Watch us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmMGEQbdUbI
Susanne Leeb is an expert in HR Management and career coaching. At her current position at the Career Center of the Technical University in Vienna she holds a two-sided responsibility: As coach she provides professional job & career planning services to students and as HR consultant she offers her expertise in employer branding and talent management to employers.
Connect to here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/susanneleeb/
The Career Center´s mission is enabling students, graduates etc. to enter the job market well orientated and professionally prepared. In cooperation with employers it offers a variety of career orientation formats. An additional emphasis is on putting topics on display that are important for society in a working context, such as diversity.
For more information about our services and events: tucareer.com
Our latest event recommendations:
- Voice of Diversity May 4th
- Jobfair TUday @home May 19th
- Workshops @ Karrierezeit June 16th – 17th Recommended book:
- Working identity, Hermina Ibarra
Recommended podcasts:
- There are many interesting Career Podcasts such as Female Leadership,
- Die Boss
Transcript
TIMEA: Hey Ramón!
RAMÓN: Hey Timea!
TIMEA: Let’s talk gender equality.
RAMÓN: I love the idea. Gimme a second. I just got to grab my coffee. I hope you’ve got yours too.
TIMEA: Yeah, right here.
RAMÓN: Welcome everybody. Thank you so much for tuning into another episode of gender equality over coffee. I’m joined by Timea as always, and our special guest today is the very Susanne Leeb. Did I get that right? Yeah, I got it right on the first time. Correct.
SUSANNE: Thank you for having me.
RAMÓN: We are so excited to have you on, sorry, Timea I cut you off. I’m very excited.
TIMEA: No worries. As we just talked before, we’re still learning how to. Yeah, make space here. So so is that, then I’ve invited you over today. We’ve been actually working together for quite some time now. I mean, mostly between our entities, women Techmakers Vienna and TU career center, but today I want to. Give the opportunity to our community, to get to know the people that drives the partnership and creates the great events on the TU career center side. So I invite you to tell us a little bit about yourself. If you have pronouns preferred name what are your pronouns? A bit of, you know, three things, random things about you.
SUSANNE: Okay. Well, you know, first of all, Thank you for having me. I think that’s great. I think you, I think you’re doing really great. I just mentioned that already. Yeah, I’ve been joining ever since the call for right. With new Timea and with the women. Techmakers my name is Susanne and yeah, there have been different nicknames floating around, but actually I prefer Susanne, to be honest. I mean, yeah, let’s say within our family naming is very popular, so. One popular nickname I have at the moment is “Sai Seni”. Because when my daughter started to learn English, she just took the German birds and tried to pronounce them in an English way. So now it’s Sai Seni but yeah, I actually.
TIMEA: Okay. I promise I will not write emails to you with your nickname from now and it’s okay.
SUSANNE: You can use that for example, like Susie, the very common thing I used to have, like in my early. It is. I don’t like that. I guess about all I do request twice later on, so three random things about me. Well, yeah, one thing I am thinking of is like speaking, I think what a lot about sharing these days, like car sharing for sustainability reasons and stuff like that. So we do have a dog that we share with our neighbors.
TIMEA: Oh, Yeah, that’s more tell us more.
SUSANNE: So yeah, like I think almost every child, our daughter, as well as started the conversation like two years ago, like I wanted to have a pet. I have a dog that wants to have a pet. And we always tried to cut up the discussion by saying, well, you know, that we both work. We cannot take care of a dog that would not be fair. And then just by coincidence, we started the conversation with our neighbors and she was like, well, I always wanted to have a dog. And I’m always at home during the day because I’m a musician. And we were like, okay, well then let’s think about the idea. I started going to animal shelters, speaking with the experts there. And yeah. I mean, why not? If it’s the right dog, that might be a good idea. So yeah, like two years ago we started to have a dog. Did we, I think equally share like 50, 50% and it works out perfect. Well, I can only recommend this concept to everybody.
RAMÓN: I have so many questions. If I may ask first I’d love to know the dog’s name. If I may. Oh,
SUSANNE: yeah, you can. It’s Livi and the longer version is Liviza because she’s Croatian. Yeah. So, oh no, maybe. Yeah.
