The Job Hunting Podcast

Episode 243 - Salary is one of the most uncomfortable parts of the job search, especially when employers ask for expectations early in the process. In this episode, compensation consultant Matt McFarlane explains how companies think about pay, salary bands, job titles, negotiation, and what experienced professionals need to understand before naming a number.
Few moments in a job search create as much discomfort as the salary question. It often appears too early, too bluntly, and too impersonally. A candidate is completing an online application, still unsure whether the role is a genuine fit, and suddenly a form asks for salary expectations or current compensation. For experienced professionals, especially those in their 40s, 50s, and 60s, that question can feel less like an administrative step and more like a trap.
Read the full Blog on the Website

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31 Days of Action for Job Seekers
Find Your Talents: Learn About Your Strengths, and Watch Your Career Grow
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Timestamps to guide your listening:
0:00 The question that traps every job applicant
0:47 Why nobody wants to talk about salary
1:56 What employers really do with your number
7:02 A smarter way to answer the salary question
9:42 How companies build your pay package
14:38 Why the top of the band is rarely offered
18:21 Job titles, ego, and what they cost you
22:29 Why startups hand out titles instead of money
25:23 What startup hiring gets wrong (and right)
30:55 The client who wrote his own job description
34:07 Do employers expect you to negotiate?
38:57 What you can negotiate besides salary
39:47 Who fixes broken pay structures
42:49 Inside the Startup People Summit
44:34 Ask Matt your questions on LinkedIn

Links mentioned in this episode:
LinkedIn profile, Matt McFarlane
Watch the Replay of the Startup People Summit 2026
FNDN’s website (Matt’s business)
Podcast episode about salary negotiation (245)
Podcast episode with startup founder Alex Naoumidis (47)
Podcast episode with startup Chief People Officer, Emily Zhang (191)

About the host, Renata Bernarde
Hello, I'm Renata Bernarde, the Host of The Job Hunting Podcast. I'm also an executive coach, job-hunting expert, and career strategist. I teach corporate, non-profit, and public professionals the steps and frameworks to help them find great jobs, change, and advance their careers with confidence and less stress.
Watch the Episodes on YouTube
Follow Renata on Social Media:
LinkedIn
Instagram
Facebook
X / Twitter

Episode 342 - What if confidence isn’t the thing holding you back? I’m sharing what I’m seeing in the job market right now, from executive presence and relatability to why being more human may be your biggest advantage in the age of AI.
Confidence has become one of the most common explanations experienced professionals give me when their careers stall.
“I need to be more confident.”
“I’ve lost my confidence.”
“I don’t think I come across confidently enough in interviews.”
I hear versions of these statements every week from people with 15 or 20+ years of professional experience. They have managed teams, delivered complex projects, advised executives and built careers that demonstrate considerable competence. Yet when they enter a job search or begin aiming for a more senior role, confidence suddenly becomes the diagnosis. Increasingly, I think we may be diagnosing the wrong problem.
The professionals who stand out today are not necessarily the people projecting the greatest certainty. Often, they are the ones who communicate with enough self-awareness to be credible, enough courage to be visible and enough humanity to be memorable. And in an employment market increasingly saturated with AI-assisted communication, those qualities may become considerably more valuable.
Read the full Blog on the Website

Book a Free Introductory Consultation with Renata
31 Days of Action for Job Seekers
Find Your Talents: Learn About Your Strengths, and Watch Your Career Grow
Join 5,000+ Readers of The Job Hunting Newsletter: Subscribe Now
Lear More About Renata's career coaching and courses

Timestamps to guide your listening:
0:00 The new luxury is not using AI
1:06 Why today is off-script
2:49 Three things I can't stop noticing
4:18 Why relatable beats confident
8:21 Confidence is overrated
10:31 It's not really confidence they lack
12:04 What executive presence actually is
15:07 There's no one right way to command a room
17:16 The worst thing you can do in an interview
19:43 The new luxury: slowing down in an AI world
21:27 The career privilege nobody talks about
23:54 When AI writes everything, being human is scarce
26:23 Why slow is the new status symbol
30:19 Become more of yourself

Links mentioned in this episode:
LinkedIn post from the beginning of 2026
Episode 118 - Generalist or Specialist: Chances Are, You May Be Misusing the Labels!
The ONE Thing Executives Who Land Jobs Fastest All Do

