Your Sizzlin' and Dazzlin' Seasonal Newsletter From Careers Transporter, Renée Xinying Zhong

My dream died, and now I am here.

Hi Clair:

Oops, what a charred and smoky burnt sausage to have in our mid-summer newsletter.

Not that ‘my dream’ really died, of course. I chose to change my path, one that fills me with more enthusiasm and purpose. I am here, to prevent yours from being put on the grill and left to smoulder.

But have you found it? Your dream? Did it just appear like the sun in this city? Do you ever wonder if you really want that sausage? Or what you want is actually a prawn skewer, a chicken wing, a burger, a BBQ rib or maybe some veg?  What about all of them? I'm not listing these to make you crave the next BBQ party. The possibilities are endless like our options for career.

We have been told and encouraged to follow our passion and ‘figure out’ our careers from a young age:

A 1-year-old at the ritual of Zhuazhou grabbed a pen? He will be a writer.

An 8-year-old enjoys drawing superheroes? She’s definitely an artist.

A teenager excels in science fairs? Better focus on STEM subjects for college!

The thing with these conversations is that they’re set up for us to make one big, final decision about our careers. And if we haven’t done that, then we better figure it out quickly.

Honestly, we need to flip the script.

Devoting most of our lives to the same role is an overcooked concept in our time. As a sociologist already pointed out a quarter of a century ago, our discontinuous modern lives ‘have blocked the straight roadway of “career”.’ Why do we assume our dream job is static? Or, that we have predictable career ladders?

Besides, I covered my student loan with an Etsy side hustle – a platform that didn’t exist when I was in high school.

Remote work was not significantly adopted until just 3 years ago. Our community members secured jobs that weren't even invented a few years back.

We can’t plan it all when things can shift rapidly with a single scroll. We don’t need to have it all figured out when everything seems like a rabbit hole. And ‘passion’ can’t be something we have never tried and sadly, sometimes, it can’t help with paying the rent with an outdoor space for a sun-drenched alfresco dinner.

You may ask how I figured mine out then.

Ain't you the lucky one, Clair! As you are here, with us, in our Careers Transporter community, wink wink GIF. In this newsletter, I will share with you THE pivotal moment – private anecdotal, if I may – that gave me the epiphany and set me in motion so you could know me as a career coach. More than this, of course, even more juicier, tips to get chosen in the interview.

Keep reading. K? K. Now let’s enter storytelling mode.


In another summer haze, my epiphany was conjured by none other than a fictional character who knows a thing or two about reinventing himself: Saul Goodman. While we are still on the “barbecue” references, I don’t know why, but I feel the need to mention that watching Saul reminds me of watching a marshmallow burn.

As avid fans of its parent show, my then-partner Zeinab and I both fell for this artful and ostentatious lawyer-slash-consigliere-slash-‘comic relief’ in the Breaking Bad universe. Already knowing how a mild-mannered, cancer-stricken, desperate chemistry teacher slowly unearthed his ruthless, unconscionable, but tactical side then finally unlocked his drug lord Heisenberg avatar, we were keen to connect the dots of how Jimmy McGill morphed into Saul Goodman. So after a long shift at work, we loved to settle on the sofa and indulged ourselves by bingeing Better Call Saul.

Better Call Saul likes to open episodes with a multitude of meticulous montages depicting the monotonous grind: a lawn mower cutting through the grass; two car cleaners pulling out a broken windshield and scrubbing blood from the backseats; Saul himself hidden in his other identity as Gene, the manager of Cinnabon, staring at an operating dough mixer; or as Jimmy, the lowly, play-by-the-rule mailroom guy in the big law firm HHM, pushing his squeaky mail cart through cubicles.

During those times, when feeling bored at work, I sometimes exiled my imagination to their lens, envisioning a poetic close-up of my own nine-to-five routine.

Clinking of machinery and repetitive rhythm of the mundane are often replaced by eerily colourful intro with the backdrop of an inflatable Statue of Liberty or the discarded threepenny advertising products of Saul Goodman. Over the seasons, this stark contrast grew even more jarring – as Jimmy buried his unremarkable, mediocre self and further transformed into the more preposterous and morally corrupt Saul, the intro scenes grew increasingly corroded and distorted.