RAMÓN: Well, thank you. How, how does it work that the dog does that, that Livi doesn’t somehow like trick you into a trick, you or your neighbors into feeding them multiple times?
SUSANNE: Oh, she would, if she can. Yeah. Whenever she could, she will do it at, but I mean, we have the advantage that we can communicate very well. So yeah, knowing her we have a very good distribution of all our Judas and I think, I mean, it will depend on the doc I guess, but she was the dog picked up on the streets, so she’s pretty flexible and just very happy having people taken care of for us though. Yeah. It’s really worked out perfectly well from the very first moment
RAMÓN: we say that,
TIMEA: well, this is really nice. And I think that I’m on and I have a personal reason why we ask you more about it because we are both dog lovers. I also recently got. Well a year ago, I got my first dog. So
SUSANNE: would make sense. Yeah, no, I mean, and we never regret it, especially for our daughter as well. And especially with, during the pandemic situation. Yes. It gives her so much stability, so much support. Yeah, for us it was just a great idea doing it. I’m not thinking too much about it. I’m just trying.
TIMEA: I’m super excited. That it work. Maybe you can inspire other people to take in dogs, especially in this pandemic time.
SUSANNE: Yeah, I think so. I mean, of course the things to take into account and it will not work with every dog, but the way it works for us, it just has advantages. Like for example, our dog is almost never alone and she’s almost all the time with someone. So. So there’s several advantages to it. I mean, you will see when we continue speaking that I’m a great fan of sharing because especially for additionally, I’m a fan of job sharing as well as well idea, especially for part-time solutions, but yeah, let’s,
TIMEA: let’s jump into it. Go ahead.
SUSANNE: Okay. Speaking about sharing. Yeah. So when I did last year, a couple of years ago in a different one, I was thinking about. So what’s, it’s specifically the topic that I’m interested, right? Because I wanted to take a topic that affects me personally. So I’m a woman, I’m a woman and part-time I really chose, or I took this decision consciously. I wanted to work in part-time, but of course, anyhow, I want to have a career or a job with responsibility and what’s happens with part-time. We all know that. Part-time positions often don’t offer the responsibility or the same career opportunities like the doing full time, because of course full-time of hours. We all know that. So the idea was born that I wanted to have a closer look at this concept, job sharing. And I did my thesis about job sharing and management positions. So, what I think was I was doing interviews with two crews. The first group were H R trust that didn’t have the concept within their company, asking them for the reasons they don’t have it what their ideas or prejudices might be about it. And then interviewing persons that were in, or our management decisions, living the job sharing model.
TIMEA: May I interrupt the interview partners. Were they in Austria
SUSANNE: Okay. Yep. And it was not too easy to find three job sharing packages in the beginning because it’s not that promoted that much immediate, but then yeah, I was lucky to find some really interesting Women this case, it was only women doing the job sharing model. And I was pretty excited by the results. And by what they told me, it seems to be a very, very successful model if, if it fits within the corporate culture. And if it is wanted by the management board, but a decision making decision, that’s like one decisive successful factor. One could say that. You need to have the management board on board that really wants to live different models to really make that possible or accessible within your company.
RAMÓN: Sorry. Just, just just so we can get do you have, do you have maybe a, like a definition of, of job sharing that we could share with our listeners so that they could catch up?
SUSANNE: I mean, there were different definitions, but let’s say it’s a concept where you as let’s say, for example, two persons hold the responsibility for one department, but then the most common model is to divide the different parts of the department. And into the two persons, for example, mostly it’s two persons and mostly time-wise they divide themselves for example to a Monday to Wednesday model and a Wednesday to Friday model where they have one common day one day together in the office and the other days are separately. There’s other models that are possible, but that’s like the most common one that is. Being lived out there. Yeah,
RAMÓN: it is. We’re talking about this because I actually, I actually, myself since January started my first ever job share or yeah, for, for CodeSee an American startup where myself and my colleague, Jessica, we share the role. We job share the role of developer relations.
