Control Your Career: Career Growth and Strategy for Ambitious Professionals

Control Your Career is a career strategy podcast for professionals who want to make better career decisions, navigate workplace challenges, and take an active role in shaping what's next.Hosted by Julia Toothacre, career strategist and creator of the Control Your Career framework, the show explores career growth, workplace dynamics, leadership, career transitions, and the trends shaping today's world of work.Drawing on more than 15 years of experience in career development, Julia combines practical career strategy with a real-world perspective to help listeners navigate today's workplace and build careers they don't leave to chance.Topics include:→ Career strategy and long-term career growth→ Career advancement, promotions, and increasing your influence at work→ Workplace relationships, office politics, organizational dynamics, and difficult managers→ Leadership, executive presence, visibility, and sponsorship→ Career change, career crossroads, and major career decisions→ Alig

Control Your Career: Career Growth and Strategy for Ambitious Professionals is a business podcast hosted by Julia Toothacre, with 170 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

Julia Toothacre hosts Control Your Career: Career Growth and Strategy for Ambitious Professionals, a business show with 170 episodes published.

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  Episode #171

  How to Shape Workplace Culture Without Being the Boss with Natalie Johnson

  Sep 8, 202651 min

  Workplace culture is often treated as something leadership or HR creates and employees either enjoy or endure. Natalie Johnson sees it differently. Culture exists anywhere people are working together, and every person contributes to it through how they communicate, respond to conflict, support colleagues, handle disagreement, and show up when things get difficult. Natalie joins Julia Toothacre to discuss workplace culture as a career skill. They explore how much influence individual employees actually have, why culture can vary dramatically between teams inside the same organization, what happens when a leadership change alters an environment you once loved, and how to recognize when you have done what you can and it may be time to leave. They also examine a difficult workplace problem that organizations sometimes avoid: the high performer whose behavior damages everyone around them. What We Discuss Why workplace culture is created through relationships and behavior, not perks or company initiatives How team culture can differ significantly from the broader organizational culture What it means to treat culture awareness and influence as a career skill How your "inner operating system" affects the energy and behavior you bring into a workplace What employees can do when a new leader changes a previously healthy team culture How to know when discomfort is part of growth and when staying requires becoming someone you do not want to be Why protecting a toxic high performer can send a damaging message to the rest of the organization About Natalie Johnson Natalie Johnson is the Chief Visionary Officer of ViDL Work and co-author of Leading the Culture Journey. She leads business development, strategy, and innovation while also working directly with organizations through keynotes, training, coaching, and culture-change initiatives. With 30 years of experience in human performance, resilience, and leadership development, Natalie brings a practical, human-centered approach to workplace culture. She holds a master's degree in Wellness Promotion and is an industry-recognized performance coach, keynote speaker, Certified Dare to Lead™ Facilitator, and Wellcoaches™ Certified Coach. Connect with Natalie LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natalie-johnson-speaks/ Instagram: @culture_speaker @ViDLWork YouTube: ViDL Work Natalie Johnson Speaks: www.nataliejohnsonspeaks.com ViDL Work: www.vidlwork.com Leading the Culture Journey Book: www.vidlwork.com/culturejourneybook Control Your Career Read The Blog: https://ridethetidecollective.com/2026/09/08/shape-workplace-culture-without-being-the-boss/ Explore all episodes: https://ridethetidecollective.com/podcast/ Connect with Julia on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/juliakrussell/ Visit the website: https://ridethetidecollective.com Get career resources: https://ridethetidecollective.com/free/

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  Episode #170

  Career Compromise: What Are You Giving Up and What Are You Getting Back?

