Steve Jaffe: 0:01

I wanted people to know that this is just a chapter in their story. It's not the whole book. It's not a roadblock, it's a detour. You know, the person that you are before layoff is somebody much different after the layoff. The layoff experience will change you and it's up to you how it changes you. I think that it's an opportunity for a pause and a reset. It's an opportunity for a pivot. It's an opportunity to do some self-examination. So there are some benefits that you can find.

Beki Fraser: 0:38

Hi, I'm Becky. Welcome to Short Story Long. In this podcast, we discuss ways you can integrate who you are into how you lead. Today's guest, steve Jaffe, brings a fascinating mix of creativity, strategy and heart. He began his writing journey at San Diego State University, where he earned his degree in journalism and communication. After more than 25 years in advertising and marketing, which included work on the iconic what Happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas campaign, steve has returned to his first love writing. His new book, the Layoff Journey From Dismissal to Discovery, is a powerful reflection on navigating change with resilience and empathy. Steve's work is infused with authenticity and a deep understanding of human experiences, and I can't wait for you to hear his story. Hey, steve, welcome to the podcast today. I'm excited to talk to you.

Steve Jaffe: 1:34

Thank you, thanks for having me, I appreciate it.

Beki Fraser: 1:36

Yeah, absolutely. I'm really excited to hear about your circumstance, what prompted you to write the book and certainly in terms of this main feature of the inflection point of our discussion today, what can you tell me about that specific inflection point? And then we can kind of dig into the befores and afters.

Steve Jaffe: 1:58

Okay, I have to do a little bit of the before to get you to the after, so let me just kind of wind the clock back. Spring of 2001,. I'm living in San Francisco, I'm working at an ad agency on a great account, I had just gotten married. It was literally the springtime of my life, literally and figuratively, and I had experienced my first layoff and it just threw me for a curve. I was not prepared for it. It took me a really long time to recover.

Steve Jaffe: 2:28

Fast forward, it's summer of 2023. It's now my fourth layoff over my career and I sail right through it. It's like water off a duck's back and I look at that experience and I think to myself gosh, what has changed here? And I start to understand that I've kind of become a bit of an expert in managing a layoff. I've earned my 10,000 hours and in parallel to that, that last layoff, there was about 20% of the company that was laid off along with me and there were people had grown very close to some very young, very early in their career, some experiencing their second layoff in that same calendar year to pull them aside and tell them look, this is going to be okay, these are the things that will help you get through this.

Steve Jaffe: 3:30

I wanted to impart some of that wisdom and that was the inflection point that I said this is a book. I had wanted to write a book for a long time. I didn't quite have the subject matter, but it was that realization, that light bulb, and I thought but it was that realization, that light bulb, and I thought, well, if I wrote a book, I could help the 20% of the people I was laid off with, but I could help a whole lot more people too. So that's what started me down this road, and that was about two years ago.

Beki Fraser: 3:58

Yeah, yeah. And the two years ago piece of it, as you said, is deeply informed by the 2001 experience of oh my gosh, right Like this is the first time this is happening to me and the world is ending as. I know it right. And so, if you bring yourself back to who you were, what you were thinking, what you were feeling at that point in time, talk to me a little bit about how you experienced that layoff that time.

Steve Jaffe: 4:28

Yeah. So you know, I had bought into this myth of meritocracy where if you work hard enough and you're smart enough you'll be rewarded with success. I certainly worked hard, rewarded with success. I certainly worked hard. I thought I was pretty smart, but I worked long hours. I did everything that you're supposed to do and the client was happy, the agency was happy, we were met with success all over the place. And traditionally you would have thought, okay, well, maybe there was a raise, there was a promotion, some sort of success metric, and instead I was met with a layoff.

