This transcript has been edited for clarity and checked against the available source transcript and recording. Filler, false starts, and obvious transcription errors have been corrected without changing the speaker’s meaning.
Juliana: People say, “But you’re not well prepared.” Then you create an illusion. If you do not look for development in those areas, you’re just going to become a victim of the system, right?
Intro#
James: Today’s guest was voted one of the top 10 career coaches to watch in 2021 by the Australian Business Journal. Originally from Brazil, she has over two decades of global experience working across strategy, people and culture, and recruitment. She’s the founder of her brand, New Mind Consulting. Please welcome to the show Juliana Owen.
Juliana Owen, welcome to the show. I’d love to start today by talking about your journey and the start of your career, because you did quite a big thing: moving from somewhere that doesn’t speak English to somewhere that does, then trying to work out everything that goes along with that.
Juliana’s Journey from Brazil to Australia#
James: That includes trying to find a job and everything like that. What was that experience like, and what led you to come to Australia and start your career here?
Juliana: I started in recruitment and talent acquisition back in Brazil. I did a degree in psychology, which was, I guess, my first step into this world of personal and professional development. It’s very fascinating when you start understanding and learning how this software here works, and how you can use it for your own benefit in terms of putting yourself in different environments.
Back in Brazil, I worked for global businesses. I guess the highlight of my career there was the ABN AMRO Bank project, which was the largest outsourcing project in Latin America. I also worked for an American business there, where I had the opportunity to set up the professional side of the business with very senior people.
That’s when I started learning a lot about recruitment strategies and careers. The personal side comes with that because you’re dealing with people. When you’re dealing with people, the majority of us want to be successful in life and our careers. I started combining the psychology side with the business side.
I finished my degree in 2008, and I had a very good opportunity in Brazil to step up in my career. I was working for an American business, but I needed to improve my communication skills, so I decided to come to Australia, do a business English course and get my communication skills up to speed.
I didn’t have any plans to stay here for good, but I fell in love with Sydney immediately. How could you not, right? For me, it’s the most beautiful place on the entire planet. I love it here so much.
I fell in love with Sydney, started developing my communication skills and looked for a job that would challenge me. Here in Australia, I’ve been working across recruitment, consulting and talent acquisition. I’ve worked for large recruitment agencies and consulting businesses.
My last two roles before I set up New Mind Consulting were in talent acquisition and as head of talent, where I had to bring together my experience on the life side—the personal self-development side—and the professional side. Along this journey in Australia over the past 13 years, I have done a lot of different courses. I’ve studied neuroscience, relationship counselling, cognitive behavioural therapy and NLP, or neurolinguistic programming. This has helped me combine these skills and give my best to the clients I worked with in the corporate world.
That was the spark that made me start thinking about New Mind Consulting, which was a project I’d had in mind for a long time. People naturally used to come to me, back in the day in Brazil and also here in Australia, asking for coaching and mentoring across these two main areas: life and career. They are much more interlinked than we think.
Usually, if you’re looking for success at work, you will develop much faster if you’re well developed, or at least have a solid base, in your personal life.
Going out on her own#
James: That’s really cool. You went from working in recruitment and different sorts of roles in big companies to starting your own thing. Was there a particular moment when you thought, “I’m going to do this now and go out on my own”? What’s the story behind that?
Juliana: When the pandemic hit, there was a big shock for everyone around the world, right? People were insecure about their jobs, what was going to happen with the market situation and a lot of different aspects of life itself. But I had this project in the back of my mind, and I was working towards its completion.
When the pandemic hit, I thought, “Yes, that’s exactly the opportunity I was waiting for,” because I wanted to serve different people around the world. There are a lot of people of different nationalities who want to come to Australia and be successful in this country. I do think Australia gives a lot of opportunities to everyone, so working online would be the best way to go.
I thought, “Perfect. I’m going to set up an online platform. I can connect with people around the world: people looking to come to Australia and people who are already here but cannot get out of their houses because we’re in lockdown.” I guess that was the perfect timing, really, because I’ve been very busy since then, which is great.
James: It’s interesting that you framed the pandemic as an opportunity. I think that’s really cool.
