sarah thing recently was when I invited Sarah to a party and I sent her the invite, and she wrote over the top of it, “Hard no”, and sent it back! I’m literally saving that as an example!
Sarah Ellis: I did actually do that! But also, I think your message, to be fair to me, to the listeners, was, “I assume you don’t want to come to this?”
Helen Tupper: Yeah, I did sort of provide you an opt-out!
Sarah Ellis: But it said about miscommunication because of our different styles, and pacing that could be frustrating. So, my conclusion with this was actually probably less useful for you than it was when I then started to put in some profiles of our team. So, we do know each other very well.
Helen Tupper: Yeah, and we’ve already adapted quite a bit.
Sarah Ellis: And we’ve probably got past the point, I feel like we know each other’s AI. I’m always like, “We know what the avatar would be”. Whereas I don’t spend anywhere near as much time with other people in our team as I do with you. So, then I started to put in some of their profiles, based on some profiling that we’ve done on people’s strengths together already. So, I’d got some data that I could put in, and I started to put those in, and then put my own data as well. And then that did make me think, “Oh, I don’t do that for that person”, or, “I never think about that”, and that probably is annoying for them that I keep correcting this thing or I don’t respond very quickly.
We actually had some feedback on this recently, where someone who’s quite new working with us messaged me and they said, “Oh, Helen’s not responded to me yet. I’m really worried that she doesn’t think it’s very good and she’s not telling me something”. And I was like, “Oh, no, she just won’t have looked at it yet”. I knew how busy you were in that two or three days, but for her, I suppose she didn’t know, and she didn’t have that context. And actually, I think about her and her working style, and you and your work style are actually quite different. You’re like, that’s a clash that potentially —
Helen Tupper: It’s useful for me to be aware of, isn’t it, just become more conscious.
Sarah Ellis: Yeah, useful. And so, I was like actually, for maybe as a team as a whole, you could put in all of your team. We were actually saying we know one CEO who shared an example with us recently, where he put the profile of his board into an AI and basically built his board into an AI, and he asks the AI, “What are my board going to make of this decision?” before actually going to the real board. I was like, “That’s really smart”. So, my conclusion with this first one was, there’s a difference between one-to-one and a team. And where I think it’d probably be most helpful one-to-one is where maybe something’s not working, so it’s like friction. If I think about some people I’ve worked for or with in the past where I was like, “This is tough”, you know, like understanding other people?
Helen Tupper: Yeah.
Sarah Ellis: This is very safe. I actually read an article about that this week, how AI in some ways feels very safe as a way to test out like, “My manager’s profile is this, I am like this. What is it that’s making it really hard for us to work together collaboratively?” So, understanding friction, I think very useful. And then more generally, understanding your team better, particularly probably around communication styles, ways of working. And then, you could use this, I was thinking, in a team meeting. So, you could do this first, and then, you know you always want to add on the human aspect to what the AI is telling you? If we had Lucy and Danielle and all of our team there, we could then say, “Well, this is what the AI said. What do you think they’ve got wrong? What would you build on it?” But it gives everyone a starting point.
Helen Tupper: So, what was the prompt again? I know personalisation was like my skills and your skills, but what was the prompt?
Sarah Ellis: You put in the profile of both people, “How do I build a positive relationship with this person?”
Helen Tupper: So, “My profile is… their profile is… How do I build a positive relationship with this person?”
Sarah Ellis: Yeah. And I just put in as many words as I could think of for our profile.
Helen Tupper: Love it. Okay, second area then, shall we go on to coping with change?
Sarah Ellis: Yes.
Helen Tupper: Okay, so the prompt that I used for this, “I work as a”, insert your job, “at”, insert your company. So, “I work as a”, I put here, “customer account manager at Britvic”.
Sarah Ellis: We’re going back in time.