Steve Jaffe: 5:09

Unfortunately, that client went through a bankruptcy. Their parent company was WorldCom. Not a lot of people remember WorldCom, but they were, along with Enron, one of the big accounting scandals in 2001. And when they cut their budget, everybody that was on the team then had to get cut. So it wasn't anything personal. But I didn't realize that at the time I had thought well, what did I do wrong? I thought I was working hard, I thought I was a strong performer and that idea of wrestling with how was I not met with success? Instead I was met with dismissal. That really stung at. That then, of course, became the 2001.com bubble which burst right and um.

Steve Jaffe: 5:57

I found myself on the job market with some pretty promising leads and some opportunities, and I thought I'd be back to work in relatively short order. And then September 11th happened and things went from bad to worse. The job market really shut down and I found myself out of work for about 18 months, and over the course of 18 months I went through all of the stages of grief, some more than others, and it was a really really hard time.

Beki Fraser: 6:28

Yeah, you know, I'm kind of reacting to that 9-11 piece of things right, when I actually just similarly but differently, had relocated and had moved without a role, and so I was looking for a job from like July until, you know, September the 10th.

Beki Fraser: 6:51

And then all of a sudden, you know that shock and there's a sense of belonging within a workplace that so often is missing when all of a sudden we are extracted or it takes less longer to find that next role than what we thought. And I'm curious for you what were some of the things that you were doing to maybe help yourself in that sense of belonging, even during that 18-month gap?

Steve Jaffe: 7:22

Well see, that's one of the things is, at the time I was not very like well evolved in my self care and like my mental and emotional and physical health. So it wasn't until later that I developed a really strong self care practice. So I think one of the reasons why it was prolonged for 18 months is because I didn't really understand how you're supposed to take care of yourself in that situation Emotionally, physically, spiritually. I wasn't giving myself the tools I needed, and that included from a community standpoint. In retrospect, one of the things that I shouldn't have done and I'd be interested to hear your point of view on this too is so I was living in San Francisco and that technologycom bubble burst.

Steve Jaffe: 8:10

All of the jobs in San Francisco evaporated and I thought well, there were jobs in LA. La wasn't consumed with technology, it was more like entertainment and media. So I thought I'll go to LA and I'll get a job and it'll be great. And what I didn't realize was by leaving cities, I left my network behind. I left all of those people that I knew, all those people that would then help comfort you after your job loss and help encourage you, but then also help you find your next job. So I lost that whole network and when I moved to LA I didn't know anybody and I didn't have any of those connections.

Steve Jaffe: 8:46

So so it was an uphill battle that 9-11 made even worse, but I didn't do myself any favors in terms of community and networking. In hindsight, if I had stayed, would I have been able to find a job sooner? I don't know, because of-.

Beki Fraser: 9:03

Well, you didn't live that version of your life right yeah, exactly Exactly.

Beki Fraser: 9:07

Yes, absolutely, and it is really interesting. I remember when I was unemployed I actually went to a staffing agency and said I'll take whatever right. And they were like right, but you're kind of overqualified for all of these roles. I said, right, yeah, I'm not doing it because of challenging work. I'm not even actually doing it for the paycheck. I need to be in a work environment. And I became the assistant to the assistant of the CFO in an organization and the task that they asked me to do that I said I really I'm just not qualified was can you do the bulletin boards? And I was like no, but if you have me do debits and credits, that I can do. And so it was interesting because that pull into. I don't care what work you give me, it just doesn't well, except for, obviously, the bulletin boards.

Beki Fraser: 9:54

But the big piece of that was I needed to create a community like you were talking about in a place where I knew my boyfriend at the time now husband, but that was it and we had agreed I would not work in his industry because let's not rise and fall in the same, and so we made that conscious choice, la.

Beki Fraser: 10:19

It becomes this whole experience of, yeah, you're leaving that network, and now, right, we're looking at this. Look, the technology back in 2001 wasn't where it is today, where it's like, oh, I can still get my comfort, I can still get my care from these people. No, I can't even remember where some of the things that I take for granted actually came into our hands, but I do know it was after 2001.