SUSANNE: So how does it work?
RAMÓN: Well we’ve been, we’ve been moving it around here and there. Trying out different things, seeing what works, what you mentioned about having you know, Monday, Wednesday, and, and Wednesday, Friday with the shared Wednesday has been working is what we did at first having two and a half days, two and a half workdays per week for each of us. And once we realized that we needed more, more time on end, we switched to have four days a week. So Monday, Monday to Thursday, five hours a day. Adding up to two, a half work week and it’s been working really well. I have to say I’m really enjoying it. It’s kind of, it’s really interesting because we, what we can do is sort of share not only shared tasks, but also learn from each other. Jessica has a lot of strategy and, and outreach experience that she shares with me. And I have more technical experience that I share with her. And, and, and of course, Vice versa. I can share parts of my knowledge and outreach and I can share, she shares parts of her knowledge in tech and we sort of compliment each other in that sense. And it it’s extraordinary. I have to say having worked freelance my entire life, having this option has been really liberating. Yeah.
SUSANNE: Yeah. Great to hear. No, no, no, no. I’m so excited to hear that there is other constellations out there. That’s really great to hear that work. I mean, it shouldn’t be like. I think the concept for everyone to do that, but it’s one possibility to deal with the nowadays working situation. And it just, if you want to do it, and if you’re flexible enough, and if you have the management board in the background, I think it’s a wonderful model. As you just said, you have this coaching constellation, right. That you can coach each other constantly. You have the situation that actually one plus one is not two it’s more than two, because like, I remember I spoke with the managing directors of Ikea in Linz . So they said, like, for example, the one of the two, she was more into the restaurant management stuff and the other one was more into the whatever interior design or human resources stuff. And they said, see, and with having two persons taking care of the whole management, you have to grip every. Topic within our position, not only a couple of topics, because usually you’re not interested or specialists in everything, like you just said, you were more the technical guy and she’s more to strategy partner. Right. As I, I understood that. So I think it’s it’s a great great possibility to deal with yeah. Some job situation. So I would say,
RAMÓN: yeah, I agree.
TIMEA: I think this is a very good hint, maybe the words of your profession actually, what you ended up doing after the thesis, right?
SUSANNE: Yeah. Right. I mean, I’ve had no more than, I think 15 years of experience in HR, like. I’ve always been in HR settings where I was able to develop and set up HR processes and manage them, but then doing this master’s I did this professional training and coaching and that’s what led me to coming to the career center, right. To work, to be a coach. Yeah. So true. Cause now
TIMEA: first and foremost, you’re a career coach for the people that come to the center. But you also work with companies basically, probably I understood correctly kind of complimenting their HR processes and helping them develop them.
SUSANNE: Yeah, right. Yeah. One could say it like that. Like the career center is like the connecting part between the students and the job market. So having or facing the students side, we’re like coaching them, offering trainings, offering shop prayers, offering different kinds of events. And then when it comes to speaking to the companies, we are asking them. So you were interested in credit rates from stem. Fields of studies. What’s your employer branding strategy. What’s your talent management strategy and how can we come together? We have all these kinds of possibilities which one works best your internal strategy. And then we have those sports, some of the classic job fair, where we have companies taking part and inviting students to meet with competence with or at the child care that’s like describes it. Very briefly what we saw. Right.
TIMEA: I would like to go into I think the project that you got started last year voice of diversity I think this is maybe also very interesting to our listeners. So how come it came to the topic of diversity? And what are the projects that you offer?