Helen Tupper: We’re going really back in time. We’re back in time to when I was doing a sales job. Second bit is, “The change I’m experiencing is…” and for the purpose of this example, I put, “declining sales and not hitting my targets”. Third part of this prompt is, “I’m finding it hard because…” and my personalisation there was, “I’m motivated by achievement, and I’m worried it’s going to affect people’s perception of my performance, because I’m not hitting those targets”. And then, the fourth bit of the prompt is, “I would like some ideas to…” and my personalisation there was, “respond to the change and still feel like I’m progressing in my career and succeeding in my work. So, four parts of the prompt, and for each bit, you’re going to add a bit of personalisation on. I used ChatGPT for this, which is probably just my go-to tool. I think you used Gemini, didn’t you, for yours?
Sarah Ellis: Yes, just to try it out. You know when you’re like, “I’m defaulting to ChatGPT every time”?
Helen Tupper: Yeah.
Sarah Ellis: And then, I went into a company where they all use Gemini and it just made me think, “I’ll just try it”.
Helen Tupper: I sometimes flip between ChatGPT and perplexity.ai, I quite like that one as well. So, I found the first bit relatively useful. So, my first response to that question, I got I think it was five actions. It wasn’t too long. You know you mentioned yours is like overwhelmingly long?
Sarah Ellis: Yeah.
Helen Tupper: Mine wasn’t that long. So, I got things like, “Redefine what achievement looks like for you now”, and it had some ideas to do that, like cross-functional collaboration, for example. “Own the narrative of your performance; run a ‘what’s in my control’ sprint”, I thought that was interesting. It’s obviously already learned from me because we would talk about sprints. So, it’s learned.
Sarah Ellis: At what point does it become scary?
Helen Tupper: Yeah, it’s already learned from me, “A ‘what’s in my control’ sprint. “Turn it into a career story”; and then I really liked the last idea, which was, “Talk to your manager about redefining success”, which I thought I would have done that. If success to that point had been achieving my sales targets, and maybe because of the market, that wasn’t possible right now, I probably would talk to my manager and say, “I know my targets are important, but it’s hard for me to hit them. What else is important?” So, what that made me reflect on is, it will come up with quite a lot of ideas, but there’s still some autonomy, right?
Sarah Ellis: You’re still choosing, aren’t you?
Helen Tupper: You’re still choosing.
Sarah Ellis: You’re saying, “Well, not that one, but a bit of that one”, or, “I’ll take that one and I’ll edit it in my own way”.
Helen Tupper: Yeah. Do you know what I should have done, which I didn’t do, is I maybe should have changed the personalisation and seen how the answers that it gave me differed. So, I could have said, “I work as a Marketing Director at Microsoft. I’m going through a restructure. I’m finding it hard because of the ambiguity”, and just seen. I didn’t play around with different change situations, but it was quite practical and there were some bits I picked out that were really useful. My follow-up prompt, this is a very Helen thing, my follow up prompt was, “Create a 30-day checklist of small daily actions to boost my confidence and control, and make it into a PDF I can tick off”. That was nice! I was like a sort of self-boosting bingo.
Sarah Ellis: Does it work; it can create that for you?
Helen Tupper: Yeah, it’ll create a nice little PDF, and then you can download it and you can just tick it. And there were lots of small actions that I could do. Some of them I was like, “That’s a bit trite”, but actually, it gave me a tickable list of things that I could do, which I thought even if I didn’t do all 30, I thought it would give me some things that I could get a sense of momentum and control. And it was a bit micro. You know when you’re going through change and it feels like —
Sarah Ellis: Yeah, massive and overwhelming.
Helen Tupper: Yeah, massive. But this is just like a little micro, “I’ve done this, I’ve done this”. I quite liked that.
Sarah Ellis: So, could you put the transcript of this script into an AI, and then ask it to create a checklist of five actions to take in the next five days from what you’ve listened to? Presumably you could.
Helen Tupper: Yeah, should you wish to do that, you can get the transcript for this episode on amazingif.com and you’ll be able to cut and paste it.
Sarah Ellis: Well, that was what I was just thinking.
