the importance of pto w/ kelly vaughn

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Hello, hello. Thanks for listening to Guidance Counselor 2.0. Listen, I want to give you a quick rundown of what this podcast is and what you're about to get into as you listen to these episodes. We had Guidance Counselors in middle school. We had Guidance Counselors in high school, but we didn't really have Guidance Counselors in college and now as professionals. We don't really have anybody to turn to to ask a quick question to learn something about the job search or to navigate your career. And so that is what I want this podcast to be for you. I want it to be a tool for you to navigate the job search and your career.

So that being said, I hope you enjoy this episode. And if you need to reach me, Taylor at vaco.com is how to get in touch with me old fashioned email social media at tdss and t d e s s e y n. And finally, please rate and review this in the app store because I want this to be discoverable for others so they can navigate their careers. Hope you enjoy the episode. So Kelly, I want to dive in. So the reason why actually message Kelly. So Kelly came on and again, TikTok, what's going on. I'm streaming down here, TikTok, Instagram. He all comments, throw it in there.

But if you all figure out why I'm looking kind of weird, I got phone streaming down here as well. So Kelly, I DM'd you because you put out a post, of course it was a really good post. Like man, this is great. Kelly's so smart. I got an interview about this. It's about PTO. And as a business owner, just like making sure you take care of your people, but then also, I mean, you've been on the other side, just as an employee and taking time off. So I don't know where you want to dive in here because this is a really vast topic, but if you want to give just your general high level thoughts around PTO, the importance of, especially right now, taking time off culture, how that applies to people's culture and organizations, we'll go from there.

Yeah, so the tweet that I posted was about how I structure PTO at the tap room because I took a very unconventional approach to it. I know a lot of people have very negative feelings towards unlimited PTO because there is this negative stigma with it where if you're offering unlimited PTO cool unless you know your company also has to actually allow you to take time off. Otherwise it's a cop out and you know if you leave the company the company doesn't have to pay out the holidays because you're technically unlimited so there's a lot of negativity to unlimited PTO which I couldn't understand which is why I wanted to tread carefully when approaching offering unlimited PTO at the taproom.

And the way I decided to do this is actually implement a minimum number of days you must take off. Oh, I love that. So we offer unlimited PTO with a minimum number of 20 days per year that you have to take off. You must take off time every single quarter as well. And like our managers, everyone's holding you to it. So that's something that's really important to me is, is, you know, work like balance is a word. We'll just leave that there and move on. It's a word. So, but it's really important to be an example. If you're a leader, you have to walk the walk as well.

And that means it's important for you as a leader to also take time off. So it shows your team that they need to take time off as well. And the whole reason why this became relevant is because I took the entire month of May off from the taproom. Did you really? I did. Yes. That's something I struggle with as a leader because I mean, listen, you everybody we follow on, I would say the way Twitter and the algorithm works, we all kind of follow the same group of people, right? And, and, you have an engine on like any other I've seen. And I, and I resonate with that.

I could say another word, but that's, but that's way too crash of a word at 9 a.m. this morning. But like that, I resonate with that, right? Like high engine, go, go, go. We always got stuff to do. How do you balance that as a leader though? Cause I struggle with it. Like I work all the time. Like literally like I'm having that conversation with my wife right now. She's like, hey, you need to cool the jets a little bit right now. Like, no, I love it. I love work. I love go, go, go, go, go. How do you balance that? I mean, I love it too.

I thrive in this kind of environment as evidenced by my career path. I'm, you know, I'm not exactly old. We don't need to talk ages or anything, but I've accomplished a lot in my short career. And that's because I find that I work well under this type of pressure. I work well by keeping myself busy and finding things that I truly enjoy doing and acting upon them. But I do need to be, you know, checked occasionally. And I think one of the things that I established early on is I'm a very transparent person. And I celebrate high highs, I celebrate low lows. I talk about everything.

And so the people close to me, like my husband, for example, he notices when I'm starting to take that downward trap and he's like, hey, Kelly, we gotta talk. And I'm like, okay, let's do this. Because if you leave me to do whatever I wanna do, I'm going to stay up too late and work too long. And there's an image that comes with that as well. Hustle culture is awful. And I get so sucked into the work that I'm doing just purely out of enjoyment that it can come across the wrong way. Same. Same. Yeah. Literally same. So I make sure to like not send emails at 2 AM, you know, things like that.

