Reshaping Your Narrative: Rebounding After Job Loss and Crafting Your Comeback Story

Full Transcript

[00:00:00] Jaime Hunt: Hi. I'm a higher Ed C M O, and I have a confession to make. I have been working in higher ed for almost two decades, and until I reached sort of a senior level of leadership, I didn't really understand how vulnerable these positions are. There are so many ways that we can be. Exited from an organization.

[00:00:23] Um, if enrollment goes down, often marketing is pointed at if there's a crisis that happens and it's not handled in the way that the leadership would like, we can lose our positions if a crisis happens and we handle it as best as possible. But still bad things happen because that's what happens. We can lose our positions.

[00:00:45] We can have a new leader come in and decide that they wanna move in a new direction, and we lose our positions. We can have a new leader come in who wants to bring somebody they worked with, you know, 10 years ago or at their last role, and we can lose our positions. Unfortunately, [00:01:00] something like that happened to today's guest who is Bryce Hoffman.

[00:01:03] He was the Assistant Vice Chancellor of Marketing at UMass Lowell and currently is the Assistant Vice President of integrated marketing at the University of New Hampshire. And he's gonna tell us his story about how he was exited from his institution and what he did to, uh, protect his family. Um, make sure that they had the resources that they need, um, when he was negotiating his exit and how he tackled the job search from a position of having recently been terminated from a position.

[00:01:34] And I think that there's probably a lot of people listening to this episode who may find themselves in a similar situation. And I think there's probably also people who are interviewing people who may. Be like, you know what? I need to rethink how I look at gaps and resumes when I go forward. So I hope you enjoy this episode.

[00:01:54] It's very real, it's very vulnerable. And I wanna start out by just thanking Bryce for being [00:02:00] honest and sharing his experience with us.

[00:02:22] Welcome to Confessions of a Higher Ed cmo, the podcast designed for higher education marketers. I'm your host, Jamie Hunt, and I am so excited to have this opportunity to share insights and inspiration with Confessions of a Higher Ed C M O. I'm designing a different kind of podcasting experience. With each episode, I'll be bringing in a guest for a deep dive into the challenges and joys we all face in higher education marketing.

[00:02:48] After each episode, you can join the conversation on Twitter by using the hashtag higher ed cmo. I would love to see this become like a book club, but for a podcast. And be sure to follow me on Twitter at [00:03:00] at jamie Hunt imc. That's j A i m e H U N T I M C. For more opportunities to connect.

[00:03:15] We're here today to talk to Bryce about a recent experience that you had being let go from UMass Lowell, where you were the a c of marketing and at a high level. Can you tell me a little bit about your time there? 

[00:03:28] Bryce Hoffman: Yeah, I'm happy to. Well, first, let me say I'm so excited to be a guest on your podcast. I'm a listener and a fan, and I think it's a wonderful resource for.

[00:03:37] People in our industry and in these CMO and CMO adjacent roles. So yeah, my time at UMass Lowell was, was really pretty great up until it wasn't. But I arrived in 2014 and it really was a campus on the move. It was building buildings and enrollments were climbing. We were ambitious. Everybody was excited about the [00:04:00] future of the institution and I, I came in to sort of, Reinvent and bring maturity to the marketing part of the organization.

[00:04:09] Like a lot of departments, university relations came from a legacy of having been a publications and a press release, kind of a service shop, and we were making that transition that everybody's on different steps of making, toward being an integrated marketing operation. So I was brought into Unite three different departments.

[00:04:32] Into this integrated marketing and I installed project management. We began doing national campaigns, regional campaigns, and we were seeing our enrollments climb, and it was a really special time. We even, you know, were able to make our peer reputation score go up, not by a lot, but any movement there is is so precious.

[00:04:53] That's a hard 

[00:04:54] Jaime Hunt: needle to move for sure. 

[00:04:56] Bryce Hoffman: Yeah, it really is. And so we had such a [00:05:00] great thing going, but then, you know, covid hits and the demographic cliff becomes more difficult and things got a little more challenging. And then we started to go through a leadership transition. So our chancellor retired.

[00:05:14] This was expected, this was the end of a long and illustrious career, and her contract ended and, and she knew she wasn't gonna do another contract. What was unexpected was that my boss decided to retire at the same time, so we were missing our vice chancellor and our chancellor. So we had a new chancellor come in who was from within the organization.

[00:05:37] She wasn't an outside hire, but she had different ideas about what she wanted to do, and she had, this was her first big role to fill, was the vice chancellor for university relations. I had been number two for going on five years By the time this search got going. And everybody on campus knew that I was going to be a candidate in this search that I'm not saying I felt entitled to it, but I [00:06:00] felt entitled to a shot and I was selected to interview for the role.

[00:06:06] I heard from multiple people that I had done very well in the interview and including a very long letter from one of the members of the search committee who, who was just impressed with what I had to say. And then I didn't hear anything. For three weeks. This is in October into November of 22. And then what happened?

[00:06:31] Then I got a text. Mm. And the text was very short. I still have it, I won't do it word for word, but the substance of it was I was from my interim boss who was the Vice Chancellor for Advancement and the interim Vice Chancellor for University relations, and it said, will you meet me? At Human Resources at 2:00 PM And how much notice did 

[00:06:55] Jaime Hunt: you get?

[00:06:57] Less than an hour. Wow. [00:07:00] What was your reaction when you got that text message? What thoughts were going through your mind? 

[00:07:05] Bryce Hoffman: I went into over analysis mode because I couldn't square what was looking. At me in the face with what I thought my trajectory was at this institution. Mm. Three weeks earlier, I had interviewed for a promotion, but I have let people go, and the voice in the back of my head was saying, this is how you let people go.

[00:07:34] Mm. Nothing good happens at human resources at two o'clock with no notice. No, 

[00:07:40] Jaime Hunt: no, nothing. It's not gonna be a cake and a birthday party usually. 

