Dexter Zhuang

Hi, I’m Dexter.

My coaching style focuses on helping you quickly identify what’s holding you back in your career journey and then moving you take immediate action towards getting the outcomes you desire.

What You May Need Help With

• Feeling stuck in your job search: You’re not getting flooded by recruiters reaching out on LinkedIn like you were hoping. Or maybe you’re looking to finally transition from UI design to product design, but all the recruiters seem to think you’re looking for a UI-role. What’s going on? Let’s dig deeper into your positioning and review your LinkedIn/resume together.
• Preparing for your interviews: You’re feeling nervous and anxious before every interview even after the 21st one. Or perhaps you’re not sure how to answer a certain behavioral or product case question. Hmm this could be a good time to talk about storytelling frameworks and schedule a mock interview.
• You’ve nailed the offer and need to negotiate: You’re sitting there looking up negotiation scripts online for hours, but still don’t know precisely what to say when the hiring manager tells you your package. Let’s chat about strategies, your leverage, and schedule a mock negotiation
• You’re starting to feel burnt out of your job: You’re feeling this strange mix of exhaustion and distance from what you’re doing. Maybe your performance is still OK or maybe it’s not. I’m sorry —burn-out is hard. We can unpack what burn-out means for you in a call, triangulate the triggers, and devise a plan to help you break through.
• Performance reviews are coming up, and you want the promotion and raise: You’ve spoken with your manager once or twice and s/he has hinted that you’re a high-performer. Does that mean you’re a shoe-in for a promotion? The reality is no. Let’s work together on a plan that you can implement to do everything short of guaranteeing the promotion.

Why I Can Help You

I’ve been in your shoes before. Sending my resume to hundreds of positions on LinkedIn and not hearing back. Presenting myself at dozens of on-site interviews to still not get an offer.

Feeling anxious and scared that I’m on the wrong track in my job search and performance reviews. Losing my sleep, health and time over trying find the magical formula to finding and sustaining a job that I love (hint: it doesn’t exist).

Over the last several years, I’ve been on a journey to painstakingly build back up my career approach brick-by-brick.

Thousands of hours of research later, I’ve explored every nook and cranny of the scientific literature, ancient wisdom, real-world case studies, and hundreds of individual anecdotes I could get my hands on.

This work —the product of much sweat and toil— is what enabled me to catalogue a deep library of insightful career frameworks, strategies, and tools that I still use to this day.

But I didn’t stop at just documentation, because what’s so useful about a strategy if it only works as a theory and doesn’t hold up to the litmus test of reality?

So I pressure-tested each framework, strategy, and tool —first, by putting them into practice in my own career; second, by sharing them with friends, colleagues, and clients to implement in their own lives and careers. Putting each idea to the test, learning, and iterating. Constantly.

And it has paid off.

In my own career, I’ve worked as an award-winning product manager at Dropbox and several fast-growing startups in Silicon Valley backed by world-class VC firms such as Greylock Partners and Sequoia Capital.

For each role, I’ve consistently outperformed my targets —whether it was revenue, users, or engagement.

I’ve been promoted eight months into a new job, negotiated my own compensation to get tens of thousands of dollars of raises, and helped hundreds of others find their dream job and get more out of their current career.

Last but not least, I’ve built a winning system of hundreds of rigorously-tested, ready-to-use frameworks, strategies, and tools for finding and succeeding in a job you love.

While I still don’t believe silver bullets exist, this system has consistently worked for me, my friends, colleagues and clients. Time and time again.

How We’ll Work Together: Coaching Using Systems

If you decide to embark on a new chapter of your journey with me by your side as a coach, then we’ll work together using a four-part coaching process:

• Phase 1 — Discover: We will discuss your career vision and identify obstacles —such as hidden scripts and stories— that are causing you to get stuck on your path towards actualizing this vision.
• Phase 2 — Ideate: After identifying these obstacles in Phase 1, we’ll practice exercises that are personalized to your particular situation to help you come up with a plan to getting unstuck.
• Phase 3 — Act: I will coach you to taking action based on our plan and hold you accountable to the work, so we can maximize your chances of getting the results you’re after.
• Phase 4 — Learn: Finally we’ll collect feedback on what happened, refine your goals/vision and approach, and then repeat Phases 1-3.

This process typically takes at least a couple of months (depending on your schedule) to give you enough time to not only learn the material, but to put them into practice.

What You Put In = What You Get Out

With that said, I want to be candid with you. This process won’t be easy!

Our sessions are going to challenge you. If you’re looking for a quick-fix solution, then I’m not the right coach for you.

But if you want to put in the actual work to learn and implement high-value systems and frameworks based on the playbook of what’s worked for me and my clients, then I think we’ll work well together.

By the end of our sessions, you’ll be well-equipped with tools, strategies, and habits to leverage your experiences and boldly step into the next phase of your career journey — whether it’s getting that new job, securing a promotion, or navigating a big transition.