the other side of recruiting w/ james arnold

full transcript

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

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, VACO.com is how to get in touch with me old-fashioned email social media at tdesintd 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. James, give the people what they want. Who are you? What do you do? And then we'll just go from there. Yeah, I mean, elevator pitch, if I've ever, ever had to do one, right? You know, I've been in recruiting a long time.

And, and I have had a lot of experiences in recruiting. I've been at lots of levels of recruiting. I've been lots of types of recruiting. And so I like to think that, that that no fair amount about it, I guess. Today, I'm working at an autonomous vehicle startup and we're focused on recruiting some of the hardest to recruit for tech positions like roboticists and hardware engineers and very, very sophisticated software people. And so what a lot of my day to day looks like is talking to folks like the crowd here and others out there in the market that are either looking for a job or got their heads down, looking hard at what their job is.

And I'm trying to take them from that to my company. You know how recruiters do, right? We have lots of contacts, lots of reach outs. And a lot of them are relationships that are pretty flash in the pan. So I like to try to think that any time I establish connection with somebody, I will remember your face at the very least. And then later on I might take your face again I'm linked in and say, I know that guy, right? I know that girl. And be able to say, man, where did I hit them up for last time? Oh, it was over there. And so I guess what I'm getting at is that I'll see your face a lot more than you'll see mine, which is probably a good thing in your career.

But don't ever hesitate to reach out because I'm always here to help and guide and give people ideas as to how to find the best job. Absolutely. Well, and then again, I mean, so that's why I wanted James on and then Elliot what's going on. It's good to see a man connect with Elliot. He's always Mr. Consistent on here. So and the reason why I want James on the show is because James made a few comments on my LinkedIn post. It's like, man, this guy gets it, right? And it's what he just said right there, right? He wants to help people. So again, any friend of mine, reach out to James because, uh, because this dude gets it.

So James, I want to go and dive into the topic today. And that's, um, in-house agencies or in-house recruiters versus agency recruiters, right? And I want to have more in-house because I don't know, like I'm uneducated, right? Like, what does y'all's day look like? What do you do all day? Like for me, like we're like, you know, A, she's like, I got to meet all the people, right? I got to meet everybody, right? And then, I feel like in-house is a little bit more intentional. Like you said, I mean, listen, the engineers James is going after for the record people is as hard as crap fun.

Like, so much respect for James. I would love to pick his brain on how he searches and tries to find those people because it is hard, hard work, especially what he's trying to do. But James, can you just talk about the in-house experience and what you're responsible for in a day to day and we can kind of break that down? Yeah, yeah, you know, excuse me, the difference in agency and corporate recruiting are night and day in lots of ways. And one of the ways of their night and day is that inside a corporation, you have a lot more levels of support. And on typically at an agency, you're kind of trying to do a lot of it yourself.

You do all of it ourselves, right? Right, right. Well, well. In some ways you could equate it to lots of other industries where there's a pathway to go if you're more of a solo, I can do all this myself type person. Or if you're more of a person who likes to have that teamwork and that energy around you, I think Inhouse has a little more of that for recruiters and sorcerers on this call. That's the biggest difference I've found is that, that team environment is someplace where either you thrive or, you know, to heck with the rest of these guys, I can do it all myself, right?

So I think that that's a good differentiator kind of from the top down. But day to day, you know, a corporate recruiter spends a lot of time trying to organize and strategize around what is upcoming in there in their work, you know, flow. So, you know, you're talking with lots of engineers and lots of engineering managers, you're probably talking to a fair amount of candidates, and then you're trying to keep all that straight while the floor is shifting underneath you. And one analogy I've heard lots of people use is you're kind of building the plane as you're flying it, right? You're trying to keep a multiple things happening so that the end results are positive for the majority of the interactions that you're having, right?