[00:07:44] Bryce Hoffman: No, unfortunately. But the part of my mind that wanted to rationalize that something else was happening was, oh, maybe there's a reorg they wanna read me into, or maybe they just wanna tell me face-to-face that I'm not gonna go to the final part of the search.

[00:07:58] But, [00:08:00] The more sensible part of me was like, this is not gonna be good, whatever it is. So I, I took a couple of laps around the building. It's cold outside. It's November in Massachusetts, and I tried to get my thoughts together and walk in prepared for anything to happen. And what happened. So the office I had to go to is at the end of a long hallway.

[00:08:25] I didn't know what I was walking into, but it, it didn't feel good. But when I got there, they sort of sat down and, and they were already there ready for me, the head of Human Resources. And my interim supervisor was the one who talked and he said, Bryce, we brought you here today cuz we wanna let you know that you're not going to be advanced as a finalist for this, the Vice Chancellor search.

[00:08:45] And then for just an instant, I relaxed and I thought, oh, this is all, this is, this is a courtesy. I don't know why they brought me to human resources for it, but. But then he didn't stop talking. Mm. And the next thing he [00:09:00] said was, and we are going to separate you from employment, and next Friday will be your last day on campus.

[00:09:09] Jaime Hunt: Oh. How did you maintain your composure in that moment? 

[00:09:16] Bryce Hoffman: I was in shock more than I wanted to lose my composure, and my mind was going a mile a minute. The main thing I wanted to know was why, and I asked that question multiple times, but I've also been in those human resource conversations enough times to know that you're not gonna get a satisfying explanation in the room.

[00:09:42] But I had had eight years of exceeds expectations reviews. I had done everything I thought the university wanted me to do, and I thought I had done it well. And I thought I had the, and I still believe that I had the respect and appreciation of my colleagues in my department and and in other departments.[00:10:00] 

[00:10:00] So it was a big shock to try to process what was happening in that moment. And I remember just saying over and over again, I don't understand. I don't understand why is this happening? And I said, how do I go from interviewing for a promotion three weeks ago? I. To being out of a job just like that. So what I was told, the official explanation was that they had reviewed university relations after my supervisor's retirement.

[00:10:37] New chancellor wants to make a change that she feels that a changes is needed and that the new direction they wanna move in. Just, it's not gonna include me. So I ask, am I the only person you know involved in this? Is this a reorg? And they [00:11:00] essentially said, we're not gonna get into any of those things.

[00:11:02] And the director of human resources, I remember, to me he sounded a, a little like a robot. And I actually, I know the guy, I like him. I've had beers with him. And he said, you know, the purpose of today's conversation. Is to inform you of a decision that's been made and to effectuate that decision. And that's probably the moment I realized that we were really not colleagues anymore, that I was on the other side of the wall.

[00:11:31] Jaime Hunt: How did, not having an answer as to why affect you mentally, emotionally,

[00:11:40] it's just 

[00:11:41] Bryce Hoffman: painful. Yeah. And. Part of that is because I think in our industry it's uncommon for people to be let go at all. Mm-hmm. Uh, but when you see somebody who's let go, at least in my experience, it's because they've done something very [00:12:00] wrong. Mm-hmm. Or under a financial exigency situation. Mm-hmm. And neither of those were true for me.

[00:12:07] I did press them to clarify whether I was being let go for cause. Had there been some kind of complaint, was there something I didn't know about? Mm-hmm. Uh, that I could defend myself against? But they made it clear that that wasn't the case. That this was just an organizational decision, that it wasn't personal to them.

[00:12:27] It was certainly personal to me. Yeah. And then I started to figure out what I needed to do in this situation to protect myself and my family. That became my next thought. 

[00:12:42] Jaime Hunt: You had to negotiate moving out of this role and into something different. What were some of your insights about the negotiation process after you were informed about the decision?

[00:12:55] Bryce Hoffman: Right, so in the room, in that first conversation, [00:13:00] they, no, they're not going to accomplish everything that needs to be accomplished. They're, they've delivered a huge shock to your system. You're not. Really rational. And so they essentially, they do what I would've done and they said, why don't you go home for the rest of the day?

[00:13:15] So that's what I did and I was, I went home and I was in shock, but I knew that there was going to be a conversation they had said, there's going to be a severance offer made to you that we will put you on a leave of absence for a period of time, and we will, we'll talk about this later. So, I went home and talked with, I called my spouse from the lobby and she could tell from my tone of voice what had happened.

[00:13:41] I didn't have to say anything. Oh gosh. And then we just tried to come up with a plan that night. The pressure that I felt was extraordinary. The negative emotion, the feeling of sort of turbulence, the desire to make it stop. [00:14:00] Mm-hmm. Was really incredible. I, I wouldn't have predicted how hard that would be.

[00:14:08] So I wanted to make this process as expedited as I could. Probably the first mistake I made in the process was to agree to meet with human resources the next day. Mm. First thing in the morning, because I didn't sleep that night. I walked in having not slept at all. Mm. And that was when we got down to what's their offer on the table.

[00:14:32] How do I feel about it? What do I think is right in this circumstance? And I told them what I thought was right, which was more than what was on the table. And they said, okay, I'll take it to, I have to take it to you head home. And we'll continue to work toward an agreement that everybody is happy with.

[00:14:53] Mm-hmm. And I will say, credit where it's due, the head of HR who I was working with was an [00:15:00] absolute professional. He was kind. I really felt like he was looking out for the best outcome for everybody. Mm-hmm. Although his obligation was to the university, and he made that very clear and I made it very clear that my obligation was to my family now.

[00:15:18] Yeah. So I made a mistake, but I didn't sign anything, which was the right thing to do. So the next thing I did was get a lawyer. Good for you. 

[00:15:32] Jaime Hunt: Good for you. 

