devspace 2018

full transcript

auto-generated from the audio, so expect a few typos. the audio is the source of truth.

Podcast listeners what is going on it has been a bit actually it's been way too long and even more sadly I think it's almost been a year since I posted my last podcast episode So I just want to let everybody know I'm kind of bringing a new energy and a new focus to this podcast. I really see the validity And sharing not only my experiences as a recruiter and working with people But also again continually interviewing hiring managers and job seekers alike to share their stories and to obviously be a tool for others that are going through the process as well. I have about a handful of episodes I'm sitting on at the moment from user groups to conferences late last year that are never released so that is coming out and I am super excited about that.

As always go ahead and rate and review this in the App Store. I'm going to allow this podcast to be discoverable to others and so they can use it as a tool in their job search process. This episode specifically is coming from a conference that I did in Huntsville late last year at DevSpace. Chris Gardner and his crew third just an amazing conference. So if you have the chance, attend that this year. If you are going by chance to code on the beach and are listening to this, come find me. I'm speaking down there next week. Super stoked about that. And again, find me on Twitter and LinkedIn as well.

I'm actually doing a lot more posting over the last few months from my LinkedIn and Twitter. So feel free to connect with me on Twitter at tdesntdesnyn as well as my LinkedIn and looking forward to bringing many more episodes to you all and I hope you guys enjoy this one. Engaging conversation. So if you really do not like to talk, I'd probably recommend you to get out. Because my goal in this is to have a really frank conversation. So just practicing that now. While I give a quick intro about myself, start thinking about some questions you may want to ask. Yeah, two more people. You missed the 80s.

I guess we got to play some more. We got an hour. Cool. So I guess I'll dive right in. So my name is Taylor Deafson. I am from Nashville, Tennessee. I believe it or not, am a recruiter, and it is still surprising to me that I am always picked to speak at these things. I think that's what's oxymoron being ever to have a recruiter speak at a developer conference. So first and foremost, I'm very grateful and very thankful. That's the same thing. I'm very blessed that you guys showed up to this because I know there are probably more technical talks you want to listen to, but the fact that you are here, I do not take it for granted one bit.

So the cards, so like the fill out thingamajiggers, please fill those out. If you actually hate my talk and never wanna come to it again, totally fine, rape me a one, tell me why. If you love it, please tell me why as well. That is kind of like my oxygen in regards to keep wanting to do this. So if you don't fill it out, I will die anyways. So a little bit about me, like I said, National Tennessee, Born and raised in Columbia, South Carolina, go Game Cocks. They are literally kicking off with Texas A&M right now. So I will try to not look at my watch during this talk.

I had no idea how to turn on a computer. It really still don't. I went to school for a business. I was in the drum line at the University of South Carolina. I was in the marching band in high school. I realized now that high school kind of set me up for what I do now. I was band president. So I was president of the nerds, which kind of set me great with what I do now. So very thankful for the music side of things. And so I graduated college, realized I did not want to be a typical salesperson, and I moved to Nashville to pursue music, but you haven't heard that one before.

So I moved up to Nashville, I did the music thing for roughly six months. It was working six nights a week as a drummer. I needed to play at night, but I was working six nights a week and losing money, and my brilliant self was like, I need to pick up another job at night. So it wasn't really doing much music. Came across my company I work for is Vaco, V-A-C-O. Most people call it Vaco. We missed kind of a marketing thing where we could have been tacos at Vaco on Tuesdays, but that's a whole other thing I could talk to marketing about that. Vaco is a privately held 40 plus office company around the country.

We are now international with with the offices in Toronto, London, India, and I specifically am in the Nashville area. We are 500 million in revenue, and we're growing like crazy. Most people don't hear. Most people have not heard of us, but we are the best kept seeker, is what I say. So I found Vayko through a friend of a friend, started doing that. I was your typical recruiter starting out. I had no idea what Java was. I had no idea what .net was. I was recruiting everything from 13-hour admin assistant positions to CFO CTO level placements and everything in between. I did that for a year and a half.

My first technology project was staffing up with a bunch of Java developers who were clients in Denver, Colorado. And I just started calling people. And believe it or not, I did make the mistake of calling people and asking them, since you had JavaScript, do you want a Java job? I did not go over well. So, I learned quickly with that. that. I started calling into the Bay Area as well. So Yahoo before the data breach. Disney, Sony, you name it. I had a lot of software developers hang up on me and I said there's got to be a change. I need to do something where I can meet developers face-to-face.

And so I had the opportunity to interview for our Raleigh and Charlotte office. Got the offer both. Time to go to Raleigh. Just because the team fit was a little better at the time. And essentially I was in the The research triangle for you got super invested out there in the IT community. I got really involved within the .NET user group in Raleigh and had the opportunity to have my first talk at a conference, one of the architects in town said, hey, we would love for you to come and speak at our conference. And I said, I don't know about C-sharp. He goes, that's good.

We're not asking you to do that. I'm asking you to speak about recruiting. I said, okay, great. I can do that. My first talk went for three hours. I had the hour and a half block before lunch. I said, you are all dismissed. Nobody moved. I ended up speaking through lunch. And I said, maybe I'm something here. I had to move back to Nashville. My mentor, Scott Gordon, if you are in the Nashville market, you probably have worked with Scott some time or another. He is the man. He was my mentor. And he was like, hey, I'm moving into this new role. Do you want to kind of come and train under me?

So I trained out of my mentor for a year and a half. He moved on. And then I kind of took rain of the development community in Nashville. So right now, all I work with his developers, anywhere from the database side all the way to the front end. If you have held some sort of developer title in Nashville, my goal is to make friends with you and never, ever leave you just kidding. So I've been doing that for five years now. Superactively involved in the Dev community, so I have been VP of a .NET Meetup at Nashville for the last three years. So that's about a group, about 55 to 60 active members a month, so I help lead that meetup.

And what else? Speaking of conferences, kind of meetups around Nashville as well. This whole idea kind of came across a buddy of mine, Kyle Welch, for those of you who know him. He was actively involved with November. He is a React developer at Eventbrite. I was responsible for even Kyle down to Nashville before Eventbrite, so that's one of my bright points. He essentially was like, hey, these conferences, there's usually 15 talks in React, and he goes, there's only so many components you could talk about within React. He goes, what developers need to know, what we need to know is how to navigate the job search, what to look for, who to work with, how to write a resume.