About the host, Renata Bernarde
Hello, I'm Renata Bernarde, the Host of The Job Hunting Podcast. I'm also an executive coach, job-hunting expert, and career strategist. I teach corporate, non-profit, and public professionals the steps and frameworks to help them find great jobs, change, and advance their careers with confidence and less stress.
Watch the Episodes on YouTube
Follow Renata on Social Media:
LinkedIn
Instagram
Facebook
X / Twitter

Episode 341 - Financial stress can change how we assess risk, negotiate, job search and plan our next career move. Carrie Joy Grimes, founder and CEO of WorkMoney, joins me to discuss financial runway, career transitions, money anxiety and how to make better decisions when your income or employment suddenly feels uncertain.
When experienced professionals lose their jobs, one of the first questions I ask is not about their resume, LinkedIn profile or network. I ask about money. How long can you afford to be out of work? The answer matters because a job search conducted with six months of financial runway can look very different from one conducted with six weeks.
Financial stress has a way of turning a career decision into an emergency. Suddenly, the goal is no longer to find the right next role. It is to make the discomfort stop. That distinction came up repeatedly in my recent conversation with Carrie Joy Grimes, founder and CEO of WorkMoney, a U.S. nonprofit focused on helping working people improve their financial lives, and author of The Joy of Money: How to Do More With and Feel Better About Your Money, No Matter How Much You Have.
“Financial stress isn't a thing that we walk around saying, ‘I'm financially stressed right now,’” Grimes told me. Instead, she described it as something that gradually weighs on us until we become accustomed to operating under pressure. That pressure can have consequences well beyond our bank accounts.
Read the full Blog on the Website

Book a Free Introductory Consultation with Renata
31 Days of Action for Job Seekers
Find Your Talents: Learn About Your Strengths, and Watch Your Career Grow
Join 5,000+ Readers of The Job Hunting Newsletter: Subscribe Now
Lear More About Renata's career coaching and courses

Timestamps to guide your listening:
01:03 Introduction and Context of Financial Stress
02:31 Understanding Financial Stress and Its Impact
05:11 Strategies for Managing Financial Stress
08:22 Navigating Career Transitions and Financial Decisions
12:51 The Role of Employers in Alleviating Financial Stress
17:59 Adapting to a Changing Workforce and Financial Landscape
21:15 The Importance of Financial Education and Support
25:50 Conclusion and Final Thoughts on Financial Well-being
33:18 Embracing Change: The Transition to Entrepreneurship
36:36 Budgeting for Joy: Finding Freedom in Financial Choices
38:41 The Reality of Financial Distress: Sharing Real Stories
41:27 Overcoming Financial Anxiety: Understanding Your Worth
45:22 Empowering Women: Negotiating and Understanding Value
52:09 Building a Supportive Community: The Role of Organizations
54:07 The Joy of Money: Understanding Your Relationship with Finances

Links mentioned in this episode:
Carrie Joy Grimes’ new book, The Joy of Money
Carrie’s non profit organization, WorkMoney

About the host, Renata Bernarde
Hello, I'm Renata Bernarde, the Host of The Job Hunting Podcast. I'm also an executive coach, job-hunting expert, and career strategist. I teach corporate, non-profit, and public professionals the steps and frameworks to help them find great jobs, change, and advance their careers with confidence and less stress.
Watch the Episodes on YouTube
Follow Renata on Social Media:
LinkedIn
Instagram
Facebook
X / Twitter

👉 Ready to take the next step in your career? Book a free Career Coaching Introductory Meeting with me.
👉 Join 5,000+ senior professionals getting actionable ideas to get your next job and take control of your career directly in their inbox
The people deciding your next role form an opinion about you before you ever apply. This conversation shows you how to shape it.
My guest is Vanessa Errecarte: marketing lecturer at the UC Davis Graduate School of Management, consultant, and author of Valuable and Visible. She created one of the only for-credit MBA courses in personal branding in the United States, and she has a message for every senior professional who was taught that great work speaks for itself: the market stopped listening to silent excellence.
We talk about why decades of strong work can disappear from view after a redundancy, how recruiters and hiring managers now discover senior candidates before a resume is ever read, and what separates real authority from empty visibility on LinkedIn. Vanessa explains why the advice to simply post more backfires, and why helping people publicly beats talking about yourself.
You will also hear the practical layer: her formula for introducing yourself so people remember you, the difference between an influencer's job and yours, what AI can and cannot do for your thinking, and a minimum viable personal brand that takes 1 to 3 hours a week, starting with one LinkedIn post.
In this episode, career coach Renata Bernarde and UC Davis marketing lecturer Vanessa Errecarte argue that personal branding is about creating value for others rather than promoting yourself: senior professionals get remembered, referred, and recruited when they publicly help their audience solve problems, because visibility without earned trust produces no career results.
Your one thing this week: write one LinkedIn post using Vanessa's formula. Open with a short personal story, connect it to why it matters, then teach a framework of three to five steps your peers can use.
As I say at the close of this episode, your expertise can be recognized, remembered and recommended through a little bit of work on your part. Subscribe so next week's episode finds you.
Read the full Blog on the Website