[00:15:33] Bryce Hoffman: And part of the reason I got a lawyer was because the way that they told me was linked explicitly to a position search that I was a part of. Mm. Which to me makes it a little bit more complicated than we've decided to reorg.

[00:15:49] I sought a promotion and then I found myself on the outside of the organization and I thought that warranted some attention. Yeah. And I told them in the room, I'm not [00:16:00] confident that my rights have not been violated. Um, and that doesn't mean I thought they were, it just means I didn't know. Yeah. 

[00:16:06] Jaime Hunt: Well, and that makes sense.

[00:16:07] How would you know if you've never been through this before? 

[00:16:10] Bryce Hoffman: How would you know? Yeah, so I did end up retaining counsel, somebody who specializes, as it turns out, in executive separations. She was wonderful and. Although expensive and an hourly, the hourly rate would make your eyes water. But she was aware of that and I don't think I used even an hour of her time.

[00:16:33] Oh, wow. She requested some information from me about what had happened, a timeline, some everything. As I understood it, she called me, we talked for 20 minutes, and she said, okay, here's what you're gonna do. Here's what you're gonna ask for. Here's when you're gonna send the email. And don't tell them you have a lawyer.

[00:16:53] Oh, interesting. So I didn't, and her [00:17:00] advice worked. I can't promise it will always work when you hire a lawyer, but her advice worked and the university came much closer to where I wanted to be in terms of, we were talking about number of months, mm-hmm. Of severance. And how long is the leave of absence?

[00:17:14] Are they willing to do. An extension on healthcare. The things that I was concerned about, and this is probably a good moment to mention, I was essentially my family's sole breadwinner. Uh, we relied on my employment for benefits to pay the household bills. My spouse was an adjunct professor teaching one class at a time at the university that had just told me I was losing my job.

[00:17:37] Wow. So our only source of income was going to be that. And she did not qualify for benefits. So I was looking at her family finances and thinking, how long can we hold out? Yeah. If I don't find something new. And the severance process for me was really about maximizing that window. Yeah.[00:18:00] 

[00:18:02] Jaime Hunt: Hey all. I hope you're enjoying this episode of Confessions of a Higher Ed cmo. I wanna take a moment to thank my friends at mindpower who are making season two of this volfi podcast. Possible. Mindpower is a full service marketing and branding firm celebrating nearly 30 years of needle moving, thought-provoking, research, fueled creative and strategy.

[00:18:23] Mindpower is woman founded and owned, W B E N C, certified nationally recognized. And serves the social sector, higher education, healthcare, nonprofits, and more. The Mindpower team is made up of strategists, storytellers, and experienced creators from market research to brand campaigns, to recruitment to fundraising.

[00:18:42] The agency exists to empower clients and amplify brands and help institutions find a strategic way forward. You can learn more about their work in the world by heading on over to Mindpower, Inc. That's M I N D P O W E R I N c.com, and be sure to tell the crew that Jamie sent you [00:19:00] their way. When we discussed this earlier, you negotiated some things beyond financial compensation as well.

[00:19:07] Can you talk a little bit about that? I think some of it was staying on the books so that you'd be searching from a position of currently employed, but can you tell me a little bit about 

[00:19:17] Bryce Hoffman: those things? Yeah, absolutely. So it's not just how big is the severance gonna be. I was really worried about how am I gonna come out of this reputationally.

[00:19:28] Mm-hmm. And how can I create other kind of benefits for me that aren't necessarily just monetary because I'm a marketer. I would like control of my own narrative as much as Yeah. As I can. Yeah. And I'm also been in higher ed long enough to know how tongues wag and how people jump to conclusions when somebody disappears seemingly overnight from the senior administration.

[00:19:52] Yeah. Which is essentially what happened. I stopped coming to work, I stopped answering emails because I was asked to stop [00:20:00] coming to work instead answering emails. So in addition to the severance, which was generous in the end, I also was able to get in writing that my position had been eliminated. Which meant that I had not been fired for cause they were generous enough to allow me to tell my team in person okay.

[00:20:18] That I was leaving and to help shape the narrative around that announcement. And also an email out to some of my campus partners who I'd worked with closely over the years. And that mattered quite a bit to me emotionally. Yeah. To be able to walk out with my head up and having looked everybody in the eye.

[00:20:37] Uh, the university provided me with. A recommendation, uh, that I could use with future. Anybody who wanted to call UMass Lowell for a reference could speak to this person and they would have good things to say about me. I didn't end up using that because I felt I had stronger references who weren't involved in this whole thing.

[00:20:57] Mm-hmm. Uh, but had I [00:21:00] needed it, it was good to know. That it was there. I also got it in writing that I could seek future employment at UMass Lowell. Oh. If I so chose, I was not barred from ever coming back. I, I can't imagine right now a scenario where I would come back, but you never know. Yeah. Things change.

[00:21:16] The arc of time is long. Yeah. And the university agreed that it wouldn't protest any claim of unemployment that I made with the state. 

[00:21:23] Jaime Hunt: Is, are those all things that the lawyer recommended that you ask for? 

[00:21:28] Bryce Hoffman: For the most part, the university offered some version of those things. Okay. And I just worked to strengthen them.

[00:21:34] The leave of absence was something that the university provided in their initial offer. I asked for them to lengthen it because the first month of it really covered the holidays and Yeah, nobody's hiring. That doesn't help you. Nobody's hiring. Mm-hmm. From December 15th through January 15th. Yeah. And then I.

[00:21:52] In exchange, I made some promises to the university. There were waivers that you signed that I won't take you to court Promises of [00:22:00] certain kinds of behavior during the leave of absence period. I won't show up on campus without telling you I'm gonna be there. I, I won't interact with things, I won't make decisions, I won't spend money.

