217: An Effective (but Rare) Strategy to Snag Your Dream Job with Kristen Berndt

Pete Mockaitis
Kristen, thanks so much for joining us here on the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Kristen Berndt
Thanks for having me, Pete. Glad to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I think that this is going to be such a treat because it’s a blast from the past in terms of when you and I met some years ago and where you are now. So to open us up, I’d love it if you could share with us your unique vantage point. Have you discovered anything sort of striking or surprising inside the world of baggage and how it moves through airplanes?

Kristen Berndt
Well, I do have a personal story that I’d like to share. About a year and a half ago, I was taking a trip to Hawaii with my family and we were all flying non-revenue standby to get to this Hawaiian cruise. So this was risky and my mom is so nervous about flying standby. And of course, we were all checking bags, too, so we had to get five people and five bags to Hawaii in a short timeframe so that we can make it on the cruise ship.
My whole family was nervous. We tried to get on one flight and it was full, so they didn’t have room for us. But we had all checked our bags, and so the bags were getting on the plane. Either that or they were not. And I was very uncertain as to what was going to happen with those bags, so we ended up making a connection through San Francisco. And the minute we landed in San Francisco, I said, “Mom, I’m going to investigate and I’m going to see if I can find out where our bags are, if they made it on that nonstop flight to Hawaii or not.”
And so, funny enough, I ran into a woman that I was working on a project with, and I said, “Hey, can you help me out here? I’m trying to figure out if my bags made it on this flight or not.” So she was like, “Okay. Let me go through into my system, see what I can find out,” and she said, “Yes. All five bags made it on the nonstop from Chicago to Hawaii, and they should be there when you land.” And sure enough, they were. They had them stored away in a closet for us, and we were able to get our bags and go on with our vacation.
But that experience really opened my eyes to how our customers feel at United. Everybody wants to know where their bags are, if they made it on the plane or not. And some exciting project that I’ve been able to get involved in is in a couple of weeks here, we’re actually going to be rolling out functionality in our apps so our customers can do that and track their bags. So it’s been fun having that experience and being so stressed out about my bags and being able to put myself in the shoes of our customers and now being able to work on this project where we’re rolling out mobile bag tracking.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that is handy. I did not even know that was coming. And it makes a whole lot of sense. We track everything mobile-ly. Why not bags?

Kristen Berndt
That’s right.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. Well, what’s interesting is you said you had fun with that experience. I know that you really mean it. So if any of you listeners is wondering like “Is this like a PR situation?” it’s for real because when we met, and that was six-ish years ago, I remember you had such a passion for baggage and planning and operations and a fascination with it even before you were working in the industry. And I was so struck. I didn’t know if you were messing with me or what was kind of the backstory. But you really did mean it. You really were into it. And so I’m just intrigued from the sort of human standpoint. At your core, what is it about baggage planning or operations that just captured you?

Kristen Berndt
Well, Pete, I studied industrial engineering. And with that, it involves a lot of logistics, process improvement, all of the finer details of how things get from place to place. And even as a young kid, I remember my family would take a trip and I would ask my mom if we could get to the airport three hours before our flight so that I could walk around and people watch and watch through the window to see the bags being loaded onto the plane. So I have very early memories of just having this fascination with baggage.
And my first vivid memory when I thought about a potential career in that field was when I had just graduated college. So this was about 10 years ago, 2007, and I was taking a trip to Seattle to visit one of my friends and, of course, had gotten to the airport hours in advance as I always used to do, and was just staring out the window and saw this whole cart of bags that wasn’t loaded onto the plane. And I was just thinking to myself, “I wonder where those bags are supposed to go and why they didn’t load them on the plane and if they’re going to be late and if there’s going to be customers without them.” Just so many questions going through my mind that really sparked an interest, and I started thinking about all of the different logistics that go into it. And it’s really, really interesting to think about how those bags get from place to place, how they go underneath all of our tunnels and airports. And it really only took off from there as I started learning more about the field itself.

Pete Mockaitis
Intriguing. And so I’m wondering, then, what from your experience can listeners take away in terms of zeroing in on an area of passion and fascination? So I think in some ways, it might just be like what are the unusual requests that you’d make as a child? Like “Mom, can we get to the airport way, way early so that we can do this?” And that’s one thing. And then what maybe natural questions do you find yourself just drifting off into and wondering about and wanting to fixate, to focus on much longer? Because others might just say, “Huh. Those bags are just sort of chilling there. That’s weird.”

