The resume gap…it used to feel like it spelled the end of a career, but that’s not true, especially now.

We’re living in a time when career gaps (once seen as red flags) are becoming part of the new professional norm.

Whether it's stepping away to raise a family, navigating layoffs, or hitting pause for personal growth. The question isn’t whether you’ve had a break, it’s how you tell the story of that break.

Returning to the workforce after time away can feel like starting from scratch, but what if your so-called "gap" is your greatest strength? What if the skills you gained while off the corporate track are exactly what hiring managers need right now?

What steps can you take to get call-backs and start landing interviews? How do you package your time away?

In this episode, we’re joined by Erika Price, founder and head coach at Root Cause Coaching. We discuss how professionals can confidently reenter the job market and reshape their career narratives.

She shares how she helps professionals transform “career gaps” into value-packed stories.

Guest Bio

Erika Price is the founder and head coach at Root Cause Coaching. She’s led teams at tech giants like Microsoft and Intel, been both a recruiter and a hiring manager, and navigated her own successful return after a long career break. With 20 years of business experience, Erika has seen firsthand how careers evolve, both the planned pivots and the unexpected ones. While at Microsoft, she created an award-winning coaching program that helped hundreds of colleagues navigate career challenges. Today, she’s a career coach with 500+ hours of coaching experience, working with professionals from Google, Microsoft, PwC, Morgan Stanley, AWS, and more. She helps high-achievers break through roadblocks, step into leadership roles, and find careers that align with their values and strengths. To learn more, visit https://rootcausecoaching.com/.

About Your Host

Vince Holt is the founder and CEO of Management Recruiters of Mercer Island. With 35+ years of industry experience, he is the only MRINetwork team member to win CSAM of the Year, Person of the Year and Lifetime Achievement Awards. In addition to spending time with his wife, children and grandchildren, Vince has raced motorcycles for over 50 years, winning 5 National Championships.

Check out this episode on our website, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify, and don't forget to leave a review if you like what you heard. Your review feeds the algorithm, so our show reaches more people. Thank you!

If technology’s impact on the sales profession was up for debate before, 2020 turned the dial all the way up.

The digital transformation that was already in motion accelerated at lightning speed during the pandemic.

Now, salespeople face a new challenge: making sure screen time doesn’t become a barrier to the face time that drives success.

Technology can make us more efficient, but it will never make us more effective. To thrive, we still have to do everything we did before the digital shift, and then some.

Technology should be a tool, not a trap.

That means resisting the urge to hide behind emails, automation, and slide decks, and instead stepping forward with real conversations, insight-driven questions, and authentic value.

In a world where it’s easier than ever to reach people, the hardest part is still truly connecting with them.

So, how do we leverage technology without losing the human edge? What does it really take to go beyond the elevator pitch and deliver real value?

In this episode, Julie Thomas, President and CEO of ValueSelling Associates, shares how salespeople can maintain and even increase their effectiveness in a tech-driven world.

She breaks down the key questions we should be asking and offers a smarter way to think about technology in sales.

Guest Bio

Julie Thomas is the President and CEO of ValueSelling Associates, Inc. She works with revenue leaders across many industries to help them realize results they never thought possible. She is passionate about guiding revenue organizations through uncertainty and helping them build resilient, engaged teams that drive predictable, sustainable results and create customers for life. Julie is responsible for ValueSelling Associates, Inc’s company’s global expansion and its position as a market leader in on-demand, instructor-led, virtual instructor-led, and hybrid (blended) learning solutions delivered throughout the world in more than 17 languages. In a career spanning more than 24 years, she credits her mastery of the ValueSelling Framework® for her own meteoric rise through the ranks of sales, sales management, and corporate leadership positions. Julie began her sales career at Gartner Group (now Gartner, Inc.) In 1999, she became Vice President of Gartner’s Sales Training for the Americas. Her role included successfully onboarding new sales hires and driving adoption of the ValueSelling Framework. She has extensive experience applying, coaching and reinforcing the ValueSelling Framework, ValueSelling Essentials® and their application to all customer-facing roles across the revenue engine. In 2003, Julie joined ValueSelling Associates as Chief Executive Officer and President. She led the company to become an industry leader in competency- and process-based training for escalating sales performance in business-to-business sales organizations worldwide. She takes pride in the fact that ValueSelling Associates is consistently honored as an award-winning Sales Training Service Provider. Visit https://www.valueselling.com/ to learn more.

About Your Host

Vince Holt is the founder and CEO of Management Recruiters of Mercer Island. With 35+ years industry experience, he is the only MRINetwork team member to win CSAM of the Year, Person of the Year and Lifetime Achievement Awards. In addition to spending time with his wife, children and grandchildren, Vince has raced motorcycles for over 50 years, winning 5 National Championships.

Check out this episode on our website, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify, and don't forget to leave a review if you like what you heard. Your review feeds the algorithm so our show reaches more people. Thank you!

Most people think sales is all about getting deals and hitting targets. That mindset misses a much bigger opportunity.

The fact is: even the best salesperson won’t win every deal, that’s just the nature of the game.

But what if you could lose the deal and still win the relationship? What if you could deliver value even when someone chooses not to work with you?

When we shift from chasing transactions to building trust, we gain something far more lasting. Because long after the deal is off the table, the relationship can still be intact, and still be meaningful.

Relationships don’t grow through pressure tactics or perfect pitches. They grow through curiosity, humility, and a willingness to show up as a human, not just a salesperson.

How do we make that shift? What are recruiters and sales leaders getting wrong in their approach?

In this episode, we’re joined by Casey Jacox, speaker, coach, sales and leadership expert, and author of WIN the RELATIONSHIP – Not the DEAL.

Casey shares how to rethink your entire approach to sales and why recruiters, hiring managers, and business leaders can get better results when they focus on connection over conversion.

Guest Bio

Casey Jacox is a speaker, coach, sales and leadership expert, and the author of "WIN the RELATIONSHIP – Not the DEAL." Throughout his career, adversity has been his strength. At Kforce, Casey held the top national sales position for ten consecutive years before becoming President of Client Strategy and Partnerships. In March 2019, Casey left Kforce as the all-time leading salesperson to author his debut non-fiction book. With over 100 organic Amazon reviews, it's reshaping how teams build customer relationships and internal cultures. Drawing on lessons from my college quarterback days, he embraces adversity and leads Winning The Relationship, LLC, where he offers executive sales leadership and coaching. Casey also hosts The Quarterback DadCast, sharing stories and wisdom on fatherhood and leadership. To learn more, visit https://www.caseyjacox.com/.

About Your Host

Vince Holt is the founder and CEO of Management Recruiters of Mercer Island. With 35+ years of industry experience, he is the only MRINetwork team member to win CSAM of the Year, Person of the Year, and Lifetime Achievement Awards. In addition to spending time with his wife, children, and grandchildren, Vince has raced motorcycles for over 50 years, winning 5 National Championships.

Check out this episode on our website, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify, and don't forget to leave a review if you like what you heard. Your review feeds the algorithm so our show reaches more people. Thank you!