[00:22:08] All those kinds of things. So how did 

[00:22:11] Jaime Hunt: you tell your staff 

[00:22:14] Bryce Hoffman: That was hard? Yeah, that was hard for me because I had worked for them for. Almost nine years and very closely. We had been through life events together. We had been through a pandemic together. Some of them I had laid off during the pandemic and was able to bring them back after the pandemic.

[00:22:33] So you've just been through a lot with a team when you've been there for that long. It's, it wasn't one or two years and move on. I'd been there. The, this, I'd never been anywhere longer. Yeah. In my career. And I'm not a touchy-feely guy, and I'm sure some of them are gonna listen to this podcast and think, oh, that's very bright.

[00:22:52] But I'm a very direct person and it was always my method to be level with them and to give them the news, good or [00:23:00] bad, as straight as I could, right from myself. So I worked on a paragraph with human resources. They wanted to see it first, and that was fine. I understand. Yeah. I told my peers on the leadership team one by one, who were universally shocked.

[00:23:14] They had no idea something like this was going on, and they commiserated with me a little bit and offered to help me find whatever was gonna be next for me. And then I brought everybody into a room. This was their no notice meeting cuz we didn't have anything regularly scheduled. And I read my paragraph.

[00:23:34] I, I sort of struggled through it, to be honest with you. Yeah. Because I felt the weight of what was happening, that this is the last time I was gonna talk to this group of people. But I managed to choke my way through my statement that I had to read. And then the room just sort of looked at me and there was this stunned silence of, is this.

[00:23:53] Is this happening? What sounds like it's happening? Is this happening? And one of my peers on the leadership team sort of piped up [00:24:00] from the corner and he just said, thank you. Mm. And that was one of two times in this whole time when I completely lost it emotionally. Oh, I bet. Because the room gave me a standing ovation.

[00:24:16] Jaime Hunt: Wow. That says a lot. 

[00:24:19] Bryce Hoffman: It does. I'm so proud that they felt that I deserved that. But it was very hard to take emotionally. I, I mean, I just sat there and covered my face, but then there was nothing more to say. Yeah. So the plan was for the interim vice chancellor to come in after me, and I shook his hand. I looked him in the eye and said, okay, it's your team now.

[00:24:44] And I went home. Wow. 

[00:24:47] Jaime Hunt: Have you been in contact with any of your former team members since then? 

[00:24:51] Bryce Hoffman: Oh sure. Yeah. We're friends even though we're not colleagues anymore, and there continue to be changes at at the [00:25:00] university and some of them,

[00:25:05] some of them you know, are continue to puzzle me, but for the most part we just talk about other things. 

[00:25:12] Jaime Hunt: I find that when you. Work with people for a long time. They become so much more than colleagues. They become friends and people that you have in your life for the rest of your, I mean, I have, I'm still good friends with somebody I worked with 15 years ago.

[00:25:29] You bond over the shared experience of dealing with all the troubles of a university in these jobs. For sure. 

[00:25:37] Bryce Hoffman: There is a lot of truth to that and as news. Of what had happened to me, sort of spread throughout my professional network people from one job ago, two jobs ago, four jobs ago. It's really gratifying to see how many people are willing to help.

[00:25:57] Yeah. And they come out and say, do you need a phone call? [00:26:00] Do you wanna meet? Can I introduce you to somebody I know is a, A lot of it is just the feeling of somebody calling you and saying you're gonna land on your feet. Yeah. Because you don't feel like it right away. Yeah. You, you feel very hurt and very damaged and like, something must be wrong with you because how could this have happened otherwise?

[00:26:23] Yeah. 

[00:26:24] Jaime Hunt: And a lot of people have imposter phenomenon and I, I would imagine that a situation like this would just really feed that, like, I finally convinced myself, I'm good at what I do, and then this happens, or something like that. I, I feel like that would be my reaction. In that moment, 

[00:26:41] Bryce Hoffman: I felt some of that for sure.

[00:26:43] And you go back and you question the ways that you behaved in your professional role and the things that you championed and the battles you made have chosen to fight or not fight. And I'm not saying I'm perfect. Nobody who knows me would think that I feel that way about [00:27:00] myself. But as I examined it, I really.

[00:27:05] Had a hard time coming up with anything I did to bring it on myself, other than there's a new leader with a new philosophy who wants to do things a different way and saw me as a barrier to that. Mm-hmm.

[00:27:20] Jaime Hunt: So to pivot from what happened, How did you sort of pick up and move on to the next thing? And I know one of the things that, that you shared earlier was that you didn't take that break that everybody recommended that you take before starting a job search. 

[00:27:38] Bryce Hoffman: I did not. I did not take a break and I don't think that I would take a break if that happened to me again at some point in my career because it's not like me.

[00:27:48] Mm-hmm. Sit down and let time pass while I nurse my, my wounds. So [00:28:00] the, the timing here is that, so my last day on campus was the first week of December, and then you've got the holidays. So I started right away making a spreadsheet of, okay, where are the jobs open that I'm qualified for? I was, I would qualify my job as a CMO adjacent job.

[00:28:17] I was not the highest person in my division. I was number two. But my boss for eight years really was an expert in specialist in public affairs. Mm. And I was the person who really looked after marketing and brand. So I felt like I wanted to target advancement if I could. But I have a child who's in high school and he's thriving.

[00:28:40] Mm. I didn't want to relocate the family, but I knew that was the possibility. Uh, so I looked, I sort of drew circles and said, okay, if I can stay inside the circle where we don't have to move, that's where I'm gonna look for three months. And then I'm gonna draw a bigger circle and then a bigger circle.[00:29:00] 

[00:29:00] Because the, the big worry in my head was, okay, I've got a couple of months where I'm technically still on the books. I can tell people that my title is my title. Mm-hmm. But if that gap. Gets on my resume and it starts to grow. I was worried about how difficult it would be to find the next thing with a, with a gap on my resume.