Kristen Berndt
Right.

Pete Mockaitis
And then they move on, whereas you dig in and you linger. Any other maybe themes or areas of inquiry that could be helpful for others?

Kristen Berndt
Yeah. Ultimately, Pete, this is something that people encounter in their everyday travel, their everyday life. Every passenger has a bag. Baggage is personal, and bags touch every area of the airport. Now, the same can be true for other parts of life, too. I have a lot of friends who became teachers because they were inspired by those who educated them. I have a lot of friends who went into healthcare because maybe they had health issues in their lives and they spent time in hospitals and around healthcare individuals. So there’s a lot of people that we encounter throughout our lives that can inspire us and instill those levels of excitement like the ones that I had for watching those bags not get loaded onto the plane. So just be open to lots of different things that you encounter in day to day life and to always try to learn more and see what sparks an interest for you.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. I’m with you in terms of it’s personal, you have those experiences, those encounters, and then you’re rocking and rolling from there.
Now, Kristen, what got you back on my radar screen was I was chatting with a guest, Nick Campbell, about how to pursue dreams and goals in terms of the career and how to go after pursuing them. And he mentioned it’s great to just blog about it or podcast about it, just sort of be loud and let the whole world know what you’re into and what you’re up to. And I know that that is really a part of your story with regard to the blog. But maybe could you walk us through kind of the whole tale from you decided this is what you wanted to do to then how you did the networking, the résumé, the conversations, the stalking people, the interviews, the whole shebang, from having a very specific and interesting dream to living the dream right here right now?

Kristen Berndt
Oh, I would love to. So it really all began… I told you that I’ve always loved traveling and that I would get to the airport early with my parents when we would go on family trips. But it really all clicked for me when I was a junior in college at the University of Michigan and a group of employees from United came to give a presentation about internship opportunities, potential career paths at United and what that might look like. And I probably attended that presentation for the free pizza, knowing my college self, but I sat in that room and I was listening to what that career might look like. And that’s really when it clicked for me that “Hey, I’ve always been interested in traveling and I love that type of industry, and I would love to be able to explore that and have a really, really exciting career on that field.”
So I started looking into it, and as it turns out, United wasn’t hiring for the types of positions that I was looking for when I graduated college. Now, I will say that I studied industrial engineering and I would go into the united.com job posting board and type in “industrial engineer.” And that’s something that I actually have learned throughout my career that currently I’m not working as an industrial engineer per se, but I’m using a lot of those same skillsets. And that’s one thing that I would tell our listeners, too, is to be open to using more broad keyword searches and stuff because I found that they weren’t hiring for industrial engineers and so I went to work for General Motors and I worked as an industrial engineer there for a couple of years, had a great career there, but still always loved the airline industry and wanted to explore that as a career opportunity.
So from there, I moved to Chicago and worked for an advertising agency called Shock, also worked as an industrial engineer there. Completely different type of industry where I was looking at an advertising process and trying to optimize that. But I was still very tuned in to United and the airline industry, had that in the back of my mind as a potential career option for me. And it was around 2011. Pete, I think that’s probably about when we met. I was working for this company called Shock and I was thinking to myself, “I need to get airline experience to work in the airline industry,” because every single job description that I’m reading says “Two years of airline experience required.” So how the heck am I going to get that if I don’t have an opportunity to work at United or another airline?
So what I did is I started a blog about airport optimization. And a lot of this I had been reading a lot of books and articles in my free time just for fun and to learn about the industry, to learn about those things that I found to be so fascinating. But I had accumulated all this knowledge about this that I started a blog. It was called itsplaneandsimple.com. Kind of a play on words there. It doesn’t exist anymore, for those who are trying to type it into their browsers right now. But I ran that blog for about a year, did a lot of research, read a lot of books about topics that I found to be interesting.
And that opened some doors for me because eventually, a few years later, when I did go to interview at United, I was able to say in that interview, “Hey, I don’t have two years of airline experience, but I have a passion for the industry and have quite a bit of knowledge about the industry. Here’s my blog. Why don’t you check it out?” And that really helped me to get my foot in the door at United about three and a half years ago because it showed that I was passionate about this, that I was serious about doing this for my career for the long run. And so I would say to our listeners just to be creative about developing that experience for yourself. You don’t necessarily have to follow a job description and match it 100%. It’s important to be creative, too, and think about where you can go with that, creating your own opportunities for yourself.
So then at United now, I’ve been here for about three and a half years. And I actually started in flight operations. So not baggage, not airport operations at all, but it was a way for me to get my foot in the door and just to really start learning about the company and the industry itself and found out that it was a very interesting part of the company. And that’s something that I have learned now at United. I’m currently in baggage planning, had a couple of different moves getting there through some networking that I did and building some relationships with others at the company. But there are so many different things to do in a huge industry like this that it’s important to always be building those relationships and learning new things, generating new interests. And the opportunities are endless.