Juliana: Look, James, I see everything that happens in life this way. This is actually one of the things that I work on a lot with my clients. Naturally, when we see a barrier or a challenge that we need to overcome, the way we’ve been set up in society means we immediately think, “That’s going to be a problem. That’s negative.” We always go towards that side.
My job is to help people change their mindset and make them feel excited about it. If you look at the challenges you’re going to face as a platform for your success, not as a problem, it’s much easier to get motivated, find your determination and get into it without feeling pain.
You actually take on the challenge, and when you take on a challenge, your brain becomes curious about the final outcome. You think, “I’m taking on the challenge.” But if you’re in the problem, you just think, “Wow, I’m in the problem. What am I going to do here?” So, yes, I saw the pandemic as a fantastic opportunity for my business.
James: I feel like many people would look at the pandemic or something like that and think, “This sucks,” focusing on all the negatives. I think it’s really cool that you can look at something like that and, although there are obviously negatives, look at the positives and choose to take it as something positive. I think that’s really powerful.
One thing I want to ask is what someone like you, as a coach, actually does and what a day in your life looks like.
What does a day in the life look like?#
James: Sometimes, coaching—or helping people with careers, or whatever it might be—can be hard to understand in tangible terms. What does it actually involve? Obviously, we don’t want to share too much about exactly what you do, but I’d love you to give us a glimpse of what a day in Juliana’s life looks like.
Juliana: Busy—really, really busy. Usually, my day starts around six. I exercise in the morning. I actually do what I preach to my clients, right? I think it’s all about leading by example as well. Once you go through the process, you can understand the difficulty your client will face in overcoming one aspect or another of the self-development process.
I get up very early, exercise, meditate, have breakfast and get ready for my first session. Usually, my first session starts at seven in the morning. I also work around people’s availability. That’s another advantage of working online and working from home.
I have clients, for example, in London. When they’re waking up at nine in the morning, it’s 6.00 pm here in Australia. I also have clients who finish work at 6.30 pm, and their session will start at 7.30 pm. My day starts at seven and finishes around nine. It’s really busy.
Diary management is very challenging on a daily basis because people’s priorities change: meetings, kids and whatever is going on in their lives. I work around the client. I like to get myself ready so I can give my best to my clients and they can make the most of the sessions. The sessions usually go from 60 to 90 minutes, depending on what we’re working on and which program the client is interested in.
James: It’s interesting to hear what it’s like. As I said, with coaching, it’s hard to understand what you actually do.
Juliana: What do they do, right?
James: I’d love to get into the sorts of things that you actually help people with.
What Juliana helps people with#
James: My understanding is that a lot of the clients you help are looking for career advice in Australia but have a different background and haven’t grown up here. What are some of the challenges you commonly see? What is a classic case that Juliana is out there to fix?
Juliana: On the career side, the biggest thing that comes to me most of the time is clients looking for guidance in understanding the Australian market. The way recruitment and the market work here is completely different from South America, Asia, America and India. It’s very specific.
The majority of people come to Australia and think, “I’m going to do this. I’m going to do that.” Then they realise, “Oops, there is something that I’m missing. How does this work? What are these people looking for?” I would say understanding the Australian market is one thing.
Another very common thing is that people want to know the practical aspects of how to get into this market. They think, “Now I understand how this works. How am I going to get into it?” That’s where the job I do on the career-coaching side comes in.
I’ve got programs where we can set up the professional portfolio, which includes a CV, cover letter and LinkedIn. Some programs have that combination and a mock interview as well. In other programs, I do a more detailed report and personality assessment. I also have a five-to-ten-week program that I develop according to the client’s needs.
I’ve got clients already in Australia who are looking to transition careers, change markets or step up in their careers. How can we do that? Usually, it’s about understanding what the market is and how to get there. That’s basically the career side.
On the life-coaching side, because the areas are so interlinked, I would say confidence and relationships across the board: family, friendships and working relationships. Those are significant issues. Australia has people from all over the world, and it’s very challenging for someone from a specific culture to fit into Australian culture. I love Australian culture because it’s very straightforward. People are very black and white.
But some people don’t really understand it. They say, “I went to an interview and the client said this and that. I don’t think he liked me.” I say, “No, that’s actually standard. You did very well.” Then the person calls me back and says, “I’ve got the second interview.” It takes a little while for them to warm up, right?