It really sucks for a recruiter corporate or otherwise to approach candidates that don't end up succeeding. That's kind of a waste of everybody's time. So I think the goal is to get as good as you can and better at trying to find that really small group of people that really wanna work with you and work with your company. And I think there's an onerous on recruiters that maybe they ghost you or they don't get back to you or they've got not enough information for you. And I always kind of abut that with saying, but the quantity of what they're trying to do, has to equal some quality as well, right?

So that kind of narrows. And if you're a candidate that's looking at work, the best interactions you can have with a recruiter are finding out, being conversational, being an investigatory, I always say being curious. If you're curious about stuff, you're gonna succeed, right? Because curiosity may have killed the cat, but it's not gonna kill you if you're a job seeker in your curious. The worst that you can have happen is somebody says no to you, right? The best that you can have happen is you establish new relationships or you establish a pathway to applying and getting a position. But really being curious, I find is the best way for candidates to interact with recruiters from the in-house or from the agency.

And within-house, I think it's a, you gotta make sure to pattern yourself in the sense that you don't wanna just have a flash in the pan interaction with the person that works at the company, the recruiter like myself, it helps to have some people that are kind of, I would say repeat offenders, people that bug me every year about a new job. Maybe they're in a happy new job at the current work, but they're really interested at some point in working for the company I'm representing. So they would come to me and they'd say, I'm interested in this sort of thing. And I might look at their experience and be like, well, that's not quite enough for what we were looking for, go get another couple of years where you're at, and then you're at problems, right?

And I think having an open dialogue with folks really enhances that pipeline for recruiters, but also enhances the candidate's experience throughout the whole process, and enables you to kind of get in there with somebody a little bit, rather than well. And I wanna break that down real quick, right? Because so I think this is the biggest knock to agencies, and I applaud the in-house recruiters who do it well, and that's why I have James on the call, because I feel like he does it well. We don't, we, agency, we don't really care. I mean, we do, the good ones do, but for the most part, we don't care about the candidate experience.

We don't. Right. I mean, it's, it's, you know, listen, you know, if James called me up, he goes, hey, he goes, hey, Taylor, I want to use Vaco and, you know, partner with you guys to help kind of expand some talent. Listen, the end of the day, like, we're just, we're just, I hate to say it, we're flinging resumes to James, and then James makes the decision, and then James walks that candidate through the process, right? And so, James, like, correct me if I'm wrong, I feel like you guys aren't focused on the volume that we are, because you have to be intentional, because you essentially, and I talk about this all the time about brand and how important it is taking care of people through the interview process about your company's brand.

So can you elaborate on that? Because I feel like that's kind of the biggest rub and the biggest difference on both. Yeah, 100%. As an agency recruiter previously in my other life, it is about the flow. about getting people into that job that you might potentially get a fill, right? And you're getting paid based on that, right? You're getting paid based on how many people you can get into the job and then what their salaries are is, you know, kind of equates to how much money you make on that, that sort of thing. In house, you know, you're looking at more of shepherding somebody through the experience so that even if it ends up, you know, negatively, they're still pleased with the experience, you know, as they can be, as much as they can be, I guess.

If somebody is having a terrible time and they're applying for a company, the chances that they say yes at the end of the day that they offer are really low, the chances that the company has their act together in order to hire people around you, if you do say yes, are really low. So that experience that the recruiters are trying to give you is something you really should try to take a holistic look at, and not every person you interact with at a company is gonna be perfect. We all know that. Sometimes you get a dud, you know, and they're just not somebody that is gonna run your, you know, run your stuff forward or they don't get back to you.

There's usually ways to go around those sort of people if you run into that at a company. For sure. The one thing to be aware of is that if you find that a lot of people are like that, maybe there's kind of a malaise culture where people are just not really caring about it, right? So you like to see people care. And I feel like if that's usually a good indicator that they like their job, like their place of work and they care about your experience as a candidate. Whereas an agency, you know, you just want to get the job done, move on the next role and, you know, kind of keep your, keep your, your, you know, your clients happy, right?