Pete Mockaitis
Right. So that’s really cool how you really saw the problem I think a lot of career searches have, which is “Oh, it says I have to have these two years of experience, but I don’t. So what do I do? I need the experience to get the experience.” It’s like the vicious circle or catch-22 there. So I think that’s fantastic. So you’re just telling me that you were able to just entirely leapfrog that hurdle of two years of airline experience is required. You’re just like “No, I don’t have that, but I have a blog.” And they say, “That counts for us. That works.”

Kristen Berndt
That’s right.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. So when you said it opened doors, is that primarily what you meant is that in the conversation, it enabled you to bypass that hurdle? Or did it also create opportunities where you met people or they reached out to you because they saw the blog?

Kristen Berndt
Yeah. So actually, when I was looking to get this job at United, I knew that I had to make a connection to get my foot in the door because that’s generally how things happen nowadays, or at least have in my case. And I was actually throwing a going away party for a friend at my house, and so I told this friend that he could invite whoever he wanted to. And there were quite a few folks there I hadn’t met before. So as the hostess with the mostest, I was walking around and talking to a lot of the new people there that I hadn’t met, and it turned out that one of the guys there worked in HR for United. Now, this was at the same time that I was writing my blog and so I actually had made business cards with my name, contact information, and the name of the blog on it.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yes.

Kristen Berndt
I was able to just hand it to him. We were at my house. I had everything with me. I was able to just hand to him a business card and say, “Hey, check out my blog. It’s my life goal to work at United, and so can you please pass this on to whoever needs to see it?” And I maintained contact with that person. He and I touched base about once a month to see whether there were any open opportunities that might be a fit for me. And so it was really important to maintain that relationship with him because he was ultimately the one that helped me get the interview. And then, of course, I just had to knock their socks off in the interview.
And the same was actually true with my desire to get into airport operations after that. I knew that I wanted to meet someone in airport operations to, number one, just hear about it and make sure that it was something that I wanted to do, but number two, so that I had that connection to be able to vouch for me and put in a good word for me. So I’ve done quite a bit of networking at United and met a woman whose husband worked in airport operations and she said, “Hey, you should sit down with him just to hear about what his team does.” And once again, I maintained contact with that person. There were no openings on his team at that time, but we were able to maintain that dialogue, check in with each other. And then, of course, the moment that a position did open up, I was someone who was at the top of his mind and he reached out to let me know. So it’s been really key for me to make those really important relationships and network.

Pete Mockaitis
I want to follow up on a couple of points there. First of all, I’m visualizing the scene. So this guy is at your going away party and you say, “Oh, I happen to have a blog about airport optimization, and here’s the business card.” What’s his reaction to that?

Kristen Berndt
I can’t say that he was expecting to see that when he entered the party that night.

Pete Mockaitis
Totally. Well, so I guess I’m intrigued because there could be a whole host of reactions from “That is insane. I’ve never seen or heard of anyone that into it,” versus “Wow. I wish my teammates had this level of proactivity.” And maybe it’s hard to recall the precise words or response, but whatever you can recall, I’d love to hear.

Kristen Berndt
Oh, yeah, he was shocked. And he actually had sent an email to a bunch of his team members after meeting me and copied me on the note and just said, “This girl is more passionate about airports and baggage than anyone I’ve ever met. We need to get her a job at United.”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that is what I’m talking about because, absolutely, it makes such an impression because it’s so rare. It’s so unique. I mean, that’s what sort of struck me when we were first talking about your area of interest and passion. So that’s fantastic. So with the blog plus business cards plus my life goal and then maintaining contact over the timeframe, it’s a winning recipe. So I want to also dig in on the maintaining contact part. So in practice, what does that sound like? I mean, in some ways, it feels a little off to be like “Hey, you got any jobs for me? Okay.” Holler back a month later. “Hey, you got any jobs for me?” So what is the savvy, tactful, diplomatic way that you go about maintaining that contact?

