No, But Really, What Do You Do?

Blaike Hannay is the creator*, producer and host of No, But Really, What Do You Do? Her own career journey contributed, in part, to the idea for the show—or at least her extensive range of interests and the alternate routes she might have taken. In the 2nd grade, she would proudly tell anyone who asked that she would someday be hired as Animated Feature Background (fancy 8-year-old speak for the voice of cartoons). Around the 7th grade there was a brief stint thinking she’d someday be president. Then a few successful negotiations with high school English teachers on paper deadline extensions put her on the path to being a lawyer, until two weeks before taking the LSAT her senior year of college when she surprised (disappointed?) her parents by saying it wasn’t for her after all. Movie producer, museum fundraiser and chef all made an appearance along the way as well.

In line with absolutely none of that, she began her career as an administrative assistant in a financial trade association. Nothing teaches you attention to detail and how to juggle overlapping priorities like managing multiple people’s schedules and dozens of industry events per year from conferences for hundreds to dinners for ten. (Also, a pro tip: forget cozying up to senior leadership, always befriend the admins!) From there she has gone on to spend most of her working life happily bouncing around different marketing roles at organizations including Scholastic, J.P. Morgan, and Morgan Stanley (marketing children’s books and wealth management have more in common than one might think).

Through all this, she has remained endlessly curious about other people’s work. While some argue that the common first question in NYC when meeting strangers of “what do you do?” can come across as shallow, she genuinely wants to know what you spend half of your waking hours doing all day and adamantly believes there’s more to every job than meets the eye if we dig a little deeper. So, if you’re thinking of making a job change and need to update your resume, or want a confidence boost from identifying all the skills and accomplishments you’ve accumulated over the years, ask yourself, “No, but really, what do you do?” You might be surprised by the answer.

*CREATOR is short for:
- Content coordinator
- w(R)iter
- Editor
- Art designer
- Technical support
- Operations manager
- Research specialist (aka, can Google her way to learning how to record and publish a podcast)

See? A single job title can mean a lot of things:)