SUSANNE: See, I mean, we have like our basic events, like the job fair, because we know that’s what companies want to do. And we know that’s a good opera for students to orientate themselves for future employers. But then additionally, we always see ourselves being responsible to put topics on display that are relevant for like, So society in a working context. And when speaking about diversity, I mean, look at all the webpages out there. Every single company will somehow has adversity implement, implemented within the strategy, right? So they all say it’s very important for them to encourage women, people from different nationalities and whatsoever And his relative within diversity, but then speaking to the students we very often heard, like, you know, I’m a woman and I just applied for this civil engineering job and I knew constant or immediately within the interview that they were reject me just because I’m a woman. Of course they didn’t say that, but I felt it, or someone else said, like, I knew that, or for example, me and my colleagues spent with the job fair, we approach company X Y Z and they constantly spoke to my colleague who was obviously European to me, obviously by being, I don’t know, from some Arabic countries, they didn’t really talk to me. So there’s a gap between what companies would like to represent and offer and what student experience. So we thought it would be a really great idea to take these very often unconscious bias. That’s a topic and put them in this event format. And I think I really love that idea because I mean, speaking about biases, there’s like conscious prejudices. Okay. We can work on them because of course companies notice prejudices. They can have trainings to raise awareness and everything, but then there’s unconscious bias and that happens to all of us. And of course that happens in recruiting as well. Perceive these different kinds of information, like gender name, nationality, religion. He, she looks like me or is similar to me or is the opposite. There’s this halo effect. There’s so many biases out there and they mostly run unconsciously. So recruiting decisions are very often made upon these unconscious biases. What we now did is we Develop this project where we have a recruiting event and we have it supported with together with Institute of technology and science at the TU. So they do really do the research and the scientific work. And what came out is a recruiting. When we’re in the first step you only speak with the companies without giving your name without. The company, knowing your gender, your nationality. So nothing just perfect. Right? You’ll feel the study, your experience. That’s it. That’s what companies know from you by now. It’s like some kind of chat. So company representatives and students get to know each other through a chat function.
TIMEA: And this you moved into chat because of the COVID situation and moving online.
SUSANNE: No. I think that was because that was the most objective way of doing it because we were thinking of having like some curtain between us having the voice made not recognizable anymore. But then we ended up in working together with just research support to end up doing the chat as being the most or the best solution for us. Yeah. It’s a very interesting, yeah, very, yeah. I mean, what’s happened through the first event post, for example, that one recruited and said, well, through the first phase of the church recruiting he was very sure that this for example, would be a man. And then when getting to know each other, it was like really surprised seeing a woman. And that was a big aha effect for him. Of course. And that does something with us. Yeah. And I think that’s important, important work that we have to do like to put these things on display because very often we don’t want to be discriminating, but teachers are unconsciously. So that’s an important thing to do. And we’re actually repeating this event very soon. So if there’s any students out there being interested I think this time it’s, especially for computer science students, I’m not quite sure, but I think it is. So if there’s any students out there being interested in doing this experiment I think the easiest way would be to go on our webpage to career.com for the further details. There’s a deadline for registration, I think next week. Yeah. Yeah. I’ll have a look. And if you’re interested to go for the experiment, I think it’s a good experiment and experience.
TIMEA: We’re going to make sure to put all the links in the show notes. I think that’s what one wants to say. And also this, well a week when we, we we’ll air this podcast in a few days but by then we will already have promoted the event on our channels. And I think indeed what I understood the audience is mostly for tech the tech industry. So if there are any people actually tell us, is it only for students or is it a, also other young professionals or, I mean, yeah.
SUSANNE: Why not? I’m not quite sure I’m not in the lead of this project, but thinking of it. Yeah. Why not? Yeah, it might. I’m saying I’m not quite sure because I didn’t have the conversation or the briefings with the companies. So I don’t know what their expectations are, but I’d say they should go for it.
TIMEA: Yeah. In the target message. It says students but if there is somebody looking for an it job and really, really need some help, I think they can contact you anyway.
SUSANNE: They can contact us anyway. Yeah, that’s what our mission is right to a company or to support young people entering the top market. To get orientation for that career planning. That’s what we do and that’s what we really like to do. And that’s what we can do.
RAMÓN: Amazing. Thank you so much for her promoting this. One question that I have on behalf of our listeners is as a, do I need to, is this a German only speaking event or is it also an English?
SUSANNE: This event is in English as well. Yeah. Cool. But that’s a good question because I know that for example, organizing other events like workshops we are very often facing. This kind of problem there. So diversity sometimes ends here. Yeah. But having companies taking part in some, he wins, when the representatives come to these events, they are like being surprised. Also we briefed them that they have to, maybe I switched to English from plan to plan. Yeah. So. That’s the first obstacle when speaking about diversity very well.
