VetNet Career Week 2021 Functional Paths for Veterans and MilSpouses: Business

hi everyone and welcome to the first set of functional panels during google's vet net career week i'm nathan leaf a google cloud culture and transformation leader as well as a proud u.s air force veteran and a current military spouse over the next hour i'll be talking with four googlers in business roles to discuss their journeys their recommendations performing similar roles and what day-to-day life and expectations are like in these functions when many think of google they sometimes assume we only hire engineers or those who can code this panel will demonstrate this is not the case through hearing their stories we'll uncover helpful insights to inform your career decisions let's get started and have our panelists introduce themselves i'll ask each of you to share your background what team you work on and a high level explanation of what you do on a daily basis bill why don't we start with you hi my name is bill osland i'm the global security manager for youtube and a proud army vet um i transitioned in into the role of global security manager which is really responsible for all of youtube's physical infrastructure and uh to address the physical threats that approach our san bruno campus and 20 campuses across the globe great thanks phil camille let's go to you next hi i'm camille mcclure i work with google hr i'm working on organizational design structure consultation team development a lot of different functions awesome thanks camille sybil hi i'm cebilian strimbu i'm an 11 year googler a legal specialist and civilian ally on a daily basis i help support google's efforts to improve communication services and devices to maintain an industry-leading physical network and to shape and satisfy communications related regulatory requirements great thanks lindsey why don't you bring us home awesome hi everyone my name is lindsey hafner i support our staffing efforts in tech here at google this is across a variety of different functions so i have the pleasure of being able to hire for software engineers product managers technical program managers across all of our different google product areas google assistant youtube search you name it and probably support it here within the us awesome well let's learn a little bit more about your backgrounds and how you got to the roles that you're in today so i'll pose this first question of what was the path that got you to where you are and what was the moment that you realized this was the right role for you whether that was in the hiring process or once you got started and maybe we can go in the same order that we did our intros so bill why don't we start with you and go in that same circle thanks yating so youtube security was born out of a tragedy that occurred in april of 19 or april of 18. um i received a call while i was on active duty and was asked to apply for the position after that first interview i was actually deemed overqualified for the position was not hired but was subsequently called back a few weeks later when a new position opened up that google felt i was qualified for um as i got here i think the the most interesting thing about google is many people in google expected this to be a real cultural shift for me likewise my peers that i spent uh 13 000 and 44 days in the army with thought that it had to be an incredible um you know difficult transition and it really wasn't you know it was the ideas of respect and um and empathy are prevalent in both the army i found in the army and in google so that's how i ended up here great thank you for sharing that bill and that resonates with me as well coming from the air force to google those three respects really uh played at the air force corps values too and so that's been a nice part of the transition here sybil and share your story with us sure so my path to google began two years before google even existed my initial plan was to work in a museum as a stem related curator or educator in the meantime i was working as a vehicle safety researcher at a very quirky non-profit in washington d.c because i wasn't earning enough to purchase a home i decided that i would take a job that i saw posted in the washington post newspaper for an entry-level telecom paralegal i landed the position i worked at that firm for about 18 months i then moved to a smaller law firm where i worked for about 10 years google was a client of the small law firm and after having a particularly crummy day at the law firm i searched online for open google positions the next day i was chatting with the google record recruiter and the rest is history you may be one of the interesting people here at google that is a fascinating background of other questions for you that i'll save for a post panel can we all share your story please yeah i am i joined the military out of college and i spent eight years as an intelligence officer i traveled a lot i had really loved my time um but my husband wasn't in the military and so it made it really difficult for us to stay in so we made the complicated decision for me to leave after eight years it was really really hard to make the transition um at least initially i moved into a medical device sales job for about six months and to be honest i hated it um so i ended up looking around and a friend of mine worked at google as a recruiter so i applied into a role and i got it and i had no idea how to do recruiting it was a huge learning curve for me um but it taught me a lot of lessons about transferable skill sets and really what it meant to use the things that i learned in the military in a role that felt very very different so i did that for a couple of years and then i ended up moving into a manager position where i oversaw teams hiring into google and i did that for multiple years at google i think um four or five years um and so for the last six months or so i've been working in hr as an hr professional overseeing organizational design structure consulting with senior leaders what i've really seen in terms of the skills that i've applied team development leader growth of leaders um really resiliency and how we apply that especially over the last two years these are all things that come from my time in the military um and i really feel like they set me apart just in how i can navigate the complexity of problem sets um so yeah i was intel as well i think that's one of the other fun things about google you can find people that you have connections with and are