Hey Reader,

Welcome to issue #019 of The Next Chapter, a career planning newsletter for LGBTQ+ professionals.

This week, I'm covering:

• This Thursday's free webinar: What’s Next For the Human?
• Recap: Job Market Real Talk with Hey Famm
• Getting your job search in order
• Managing up to get what you need

Webinar: What’s Next For the Human?

What are you doing this Thursday, October 1? 🤖

I’m teaming up again with April Starlight of Tangerine Search to kick off spooky season with a conversation about AI in the workplace, and we'd love to have you there.

When AI makes polish and output abundant, what becomes more valuable about the human behind the work? We’ll work through real scenarios where AI has directly touched fundamentally human parts of work: job searching, interviewing and hiring, and team collaboration.

This session is for job seekers, hiring managers, recruiters, and anyone navigating a workplace where the line between human and AI-generated work keeps getting blurrier.

Come hang with us on Thursday, October 1 at 10am PT / 1pm ET. It's free to attend.

Recap: Job Market Real Talk with Hey Famm

I recently had the privilege of speaking with the Hey Famm community along with Shana Summers, Virginia Hillman, and Dr. Jaime Raygoza for some real talk about the current job market. Thanks to those of you who could join us live!

Shana kicked off the panel by asking: “How much should someone think about how ‘out’ they are during the job search?”

Here’s a summary of my response:

Safety looks different for everyone, and our community spans a huge range of identities and circumstances. My advice is to start by naming your top three priorities for your next job. When push comes to shove, what actually matters most?

The answer is often not what people expect going in, and it usually clarifies how much disclosure risk feels worth taking on.

From there, remember that disclosure isn’t all-or-nothing. It’s a spectrum. You might skip your pronouns in an interview but list volunteer work with an LGBTQ+ org on your resume. You might mention a partner without specifying their gender.

Trust that hard-earned queer wisdom.

If you're LGBTQ+ and want something a little different than LinkedIn, I recommend checking out Hey Famm! And if you're already on there, send me a connection request. :)

Get your job search in order

Okay, I’m gonna share one more piece of guidance I offered to job seekers during the Hey Famm panel: get organized.

It might be time to get organized if you...

• Can’t remember which resume version you sent to which employer
• Have missed a follow-up because you lost track of the timeline
• Have shown up unprepared to an interview
• Have accidentally applied to the same job twice
• Have lost a networking contact’s info

You don't need to adopt a complex new app or system. Group your materials into folders; cut down 40 versions of your resume into a few clearly labeled ones; keep a spreadsheet of your applications, interviews, and networking contacts.

This is immediately actionable, and it can make a challenging job search a little more manageable.

If it’s useful, I have a free interview tracker you can download. My job seeker clients use it!

Managing up to get what you need

A lot of managing-up advice goes one direction: learn your manager’s priorities, adapt to their style, make their job easier.

Fine advice if you’re okay with a hierarchical dynamic doing all the work. But it’s missing the other half: if your manager doesn’t know what you need, all that effort to adapt to them doesn’t do much for you.

A lot of us don’t name our needs at work. We hint. We hope our manager notices we’re overloaded. We save it up for a performance review, then wonder why nothing changed even though we never actually asked for anything.

(hi, I’ve been that person 😬)

Here are some examples of how you can get what you need through managing up:

• “I find I do my best work when I have real focus time. Would you be open to looking at which meetings actually need me there?”
• “When everything feels urgent, I lose track of what matters. Could we align on my top two priorities this month?”
• “It helps to know what ‘good’ looks like before I start working on something. Could we put our heads together before this next project and make sure we’re on the same page?”

Vague complaints put the guesswork on your manager. For better or worse, humans haven’t developed the ability to read minds, so I recommend building the muscle to ask directly.

Tell me what’s on your mind

I want this newsletter to be community-driven. It’s meant for you, so it should be valuable for you.

If there's a topic you want me to cover, don’t be shy about hitting the ‘Reply’ button. It might just end up in the next issue.

Talk to you soon.