[00:29:20] Mm-hmm. So that was very much on my mind. So I was trying to pick myself back up two different ways. One was sort of emotionally, because that's happening in your co-processor, all of this while you're trying to run a job search. And we all know, we've all been candidates and we've all been hired that.

[00:29:40] Your energy comes through in the interview mm-hmm. And your approach, and you have to be the happy, shiny, mm-hmm. Competent, upbeat, confident, upbeat, upbeat person that is gonna come in and make their lives a lot better. Yeah. While privately your nursing probably the strongest doubts you've ever [00:30:00] experienced in.

[00:30:01] Your professional life because I, I never experienced that level of sort of, let's just call it rejection cuz that's what it was. So that's a, a weird place to be. It's a weird place to be because you're sitting there writing a cover letter that talks about how great you are and you're feeling maybe not so great.

[00:30:18] So picking myself back up emotionally, I didn't take a break where I just sort of didn't do anything. But I did spend some time forgetting, which was important for me. Everybody who knows me knows that I'm a, a nut for road cycling, so I worked out a lot. I go in the basement, make myself miserable for an hour or an hour and a half on the trainer, sweat it all out, and, and then go back to my life.

[00:30:45] And that was therapy for me. And I also fix up vintage bicycles is my hobby. I picked up during covid and I, I fixed a lot of worthless old bikes and made them beautiful again. And then professionally, I [00:31:00] did all the things you would expect someone to do who's looking for a position. There's only so many roles open for people like us at any given time, so I reached out to my network and search firms and consultants that I've developed relationships with over the years.

[00:31:15] What do you have open? What's coming? And I was able to develop in pretty short order, a number of opportunities and I also clicked over the button on LinkedIn that says, call me. I'm looking. And I received a few leads that way. It was helpful for me. The best job board was higher ed jobs.com, but it wasn't the only place I looked.

[00:31:34] LinkedIn I found to be a little spottier. And also looking at the various search firms that post their opportunities on their websites, I found a few things there that I didn't find posted on the other boards. And then it was a matter of, one thing I wish I had been doing all along while I was securely employed was giving my, my resume and references and cover letter, just like a, a yearly checkup because it's easy to let those things [00:32:00] go out of date and then you don't have anything to work from.

[00:32:02] Fortunately for me, I had just done this for the Oh, right. Promotion I was trying to get, yeah. So it was all ready to go. My references were all ready and I, I. Made sure they knew that my circumstances had changed, but they were more than eager to help me find my next role. 

[00:32:18] Jaime Hunt: I think, uh, you've reached out to me, I think in, in December, and, um, unfortunately for the record, Norfolk was outside of the ring of areas that, that you were looking for a job at that point, and I'm glad you found one where you didn't have to move necessarily, but spoiler alert for those listening to the podcast.

[00:32:36] But you know, like if you had gotten to that point, I would've happily had you come down to Norfolk, but. I was in a slightly similar situation, really, really early in my career before I was working in higher ed, and I had gone on medical leave and during the time I was on medical leave, the company was sold and they had to pull me in and tell me like we're, we don't have an obligation to you because it's new owners [00:33:00] and so goodbye.

[00:33:01] And so I can, as you're talking about how you were feeling in that moment, it was just dark, dark days and unfortunately it was like, Right around the time of September 11th. So it was dark, dark days, just like everywhere. But that feeling of my identity is in my work and that kind of, I thought my life was over and I would never work again and or I'd never work at that level again or any of that.

[00:33:25] And it's a lot to wrestle with when you're trying to be confident and appealing to somebody in a job search. When you talked about sort of, there isn't a lot of these jobs open at any given time. When you shared with me the list of positions that you had interviewed for, I think for all of them that were in higher ed, I knew the person that got the role.

[00:33:48] Um, and so it was like, oh, small world. Oh, small world. But tell us about what you did to be able to get to the point where you are today. 

[00:33:57] Bryce Hoffman: Sure. Well, maybe I won't name names, but I'll [00:34:00] talk about what types of places I talked to because I looked inside higher education and I was open to outside if it was local.

[00:34:08] Knowing that my skills are transferable to some kinds of organizations more than others. I looked particularly at the healthcare industry, so I ended up getting a number of interviews pretty quickly.

[00:35:13] So that was one thing that happened. But I also, I think my first conversation with a recruiter, It was two days after my conversation with human resources. Holy cow. And it was a really a great conversation. The recruiter was on the West coast, but the job was on the East coast close to me. It would've been commutable for me at a prestigious, well, I'll just say it's a specialty type of a school, but a very prestigious one, and it was a great title.

[00:35:41] Outstanding pay. I was very excited for it and I, I made it in that case through a few rounds of talking with the search companies. I think they talked to me three times before they passed my name to the institution in question. I think they supplied maybe 15 names for consideration. And ultimately when they [00:36:00] looked at my credentials, they decided to go with a small subset of those 15.

[00:36:03] And I didn't make the cut, so that was hard. But you don't hit every pitch you swing at. So I was ready for some of that. And then a search firm I was friendly with called and said, Hey, Bryce, there's a small liberal arts campus that is on the edge of your commutable distance. We think you, we like you for the role.

[00:36:24] They're looking for a vice president for marketing. We'd love to see your application. So they had it the next day. And I went quite far in that search. I was number two. I was next door to the person who eventually got it. And that was a, a long process. A lot of interviews with committees of entire, more than an entire day on campus.

[00:36:45] And then a couple of others where I. I had a couple of search firms sort of kick the tires with me. These were out of region for the most part, and then I got ghosted by one, and then a couple others just didn't get very far before I accepted a position. And then there was the position that I did [00:37:00] get, which was the sort of happy ending that I had been hoping for.

[00:37:04] Jaime Hunt: And do you feel comfortable telling us about that where you are today? 