Steve Jaffe: 10:47

Yeah, absolutely yeah. Yeah, it was very much like the dark ages in 2001. I think it was like still printing resumes and maybe mailing them or hand delivering them to an office somewhere. You know it was, it was. Yeah, you know it was, it was.

Beki Fraser: 11:03

Yeah, See also dot com bust right was because they were still in the infancy of really making that readily available into the world at large right. And so it was a certain character of person who really loved that kind of stuff, that learned it and certainly none of the social kinds of things that we use now. And so when you think back, I mean how reasonable was it that at that age, that stage of life, that stage of technology, that some of those tools weren't as accessible to you after that relocation, yeah, I mean there was nothing.

Steve Jaffe: 11:45

I had to build a network from scratch. I had to go out and talk to as many people as I could and try and get references and referrals, and it was an uphill battle. It was really hard. Not to mention, there was a bit of like a culture shift from San Francisco to LA that I didn't quite understand. So it was difficult, it was really difficult.

Beki Fraser: 12:09

Yeah, and you talked a little bit too about not having a self-care practice in terms of sort of the physical, the mental, the emotional, all in the spiritual side of things. What are some of the skills that you have learned since that time that you think are really relevant for people going through this right now?

Steve Jaffe: 12:31

Yeah, absolutely so. You know, the premise of what I write about is the stages of grief, and having this baseline will help you not only navigate the stages of grief after job loss, but after any sort of traumatic life event. Um, I consider them sort of my like daily non-negotiables, um, and, and. They may sound simple, but when you ladder them up, it gives you, like, strength and and I mentioned resilience in the beginning it gives you some resilience, um, and, and and the, the, the inner capacity to manage what life throws at you, and for you to, you know, kind of deal with life on life's terms.

Steve Jaffe: 13:16

So you know these are like you know eat a really good, healthy, nutritious diet, get exercise, get out, get some fresh air every day, get plenty of rest. Sleep is really really important. Limit any kind of alcohol intake. I think one of the things that's really important is some sort of a gratitude practice. You know, in this period where you're dealing with loss by focusing on what you've gained or what's going well, what's a positive in your life, through some gratitude is really really important to kind of get your mind thinking in a positive loop rather than a negative loop. So those are a few simple things. If you can do some simple meditation, simple breathing practice, all of those things combined will give you a great baseline, of which none. I didn't have any of those on my first layoff and what I realized was by the time I had my fourth layoff, I had already established all of those routines, so I was already like ahead of the game, but those are very foundational.

Beki Fraser: 14:37

There's a lot more than I talk about in the book, but those are simple things that anybody can do to set yourself up for success. This is where I am right now and, you know, the phrase that comes to my mind in a way is this too shall pass in a sense of just this is where I am. I'm not. I'm choosing not to stay here, which means that I'm taking affirmative steps in a direction, toward what I want, and there's a way to define small victories in.

Beki Fraser: 15:09

That is what I'm hearing you say Because in the work that I do, one of the things that I talk to people about a lot is whatever you're looking for, you're likely to find. So if you're looking for something wrong with a person or a situation or a circumstance, yeah, you'll find it. And if you're looking for a silver lining to an even ugly, ugly kind of thing, as a former HR person I can say that there were many times in my career that I was in a place where I was thinking, okay, so it feels like dark humor, but this is kind of where I can extract something that's a little bit of a positive, and it's not Pollyanna and it's not toxic positivity, it's. This is the tiny thread that I get to hold on to that makes me feel good about today.

Beki Fraser: 15:54

And sometimes that's what gets you to tomorrow, right? That's sort of what I'm hearing 100%, 100%.

Steve Jaffe: 15:59

I'm a big believer in the one that you feed is the one that grows. Yes and if you feed positivity, positivity is going to grow. There's a great saying. Someone I worked with gave me that I still hold on to.