Helen Tupper: Well, I did that recently, separate point. I did that recently with a podcast that I was listening to and I was listening to it when I was driving, and I remember thinking, “Wow, it’s really good”, and I couldn’t write anything down. And so, afterwards, I copied and pasted the transcript, it was an Adam Grant episode actually, copied and pasted the transcript into ChatGPT, and then just asked it questions. Like, “I remember this point, can you pick this out?”
Sarah Ellis: Okay, so more conversation versus a checklist?
Helen Tupper: Yeah, it sort of felt like I was just sort of chatting with the podcast episode a little bit. But yeah, if you want to do that, then all of our transcripts are on our website.
Sarah Ellis: I wonder if you tried that, whether it feels like you’re chatting to us?
Helen Tupper: Oh, yeah.
Sarah Ellis: We’ll have to try that. Also, is that really meta if you’re trying to chat to yourself?
Helen Tupper: Is that narcissistic?
Sarah Ellis: Yes! But if somebody else is doing it, I was imagining, less so.
Helen Tupper: “Hi, Helen, what’s one of your great ideas that you had on the podcast?”
Sarah Ellis: “What was my most quotable sentence”!
Helen Tupper: Oh my gosh!
Sarah Ellis: What were Sarah’s words of wisdom from this episode?
Helen Tupper: “Sarah offered nothing to this episode”!
Sarah Ellis: “Sorry, no answer to that one”, imagine that!
Helen Tupper: “Next question, please”!
Sarah Ellis: Yeah, really dent your ego. Should we move on to the next one?
Helen Tupper: Let’s do it.
Sarah Ellis: So, this is the sort of emotions and how you’re feeling. So, I’d written, “I’m an Innovation Manager in a financial services company”, and I wrote, “and I’m feeling a bit bored”. So, I actually went with bored, rather than stuck. Real-life example.
Helen Tupper: I wasn’t going to say that, but I do know the moment!
Sarah Ellis: And then I wrote, actually I did a slightly different prompt, “What questions could I ask myself to feel more positive about the work that I do?” So, I was trying to get it to ask me, or to come up with some coach-yourself questions. So, rather than just always ideas, like, “Tell me what to do”, because I felt like I was getting quite a lot of bullet-pointed lists of like, “Do this, do this, do this”, and I was like, “Well, no, I’m more reflective”, so I would like some questions. I also like how empathetic these AIs at least try to be, “It’s completely understandable to feel a bit bored sometimes, even in a role like innovation manager, that sounds inherently exciting!” I might have to train my own AIs to get rid of the exclamation marks.
Helen Tupper: “Reply with no exclamation marks”!
Sarah Ellis: I don’t want any exclamation marks. I mean, I literally said to someone in our team this week, “I really don’t like exclamation marks”. They were like, “Oh, Helen uses them a bit”.
Helen Tupper: Well aware!
Sarah Ellis: I know, that’s in the AI of why we sometimes don’t get on. No, I’m joking, kind of! So, it then started to talk to me about these questions. And actually, what I liked is it divided it into sections, which I hadn’t asked it to do. So, it focused on impact and purpose, growth and learning, contribution and strengths, focusing on the future. I was like, “Oh, it gave me some frames and some themes”, which again, I felt meant that I could then edit or choose like which direction I wanted to go in.
Helen Tupper: I’m intrigued to hear those questions, because I think one of your very strong skills is you’re so good at reflective questions. Like, in our book, You Coach You, which is there behind Sarah, Sarah’s ability to come up with a coach-yourself question, you’re so good at it. So, I’m wondering whether it can top your skill.
Sarah Ellis: Yeah, I mean, maybe I’m going to get made redundant, would be my conclusion.
Helen Tupper: Oh, really? Are they good?
Sarah Ellis: I think some of the questions are really good.
Helen Tupper: Okay, go on.