RAMÓN: Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And I think, I think, you know, this is, this is something that we’re seeing a lot in, in in, in areas that are trying to increase inclusivity by doing things like, like you said, this double-blind approach of like having just a chat box. I think that’s fantastic. One thing that this reminds me of things of steps that other. Institutions are trying to enact, for example, conferences like software conferences. What they’ll do is, and we, we, I think we’ve done this a few times at women tech makers as well is to remove all identifiable data from, from a speaker. So all we get is the title of the talk, the description of the talk, and then we. Vote on which ones we like according to that. And I think this, this, this helps, like you say, not completely removed because it’s impossible to remove these unconscious biases, but to mitigate them.
SUSANNE: Yeah. And to make them conscious and to be able to reflect upon them. Because if you don’t know that you’re having them and then you can make decisions upon them you cannot change anything. But if you realize that you just had some kind of unconscious bias, you can adapt. Reflect upon it. I think that’s really, really important. Absolutely. I mean, that happens to me as well. Like, I don’t know. I didn’t use to be like the, because all gendering language, like having All the differentiations between female and male pronunciation. But then when I realized, when speaking of, I dunno, some certain professions, like I was speaking about whatever and in my mind I realized I was only thinking about male politics. And that’s the point when I started to really use a differentiated language, because it does something to you. And for example, here comes the thing with my daughter. I realized at a very, very early age that she always, when we were having a conversation, for example, under speaking about, let’s say (fireman in German), and she was like automatically saying and (firewoman)I was like, yeah, that’s good. She, I mean, I don’t know. It will be interesting to see if this changes during time or if that’s something that is already. Coming natural in this new generation. I don’t know. It will be interesting to see and to follow this development.
RAMÓN: Absolutely. Just to, just to make sure that I got this in English as well, German is not my first language. I’ll admit. So what you were saying was talking about a fire man, and you were saying, and, and your daughter was following up with you and fire or fire woman, is that correct? No, no, no, no problem. Just making sure. I just making sure I capture that. And that’s, that’s something we’re seeing a lot of recently. And in fact, the mayor and I have a bit of a book club going on with this with this podcast. We’re reading the book, invisible women by Carolyn Craido Perez. And there are a lot of these, a lot of these data points are being brought up about how much better, for example, on job ads. If you put a stock photo say for assigned, like, look for, say, you’re still looking for a scientist and you put up a a picture of a man on the job, on the job ad. Then you’re a number of of, of, of people who identify as women applying comes way down. Well, and conversely, if you put, if you put a picture of a woman, then it goes, it almost 10 times is itself. And, and these are these, like you said, are these unconscious biases that I think by having these conversations by, by exposing our children, to, for example, having your, your, your, your daughter already be questioning these things and being as supposed to us also reflects backs back on us, even though we try to be as inclusive as possible, all these things that we learned as children. And, and, you know, reflected in our language, like you said, the fact that the fact that, you know, when you, when you, when, when you think of like the subtle changes, like police officer from policemen, they make a difference.
SUSANNE: Of course. Yeah. But yeah, as you just said, it depends on your own socialization as well, because that’s the moments when you realize, oh, also I really try to be Really reflective about upon it very well. I’m not. Yeah. So it’s a really long process coming along with this. Yeah. And
RAMÓN: I think I, yeah, I agree. 100%. I think the best thing we can do as people is when confronted by our own Follies, in our thinking, do we double down and say, no, I’m just, this is the way I learned it. I’m going to keep it this way. Or do we reflect and say, huh? I’ve been wrong. I’m going to what word from this line of thinking and try to be more inclusive. And this is why, for example, doing this podcast has been so, so, so enlightening for Timea and myself, because we’ve been confronted with concepts that we’re not familiar with. That as we’ve mentioned in past episodes, make us uncomfortable and we just acknowledge it. That discomfort fighting. It is not something we can do, but by acknowledging it and reflecting on it, that’s how we learn. And we grow as human beings.
