Kathryn Minshew

@kmin · Founder & CEO, The Muse

@ems_hodge Hi Emily, great question! The best piece of advice I ever received was that "No" is often just the starting point, and most careers worth having involve a fair amount of determination, grit, and just general "try try again"-ing. That's been true 10 times over at The Muse, and I'm so glad I learned it early! In terms of the worst career advice... probably all of the people who told me not to start The Muse, or to give up early.

6 share tweet・a year ago

@kmin · Founder & CEO, The Muse

@kmin @ems_hodge Also, early on when I was about to take the job at McKinsey, someone I respected very much told me not to take it because I'd get "too used to the lifestyle" and never be able to do anything risky or non-traditional afterwards. With all due respect, I disagree - I think getting "used" to anything is a choice you make, not something inevitable. I'm really glad I worked in consulting for two years -- but also so glad that I didn't let myself get "used" to the lifestyle, and was totally comfortable jumping into something completely different afterwards (startups, working in East Africa).

9 share tweet・a year ago

Emily Hodgins

@ems_hodge · Community and Marketing, Product Hunt

@kmin is there any one company you look at right now as a standout example of somewhere that has really nailed their company culture? What is that particular company doing to make it stand out? - What could others learn from it?

@kmin · Founder & CEO, The Muse

@ems_hodge Hi Emily, it's so exciting to me that companies are really waking up and getting better at onboarding, since it's a really important part of making sure your employees are passionate about your mission and all on the same page. One example of someone who's doing it well right now is HBO - they do a great job of immersing new hires in different teams and projects so they can learn a lot about the business, and they match every new person up with a Buddy (like we do at The Muse with the Muse buddy program)!

3 share tweet・a year ago

Cali Pitchel

@calipitchel · Brand & Content | Joy the App

Hi Kathryn, I'm hopeful for the day we no longer have to ask this kind of question, but... What have been some of the greatest challenges you've overcome as a women in startups and tech?

@kmin · Founder & CEO, The Muse

@calipitchel Hi Cali, you and me both - I hope this question will soon be no longer relevant, because there will be so many smart, driven, totally badass women in tech that the idea of people discriminating against them would be shocking. Someday :) That said, I've definitely dealt with some un-fun stuff. Interestingly, the instances I've encountered of totally overt and awful sexism (someone making wildly inappropriate and repeated physical advances at a work meeting, people who told me The Muse couldn't build an audience of career-focused women because "won't your users all turn 30, have babies and stop caring about their careers?", etc) somehow weren't as frustrating/demoralizing as the little things - people always assuming I'm nontechnical, asking "Who are you here with?" and thinking I'm somebody's assistant at an event for CEOs, musing out loud if I'm "too nice" or "not tough enough" to be successful (...really?!), the tons of little unintentional pats on the head. I could write a book about it. But for now, I've found my best response to be 1) understanding it happens to a lot of people and it's about them, not about me; 2) talking about it with all the fantastic men I know, who are often surprised this happens; 3) having a cohort of badass women around me to vent about the worst stuff -- and then move on. Kicking ass is ultimately the best revenge, though it doesn't mean I won't talk about what needs to change along the way.

14 share tweet・a year ago

Cali Pitchel

@calipitchel · Brand & Content | Joy the App

@kmin @calipitchel Thanks for sharing, Kim! I think every woman, regardless of industry, should be surrounded by a cohort of badass women. Great advice. :)

1 share tweet・a year ago

Allie Hunt

@alliehunt_ · Social Media Manager

@kmin Can you tell me a bit more about the new career coaching services The Muse now offers?