Basic, basic things. I have to wash my stuff. I was like, oh, I'm like, oh crap. I got an idea for my team. I text them a tailor. It's like 10 30 at night. Like I don't think it's maybe best for like a manager to be texting because like people get anxiety, right? Like, and that's something I want to get to and then everybody commenting. Uh, Robert, what's going on? Emmett. It's good to see a big dog, Chris. I love it, yes, I love it. I love when I can catch up with my favorites from Twitter, P.F., yes, wow, minimum 20s a year. Elliot, you must take time off, yes 100% agree.

Christine, I absolutely love that. I usually don't take PTO, exactly. So having someone, yes, yes, absolutely. Good morning, Alicia, it's good to see you. Bear goes wild, wish other companies had such policies. Exactly, that's why I want to Kelly on the show, talking to talk about this. Yolanda, what's up? Good morning, Amy, I love deadlines, pushing them, but I find I love to find the balance of PTO versus work. Don't we all start contrast to employees that give PTO, but take issues when you take it? Yep. Absolutely. So like my thing is, is like, I have to realize as a leader, like while I love it, I also sometimes that can cause anxiety for my team, even if I don't mean it because as much as like we love to go, you, not everyone's like me, not everyone's like you, right?

And some people, I would say our generation has been conditioned to feel a little anxiety when managers reach out. Right? Yes. I mean, I mean, like, I have to give him props. Is it just Rod on Instagram, right? He's blown up since COVID. He talks about mental health and taking time off all the time. But like he talks about like our generation just for whatever reason really is like, I have to work, I have to work, I have to work, I don't take time off. And so I think as a leader being overly cautious with that is incredibly important. For sure. And it's kind of funny you bring that up because you know, I have people who report to me being like, Hey, can I schedule a meeting with you?

And I'm like, Oh God, what did I do? So it's the same way. It's like it's whether I'm the leader or somebody, you know, it doesn't matter. I still get anxiety over it. I love it. That's so good. So, so what are some other thoughts, right? What have you seen examples running your running your organizations, giving people off? How has that affected people? Cause I'm kind of curious from that perspective. I think it, you know, it results in a happier whole being. If you're taking that time off, you cannot work nonstop. If you don't take breaks, you're going to be working at, let's say 20% capacity and you're not going to be doing your best work, you're not going to be doing work that you're going to be proud of.

And so that's why it's important to me when I see, you know, one of my employees starting to falter a little bit. It's not like you're doing something wrong. It's like, hey, let's talk what's going on. Do you need a break? Please just take the rest of the day off and rest and recharge. Get back to it tomorrow. I'd rather you be working at 100 and feeling like you're doing your work and doing work that you're proud of than to just kind of be like trudging through and hoping for the best and just getting through your day to day. Cause no one wants to live like that.

You know, if we're spending so much of our lives working, at least enjoy the work you're doing. I feel like that's the expectation of society though. Yeah. Let's just grind it out and it's like I mean I tell my team and Kelly again That's why I love talking to you and I'm of course like all like energized talking to you But I say the same thing. It's like listen like if it's not working Just just go like take the day off like nothing is going to change and of course I say this if my wife is watching this she's gonna be like really there cuz you don't do the same Change from now until the next day, right?

If you're not a hundred it's important to take that time off Yeah. I also want to kind of touch back on the anxiety that results and people reaching out, especially at oft times. One of the things I cannot stand when people do is when it's the evening or it's like six o'clock, you know, you're wrapping up your day, you're about to like just enjoy your evening and you get a message from someone saying, for tomorrow, just send it tomorrow. I know you don't want to forget. There are reminder tools. Put a a note on your phone saying, hey, it reminded me to reach out to so and so.

