Claire Thornewill Know your worth
Video Transcription
Right. So I suppose I'll uh get started. So thanks everyone uh for joining my session. So in 2012, um I graduated from my art and design degree and I didn't really know what to do with myself, my life.I, I kind of felt like I hadn't found that one true calling yet. And I was very much under pressure at the time, you know, when you're 1617, going on 18, you kind of have to make that decision and, and what, you know, at the time is that you have to make that one decision for the rest of your life. And so I was really confused and, and I guess anxiety driven by the fact that I still didn't know what I wanted to do. So I went to South America. I took a gap year. I um traveled around for the better part of a year and I went round from, I mean, you could probably say the the whole subcontinent. Um And this question was still following me of what do I want to do. And so by the time that year of traveling come, came to an end, I had to make another decision. And I was like, OK, maybe I'll just follow in my brother's footsteps. He went to live in Madrid for a year.
So I went to Madrid for a year in 2013. Um to learn the language again, it was an amazing experience. You learn so many different cultures, so many different people and you meet so many different people from different walks of life. Um And it was amazing because I immersed myself into the culture and I, I got to learn a language which um in the meantime, is great because my, my boyfriend is Spanish, so I was able to use it. Um So when this year came to an end, I still had that same question of what, what on earth do I do? And at this point, I've remembered that whilst I was in South America, I had met a Dutch guy who was talking about a master's and management degree called Ses. Now, Ses is a master of management that is not done at one university, but about 28 universities or by now, it's probably more than that and all over the world and they come together to create one program. And what's amazing about this is that you get to do exchanges in other sister universities. And so I thought this was a really amazing idea. Problem is I had an art and design degree. How do you get into management with that?
And I could tell you probably in Europe, it's a very, very difficult thing. But I stumbled across the University of Sydney and they didn't require you to have a previous degree in business to go and do a master's management. So it was like, ok, well, what could I lose? Nothing really? I may as well apply and lo and behold in 2014, I ended up in Sydney to my biggest surprise ever. I never expected to be accepted into a management degree after I'd done art and design. But I was brave enough to say Carol, I'm just gonna apply. I, you even had to pay for the application. And so I, like I said, went to Sydney and, and this again was amazing because I was in a, a degree with so many different nationalities and so many different backgrounds. And um obviously, I got to see Australia and I traveled around and I got to see a bit of China whilst I was that side of the world and some of Bali as well. So again, super amazing. What was even more amazing about this degree was that I got to do two exchanges and I got to do one in Helsinki in Finland and one in um Portugal in Lisbon.
Um And this again was so interesting because particularly these two cultures are quite contrasting, one of them. So Portugal is quite Latino uh culture and, and Finland is quite a Nordic culture. So they're, they're quite different and I find it really interesting to also see the difference in the education systems. Um, but obviously, you know, 2015 and that degree came to an end and I still had this horrible question of, I don't really know what I want to do and I don't really know how to combine now, my art degree with my business degree. So 2016 looked a little like this. Um This is a Excel spreadsheet that I made for my job applications. Now, this is not even half of it. I sent out about 171 applications. Very many didn't even reply. Uh Even fewer. I got interviews and, you know, very few at all like one or two, I actually got a job offer. And one of the things that struck me most during this application process was I came across some very odd questions in interviews and one of them was after I explained, you know, my education, my path until now I got the question of, well, what have you been doing the last four years?
And I was like, what? But I, I just told you, I, I went to South America and then I, I, you know, saw different countries learned the history of the places, the, the geography, I can tell you exactly where every single country in South America is now. Um And then I, I went to Spain and I learned a language and then I did a master's for two years. What do you mean, what have you done for the last four years? And this first question really confused me because at this point in time, and it was really the first time in my life where I thought, do you know what if you do not see the value in my experiences from traveling around which is traveling is just problem solving on a daily basis to learning a language and immersing yourself in a different culture to doing a degree for two years, then sorry, if you don't see the value in that, I don't want to work for you and I don't see the value in working for you.