If you're right. Well, and I think, I think, James, I want to, I want to drive home what James just said about caring. Right. So many people asked me like, Taylor, how do I find a good recruiter? Like when do I know I found a good recruiter? Right? Well, one, it's a vibe, right? Like, do, do you vibe? Right? do you gel, do you mesh, whatever other term that's old people use these days, but vibe is the new term. But like the thing is, is like, you know, even talking to James, I can tell he cares, right? And I think that's what you have to have in a recruiter is the caring aspect.

James, I wanna ask you this, and this is the question I get a lot of, how can I approach recruiters? How should I approach recruiters as a job seeker, right? So let's break this down, because this is probably one of the bigger questions I wanted to ask you about is how do you like to be approached, right? Like I have so many questions I want to ask you, but so start there. How do you like to be like people in your DMs? Talk about, you know, I like it. I love it. You know, I think that there's, there's, there's only so much recruiter can focus on and do.

And so I find that sometimes, you know, you, you can't get to everything you want to do. And a lot of times that looks like passing over maybe a DM of some candidate. that didn't maybe do their homework about who you are before they reached out. So just as I would do my homework on a candidate before I'd reach out, try to do as much investigation on that recruiter before you reach out. When you do reach out to the recruiter, try to dictate what you want to have happen from that reach out. Rather than just like, hey, I'm in this industry and I'd love a job, it's like, okay, great.

Hopefully I can help you, but I don't have a lot of other context, right? So I like it when somebody says, hey, I found this job on your website. This is what I think I'm good at. Here's my resume. I'm available and I'm happy to fit your schedule to have a chat or we can just do this on DMs. And usually with candidates like that, I can leverage what they've sent me into the next steps. Either that next step is, hey, sorry, this isn't gonna work out for this role, or it's, I've talked to the hiring manager. I've talked to the recruiter on that role.

you look like a great candidate and you just put yourself out ahead of a lot of the pack that is waiting in the application queue, right? And I want to dig into that. I want to dig into that. People are over like the recruiters like the job markets crazy were overrun. We got a lot of things we're doing. There's a lot of people posting the resumes applicants are deep. You are you have a little specialized field. I don't I mean you create me from wrong. I don't know if like you necessarily have a ton of I'm sure you have a ton of applicants. I'm sure there's not a qualified applicants.

But like, do you, would you say that the job seekers that reach out to you after they submitted their resume, do you take note of that when you evaluate resumes in the ATS, whatever you use? Yeah, you know, there's two ways to think of that, right? And I think every company, every corporation where you're interacting with recruiters does it differently, right? Sometimes if the candidate's already applied and then the system, you know, maybe you're more likely to be hands off if they've reached out to you directly and then they've already applied to the position they're interested in because in some ways you gave that recruiter out and their problem is no longer your problem anymore.

Your problem is getting a touch and getting accepted and your application getting pushed through the system to that manager and so it might make a recruiter less likely to say oh well let me help this person out. If they haven't already applied, if they come to me before they've applied, a lot of times I can say, well, let's suss this out before you waste all your time going through now. I like that. And putting your information in our system, right? And once you're in the system, it's not, it's not going to do any magic and say, oh, we're rejecting you because you don't have the right keywords or let's talk about that too, right?

You know, beating the beating the ATS and again, I'm all over the place. I was so excited to have I have you on because again, I've had all these questions. Talk about that, man. Like, you know, that's you. Like, you're the agency. It comes everywhere. It's something that is, I want to put rest to now. The ATSs are not smart enough. They don't look at your resume that far. They, you know, there are maybe scoring or there's, you know, the level of years of experience or maybe your, you know, your degree or something, you know, has some weight to it. but almost every single candidate that I've seen come into our corporation has gotten looked at by a human.

And whether it's- It's harder here first. Yeah, yeah, it's not an HCS doing the rejections. If you do get rejected, maybe they found somebody better, maybe the job is closed and they didn't take it down yet. I mean, there's a multitude of reasons why you wouldn't get a call back if you applied for a role. It's more though that people seem to think that there's some mystery and magic behind the scenes that really doesn't exist. And we would love, shoot, if we had that, I would wave my magic wand at it every day, and I'd tell it to give me the best candidates. And I'd, you know.