Kristen Berndt
Well, I normally go into those conversations just expressing a desire to learn more about the group that that person is in, just expressing it as a learning opportunity, that you want to learn more about a certain area of the company and that it’s an area that you might be interested in working in someday. And really just establishing those connections upfront, but then saying to them, “Hey, I’m really happy with the group that I’m currently in or the job that I’m currently in. But if anything were to come along, I might be interested in just talking a little bit more about it. So let me know if anything happens, anything opens up in your group.” And then I was able to just maintain that relationship by setting up a coffee meeting a month later or sending a quick email just to say “Hey, how’s your family? How’s your kids? Hope all is well. Let me know if anything opens up in your group.” So it’s important to really just get to know the person personally, too, and be able to interact on that level.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s great. And so then, when it comes to doing the actual blog, I’m just thinking about the time that that takes. And so it sounds like, in a way, you saved time because you didn’t have to have two years of airline experience and you instead did the blog, which I imagine amounted to less than two years of fulltime 40 hours a week effort to create.

Kristen Berndt
Yeah, thereabouts. So when I was first thinking about doing this, I sat down and I thought to myself, “You know what? There are 24 usable hours in every day, and you can break that into…” Okay, let’s say I’m spending eight hours a day at work and let’s say that I get eight hours of sleep at night, which we all know isn’t always the case, but maybe it is. That still leaves another eight hours to play with. I’m sure some of that time is in transit or whatever it may be, eating dinner. But there’s quite a few hours there that, if you plan it out right, you can really use to your advantage.
And that’s the time that I used to do the research, read those books, write the blog stories. I did a lot of my reading and research while I was on the train to and from my other job at the time and found that to be a really useful way and a useful amount of time to be able to do that reading and research. And then I would get home and jot down notes, come up with ideas for my next blog story. So that was a really useful way to break it up in my mind, to think about the fact that pretty much a third of my day is my own that I can do whatever I want with.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s really cool. And now I’m thinking about with podcasting, which has just grown and grown sort of each and every year over the six-ish years that we’ve known each other, I think that that could be just another fantastic channel to accomplish the same ends and make the relationship connections all the faster because there’s guests that you talk to and then they know you, and so you’ve got that happening. So blogs and the podcasts.
So if you’re fascinated by systems and operations and baggage and efficiencies, I’d love to get your take on any pro tips for boosting your efficiency and productivity at work.

Kristen Berndt
I don’t know if it’s so much about boosting efficiency and productivity, but it kind of goes back to thinking about what you want to do with your career, with whatever you do for work. And a professor once told me that you can break down the work that people do into three categories: a job, a career, or a calling. And think about that kind of on a bell-shaped curve and career is in the center. It’s where the bell goes at the top, so the majority of people fall into that career bucket. And on the far left, you’ve got a job. And on the far right, you’ve got a calling.
Now, people who think of their work as their job are the type of people who may go to work from 9 to 5 every day. Maybe they’re just working to get the paycheck, to support their family, and they’re not particularly passionate about the work that they do. Now, those who fall into this career bucket, they have committed to a career, whatever it may be. Whether they’re in healthcare or education or baggage planning, they have committed to a career. Maybe they work at a few different companies, but they’re doing this for the longevity of their time in the workforce and they’re dedicated to it. Maybe not particularly passionate about it, maybe slightly passionate about it, but they think of it as their career.
And then there are those like myself who fall in that far right hand side of the bell curve, and those are the people who think of their job as a calling. And a lot of times, we hear this in a religious sense. Those who become priests find themselves being called to the priesthood. But I think it’s also very applicable to the workforce that I feel called to work in the airline industry. Many people are called to whatever they do for a living. And I think that has really inspired me and helped me to come up with some of these tactics to achieve my goals and to be efficient, to be effective at work. And so I would encourage people to just think about what are you called to do, because if you’re passionate about something and you can consider it to be your calling, you’ll be good at it and you’ll succeed.

Pete Mockaitis
Now I’m intrigued. So there is a little bit of a rubric or a typology there in terms of jobs, careers, and callings. And so if what makes a calling is that you sense a call either from the Lord or a huge purpose that’s just bringing you forth, so I’m wondering, what is it for you that makes the air travel industry a calling? Because I think, in a way, it’s kind of like a mental or a perception thing in that other people could be having your exact same job and for them it could be a job or it could be a career. So what is it kind of in your day to day mindset or approach or philosophy of what you’re up to and what it means that puts it into calling territory?