Another issue um that you often come across. Um I'm sure most of you have seen this before is, you know, employers want you to have 10 years work experience before the age of 22. I mean, given I was 26 at the time and the expectation is that I, you know, might have we some experience at that time but still like this speaks true to me now. I mean, I'm now a senior and yet I don't have 10 years work experience. So how are you expecting? 10 years work experience from these young kids who are coming straight out of university. So these are the two challenges that I face quite often. And eventually I got a job in London at accenture. It was a graduate program now, this was super exciting. It was 2016. Um I was going to be moving to London. My brother lived in London at the time. So that was also super exciting. I have a very international family. So we were always split across the globe. So this was a first um and I was super excited about this and I remember sitting there on my first day at accenture and I was super confused or like almost embarrassed or II, I don't really know what the feeling was. A little bit of anxiety, a little of shame, but because we were sitting there and we were introducing ourselves and we were going around the table and um it started off with, you know, hi, I'm whoever I'm from this part of the UK and I studied in this part of the UK and then the next person said the same thing and the same thing and the same thing and then it came to me and I was like, well, hi, I'm Claire.
I am born and raised in Munich, Germany to British parents. And I studied my bachelor's in the UK. And then I studied my master's in Australia and Portugal and Finland. And I almost felt this sort of embarrassment that my experience had. I just had more of it because I was older, these were kids that were four years younger than me. And then it kind of confuse me why I was even there or why I had been put in the same bucket as these kids. Yes, I didn't have more work experience but isn't life experience and, and education worth something. So, it left me standing there thinking like, why am I even here? Why am I in the same bucket as these kids who have come straight out of their, their bachelor's degrees? And so I left and I, you know, went off to Australia and got a job there. Hi, I'm Claire Thoro. I'm a senior web performance consultant now. And I want to talk to you about why knowing my worth has helped me along my career and how I've maybe learned to value my own worth. So you might have noticed that um my life has been a bit of a higgle piggle. I've moved around a lot. I have a very international life. Um And my, my career path is no different. Um I studied art and design, like I mentioned, went on to management. This led me to think that marketing was the right thing to do because it's business and creative.
And then I um got a job as a business consultant officially and they put me into projects as a requirements engineer which opened up the world of product for me and product management. And I was like, hey, OK, this is what I want to do. So then I went into product management and I've changed jobs several times. It's probably six now. In the last five years. Um And the last time I changed my job is actually um may I, I actually went back to the same uh previous employer and now I'm in web performance now, I'm a web performance consultant, but actually, I'm a prod product manager, building web performance tools. So um it's not a straight line and I think this is something that I learned along the way as well, that it doesn't have to be a straight line. I think very often kids in school are told you have to make that decision. You want to be a doctor, you be a doctor, ok? But you have to, you know, plan out your entire life. Whereas I, I didn't know how to do this and I only knew how to do step by step. And every opportunity is a new open door and, and every opportunity you take opens a different door. So this is kind of, I guess, evident in my path.
I had a very pinnacle moment in my path not so long ago, it was about two years ago and I was a senior transformation manager at a really awesome company, really awesome people. And it just didn't have product management or product building. It was a very project based company and I wanted to do. And so I applied for this job and um they offered me the junior position and at the time I was like, well, I kind of understand it, it's a career change. Um And then I took a pay cut and obviously a cut to my title, which sometimes it's worth it. And I think really, if you follow your passion, I think definitely this one didn't work out for me the way that I hoped. And I ended up in a small company, uh start up with about 80 people and the culture was just toxic. This was the first time I came across a company that had a very toxic culture. And um I got told I was penetrable. I don't even know how you put that in a person context. Um And I'm fairly sure a man would never be told that in any context really. And um I just, I spent the first couple of weeks running to the bathroom crying and it really took a toll on my mental health. And I just, I figured at some point I can't do this anymore. It's not OK.