Use the Slack bot, like the schedule is not. I just learned that. Yeah. You did not know that. Oh, how did you are watching? There's there's a way for you to remind on Slack. It's like the three dots and you click the three dots on the top right of the chat and you can do remind remind me. I that was a huge hat for me. It's so helpful because, you know, you might not realize when you just need to get something off your chest, you want to get it off your brain before you forget about it, that it's impacting somebody else as well. It's impacting them on the receiving on to because I see that in my brain is immediately like, you can tell me to think about it tomorrow, but I'm thinking about it right now.

And I can't I cannot put that down. Yeah, so can can you send scheduled messages on Slack? I know you can do outlook. You can I just realized that too. I've started to actually schedule emails to go out the next day instead of 10 30 at night. You're welcome. But it can't can you send messages, schedule messages on Slack? I don't know. You can. Yeah. All right. Then I got started doing that. So if you're watching, I'm sorry. I'll get better. I promise. All right. So we're already halfway through this morning. I knew this was flying by. I want to dive into. So Kelly, can you give a quick background about yourself just like from a hiring business just to kind of set the tone because I want to get into hiring as well.

Yeah, I think also an educational standpoint as well. You see my diplomas that are hanging out down there, they're blurry, I get it. So I have my bachelor's in psychology and I have two master's degrees in public health and clinical social work. So I'm a trained therapist, which explains a lot of how I approach business and leadership as well. So I started running the taproom. I re-ran it to the taproom in 2017 and hired my first employee in 2018. And we're currently sitting at 15 employees at the taproom. We're currently sitting at 17 at Gavalo with three more starting in January. Lots of hiring. So literally that's what I'm telling on the show to talk about hiring.

What are, I mean, obviously you've, I'm sure you've made mistakes. Right. No, ever. I'm sure you've perfected processes. What is some biggest advice you have for hiring managers watching this because there is hiring managers Alicia. I see you. Hiring managers watching this and also job seekers for during the interview process. On the on the hiring manager side, I highly recommend the book who a method for hiring. The reason why I like this book is because it walks you through, it forces you to think through what you're looking for in a role. It makes you write out the not only the job description, like obviously you need that, but what does success look like in this role?

And how would you rate that success? In keeping these ideas, going into the interview helps you frame and answer or ask the right questions. And you're not always going to know everything from day one from that first or second or third, however many interviews you have. I can all have a whole thing on how long some of these interview process are, which makes zero sense. But again, I don't work at a corporation, so I don't have to jump through any hoops. I get to decide what hoops exist. But I think one of the things that I'm looking for when I'm hiring is, of course, the technical expertise, like what do you know?

How well do you know it, how well can you talk about it, how well do I think you can talk to others about it as well. The second really important piece is a vibe check. How are you going to get along with everybody else on the team? Are you going to enjoy working at my company, whichever one we're interviewing for? It's really important that it's a fit for both of us. And I don't want you to just be feeling like you have to grind out work that you're not enjoying the people you're working with, you're not enjoying the work you're doing. So that vibe check is very important.

And when I'm giving feedback after an interview, which is again, something that's very important to do, I talk about that as well. Like, again, I'm full transparency, everything I do. And like, look, here's where I feel like there's still room for improvement for you. Would love to talk to you again in the future if it's not a good fit right now, if it's not a good fit and it's not going to be a good fit. I will not say would love to talk to you again in the future. Again, not going to lead you on. So where does the transparency come in? Like, can you, is there something, it's something you're willing to share where you really live by this transparency thing?

Cause I'm all about it too. And I have stories, but I'm not the one being interviewed so I wanna ask you. Yeah. Just kind of break down where the transparency comes from. One of my favorite things about how I handle interviews is I don't like asking questions that there's a clear right and a wrong answer. Like I'm not going to test how do you, like especially like an engineering interview. I'm not gonna ask you to walk me through specifically how you would code something just by talking about it, because that's not how we do our work. And I don't think coding tests are also a good representation of your work.

Talk about that too. It has a whole topic as well. So I think one of the things that I value a lot is, especially when I'm talking to more junior engineers, I don't expect you to know everything, but I want you to be honest about what you don't know. And so I'm going to ask you questions, like, what is your experience with Node.js with Coa, you know, like Coa is especially one that comes up a lot because most people have not even come across Coa or just by the work. It's like an express light for if you're in the, the node side of things. Never heard of it.