parallel pathing within various ways so thank you for sharing that lindsay how did you make your way here um well first i just have to say camille i love that you have mentioned when you stepped into recruiting you had no idea um anything about it because that tends to be the case for a lot of us recruiters so um you know i actually went to college for a psychology degree i had interest in becoming a psychologist of some sort and you know in my senior year i realized i don't really know if i'm ready to to go and pursue a master's right now and really go down that path as i originally thought i always joke that i don't know if that at 18 we should be responsible for making our life decision of what we want to be when we grow up so to speak um and so with that i had some friends who had graduated and had pursued recruiting um i knew that you know you can make some good money out of it they always said if you're money motivated was the phrase that they'd give then you know you could be successful and so i said i guess i could be money motivated and next thing you know i ended up at a recruiting agency that taught me a lot um similar to camille i had no recruiting experience but i learned what it meant to to just provide that support to candidates through the recruiting process how to partner with clients on you know the um both as an account manager but also as an advisor um and that then brought me to um a financial organization in which i really learned how to be more of a develop more empathetic skills because when candidates are going through that journey it's a life change right and and so having that impact on someone really changes everything for them so really being able to lean in understand their experiences what it is they're looking for and actually make that connection to their future job um where they spend the majority of time during the week was really important and that's where i found that i'm pretty good at this and really enjoy it just from you know a personal perspective and um my husband current active duty in the marines i am a military spouse at the time we were in virginia and he was being stationed in hawaii so while we were in the process of me determining how i would continue my work and why a google recruiter reached out on linkedin about a recruiting opportunity in colorado and that's actually where we wanted to end up long term so we made the choice to do long distance um while he pursued his time in the military and i ended up moving to our boulder office in colorado and haven't looked back since to be able to support staffing for a company like google is incredible google does incredible things but it all starts with our people so i'm excited to talk about a bit more today great thank you and i think one of the silver linings of the pandemic is google is offering a bit more flexibility with locations for military spouses i know that is very very important and it's part of the reason i actually was able to land the role that i'm importantly and be based out of the bc area where my husband is stationed currently so just keep that in mind for everybody listening to the panel there is more flexibility on the horizon so one thing that a couple of you mentioned was that this was a big shift for you or an opportunity that you jumped into with not a whole lot of experience or depth previously so for camille and lindsey i'm curious what your biggest recommendation to veterans or military spouses would be with limited experience and an interest in coming into roles like roles i'll jump in um i would say have one have faith in yourself i transitioned through a role in come before i came to google and it really made me question a lot of the decisions that i made and whether i could um apply myself out of the military it's been eight years there learning what it meant to be an officer and what it meant to be in the military which is a whole life um and so was there a life for me after that that i could really feel as included um and so that i i would say just start with having faith that there's an there's other opportunities that there's other options um and then two the life lessons that you go through cannot be replicated the things that you experience the ways in which um the military challenges you in in some of the best possible ways uh are and very very hard ways too are not things that others naturally go through and so you learn some really complicated things that are very transferable um and you'll be able to navigate a lot of complexity so i think that's where i'd start lindsay thanks camille those are great pieces of advice um you know i would say you have to start somewhere it may not be in the job that you really are passionate about it may not be a job description that you're like wow that heads to my core right but it's about stepping your foot in the door outside of your comfort zone in a position that's going to help build your skills in any kind of way shape or form once you're able to do that you begin to slowly learn what you like and what you don't like and then you're able to properly kind of pivot the career trajectory that you'd like to pursue moving forward but you can't get there and you won't have those options until you've been able to really build those skills um so as i mentioned you know recruiting wasn't something that i was personally seeking out but i knew that i needed to be able to gain skills and i needed a job let's call it what it is here right after college to pay those student loans and from that i learned okay i'm detail-oriented um i am a people person i can build a great rapport with people i can build trust right and those are all soft skills that can be applicable to a lot of different roles but if i don't have that experience to put on my resume then i won't get an interview right so just taking that leap um starting somewhere and trusting that it's okay that this may not be what i'd really love to do long term it's going to at least be that stepping stone that will help get me there is my biggest piece of recommendation all right well let's broaden the uh conversation here a little bit and talk about some general tips to transition from military into roles like what we have at google so bill why don't you share either a general tip around what has helped you or what you've seen has helped others um or anything that's surprised you in the journey from military to civilian life yeah thanks yanting a little bit different than the other panelists is i spent my whole adult life in