[00:37:08] Bryce Hoffman: Oh, sure. A hundred percent comfortable. Because this, you know, dovetails into the conversation about how do you talk about this? Yeah. When you're in the, in the interview process. So one of the couple of resumes I had sent out earlier in the fall was to the University of New Hampshire, which was a direct competitor.

[00:37:25] To UMass Lowell and happens to be in a commutable distance from my home. It's an assistant vice president role for integrated marketing, and all I knew about their structure was that they had a new chief marketing officer from outside of higher ed. Hmm, interesting. And I was interested by that, but I sent the resume in October and I hadn't heard anything.

[00:37:46] I thought, okay, well maybe there's nothing going on there, but I did know one person who worked there. Because she had worked for me for a couple of months when I was brand new at Lowell, and then she went to the nh. So I [00:38:00] contacted her, this member of my professional network, I said, Hey, a bad thing happened.

[00:38:05] She happened to know anything about this search. And she said she would check and she put my name in front of the CMO and said, you really ought to look for this person's resume. Now, this is a tip from me to everybody who's out there. You know how when you go in the applicant tracking system and they have all those annoying little boxes that ask you to sort of rewrite your resume?

[00:38:24] Yep. And you think, I'm not gonna do that. I just gave you my resume. Yep. So I didn't do that. I just wrote C resume in all the boxes. They haven't confirmed this to me, but I think that that's why my application didn't make it through their screener. So they had to go find it and they said, oh, this person was in the pool.

[00:38:44] We didn't even know he was in the pool. And from that point, UNH scheduled an interview and it was an interesting process, not what I'm really accustomed to in our industry, but I actually liked it. I had an hour with the cmo, the hiring authority, right away. And [00:39:00] it was a get to know you. It was not a high pressure.

[00:39:02] It was a conversation. We talked about branding, we talked about leadership. Very much liked the way she handled herself, but I think that she was impressed with what I had to offer and I thought, well, that was, that was good. That felt positive. And I talked to my spouse afterward and said, boy, I could just really see myself working for her.

[00:39:20] I think that we'd probably make a pretty good team. And then you go into the, what happens always in higher ed is like time passes because it does, because people have other things to do than complete their searches. So a couple weeks go by and then they say, okay, we'd like to have you maybe do a. Panel, like a A teams meeting or a Zoom call with this group of people who were in the department.

[00:39:41] So I did that and then I did a similar one with campus stakeholders and I thought I was in the middle of a process. And then the next day, or a couple of days later, it was really quick, they sort of said, we're checking your references in anticipation of an offer and you would not believe the jubilation in my [00:40:00] house.

[00:40:00] Jaime Hunt: I bet, 

[00:40:02] Bryce Hoffman: I bet. Yeah. We didn't have to move. You know, it was just the perfect thing at the perfect time. And so we had talked, you and I have talked a couple of times about how do you talk about what happened to you. Yeah. When you're in the job search. And I would say that early on, especially when I was talking with the search firms, I was probably too forward about it.

[00:40:25] It was raw for me. It was fresh. I felt like I had the Scarlet letter on me. The sort of damaged goods tag that would follow me around for the rest of my life, and there was no reason for that other than my own emotional reaction to it. Hadn't had time to.

[00:40:45] Search firms are wonderful because they've seen everything and they were able to give me some of these individuals that they were working for, people who had jobs open, but they were providing me with some really valuable career counseling on the side, um, because they wanna [00:41:00] present great candidates and I wanted to present as a great candidate for them.

[00:41:03] Mm-hmm. And one of. My ways of going through the world is I would never want anyone to think that I've misrepresented myself. Mm-hmm. So I tend to be over precise about things like this. So on February 1st, when I was no longer an employee, I changed my LinkedIn that day. Wow. Which was in the middle of these interviews, and I thought, okay, but I'm not gonna lie.

[00:41:25] And when I talked with my now supervisor at the University of New Hampshire, at the end of our conversation, I said, I need to tell you. That my status since the time that I applied has changed that I am in the process of separating from UMass Lowell. There was a, a leadership reorganization and they elected to, you know, send me on my way, and she was outstanding.

[00:41:54] What she said to me was, thank you for telling me that. I know how [00:42:00] hard it is to say something like that, and I appreciate how vulnerable you're being right now. You didn't need to tell me that I wouldn't have asked. Hmm. And it does not affect the way I view you or your candidacy or your ability to do this job.

[00:42:15] Hmm. So I know that I'm talking right now to a lot of people who make hiring decisions. That is how you handle that. That's the template. If you liked them before, you should like them still. Yeah. 

[00:42:29] Jaime Hunt: That is honestly, I thought this episode was gonna be beneficial for people who might be in the same situation that you were in.

[00:42:38] But as we're talking, I'm thinking that this should be helpful for the people who are also hiring and to think about, we don't know why there's a gap in the resume, and it's. Very likely that it isn't by fault of the candidate or even if it, even if there was something that didn't go right or there was a personality conflict or something like that, [00:43:00] that doesn't mean that same personality conflict would exist in the new role, or we just don't know.

[00:43:06] And we've gotta give people grace. And I think in the roles that we're in price, these are so vulnerable. Like these are roles where you could have. One little enrollment slump and be out the door. You could have one crisis that didn't go the way a temperamental president wants it to have gone. You're out the door.

[00:43:27] You could have any number of things. Somebody thinking they wanna bring somebody they worked with in the past to your, to their institution, and they have to get rid of the person that's there to be able to do that. Like, there's just so many reasons why somebody could have a gap in their resume. And, and I, I do think that.

[00:43:45] Um, I, I, I posted on Twitter about once, if somebody's applying for a job in April and they started their current job in March, I do wanna know why are you already looking to leave your current job? But I [00:44:00] think we can be really hard on people and I'm, I'm kind of glad that I learned early in my career back in, in 2001 when I had that experience that I didn't do anything wrong and I had about a.