But most people, like if they say, yes, I've, I've used it for years, great. But if you, if I find out that you have never actually touched it before, that, you know, you're breaking down that trust. And so I really value that transparency about like, here's what I know, here's what I don't know. Here's what I would like to learn but haven't had the opportunity to come across it yet because you learn a lot on the job. I just, I expect that honesty and I'm asking questions like, what is your experience with database migrations? I wanna ask you about it and I'm gonna be like, I have never written one in my life.

Right. Right. I love that, I love that. But also to like, what about you though, right? Like the transparency, like here's the deal, right? Like not all leaders are transparent. Not all hiring managers are transparent, right? Has there been a singular moment in your life or your career where you're like, you know what, I need to be more transparent because of X. I think one of the big ones was the beginning of the pandemic. There's a lot of fear around him. I'm talking like February, March, 2020. Yeah, like we're more like deep in it. We're like, this is going to be two weeks and it's going to be over.

Yeah. Ah, ah, ah, ah. Anyway, I think one of the reasons why I wanted to be transparent there is because like, I'm nervous. I have no idea how this is going to affect the taproom and our clients, are they going to keep on bringing work to us? Are they going to pull back? And so I felt like it was important not only for me, but for my team to have transparency into what we're looking at there. So I was sending weekly updates being like, here's where our conversations left out, but these clients, we do have these new leads coming in. These of these are pulling back, or these clients are canceling projects.

Here's where we're at financially, so you know that your job is still safe. Man. So really COVID is the reason why that you've put more emphasis on transparency? I think COVID was really the start of it for me. I've always just naturally been one of those open books and I hate that phrase. I use a lot of phrases I hate. I'm just coming to learn these things. I mess up all these phrases when I say them, so it's fine. But I guess I've always been like that. And I think my degree in social work lends a lot to how I communicate and how I bring up topics that I'd rather talk about the difficult things than push them aside.

But bringing that into the workplace, I think COVID was a really good turning point where I was just like, all right, we're just gonna talk through everything. And so like when we have hiring changes, when we move, I move for employees from the top room of a particular Apollo. And I talked about, you know, what led to that decision and why we, you know, why we did what we did and in bringing, I really appreciate our director of operations, Victoria and director of engineering, Josiah, because they have those same qualities. And so when they're talking one-on-one with the employees, I fully trust that they're having those same transparent conversations with them.

So I got goosebumps, we got diving into that topic. How important is it to have your staff align especially on the senior level with what you believe in? That is a very like softballed question, but I'm gonna let you kind of. It's extremely important because, you know, culture, the company comes from everybody. It is, you know, I can think one thing, but if nobody else agrees with me, It is not how the company operates. Either that or you're gonna create a divide in the way the company is functioning. Because at the end of the day, they have their direct reports and those direct reports are going to listen to what their, their manager, their leaders are saying.

And so that's why, you know, our leadership team at the taproom, we're talking all day, every day, whatever, but like we have fixed times every single week that we're talking through anything that comes up and how to address it, how to bring it up with, you know, whatever the issue might be, talk through what our all hands are going to look like, things like that. I love that, I love that. All right, so let's talk about the job seeker, and then I have some questions coming on, on Instagram and TikTok. And for those of you who have questions, I'm gonna get to comments here soon.

I'm just trying to like, get as much out of Kelly right now, cause she's just a wealth of knowledge. Talk about the job seekers side of things, biggest issues you see with job seekers. I know we talked about briefly, but like, just maybe some tips to job seekers right now as they head into the new year. This again is kind of related to the transparency piece and corporations definitely do not agree with me on this one, but the more honest you are during that interview process, the more trust I am building with you, the more rapport I'm building with you, and the more likely I am to want to bring you on to the team.

I think it's really important to have that, have that open conversation from the beginning. Like it's extremely important to remember like, yes, you are interviewing for this job, but you're interviewing them just as much as they are interviewing you. And, you know, I still see, I reach the end of interview, you know, I'm asking what questions you have for me and when you don't have questions, it gives me a little pause. Did I lose you? You're frozen. Okay, we back? We back? We're back. Yeah, we're back. Go ahead. No idea what to say. I'm having some internet this morning, so I do apologize for everybody watching.

