Thank you so much for joining today's talk. And as I was telling people who just uh joined uh my keynote decided to crash two minutes before my talk. So somehow I managed to get my presentation up. So it's exciting.Um If people who just joined you, feel excited today, put a smiley face in the chat window before I get started to make sure we have the vibe going on. I have the chat window on my right and the screen on the left. So cool. OK, so my name is Rachel Ramier and uh I'm super excited to be giving this talk today about the future of work. Before we actually get into the stack, I need to give a brief background about myself. So I am the owner and CEO of child at consulting. I'm a tech career strategist. So I help people specifically in the tech space to find their dream job and become successful leaders in the industry. I've been in the tech space for over 15 years now. And um I also do a lot of speaking at conferences like this and then company private events. They hire me, I speak on radios. Topic, leadership motivation A I software development testing, so on and so forth. And also I write for a lot of tech companies as well and uh large publications. So if you want more information about me, definitely go check out my website. And again, I'll be monitoring the chat window as well.

If you have any questions as and when you get questions, feel free to put that on the chat window. Ok. So I also released a book called Skyrocketed Career last December which hit number five on the Amazon best seller list. I'm super proud of it. So if you uh are interested to check it out, definitely go to Disney World. So that being said, let's add some context to this talk. Why am I talking about this? So for that, I have to go back to my days when I came to the United States. So I still remember this vividly, I came to the United States in on August 31st 2008 and on September 7th, 2008 Lehman brothers, one of the biggest financial firms in the world became bankrupt overnight and getting jobs was so hard, especially as an immigrant who needed a work permit and sponsorship.

It was really, really hard. So I was left with two choices, right? Either go back with half of my international students because I come from my master's in software engineering, go back from where I came from or my second choice was do whatever it takes to get a job. And luckily I chose the second option. And from the beginning of 2009, till end of 2009, I applied for 1293 jobs, 1293 jobs. And I got four callbacks from it and I converted one job out of it. Right. And that it was not a full time job, but it was an internship since then. I worked my ass off to prove to people that I can do the job. Right? And over the past 15 years since that episode, in 2008, I've learned so many different strategies which have transformed my life from a shy introverted kid earning a minimum salary into an international keynote speaker, author and tech career strategist running a six figure business.

I've been a star performer in six out of my seven companies. I've exponentially increased my salary by over 100 and 50%. And those are my clients by over 400%. And I'm not even exaggerating. And the kicker here is I have an average guy, right? And I was able to do all these things because I started understanding how job market works, how career advancement works. Because currently, if you see we are in the same situation right now where millions of jobs have been lost, people who have been in the company for 20 years waiting for their pension and waiting for their retirement, got laid off along with people who just joined four months before and even the companies you thought were super rich and your jobs are safe.

Like uh sales Force, linkedin Microsoft, all three of them laid, laid off thousands of people and airbnb laid of 1009 100 people. So if you're thinking your job is safe, then you're living in an artificial world. You're kidding yourself. And you're ignoring the obvious, right?

Because there's a lot of things happening around you and you need to take action. So just ignoring it because in when it comes to jobs, there's only security, there's no security, there's only opportunity, right? And this being the situation, how are we going to adapt ourselves in this type of environment? So that takes me to the three things I'm gonna quickly cover today just to set the context of the future of work we are looking at. So I'm gonna cover the pre COVID era, how work was during the COVID era. And then I want to talk about the post COVID era which I term the future of work as well. So let's talk about pre COVID man. I remember those times where I used to go for final rounds of interview and the company used to fly me in, gave me fancy accommodation in a hotel and then I used to get free food. The next day I attend the rounds of interviews and then in the evening, I just go around the town wherever I'm attending the interview. And the next day I come back home. Right. It's like a mini vacation for me. I miss those days. But I digress the point I wanna make here is in the pre COVID era we had on site interviews. As I was saying, working from home was a luxury.

In fact, Marissa Mayer, the ex CEO of Yahoo, she banned work from home from the entire company because she wanted the employees to be more productive. But that didn't work that well because after that rule, Yahoo had the worst years and then they got sold to Verizon for such a really cheap rate. And then there were very limited virtual meetings, virtual meetings were only for people who are out of state and even for important meeting, they had to fly them in. That was the situation before and travel was mandatory for consultants, government officials. And that's the reality we were living in and then shit went down with COVID, right? And we had no on site interviews. We needed 6 ft to 1 million miles separation. Work from home was not a luxury anymore. It was a necessity and every freaking thing is no virtual meetings. Have you heard of zoom fatigue? If your face zoom fatigue, put a uh sad face in the chat window so that I know you can relate to what I'm talking about. I have to chat from over here. Look at it. Exactly. Right. We cannot handle zoom anymore. One more zoom. Meaning you wanna kill yourself. That's the feeling you have. Right. And travel. What does even travel look like? What is the meaning of travel anymore?