And I realized something that was super important to me before. But what I realized now was that it was the most important thing thing to me. And that is culture really matters in your company and the culture of the people that you are surrounded by and their attitudes and how they treat you. I have never felt so small in my life in this company and yet the previous company was big and more corporate there, 700 people and I felt uplifted and and supported in all these things. And these are the reasons why I think culture really, really matters is that I felt supported by the people around me, not just, you know, the whole company on a whole, but really the people around me had a support system and the company itself was really inspiring. I mean, these people around me were super inspirational, super motivated and I think the more inspired you are, the more motivated you are. I mean, I think, you know, many of us have suffered from the pandemic and working from home and not going to the office. Some people love it. I am just energized by having people around me. So the combination of this was really hard for me to be in a toxic culture, toxic people and then also from a distance. So this was extra hard for me in my mental health.
And another thing that was super important that I never realized I had until I didn't have it. I mean, it's a typical thing you don't know what you've lost until it's gone. Um And that's trust I have had trust everywhere I've gone except for this one place and my boss was in every single one of my calls and I was in product management. I had dailies. I had reviews. I had um you name it like all sorts of different calls in the week where I question like if she's managing to go to every single one of my calls is she even doing her own job. But there was micromanaged on another lesson on a level. So I think trust is something that's super important. If you're employing me, then you're basically saying you trust me. And the difficulty was is that I had allowed myself to be employed as a junior and I was treated as a junior. And I think I really suffered from this because I came in, I was super motivated. I want to get involved in all these different things and they were like, take 10 steps back, put your head down and concentrate only on your project, which isn't me. I've, I'd love to get involved in many different things which comes to the fun part.
I think it's super important that um the people around you are fun and I don't mean it has to be, you know, like you have really cool company events or whatever it could be just you really enjoy going for that coffee once a week without one person because they support you, inspire you, trust you and you spend 80% of your life at work or in the work environment, whether it's virtually or actually physically.
So I think it's super important to have people around you where you can be yourself, where you can have fun, you can have a laugh. And with all this, the things that I have learned throughout the path that I've taken um that's been a bit of a higgle piggle is that I have come to terms with the fact that it is absolutely ok to not have a straight career path. It is ok to change five times, five, jobs in five years. That's ok because it's an experience. Everything is an experience, which is something that brings me to sharing experience is really, really important. And that's why I'm here right now. I'm not here to share any expert advice or anything. I'm sharing my experience. I'm sharing the fact that I had to deal with this anxiety for the first couple of years of my career thinking I have to choose and you don't because just follow the opportunity that's out there. And I'm sharing because I think the more we share with each other, the more we can all get over our own imposter syndrome. And I promise you, I think everybody suffers from imposter syndrome even if they say they do not. And another one is never regret.
I don't think it's good to regret anything ever. I think every decision that you make leads you to the next decision or fuels the next decision. Um I think it's, you can't change the past, you can only change the future. And so yes, I don't regret going from senior to junior and taking a pay cut. I don't regret it. I don't think I would do it again, given the choice. Um But at the end of the day. That was the decision that I made. I weighed out, you know, the pros and cons of it and I chose to do it and I, I stick by it and it's, it's led me to where I am now and I'm, I'm happy where I am now. The other one is obviously have fun. Um Take everything you do seriously except yourself. This is something I find really important. I think you can have super serious moments but always put a smile on. You can always learn things up with a joke. Continued learning is also something that I think is super important that I've done throughout. Um The reason why I'm in web performance right now is because I continued learning, I, you know, taught myself to code at some point, I was super interested in UX and that's kind of all just kind of been put together and led me to where I am now.
It's not any one thing that I did in a degree at any point. And I think one of the important things is also know when to move on. If your mental health is suffering, time to leave, if you have lost the motivation to learn more in your job or to get up in the mornings to go to work or to sit down at your desk at work, then it's time to move on because I think you should never ever, ever sacrifice your mental health for your curriculum.