Because I think that's what people think it is. I think people think like it's this like wizard sorting hat, Harry Potter folks out there, right? Right, right, right. And they think it's like Gryffindor, Slytherin, it's like, no, it's James, sorry. It's James on the other side. Just me, sorry. I hate to break it to ya. And you know, I'm not perfect, I'm not perfect, you know. I think that that, you know, when you look at a role, when you look at who you're applying to and how you're applying, you know, one thing I tell candidates all the time is tailor your resume to the job description.

That makes it so much easier for me to say, hey, even though this person only has a year and a half experience and are we really, you know, I've been told by this management we want three years experience, they're putting in the one and a half years, you know, for the bullet points that I'm looking for in my job description. This person's going to pass the mustard, right? So I'm going to, I'm going to send that person forward even though they don't have enough experience per se to, to, to meet what requirements we put on the job. And so that's why a lot, lots of times you'll see in job descriptions even, don't hesitate to apply if you don't have all that we're asking for, right?

So, so I kind of preach 50% yeah. Yeah. 50% and then, you know, maybe some, some level of, of, of interaction that you've have in the industry or with other people in the industry, or some way that you're networking into the company. I recommend finding somebody that does the job that you currently want to do and trying to connect with them before you connect with recruiters. I'm listening. Listen, part of the reason why I have this dang live show is just for people to affirm what I'm saying, to make sure I'm not crazy. James just did that. So that's all about networking, right? So let's say you've always wanted to go work for a Tesla, right?

Again, I know you really were age James Gray, another Tesla reference. I haven't heard that before, but like, you know, if you want to go work for an autonomous vehicle, right? Rivian or all these other ones, right? If you go and reach out to a principal engineer at Cruz and be like, Hey, listen, like I've always wanted to like work at an autonomous vehicle company. You know, we'd love to chat with you. It kind of my DM is like, you know, flattery, admiration, a specific amount of time, specific question, right? So I love a chat with you for three minutes, talk about what's kept you at cruise for so long.

So you just kind of said that that would go a long way. Yeah, well, and if you think about how that how that all would transpire if that went if that went well, if you're a mess, you have to come with questions and be engaged, right? Right, right. You know, if that call goes well, you know, that person at the company is going to think highly of you as an applicant and maybe you're going to apply and they're going to they're going to push a lever or or you know, be able to say, Oh, I I talked with, you know, with Tim and, and this is what it, you know, this is what it equaled, right?

Or, or maybe they're going to say, you know, hey, I don't have time for that. And then you're going to know, okay, well, maybe that's a really high pressure team, you know, I don't know if I want to start there at this company. Yeah, maybe I need to start somewhere else. That's a great one of my buddies here in Nashville. He was DMing people to ask questions at Netflix. He was like, Hey, like, I got a question. I thought it was really well stated or something. And he had a few managers like, they were kind of rude to him. Yeah. And, and here's the deal.

Right. The end of the day, like, they could be having a bad day. Things happen, right? But, but this, but this individual will kept, kept doing it, kept doing it. And then finally found a place. And now he's at Netflix because of it, right? So again, it takes some time, but don't be, don't be put off, right? Don't, don't be put off. I think that's what I want to get across because everyone's like slammed. James, I'm, let me ask you, Are you the busiest you've been maybe in your career right now? Oh, yeah. You know what I mean? It is a buyer's market in terms of being a candidate, right?

You have a lot of options. You're probably doing a lot of searching and there's lots of different companies knocking on your door. So use that to your advantages as a candidate right now, but it's busy. So it's not a, if you don't come with the right setup, you're not going to win the race, right? Somebody else is going to win the race. your comment earlier about how maybe you'd send that email, you'd set the time, you'd set the focus, and then you'd flatter the person with, hey, I saw you've done this in the past and I got to learn more about it. And so those things are just, if you set it up the right way, your success chances go up greatly, right?

