The Job Hunting Podcast 68. The power of the first 90 days: How to start a successful role even before you get the job, featuring Sue Zabluld. Renata: Sue Zablud and I have been friends since 2008. When I started my role as the Student Development and MBA career manager at Monash University, I inherited this amazing set of documents and guidelines that made my job so much easier. I had a great blueprint to start with, and Sue's name was all over it. So I reached out and introduced myself to her. You see, Monash University had demerged from the Mount Eliza Business School, and Sue Zablud had left with the Mount Eliza team, which then merged with the Melbourne university. And I had taken over some of her responsibilities at Monash. We have been close ever since. I've done Sue's coaching training, and she has mentored me all of these years. Sue was the person who introduced me to the concept of paying close attention to the first 90 days on the job. And I cannot thank her enough for introducing me to the book with the same name by Michael D. Watkins. I invited Sue to run a special masterclass in the Job Hunting Made Simple, my online course and group coaching program, which I'm running again for seven weeks beginning end of February. This will be one of three special masterclasses included as bonuses to my seven-week coaching framework, which is the foundation of the Job Hunting Made Simple program. I only do group coaching twice a year. So if you are keen to join, please go to my website to learn more about the program. You can do it live with us over the next seven weeks, but you can also do it whenever you want. Since the entire program will be recorded and you can listen to it on demand. Registrations are now open, and we'll be closing in a few days. So if you're listening and the time has passed, please still go to my website and register your interest in the next coaching program. Depending on demand, I promise to bring it forward and run another group coaching program as soon as I can. To learn more, go to renatabernarde.com/JHMS. You can find the link on the episode show notes. Renata: About Sue Zablud. Sue is an experienced non-executive director, human resources professional, internationally accredited executive coach, mentor, and facilitator. She currently leads the human asset development group - a consultancy focused on the design and delivery of leadership development, executive education, board governance, strategy, mentoring, coaching, and career management solutions. Her focus is on engaging and empowering individuals and groups across industries, not for profit, the professions, education, and government. Sue is responsible for growing her consultancy into a highly respected international human resources consultancy and has grown her portfolio of appointments to include board positions in the public and private sectors. She has successfully served on the board of the Royal women's hospital in Melbourne, served as the board chair of the Royal women's hospital foundation, and as an executive director of private companies. She has a B comm and MBA, is a certified professional coach with the international coaching Federation, is a fellow of the Australian HR Institute, and a graduate of the Australian Institute of company Page 1 of 11 ​ ​ ​ The Job Hunting Podcast 68. The power of the first 90 days: How to start a successful role even before you get the job, featuring Sue Zabluld. directors. Okay, so why are the first 90 days so important when you start a new role? Sue and I start talking about her career first, and then we moved to provide advice for professionals currently in between roles, specifically, those who are having to move sectors. And this leads us to talk about preparing to tackle a new environment, a new job, and how to be successful at it. The first 90 days is a great framework to follow for that purpose. Let's listen, and I think you're going to enjoy the discussion. Renata: There you go. It's nice to see you. Sue: Yeah. Lovely to see you. Renata: I like your background. Sue: Yeah. It's the view from my balcony. Renata: Did you take a picture? Sue: Yeah. Renata: And then you use it as a background? Sue: And my clients love it. Renata: Yeah. It's lovely. Very nice. How are you? Sue: I'm good. It's a very miserable day. Horrible. Renata: Yeah. And you got a nice little headset. Sue: Yes. I went to office works, and it's an Apple. They recommended Apple. Renata: Yes. Excellent. Sue: And my brother tested it with me, and he's now gone to buy one. Renata: Oh good. Sue: Because he does lots of zoom meetings. I think it made him understand how different it could be. Renata: Yes, it makes a difference. But you know what the most important thing is the content. Sue: Yeah. Well, I think, I think I've got it right. I've done a bit of prep. So actually talking about my career is a really interesting one, but there you go. Renata: Well, let's start with that. Sue: Okay. Page 2 of 11 ​ ​ ​ The Job Hunting Podcast 68. The power of the first 90 days: How to start a successful role even before you get the job, featuring Sue Zabluld. Renata: Tell me about your career, Sue. Tell me as if I didn't know, and you know what the funny thing is, we've known each other for so long, but I bet you there's a lot I don't know about you. So I'm curious. Tell me about your career. Sue: So my career started in the 1970s when it was very unusual for a woman to enter the business world. I was the only girl from my year at school to go into a commerce degree. And after finishing my degree, the big thing was how do I find a job now? I was very lucky to be recruited into the Myer, Melbourne, or Myer department stores, I think we'd probably call it now, as the first woman in their internal audit department. And I was a woman with two other guys, and we had a lot of fun. And I thoroughly enjoyed being in retail, in a role that was professional rather than just sitting on the floor selling. So that was a big shift for the organization. And, I realized how big it was when I got in there. Sue: I had fun, but there was a crisis in our family business. And my father said, well, you've done a business degree, come and fix it. So I went and fixed it. And for 17 years, I stayed and did marketing, research, got involved in industry textile and clothing industry, and got involved in establishing the flammability standard for children's nightwear - which I see as a big tick in terms of making sure kids are safe in the clothes they wear to bed. So it was important. From there, the business was sold, thankfully you want to know on my behalf. I was through, and I’m no longer locked in. I went off to do an MBA with the dream that I would be an accountant. That was what I could see as the opportunity, and that would be the way I would go. Sue: And through the Monash MBA, I could do an accounting stream to qualify as a CPA. So off I went, but to my surprise, I mounted all right in the accounting subjects, but I excelled in the strategy and the people subjects, human resource management, which was just really starting to happen. It used to be called personnel management. And suddenly I found my area of passion and, I really enjoyed it, and I still keep the connections. As part of that, I also entered into the career management area without even knowing it by being president of the MBA alumni association on introducing or being part of the team that introduced mentoring to alumni at Monash. I mentoring again was a very, it was used to happen, but it was never a process that had a structure or a formality to it and accountability for both the mentor and the mentee. Sue: So that was a really interesting place to go. in terms of that, in the 1990s, the recession hit, and as we said, now we have the first one since then it was a big recession. Lots of people were laid off, particularly professionals, airline pilots, defense personnel, and the idea of getting prepared for a job and doing a job search was something very new. And I got involved in that industry, and as my clients won jobs and they did, then they would call me in and go, well, okay, you've done the job search piece. Now, can you help us? I need to recruit people, or I need to set up some HR policy. I was very honored to be the recruiter for the first internet development team at Yellow Pages, a search engine, which we now know has died, definitely died as these things can do. Page 3 of 11 ​ ​ ​ The Job Hunting Podcast 68. The power of the first 90 days: How to start a successful role even before you get the job, featuring Sue Zabluld.