And I said, great, believe it or not, I know how to talk about that. So I started submitting my talks. It's been a crazy year. I've had the opportunity to speak at Code Stock in April, Music City Code, going to when that was, and it was recently. And then, Phoenix City last month, and then obviously, Dev Space this month. So again, very, very good for me here. Every single division I've been in at Nashville, we can talk about scaling teams. So my first division in Nashville, we were a team of three. We were a team of nine when I left, and Raleigh, I was a team of three.

We were a team of seven when we left. And when I started at VACO Nashville, this is the most substantial growth in the last few years. We've gone from seven to 19. So we have grown tremendously. I've been a part of hiring every single one of those teams. And so yeah, that's all about me at a super high level. So with that being said, we're gonna go ahead and get to the fun part of this conversation. What my goal for this talk for the next, I'm bad at math, whatever, how long until this is done, 330. It is quite frankly, someone said at best last night at dinner with some of the people that attend here, they said last month I'm gonna take a talk with a fireside chat.

One, can't get a fire in here, that'll be weird, probably burns things down, probably never had to be asked to come back again. But my goal for this entire conversation is to be very frank, very open, very transparent. My goal is to answer any questions you've always had with working with recruiters, right? So we could talk about, I mean, nothing's off the table, I'll talk about markups, I'll talk about how we get paid. I'll talk about what to look for. I'll talk about how to write a resume, everything. So that being said, usually the first, no one is like, everyone's terrified to ask the first question.

And then like three hours later, like everyone's still asking questions. So anyone have a burning just question in their soul that they've always, oh, that was quick. Yep, go ahead. Yeah, so I'm curious to know like any successful people already trying to find a job by themselves. Is there a user recruiter? Absolutely, right here, that question. Basically, essentially, the success rate data points around a recruiter, not recruiter. No, I don't know. But I will tell you this, in today's market, I would absolutely use a recruiter. I would say you are behind the A-ball if you do not use a recruiter. And the reason why I say that is because, in today's tech industry or tech world, HR at the companies internally, so company A has their own set of recruiters, right?

they will post that job for 30 days. If you submit your resume, and then after 30 days, that company calls up the agency side, right? So there's two types of recruiting firms. There's like the internal company side, and there's an agency side, I'm on the agency side. So I don't get job opportunities until about 30 days after they've been posted. And then I have to try to find people from there. If you submit your resume to a job posting at that company, within after 30 days, I still probably can't represent you. And we pride ourselves on making a relationship with managers. And so if you submit your resume to the website, and then you and I get in touch, and I want to come and do that client, I will lose the opportunity to represent you because you're already in their system, thus causing things to slow up.

So I highly recommend, now there are people out there, there are developers in Nashville that I work with that have been successful finding jobs on their own. Again, I'm only one person, I've crafted this a lot, I'm one recruiter, one person, one city, But my one and a half cents is to use a recruiter. Also, love the music behind me. I sound a lot more like regal than I actually am. But anyways, what else? Yeah. What's the deal with contract to hire? Why is that so common? Why is it I got a new six month contract and all promise of it? It was a very good one.

So good question. Great question. Everybody hear that contract hire? So I love the music. It's very, very, very regal. So essentially, contract to hire. There's a few reasons why clients do it. One, a lot of the dev managers that I work with understand that HR is very slow, and that they will lose talent in today's market if they go the direct hire salary perspective. Again, that's just a handful of our clients. Sometimes, essentially, it is sometimes cheaper to do the contract to hire inside of things based off contract negotiations, so the way I get paid is essentially if you go full time, if I place you at 100k, salary at a company in Nashville, if our contract is good, the client will pay us $25,000.

So essentially it's 25% a first-year salary. So that's another reason why you're a contract hire. Speed, like I said, is another thing. Also, the client wants to try before they buy it, right? So that's another big thing. And also too, working with software developers and just developers in general, it may be smart for the developers to actually try before they buy as well. I can't tell how many times I've talked with developers that have one in opportunity and I say, hey, it's not a good opportunity that they've had to turn over and they get three months into like, oh my gosh, why didn't you tell me?

And I'm like, well, one, I did, two, you took the job on your own, three, do you want me to place you somewhere else? So that's essentially the three main reasons. You placed me on six month contract to hire. Yeah. And three months in when you played sucks. Right? I'm out of here. Did I just screw you over now? No. Could you put me on some contracts? Nope. Not at all. So essentially if I placed you at a six month contract hire, three months in, you call me and you're like dude this is awful. First off there's always the benefit of working with recruiters. One, if you like a recruiter, hopefully you like me, you get to work with me.

That's it. No one else you have to work with. You don't have to work directly with me. If you have a problem with your client, talk to me. I talked with our account manager. We helped solve it for you so you don't have to have the conversations as a consultant. If it's six months in, now, this has happened before. If it's six months in and you kind of like everything, and there's been no warning signs, and all of a sudden, you're like, no, I don't want to go convert. That makes us look bad, right? Because essentially, if it is a contract to hire, you have agreed that after six months, you will go full time.

And if there's no warning signs, If you haven't been checking in with me 30, 60 days out, like, hey, this may not work. Then that does make us look bad. But three months in, if it's not good, we can go ahead and have those conversations. And if it should not fit, we can pull you off contract, push you another opportunity. Roll you off. Is that simple? And can they tell your clients that, like, hey, you're not going to do this? Give us a heads up. Absolutely. I usually tell individuals that if I'm doing my job correctly, there should be no downtime. Now, I'm not perfect.

I had to fire two people this week. It's been a tough week. It's been a tough week this week. And essentially, no warning. I had to buy one guy at 9.15 at night because HR called me. It was nothing due to performance. It was a direction of the project. The other one was actually surprised to us. I had no idea. And I am currently working with him just for the last 48 hours to try to get him back on the job again. So I don't bat a thousand. You know, we try to educate our clients as much as possible. Give us 30 days heads up.

Sometimes it just happens. So what else? Hey, that's great, man. You love it. Just keep questions wrong. Hey, Amy, how's your job? Whoa. Keep going. No, not really. And here's why. Well, actually, yes. If I get a remote position, I bat a thousand. You know why? Everybody wants to work remote. Or for the most part, everybody wants to work remote. I can't have OCD problems. That's a whole other issue. I have to clean my entire house before I go from home. I'm getting that dress. Most people like to work remote. Most companies come to us and they can't find the people for their jobs. They can find people for remote jobs.

