Amy Feind Reeves is the Founder and CEO of JobCoachAmy, where she leverages her 25+ years of experience as an executive and hiring manager to help professionals at all levels of their careers find and keep jobs that make them happy. Her corporate consulting practice focuses on career coaching for Millennials and Generation Z, as well as consulting on practical approaches to implementing improved Millennial and Generation Z management practices.  

As a highly sought-after expert, speaker, and career coach, Amy works globally with clients across a wide variety of industries including finance, consulting, media, consumer products, technology, and healthcare. Her functional expertise–gained from nearly two decades of working with companies and organizations to reduce costs, increase revenue, and improve processes–is significant across all areas of business operations. 

She has been featured in countless media including the Wall Street Journal, BusinessInsider.comYahoo.com News, Upjourney.comHive.com, The Baltimore Sun, Chicago Herald Tribune, Yahoo News, and Job-Hunt.org. As a speaker, Amy has spoken at City Year, Dartmouth Alumni Women’s Leadership Conference, is also a regular speaker for undergraduate and new alumni groups, as well as is a speaker at women’s conferences and Canyon Ranch. 

Prior to focusing full-time on coaching in 2012, Amy held a variety of positions including commercial banker, global management consultant, entrepreneur, corporate executive, and non-profit executive. Her long-held passion for supporting others in their careers comes from the difficult time she had Amy found her way after college and when she needed to change careers after finding herself a single mother.

College to Career, Explained: Tools, Skills & Confidence for Your Job Search, Amy’s first book, will debut this summer. It provides insightful strategies and common-sense tactics to help job seekers make a smooth transition from college to career. Using a proven methodology and unique insight that only someone who has sat on the other side of the interviewing table for many years can provide, College to Career, Explained is ultimately for the young professional or new grad looking for career guidance, or the more seasoned professional looking for pointers or to brush up on basics.

Committed to helping improve her community, Amy served as a board member of The Philanthropy Connection, a women’s collective giving organization, as well as an organizational development advisor to the founding Board Chair. She established a model for young women executives to become philanthropists which has been replicated in other similar organizations and personally mentored many young women to help them reach their highest potential. 

Can you share your professional background?

I created my business to provide a service that I know from personal experience is not out there in the marketplace. When I graduated from college, I did not have a particularly marketable major or any connections to the Wall Street jobs that I wanted. I floundered trying to find my way. So, I spent a year as an admin, meanwhile learning about the jobs I wanted and teaching myself how to get one. Which I did, and quickly learned that I was good at it and liked it. So why had I failed so miserably the year before trying to get the same jobs? I just did not know how to do it. And my passion was born for helping others do the same. It’s a strange passion, but it is also very rewarding. The perspective I offer now is that of a hiring manager, and that is how what I offer is unique.

We all have myths and misconceptions about success. What are some myths or misconceptions that you used to believe?

I’ve redefined success in each of my career stages. In my first career as a banker, I had a 10-state territory on the West Coast where I flew first class for one week a month. I had never been West of Pennsylvania until then! I worked with big oil and gas companies that gave me tours of their private art galleries, and mining companies that took me on their private planes I was thrilled with my success. But I wasn’t learning anything after a while so the perks faded quickly. After business school, I was in the distinctly unfashionable heavy metals and chemicals group of a consulting firm and spent months at a time living in Hampton Inns in remote parts of the country five days a week BUT loved the challenging work and good paycheck. After a while, the constant travel took a toll, as it does on most people. Eventually, I think every professional needs to find the balance that works for them. Whether, it is travel, intellectual engagement, and salary. Almost all my mid-career clients come to me seeking to redefine this for themselves in a new way.

How has your definition of success changed?

Well, I’m an 80’s girl so I cringe at the way I used to think success came with lots of expensive, monogrammed “stuff”. If you had asked me to define luxury back then, I probably would have said something you could buy or wear, and I now define luxury as being able to have my coffee outside in the morning in my pajamas with no time constraint. I probably would have said success meant rising to the top of an organization and wearing great suits, then hosting Ina Garten-like parties at my weekend home. Now I love having a small company, not wearing suits, and don’t even like taking care of the home I have, much less having two.

The pandemic, in many ways, was a time of collective self-reflection. What changes do you believe we need to make as a society to access success post-pandemic?

The change we need to accept is that we must spend our time and attention as carefully as we spend our money. Our time and attention are just as precious, and perhaps even more so because they are truly finite and cannot be returned.

I hear people talking about the resentment they are starting to feel about having their calendars fill up with events now that people are starting to stack up meetings, and get-togethers again. Of course, we all missed human connection, but I think we all started to appreciate the downtime as well.