Sarah Ellis: I mean, I’m not a fan of a closed question. So, one of the ones in impact and purpose, it asked me was, am I living in alignment with my values through the work that I do? Now that’s a closed question. However, the fact it got to values, I was like, “Well, actually that is a good starting point”. What it’s done is put in brackets a different way of expressing the same thing. So, then it says in brackets, “Does your role allow you to express what’s important to you?” So, I actually thought the words in brackets were more sort of everyday.
Helen Tupper: Still closed.
Sarah Ellis: It’s still closed, but it’s trying to help me understand. Values is not a super-concrete concept for some people, especially if you’ve not done loads of work on it. And so, I felt like it was giving me a bit more of like, “This is what you might think about, or this is where to go with this”. So, I didn’t like the fact that they were closed, but I did like the fact that it had gone to values. And not all of them were closed. So, one of them was, “What opportunities am I helping to create (think about new possibilities and growth)”. The majority of the questions actually were open, and there were even some ‘if I’ type questions. So, “If I could design my ideal innovation project, what would it be?” That’s quite an imagining one. And then in brackets, “Dream big”, which I was like, “Oh, a bit cheesy”, but we get where it’s going.
So, though I might rephrase some of the questions some of the time, a lot of them were really good. Growth and learning, “What experiments or new approaches could I try in my work?” Again, we would talk about experiment, try new things out, think about novelty and learning. So, I actually felt, even if I might not have written the questions in quite this way, I thought they were good quality questions. If I was giving them a quality score, I’m like a 7 to an 8.
Helen Tupper: And you probably could, in the prompt, say, “Ask open questions”. You probably could knock out some of those closed questions by refining the prompt further.
Sarah Ellis: Yeah. And then I actually asked it, “Which questions do you think I should ask first?” And it was saying actually, “Start with purpose and impact”, because it made the connection between, “If you understand your why, you’ll then be more motivated by the work that you do”.
Helen Tupper: I agree with that.
Sarah Ellis: We’re both going, “Yeah”, that’s probably not a bad place to start. It’s perhaps quite a zoomed-out place to start if someone’s not said they’re feeling really lost or they’re really lacking meaning. I just said, “I was a bit bored” and I did say ‘a bit’ as well. So, they perhaps weren’t very zoomed-out. But I think what this gave me was just loads and loads of prompts. If you were doing something like, and I didn’t ask it this but you could have done, you could use each of these questions to do a three-minute mind map. So, if you were a bit bored, you could be like, “Right, I’ll take each of these questions and do a three-minute mind map on, ‘What positive changes have my initiatives brought to the company or our customers?’ for three minutes”. And after that three minutes, I think you would feel better, because you would remind yourself of the work you’ve done that you feel really proud of, you’re probably feeling a bit less bored, you’re like, “Oh, actually I have done some good work”, and it perhaps just gives you a bit of a spark of energy to rediscover some of that, because often boredom comes from a bit like, maybe I’ve been doing a lot of the same things, maybe I’ve not had any new opportunities. But maybe it reminds you to go and create some of those opportunities. Maybe you’ve fallen into the trap of waiting a bit.
Helen Tupper: Quick question for you. If you were in that situation, board Innovation Manager, who wants to feel a bit better about your work, and you didn’t have AI, what would you have done instead?
Sarah Ellis: I can tell you what I did, if that’s useful.
Helen Tupper: Yeah, and what was better? I’m just trying to work out, would that have helped you in a better way than what you did do instead?
Sarah Ellis: Well, what I did do was much more leftfield and lateral in its approach. I think I did the imagining. So, I decided of some brands that I wanted to go and work for in my head, quite famous brands, that hadn’t got jobs, it wasn’t like I’d seen jobs advertised, and I made up products and ideas that I thought they should do.
Helen Tupper: Was one of them a beauty brand?
Sarah Ellis: Yeah.
Helen Tupper: Yeah, I remember you doing it.
Sarah Ellis: I’m when I think back to it, I’m like, “What was I thinking?” But I was a bit bored. And then back to, I do really like branding and words and how things look. I thought they’d done a really good job of that, I really liked their tone.
Helen Tupper: Shout out to Benefit!