So people come for us for the jobs they can't find which is typically on site. Now, I've had opportunities to staff up 100% remote client Northern DC or Northern Virginia. Python, PHP, 100% remote. They just, they didn't know where to start. They were a startup. They were like, how do we filter all this talent? We go, we'll get you set up. Just let it be remote. And they said, OK. 10 developers later, they were happy with us. But no, for the most part, we don't get a ton of remote. I'll be able to fire the lights like they don't be able to sign the contract.

Yeah. So that's something that, so my team, we're trying to get better at it. Because when you have a team like us, there's always more business out there, but it's like, what's good business, right? So essentially like, you know, is a client that wants 15 resumes for every position a good client for us? No. So, Vaco, we pride ourselves on one or two resumes for each position. You hire one or two and then that person stays within three years. That's just kind of how it works. We don't fire our clients enough, in my opinion. It's obviously hard to walk away from money. But we try to pride ourselves at Vaco to put people in positions for them to be successful years down the road is our goal.

But again, we don't bat a thousand. We make mistakes. We do not have Huntsville. So that's what I'm down here essentially is just kind of like have awareness. We're growing like crazy, right? So we've gone from 250 to 500 million probably last like three years and then it took like 12 to get to 250. So like we're growing like crazy. We don't have an office in Huntsville, but essentially I'm down here just to start having conversations if we were to evaluate coming down here. But if you want to come to Nashville, let me know. Yes. Hey, if I had, if it wasn't weird, one, I'd hug you two.

If I had something to give you, I'd give you a treat, but there's cookies out there. Yes. That is like, all right, so listen, if you're going to write anything down in this entire conversation, this is it right here. If there's one thing that I want you to get out of this talk that you attend is this right here because it's going to save you a lot of heartache and headache moving forward in your career. I personally would, so if a recruiter slides into your DMs, I would take a look at their profile LinkedIn. If that recruiter has been with the company, in my opinion, less than two years and in the local market less than a year, I would not work with them.

And here's why. Most recruiters are really bad at their jobs. Again, this just by two cents. Usually jump every 18 months to get a base salary raise because they can't cut it from a commission perspective. Recruiters typically are heavily commissioned on the amount of people we place. If you are not good at placing people, you are just there for the base salary, thus causing you to jump jobs every 18 months. So there was literally one guy that used to work in Vaco and I've kept up with him because literally he updates his LinkedIn every 18 months. But if you go to his LinkedIn, it's like one year, one year, six months, one year, 10 months, one year, five months.

It's like if I was an employer, I'd be like, dude, you're gonna leave it in like a month and a year and a half. So that's the first thing. Second thing is I've been in the national market recruiting just developers for five years. I still, one, don't know everybody. Two, I'm still learning the market, right? There was a company the other day that I heard in the national, like who is that? And they've been here for years, I still don't know that company. And I'm literally so, I'm so siloed in what I do. I only work with one part of the industry within Nashville that essentially if I don't know it and I've been doing it for five years, imagine somebody who's been at that firm for less than a year.

They're just gonna be not knowledgeable in the market. So if you really wanna get picky, I'd probably work with a recruiter who's been at the same company for like three plus years and then the market for two plus years, But that's kind of hard to find. So you want to lower that a little bit, at least two years to the same company, and at least in the local market for a year. Again, like I said, if there's anything I want you to go out of this talk, that's it. I also look at their references on LinkedIn. So I have all of my developers that I work with that like me enough, write a reference for me.

So if you pull up my information, you're like, oh wow, Taylor actually is an immediate. Like he actually knows what he's doing, because what I try to do is I try to put that on my LinkedIn. I have my hyperlink in my e-mail signature for you to go to it, to check it out. If a recruiter has none of that, not even one person can speak to their technical abilities. I would steer away from that. Also, I would probably recommend moving along for you to have that on your LinkedIn as well. So I am working on a ton of positions right now. I always check out developers' LinkedIn.

If you don't have a LinkedIn, it's the equivalent of you going to like trying to look up a company to fix your car and they don't have a website. You would probably not go to that company to fix their car unless you know them. That's not the point. The point is I would absolutely have a LinkedIn. I would absolutely have references on your LinkedIn because I check out developers every single day on LinkedIn and if I see that your reference is from somebody I know, I'm going I'm going to want to work with you even more so. It's very easy to do. If you don't know how to do it, let me know.

If you need to also side note, if you want to reach out to me, I'm on all social media. My last name is kind of miserable. It's at T. Destin, D-E-S-S-E-Y-N. LinkedIn. My website is Taylor Destin.com. There's a lot of floral and pink. It's kind of who I am. What else? I'll also have a podcast too, if you want to check that out. I'm in every App Store, guidance counselor 2.0, and I interview hiring managers, I interview developers on how they found job, and I also record all of my talks at Code Comances, which currently recording right now. Cool, what else? Yep, every here that, down sides of working with the bad recruiter a lot.

So, yeah, yeah, so essentially, first off, they can submit your resume everywhere around town and not blackball you because you can still interview, but essentially not allow the good recruiters to represent you for the jobs that are open. Because that recruiter doesn't have the relationship with the managers that may be a recruiter who's been there longer. And so they can't represent you because I've had plenty of times where the developer reaches out to me and said, hey, where have you been submitted ABC company? Well, great. We're working with those companies too. I can't represent you. And that usually that developer goes, I haven't heard from that recruiter in 30 days.

That's the biggest one. This is, go ahead. Okay. So the second biggest one too, I would say is they will wear you out, like by the phone, like by email, by text message. So most recruiters have metrics to hit. This is another thing. If you want free lunch, a recruiter is the best place to get a free lunch. I see a lot of head nods on that one. That resonated with a lot of people in here. The reason is, is because recruiters always have metrics. So with our team, and I'm going to say this too, I'm going to go off Tangel a bit, so bring me back if I go too far out, or I can get what I was saying.