  Sep 1, 202651 min

  Every career involves trade-offs. You may take a longer commute for better pay, give up flexibility for a promotion, accept fewer responsibilities for more stability, or stay in a role because your life requires predictability right now. A compromise can be a reasonable decision when you make it and still stop working for you later. In this episode, Julia Toothacre looks at how career compromises accumulate, how to distinguish a preference from a genuine non-negotiable, and what can happen when a temporary trade-off quietly becomes permanent. She also explains why feeling frustrated at work does not automatically mean you need a new job. The more useful question is what you are compromising, what you are receiving in return, and whether that exchange still makes sense for who you are now. What Julia Discusses Why some level of compromise is inevitable in almost every career decision How values, preferences, personal priorities, and life circumstances affect what you can reasonably trade Why a compromise that worked five years ago may no longer work now How career compromises can accumulate without you noticing Signs that you may be spending more energy tolerating your work than doing it Why high achievers often assume they are the problem when the environment may also be contributing Three questions to determine whether your current career trade-offs still make sense Resources Get Julia's career resources and values assessment: https://ridethetidecollective.com/free/ Explore all episodes: https://ridethetidecollective.com/podcast/ Connect with Julia on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/juliakrussell/ Visit Ride the Tide Collective: https://ridethetidecollective.com Read The Blog: https://ridethetidecollective.com/2026/09/01/career-compromise-what-are-you-giving-up/

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  Episode #169

  What job seekers get wrong about hiring with Tank Rhodes, Part 2

  Aug 25, 20261h 28m

  A job description can look specific, but that does not mean everyone involved in the hiring process agrees on what the company needs. A candidate can meet the stated qualifications and still lose out to someone with a referral, a particular background, a degree the job may not require, or a profile that better matches what a hiring manager has in mind. In Part 2 of Julia Toothacre's conversation with Francis "Tank" Rhodes, they continue examining assumptions about hiring from both the candidate and employer side. Tank draws on his experience in recruiting, HR systems, and hiring while also discussing what he has encountered during his own extended job search. The conversation covers AI-generated resumes, degree requirements, hiring bias, networking, referrals, and the growing concern around ghost jobs. What We Discuss Why AI can help with a resume without replacing the candidate's own context, results, and language Why companies do not always have a precise picture of the person they want to hire How implicit preferences and hiring-manager expectations can influence who moves forward Why the "most qualified candidate" is more complicated than it sounds How unnecessary degree requirements can exclude experienced candidates Why networking still matters, while access to networks and referrals is not equal What ghost jobs are and why a posted position does not always mean active hiring About Tank Rhodes Francis "Tank" Rhodes is an HR professional, fractional HR practitioner, and digital creator who has worked in recruiting, hiring, and HR systems. His content examines workplace culture, recruiting practices, corporate behavior, and the assumptions people make about how hiring works. His perspective in this conversation comes from both sides of the process. He has worked inside hiring systems and has also spent several years navigating those systems as a job seeker. Resources Mentioned Tank on TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@hrsagentofchaos Tank on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/rhodes19/ How Applicant Tracking Systems Actually Work in 2026, Huntr https://huntr.co/blog/how-applicant-tracking-systems-work Huntr's 2026 research found that tailored resumes converted to interviews at roughly twice the rate of generic resumes, that two-page resumes performed as well as or better than one-page resumes across experience levels, and that knockout questions were the primary automated filter it identified. Dismissed by Degrees, Harvard Business School https://www.hbs.edu/managing-the-future-of-work/Documents/dismissed-by-degrees.pdf The HBS research examined degree inflation, including employers requiring four-year degrees for jobs that historically did not require them and the resulting barriers for workers without those credentials. A Causal Test of the Strength of Weak Ties https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abl4476 The 2022 study analyzed experiments involving more than 20 million LinkedIn users and found that moderately weak professional ties can increase job mobility, although the effect varies by tie strength and industry. Texas Attorney General Investigation Into LinkedIn and Ghost Jobs https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/news/releases/attorney-general-ken-paxton-investigates-linkedin-advertising-fake-and-misleading-job-opportunities The Texas Attorney General announced an investigation in July 2026 into allegations involving fake or misleading job opportunities and LinkedIn Premium. These remain allegations under investigation, not findings of wrongdoing. Mike's TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@realisticrecruiting Control Your Career Read The Blog: https://ridethetidecollective.com/2026/08/25/what-job-seekers-get-wrong-about-hiring/ Explore all episodes: https://ridethetidecollective.com/podcast/ Connect with Julia on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/juliakrussell/ Visit the website: https://ridethetidecollective.com Get career resources: https://ridethetidecollective.com/free/

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  Episode #168

  Why Is It So Hard to Get Hired in 2026? Job Search Reality with Tank Rhodes, Part 1