With career and life interlinked, my job is always to have a positive impact on these people’s lives and help them achieve the end result.
Differences in Job applications in Australia#
James: You mentioned some differences between Australia and the rest of the world. What are some of those differences? Are they good or bad differences, in your opinion?
Juliana: I think it’s actually fantastic. I really love Australian culture. That’s why I love this country so much. Here, people are very black and white and very straight to the point.
If you look across different markets, some professionals think being a generalist is a very positive thing: “I can do one, two, three, four, five different things. Look at how awesome I am.” Great, it’s wonderful that you can do five different things, but here in Australia, the market is a specialist market, not a generalist market. The client will be looking for specific skills. There is a specific mindset and perhaps a specific attitude required for you to do that job and add value to the business.
A lot of my clients who come from overseas take a little while to understand this, but the work is very rewarding afterwards when they get results. They need to focus on one area, and that area is usually the one they like the most. That’s how you become a specialist, and that’s how you generate value for the company or whoever you’re working with. I would say being more of a specialist than a generalist is one of the main characteristics.
James: That’s an interesting perspective. Many of us, including young people like me, haven’t seen many job markets outside Australia, so it’s interesting to hear that.
What would your advice be for someone coming here from overseas with more of a generalist approach to jobs, where they work across multiple areas? What are their next steps? Is it more about framing their experience to show that they’re a specialist in certain areas, or is there an element of upskilling where they need to learn things to become more of a specialist?
Juliana: My first piece of advice would be to look for someone who knows how this works—a professional who will help you understand it. There are a lot of different ways of presenting a CV, a cover letter and a LinkedIn profile, depending on where you are.
For example, in South America, a cover letter is a more general overview of yourself. You put everything in there: a lot of details and different information. Here in Australia, it works completely differently. When the job asks for a cover letter, they’re asking you to highlight to the business which of your abilities match the job and what you can provide to the company.
They’re looking for reassurance that you would be a potential candidate to interview, so they don’t waste their time. They’re not really interested in whether you like swimming or football. At this first stage of the process, they want to know: “How can you add value to my business? What do you have that will help us get where we want to go? How can we, as a business, help you develop your skills further?”
There are also a lot of different areas of CVs and LinkedIn profiles that I could discuss in more detail. But my first advice is that if you don’t know where you stand—if you don’t understand the market—look for a professional. Do not make the mistake of saying, “I’ll see how it goes. I’ll give it a go,” because you will regret it.
The Australian market, especially here in Sydney, is small. Once we start putting our names out there, it’s our reputation. You will be known as James; I will be known as Juliana. People will talk about you as you grow and develop your career. If you’re a specialist in your area and understand what these people are looking for, you’re definitely going to have a very successful career. But if your approach is, “I’ll see what happens,” you’re wasting time and burning your cards, right? You’re not creating the credibility you should, especially when you’re entering the market as a graduate.
James: Thanks for listening to this episode of Graduate Theory. If you haven’t already subscribed to the Graduate Theory newsletter, you can do so via the links in the show notes. The Graduate Theory newsletter comes out every Tuesday morning with my thoughts and lessons from each episode.
But without further ado, let’s get back into it.
Common Problems with Professional Applications#
James: You mentioned CVs and résumés. I’d love to get into the weeds and talk about the approaches you bring to these documents, because they’re obviously quite important. Without a good set-up here, you won’t get to the interview; you’ll be knocked out in the first round. What are some common mistakes you see with these types of documents that you need to fix straight away?
Juliana: The structure of the CV is extremely important. Here in Australia, as I mentioned before, I’ve worked in different areas of career development, recruitment and guiding professionals.
Each company uses its CRM database for a different purpose. If you’re talking about recruitment agencies and dealing with a recruiter, these people will use a type of CRM to collect that CV and develop their database. Large organisations with a recruitment area will have a different type of CRM. A consulting business will have another type.
A recruitment agency is much more specialised because that’s what they do: they map the entire market and highlight talent to their clients. A consulting business won’t necessarily do the same because it’s dealing with internal clients. Similarly, an internal recruitment team in a large organisation won’t necessarily have the same CRM because it works internally.