So, repeat everything you just said basically. So my name is Kelly Vonn, now I'm just. Where did I even leave off? Job secret, fancy all that. That is important, you're interviewing them as much as they are interviewing you. And make sure you have questions for them. Ask them the tough questions. Ask them, what is the future state of the company? Where do you see the company growing? Why are you still working here? Why, what keeps you driven? especially when you're not interviewing with the founder of the company. Obviously my answers are going to be different. I'm somebody else working for me. So, you know, have different questions to ask different people if you're going to be talking to various levels.

Do your research, you know? If I am, talk to some of the other employees, like message them on LinkedIn on Twitter and just be like, hey, I'm currently applying or I'm interviewing here, I would love to get your take on what it's like to work here. You know, do your research. It's so incredibly important. So important. And as a business owner, I'm sure you like it. Right? If somebody comes to the table and they're like, hey, listen, Kelly, like what's your plan on this? What's your plan on that? Where are you going to be? You're going to be like, bam. And I'm like, oh, let's talk.

How much time do you have? You're also going to be like, wait a minute. I got to figure this out too. Good question. I haven't figured it out yet. Yeah. Still working on it. All right. So I'm going to get to comments here. Let's see here. So Alicia said, what was the book again? You say who? Who was it? Yes. It's by Jeff Smart and Randy Street. Okay, cool. Alicia, you got that? If not, just text me and then I'll get Kelly to send that to me. Ah, let's see here. Yes, Barrett's coding tests and whiteboard interviews are utterly worthless. Hey, real quick. Let's talk about this real fast, like in like three minutes.

What are your thoughts on just like, how do you structure your interviews? So at the taproom, we do have a coding test. I will preface it with that. But we also, so our whole point of the coding test is here's a base, just do these couple of things just so you can kind of familiarize yourself with the Shopify ecosystem because we don't require you to have Shopify experience going in. Our next stage, so we do an intro interview, we do that. And then the next one you're actually pairing with our director of engineering and you know what you're pairing on ahead of time. So if you want to research it, go ahead.

Our whole point is just again, see how you work with somebody else on the team. And then you go to the final interview, usually with me or Victoria. And yeah, so that's the, that's the tap from side. Gavallo we're a little bit more expedited on it. We have an intro interview with our director, our product manager and sales manager. And then it goes to Rian and I being the co-founders and we just, we asked the technical questions and the vibe check, no coding tests whatsoever. We're going purely on vibe right now. Can you spell Shopify great? You're hired. Yeah. follow us doing. Have you looked at our website?

Have you researched that? You're hired. Yes. I you know, that type of hiring is exciting. Tatiana, what's up? Good morning. Riley from Richmond. I love it. Pia comes back here goes, we usually here please take the rest of the outfit normally in the case you should start playing for your next job search. It's nice to hear from Kelly. That it truly means be well see you tomorrow. Absolutely. And that's the way it should be run Michelle, what's going on? I know Alicia I was paused Muhammad, what's going on? Let's see here, Robert goes, I'm experiencing serious burnout about learning for a job and ask myself why I should keep learning if I'm not finding any jobs.

Thoughts on that? That's a deep one. What really comes down to what are you learning and why are you learning something specific for a specific job? Are you just learning like, you know, on the programming side, you just wanting to build out your skill set? Are you completely going, you know, pivoting to a different career? Or is it like a very specific company you want to work for? And so you're trying to align with what they're looking for. Really important to remember, you don't have to have every single thing on the job listing because usually, especially for larger companies, it's not them actually putting together the listings.

Correct. And there's going to be some very confusing words in that job listing for sure. Yep, so good. Yeah, I'm not telling you this, Robert. I would say it's definitely a balance. If you're experiencing burnout step away, I would also tell you this, you need to evaluate where you're at. I think evaluation of the job search. I think people do the same thing, right? And Sandy's doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. I think a lot of people, I see all these posts, right? 500 applications submitted, 900 resume, or 900 interview, whatever it is, right? It's like, listen, like maybe change something up like a hundred resume.