Essentially, a lot of recruiters out there really bad at their jobs, but I want to defend recruiters for a quick second. Our job is to meet 10 to 15 new people a week, not to mention maintaining system relationships. If you do that math over a year, I'm bad at it. I've been a national for five years. I have now with that map in that 2,500 people. It is literally next to impossible for us to keep up with everything. The biggest complaint I hear about recruiters is I haven't heard from them in 30 days or I haven't heard from them. Well, have you checked in with them?

No. Okay. Two way street. All right. Like I said, again, most of the reasons that recruiters really died their jobs because there's very little communication are highly advised you to check in with your recruiters. because there's very little communication. I would highly advise you to check in with your recruiters as much as human as possible. When you work with me, I say if you're not texting me or emailing me every week, you're doing it wrong. I want to hear from you every single week. It's a two way street. But going back to the metrics, most people who start out at recruiters have a certain amount of calls they have to hit, a certain amount of in person meetings they have to hit.

So if you're not careful, you will get a lot of junior recruiters sliding into your DMs, wanting to meet with you and take you to lunch, and then like your whole entire week's booked, you've gained 15 pounds and you still have found a job. So be careful with that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Everybody hear that? Essentially how to, I mean, essentially I would tell them, don't submit me until you run. Yeah, absolutely, right? So a lot of times, I mean, I would point out point blank, say, hey, listen, don't submit me unless you send me the opportunity and I approve. Nobody should submit you if you say that.

If they do, you need to run away screaming because that's just completely unethical. For me, I liked personally, if we build, if I have built a relationship with the developer, I'm working with a few developers right now. We're kind of in the last hiring frenzy before the holidays. I'm like, listen, there's too much going on. Can I just line up interviews for you and you take them and they go yes. So I'm just submitting them without even registering them. But that's because they trust me. I would not do that with any recruiter that you trust. It's good stuff. Everybody learn some things? We are learning some things today.

What else? Yeah? See, you have a kind of thing to have about the resume part. Like, do you just get them whatever you have and work with them on that? or she's been more peppered up around the resume before going? That's a good question. Everybody got that? So essentially, with resume writing, oh, Paul, may I get engaged? I love it. Move forward, dude. Yeah. He's like, all right, the content is actually OK in this. I'm going to move forward a little bit. I'm going to hold my lap. OK. All right, forget. That's fine. Yes, OK. Yeah, yeah. So resume writing. I always help developers write the resumes because here's what it is.

You're really passionate about writing code. I'm really passionate about writing resumes. That's really nerdy. It's just the way it is. I actually love writing resumes. The big thing is if you need a resume template, this is the biggest thing I always get emailed after talks. Feel free to email me. Ask for my resume template. I will send it to you. Taylor at vaco.com. Again, it's pretty simple. Taylor at vaco.com. If I were you, if you think your resume is not good, I would ask the recruiter to help you if they do not help you do not work with them. That could be the first screen out question you could ask.

If I would love a developer to ask me to help write the resume, I'm the one usually volunteering to do it. Resume rules, I want to, this is kind of where my guidance counselor 2.0 came in. I want to kick the guidance counselor in the shin. If anybody who's a guidance counselor, I'm not actually going to do it. Whoever said you need a one page resume. If you've been in the industry for any substantial amount of time, you need a more than one-page resume. My two cents is I would say anywhere from three to five is really good. I would say anything more than five gets a little long.

I would say also too, if you've been in the industry for a while, I would probably go back to only the technologies that you want jobs for. I have a bunch of people sending me resumes, hey listen, there's a lot of cobalt there right now. But essentially, if I have a resume where there's a bunch of Cobol on it, we're gonna probably try to edit that out and focus on the technologies you want to work with. I don't know if that helps your question, but I would absolutely ask for your email. I mean, if people are working with a .NET for 17 years, sure. I mean, that's what I'm saying.

Yeah, I mean, so the way I would do it, if there's enough, so I linked in stock to you last night. You have a bunch of good stuff and you're linked in, by the way I like it. So essentially I would do three to five pages probably going back to if you can get some good stuff the last ten years put that down and then put a little blurb and just say past experiences senior mainframe developer at ABC company for these years and just list out your title of what you did in the companies just to show clients that you've been working all those years but you're just putting the applicable stuff.

Didn't that a little bit? Yeah. And I would just do that, right? So like get it to like four and a half and then like at the bottom of the four and a half, just list out where the companies and dates and the positions you held just so it, again, it shows and you already, it shows you've been working, but it doesn't get too wordy. I usually look at resumes and I know a good resume in five seconds. And I know it's crazy and we can talk about buzzwords and stuff like that, but I would highly put as much information as possible on the first page.

Yep, Paul. So, being a resident, you're a person. Yep. I put the energy in, I put it in the program. I don't know anything about the program, but it's the information that people tweak to them. Like being more of that let me know, I'll have to do it in the age, the future will start working with the program. Is that a bad practice? Like the whole purpose of us, you can get it from like that, is to have the references on there, and to have the references on that. And so, I mean, that's what living doctors, I can update more often in keeping things insane.

I mean, I don't think the same point of a specific job, I think the tailor of my resume is a bad job. But I know, obviously, it's been a thing in a life how mine they seemed to have done job a few years ago because they know that I can learn new things, work new things, how to wear your clothes on the island. Is it worth it to actually grab any resume and wear a diet, eat up whenever versus this? Yes and no. The reason why I say that is, So if you want to channel everything through LinkedIn, and I will work with you, which hopefully we do soon, essentially I would just cut copy and paste up your LinkedIn.

If you're cool with that, then I'll do that. Okay. Several of them have done that before, but I mean, I guess it's like, it's been pointing to pictures of like, why, for whatever it is. No, it's not, it's not, it's like, it's your job to do that, like, you can only do a group of all make it work, or whatever it is. Most developers don't want that though, right? So most developers don't want a resume, or a recruiter editing the resume. Yeah, but most people that work with it, they're like, yeah, just go ahead and do your thing. I would say for you two, because you're doing a lot of agile coaching now, and obviously you have the DevChops too.

I would have two resumes, if I were you, that is super targeted. Like if I get a consulting agile role and I want to send you to it, I would ask you for your, you know what I'm saying? So if you've been in the industry for a while, And you've been a developer, but you've also kind of moved into the world of like the functional role. And you still want to do both. I would have two resumes for that. That will help an absolute ton. This is all good. This is great. This is great questions. You guys are doing a great job. We still got hurt in it.