Ensnaring with these transitions, we segued all our way through the penultimate episode of season 5, ‘Bagman’. We saw Jimmy, the self-proclaimed, yet way premature 'el amigo del cartel', assist in a murder in a bid to stay alive. Following a gruelling ordeal of a shoot-out, a Suzuki Esteem pushing off the ravine exercise, then carrying two capacious duffel bags of cash, the bail for a sadistic drug dealer Lalo Salamanca – $7 million or 75 pounds apiece, to be specific – escaping on foot, in the desert, and subsisting on urine, he still managed to do it in a flashy Saul Goodman way. When a hostile gunman came back searching for his prey, Saul pulled out a shiny space blanket and lured them towards him, so Mike, his only companion on this trek and an experienced hitman, could pull the trigger. We finally reached a strong symbolic point of Saul, the criminal lawyer, the character arc was nearly completed.

While I was eager to click onto the next episode, Zainab went to the kitchen off our living room, a few steps away, walked by, walked by the stacks of unwashed dishes and unpaid bills, reaching for their favourite popcorn in their snack-only cupboard. They held their sweet and salty guilty pleasure in one hand and turned to face the window. When their hand was mid-reach for popcorn, they paused and started scrutinising the bag.

“What is it?” I asked, looking at them, hands on the remote, tone urging them to come back so we could start a new episode.

“Do you think this is made of the same material as the space blanket that Chuck and Jimmy used?” They pointed at the bag and nodded towards the window.

Noticing that metallic packaging, I turned to the window and noticed the foil insulation we had placed on the window sill last winter, barely hanging there with masking tape. We had more behind every radiator in the flat. “Yeah,” I whispered, knowing they had their answer.

Unlike Zainab, I was neither empathetic nor perceptive. But I recognized that expression – they had been affected by Chuck McGill’s suicide. You might think getting deeply emotionally impacted by a TV show is a bit eccentric, but not to Zainab. They grew up in a household where watching programs and dining together with minimal exchange was a daily routine. That TV had done most of the heavy lifting when it came to emotional connection for the whole family.

Considering that, plus their ongoing career setbacks, I began to feel a bit concerned. The poignant presence of the same material – tinfoil – in our living room was indeed squarely reminiscent of a real dead dream of Chuck, to them. Possibly, of them as well?

Chuck’s space blanket was his shield against electromagnetic radiation. Metaphorically, it also shielded him from facing the sick joke that his brother, the deceitful, online course-graduated Jimmy transgressed into his sacred domain: the law. The space blanket was Chuck’s manipulative cover. A tangible one. He built a faraday cage, wrapping every surface of his home with them, to guilt Jimmy into confessing to a felony. However, what was intended as a courtroom threat to Jimmy, simultaneously turned into a trial for Chuck. His self-diagnosed illness proved imaginary, and his credibility as a legal professional was forever tarnished due to that inadvertently revealing his own mental struggles. That cut deep. No one won. The space blanket remained, enveloping him, at the moment he set himself and his house on fire in a futile attempt to prove his sanity, primarily inwardly.

Jimmy refused to use a space blanket Mike offered when the desert became deadly cold at night. It became an obtrusive symbol of Chuck’s mental decline, the tragic end of his life and their brotherhood, with the gleaming shade of his deep-seated mistrust and disapproval.

I recomposed myself and tried to pull Zeinab back to see the glass as half full. “He didn’t hesitate for a beat when it came to using the blanket in a scheme though, to save his ass. “

That’s what really appeals to me anyway. However despicable Jimmy became, however many shortcuts he took, his “s’all good, man” persona was his faith, his abracadabra, which makes all of his ‘delulu’ to ‘trululu’. Everything will eventually head to a disheartening end – his karma – I knew somehow, but before that, the particular enjoyment of this show is seeing this underdog dust himself off again and again, talking to himself in the mirror with the jazz hands, saying, “It’s showtime, folks.”

“Your man... he's, um, he's like the cucaracha... you know, a born survivor.” a penetrating remark Lalo left about Jimmy.

How do you avoid being weighed down by a broken dream? Have tons of them. There is no detour when you have tons of proverbial Romes! Embrace your journey, try new things, do the work, and trust that the path will unfold as you go because there is only ONE of you in this world, and ONLY YOU, WITH YOUR UNIQUENESS can make wonders happen. The destination doesn’t matter as long as you find yourself.

Ok. Now, no more funny bits about my previous relationship.


In short, after sensing something was off, Zainab and I had a night-long conversation. We covered their frustration over ghosted CVs,  the daunting experiences in a few interviews, and how their dream seemed unfeasible after years of effort in their sector. That might have been my first “one on one” coaching section. Drawing on my days in corporate HR, I shared with them my years of gruelling study of corporate butt-kissing along with my stories of mastering the art of charming the socks off an interviewer or employer. We even critiqued a couple of Better Call Saul interviews since they were so into it. 