Kristen Berndt
Yeah. I think it really goes back to what I get out of it and the satisfaction that I feel. Number one, because I’m just really excited about the subject matter itself. So I like going to work every day. I enjoy the work that I do. It’s fun for me, and I’m not in a rush to get out of there. I think about it when I’m at home, on the weekends and stuff like that, too. And it also comes into play: just being good at your job, being awesome at your job, if I were to say that, because you can get a sense for that, too, based on conversations with managers and people that you work with, your peers at work. And I think that that really resonates. If you’re passionate about something and if you get a lot of satisfaction out of the work that you’re doing, then that shows forth in how you do your work and how you portray it to others.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Got you. Well, Kristen, is there anything else you want to mention before we shift gears and talk about some of your favorite things?

Kristen Berndt
I don’t think so.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, let’s do it. Share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring.

Kristen Berndt
So one of my favorite quotes is “The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt” by Sylvia Plath. And this just all comes down to being confident and getting your foot in the door and then figuring the rest out. If you have self-doubt and you’re not confident, then you can’t succeed and you can’t be creative or think outside the box or step outside your comfort zone.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Thank you. And how about a favorite book?

Kristen Berndt
“Lean In” by Sheryl Sandberg.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite tool?

Kristen Berndt
It’s probably the STAR framework from interviewing and just being able to think through that in situation, task, action, and result as you’re interviewing for jobs. That’s really helped me to succeed at interviews.

Pete Mockaitis
So we didn’t talk about the interview itself. So you mentioned this tool, and so let’s go deep into it. So my understanding of the STAR framework is that an answer to a question is complete when you touch upon those four components: the situation, the task, the action, and the result. When you’ve got all four, then it’s complete. And you really do notice when one of them is missing.

Kristen Berndt
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Like the result. “And so what happened?” Or in the situation, like “Why were you doing that?” So I think that’s handy. So tell me, any other interview tips or ways that you use that effectively? Are you sort of preplanning four bullet points for the STAR, for each kind of a question? Or how do you put that into play?

Kristen Berndt
Absolutely. So what I’ve done is I’ve looked up lists of common interview questions online and just created a spreadsheet where the question is on the left side and then you’ve got a column for situation, task, action, and result. And I actually type out my answers to all of those questions and then sit in front of a mirror and rehearse as if I was in the interview. And I think that that’s really helped me to articulate my thoughts when I actually am in the interview. Obviously, you don’t have a piece of paper in front of you, but it all comes back to mind.
The other thing that I’ve done with interviews is to make a list in your mind of your top 8 or 10 examples that may be good to use and could be… Let’s say you worked on a project that you learned a lot of lessons from. That could probably be an example that you would use for a ton of different types of questions that might be asked. So it’s important to be able to think about those quickly when a question is asked of you.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Great. Thank you. And now, how about a favorite habit?

Kristen Berndt
Be present. So often these days, we are tied to our phones and our laptops, and it’s such a digital age that I always live by the mentality to be present in meetings. Use my active listening skills. Really commit 100% to what’s going on there in the moment.

Pete Mockaitis
And so to follow up with that, when distraction hits you, you’re just like “I’m bored. I don’t really care about this. I am really intrigued as to what might be in my text messages or my emails right now,” internally, how do you kind of refocus, redirect, and stay on target?

Kristen Berndt
Well, a lot of times, I won’t bring my phone with me to a meeting if I know that I may be distracted by it. If I’m waiting for an email or a text from someone, I’ll purposely not bring my phone with me just to eliminate distractions. A lot of other times, if I do have my laptop, if I’m taking notes or presenting something, I’ll close out of my email and my chat so that I know I’m not going to be distracted by any incoming messages.

Pete Mockaitis
And if folks want to learn more or get in touch with you, Kristen, where should they go?

Kristen Berndt
I am on Twitter at kristen_berndt, and you can also find me on LinkedIn.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks seeking to be awesome at their jobs?

Kristen Berndt
One thing I would say is to do one thing each week for professional or personal development, whether that’s listening to a podcast or taking a training class or grabbing coffee with a colleague that you want to learn more about what they do or going to a networking event. There’s all kinds of different things that you can do for your own personal or professional development. And I have made it a point to do at least one thing each week for that purpose.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, Kristen, thank you so much for sharing your perspective here. I think this is a potent solution for a job hunting problem many people have. And so I’m excited for more people to discover and to put it into use and to achieve their unique and delightful career dreams. So thanks for making that possible for us, and keep on rocking.

Kristen Berndt
Absolutely, Pete. It’s been a pleasure chatting with you.