[00:44:12] Four month gap in my resume as a result of that. And that didn't change who I was or what I offered to employers. Just like this situation didn't change that for you. 

[00:44:22] Bryce Hoffman: That's exactly right. And like you said, it's to be in marketing and higher education is much more vulnerable than it used to be. I mean, we all look like geniuses when there were more students every year and we could all enroll the classes that we wanted.

[00:44:35] But at least in the northeastern United States, that's getting tougher and tougher. The demographic cliff is upon us. We have skepticism about the value of a college degree. We have the highest concentration of four year institutions in the country where I am. Yeah. And everybody is super hungry to meet those enrollment numbers, spending more, trying new things.

[00:44:59] [00:45:00] It's a very dynamic environment and in some ways it's, it's really invigorating to be. In a place where your work really truly matters. Yeah. To the, to the future of the institution. But I think it's very easy and very tempting for a leader to say, I think the problem that we have is marketing. 

 

[00:45:20] Jaime Hunt: Mm-hmm.

[00:45:22] Well, I think that that sort of stems a little bit from everybody thinks they know how to do marketing, so it's like, well, I wouldn't do it the way that that. Jamie's doing it, so Jamie must be doing it wrong and sort of discounting that two decades of experience doing it because you think it's easy or you think, oh, everybody knows how to market.

[00:45:44] Yeah, it's, it's a tough, we're in tough positions and I, I think about. In the private sector, CMOs are, and marketing people are just as, as vulnerable as we are. And so it's like, why did I choose this profession? I dunno. 

[00:45:59] Bryce Hoffman: Well, [00:46:00] and I feel lucky that, uh, ultimately I was hired by a CMO who came from industry, from outside of higher education, where somebody who had my, you know, what happened to me is not that unusual.

[00:46:11] Yeah. It didn't occur to her that that would be a problem in higher ed or if it did occur to her, then she was able to look past it. I think one thing that was hard for me, And the job search though was I think to be a good candidate for any position, you have to get really emotionally invested in it.

[00:46:27] Mm-hmm. And the hours of preparation to be the best candidate in their pool can sometimes be really extraordinary. And I don't know any other way though, to be a candidate in the search than to be all in. Yeah. And it's hard for your family though, because you're like, well, If I get this one, we're moving to Minnesota.

[00:46:46] Right. You know, I've got a teenager who doesn't wanna move to Minnesota. 

[00:46:50] Jaime Hunt: Yeah. I don't blame him being from Minnesota. And there, there's 

[00:46:54] Bryce Hoffman: a lot of, we're in Minnesota. Minneapolis. Oh, okay. So that's where we were gonna be if at [00:47:00] this position had worked out, but it, it didn't. So that was okay. You dodged bullet, but you had these conversations, okay, well are we gonna have to sell the house?

[00:47:07] Are we gonna have to do this and that? Yeah. And you. Participate in a lot of alternate futures for yourself, and it's very unsettling, but it's also on some levels kinda exciting. So, I dunno where I was going with that. I just thought I'd say it. 

[00:47:22] Jaime Hunt: So what tips would you give to someone going through the job hunt process after a termination?

[00:47:30] Bryce Hoffman: So, in addition to just generally making sure that your, your network and your sort of application materials haven't atrophied. Over the years, and if they have, maybe pay a little attention, give them a little cleanup. I found that we all hear from search firms. Mm-hmm. I talk to them even when I'm not interested in the role.

[00:47:51] Mm-hmm. I will try to, At least hear what they have to say. Make sure they know who I am and it's, it's not because I'm always looking for the next thing, it's [00:48:00] because I want that robust network. Mm-hmm. Of people who know who I am. If I can help them, if I can help them find somebody who is looking for another role right now, so much the better.

[00:48:08] Yeah. They were some of my best resources, although I ended up in a position that hadn't hired an external firm. And like I said, the A person who only worked with me for a matter of a few weeks ended up saving my application at U N H. So Laura, you know who you are. Thank you so much. You've been on a million hiring committees if you've had any kind of career in higher ed.

[00:48:29] So don't ask surprised when they ask you the questions that you've asked everybody in all of your searches, right? So make sure you've got your three minute narrative about who you are and what you're about. Know your leadership style cause they're gonna ask about that. You wanna be able to talk about your approach to diversity, because that always comes up and it's important.

[00:48:49] You need to know how you're gonna respond to the demographic cliff. And then I try to take it one step further and make sure that they know that I've read, if not memorized, their common dataset that I've been on their [00:49:00] campus, if they're anywhere near my home that I have looked at, who all their leaders are and what their resumes are.

[00:49:06] I make it a point of being the most prepared person in any in interview I walk into. Now this results in them telling you a lot of things that they think you're hearing for the first time that you already know. Yeah. But that's okay. Yeah. And you know, you don't wanna be kind of like a SmartyAnts about it, but you can find ways to inject into the interview your level of preparation.

[00:49:26] Yeah. Even if it's just in the 15 minutes for questions at the end, it's always like three minutes because everything goes over.

[00:49:35] And the other thing that I would say for good or for ill, I always. Told myself I was not gonna try to contort myself into who I thought they wanted. I'm gonna show them who they're gonna get and let them make an honest choice based on that. Mm-hmm. And I take the risk of showing that I have a point of view and that I have a personality cuz that's who they're gonna get.

[00:49:56] And I, I would rather have them say no thanks to that upfront, then [00:50:00] find out later and say, you're not who we thought you 

[00:50:01] were. 

[00:50:02] Jaime Hunt: Hundred percent agree because you need to be your authentic self at work. I think I tweeted the other day that we have hired, we've had about a dozen searches in the past eight months as I'm building up my team, and it's been 108 different interviews in that process.