Beki Fraser: 16:21

And it's we bring about, what we think about. And it's very true, you can manifest a lot of things just by thinking about them. About that, you start to see in your space things that fit into that right, and when you lock in on all of the negative bits, then your ability to notice what's going on outside of that is very, very limited, and so you don't see those possibilities, you don't see those opportunities, and so your 2001, 2002 self wouldn't have been able to come up with. Okay, I'm going to network, or network with the right people, and you've mentioned that this happened four times before this most recent one. So we talked a little bit about what you learned in the first one, but when you think about the second and the third time, what were some of the additional perspectives that you were finding that helps you navigate those more easily? You said the self-care practices might have been in place a bit by then.

Steve Jaffe: 17:19

Yeah, I think what I started to realize was that myth of meritocracy by believing that somehow you're at fault in a layoff, that you've done something wrong. You're at fault in a layoff, that you've done something wrong then becomes a statement about who you are, what you do, your intelligence, your ability to become successful and then how others view you as well. So what starts to creep in is this level of shame and embarrassment that I'm like somehow damaged goods because I've been laid off, and what I start realizing over time is that that's not the case at all. The company is going through a budget exercise. Maybe maybe it's a pandemic, maybe it's a dot-com bubble burst, maybe it's a recession of 2008. Whatever the market conditions are are dictating. The client needs to start saving some money and it's easier to reduce headcount than it is to increase sales. So you become a name on a list and I've been the first name on that list. I've been the last name on that list and it doesn't matter. You're on that list, but it's more of a function of them freeing up salary than it is this declarative statement on who you are as an employee, as a person or whatever.

Steve Jaffe: 18:42

That became a big mind shift for me that I also hope, through talking about it in this way, I'm able to dispel some of that shame and embarrassment that people carry.

Steve Jaffe: 18:55

Because what happens is, if you're experiencing a shame and embarrassment about your layoff, you probably aren't going to talk about it right, you're probably going to be reluctant to network, you're going to probably not want to reach out to your community, but the truth is about 40% of all Americans have been laid off at least once in their careers.

Steve Jaffe: 19:14

So more than likely, once you start talking about it with people, you're going to find a lot of other people have gone through this as well and they're going to be able to give you their advice and their feedback and support and you're going to start growing this community that's going to help prop you up and tell you look, this really isn't that big of a deal. This is just a stage of your life that you're going to get through. So that's one of the biggest things that I think. If you start to break down, you take the power away from it and a lot of the grief that comes from the layoff is kind of wound up in that shame and embarrassment from the layoff is kind of wound up in that shame and embarrassment.

Beki Fraser: 19:59

Absolutely, because, as you very accurately said, what we are embarrassed about, what we're shamed by, those are the things that we put into a little dark closet that we don't want anyone to see except for I still need employment, so I need to be able to be out there in some form or fashion, and all of a sudden I am almost. I don't know if you would agree with this, so I'm curious on your take, but it's almost an awkwardness then, because now there's a piece of me that I'm trying to hide, so a lot of my energy goes into. This is the thing that I'm not going to talk about.

Steve Jaffe: 20:27

Right.

Beki Fraser: 20:27

But of course, then so much of your brain is dedicated to.

Steve Jaffe: 20:30

I'm not going to talk about the pink elephant, and all you can see is the pink elephant you go on the interview and the person from HR says well, tell me about your last job, right? Rather than having you try and avoid it and it's this big thing that you don't want to talk about. If you've processed it in a healthy way, you're going to be able to talk about it in a healthy way and it's going to be something that you're going to be able to move right past, right through, and you can go on and focus on all the more important things in the interview, rather than you're stumbling around trying to explain, like, why you got laid off, right, yeah.

Beki Fraser: 21:19

So, which isn't relevant anyway it's that I'm no longer working there, and what's really powerful about that is it's not even just the words. One of the things that you were kind of talking about there is you're stumbling around, but it's also like when you're feeling that shame, you physically curl in a little bit as well. You almost go fetal in a way. And that looks a little odd in an interview.

Beki Fraser: 21:47

Whether you're on camera or whether you're in person or partner with some of that grief that you're feeling. Then, all of a sudden, it's just like I put this jacket on and it's part of what goes with me into this interview instead.