the military from the time i was 17 i'll just say for almost 36 years um so what i had to come to grips with and i know there will be a lot of retirees watching this is the civilian world really doesn't understand retiree if you're retired why would you be transitioning or why would you be looking for a job so i advise people to accept this is a transition whether you're retiring or leaving after two three four eight years it is a transition it's just another leg on the journey and all these great tips that you've heard prior to this about finding the role deciding you know what you want to do what you will do and what you won't do and is there a location what you where you want to live where you will live and where you won't live and is there a caveat like compensation i won't live in california unless the compensation is x and then you've got to understand compensation in the military you know what you're gonna make plus or minus two percent every year of your career you gotta understand total compensation and the recruiters might be able to talk about that a little bit more but that's something very different um than in the military so that's what i'd suggest and again really willing to talk to any retiree that is in here and talk to you about transitioning vice retiring that's fantastic thank you bill and i know that the compensation opportunities especially at places like google introduce a level of complexity as well as a level of excitement so that's a really really valuable tip ask lots of questions and don't be shy about asking questions when it comes to that topic sibyllan i'm curious to hear your perspective on this topic knowing that your civilian ally and perhaps have seen folks try to make the transition or maybe supported folks as they transition from military to civilian absolutely so my first suggestion is make sure you know everything you can about the company that you're looking at don't just fire off your resume make sure you know what that company does good and bad um make sure you know the people that are involved in my instance it was back when you mailed resumes my husband actually called the law firm to find out who the hiring partner would be we did that so that they couldn't trace it to me necessarily so i came in armed knowing exactly who the hiring partner was during that interview they actually said have you ever been to the federal communications commission's reference room and i said no but i'm going right after this interview what i did was i took the whole day off for the interview had the interview met with everyone got in a cab went straight to the reference room and sat and watched all the paralegals work then i was able to say to the hiring partner look at this i went took my time figured this out i know what they do i can do this my other recommendation is to consider other law firm positions it's not unusual for law firm receptionists and other support positions to be promoted internally also law firms often hire inexperienced temporary or contract paralegals for short-term document review work and that is a great way to get your foot in the door and be noticed finally some people will pursue paralegal certificates however i don't actually know any paralegals who've taken this route great thanks for all of those tips that's super helpful lindsay i'm also curious to get your perspective given where you sit in the organization and perhaps if there are any tips you can share generally about what you see people do well as they navigate the hiring process or potentially common missteps that folks transitioning from the military might make absolutely um it's a great question because you know just as we heard here both from bill and sybil there's so many things that you want to keep in mind when you're making that transition and all of which are so important um but the one thing i will say that is so common that i see both from transitioning veterans but also just general applicants that maybe civilians are applying the roles when a candidate actually doesn't meet the the minimum qualifications listed on the job opening and so you know you're spending so much time right looking for these opportunities and applying filling out those lengthy applications you might as well make the most of that time right so by ensuring that you're not only meeting those minimum qualifications for the roles that you're applying to but also ensuring that your resume explicitly speaks to those minimum qualifications is absolutely key and the reason for that is because you can imagine how many folks are also applying to the same type of job that you are right and so as recruiters when we're reviewing resumes yes each and every application is reviewed um at least within google i can speak for that firsthand but we are moving pretty fast right and so if we are looking at your application for one particular opening and we're not really seeing how your experience actually aligns with the bare minimum that our hiring managers need to see to consider you for the roles you might not get a call right and that may not mean that you don't have the qualifications but it may just simply mean that it wasn't stated in a way that we can really understand right just simply how it may be written on a resume and so ensuring that you know again that your resume is able to speak to those minimum qualifications uh what i recommend to folks is craft your resume and then share it with you know a friend that they have they may know you're in the military but they might not really understand right and get their two cents hey do you understand what's listed on my experience and how it may correlate with this job description and show them an example right of the job you're applying to if they don't really understand there's a good chance the recruiter looking at it or hiring manager may not either and again you want to get a front in front of this first hand right prior to submitting that application because it's time consuming and it can be kind of draining going through that interview process and application process so by taking that step you're helping yourself out a long way um and then my other recommendation is just around behavioral interviews i think that it can be really difficult for for anyone regardless of your experience to talk to a stranger about what your day-to-day work may look like the end of the day they're not in your shoes right so simply talking about what your day-to-day responsibilities may look like can sound a little foreign