Say what? Yeah, it's really hard. So every question, how do we meet as many people as we do? honestly I still don't know how we do it. Yeah, so the first thing is I have lunch with every single day. That's five right there. I get a lot of people to come into our offices. So I would say if a recruiter does not offer to meet with you, I would not work with them because why in the world would you put your career move in the hands of a recruiter who does not want to meet with you? To me, I just wouldn't want that. I would want somebody to be my advocate within the market.

And so I usually ask a lot of the developers to come by and meet with me now. A lot of recruiters are like, hey, come by my office for an hour. And you're like, what? I don't have time for an hour. So usually for me, I do like a 15, 20-minute catch-up session, meet your face-to-face, get an idea of what you're viewing, send you one, and then we'll just continue conversations over the phone. But the way we meet people is by utilizing the job boards and LinkedIn. You asked a very good question because we're going to go into a few things now. So thank you for that.

Y'all, too, just a nice great question. So essentially, who in here has a functioning LinkedIn raise your hand? A LinkedIn, that's pretty decent, link upcap. OK, cool. More than 50, that was good. So we heavily use LinkedIn Recruiter, right? So LinkedIn Recruiter is a way for us to send unlimited DMs and see everybody's LinkedIn profile even if I'm not connected with you. So that's why you get like so many messages on LinkedIn, right, which is why I told you the keys to success and work with recruiters and what to look for so you can easily weave them out. So we use LinkedIn a ton, usually what I try to do, So I'm fascinated by the UI UX of email crafting and message crafting and titles and stuff.

Because people aren't taught how to craft an email message where other people want to read it, right? Email marketing essentially. So my email on LinkedIn is usually not another recruiter message, and usually most developers respond back. One of my co-workers who I train, she says, I hate recruiters as much as you do as a title, and it's worked pretty well. But essentially, I don't talk about jobs at all when I slide into your DMs. I'm like, hey, listen, I just want to catch up. I just want to hang out. There is an option on LinkedIn. Most people do not know about this. There's an option to say that you are open to looking to opportunities.

Please select that. If you want to get even more hit up by recruiters, if you do not want to get hit up by recruiters, please uncheck that, but you will still get messages. Just not as much. So that's a big thing. Most people don't know about that. We also use dice and career. I use dice and career builder. But I'm going to caveat this the same. I actually don't use career builder. So my team uses it. I think there is validity behind it. I only use dice. Who in here does not know about dice? Raise your hands. See, this is why I give this talk right here.

I'm going to share this little nugget. And you guys are going to be successful for the rest of your career business. Dice. Dice is awesome. So essentially, dice.com, you have to be in tech to have a profile. I mean, you don't have to, but it's not gonna help you at all. You have to be in tech to be on dice. And essentially, I type in the word developer. So if I type in the word developer on career builder, I'm gonna have construction development, like electrical development, whatever. If I plug in developer on dice, I know for a fact it's only gonna catch everywhere from the database to the front end.

So I would highly recommend using dice if you have not used it already. It is a big help. So dice linked in career builder, I message everybody, I say do you want to be friends with me because that's essentially my job. I have to make, my job is to make friends. And then essentially I ask you to come meet with me, we hang out for a few minutes, I get to know you, I start sending you jobs and then hopefully you find a job through me. That's kind of how we meet people. What else? You guys want to talk about? And so this seems to be all of a day ago, man.

To give, give, give relationships, right? Yeah. You're doing all this wonderful things for us. So, so what do you get? I get paid. I make money so my wife can buy shoes. Let's be honest, me too. So are you commissioned? Yeah, so low base, high commission. Most recruiting firms do higher base, but you have to hit a certain amount of commission to start collecting it. And if that makes sense, at Beiko, we're fairly low base compared to the, not super low, but a little bit below the industry average. But we make that up because every single cent that you make in commission, you can get back immediately.

Unlike other firms where it's kind of a tiered system, you have to get a certain amount of GM to get that money back. So yeah, I mean, essentially the way we work is like, you know, the big thing, so consulting, contract to hire, I say that we're consulting because they were pivoting them more of the consulting practice. So, hey, I need 15 developers to staff up a project, kind of what we talked about. So I would advise you a lot of recruiters, so a question I'd ask recruiters for a contract to hire a contract opportunity is, one, do you have a markup? Or does the client require a markup?

And if the recruiter says, yes, ask them what that markup is. are going to wonder where the heck you learned that from. Because I never get asked that, and that is a question to see if you are being jerked over with the rate. We have a client in Nashville that I have a fixed markup. So essentially, I get the same amount of money, whether you get paid $5 an hour or $25 an hour. And so, or ish. But essentially, the markup, now, we have a lot of clients that don't have a markup. So if a client does not have a markup, What I would ask is essentially, first off, what they're doing right lies, right?

So we're giving a right from the client and we have to try to find somebody within that right. Now, there's a lot of people, a lot of recruiters, or a lot of developers I've worked with, they're like, well, what's the bill rate? Listen, does it matter if you're getting paid which you want to get paid, right? Essentially doesn't matter what our rate is, but I will tell you that if the rate seems lower and it's not a markup client, the recruiter has room. Everybody got that? What's the markup? Yeah, so markup. So essentially, so we have a client in that. So let's say our rate is 100 an hour.

We essentially can only pay that person what? It's like, I'm bad in that. It's like 100 divided by 1.45. So it's like what, 68 an hour? It's like a 45% markup or something like that. So essentially, it, what? Sure. See, that's why you're a developer and I'm not. So essentially, we have to pay that if we want to go in at that rate. And then it's a direct correlation between the bill rate and the pay rate. Now that we have a lot of clients that don't have that, but I would say that's the first question asked if you're getting a fair rate. If someone says yes, this is a markup client, why are you asking me this?

You can say, well, I learned that depth space from a great recruiter to ask this question. Say what? Yeah, the recruit is gonna come up and down. And the next thing, if it is not a markup client, I would specifically see what the rate range that you're targeting. There is, this is where you have to work with the recruit that you trust. I absolutely make sure all of my consultants are getting paid fairly. I even try to get them bonuses as much as possible, because I don't want them to leave. But I usually tell people like, hey, this is literally the most I can do.