Beki Fraser: 22:02

And I think that that's really a powerful thing. The other thing that I would really just applaud is this idea of it's not shameful because really it's so hard to hear, but it's true that it's not about the individual. I've talked on the podcast before that one of the things that actually caused me to leave HR was I kept on having to be part of the architecture, the communication, all of that around these layoffs, and at least once a year, for probably five or more years, and often multiple times within a year, I work for a company with mergers, acquisitions, and so there's a lot of redundancies, a lot of restructurings, and when you create those lists, it's what are the functions that you don't need and what is the and it's not necessarily the whole function, but it is. You know, we need to reduce by this number, and there's all sorts of ways that you can architect that list, and very little has to do with gosh. I really don't like Becky. We should get rid of her right or.

Beki Fraser: 23:13

Becky's not a good employee. That can be factored in, but for the most part, like you said, it really comes down to a business decision that is made. And the other thing too is that so many people in my experience they saw it coming and they were like I'm out right, like I see this rock rolling downhill and I don't choose to be in the way, and in some respects they might save a couple of people by doing that, by exiting that way, and at the same time you know they might have dodged what was never coming for them in the first place, right, and so there's just such a mix of that. When you bring in this idea of grieving right and grieving that process or grieving that loss is what I meant to say. I guess the question that comes to my mind is if there was an object that they were specifically grieving, what would you say that that object is?

Steve Jaffe: 24:11

I think in this case it would be the job right. I think that would be the job that you've lost, and I think with a lot of things, when you lose something, you need to say goodbye, right?

Steve Jaffe: 24:24

And I think that's one of the hardest things about a layoff is oftentimes you're shown the door. You're told in a five minute meeting thank you, today's your last day. Clean out your desk and you're out. Or now, over Zoom, your computer could just shut off. Your key card cannot work. You may get an email. That may be the end of it.

Steve Jaffe: 24:45

You don't get the opportunity for that closure and all of those people that you worked with that were friends, the colleagues, the people you shared a foxhole with. You don't get to tell those people what they meant to you. You don't get a going away party. You don't get the opportunity for them to tell you hey, thanks, your work here meant so much. We really appreciated all your hard work. Right, there's this profound sense of loss and a feeling of five minutes earlier I was in the middle of planning whatever the item of business was going to be. I was writing an email, I was meeting with a vendor, I was on a phone call. I get called into the conference room and now all of that work is gone. It's all been taken from me. My sense of pride, my accomplishment, of course, my paycheck, my health insurance, all of that is gone in just the blink of an eye, and that is a really disorienting experience.

Beki Fraser: 25:45

Yes, absolutely. And with that, what I hear you describing with that is, yes, it's the employment, it's the job, but it's all the tangibles and intangibles that surround that in terms of the people, the value of the work, the gravitas of being seen as a professional in that situation. In that situation, and even if you didn't like the job, it still wasn't your choice, you were not the one with agency in that moment. And that is a shocking circumstance, because I remember an instance where I actually had to do a layoff conversation with a colleague of mine. It was known in advance, both parties right, but that person had to be given a choice because there was another opportunity that they could elect to go into. I was told I needed to technically do the layoff conversation so that that individual was legally in a place of choice.

Beki Fraser: 26:48

So in a sense that makes sense right.

Beki Fraser: 26:50

Except for what a horrible conversation when you already know this isn't what I'm going to do. And yet I have to go through this theater of being told that my position has been eliminated. And it's just like we had a hard time after she came up, like we had to kind of re-engage and figure out what this new relationship was going to be, because we'd gone through this difficult time, and arguably harder for her because she was going into this other role. But even in that circumstance, I'm still employed, still employed with the same organization and yet grieving the loss of what was that.

Beki Fraser: 27:30

I didn't have a choice about whether or not I kept it or I gave it up.

Steve Jaffe: 27:34

Yeah.