[00:50:21] 108. Oh wow. Eight. And I've been in many of those 108. And I'm always shocked at the people who are completely like taken aback by a common question, like, what's your leadership style like, huh. I've never thought about that. And then I also, Alan Stein Jr. Says, preparation is separation. And you can tell the candidates that prepare for the interviews and it's always, they just get a little extra star on their chart because they've read your strategic plan, they've visited your department website, they've researched you.

[00:50:56] In my case, they've listened to my podcast. So they're working in subtle [00:51:00] callbacks to that. It's not that it's time consuming, but it's not that hard, that information all publicly available cuz we are. Universities. We're not Lockheed Martin hiding our trade secrets. You know, it's just a lot to say. 

[00:51:14] Bryce Hoffman: It's amazing how out there it is.

[00:51:16] And it's also amazing how similar the challenges are from institution to institution. We're all unique, but we're not as unique as we think we are in certain respects. No, absolutely 

[00:51:30] Jaime Hunt: not. Is there anything that you else you would want people to know? 

[00:51:35] Bryce Hoffman: Oh gosh. I think. If this happens to you and it will happen to somebody.

[00:51:43] One of the reasons I wanted to do this was to provide a template because I went looking for one and I couldn't find one, anybody who would speak about it openly. So this is me trying to provide a service to people in our kinds of roles and to help people puzzle out what to do next. But if this [00:52:00] happens to you, the thing that you have to keep centered in your mind is that.

[00:52:06] The person you thought you were the day before you got your bad news, how capable you felt, how experienced the kind of leader that you saw yourself as one person's opinion on one day in your life does change your employment status, but it does not change who you are, and you have to go forward with that confidence that you were doing things right to have the career that you had up to that point.

[00:52:34] And you didn't necessarily do anything wrong to have this situation occur to you. Now, if you're let go for actually doing something wrong, that's different. But when you're on the other end of a change that isn't necessarily about you, then you need to believe the best things that people say about you and that you believe about yourself.

[00:52:54] And it's not always easy. There are moments when you question, but you have to keep coming back to that. [00:53:00] 

[00:53:01] Jaime Hunt: That is, that's really awesome insight, and I hope that helps anybody listening right now. I am confident that there are a lot of people listening to this who are in the boat that you were in just a few months ago, because that's the nature of the work and the nature of what happens and yeah, I, I think this will be really helpful for people and I really appreciate your willingness to talk about this.

[00:53:22] And Bryce pitched this topic to me, I think back in December-ish, December, January, timeline. And I thought it was just a tremendous opportunity for people to see, like you said, that template, what do you do in this situation? 

[00:53:37] Bryce Hoffman: It was somewhere in there, and I remember when I pitched it, I said, I won't do it until I have my happy ending, because I was still looking, I was still looking, and I, I thought it might work out, but I wasn't sure.

[00:53:47] And the other thing I, I would say is that you put your heart and soul into the institution you work for. You have to be good at the job. To be a good marketer, you have to believe in what you're marketing, [00:54:00] and I still believe in the institution of UMass Lowell. I did not spend eight and a half years of the middle of my career building up that institution to have anything bad to say about it.

[00:54:16] Now it's a wonderful school that provides education to. A lot of people who couldn't get one in another kind of institution. And, but part of me will always be a river hawk. A bigger part of me right now is a wild cat, and that's fine too. And they were, in the end, as generous as I think you could expect somebody to be who has decided to make a change.

[00:54:36] And I appreciated that. And I felt like I was afforded a certain amount of dignity in the process. I wasn't perp, walked out the door. I didn't have to surrender my machine. I didn't have to. Go through some sort of humiliation. It was just a change that they wanted to make. And we talked about how to make that happen and, and it happened and I didn't like it.

[00:54:59] I didn't agree with [00:55:00] it, but I cannot really fault how they went about it beyond the fact that I think that there was a better decision they could have made overall. Yeah. 

[00:55:10] Jaime Hunt: Well, I really appreciate your openness, your candor, your honesty, your vulnerability. And I remember when you messaged me that you got a job and I was like, oh my God, that was so fast.

[00:55:20] That was awesome. I was so happy 

[00:55:22] Bryce Hoffman: for you. I was extremely fortunate and I will say that it is so far a fantastic new opportunity. We are building something special at the University of New Hampshire, and I'm so proud to be a 

[00:55:32] part 

[00:55:32] Jaime Hunt: of it. I, I very lucky to have you. So if people wanna find you and, and maybe say, Hey, can I pick your brain about what you did?

[00:55:40] Where can they find you? 

[00:55:42] Bryce Hoffman: They can find me on LinkedIn. I keep a pretty low profile on social media other than that, but I'm Bryce, Bryce t Hoffman on LinkedIn and I'd be happy to private privately talk with anybody who's concerned about the situation they're in or who just wants to add to their network.[00:56:00] 

[00:56:00] I'm game for all of it. I think that in our industry we have to create community too. 

[00:56:04] Jaime Hunt: I absolutely agree, and if you wanna connect with me, I'm always happy to tell you about job opportunities that I'm aware of. You know, we, we get those head hunter emails and, and phone calls now and then, and happy to share any.

[00:56:19] Insights or connections to people in my network. After 20 years in this industry, I know people all over the place, so I'm happy to help make connections and you can find me on Twitter at Jamie Hunt imc, J I M E H, UT imc. I'm also on LinkedIn and Jamie Hunt. And I hope that you will have some conversation about this episode on either of those channels using the hashtag higher ed cmo.

[00:56:44] And thank you again, Bryce. And for those of you listening and gainfully employed in higher ed, let's go bust some silos.

[00:56:56] Zach Busekrus: Hey y'all. Zach here from Enroll five. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Confessions [00:57:00] of a Higher Ed CMO with Jamie Hunt. If you liked this episode, do us a huge favor and hit that follow and subscribe button below. Furthermore, if you've got just two minutes to spare, we would greatly appreciate you leaving a rating and a review of this show on Apple Podcasts.

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