Sarah Ellis: Shout out to Benefit in the good old ’90s, or no, it must’ve been after that. I don’t know. I don’t want say ’90’s, later than that. They were innovative, I liked the brand, I liked the copy and all those things. And we’d both learned about those sorts of things back in our Boots days. And so, I just started writing copy, creating —
Helen Tupper: I remember you tried to write copy!
Sarah Ellis: I don’t even think I ever sent it to them. I might have done, but I don’t remember ever applying for a job there, but I think it gave me a creative outlet. And so, people who are maybe proper creative, so where other people might draw a picture, I’m like, “Well, I can’t draw a picture. Well, I could have a go, but it wouldn’t be very good”. I think it was my creative outlet.
Helen Tupper: But if you’re bored and you work in innovation, you probably do need a creative outlet.
Sarah Ellis: Yeah, and I think I wanted to work in innovation in a slightly different way. So, I think I did imagine it!
Helen Tupper: So, I think that is better than those questions. However, I think you’re the sort of person who was naturally already asking yourself those questions.
Sarah Ellis: I don’t know though. I don’t know if it was, because I think it was a form of escapism, but that didn’t move me forward. Whereas I think some of these questions, that is the time actually where somebody introduced me to the idea of values. And so, I think these questions would have practically helped to move me forward. I think creating fake products for Benefit, which sounds so weird to say out loud, I’m actually embarrassed by this.
Helen Tupper: Do you think you’ve still got it?
Sarah Ellis: No, I really hope I haven’t. I don’t even know where I put it, but I just really do remember doing it. I’m like, well, that was just so disconnected, rather than even having a conversation with my manager or trying to make my day job better. I think I felt a bit powerless maybe, but I think I did also fall into that waiting, rather than creating. And these questions would have been like, “Well, okay, so your job might not be ideal right now, but what skills could you gain? Who else could you go and talk to?” One of the questions here is like, “Who are the inspiring people or companies in the innovation space that I can learn from? Seek out external inspirations”. So, I was doing a bit of that, but I also wasn’t thinking, “Well, what are the innovation communities or networks?” or anything like that. I think I was just a bit solo and a bit isolated and I don’t think that was helping me much, just sitting by myself.
Helen Tupper: I just saw a little flashback to little us and the things that we did! So, last one, LinkedIn.
Sarah Ellis: I gave you this one. I delegated this to you.
Helen Tupper: You did. I liked it, I really enjoyed this one.
Sarah Ellis: I know, because I had a go and I was like, “This just doesn’t work”. And then I was like, “Maybe Helen can make it work”.
Helen Tupper: Okay, so the prompt and the personalisation. And it’s only a tiny bit of personalisation actually I needed to do with this, which was basically stick in the link. “Can you review my LinkedIn profile?” stick in the link. That was the only bit that you need to personalise this one. And then, the rest of the prompt is, “and do three things: summarise my profile; identify the personal strengths that stand out; and suggest opportunities to improve my profile”. The first bit that came back, you get some photo, it depends what you shared on LinkedIn really, I think. I mean, mine’s quite, I would say, a rich profile, given that I post almost every day, it’s got a rich profile to mine. So, the first thing is you get a couple of pictures. I thought that was quite interesting. They were four images, most of it with you, and then you get a little a little summary at the top. And I thought it was quite interesting to scan through the summary and see things that it said.
Sarah Ellis: I don’t make an appearance in your summary though, because I can see it now.
Helen Tupper: No. I mean, there’s a lot of co-owner, it just doesn’t say who the other half is. Like, “She is the co-founder. She is the co-author”.
Sarah Ellis: Yeah, but I could be anyone.
Helen Tupper: I know, I quite like to have a replaceable business partner, just like, any co!
Sarah Ellis: With AI. Your co could be ChatGPT!