to them um and so by simply googling sample behavioral interview questions and then again picking a friend a civilian ally who may not really know what the military is and having them ask you those behavioral interview questions go back to them afterwards and say hey did any of that did that make sense was there anything you maybe didn't understand your responses should make sense to a stranger and so by at least practicing that ahead of time that will not only help you kind of build that skill on how to speak to your military experience to someone that may not be as fluent with the military and what your occupation may have been but it's also going to set you up for success in a lot of the different interviews that you'll likely end up having i hope everybody listening wrote down everything lindsay just said because those things are incredibly valuable they are things that i did with my cohort of vets transitioning to my mba program and i think they were game changers so listen to lindsay and do everything she just told you to do camille i have a building question for you given where you sit in the organization how you support leaders in the business i'm curious from your observations and your role if you've noticed anything that really stands out from military leaders to the business leaders that you work with and if there might be any i don't know if it's hidden superpowers or hidden capabilities that folks in the military might not realize they have that are relevant to the business world given everything you do to create organizational and team effectiveness that's a great question i think i would ground it in structural problem solving the military has a foundation of how you approach solving a problem or approaching a complex situation or scenario and the way in which it breaks down each component of that is just not trained in depth outside of the military in the same way and i think that no matter what you do in the military the foundational training you're going to get around that will really shine as you go through your civilian life um and just being around how people think and communicate in the military can really give you access to that um so in transitioning into roles like this when i experience somebody who's been in the military and they're working through small or large problems um whether it's a day-to-day scenario with a smaller team or a globally complex situation with a lot of different components a lot of the same criterion and components of how you break down that problem i see really reflected in what they learned in the military and it is uh it can illuminate a lot of things that even somebody who went through an elaborate mba program or has a complex degree won't necessarily have it trained um with the same level of experience the other thing is the the stakes are often higher in the military not to diminish the stakes outside of the military for sure there's a lot of people in their livelihoods on the line but the stakes are a little bit different and so the way you look at applying that the way you look at your team can be a little bit different and i think that trains you to look at organizational design and look at the complexity of both every single individual and how much you care for every single individual within that organization but also the health and welfare of the whole organization in a way that um the business businesses often don't train leaders to do so that infrastructure is just absolutely fantastic i love both of those tips and i think they're quite applicable to military spouses as well military spouses have to deal with a bit of structured problem solving as you navigate moves with or without kids and as you try to juggle a career on top of that with a lot of unpredictability as well as putting people first i think the military is really deeply ingrained in folks to put humans first as best possible and that carries through as being a differentiator in the civilian world i couldn't agree more well i also wanted to touch on something that i know a lot of veterans at least ones that i've worked with and transitioning have wrestled with and that's the concept of networking and depending on other folks to navigate the civilian world and one of the questions that is on the panel list is have mentors assisted you on your journey i'd like to post that more broadly to see if any of you have a story about a mentor or somebody you networked with who helped you here or more broadly any networking you might have did that made the difference for you to get an opportunity at google so i'll just open that up i'm happy to jump in here um there was so when i initially joined google i had shared a little bit that uh you know my husband and i had made the decision to be long distance for a bit and so i moved across the country i sold our house did the cross country drive with our pets unfortunately no no kids at the time or else i can't imagine how i would have done it um and started a new job in a place i knew no one and of course my husband was you know the states away time zones away as well so it was really hard in the beginning um within my journey at google and on top of that the initial role that i actually stepped into within the company ended up really not aligning with what i i thought i had signed up for and i was in a really tough position because at that point i'm like you know i i'm reflecting on all those decisions i had just made very big ones impacting our lives and and didn't really know what to do um then an internal opportunity came up and i reached out directly to um a leader within our organization i believe she was in the director position at the time and she is a veteran herself and i just shared my my personal experience um as not only a military spouse but also just my experience uh supporting different you know diversity initiatives within staffing and ensuring that you know we're making a better organization for all by ensuring that we're being representative of our user base and by that email and simply personalizing it and you know trying to make that connection with this point of contact the next thing you know as soon as her and i met one on one together she was already taking the initiatives and figuring out how she could help me transition into this new opportunity within google and again this was shortly after joining uh certainly don't recommend this take being the path that you take but um it also goes to show that our internal mobility is incredible um but you just you