Beki Fraser: 27:36

It strikes me, when you were laid off that fourth time, that there are a lot of reasons. It was a very, very different experience for you in that moment and the water off the duck's back, as you said, right, like all of these tools and skills that were so valuable that it's this catalyst, for I'm going to do that thing I love and I'm going to write this book so that other people can learn from that experience. I mean, obviously, the contents of what you have in the book and everything, but as a thematic thing, what did you want as a consequence of writing the book that you wrote?

Steve Jaffe: 28:11

I wanted people to know that this is just a chapter in their story. It's not the whole book. It's not a roadblock, it's a detour. You know the person that you are before layoff is somebody much different after the layoff. The layoff experience will change you and it's up to you how it changes you. I think that it's an opportunity for a pause and a reset. It's an opportunity for a pivot and it's opportunity to do some self-examination. So there are some benefits that you can find, that you can come out the other side with some renewal, some resilience. I hope people read the book and from it they find a way to get back up again after they've been knocked down. I hope that they find the tools and the resources that will help them pick themselves up and carry on and move forward now through job applications and their next employment opportunity, in a way that they don't carry the baggage of this experience with them.

Beki Fraser: 29:20

Yes, because if you don't set it down and find a way to process it, it certainly will be carried into that next role, and probably not in the most positive way. Generally speaking, and what strikes me is the growth and the learning journey that you experienced with this is such a powerful thing. The process of writing a book is an interesting thing too, because it's like wow, I hadn't really thought about things in this level and in this depth. I'm curious what are the things that you have learned about yourself in the last two years as you've gone through this process of? Wow, I just was laid off and now you're here today. What are you sitting here now seeing new about you?

Steve Jaffe: 30:07

You know, I think my definition of success has changed pretty dramatically. If you had asked me a few years ago, you know a title and responsibilities and a paycheck and all of those things might've been how I measured success. And I think now my measure of success is how many people can I help? How can I be a resource? How can I help somebody find what they need to recover from this? So that's been the most surprising. I set out to write a book. I didn't really set out to tell my own personal story. My story was the vehicle for the journey because there was sort of like an analogy to be made there and it fit the structure.

Beki Fraser: 30:52

But ultimately, yeah, I think that idea of helping people yeah, and it's an interesting process to go through that kind of change where, on one hand, our careers can sometimes be a little bit me-focused, right, Like what's my title, what's my span of control, what's my me focused? Right Like what's my title, you know what's my span of control, what's my revenue number? Right, Like whatever it might be. You know, even if we're leaders of people, right, and it's my team, it's still sort of what am I leading them to do? And what I hear is that shift for you is, yes, there's me in the equation, but my focus is really out there. And what can I see as the change for other people, the growth for other people? What are some of the ways that you would kind of measure that return on investment?

Steve Jaffe: 31:45

Yeah, I'm still looking at book sales, not for a revenue number, but from a you know, if I sold 500 books, I guess that meant I've helped 500 people, right? So I still want to try and help as many people as I can and book sales is one of those measurements. I think one of the pieces of feedback that I'm really appreciating is just how much this is resonating. That I'm really appreciating is just how much this is resonating that the people that are reading it, that are hearing about it, that it's powerful, like it means something. It's resonating, you know it's.

Steve Jaffe: 32:19

It's not like what I wrote just becomes kind of, you know, dust in the wind that blows and and it doesn't really get noticed in a way that affects people in a positive way. So I think the the substance by which, like, the people are reacting and telling me how much it's meant to them. And, um, I've had some people just go above and beyond in terms of their own kind of marketing of the book and I've had some people do some amazing things like on their own kind of marketing of the book, and I've had some people do some amazing things on their own time and effort just because it meant so much to them that they wanted to try and help others as much as they felt the book helped them, and I was really blown away by that.

Beki Fraser: 33:04

Yeah, yeah. It's sort of that magnifying effect that we sometimes want to have with that. So it's written, it's out there. Where are you now? What are the things that you're striving to do? Let's say, aiming for 2026? What's your dream for 2026? 2026?.