SUSANNE: Yeah, I think that’s such a much, excuse me. That’s such a much better concept than always being into fighting moments, right? Like that’s my position and I’m against I’m in favor, but acknowledging that there’s differences, acknowledging that we might have made mistakes in the past and then to reflect upon it, that’s the way to go or change it. Yeah. Sorry. Yes.
TIMEA: No, no problem. I was recalling that yesterday evening. I was in a meetup, the monthly meetup from fem chat, and this is a group of engaged great people over available that also invite to different conversations from a research perspective on different topics. And it just happened that last night. The conversation about was about inclusive language. And there were two different point of views presented and. Yeah. I had to realize that there are still people that out there Don’t really well, I don’t, they don’t agree basically with being an E with star, with DAPL Puente writing to try to, to add somehow gender discussions, to the words we use in, in German, because. Well, that’s the German language or people. This was a quote from the presentation that was like, is this even still German as a language is still, is it still correct? You know? So people that really have really down to earth. Concerns also when it comes to this point. And then also there was a point about the fact that some for example, women don’t want to be highlighted actually that I’m a female CEO. No, I’m a CEO. Please don’t make me fem preneur. And I don’t know what it, or femme, whatever kind of words in France. So there’s in the society is sort of like a movement up and down. That goes with this fight against it, somehow at fun, very interesting to put a bigger perspective on what’s going on. So every individual basically can have the, has their own opinion. And I think I’m going to throw mine in the pot. And, and I think it has to do for me a lot with the unconscious bias because. If we don’t use the star or the doppelpunkt, the semi-colon to, in our writing, or we don’t stop to say police woman because of our unconscious bias, it can be that in a few days, weeks, a year month we discriminate automatically. And we don’t even realize, right. This is actually why, what it is about. Okay. So
SUSANNE: we are a decent page with that. I mean I can understand both parties. Yeah. I see that this advantages with being that sends a PIP about language and the lay out obstacles, it brings along for example But yeah, I think it’s about the discussion. You can have the current opinions, but having a discussion, you put topics on this, they want to do, and then you can push things forward with you. And as long as you know, the stand up female CEO, that doesn’t want to be promoted as female CEO, I fully understand that she’s a CEO because she’s got all the experience and competence. I completely understand, but I think we’re in the process. And as long as we are not as many women in decision-making positions, having the power as much as men do, this is just the vehicle or means of pointing out to the problem, to this situation. Having like an equal 50 50 situation, I think there shouldn’t be any. Female or male C O pointing out any more yeah, because it’s about being authentic and individual person and having the individual competencies for this position that you’re having. Yeah.
RAMÓN: I am reminded in our conversation of this line of t-shirts that I, that was really, that was really trendy in the, in the conference scene. It’s all pre conference seen before before we had to stay home for a little while. And that is before time. I’m reminded of a t-shirt line that I really liked, which was sh fitted and cut line of t-shirts right? That say the, the fitted one said programmer and the w what was the other one called the fitted and straight cut of t-shirts. Right. And the, and the straight one said male programmer. And, and just, just, just to sort of like challenge this, this internal bias we have of when we think of software engineers and female software engineers, as you said. And I think, I think having this pushback is going to, I think, I think having this as Timea called it an up and down and ebb and flow of how language evolves. And I think, I think the thing that people don’t realize is that language does evolve 20 years ago. The concept of Googling something didn’t exist. Right. I forget how old I am, but yeah, further back in my head, 10 years, it’s still 1990. You know, and, and, and language does evolve and, and like this, this ebb and flow, this pushback, like I think it was two, one or two years ago that the, that the academy of French language was considering eliminating gender less gendered language from, from, from, from the language itself. And that didn’t pan out. But I think the fact that this conversation was had does have to say something for where things could head. And I think being receptive, being open, like, like we’re having here an open discussion about what we think is, is works for us. Doesn’t work for us is the only way to make it work. And the solution we come up with today, it’s probably not going to be the best solution in five or seven or 10 years. Absolutely. Yeah.