And it worked on James. James here. I love your thoughts around this post. would you be open to, you know, hanging out and it worked. So a few more, I want to get a few comments here. Elliot goes, people who care. Yep, the recruiters who say, let me help you improve your resume. The recruiter first said that to me, totally changed my mindset on recruiters, exactly, right? Like if you messaged James and James, I've always wanted to work for an autonomous vehicle company and James goes, hey, that sounds good. You know, hop on a call, it's not a fit. I'm sure James is probably going to give you a piece of advice.

advice. Yeah. And so, you know, again, the recruiters who care is important. John, it's good to see you, man. Jordan, what's going on? Jordan, Tom's, I miss watching these. Love your interest. Thanks, man. I appreciate that time. So, so as we wrap up here, I mean, literally, like, we don't have a ton of time left. Or actually, we do, we got a little bit of time left. But let's, let's, let's talk about the things to stay away from as a job seeker. What, What are just some things you see people just crash and burn on? You know, there's a multitude of things. There's so many things, right?

James, how long do we have? Yeah, yeah. You know, today, in this day and age, there's things that people focus on that are old and outdated. And so I think thinking about those first, right? Yeah. A lot of times I get the question, is my resume is two pages? Do I need to cut all this out and make it one page? Who's printing a resume anymore? Is it really two pages? just scrolling down, right? So, you know, don't sweat that, right? You know, I've been on past that way before. Yeah, move on past that hang up, you know, you're, you're going to be fine, right?

You know, spend the time and the energy on the things that actually will equal results. And a lot of times that looks like really doing your research, right, really being curious about an opportunity, an individual, a company. And you're able to use those levers once you get further into the process. And, you know, a lot of times, I recommend that it's it's a good thing to have interviews if they even if they don't work out You're gonna learn something throughout that process Yeah And I think a lot of people shy away from it because they say well it's awkward and maybe I had to take some afternoon off of work And you know that's that and that's the other thing if if you're if you're presented with that opportunity Think of it as just as that right an opportunity to grow and I think Yeah, I'm rough again.

I saw a lot just because again that's what I talk about right I think there's a mentality shift that needs to occur with the job search. It shouldn't be, oh crap, here we go again. It's, I get to learn something. I get to talk to new people. I get to maybe learn where I'm lacking, right? Like, there's such a negative, like, and I've become really big on branding and marketing over the last two years with doing everything virtual, but there's such a terrible brand around interviewing. around interviewing. Now, and I understand, I understand, by the end of the day, you gotta change your mindset. You gotta change your mindset.

What else do you see? You know, the one thing that popped in my head is you're saying that is, you know, changing your mindset so that, you know, when you are looking and applying and being a candidate for positions, you're enthusiastic about it. You know, there's nothing worse than low enthusiasm. And it's not a fake it so you make it. If you're low enthusiasm type person and introvert, and this isn't your, you wouldn't get on with Taylor and jump out here, that's totally fine. You don't need to do that to be a good person or a good candidate for a role. What you need to show is that you have had a little bit of passion behind your search, behind your investigation of the company and the role and things like that.

And if you bring that to the table, I always tell people in interviews, at least 50% of this interview is just psychology. It's not about what your answers are. It's about how you're interfacing with the people that you're talking with, because we're gonna have to work together every day. I know if I was gonna work with Taylor every day, I'd be super stoked and I'd be happy about it, because Taylor's been great and so much fun, right? So you wanna look at that as a job seeker, you also wanna make sure to exemplify that somewhat. And it's really silly, But when I first started out and recruiting a long time ago, we used to try to cold call people and talk to them about stuff.

And so you're really starting cold when you're doing that. And you're trying to find any touch point you can with this person, and all you has a phone number and maybe a name if that, right? So yeah, yeah. Yeah. You're kind of in the dark with your blinders on, and you're like, how do I make friends here, right? So figuring out how you can address somebody and break the ice, right? Look at those icebreaker questions out there online. Think about how you might talk about your background so it gives inclusion or it gives that interviewer an opportunity to ask you some questions about what you do.