So this is the reality we were living in with the COVID era and some possible things with the ecommerce uh industry. They increased 2 to 5 times. They did. Well, we had telehealth, we didn't have to go to a doctor. Everything was I can reassume and then we could see all the latest movies right from our house in our pajama pants using Disney Plus and other streaming services. So those were the good things, but that doesn't give us money, right? So talking about the bad things according to the American Psychology Association, eight in 10 adults say that uh they suffered extreme stress during the COVID era, right? And we are trying hard to manage work and life and that line is really blurry right now and collaboration tools like Zoom Slack, they became billion dollar companies after the COVID era. So that's how work was during the COVID era. So now how is work going to change? What are the different things you need to do in terms of career advancement? What's the meaning of career advancement right now in the postcode era? So that's what we're gonna talk about in my final section, which is what I term as future work. So I categorize five biggest things, which is going to be the future of work, which is going to define your career advancement, which is going to set you apart from the competition. The first thing is a social media footprint. You need to have a linkedin profile.

All those folks now watching me and all those folks in the wo women in tech conference, they need to have a linkedin profile because that's where tech folks hang out. So if you don't have a linkedin profile after this talk, the first thing you need to do is go update your profile. The reason this is so important is everything you put on linkedin is SEO information and it's indexed by Google. What do I mean by that? So I consulted with a lot of recruiting companies. What they do is they use this A I BASED software and then they put keywords like C# Scrum, business analyst collaboration uh leading and then it scans through your linkedin profile to see whether those keywords are there. And then immediately you stand up, stand out your profile stands out from other people. That's how it's working and and it's indexed by Google. So when people say search for Ras Ramier, if I have to write keywords on my profile, I am gonna be displayed in the top 10 results of Google. That's why it's so important to update your profile with the right keywords that is so important that is going to define your success in the future.

And also talking about linkedin, you need to start engaging by other people's posts, you need to start posting, you need to start liking because the more you engage in social media, the more visible you become and keep a goal to connect with five people on linkedin every week and then have a 15 minute, 30 minute call with them.

That is how you're gonna build your network. That is gonna be so crucial for your growth, right? So that is the social media for that's number one, number two is a personal brand. Your personal brand is everything folks. So let me give you a really raw example just to uh stress on this point, say you have your favorite body wash, OK? And you've been buying it for eight years, you're not buying the body wash just for the price. You're buying the body wash because of different factors, the fragrance, the durability, the color of the packaging, the way it's packaged and when you drop it on your bathtub, it doesn't split open. So you love how uh you know it can be stress tested. So there's so many factors which makes you keep buying the box. That brand of body was for over eight years and our personal brand is the same thing. It's not just your master's degree, it's not just that you're speaking at conference. It's all these things combined, which is gonna make you stand out from the crowd from and stand out from other people. So your personal brand is the number one thing you need to start working on when it comes to the future of work, right? And how are we going to do that? So here are some ways to quickly do that. First thing is start growing your network, we already talked about linkedin. That's a great way to do that. And then use meetups and conferences like this to connect with people.

Because the more people you connect with, the better your chances are to figure out different job opportunity opportunities and those areas and then always do continuous learning, you always have to keep learning because if uh there 100 people applying for the same job, if you have something extra in terms of learning that is going to stand out and finally identify clear vision goals and tasks where you are going.

What do you want to do in life and have a strategy to focus based on that. And that's what I help clients with as well. The next thing is remote working. The meaning of remote working has totally changed. After COVID, you can be work working from Hawaii for a company in San Francisco and earn in San Francisco salary. That is the, that is what we are looking at right now. So when you apply for jobs, make sure they have remote working uh facility because you could settle down in a cheaper location and earn higher wages. That is something which people are going to do. But with remote working, there's a lot of things we need to start considering now, especially in the post COVID era. Number one is you need to start blocking your time in terms of what you're going to do. Because with slack and other communication channels, they constantly expect you to be available 24 7. That's not gonna work. If you wanna have a healthy work and life balance, you need to set boundaries like 5 to 8 p.m. For example, for me, you can never reach me because I'm going to spend time with my 18 month old kid, right? That's not negotiable.