You should never ever put your mental health behind what it means on your CV. So yeah, after 10 months, I was like, I cannot handle this job anymore. I need to leave. I'm, I'm not healthy. I need to leave. I don't care what it says on my CV. And if someone asks me in the future in an interview, well, I can be proud and say, well, I was looking out for my mental health and then two big things that I would like to share is that every experience matters. It doesn't matter if you've gone, traveling in South America or you've gone to Spain to learn a language or you've done a master's degree or a phd or you've gone and volunteered somewhere. It's amazing. Every experience matters. It makes you who you are. So don't ever let anyone ask you, what have you been doing the last four years as if it doesn't matter. And finally knowing your worth is super important. And I've learned to know my worth, particularly in this moment of when I moved from senior to junior because I let people tell me that my experience wasn't worth a higher position or higher salary. So don't ever let people tell you what your worth is. Thank you for listening.
Um If you like my talk or you want to continue the conversation and me on linkedin, um and I'm just going to switch over to the chat and have a look if you have any questions, we do have, um, a couple of minutes for questions. Um, as everything has its ups and downs, how do you determine if it's time to move on in, uh, to a different job? Um, and, or if it's hard to patch in the job? Oh, that's a good question. I mean, I think there's a lot of things that come into it and one part of it is, do you think you can progress in this career? I mean, I just left a start up and great culture really love good people, but something that I really needed was people that I knew and this is how I've ended up going back to a previous employer. Um One of my first employers in Munich, um I've been here three years now and they, the culture was amazing um of this start up. But my difficulty was is that I just didn't see how I could fix this whole startup's problems. And I just felt like if I put my life energy into this, that I was, it was gonna burn me out. So I think again, it's experience matters, right?
Um It was really, you need to, the more experiences you have and the more you, you know, have a burnout or the more you have certain situations where your mental health is suffering, the more you know, how to identify those points. I hope that answered your question. Um uh feeling undervalued at my current company but if I had to take that step to get out, oh, ah, take the leap. Um, and the thing is, is if you have a job, it's easier to find a job and you can make more demands. Um, I asked for a higher salary than I ever expected to get. And, well, I got it and that was a big surprise to me as well. Um, just take the leap and apply, look at the market and apply as much as you can and until that perfect job comes along, stay where you are. Um I would like to know something more about your current job in the web performance. Um Yeah, I, I would say ping me about that for sure. Um Thanks for the great feedback. Um Just looking for questions. Yeah, if it's not aligned with your values, I totally agree. Um Time to move on. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you so much. I really appreciate all your feedback and yeah, it's, it's all a learning curve, I guess it's a learning curve of life, right? It's, it's a hard one. Um Thanks everyone. I really appreciate it.
Oh God, how do you know you are worth more than what you are currently doing? Especially when you are in an environment where people do not appreciate others. Um I would say, you know, figure out do maybe do an inventory of what you think your skills are your hard skills, your soft skills and then really map out like to what the expectation is in your job. Um And are you, are you over exceeding in your job? And this is something that you can make the decision for yourself? Um I, yes, I think it's very often you get to a position where people are telling you that you're in my case, penetrable. Um And I guess I felt like that wasn't fair and I guess this feeling of being treated unfairly is that obviously in my inner self, I knew that actually that's not ok for my boss to be saying this to me, by the way, was a woman who said this. Um Yeah, it's, it's, it's a tough one, but I think self reflection is always super important in these cases. Um And I think it's important to also be honest with yourself. I've had situations where I've also wanted more faster, um and looking back or like wanting to be more senior before, you know, I'm still young, but I, I think looking back, I wanted too much, too quickly.
And now obviously I've kind of reflected on, on the truth of that, whether I, I deserve to be promoted to senior at the time I had been, I felt like I hadn't, I felt like I had somehow, you know, tricked the system to get my promotion and which is partially a reason why it led me to leave because I had all these imposter syndrome issues and I left the job and, and now that I've, you know, gone out there and looked at like, got all these different experiences and believe me, when you change jobs so often you, I feel like you learn a hell of a lot.