Be interesting, I guess, is a good way to say it, but also be interested, if you will. Yeah, I mean, you don't need to bring, you don't need to bring like, don't be inauthentic, right? Right, so like, we're not saying like you have to like, You know, yeah, I don't know, just be completely wrong. So you make it? No, none of that. No, you got it. But like, here's the deal, right? Like if James goes, hey, tell me about Cruz, you know what Cruz is, right? James at the end of the recruiter call goes, do you have any questions? You have questions, right? Like it's those simple things.

Like you're not on your phone while James is interviewing you, right? You turn off notifications. You look at James and the entire, it's things like that that really make a difference. Jordan right here. It's often just as awkward for the interviewer, I think, and thinking that way helps me stay relaxed. That's so true. I mean, listen, that is the most true statement I've heard all day, right? It's so good. You know, make sure that you make them feel good. You know, that's as Jordan saying, you know, it's their, they're in an awkward spot. Sometimes it's, they haven't done too many interviews themselves, right? Maybe this is their third job and they've only interviewed two other companies in their whole career.

And so they're awkward trying to figure out how to be on the other side of that table. And so making them feel comfortable helps you stay relaxed and also kind of puts you in a position of a little bit more power in that conversation, right? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. 100% Elliot, dude, the take on projects, the take on projects that I've done has stretched me so much. Many failed interview projects become resume projects. I love that. I love that. And again, I think, and this is why Elliot's been, I followed Elliot. Elliot does a great job of communicating kind of what he's doing online and it's fun following Elliot's journey.

Elliot's been a constant student of the game and he takes every opportunity to learn and I think that's why Elliot has done so well getting his career started because he's been a student of the game. So Elliot, I love that mindset. So now James, we are wrapping up now. Sorry, I didn't mean to rush you. But so just some last bits and nuggets, man. And so obviously, we've talked about the do's, the don'ts, what internal recruiters do. Anything else that you want to impart on people here at the very end? Yeah, I think change is tough for everybody. And changing jobs is really tough. I think going through change in your life, whether it's a relationship or job, a birth, a death, whatever it happens to be, change is not something that everybody can accept and deal with in the same way.

But I do think that in the job world, changes a good thing. And it spices up your life. It might make things more challenging, or it might make things more difficult for a time. But any time you're feeling that difficulty, you're learning and growing. And so I think putting yourself in those positions, it really helps you. Elliot mentioned that. And I think that is something that you can continue to keep doing is putting yourself in those uncomfortable situation so that the next time you're in that situation, you're that much more comfortable. I love it. I love it. Well, y'all, thank you again for hanging out with us today.

James, stay on real quick as when we end it. But James, thank you again. Y'all, everyone, thank y'all for tuning in. A lot of great comments, all great questions. This is what I call my West Coast edition. So, I'm going to start calling it that because I'm getting a lot of people from the West Coast involved We always have to do a new show because it's really early from the West Coast folks. So this is Guy's Council 2.0 West Coast edition. West Coast edition, I like it. Well, I'm coming to you from the island of Hawaii. So you're far West Coast. You can possibly be, man.

You're all the way. You went all the way this time. So next time it'll be even better. I love it. Yeah. So again, go connect with James. Like I said, there's no one on James. He said a bunch of great things. And I think he's a great person to connect with him. And yeah, listen. This is the last, so James, you got my last live show for the next few days. I am heading on vacation. I took a PCR test yesterday at negative and I'm flying out and I'm going on vacation. So y'all have a great one. And again, thank you so much. I appreciate the algorithm.

See you everybody. Hey, you did it. You listened to an entire episode and I am very grateful. Cause you know why? There's a lot of podcasts out there. There's a lot of episodes. And I myself rarely finished 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 Tdaston on all social media handles.

and I hope you have a fantastic day.