Why am I telling you all this? A lot of people get caught up in the illusion because they do not understand what the market is looking for. They create, let’s say, a CV in Canva. If you’re in UX design or a very alternative area of work, fair enough. But if you’re going into the corporate world and adding lots of tables, photos and different elements, once that CV is uploaded into the system, the information becomes confused and messed up.
Most of the time, these people do not get called for future opportunities, not just the one they applied for. The intention when you’re applying for a job inside a large organisation is to be in its database and be called later, further down the track. You want people to identify your skills when they search, but if your CV has lots of tables and photos, it’s too fancy: too much quantity and not much quality.
You create an illusion for yourself and think, “Look, I’ve made this amazing CV on Canva, and I never get called.” Then you work with a professional who develops a CV tailored to your area, what you’re looking to achieve, your personality and the specific skills the market is looking for. The person sends out one CV and gets 10 interviews. That’s how it works.
Again, if you do not have the knowledge, do not waste your time on the illusion that you’ll see what happens, because “we’ll see what happens” will pull you behind, not ahead. It’s very interesting when you’re dealing with different personalities, because people say, “I can’t believe it’s happening.” But there is a technique behind it, right? It’s not just putting in a photo, a little balloon or whatever.
James: I’ve seen that too. I don’t know the word used to describe it, but it’s software that you put your résumé into. It can’t properly read things like tables and images. I think it might be called an ATS, where it tries to categorise you and extract your skills from your résumé. It can’t really do that if you have those elements.
Juliana: Exactly right. It’s very important.
Are cover letters less common?#
James: What about the cover letter? Is there anything similar there? Are cover letters really common, or have they become less common? I feel like I’m seeing them less often. I’d love to hear your thoughts and what someone could do to write a good one.
Juliana: In my experience, jobs that ask for a cover letter are usually very specific. If I’m not looking for someone specific, or I just want to know who is available in the market, I usually don’t ask for one because I want a flow of potential candidates coming to my inbox. But if I want to target a particular market, type of individual or set of skills, I will potentially ask for a cover letter because it will help my search.
Rather than analysing three or four pages of a CV, I’m going to read the cover letter. In that cover letter, the candidate must tell me why he’s suitable for that job and which skills he has that match the job description. Then I will naturally have an interest in interviewing this person or reading that CV.
Think about the cover letter as the book’s front cover. When you’re in a library or bookshop, you’re going to say, “Maybe this book is good. I don’t know. Let me have a quick look.” Then you think, “Awesome, it’s everything I want to read about.” What do you do? You buy the book, then you read it. The cover letter works similarly. You’re going to read it and think, “Great, that’s a potential candidate. Let me see more.” Then you’re going to go into detail in the CV.
Obviously, that’s different for each company. Recruitment agencies don’t usually ask for a cover letter because the candidates are the product, right? They need to map the market and become specialists in it, so they need to understand who is there. But large companies recruiting for specific projects will ask for one.
James: That’s an interesting way to put it. I hadn’t thought about it like that.
Juliana: Have you had that experience with cover letters? Have you had to write one?
James: Most of the recent jobs I applied for were graduate roles, probably two years ago now. That was the last big batch of applications I did. I maybe wrote a couple of cover letters, but the vast majority of graduate roles were very general. Sometimes, the only requirement was to play some of those games intended to test skills, though I don’t know exactly which ones.
That was the main thing. I would say maybe 10 per cent of the jobs required a cover letter, so it really wasn’t that many at all.
Juliana: That’s true. If you’re going for a graduate job or graduate role, they want to see different aspects of your personality. They want to see whether you’ve perhaps done volunteer work and what your attitude is towards starting your career. It’s a completely different approach from dealing with a professional who has been in the market for two, three, four years or more.
James: That’s an interesting way to look at it. I like it.
Juliana: You’re listening to me and thinking about your experience: “Okay, I’ve done that. No, I haven’t. Cool. It makes sense.”
Undervalued Parts of the Application Process#
James: You’ve seen a lot of people apply for roles and helped them do that. What is one area of the process that you think people underappreciate or underestimate? Is there a particular aspect they don’t realise the value of fixing?
Juliana: Very good question. I like that. Something I think people underestimate is networking. People don’t really see the value in networking, but once you’ve been in this market for a little while, you will understand that it’s not only about what you know, but who you know.