Book a Free Introductory Consultation with Renata
31 Days of Action for Job Seekers
Find Your Talents: Learn About Your Strengths, and Watch Your Career Grow
Join 5,000+ Readers of The Job Hunting Newsletter: Subscribe Now
Lear More About Renata's career coaching and courses

Timestamps to guide your listening:
00:00 Introduction to Personal Branding and Visibility
03:06 The Shift in Career Progression and Recruitment
05:55 The Importance of Genuine Authority in Visibility
09:08 Navigating Personal and Professional Branding
11:52 Building Trust Through Value
15:03 Leveraging Personal Stories for Professional Growth
17:46 The Role of AI in Personal Branding
20:56 Overcoming the Visibility Trap
23:57 The Challenge of Authenticity in Online Presence
27:33 Creating Engaging Content
28:30 The Impact of Viral Posts
29:04 Building Trust and Authenticity
31:57 Navigating Job Transitions
36:06 Minimal Visibility Strategies
39:31 Consistency in Personal Branding
43:24 Leveraging Different Platforms
46:17 The Human Element in Online Engagement
50:11 The Importance of Real-Life Connections

Links mentioned in this episode:
Vanessa’s website
Learn more and join Renata’s RB Career Club

About the host, Renata Bernarde
Hello, I'm Renata Bernarde, the Host of The Job Hunting Podcast. I'm also an executive coach, job-hunting expert, and career strategist. I teach corporate, non-profit, and public professionals the steps and frameworks to help them find great jobs, change, and advance their careers with confidence and less stress.
Watch the Episodes on YouTube
Follow Renata on Social Media:
LinkedIn
Instagram
Facebook
X / Twitter

Ready to take the next step in your career? Book a free Career Coaching Introductory Meeting with me.
Episode 339 - I answer the seven LinkedIn questions my career coaching clients ask most often, from headlines and About sections to recruiter visibility, skills, posting, and making your profile support your next career move.
Most experienced professionals know LinkedIn matters. They know recruiters use it, hiring managers check it, and that former colleagues, board contacts, clients, and professional peers may look them up before making an introduction.
And yet, many still treat LinkedIn as a digital filing cabinet. A place to store job titles, dates, and old responsibilities. That is a missed opportunity.
Your LinkedIn profile is designed to be a record of where you have worked. It is a positioning tool. It should help the right people understand who you are, what you are known for, what problems you solve, and where you may be heading next.
This is especially important for professionals in their 40s, 50s, and 60s. By this stage, your career is usually more complex. You may have worked across sectors, held several leadership roles., and you may be changing direction. For example, you may be moving from executive work to board roles, from corporate to consulting, from one industry to another, or from full employment into a portfolio career. If that's the case, your career complexity can be valuable. But if your LinkedIn profile does not translate it clearly, it can become confusing.
That is why Episode 339 of The Job Hunting Podcast focuses on the seven LinkedIn questions my clients ask me most often. These are not questions from people who lack experience. They are questions from people who often have a lot of experience, but are not sure how to make that experience visible, searchable, and relevant.
Read the full Blog on the Website

Book a Free Introductory Consultation with Renata
31 Days of Action for Job Seekers
Find Your Talents: Learn About Your Strengths, and Watch Your Career Grow
Join 5,000+ Readers of The Job Hunting Newsletter: Subscribe Now
Lear More About Renata's career coaching and courses

Timestamps to guide your listening:
00:00 The Importance of LinkedIn for Professionals
06:05 Utilizing the Featured Section
08:20 Choosing the Right Skills
14:37 Crafting Your About Section
20:53 Why Recruiters Aren't Finding You
26:05 Positioning for Future Opportunities

Links mentioned in this episode:
My LinkedIn Audit Service
My website

About the host, Renata Bernarde
Hello, I'm Renata Bernarde, the Host of The Job Hunting Podcast. I'm also an executive coach, job-hunting expert, and career strategist. I teach corporate, non-profit, and public professionals the steps and frameworks to help them find great jobs, change, and advance their careers with confidence and less stress.
Watch the Episodes on YouTube
Follow Renata on Social Media:
LinkedIn
Instagram
Facebook
X / Twitter