Steve Jaffe: 33:26

Dream is to write another book, to sell it to a publisher and to have some sort of follow-up. I'm not sure what exactly, but I know that I want to stay on the writing path. So this book was published in February 2025, and I'm about six months away from that milestone. So I've got six months left of this runway, but 2026,.

Beki Fraser: 33:49

I see kind of this book fading into the background and the next book coming into the forefront of where is it that I can have the most meaningful impact on my readers and what they might be able to grow and learn from? I guess I'm curious. You know, as we've talked about some of these things, is there anything that you would want to talk about that we didn't discuss, or any questions that you would want to explore?

Steve Jaffe: 34:22

Yeah, I would love to know, from your point of view as an HR professional, how you see the HR profession evolving from when you were in it to today. And I think so much of HR now is being comprised of a reliance, and maybe a growing over-reliance, on AI to read resumes, to screen resumes now to even interview candidates, and it just seems like this has been said before but the human aspect of human resources seems to be diminishing. So, you know, what do you think the state of affairs is for human resources and what do you see as the shining light in terms of if we had a silver lining or some level of positivity? What's the silver lining in AI?

Beki Fraser: 35:16

Yeah, so I've been out of the game for about a decade at this point in time.

Beki Fraser: 35:21

So I've probably forgotten as much as I knew back then, but I joke it's not quite that much that I've forgotten. But you know, even in the time that I was in human resources there were still a lot of technical tools that were being used. I would post positions even that position, that first position that I did get after I had moved here. I was doing a lot of recruiting which I'm not well suited for and you know you would have hundreds of people applying for a position. Like the human eye can't look through all of those in a timely enough way. So there were systems that were set up to filter and kind of score, even back then. And now with AI to be honest, I don't know the quality of that at this stage because I haven't had the experience of it. Where I do see the silver lining is really in that space of if you're going to use technology, ai being one of the tools that kind of impacts some of the tactical, repeatable tasks within human resources as a function and there are a lot of administrative things. I don't think AI is really worthy of deep trust in that regard because I don't think it's been developed to that level. But if you start to build tools and understand how technology can assist in minimizing some of the administrative thing, you still need a human eye to review it. But it also my silver lining.

Beki Fraser: 36:54

My dream for my former HR colleagues is really this idea of maybe they get to do the human work at that stage and they get to do less of what most of my colleagues didn't enjoy. I'm nerd enough. I loved a good spreadsheet I still do but what they really wanted to do was like get into the talent development, get into the. You know, how does HR show up? How does the allocation of people into different roles really work? Most of the people I worked with that's what they got excited about right, like how can we help people be their best at work? And what ended up happening is all of that administrative task would drag them down a lot. I don't know where that balance is. These days. I get kind of hit and miss from people I know who are still in the profession, but I wouldn't presume to know the depth of that, though it gives me an idea that maybe I should be talking to somebody to maybe interview them and get them on the show to talk about it, right?

Beki Fraser: 37:56

Because that is an inflection point. You have all this technology coming in, so how has that changed your role? How has that started? You know the shift for you, so HR folks contact me right.

Beki Fraser: 38:07

But yeah, I think that there's a real opportunity and I don't say that just for HR, I actually say that for all of these different roles. We can view this as the threat and the fear and the loss that we would be grieving in that moment. And, like you said and I love the imagery and all of the storytelling that comes with this but the thing that you feed grows. So if you feed the fear of that technology, then it's going to continue to grow in some way, shape or form. And now you're not familiar with it and that puts you at a disadvantage where I'm not saying full on, give it big hugs and hold on for a long time, but I am saying get familiar, understand what the landscape looks like and where it can be useful and how you can, as a human being, add value, and I think that's where people like to live anyway.

Steve Jaffe: 39:04

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's well said. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's well said. Yeah, I like the idea that it's doing some of the administrative work and that it's allowing the HR professional to focus on employee development and the real, meaningful, important work, and I think the idea that 10 years ago you were getting a couple hundred applications.