Or it doesn't make sense business wise for us to work together. And if it just doesn't work, it just doesn't work, But that's where you have to work with the recruiter that you trust to make sure that if it's not a markup clients, you're getting a fair pay. Yeah. Good question. How many recruiters you work with at the same time? I recommend two. Here's why I say two. One, if you just work with me in Nashville and you are without a job, I highly recommend for you to work with another person because Beikou does not work with everybody in Nashville. We are more expensive, our bill rates are higher, our direct salary conditions are higher than most of our competition.

For example, remember I said to 25% a first year salary, a lot of companies are at 18, some of you earn are at 15%. We walk away from that business because essentially we want to pride ourselves on quality and if clients do not want quality then we don't want to work with you. That's how we structure our business. So from a recruiting perspective, if you're in a job that you're enjoying things, I would just work with one. But if you're like without a job, I would probably do two. The reason I wouldn't say any more than two is because essentially two should cover most. I would say two recruiters should probably cover about 70 to 80% of the market.

And usually the other 20% are like clients who probably don't even want to work for anyways. So I'd recommend two. also to like we'll wear you out again if you work with any more than two of us. So would you like to work with the website? I would want to find two recruiters to recover or see. Whole market? Yeah. And how I can figure out that they're like, oh, I'm intrigued instead of. Yeah, absolutely. So I would do this. So first off, you use that like filter that we talked about. I would then ask who are your main clients you're working for right now. And I would ask clients you're working for right now with my skill set, even if you don't have a job for me with those clients.

So there are, I work with 15.net clients right now. I only have one.net job right now. That doesn't mean I'm going to get 14 tomorrow, but if I was a developer, I would meet with that recruiter like, all right, who are your main clients? who are your bread and butter clients that you get jobs for all the time, I can list off like 12 right now. I would go to another recruiter, hey, who are your bread and butter clients and just see whatever laps and what doesn't. I would say that, and literally tell them, like listen, I don't care if you have a job for me or not with those clients, but who are your hottest clients right now you're doing the most work with?

And they should be able to tell you, and if they stutter at all and like, can't figure out what it is, you need to run for the hills, screaming. or just hang up the phone, do the work. What else? This is good stuff. You have 18 minutes to learn everything you've wanted to learn about recruiters and the job search process. Or you can just obviously email me afterwards too. Yep. Yeah, absolutely. Everybody hear that? So essentially, if you're looking to relocate, maybe three or four different cities around the country. So I would absolutely get you connected with recruiters in our other offices if you wanted to work with me in our Dallas office or whatever.

I would ask that first. Wait, I say that again. Well, I mean, we're national. So I guess I just want to make sure we're on the same vocabulary. Well, we did not all the more. OK, yeah, yeah, OK. I give up your chance. Yeah, because there's some of them are just like ones. Like just the Knoxville I learned. Like this one. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, I would say like, hey, listen, I want to relocate to these offices. These cities, do you have offices in there if they say no? that I would probably look for another company. Here's the deal, and here's what's difficult, right? So you essentially have to become a recruiter if you don't want to do the job search with a recruiter.

Does that make sense? So my dad is not in tech. He's in the restaurant industry. He left his job after 25 years. He literally goes, what do I do? And it really sobered me, and my mom's going through kind of a job change as well, and it sobers me in a sense because a lot of times recruiters can be so money focused and we view every single developer as a potential commission check or whatever that we kind of lose track on the ability to just want to help people. And so I would want to work with a recruiter who immediately tries to help you even when it's not directly related to them.

Does that make sense? So that's one thing I would find as well if a recruiter goes, oh, I mean we just don't have anything and then you go on their website You see they have it I would drop it right and then with with anybody who's on the job search That doesn't want to go through a recruiter. You essentially have to think like a recruiter And I'll just say this we are I have a job because this is a job and so I Would also another thing of preference preference as well is I would absolutely start looking before you think you need to start looking If I were you and if I was a developer, I would always keep my LinkedIn on open opportunities and see what comes across my desk.

My brother is a product owner in Nashville and he's always taken interviews, always. Because just to see what else is out there, if you're literally at the same company for six years and you haven't taken one interview, you could be underpriced. You could, behind the skillset, you could, I don't know, be missing out on another great opportunity, but you don't know because you're not taking calls. Like I would absolutely be open to taking all calls and all interviews, even if you're happy with where you're at. That's another thing I'd recommend. Yes? I mean, essentially, here's the deal. So we still get job opportunities even through November and December, hiring just slows down.

Right? So like people, so if someone calls you about a contract to hire a job and you're like, Most holidays, most clients are open to you working like 410s or like, I don't know, 3, how much would that be? 3, 3, 13s? I don't know. Anyways, that's why I'm not a developer. Most clients are willing to do that, so that's something that's taken into consideration. So like if you get a really sweet job and it's a contract to hire, you're like, ah, it's the holidays, that's not a valid response. Like, literally you'll be fine. Honestly, you'll probably get even more time to work remotely because most FTEs work obviously take off and you'll be able to work from home anyways.

So I would say the rush is kind of for like active stuff, probably like now until November 1st, we'll still get jobs but the hiring won't happen until January 1, like free onboard stuff. What else? This is great stuff. Hopefully you're going to learn something. What are like the key gear we like on seasons for hiring? What are the stock? Man, I would have to go back and look. For some reason I feel like Q2 is always crazy. Yeah, Jennifer, March, April, June, April, May, June, then there's a lull for the summer, and then right now, like literally right now, September, October for me, like it's just been like literally, I need to work for like 20 hours tonight.

Like, that's just where I'm at right now. So that's kind of the, the abs and flows. But again, that's why you need to have a recruiter looking out for you to send your job opportunities so you can kind of keep a bead on the market, right? So another thing too, market's really good. If you want to try consulting, contracting, I would do it right now. The market's really good. There's a ton of opportunities. Again, I'm only speaking of Nashville. I don't know about Huntsville, but everybody I've talked to within the community. Everybody's always saying, yeah, there's a ton of jobs. I have the best you've ever had, et cetera, et cetera.