After that night, they were not only able to shed the overwhelming burden of unemployment and the emotional toll it took, but they also landed an influential role that gave them fulfilment and increased their compensation by 40% compared to their previous position.

Below is the butter of this newsletter, as I am going to share with you three of the tips that I told Zainab which helped them crush their interview.

1. Prep the starter pack of your character
Ever seen those starter pack memes? With just 6-10 images, they nail stereotypes in a hilariously accurate way. Sure, they’re reductive, but they’re also spot-on and brutally relatable. Those cheesy, primary-colour suits – as raw as those cheap pricing stickers we usually see in private discount stores – of Saul don’t just give him a unique edge; they make him memorable to his targeted clients.

If creating a persona like Saul’s feels over your line, think again. Consider the role you’re aiming for. What do the ‘influencers’ in that position look like? How do they behave? Is there a part of you that you could amplify to seamlessly blend in and make the hiring team think, “This is the one we’ve been waiting for”?

2. Be the Guy with the Mouth, more Importantly, the Guy with the Eyes

Saul saved his own and plenty of others’ lives by keen observation and persuasive talking. He built his brand as ‘the guy with the mouth’ by convincing the psychotic drug kingpin Tuco to spare three lives that Tuco originally couldn’t care less about. He fabricated a loving, hardworking mother figure to evoke memories of Tuco’s beloved abuelita (grandma). He observed with detective-like precision, ironically. Once he identified a soft spot or pain point, he tailored his speech for his audience, pushing them to take action in his favour.

A prime example is his first interview for a sales position at Neff Copiers, after his licence was suspended. He entered that office like he owned the place. Even before the official interview, while chatting, he was already dropping tactical comments about copy machines, making it seem like he’d been born with toner in his veins. When questioned about his lawyer experience but lack of sales experience, he spun a tale, made some jokes, pitching his ‘stubbornness and persuasiveness’ – transferable traits that both lawyers and salespeople need to thrive. He nailed the company’s need for a door-to-door salesman willing to have multiple doors slammed in his face.”

Do thorough research on the company like him, or even ask the interviewer directly: What are their problems, their goals, how fast they want you to fix them, and at what cost? Know what mould you should fit yourself into.

3. Colour the Past, Link it to Their Future, Through YOU

Once you understand the job requirements inside and out, you can start crafting your narrative, connecting your history to their needs, and demonstrating how YOU are the perfect fit for their challenges. Infuse your past with drama.  When it comes to the interview, you are the centre of that universe: present situations that happened because of you, driven by you. Show how you were the ultimate fixer, tackling seemingly insurmountable obstacles..

Take a cue from Saul again: after being told to wait for the outcome in the aforementioned interview, he didn’t just leave. He took charge and further built his case, emphasising the indispensable role of the copy machine to the company owner himself. He elevated their product into the centrepiece of every thriving business. “The copier is the beating heart of any business. Ka-chunk, ka-chunk, ka-chunk…” He then painted himself as the reliable mailroom guy who was always there for technical challenges, for approaching deadlines with a roll-up-his-sleeves attitude. His non-negligible passion for the product sparked interest in the employers’ eyes, positioning him as someone deeply connected to its success and ready to drive unlimited profits. He was hired on the spot!

This could be you, Clair! To whiz forward into your dream job, click here to continue reading the rest of the newsletter.

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Renee Xinying Zhong is a cultural practitioner who aims to continue evolving in her curatorial journey in London, with roots in Kwangchow, China. Her curatorial work is grounded in a critical awareness of dismantling authoritarian impositions of archaic dichotomies. Recent projects and research explore identity formation and deconstruction within today’s tumultuous geopolitical and economic landscapes, echoing themes from her experiment writing – a faux-marketing email from a career coach. She curates Not to be a Singular Being and has collaborated with Chisenhale Art Place, Goldsmiths CCA, Notes Coffee, Cell Projects Space, Deptford X, Misa Shin Gallery, Arata Isozaki & Associates, and Hara Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo. She received an MFA in Curating from Goldsmiths, and an BA in Art Studies from TAMA Art University, Tokyo. Renee is also a recipient of the 2023 Art Trade Forum, funded by the Paul Mellon Foundation, and serves as an artist liaison for cultural commerce.