If you know the right people, they will give you a shortcut through the process. They will guide and mentor you towards your goals. They’re connected with other people, who will connect you to still more people. That’s when you start creating your network and getting into the market you’re looking to join.
To network, you need to get out of your comfort zone. You need to research events and happy hours. Before the pandemic, there were a lot of happy-hour networking events or Thursday 5.00 pm beers somewhere for particular professionals—IT professionals or marketing professionals, for example. At one of those networking events, you can meet five or 10 people who will lead you to another 10 or 20, and the story goes on.
People don’t necessarily focus on networking, but it’s extremely important. If you don’t know the important people in the market, how are you going to go about it? You will develop your skills further, no worries, but it will be a little slower. If you know the right people, you’ll get there a little faster. With some coaching and mentoring, you can stand out from the crowd for sure.
James: I totally agree. Everyone knows people who get jobs through their network, and it’s almost seen as, “They’re so lucky. This person they know just gave them a job,” or whatever. But you can flip that and think, “Is there anyone in my network, or anyone I can meet, who can give me that kind of opportunity as well?”
Juliana: Totally. I’ve been with New Mind Consulting since 2020 and working in the Australian market for 13 years. My clients from the corporate world and the clients I have at New Mind Consulting for one-on-one sessions or workshops know the quality of the work and the way I operate.
If you go to my LinkedIn profile, you’re going to see all the recommendations I have there. That’s a shortlist ready to go. All those people are extremely well qualified, but they’ve also gone through the coaching process: what this market expects, how to position themselves, how to present a CV, cover letter and LinkedIn profile, and how to verbalise their ideas and create credibility through an interview process.
All of this helps. It’s very interesting when clients leave a recommendation on my profile. They come back and say, “Thank you so much. I left you a recommendation. So-and-so got in touch with me, and I’m already in an interview.” Then the client calls me and says, “Juliana, by the way, I’m hiring so-and-so.” Wonderful, right?
The end result of the work you do is extremely rewarding. People call you afterwards and say, “Look, I’ve got a job. By the way, the communication skills we were working on in my life-coaching sessions are now affecting my career, because I’m dealing with my manager in the same way I had to communicate with my wife, perhaps.” Again, everything is interlinked: life and career. But going back to your question, networking helps you.
Similar traits in successful job applicants#
James: I’d love to go into some more general career questions. You’ve seen a lot of people go from being a jobseeker to having a job, then progress into someone who flourishes in the workplace. What traits allow people to succeed? Are any traits common among people who seem to find it super easy, get their jobs easily and go on to do amazing things?
Juliana: Unfortunately, “super easy” doesn’t really exist. I’m thinking about my experience when I first arrived in Australia. I always knew my potential, but I didn’t know anything about Australia, especially the market.
When I started, I did what the majority of people do: “Let me see what happens. I believe in my potential. I know I’m going to get an interview. I know I’m going to get a job.” Eventually, I got to a point where I thought, “Hang on a minute. There is something I’m missing. What is it?” Then I started looking for guidance.
I worked with professionals in the market who coached me throughout the process and did the job I do nowadays. It became a little easier to create credibility because I knew what people expected from me, not because I had done something out of this world.
I believe that when you’re looking to enter the Australian market, if you know how to set up your CV, cover letter and LinkedIn profile, you know how to create credibility through those documents. The interview uses pretty much the same approach, but it is the verbalisation of what created that credibility.
Once you understand that, it’s much easier to pass to the second stage of the interview and get an offer. If you don’t, you might answer in a way that people aren’t expecting, and that’s when you fail. But you don’t know that because you haven’t had a professional guiding you through it. Then you’re going to think, “Maybe my CV isn’t good,” or blame something else. The reality is that it’s all about how you verbalise your ideas and create credibility.
You need to give your employer a reason to hire you. What can you do for my business? How are you going to add value to my company? What skills can you bring to the table?
You might say, “Juliana, but I’m a graduate. I haven’t worked. I don’t have any experience in a corporate or paid job.” No problem. You can do volunteer or unpaid work. You can show your potential employer that you have the attitude to get out of your comfort zone, that you’re meeting people in the market and understand what they’re looking for, that you’ve researched the company’s website, and that you’ve connected on LinkedIn with people from the company.