Beki Fraser: 39:27

Now some people are getting a couple hundred applications now some people are getting like a thousand, right?

Steve Jaffe: 39:30

so if you get a thousand resumes you, there's no way you can look through those. You've got to have a screening mechanism. I think the challenge is like what's that right balance, you know?

Steve Jaffe: 39:41

exactly I think I've seen ats get it wrong more than it gets it right. And now there's even more tools coming in above and beyond ATS. So, and now, like anybody who's interviewing, they've used AI to write the job. Hr has used AI to write the job description. So now you have an AI written job description and an AI written resume, and what are they going to do? Of course, they're going to score each other a hundred because, right, that's talking to himself. But I just was speaking to somebody yesterday and he was telling me that people are interviewing with, like an AI note taker and it'll then give the answer to the question that they're being asked, and they're just reading the question. So it's become even harder to discern who really has qualifications and who doesn't, and that, apparently, what they're saying is, if you get a thousand job applications, what they're going to do is everybody is going to basically interview with some sort of AI video interface and then that will become the screener, which opens up a whole other can of worms.

Beki Fraser: 40:51

Well, yes, including the things that were a problem before in terms of bias, et cetera.

Beki Fraser: 40:56

And the other side that I think is really interesting about that is that awareness that when you've experienced that layoff, when you're moving through that grieving process that you were talking about and learning all of the elements about self-care, looking for what's important, really connecting to the right people in the right ways to be at whatever right means in that context, and also really just journeying with that vision forward that it's important to understand what some of those tools are, because what that does is it helps you appreciate what you are able to do and maybe, where you're not a great fit, because ultimately, the person who's experienced that layoff and is going through that job search there's financial pressure in a lot of those cases and, I would argue, most of those cases, pressure in a lot of those cases and, I would argue, most of those cases.

Beki Fraser: 41:52

However, I think one of the key things is is a robot interviewing you or AI interviewing you going to be the kind of culture of an organization that you want to be in? And so you learn so much about yourself in that process, much to what we've been discussing, and I know what you've outlined so much in your writing. I think that there's such an important aspect to this, which is how much do you choose to engage with humans?

Beki Fraser: 42:18

You know, I don't like to call the bank and it tells me to one, two, three, four and five. And then they lie to me and say that it was changed last week. No, it wasn't. I know it wasn't. I called last week and still had the same roster was changed last week.

Steve Jaffe: 42:29

No, it wasn't, I know it wasn't.

Beki Fraser: 42:30

I called last week and still had the same roster. So you know it becomes this what is the degree of human interaction that you want in your role? Quite frankly, for different people it's a different scale. And you just have to find your place, and that's part of that self-discovery and that resilience that I heard you talking about before.

Steve Jaffe: 42:47

You know, as we're talking about the job application process, right, and you know, let's say you fill out 100 applications and maybe you get one phone call. That's a lot of rejection, right? And people's job search is taking months and months, much longer than it ever has right.

Steve Jaffe: 43:04

So what happens is you have the grief of the layoff and then quickly followed by this grief of rejection and the financial strain, and it's just all the more reason why you've got to develop that healthy baseline, manage the grief of the layoff before you can move through to that job application process, because it's really rough, it's getting harder.

Beki Fraser: 43:33

Absolutely. And what happens is that if you bring all of that grief from the layoff into the experience of the job search, facing that rejection, it just starts to stack up and pile up, to be even more weight that now you have to find that healthy outlet to be able to release it. And that's such a powerful thing. Well, steve, thank you so much for talking with me today. I've really enjoyed our conversation and I'm hopeful that people will be able to learn a lot from our discussion and from the contact information that we'll put in the show notes.

Steve Jaffe: 44:07

Thanks so much. Thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it. Great conversation.

Beki Fraser: 44:10

Great, thank you. Thanks for listening. If you found this episode helpful, share it with someone who could benefit from it. Until next time, I'm Becky Fraser, reminding you to integrate who you are with how you lead. Okay, bye.