SUSANNE: Yeah. And I think it’s not about finding this solution. It’s about having. Accessibility for everyone. And that’s the point, right? I’m so not in favor of women being like Lola and then being like Bella it’s like everyone should be able or allowed to be authentic and be him or herself, but we were always tend to speak about Women should be like this. How can we offer women more? I believe he used to not work as much part then as they do now, how can we know a woman should be able to decide whether she wants to work? Part-time whether she doesn’t want to work at all, because now she’s having children and wants to be with them, or if she wants to return to full-time position up the one week of the giving birth, but she should have all the possibilities to decide. We don’t have these possibilities and that’s, that’s a problem. There’s so many possibilities out. There are so many, like my food truck sharing might be something else. I think that’s the main challenges that we are facing now. And.
TIMEA: I completely agree. It’s about having the option now. It needs to happen. And then we see the, you know, how does the result look like being any dump it, boom, whatever
SUSANNE: you find yourself. That’s up to you, but as long as we don’t have this equivalent, Situation. I think we will always need to discuss, need to fight me to position ourselves, need to be in conversation like this. If we had like a 50, 50 at least situation, I think all his problems would be solved by them. That’s my ideal idea. Or thinking of it like this. Yeah.
RAMÓN: Yeah, one, one thing I see a lot going around is, is this concept of, of not so much having a high priority on equality, but rather on equity while equality is still on, on, on the horizon. And I think that’s something to bear in mind that giving folks the opportunity to be authentic, have an authentic life that works for them is going to be the challenge moving forward that we need to address.
SUSANNE: Yeah. Absolutely.
RAMÓN: I realized that I could, I could talk about this stuff all day, but I also want to give you an opportunity to also platform your, your other projects. You’re working on Susanne at the two career center. What, what other what other projects and events are you working on?
SUSANNE: Yeah, I’d love to share that. I mean Being a skewed and graduate, or just coming from like the stem field. If you think of your career or retired patient, or you’re planning your entering the job market or changing a job all these topics around career and child planning services, think of us We’re offering all kinds of counseling and coaching training settings that you can think of. And we’re all coming as all that we are working in counseling. They’re all coming from HR background. So we know what you’re talking about. Maybe that’s important to know as well. Besides those counseling and training possibilities, we do offer a lot of events throughout the year. So, I mean, follow us on Facebook or wherever Instagram, I don’t know where we are online, which channel, but, or just go to, tucareer.com and see which events are coming up. Just don’t hesitate to contact us because if we can help, we can help. But usually if you have some questions regarding shopping career planning, we can help very well. And we like to assist or support. Young people finding their way into their ideal career.
TIMEA: I’ll ask you one point about maybe relate to not related to project events. Since you finished your master’s thesis on job sharing. Do you see a change in the industry on picking this up more? Is there any change towards it or away from it?
SUSANNE: No. I partially see a change and I think. That has very much to do with the so-called war of tell it’s out there. Right? I mean, companies, if they don’t have to, if they always have enough applications coming in, they choose the easiest way because that’s how a system works. It always chooses the easiest way to structure and organize itself. But seeing that there’s not enough applications coming in, that there is. Especially in stem, right? People are so much wanted from that field. So PE companies really need to adapt. And of course, I mean, recruiters are people in the HR or a single persons within the companies always wanted with the FMO to offer different working models. Because of course they knew that women that then were in for maternity leave and wanted to come back and. Couldn’t into her former position because then would have asked for full time plus extra hours. So they’re single persons that always wanted to support and encourage these kinds of models. But now the company itself is really forced to adapt because if they don’t do so, they won’t find the applicants they need. So I think they will be changed and there is change. But, yeah, it’s still challenging. Even if a company has a real right. Diversity strategy implemented when you speak to the recruiter, then, then he, or she says like, well, you know, yeah, that all sounds very good with diversity, but I know that I cannot place a team member within this team that only speaks English. It will not work. Or I know that placing a woman within this team, it will not work. It’s still a lot of challenges, but there’s things changing as well. I think so. Yeah, quite a lot. Especially with all the young people entering the job market that are, I think more, self-confident knowing much better what they want them, but they don’t want that try things as well. So better I’ll
TIMEA: Wow. Thank you for the analysis on that aspect. I’m I’m. Looking ahead to see what happen once further. I know there’s a company in Germany that focuses on trying to place the shared job job kind of people that was exciting to see happening now, if there is a market for it, I just don’t know, especially in Austria, if it’s open yet to this or not. Yeah, I mean, some of
SUSANNE: them are. Conservative companies that were having installed or had that they installed this model. And like the, the common bottom line was like, if there was one decision making person in the background that really wanted it, that really wanted to enable that model it was introduced and it works. You could don’t have the management in the background supporting. A certain strategy or model or whatever, it will never work out. I think
TIMEA: this is in general with most of often, especially in diversity and inclusion.