3 share tweet・a year ago

@kmin · Founder & CEO, The Muse

@alliehunt_ Yes! I'm ridiculously excited about this. You know how sometimes in a startup's early days, you have a vision of what you'll do eventually, but you can only execute on a small part of that vision? Coach Connect (themuse.com/coaching) is like that for The Muse

@kmin · Founder & CEO, The Muse

@alliehunt_ Since the early days, we've known we wanted to roll out professional development / 1-to-1 support alongside everything else we offer on The Muse (free advice, resources, company "behind the scenes" profiles and job search). But it wasn't until this fall that we were ready. What we did was find the absolutely best career professionals in our network - people who specialize in helping you figure out where to go, and making sure you get there - and build a platform to allow people to book them on The Muse. So far, the average review on the site is 4.89 out of 5 -- so I'd say we're doing a pretty good job! If anyone wants to learn more about how we conceived / built / rolled out this platform, happy to answer more questions about it :)

1 share tweet・a year ago

Corley

@corleyh · COO @ Product Hunt

@kmin what is one of the biggest mistakes you've made and what did you learn from it?

@kmin · Founder & CEO, The Muse

@corleyh Hi Corley, oof, so many. Building a startup is basically an exercise in mistakes: learning from them, avoiding the really bad ones, and forgiving yourself for the little ones you're bound to make. One of the biggest mistakes I made pre-Muse was ignoring my gut about some people I was working with. I knew better - something told me that these people were not good partners - but I overruled myself because I couldn't point to anything specific, and I wanted the access and connections they were promising. It turned out pretty badly, but I learned so much from it. Now, I trust myself implicitly on people, especially when it comes to values/ethics questions.

brandon tsang

@brantsang

@kmin Hi Kathryn! Who inspires you, personally & professionally?? Who are people that you follow for advice/inspiration??

@kmin · Founder & CEO, The Muse

@brantsang Hi Brandon - so many! I have a number of startup founders like Katia and Hayley from Birchbox or Payal from Classpass that I both get to chat with about scaling questions at The Muse, AND that I look to for inspiration. Also business execs like Arianna Huffington, Cathie Black, and more. For reading, I love First Round Review (great content) as well as Mark Suster's blog. Will add more great ideas here later on--

brandon tsang

@brantsang

@kmin @brantsang Awesome!! First Round Review is great!! thanks!!

1 share tweet・a year ago

Theoharis Dimarhos

@theo_dimarhos · Marketing+Biz Dev at AngelouEconomics

@kmin Thanks for doing this! What are the most impressive ways you've seen that someone has gone about to get a job at one of your clients? (the extra effort beyond sending a resume.)

@kmin · Founder & CEO, The Muse

@theo_dimarhos Great question. One person applied to a small startup and created a video introducing himself and sharing his passion for the company. Someone else included a work sample of some really impressive planning they'd done for a previous job. At The Muse, one of the most impressive applications we've seen was a candidate who organized her resume *into a lookalike Muse profile*. It totally blew us away - and we ended up hiring her.

Alex M Payne

@alexmpayne · Insights & Paid Media, Sunshine Sachs

How did you decide launch Coach Connect and what which track do you wish you had access to when you started your career?

@kmin · Founder & CEO, The Muse

@alexmpayne Great question - I talked a bit about why we decided to launch Coach Connect above (this is really just the beginning in terms of offering 1-to-1 advice, on-demand career help, and other resources to our community), but the specific process of conceptualizing and launching it was fairly detailed. We started talking about the concept internally in February/March of this year, as we realized that Muse users took our recommendations really seriously and were often desperate to find 1:1 help that went beyond what we could offer in an article or video. Some were first time managers, others needed to make a huge career switch, and still others just had a quick but important question that they didn't have anyone they could ask. So we decided to start with a selection of our absolute best coaches and career experts from The Muse, in a mini beta test this June. The results were phenomenal, including someone who got 5 interviews and a job offer within weeks of using our resume revamp service. It became clear that we were finally ready as an org to launch it. Once we made the decision, we spent the rest of June-August designing themuse.com/coaching, making sure it accounted for all possible use cases, and then building it and recruiting coaches through the late summer and early fall. We pushed it live to 1000 early users the day before to make sure there were no crazy bugs - and then we went live! Everyone in the Muse office celebrated when the first booking came through :)

Michael Gracias

@mgracias13

Hi Kathryn! How do you spend your downtime when you're not working on The Muse?