Now it's time to do it if you ever wanted to do it. If the recruiter's good enough, like I said, you will never have any downtime. Yep. to be honest with you, if you have to rely on a resume, you probably aren't going to make it by yourself. Paul, Paul, Sam, pray to PTL that there. So, yeah, I mean, because if you go off on your own, you're going to have to leverage your network and become a recruiter and a hunter mentality all the time. That's what I tell developers. If you want the consulting mindset, you come in, crush a project, learn some new tech, get out, but then we'll take care of you from a marketing perspective.

That's the pros of going through a recruiting company, because essentially we should be able to deploy you on the next project. If you're good, and we will do all the marketing for you, you don't have to do that. Got you. Yep. Yep. Yeah, yeah. Like I said, so we've, when Neil, through my notes, we have like a few clients in Nashville, like one client specifically, I know off the top of my hand that does remote stuff, I placed one remote. So I think I'm on pace for this year to probably place like 40 something people this year, and I think two of those placements are remote.

But yes, I would absolutely say, but I would take the meeting, because here's the deal. Developers, hey so and so, sorry resume, what you want, I want remote. Okay, you want to meet? No, not really. All right, click. Hey, what's up, developer? Hey, man, why are you calling me? Ah, sorry, resume. You want to hang out? Sure, but I want remote. Okay, do you still want to hang out? Sure, okay, great. Which one of you things probably gonna be able to send that remote opportunity if I get it six months later? If you want remote, I would still meet with the recruiter, but again, still use those filters, because essentially, you know, you want to have recruiters, I know what they're doing.

Yep. job hopping. So, everybody hear that job hopping kind of the vibe within the community on that? So, if it is a contract role, and it ended because the contract is done, I would just notate on your resume that it was a contract position in your file. I had a developer, I had to let go a few months ago that was working on a project for us at a consulting company. And he was like, do I put it on my resume? I go, yes, you do because your managers would give you good references. It just wasn't a fit. It was just some ambiguous project that he was way over his head.

But technically he was still good. It was just like sense movie being sported. If you can get a good reference, I would absolutely put it on your resume. I will also say too that there is, and again, this is just Nashville, if you've been out of company for 10 years, I wouldn't say there's a negative connotation with that, but in the market right now, like, three years, or four years, staying out of company is what I've been able to see if you can't keep up your skills, or your skills start to stay the same. And so if you're bouncing every 18 months, but literally you can talk through it on every part of your resume, you're fine.

In today's market, we place a guy who hasn't worked in eight months, the tech market in Nashville is just so nuts right now. And I know I'm obviously selling Nashville heavily. This is what I know, that people are getting jobs without working for months. I almost thought about becoming a coder. But I'm really bad at problem solving everything that. What else? Yeah, eight minutes. This is good stuff again. I mean, this is it. I'm done speaking of conferences after this. You will not hear me until 2019. Yep. Hey, so what? So I mean, different company names and that kind of thing would be a problem.

But to what degree would you allow? Well, yeah, I mean, essentially, like, if you're in a 50-50 role scrum master and developing and developing .NET like and you're open to going either path or a mixed path and and you've been doing kind of scrum master stuff for the last two positions so like seven years I would absolutely for what for I have a resume where ones and more scrum master focus to agile blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah term buzz term I don't know what it means and then also with .NET as well if you want to move to the .NET side have more of a .NET focus resume does that make sense?

Oh yeah yeah yeah I mean just depends how you want to do it right so I'm working with a guy right now that had to fire this week on his LinkedIn he didn't have a LinkedIn here's what I would say to pull your LinkedIn it does not need to be a direct cut copy and paste off your resume recruiters search on keywords imagine that so if you are a dotnet developer I would absolutely put C sharp if you are currently working with react right now please put that on your LinkedIn, don't leave that out, especially if you want to do it. What I would do on your LinkedIn for the position you're at, I would summarize it a 30,000 foot view or you're talking to your grandma or your mom about it of what you're currently doing.

I am currently developing at Facebook the messenger application and the feature that allows you to post like Snapchat. That's pretty easy enough. But then what I would do is I would put the complete tech stack right next to it. So I would say high level summary and this is your LinkedIn. And then put the key technology you're using. I'm utilizing React.js, JST, C sharp, no SQL in the back end with Mongo, whatever, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so that's what I would do on LinkedIn. Wait, skills, job descriptions or? Yeah. Oh yeah, that's not that big. Because I'm like, I'm- The description. But if you don't have the description, then I look at the Skills, right?

And I literally mess with you. It's hard to tell what you do if you're linked in, are you Open the dot net gigs or do you do this? And then usually developers are like, oh, I actually do this. Yeah, so I would absolutely put the technology like that, Again, high level summary, technology is used portion and go from there. Because that way recruiters can still search on your LinkedIn based on key search terms. But then you don't have to spend a ton of time on your LinkedIn. I also use Twitter. So Twitter is like, I'm starting kind of speaking on the conference circuit. Like I've learned that Twitter is kind of like a developer's like unlinked in, in a sense where connections are being made and stuff like that.

So if you don't have a Twitter, I highly recommend getting one and start networking with people in the deaf community. I didn't plan this. I spoke at the dot and I made up a national in January. We have a career panel. And I was on a panel with two other engineers, a dev manager and an architect. And essentially, we have a wonderful program in Nashville, the Nashville Software School. And essentially, there was a ton of Nashville Software School kids. I say kids. They can be literally 50 in a second career change. And one of them was asking, hey, how do I find a job as a junior dev?

And I'm like, okay, how many people in here and raise your hand, you have found a job by sliding someone's DMs either on Twitter or LinkedIn literally for NSS people, they're literally the only two people that raise their hand were the two females on either side of me that started NSS and now are software engineers. Like, and I didn't blame that at all. And they got, and they made those connections off Twitter. I would absolutely tell you if there's one, another thing to take out of this conversation. If you want to network and make relationships, I would stay away from submitting your resume blindly and try to make connections literally through LinkedIn and Twitter as much as possible.

I would type in the word developer and Huntsville in the search feature in Twitter and just start following people and retweeting their stuff and eventually they'll like you enough. And people are like, I don't know what to post on LinkedIn. I mean, Twitter, all I do is have cat gifts and some dog stuff and Gamecock football. That's about it. And then essentially I just tweeted people at different conferences. I think Cream City's going on right now. And so a few of my buddies are up there speaking. It's just like, it's a way to stay connected within the dev community. So if you're not on Twitter, I'd highly recommend using it.