SUSANNE: Wow.
TIMEA: Thank you for your thoughts on the topics. I’m I have a personal interest on this matters also because of what I’m doing in the startup, but let’s get back to our podcast, I suppose which we’ve been at it for a while now. So. We always like, like to ask towards the end of the recording, if you have any favorite I don’t know, resources in some way, book, person that you follow events, podcasts, anything, if you would like to give a shout out to anything that anyone who inspires you on your path,
SUSANNE: I’ve been thinking about it. I mean, I think there is. Many out there, but I think it always depends in which kind of niche you are at the moment. I mean, there’s like networks or women generally, but then of course, there’s networks for women, young women, for example, and bring the top market. Like for us, we are in a lot of HR communities. Yeah. Or me personally, I’m listening to a lot of coaching podcast just because I like to, so I don’t know if there’s one specific One, I mean like podcasts, like you do are really great. I would say then what I realized for the last year, there’s a lot of coaching offers online at the moment that are for free. So there’s so many interesting trainings and workshops for women. Doing the career planning for people wanting to start their own business. There’s so many possibilities out there. That’s something that I really enjoy and that I would really recommend to do some research. And then, yeah, just being the network that’s used to best for your life phase. And that might change the time. I would say.
RAMÓN: That’s wonderful. Do you have any names of of, of. Podcasts or, or communities that, that you’d like to name drop here. And we can share with our guests with our listeners or maybe share them later. We can put them in the show notes.
SUSANNE: Yeah. Let me have a look at my Spotify podcast list and I’ll share with you later on, because I don’t like switching type between all coaching podcasts that I’m listening to them. Make sure that I’d get some that I would really recommend. I know it’s
RAMÓN: fascinating with notes. Thank you,
SUSANNE: buddy. Yeah, maybe wait. I got. Yeah, that’s here. That’s something. If you ever plan to maybe thinking of a new career because I think having a wonderful or good career is more than knowing what your technical interest in. That’s a book that I can really recommend. That’s it’s working identity. I’ll send you the link in your email. That’s a really nice book because it describes very well. The process of how you can reinvent your career or you can self-reflect on your interests. What motivates you and how you can get going? That’s something that I really enjoyed reading, for example,
RAMÓN: that is excellent. Thank you so much. Well, Susanna, it has been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for coming on. How if I, if I, if I wanted to get in touch with you or get in touch with the to career center, what’s the best place for for me to go.
SUSANNE: Mm. If you want to get in touch with me regarding counseling or coaching, it would be best to write to at [email protected]. If you want to just get in touch with me, you can contact me for example, by email or by my LinkedIn profile. But you will find very easy.
RAMÓN: Excellent. Well, again, it’s been wonderful. Thank you so much. And
SUSANNE: thank you. That’s really nice. With this new stuff with
RAMÓN: figuring it out as we go
TIMEA: yes. Learning while doing jumping in the cold water. Yes. Have a wonderful rest of the day and
SUSANNE: keep in touch. Yeah, we’ll certainly be in touch. Bye. Bye bye.
TIMEA: Are you on the forefront of gender equality? You are invited on our podcast.
RAMÓN: That’s right. Or maybe you know somebody that we could have a chat with on gender quality. You should totally get in touch with us. We’re on Twitter @GenderCoffee. Or any of the other contact methods on our show notes, we would love you to get in touch and for us to have a chat.