  Aug 18, 20261h 4m

  Hiring has always been complicated, but for many professionals, the process feels especially difficult to understand right now. Candidates are navigating long hiring processes, inconsistent communication, changing expectations, conflicting advice, and technology that isn't always well understood. In this episode, Julia Toothacre is joined again by Francis "Tank" Rhodes, a human resources professional who is also experiencing the hiring process from the candidate side. Tank shares an update on his own job search, and the conversation uses his experience to explore some of the larger issues affecting candidates and employers today. Julia and Tank discuss candidate ghosting, what professionalism should look like on both sides of the hiring process, how expectations have changed across generations, and why some of the frustration directed at Gen Z deserves more context. They also examine the disconnect between what companies say they value and what candidates actually experience during the hiring process. The conversation then turns to some of the common assumptions people make about hiring, beginning with one of the biggest: "My resume was probably rejected by the ATS." Tank explains what an applicant tracking system actually does, where automated decisions can happen, and why the hiring process is often more nuanced than the advice circulating online suggests. In this episode: What Tank's ongoing job search has taught him about hiring from the candidate side Why candidate experience and communication continue to be a problem Ghosting and the responsibility employers have to close the loop Professionalism, authenticity, and changing workplace expectations The criticism of Gen Z and what employers may be overlooking Why individual experiences and broader hiring data don't always tell the same story What an ATS actually does with an application Where knockout questions and other automated decisions can affect a candidate Why "the ATS rejected my resume" usually doesn't tell the whole story This is Part 1 of Julia's conversation with Tank. In Part 2, they continue breaking down common assumptions about hiring, including whether companies actually know who they're looking for, whether the most qualified candidate gets the job, how much networking matters, and what's really happening with ghost jobs. Resources Mentioned Tank's Previous Control Your Career Episode Unemployed for over 800 days: Why you may be overlooked for jobs https://ridethetidecollective.com/2025/07/16/season11episode10/ How Applicant Tracking Systems Work in 2026 Huntr's research examines major applicant tracking systems, knockout questions, AI functionality, ATS scoring, resume screening, and recruiter workflows. https://huntr.co/blog/how-applicant-tracking-systems-work Connect With Tank https://beacons.ai/hrsagentofchaos - Everything contact, support, & socials https://www.tankshrcorner.com - Tank's website Connect With Tank on TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@hrsagentofchaos Connect With Tank on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/rhodes19/ Control Your Career Resources Read The Blog: https://ridethetidecollective.com/2026/08/18/why-is-it-so-hard-to-get-hired-2026/ Explore all episodes: https://ridethetidecollective.com/podcast/ Connect with Julia on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/juliakrussell/ Visit the website: https://ridethetidecollective.com Get career resources: https://ridethetidecollective.com/free/

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  Control Your Career: Career Growth and Strategy for Ambitious Professionals

  Questions to Ask Before Changing Careers

  Aug 11, 202613 min

  Thinking about making a major career change? Before you update your resume or start applying for jobs, it's worth taking a step back. Career frustration doesn't always mean you need a new career. Sometimes it's your company, your manager, your work environment, or a shift in your own priorities that's making you question what's next. In this episode, I walk through the questions I encourage professionals to ask before making a significant career move. We'll look at what's happening in your current role, why you're considering a change, how your personality and values influence career satisfaction, and the practical realities that should factor into your decision. If you're wondering whether it's time for a career pivot or simply trying to understand why work doesn't feel right anymore, this conversation will help you evaluate your options before making your next move. In this episode, we discuss: How to identify what's really driving your desire to make a career change. Questions to help you evaluate your current role before deciding to leave. Why your personality, values, and work preferences influence career satisfaction. Financial and personal realities to consider before making a major career move. How long-term employees can evaluate whether they need a new company, a new role, or a different approach. Resources & Links Connect with Julia Toothacre Website: https://ridethetidecollective.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/juliatoothacre Free Career Resources: https://ridethetidecollective.com/free Control Your Career Podcast: https://ridethetidecollective.com/podcast If you enjoyed this episode, please follow the podcast, leave a review, and share it with someone who would find the conversation helpful. Remember: You control your career.

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