know the reason i want to share this story is because one the veteran network in our community here both with veterans military spouses and civilian allies it's incredible um but you know the same thing goes for the external veteran community right and those relationships you're able to make you never know when you're just empathetic and vulnerable and sharing your own story where that can take you um and so i would say lead with that um you know if i went into it with perhaps a big ego or uh you know a little bit more aggressive i'm not quite sure that it would have been a seamless of a transition um but again just really showing that vulnerability and connecting with folks that you can relate to that's not only going to help build your own community within whatever organization or town you may be in but it's also going to help just networking in general for you not only in the short term but long term as well i actually have a similar experience um when i joined google i was an admin assistant on the policy team for the first year the position was a great fit the second year it was not as good of a fit the third year it was no longer a good fit for me i um let that be known i talked to people to see what i could do to either improve the position or find another position and i actually was given a five-minute opportunity to pitch a new position to a vice president who happened to be visiting google dc that day on the fly i had to pitch him that i wanted to be a paralegal for the um telecom team that was going to be newly formed i pitched it and i got the position um that is something you always have to be open to those kind of opportunities be ready to leap and then the other thing is i'm paying that forward any veteran who needs help with that kind of work reach out to me reach out to me in social media reach out to me on linkedin we can chat about it discuss how you can maybe create that position that's right for you i love that that is fantastic and everyone should take civil land up on that opportunity because you never know what's underneath the service and other opportunities are definitely out there beyond what you might see what about camille or bill any tips or stories about how networking has been beneficial to your experiences i can go i was uh i was referred into google by a veteran um somebody that i known from uh my very beginning of my days in the military um and we'd stayed in touch the entire time he'd started at the company before i did and so when i he found out that i was not really enjoying the job that i got out of the military and was really questioning the life decision that i'd made and leaving he said i really love it here i think you should consider a role um it was a it felt like a big step backward because i've been leading teams for eight years and so he really helped me understand what it would mean to make the change um and talk to me through a lot of those things so it really helps to have somebody to just bounce ideas off of and to think through what you're weighing and i to reference the earlier comments about like what are your priorities you help me think about my priorities and what they would really look like if i moved into this new role um and since then um i've had at least one other role at google i've i've moved to roles multiple times but at least one other role of google was referral from a veteran and so really leveraging that network unashamedly leveraging that network is really really valuable and i would encourage you all to do that and reach out anytime to me as well yeah a couple of things i i'd add is in the military we put such a premium on leadership and many times that's what veterans lead with is is all this leadership opportunity but something that i've highlighted to veterans of all ranks and experience is however many repetitions you have in leadership you've had many times that at being a great teammate and in this environment i think being a great teammate is is more important than being a great leader you know and every day our directors and vps have opportunities to lead but they have many more times the opportunity to be a great teammate likewise with us um this volunteering to reach out i get reached out to um routinely on linkedin and do the same thing you know maximize the vetnet community within google to find opportunities or share tips uh you know the the top 10 tips that i have um for veterans again i largely focus not entirely but largely focus on retirees which have a little different journey and are in a little different station in life but i would say you know people's reputation really matters i think camille just highlighted she was called by a veteran i was called by a veteran that i worked with overseas and he said hey i need to stand up a youtube security task force could you do this oh by the way you're not getting any head count you know you you got to figure out how to get people to work with you not for you um and i'm like perfect you know the last 10 years of my career was not you know really having people work so much directly for me but getting large organizations to work with me and i see that in google every day it's it's less in fact it's very hard to find um those of us on the screen know it's very hard to find the org chart in in here there's a secret to it um a little bit so there's not the large horse blanket or chart that makes it very clear and that means we do have to network every single day and just kind of ask or ask our teammates and and friends hey who would know something about this topic and and it trickles through and you you kind of figure it out you build your network and through that your reputation permeates but you almost also might pick up a mentor that's like hey you know that's it's a good way of doing something and um and then you have an opportunity to post a new role and and um and go and go in another direction those are really powerful points bill i love that point on you've been a teammate even more than you've been a leader and it's so true in the civilian world i transitioned initially from the military into consulting and everybody talked about managing up i was like what is managing up i don't understand this concept and it's another way of being a teammate and exuding influence and getting people to do things for you with you without having a direct line of control or line of sight to them and it's such a valuable skill set i will say for me as well my network really paid off i had somebody that i worked with in