Helen Tupper: Maybe after this. So, you get a little summary. And you know when people say, gosh, people are saying this to us at the moment, we need a bio for you, I kind of think, “Oh, is that the bio that you want?” It’s not bad. But it’s quite interesting, it’s like a quick bio. And then, the standout personal strengths, I didn’t say how many to give me. It gave five. So, for mine, for example, it gave the statements and then a little bit of expansion on it. So, “Thought leadership. Helen’s role as an author and podcast host…”, it’s got you out of this, it hasn’t put co-host —
Sarah Ellis: I’m gone now.
Helen Tupper: You’re gone now! “… positions her as a leading voice in redefining career development, effective communication, innovative thinking, empathy”. Look at you, you’re so mean! You’re like, “I wouldn’t have put that”.
Sarah Ellis: I didn’t say anything!
Helen Tupper: Oh, you looked at me in a, “Wouldn’t have put that in the top skills”.
Sarah Ellis: I wouldn’t have put it as number four.
Helen Tupper: Well, apparently, “Her focus on personal stories and real-life applications resonates with a diverse audience”.
Sarah Ellis: Oh, okay. Well, the second bit of that’s true.
Helen Tupper: Okay, yeah, I think so. And then, “Strategic vision”.
Sarah Ellis: Is there a link to Teen Vogue here?
Helen Tupper: I don’t know why there’s a link to Teen Vogue.
Sarah Ellis: Did you write something for Teen Vogue?
Helen Tupper: I mean, I’m not going to click on it now, I don’t know where it’s going to take me. I don’t know why it’s gone to Teen Vogue.
Sarah Ellis: Giving career advice from teenagers.
Helen Tupper: I don’t know, could do. I think the useful thing there is for you to think about, we often talk about the difference between intent and impact. So, intent being, what do I want to be known for? And then, clearly this is the impact in terms of the strengths that are standing out for my profile. And I think it’s useful for you to think, is that how you want to come across? Or are there other strengths?
Sarah Ellis: Mine was a disaster.
Helen Tupper: Really, what did you get?
Sarah Ellis: Because I don’t post all the time, which I don’t think you have to do to be on LinkedIn, as we said at the start, that’s never going to be me, I think it took a lot of the jobs that I’ve done before, and it really seemed to overstate those. So, it read like I was some sort of marketing guru.
Helen Tupper: Oh, really?
Sarah Ellis: So, it was really like marketing, it was creative, which obviously good is good for me, but it seemed to like that or be more interested in that than what I do at Amazing If, even though I’ve got a summary I’ve written. I’ve done the basics relatively well, but it did make me think quite a few of my recommendations are from people who are maybe still in that world; has that affected the algorithm? And you also have to work out, I suppose, which bits you care about. So, I’m like, “Well, I think the summary in particular”, it made me look at that again and just think maybe are the key words missing that I might want to put in? Have I literally said explicitly the words like ‘career development’ or ‘Squiggly Careers’? Maybe I’d want to do some of that in a slightly different way. I don’t think I’ve updated my summary for quite a long time. But I was like, it has completely ignored my more recent experience and sort of overstated what I’d done before.
Helen Tupper: Interesting. Maybe the third part of this prompt might have helped you, which is, “What are your opportunities for profile enhancement?” And so, again, it gave me five, “Optimise the ‘about’ section”, which I thought, I haven’t updated that for ages.
Sarah Ellis: No, I haven’t done one for ages.
Helen Tupper: It said, “Specific achievements, metric, impact of your work. Incorporate rich media, videos and interviews, links to podcast episodes. Highlight key skills, gather recommendations, your point in there”. That actually is probably quite useful to reflect what you’re doing right now. And then, “Regular content-sharing”. I actually found some of that was a bit generic. It’s kind of like, “Oh, that’s like LinkedIn 101 rather than 1-0-me, like what’s most useful for me.