I am hopeful. It is not easy, but I find the older I get, the less I care about doing the things I’m “supposed to do” and more about doing what I want to do.

What do you see as the unexpected positives in the pandemic? We would love to hear a few of your stories or examples.

It went from being difficult to see your favorite friends to being very, very easy — by Zoom of course, but still…. And we could be creative by having people sign on wearing their most ridiculous hat or holding up the most embarrassing food they had secreted away in their house. And we could usually schedule with just one email!

My daughter and her friends got very creative as well — one birthday party was in an empty parking lot where everyone brought birthday cakes to eat out of the trunk of a car and put on roller skates. It felt like when we were all broke and had to make our own fun. I enjoyed that part.

Another unexpected positive, maybe more unique, came in the form of people being honest about their family pandemic dynamics. My family is nerdy so one of the things I did was buy a deck of flashcards with the flags of the world on them. I thought we could memorize together over dinners. We never opened the box. My entire book club later confessed to planning family activities that turned into everything from non-starters to screaming matches. All those families who were posting about how close they were getting as a result of the pandemic? That night we realized plenty of us were just plain getting on each other’s nerves. And it was ok.

We’re all looking for answers about how to be successful now. Could you please share “5 Ways To Redefine Success Now?”

By being kind to yourself. If you couldn’t exercise today because of the demands of your toddler and your job, you can find time to exercise later in the week.

By not comparing yourself to others. There is always going to be someone who gets to the stage of life you are aiming for ahead of you, or a new job you would have loved, or that nod from the boss you covet. It’s not about them, but rather, it’s about you.

By being patient. Someone else may have what you think you want, but you might have dodged a bullet. Timing may bring something better your way. Focus on doing the best job you can, and that success will be rewarded as well as rewarding.

By building success into ALL parts of your life. My “buckets” are family, friends, community and philanthropy, health and wellbeing, and career. What are your buckets? How do you divide your time amongst them? How do you define success for each of them?

By thinking of success as a continuum not as a snapshot. Everyone has successes and failures, but that does not make them a success or a failure. A bad day, month, or, quarter does not make you any less successful in the scheme of things than a good day, month, or quarter. Careers, and life, are long. Do your best every day, then let it go.

By being kind to yourself. If you couldn’t exercise today because of the demands of your toddler and your job, you can find time to exercise later in the week.

By not comparing yourself to others. There is always going to be someone who gets to the stage of life you are aiming for ahead of you, or a new job you would have loved, or that nod from the boss you covet. It’s not about them, but rather, it’s about you.

By being patient. Someone else may have what you think you want, but you might have dodged a bullet. Timing may bring something better your way. Focus on doing the best job you can, and that success will be rewarded as well as rewarding.

By building success into ALL parts of your life. My “buckets” are family, friends, community and philanthropy, health and wellbeing, and career. What are your buckets? How do you divide your time amongst them? How do you define success for each of them?

By thinking of success as a continuum not as a snapshot. Everyone has successes and failures, but that does not make them a success or a failure. A bad day, month, or quarter does not make you any less successful in the scheme of things than does a good day, month, or quarter. Careers, and life, are long. Do your best every day, then let it go.

By being kind to yourself. If you couldn’t exercise today because of the demands of your toddler and your job, you can find time to exercise later in the week.

By not comparing yourself to others. There is always going to be someone who gets to the stage of life you are aiming for ahead of you, or a new job you would have loved, or that nod from the boss you covet. It’s not about them, but rather, it’s about you.

By being patient. Someone else may have what you think you want, but you might have dodged a bullet. Timing may bring something better your way. Focus on doing the best job you can, and that success will be rewarded as well as rewarding.

By building success into ALL parts of your life. My “buckets” are family, friends, community and philanthropy, health and wellbeing, and career. What are your buckets? How do you divide your time amongst them? How do you define success for each of them?

By thinking of success as a continuum not as a snapshot. Everyone has successes and failures, but that does not make them a success or a failure. A bad day, month or quarter does not make you any less successful in the scheme of things than a good day, month, or quarter. Careers, and life, are long. Do your best every day, then let it go.

Is there a person in the world with whom you would love to have a private meal, and why? 

Your founder! Sir Richard Branson as I met him once and THAT guy knows how to enjoy life! Plus, he is extremely down-to-earth and friendly. Adam Grant or Daniel Pink- I love their work and look forward to any content they produce. Also, I would love to talk to Annie Duke and her fascinating book Thinking in Bets.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

I’m at www.jobcoachamy.com and also Facebook.com/jobcoachamy, @jobcoachamyf on Twitter, (Instagram), (Pinterest), and YouTube, and my first book College to Career, Explained is now available.–