consulting refer me for my current job i wasn't even looking to leave my last role and the opportunity came up um he knew my background and what i was really passionate about threw my hat in the ring for me on my behalf and so i too am willing to pay it forward so folks who are listening to this feel free to reach out i do prioritize vets and military spouses on linkedin so you do tend to get a little bit of extra love take advantage of that i'm going to play on something that bill has subtly mentioned a couple of times he's been doing a little bit of myth busting and i'm interested to hear from the group if there are any myths that they would best or misconceptions that a lot of people might have about working at google in general yeah i just follow on as other people because i this is a topic i talk about all the time is again i think the parallels to google and military service are much more clean than people in google or people in the military would ever believe or in some would ever want to believe but um you know when i was the last job i had was the director of military instruction at west point i worked with phenomenally young people phenomenal young people every single day empirically some of the best in the country in the globe with our international middle students in the older people here we call them greglers greg googlers part of a proud group i'm part of you know we we had some of those running around west point too um they were normally permanent professors and they brought a very special skill set um to the younger people well that's kind of similar to google you have some of the brightest minds on the planet from all over diverse cultures working here they have kind of shared purpose and goals and you know the idea that um information democratizes the world i mean that's pretty inspiring you know google mission or google principle or it's something in there information democratizes the world and i heard that on my first day in noodler and i'm like dog on i've been trying to democratize the world in another form for a long time with modicum of success maybe i don't know but uh you know let's try information and um and as i went forward from day one in nuclear training seeing that onto you know today only two and a half years in civil that i i see parallels every single day so if you're afraid of leaving the military culture i think if you go in with a positive attitude in eyes wide open you can find positive cultures or or like cultures and not everybody like the army culture or the military culture but you can find the parallels that you liked if you look for them likewise if you put on you know negative nelly glasses you may never find it may never find it so that's that's what i'd share one myth that i'd like to bust is that soft skills do not matter in tech that's absolutely untrue great employees are creative adaptable emotionally intelligent it is very important obviously you need the hard or technical skills but you need those soft skills that's a great one and i was thinking about lindsay i'm guessing you would plus one that coming from the hiring team that and you also mentioned it with the behavioral piece of the interviews making sure that people are well prepared for that are there any other myths that you would best lindsay or would you just really reinforce um what sibling was saying yeah i think sibyl and bill touched some pretty big ones um you know the i you know clearly this this session in particular is business roles at google so i hope that this busts the myth that you don't have to be technical to work at google um so just recognizing that and with that there are so many types of jobs here i couldn't even name half of them if i tried um so you know what i would encourage too is just when you are seeking out opportunities you know plug in a couple different keywords on our career site and um you know what you can do is by doing that repetitively that's going to begin to just help you understand okay these types of roles are have the types of responsibilities i would have interest in doing at google and so that way you know even if you may not meet the minimum qualifications now you're setting the expectation for yourself of what you need to work towards right to in order to apply to those positions in the future with us so no you don't have to be technical to work at google um but if you don't meet even the non-technical qualifications you can absolutely get there but just set that goal for yourself it's certainly attainable and many of the roles recruiting included did not require um you know experience for for my initial job stepping into it and so just recognize i guess the questing there is um some roles any of us can be taught those responsibilities but again it's really just about believing in yourself and taking that first step to build those skills love that camille what about you any myths you'd like to best i mean i would really reinforce what's already been said i learned most of what i have in the military from on the job and i'd say the same is true for google the formal education that you might get is really really valuable in establishing foundations but i'll tell you most of the experience that i've gone through is really that's where i have received the majority of my lessons and so the complexity of navigating the military and all the things you might have to do if you've deployed or wherever you've worked um and if if you've been a army spouse or a military spouse and you've provided that level of support and you've navigated that level of complexity those are all transferable skill sets um and then additionally when you're in google you're going to learn a lot on the job as well and so the ability to learn is the skill you're going to transfer um the number of times i've had to look something up i assumed somebody else already knew and they didn't um because there's not an easy answer there wasn't in the military and there certainly isn't a google um so uh infinite curiosity learning on the job it's this it feels exactly the same between the two yeah comes back to growth mindset and google is useful even when you work at google or especially when you work at google lots of things to look up well i think we have time for one more question so this last one i'll pose is a little bit of a meaty one so i'll ask and give you each a moment to think about it but would love to hear your respective answers so i would love to hear your perspective on what it looks like to thrive at google