It’s more about developing your self-knowledge and the life side, then adding that to your career challenges. It’s much easier—I wouldn’t say easier, because I don’t like that word. Nothing is really easy. You need to work for everything you want to achieve. But once you’re solid in that part of life, your career flows, and vice versa.
My advice would be to look for someone who can help you, so you’ll be better guided and will definitely achieve your results. There is no way you won’t. If I arrived here with no English and no idea, and I’ve been building and working hard all these years—if I got there, anyone can get there, right?
But you need to work hard. You need to deal with frustrations and a lot of different things to get to the point where you say, “Cool, I know what I’m doing. Great, I’m ready to go for this.”
James: I totally agree about getting help. Finding someone or something to help you understand the process and work out what you need to do—whether that’s reading something, taking a course or finding a mentor like you—can save you a lot of time compared with trying to work it out yourself.
Juliana: Exactly. That involves all the personal aspects, right? You need determination, you need to be able to adapt and you need to back up what you’re saying. You go into the interview and say, “Look, I can do this, this and that.” You get the job, and then people realise, “But you’re not well prepared.”
Then you create an illusion. If you do not look for development in those areas, you’re just going to become a victim of the system, right? You say, “All my bosses are like this. All the jobs I go to are like this. All the people I work for are like this.” It’s not really about that. It’s about understanding where the gap is, working hard to address it and improving that part of your life.
The purpose of New Mind Consulting is to build the best version of yourself, because you will build it. It’s a process. You’re building every day. It’s not, “Boom, I’ve done a course. I’m ready to go.” I wish it were, and I’m sure you do too.
Juliana’s Advice for Graduates#
James: I’ve got one more question for you, Juliana. A lot of the audience are graduates or early-career people looking to start their careers in the right manner. Thinking about your journey, if you could wind back the clock to when you first graduated from uni and went out into the world of work, knowing what you know now and all the things you teach, what advice would you give yourself?
Juliana: Going back to my first point, look for someone who will guide you and give you the full picture, because it’s so much easier when you know where you’re going. I say this because I’ve gone through that process myself here in Australia. I tried a couple of times to get into the market with the knowledge I had back in the day. I was 23 or 24 years old, and I wasn’t getting anywhere.
Once I hired someone, I said, “Look, this is where I come from. This is the experience I have so far. This is where I want to go, and this is what I would like to achieve. How can I prepare to face the challenge and actually get there?”
“Okay, we’re going to have to work on your CV, cover letter and LinkedIn profile. We’re going to have to work on a mock interview. What’s your interview style?” The interview is one of the crucial points here, right? The majority of people think, “Do you have a questionnaire that I can look at, or do you have a video on YouTube?”
Not really, because the worst thing you can do in an interview process is memorise questions and answers. When you’re in an interview, you will know more or less what they’re going to ask you. But more than that, you need to build your thought process. You need to learn how to build it because, if the interviewer asks you something outside your preparation, you’re going to go blank. You’ll just answer whatever comes to mind.
After all the excitement dies down, you’ll think, “I shouldn’t have answered that. I didn’t prepare for that. The question I memorised wasn’t asked.” It isn’t about memorising; it’s about learning how to create credibility through your thought process. How do you build that thought process? How do you tell your story? That also comes through mentorship.
If you know what you’re doing, good on you. Get yourself ready, go for it and all the best of luck. If you don’t know, or if you’re in doubt, search for a professional—someone who will clear the road for you so you can drive through and get to your final destination.
Sounds easy, doesn’t it?
Where to find Juliana#
James: That sounds easy. Perfect. Thanks so much for your time today, Juliana. Where can listeners find out more about you and the things you do?
Juliana: I’ve got an Instagram page, @newmindconsulting. I also have a website, newmindconsulting.com, and my LinkedIn page is Juliana Owen. You’ll find me there as well. Anyone looking for help to build the best version of themselves, just get in touch. It would be a pleasure to help.
James: We’ll have links to all that in the show notes. Thanks so much for coming on the show.
Juliana: Nice one. Thank you so much for your time as well. It was a pleasure.
Outro#
James: Thanks for listening to this episode. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. If you want my takeaways—the things I learnt from this episode—please go to GraduateTheory.com/subscribe, where you can get my takeaways and all the information about each episode straight to your inbox.
Thanks so much for listening again today, and we look forward to seeing you next week.