The Blogs: The Unforgettable First Time - A Summary of my First Lecture | Carol Hauser

Last Wednesday, I had the pleasure of giving my first lecture for Brazilian Olim Chadashim (newcomers) that are looking for a job in Israel! I was invited by Hayim Makabee, an inspiring good-hearted volunteer, that also helped me in my baby steps when I arrived to Israel, almost 4 years ago. The meeting happened at Mercaz Klitah Sapir in Kiriat Yam, because he lives in the North of Israel and I’m working there as well.

It was such an inspiring evening, that I though on sharing the main takeaways with you, my dear readers. The content I shared was the same content you can read in my blog, but it was presented in a different format.

The 4 main topics we discussed:

Data of My Own Job Search
The Recruitment Process in Israel
Failure
Chutzpah

Data of My Own Job Search

Even though I worked for 2 years in a global Israeli company, my job search was long and exhaustive – as it is for most Olim Chadashim. To consolidate in a big picture overview, I drew the following slide. Even if you don’t understand Portuguese, it’s possible to understand the image!

Data of My Own Job Search

“You only need one yes” – used to say my mentor, Oded Israeli, when I was attending to Gvahim’s Career Program. And he was right! We tend to think about how many “no’s” we get. I got 12 no’s in the very last mile of the processes; and it was very frustrating to hear all these 12 no’s… But I’m very happy and satisfied with the one “yes” I got – read here my 6 Main Takeaways From My Job Search – After I Found THE Opportunity!

The Recruitment Process in Israel

For one of my previous posts, I drew how is the “worst case scenario” of a recruitment process in Israel (you can read it in English in The Most Complete Guide to the Israeli Job Market). We could spend a whole lecture only talking about this slide! I started sharing my own experience during each one of the steps and the attendees also shared some of their own experience.

The Recruitment Process in Israel

When I was looking for a job, I failed in each step of this process – at least once. And after each failure, I was able to learn how I should do the next time. This takes us to the next topic.

Failure

Remember the two benefits of failure. First, if you do fail, you learn what doesn’t work; and second, the failure gives you the opportunity to try a new approach. – Roger Von Oech

In Israel, we’re lucky that accepting failure, learning from mistakes and moving on is a key element in the Israeli high-tech success story. In case you haven’t attended one of F*ckUp Nights lectures, I really recommend to check out their next events. F*ckUp Nights is a global movement and event series that shares stories of professional failure. They offer some events in English, but most of them are in Hebrew. If nothing else, you’ll get to have a few laughs, drinks, and meet up with some of this city’s coolest people.

Chutzpah

Last but not least topic discussed during the lecture was Chutzpah. I presented a video that tries to explain “What is chutzpah?” by sharing leaders’ in Israeli start-ups point of view. During the video, I asked the participants to write the keywords mentioned in the video and we created a Word Cloud using Mentimeter. You can see the result in the picture below.

Word Cloud created using Mentimeter

You can read more about Chutzpah on a previous post: How to Develop and Implement Chutzpah to Get Your Dream Job.

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Everything has to come to an end, sometime. And I finished the evening by sharing several links that can help everyone’s job search. Here are some of them:

List consolidating placement agencies, job search websites, meet ups / bar talks, Facebook groups and more in a shared Google sheets;
Resource to search for relevant companies in Israel: Dunsguide;
Resource to read about the local market: Start-up Nation Central blog;
My tips to get prepared for a Meetup;
Resources to get prepared before an interview (part 1 – http://bit.ly/2H2fUaf; part 2 – http://bit.ly/2NqIRxJ);
Control and focus your effort on job search – a shared Google sheets to help you kick off with it (don’t forget to save a copy for you!).

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I hope that this summary could help you! For me, as I wrote in the title, it was an unforgettable opportunity to learn and to develop new skills.

The ‘first time’ is always special. It builds memories; good or bad, sweet or sour; leaving an impact lasting forever… – Anushree