whether you want to answer that broadly in terms of what you see others doing or what that means to you personally i'll just say i think to thrive at google in the role i'm in is about commitment um in the military we many of us transitioned units every two or three years and you had to embrace that transition um but if you were to be successful and a great teammate you would not hearken back to the last unit you were in but come in and and try to contribute to the new unit as camille said you the intellectual curiosity civil talked about emotional iq hey be aware of the new unit and and be committed to that as much as you were to the last unit you left and loved embrace the new one learn to love the ones you're with and and again i think it allows you to be positive and be a great teammate by harking back one thing that won't work here and i don't do it and i've got a lot of veterans is you know we'll we'll certainly get together and talk about military stuff but we we don't develop our own veteran lingo and and try to off put other other members of the team so embrace the ones you're with be positive use all those transferable skills intellectual curiosity emotional iq and i think anybody who's fortunate to join this company or another light company will be very happy service for me thriving at google is taking advantage of everything that google has to offer um you know on any given day you might find me preparing an application for an fcc license to construct interesting cables i might be applying for authority to conduct experimental testing on radio spectrum but i also might be volunteering we are able to volunteer during our normal business hours and in addition to veterans one of my passions is animals and i actually the silver lining of kovit is i befriended a beef steer there's only one reason for beefsteer to exist i fell in love with him gave him the name norton purchased him and then took him to a sanctuary where i now will be volunteering to raise him these are some of the opportunities that you have at google that makes it an amazing place that that's such a personal question to discuss what it means to thrive um and i've i don't think i've ever met anybody who would at google could answer that same question exactly as i would um and so i appreciate this panel um for me it it's certainly about um there's this entire concept of work-life balance and i think anyone who's been in the military knows there's no such thing as balance um but it's a matter of fitting all the puzzle pieces together and what google does is it gives you so many ways to draw your own puzzle um there's so many ways to fit all of the different components of your work with the your benefits with your life um and you can draw that in in so many unique and complicated ways and in the military didn't necessarily let you draw that for yourself um and so not that it you can't make it work um but the military it's not it's not designed to be as tailorable and i think that google really really lets you take the pen and create the puzzle that works best for you um and however you want that to look so that i think that's what thriving at google has meant is drawing the puzzle for myself that was a great i love the way that you correlated that camille the puzzle and drawing it yourself and that i guess bringing us to a close kind of ties into what um what i i would say just personally has helped um me with my own success within google and that's been being comfortable thriving and ambiguity something that i know is very much so applicable to the military life and careers um and with that you know we've touched on this a little bit throughout the cadence of this conversation today but within google every problem is complex it's very rare that when you're tackling a problem that there will be a straightforward answer somewhere and or they're a guide right to check off steps one two and three and then success uh is is at the end right so with that it's so important that you are comfortable with just figuring it out and networking and learning right just being open to learn because you never know what resources you may be able to identify and after connecting with one or two folks that may take you down a whole nother rabbit hole of something we haven't thought of for the project and problem you're trying to tackle um so that curiosity again that was mentioned earlier on but also just that comfortability and to work in the unknown you know without that comfortability it may result in you just kind of sitting there right and not knowing where to go or who to turn to and well that's going to have a lot of impacts on a number of things um and so being able to just thrive when you don't know you know figuring out how you can find out right and just taking that step and that's naturally going to build so many skills in itself because a few years down the line you're going to know a whole lot more people than you initially knew for one uh and then therefore it's likely gonna help you figure it out that much quicker moving on as well fantastic embrace the ones you're with and the unknown when you can do both of those then you can figure figure it all out well we're out of time thank you sybil lindsey camille and bill for the wonderful stories and the helpful tips i definitely learned a lot i'm sure everyone on this panel did and i hope they'll take us up on being part of their network as they try to navigate their transitions or their new opportunities so thanks again for participating on this panel to our viewers if you're interested in learning more about google our roles our opportunities or you'd like to review our career readiness materials please check out the resources tab on the google vetnet career week landing page following this we'll have three more functional panels starting at 11 am pacific 2 pm eastern you can join the live stream to hear from more panelists in different business roles including sales marketing policy and communications project management and finance if you're interested in engineering roles or non-engineering technical roles you can view those panels on our career week landing page all of our functional and industry panels will be recorded for you to view later at go dot co slash vets if you missed anything thanks again for watching do [Music] [Music] [Music] do [Music] so [Music] [Laughter] so [Music] do [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] do [Music] you

2021-07-17 03:41

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