So coming back, I now feel like I deserve it. Thank you. Uh Sometimes your manager knows worth uh your worth fullness more than you, but they won't want you to know and keep you undervalued. Ouch. I mean that for me is already wrong. Um And that for me, I mean, I know it's easy said from my, my perspective, but that's not a place you want to work. You want to work in a place that really where people support you, you want to work in a place where people will make lift you up, they will support your career. They will, if they see your value, they will push you forward. And I, I mean, it might be the person that specifically that I, I had this conversation the other day with someone. Um where I said, you know, your mentor, your people successfully does not supporting you. You need to try and find how you can figure out how do you change this person? Um that's supposed to be supporting you but is not um you need to, you need to say to someone or raise this tension with someone and say, I feel I don't feel supported by my manager um the difficulty is obviously all the politics that comes behind it.
Um And what the reactions might be. So I would say be very careful about how you approach it. But I do think that if your manager is not supporting you, you have to figure out can you, can you either change your situation and if you can't change your situation and that's going to affect your career, then maybe start looking elsewhere Because at the end of the day, your company doesn't necessarily, I don't want to say this too much, but they don't necessarily, you know, you're not their highest priority.
So if you leave, they'll find someone to replace you. But for you, if they're stopping your growth, you're the only person who has power over this. So if they're stopping your growth, you should try and find a different way around it. Or I, in my opinion, leave. But, you know, I've changed jobs so many times. I think it's easy for me to say leave. I think leaving a job is really, really tough for a lot of people. I think it induces a lot of anxiety. Um There's a lot of fear. Have I made the right decision? Have I not? I definitely had this when I changed to the start up, that had the toxic culture, I literally almost regretted my decision. And I know I did say, don't regret ever. Um You're allowed to regret. You just have to work through it and pass it and over it. Um, I, it was, it was painful to think. I maybe had made the wrong decision. Um, but you would never know if you don't make the decision. I think the worst thing that you can do is not make a decision. You can either decide and say, ok, I'm going to put up with this for another six months or you can say, do you know what I've had enough? I've, I've seen enough, I'm not supported in this place. I'm going to start looking and you could be looking for a job for six months to a year. It doesn't really matter, but, you know, watch the market, watch what's out there. I mean, I still do.
I, I've started my new job where, you know, six weeks ago. Um but I always, I'm looking out what is out there? Is that the perfect job for me? Because I haven't found it yet. I'm not sure I ever will. But if something amazing comes up, then I will definitely grab that opportunity. How do you ask for references at your company without alerting them that you are making your getaway plan? Oh, good question. Um I mean, I guess it depends from country to country. Um I, my experience has been that you don't necessarily need your references until they've actually offered you the job and then they do a background check. I don't think I've ever needed references for job applications. Um, I guess you want to avoid it. Um, you don't want to alert them and, and I think this is something that, you know, if the company is asking for that, then this is something that you have to have an open conversation with them and say, look, I don't want to, um, put my job in jeopardy in case this doesn't work out.
And I think that they'll understand and again, if they don't understand your worry on this, then you might want to rethink it. Um Yeah, it's, it's, it's a tough one. I, at this point in time I haven't really needed reference letters um for any, any job so far, like I said, only afterwards once I got the job and background checks. Yeah, cool. Um I'm guessing that's the end of the session essentially. I thought it would cut me off at 20 minutes, but I'm loving the questions. They're great questions. I really appreciate that. You also enjoyed um my session. Um I guess with that, I'm not really sure. Is it over if anyone has any questions? Just please feel free to write me on linkedin. Um Thank you all for joining. I really appreciate it. Thanks and I guess I'm going to uh leave the session now. So thanks everyone so much. Um Hope you enjoy the rest of the conference. It's been great. Um Awesome. Thanks for the connection. Cool then. Bye everyone.