Exactly. something needs to be tweaked in your process if that's, you know, and potentially talk to somebody about specifically about the interview piece, because if you don't interview well, that could be what's breaking, was breaking for you. And so it could just require a little coaching. And a lot of hiring managers are not like telling being super open. So that is true. Yeah. So I got a question in on Instagram and again, I got two phones down here. So sorry for like looking down here. It says I'm a React J. And again, Usman, thanks for tuning in on Instagram. I'm a React JS developer. I always wanted to get a remote job, but no one cares about hiring entry developers for that.

How should I approach remote opportunities? They exist. I will say that because our team is entirely remote at Kavalo and we've now hired four more junior engineers. Something I'm extremely proud of. I will say it's, I get wanting to have an entry level remote job and as we move into 2022, I feel like we're only going to be, it's becoming more and more prevalent. seen this year that companies are losing employees because they want to stay remote. And so I do believe that the more and more work opportunities will come. I will say if they have never hired a junior year before, tread carefully because as a junior engineer, it is your job to learn.

It is your job to get the experience you need so you can level up. And if they're more focused on like well junior engineers just cost less money, that is true. Especially in the science kit right now, we're developers can basically say whatever they want to. This is how much I want to make. Cool, what I can start. Basically. But it's really important that you're you're at a company that's that's actually mentoring you and you have other engineers who you can rely on, you who you can learn from, who you can pair with. Because if you don't have that, you're you're going to learn, but it's not going to be a good experience for you.

Yep, 100%. For those of you who hear my daughter screaming in the background, I do apologize. We are deep in the terrible twos right now. All right, so Kelly, I always let the guests have like this last little bit of wise words of wisdom. Like I said, we only scratch the surface on all these topics, but any final thoughts, whether it be leading teams, culture or hiring or anything of the like. Oh, final thoughts? Yeah. I don't know how to keep this concise. I know. I will say one of the things that's been very valuable to me as I've grown in my own career is find somebody who can mentor you.

Whether you're on the individual contributor side or you just wanna level up in your career, you wanna become a manager or you already are a manager, but there's always room for improvement. Find somebody who can mentor you, who you can learn from, and make sure you're doing the same for others as well. It's really important that you're, where you are in your career, somebody else's five steps behind you. And they wanna know how you got to this point where you're at right now. I mean, crushed it, as always. Kelly, where can people find you? Where's the best place to get in touch with you? You can find me on Twitter.

I'm permanently on Twitter at KVLY. I'm on LinkedIn as well at KVLY, pretty easy to find me there. And my personal website, that is actually my polyurek profile is KVLLY.com as well, where you can find my contact information in. I've just, you made your personal job. Oh yeah, it's so much easier. I don't have time to manage my own website. Girl, I heard that, I just can't do mine. All right, sweet. So everyone, thanks for tuning in this morning. To guys, Councilor 2.0, I appreciate it. Kelly, stay on after I end so we can chit chat a little bit more tomorrow. So I have four guests left for the rest of the week.

Tomorrow I have Jessica Kastrop. So Jessica works for Vaco. She actually is doing a ton of work on the accounting finance side in a fully remote distributed environment, which is kind of different for the accounting space. But we're going to talk about hiring in a fully remote setting some tactical things that she's seen from the job secret hiring side. So tune in, Jessica's awesome. She's a dynamic individual and she crushes it at Vaco. So you're not going to want to miss tomorrow. Kelly, thanks for hanging. I appreciate it. Thanks so much. It's so much fun. Absolutely. All right, y'all. You all have a good one.

Hey, you did it. You listened to an entire episode, and I am very grateful, because you know why? There's a lot of podcasts out there. There's a lot of episodes, and I myself rarely finish an entire episode, so I appreciate you so, so much for listening. Quick reminder, please rate and review this podcast in the App Store. I want this to be discoverable to others, and the only way that happens is if you take the time right now and rate and review it. Please, like, right now. Unless you're driving, then don't do it. So, thank you again. If you need to reach out to me, Taylor at Vaco.com, or at Tdastin on all social media handles, and I hope you have a fantastic day.