How They Did It | Rosie McCarthy From Human Resources to YouTube to Career Coaching
This post has the key topics and resources mentioned in this episode. The original interview is published on Work In Progress Podcast.
Rosie grew up in New Zealand and soon after starting a career in Human Resources, she met her French boyfriend (now husband) and her world turned upside down. In a matter of six months, she decided to move to Paris to be with him — but that didn’t mean she went without a plan. She got into a master’s program which allowed her to advance her studies in HR and intern while being paid. After that she found roles in various sized companies from startups to big corporate giants like L’Oreal, all in the field of Human Resources. This is when she got excited at the prospect of starting a business online, which prompted her to start a YouTube channel “Not Even French” about two years ago. In mid 2019 she left L’Oreal to start Badass Careers, an online career coaching business that combined her passion in HR and expertise in running a successful YouTube channel. Currently her income is made 100% online and she is able to travel between France and New Zealand and have autonomy over her own schedule.
Sounds like a dream, doesn’t it? How did she do it? What obstacles did she overcome in order to achieve a balanced lifestyle and maintain a good living standard? We go over all these, plus some networking tips and tricks for the networkers out there. So stay tuned!
This is a summary that accompanies the original interview published on Work In Progress Podcast. Here we highlight the main takeaway and some useful resources. Listen to the full interview here.
This post has the key topics and resources mentioned in this episode. The original interview is published on Work In Progress Podcast.
How Rosie Made The Switch
- Rosie first got excited about the prospect of making money online because she was reading more and more about it. She started “Not Even French” about two years ago and in two months she had about 300 subscribers; shortly after, one video went viral then another one went viral. Four months in and she had 7000 subscribers. At this point she started earning money and realized that it was possible to make a living from online sources [36:10]
- After getting married she knew she needed to adjust lifestyle to be able to travel between France and New Zealand, and it wouldn’t be possible if she worked at a big corporate. She had the idea to start an online coaching business because she could use both her expertise in HR and experience in running a YouTube channel.
- Rosie was well prepared for the launch of her career coaching business. She left L’Oréal in June 2019 and coached clients for free for three months to collect testimonials. Duirng this period she coached about 20 clients, worked on her website and business plan. She officially launched her coaching in September 2019
What Rosie Does Now
- 100% of her income comes from online: she does career coaching, HR consulting (one of her clients is L’Oréal), and YouTube channel “Not Even French” all contribute to her income. She is much happier because of the autonomy on her time and she is able to schedule things whenever she wants.
- A typical coaching session with Rosie looks like this:
- Career Clarity
- Career Manifesto: what you want and don’t want for the next career (your career “wish list”)
- Create applications for job listings (for advertised and “hidden” positions). For this, she goes above and beyond; the idea is to teach clients to become high performing job seekers. For example, create a two-minute video pitch for a job they want
What Obstacles Rosie Faced When She Switched
- The move was BIG: across the globe from southern to northern hemisphere. Although she thought it was moving to another developed country, “what could go wrong?” It turned out to be very tough. The culture was completely different, the way they approach risk, hold meetings, etc are all completely different to her. “I didn’t know what I didn’t know!”
- However, she was able to channel the cultural shock into her youtube channel that became successful [12:15]
- She looked at each change as an experiment and really took note of what worked for her and what didn’t. Rosie talked about how knowing her WHY and being extremely self aware hugely helped her navigate through changes and obstacles [24:00]
What Rosie Did Before The Switch
- Originally Rosie thought she was going to become a doctor. She got into first year medicine but decided she didn’t want to do this but STILL wanted to help people [3:30]. She then worked with a career counselor/coach at the university to help her figure out what she should do. She took several tests: Meyers Briggs type indicator and learned that she would be best suited for careers such as: coach, HR, and psychologist. Rosie decided to do double degree in HR and psychology [4:50]
- Started working part time in recruiting when she was still in school (about 20 hours weekly) and she got into a two-year long program in HR where she worked in a different function in HR every six months. These include training, development, talent management [6:00]
- Rosie met her husband in Auckland, New Zealand (Her “Oh shit” moment №1). She wanted to move to France, but due to visa/language issues she decided to do a master’s degree in Human Resources in France which allowed her to stay in her path and move to France [7:20]. This took her just over one year (and it was paid for). Afterwards she didn’t stay with the company because she was still new to the French language, she needed to work in a place with mostly English [17:55]
- Rosie got a job at a startup that allowed her to work in English. The startup was headquartered in France and expanded internationally so employees were from all around the world. She joined as the HR manager for the international employees. While she LOVED the startup culture (she doesn’t like traditional corporate prefers the laid back environment and dress code, etc), the job wasn’t stretching her enough[18:45]
- After the startup Rosie worked at L’Oréal for four years and decided to get married (Her “Oh shit” moment № 2) [9:00]. She realized she would have to travel back and forth for family so she can’t continue to work in corporate for too long (it would be hard to take time off). Rosie’s solution: she wanted to work for herself and as a result, started her side hustle YouTube channel which turned out to be successful very quickly [36:10]
Rosie’s Advice On Networking And Transitioning Into A New Role
- How to break into a role, internally and externally, when you don’t have much relevant experience [27:14]: (1) One of the most fundamental knowledge you should have about yourself is your strengths because these come in handy especially in situations where you are seeking opportunities or a different career but lack experience. Always know your WHY [28:40] (2) volunteer to help in your free time (3) build up your network and get introduced to hidden roles through referral [33:10]
- How to network if you don’t know what to say: surprisingly, LinkedIn can be a good tool for this purpose [33:45]
Where To Find Rosie Online
Rosie’s Next Career Goals
- Eventually, Rosie wants to create video-based online courses with subjects in Human Resources to help people figure out careers they love