Again, just to kind of even follow some trends that are going on and use as a learning tool. I recommend that as well. What else? We got three minutes. We want to keep going. three minutes left, terms of the official session. This has been all really good stuff. Yeah. Yeah. What signs may not actually be working for a professional on formalizing? Oh, yeah. Yeah. So I have a question that just want to make sure on the same page, you like the recruiter. You think you like the recruiter. But essentially, they're not working for you, don't think? I mean, I usually try to send jobs. We get jobs a lot.

And so I check in a lot. And so if you haven't heard from that recruiter in six months, past three months, probably past. So if you really like that recruiter and they're not sending you opportunities after you told them to, you need to move on. I usually send, if I message you, I have opportunities for you. If those opportunities don't pan out, I set the expectation that, hey, I'll go, I'm gonna go under a little bit. You're not gonna submarine. I'm not gonna hear from me for a little bit. but then you'll hear from me in probably like 30 days and then you'll have a job offering two days.

Literally right now, the clients are moving so fast in Nashville that I'm getting opportunities for developers so fast that they literally say no. After good paying jobs, like, they're like, hey, are you on the market? Yes, great, can you interview here? Yes, hey, I got you an offer, do you want it? No. Wait, what? So, yeah, it's just a little crazy right now. So, but again, if there's a flurry of like stuff in the beginning, give them 30, 45 days, but if they haven't hit you up after that, move on. What else? Again, all good stuff. Yeah, so everybody here at that question, we're talking about, I mean, essentially, clients wanting developers hit the ground running.

Sadly, yes. And that's a frustrating thing, because there's a lot of good developers out there that don't have React don't have Angular and then they won't get a job because they don't have it, right? And so that's the incredibly frustrating thing. If I were you at a company that you like and you feel like you can learn some new skills, I would try to pick up some side hustle projects at the client to learn new skills. React or Angular? React or Angular? Still Angular, still Angular, but there's a lot of React coming out in strong right now. a lot, a lot. View, I'm starting to see some like inklings of you, but it's not a thing yet.

Yeah, I mean, essentially if you have Angular 2 in TypeScript, I heard that's a little easier to pick up with React from what I've heard. That's a little easier sell. But it's a recruiters job to educate the clients. So if recruiter, so if you tell them that and they're like, okay, and they don't like go to bat for you, I'd be like, I'm not gonna work with you, because you need to educate the client. Now, a lot of times the client still tells us no, but I tell the developer that. I'm like, hey, we checked it with the manager, he said no. Okay. 12. 12, I don't know.

Yeah. Is that the last? It should, right? So essentially when I work with you, I try to get a reference to, to speak to your technical abilities. And so I usually tie that in like, Hey, as past manager said, this dude can catch up super fast. So yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of PHP right now with one client that I have. And I haven't seen PHP in years. And like, literally their entire code base is built on PHP. And there it is. There it is. There's a ton of good engineers out there at PHP. There's not a lot in Nashville. And so if you do PHP and you want to come to Nashville, I can get you a job tomorrow.

So yeah, I'm starting to see a lot more Python. No, not really. Because it's hard to find. From my end, it's just hard to find. Yeah, yeah. It's just hard to find. Yeah, yeah. It's good for y'all. But again, if you know people at PHP, let me know. I mean, Python, because I can place them tomorrow. Yeah, all this open source kind of hit us in the last 30 days. I'm like, whoa, open source. What is this? So no, I actually know what it is. Just joking. So yeah, Python PHP is kind of a thing I'm seeing a lot. I'm a debunked data scientist. If you went to dinner with me last night, there's no such thing as data scientist.

It's just a glorified data analyst for the most part. We have one company that wants true data scientists. So a master's or PhD in stats has done kind of the heavy lifting from a data science side of things. But essentially, a data scientist and Nashville is just somebody who can speak with the client pretty well and can get their way around our Python. That's not data scientist. And salaries in Nashville do not support data scientists. Yeah, that's a good PhD. Yeah, I mean, we just can't. UBS has some true data scientists. Vanderbilt's got a few data scientists that I know. And then there's another company in Nashville called Digital Reason, and they do like true, like AI data scientists, like just, they're software like contract terrorist stuff, pretty cool.

But they have true data scientists. So that's another thing I wanted to bunk as well. If you were with me at dinner last night, I said, there's just as much ETL, SSIS, T-SQL jobs in Nashville as there are anything else, right? So a lot of people like, do I go full stack? Do I go database? Literally, if you stay in the database and get really good ETL stuff, you'll have jobs forever. Especially in Nashville with how much healthcare there is and all the disparate databases kind of pulling all of it in. So what? So what? No, days never going away. Especially right now with everybody migrating kind of updating all their stuff.

Yeah. Great. Yep. Nope. Go ahead and start now. Yeah, the recruiters, one of the things I always ask if your own vacation is coming up, and so we just preface out in the front end. Cool. All right, guys, you guys are more than welcome to go. I will stay here and answer questions until the cows come home. Not really, because that's weird. But you guys are more than welcome to go. Thank you guys for coming. I really, really appreciate it. Hey, what's going on? podcast listeners. Super, super excited to bring another episode to you. This episode is actually my conference talk at Code on the Beach in Jacksonville, Florida a few weeks ago.

Personally, this was probably one of my better sessions. The questions were amazing and the people were awesome as well. So there's a lot of good content that was generated out of this session to help navigate your job search. I hope you guys enjoy this. Shout out to Pete, his crew are interactive resources in Jacksonville. They put on an incredible event. This event was on the beach at a great hotel. And so it was a cool experience to be able to learn a bunch of tech, but also be able to work on my tan after hours and maybe have an adult beverage or two. So it was just an absolute blast.

As always, feel free to like, review this in the App Store. This will really go a long way. My goal is again as always for this podcast to be a tool for others so they can help themselves on the job search process. The only way that people will be able to use this is if other people like rate and review it so they can find it on the podcast store. So please do that. If you need to reach out to me, email is the best way to do it. Taylor at Vaco.com. But if you want to connect with me on LinkedIn and Twitter, I'm doing a ton of kind of blogging quote-unquote on both those platforms.

So my social media handles are at Tdessintdessyn and then my LinkedIn is pretty self-explanatory. I hope you all enjoy and look forward to another episode out of the next week or two. Thanks.