Sarah Ellis: Yeah I wonder what would happen if you put in a prompt that maybe said, “I don’t want to post publicly on LinkedIn –”
Helen Tupper: Yeah, “But I do want to be known for…”
Sarah Ellis: Yeah, “– but I do want to be known for thought leadership on career developments”, that would be me, “What would you recommend could be useful for me to do?” So, that might come up with more things like, “Okay, well, maybe you could write longer form articles that you could link to”. So, when we do, like, an HBR article, then I’m much happier to go, “Oh, if anyone’s interested in fast feedback, here’s an HBR article”. Maybe it’s more about, I actually really like celebrating other people’s successes, and I love it when people share Squiggly Career stories or the work that they’re doing in their company on Squiggly Careers. And so, I would never not want to be on LinkedIn, because actually then if I wasn’t, I wouldn’t see those things. And then, I can actually respond and say, “That’s amazing and thank you for sharing it”. And probably particularly people’s personal journeys, when they’re like, “Oh, well I did do this, and Squiggly Careers has been part of my journey”, and they’re now doing something that they enjoy much more, and they’re someone you’ve never met, you’ve never come across. I’m always like, “Oh, that makes me feel like we’ve played a tiny, tiny role in someone’s career”.
Helen Tupper: My follow up prompt for this one, which was quite helpful was, “I want to be known for”, insert the thing, so I put, “career development. Who should I follow for inspiration?”
Sarah Ellis: Did I come up?
Helen Tupper: No!
Sarah Ellis: Oh, what?!
Helen Tupper: I love that you would ask that question, “Did I come up?”
Sarah Ellis: Well, I’ve not come up in any of the other things. I was like, maybe you were just waiting to say, “But for inspiration…” I mean, I can’t believe how funny you find that. So, I’m not an inspiration.
Helen Tupper: No, you are my inspiration, but ChatGPT suggested some other people —
Sarah Ellis: I’m not ChatGPT’s inspiration; got it, okay.
Helen Tupper: — and I did find that useful. Herminia Ibarra.
Sarah Ellis: Okay, yeah, well, she’s good to be fair. So, you know, been on the podcast.
Helen Tupper: Adam Grant came up. So, I think LinkedIn is a really important part of building your profile. Whilst I wouldn’t use everything ChatGPT says to change the way that I use LinkedIn or what it looks like, I do think it is a quick bit of input. Equally, I could ask you, I could say, “Could you do a five-minute look through of my LinkedIn, and let me know whether you think that reflects me at my best and things I want to be known for?” And I think you could probably be more critical than it has been.
Sarah Ellis: Yeah. I wonder, you know you can ask AI to play different roles? That’s actually one of the other things that people said to me that, AI does really well. You’ve just got to learn some of this, haven’t you? You’ve got to remember to do it, because you’re just not used to it. You could then ask the ChatGPT to play the role of a critical friend.
Helen Tupper: Yeah.
Sarah Ellis: What I think it had made me think thought, just going through the process for this podcast, is the more you practise prompts, the better you get at writing them.
Helen Tupper: That’s true.
Sarah Ellis: The follow-up prompts really help you. Ask the prompt to rewrite the prompt to make it better. And I think the more you practise using it for careers, for learning, for development, it will just become second nature. And I do think people are starting to see it in that way, but you still need to remember some of the builds. Like, I wouldn’t have thought to ask it to do me a checklist that was a PDF. I forget it can do that. I know that it can do roles, but I didn’t remember in that moment. So, I think maybe even having some time to do this together as a team, because I think we’ve got better here because we both did it actually separately. And then together, you’re like, “Oh, well I also tried this” and I was like, “Oh, I did it that way”. And so, I think hearing other people talk about how they are using ChatGPT or whatever AI to make their role more efficient, but particularly around career and learning, the more you sort of talk about it and share it, I think everyone goes, “Oh, that’s a good idea, I’ll steal that”.
Helen Tupper: It’s like sharing prompts is just so useful, I think. So, what we will do is we will put these four prompts in the PodSheet, so that you have got them and you can cut and paste and just personalise them with what you’re going through at the moment, and hopefully you’ll find it as a practical and funny source of career support too.
Sarah Ellis: But that’s everything for this week. Thank you so much for listening and we’ll be back with you again soon. Bye for now.