In fact, when I was working at a start up company, uh before I became an entrepreneur, I reported the CEO and the founder of the company and uh we had 24 7 teams all over the world. I was heading about 35 people, different different departments. My CEO expected me to be available at 2 a.m. in the morning. Now I told the pers my CEO that I'll be available till 10 p.m. And then after that I'm done and then at six AMI can attend to things. Things are not that important for everyone. Their task is important, but trust me, except for once in a year, they're not major things you need to attend to. So set clear boundaries and that is how you you're going to be more successful when it comes to remote working, right? And I'm doing a time check here, we have four minutes left, so I'm doing it on time. The next thing you want to think about is going the extra mile. So what do I mean by that? I often say this uh for people who know me, uh this, this quote which I firmly believe in to be extraordinary, you need to go the extra mile to be extra ordinary, you need to go the extra mile. So we are living in this age where a lot of people are looking for jobs, ok? Thousands of people are looking pro probably for one kind of job. Ok.

So when a person has thousands of resumes in their inbox, what is gonna make you stand out from the crowd or say you already have a job and you're looking for promotions. There are five managers and uh there's only one spot left for being, becoming senior manager. What is gonna make them give you the job compared to other folks, what is going to make them give you the promotion compared to other folks? That's what we need to think about, that's going the extra mile and the way to do that is, you know, there are multiple ways to do that and I talk more about it in my book as well. But just since you're listening here are two things you want to think about. If you're uh attending interviews or looking for jobs, record yourself for 90 seconds talking about why you'll fit the job and send an email to the hiring manager who does video like that. Who, who here to be honest with me has sent a video while applying for jobs to stand out from the crowd. If you put a smiley face, that means you did it. If you don't reply, then I would assume that no one has done it. Right. Exactly. No one thinks about it. That is how you're gonna stand up from the crowd. You need to send a video of you 90 seconds talking about why you deserve the job compared to other people.

If you do that, trust me, you're already 80% in the zone of getting the job. Or if you already have a job, here's one of the strategies which I followed and that's how I, I've increased my salary by over 100 and 50%. Right. That going the extra mile. So when the first thing you wanna do is I didn't find the most shittiest things you want to do in the company. Like no one else wants to do. If you volunteer for that and then at least find a solution, people are going to remember you. Right. That is how you are going to stand up from the crowd because then there's something complex when something people do not want to do and you do even a minor enhancement to it. People are going to remember you and when it comes to the promotion time, they're going to remember that you did the job. That is how you are going to be more successful in the postcode era. And finally retooling your skill set, you have Coursera Udemy youtube. There's no reason why you cannot upgrade your tools, skill set. There's so many courses online, make sure you do that and then add that to your linkedin profile. So people know that on your own, you're taking a lot of courses that show pro shows proactiveness and that is going to really, really help you advance in your career. I can talk more about this, but they gave me only 20 minutes.

As you can see, I'm really passionate about career advancement. So just to wrap it up, right? So that uh you can go to your next session. Remember that you're enough because right now we had COVID before we had the, we had the 2008 recession before we that we had the 2001, you know uh uh dot com burst. So there are always gonna be things happening because life is a bitch. It's gonna hit you when you least expect it. As John John Lennon said everything will be ok in the end if it's not OK, then it's not in that's not the end, right? So the only thing you can do is be consistent, have a positive mindset, do the work be strategic about your career. And that is how you're gonna stand up from the crowd and implement some of these things which I just mentioned and you can implement them right now because the right time for doing anything is right now. So keep that in mind. And again, um I have some templates which you could use during interviews and stuff. You can go to this link and then you can download it uh skyrocketed career book.com/free resources. I have a lot for different types of people. And then of course, go check out my book.

You can find it in the same URL and I love this conference. So for anyone who buys a book in the next 24 hours, I will give them both my ebook and the paperback for free. So you just have to buy the paper back and then I'll give you the ebook for free. You just have to buy it from Amazon and then email me at Raj at raj.com, take a screenshot of this and then I'll make sure I send it to you because that's my way of giving back to people in the community over here as well. That's pretty much what I had. I love connecting with new people. Uh Check out my website, email me if you wanna, you know, just talk shop about career advancement. You can set up a calendar meeting with me and uh yeah, and I have a weekly newsletter as well. If you're interested in getting updates on career advancement and stuff like that. Make sure you subscribe, follow me on linkedin and I am done. Thank you so much for giving me this opportunity to share my views. I'm sorry, it started a one minute late because keynote my software crashed two minutes before the presentation. So thank you. I appreciate it.

Um Thanks Jackie, thanks Catherine for joining and I'm gonna be hanging around the conference, so make sure to connect with me on linkedin or just message me through the app. Ok. Thank you. Have a great, great day.