Big Announcement: Jason & Austin are Officially Coworkers!
It’s about time! Plus Jason rates how well he followed his own career move advice.
The Story
Short Version: We’re both now working on the strategy team at Weave!
Longer Version: We’ve both tried to recruit each other to our respective companies since business school. So when a position opened at Weave, Austin graciously reached out to see if I would be interested. It felt like the stars had finally aligned. After a lot of consideration (and some very compelling offers at other companies) I decided to join one of Utah’s fastest growing SaaS companies.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with Weave, it’s a company that provides a “patient engagement platform” for dentists, optometrists, veterinarians, and small medical practices. Essentially it’s a phone system + software that makes it very easy for a small healthcare office to run it’s business operations (here’s a cool/short video overview of Weave if you’re interested in seeing what the product looks like in action).
Austin and I will both be reporting directly to Weave’s Chief Strategy Officer and working side-by-side on a wide variety of projects. Specifically, I took a role as Weave’s Head of Pricing & Monetization (working on Weave’s competitive intelligence + determining the company’s pricing strategy) while Austin is the Head of Weave’s Corporate Strategy team (Weave’s internal management consulting + M&A group).
For fun, I decided to painstakingly outline the advice Austin and I have given in the “Unwritten Business Guide” to date and rate my performance on how well it served me in this latest career move…
Advice Followed / Advice Missed
You may be curious how I would evaluate how well I followed our own advice since we’ve written quite a bit on getting a job, so I’ve given myself a score and description below:
The Unwritten Guide to Resume Writing: How to Rewrite Your Resume in 61 Minutes
Score: 6/10
Evaluation: OK, OK! I did rewrite my resume to focus on pricing and monetization. You can see my sample resume here. BUT I should have followed our advice to quantify more the impact of my prior pricing work. I also did not have a proofreader.
The Unwritten Guide to Job Searching: How to Find a New Job in 8 Hours
Score: 9/10
Evaluation: By getting referred in I was able to skip step 1 (making a list of 60 companies) and step 4 (reach out on LinkedIn), but otherwise followed our advice.
Project Scope Tools with Examples
Score: 4/10
Evaluation: For my interviews I had created 4 slides with my thoughts on the role and prior experience with pricing, but candidly should have spent a bit more time with this and sent it prior to each interview.
Why Choosing Your Boss Is Probably Your Best Career Strategy
Score: 10/10
Evaluation: Austin & I will share a boss, Marcus, who through my interactions with him and feedback from others is just a genuinely great manager/leader.
Why You Should Send a Pie After an Interview
Score: 0/10
Evaluation: Gah! I just didn’t do this. I only sent thank you emails. I had considered boxing up some Traeger things in a nice little package with a note for Marcus (the hiring manager) since we had discussed Traeger, but I just ran into roadblocks. I couldn’t find the Traeger rubs in the store, my thank you cards were just not “on brand” to send with this yet-to-be-assembled box, and I was just too busy to do this right. I should have sent a pie. Marcus, if you’re reading this I owe you a pie!
Using Personal Prototyping to Make Big Life Decisions
Score: 9/10
Evaluation: My wife and I followed this article nearly perfectly. We were deciding between multiple offers and would sit imagining our lives with each company. This was an extremely helpful framework, and we could have done better at writing down our thoughts.
In Conclusion
We have been building this guide together over the last year so this was a unique way to work together and be able to refer one another. It should be noted that your chances of being hired as a referral are 40% higher than applying cold. Also referred hires stay 70% longer than other employees. So while it was better for me as a potential candidate to be referred in, it’s also better for the company too.
We’re so excited to be working together. We pre-apologize to the strategy team for all of the unsolicited business advice and Brandon Sanderson references.