helping job seekers and managers w/ matt fesler

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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, VACO.com is how to get in touch with me, old-fashioned email, social media at tdesntesnyn. 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. Matt, give the people what they want. Who are you? What do you deal with go from there? First, as Lori would tell you, if she were here right now, no, you don't want snow. Trust me, is a former South Dakota? No. Yeah, you're like the only guy I've ever met from South Dakota.

That's because there's so few of us, Taylor. So, yeah. So tell me about it. So tell the people who you are, but tell the people who you are. I'm Matt Fessler. I've been an engineering as long as I can remember, but, and so let's see, it's been about 30 years. Actually didn't start out as a software engineer. I started out as a chef. I was actually classically trained chef. There you go. Unfortunately, due to some kitchen incidents involving a back injury, I had to find a new career. So here I am, engineering instead. I love it, I love it. So Matt, so the reason I want to have Matt on, Matt and I've chatted multiple times about trying to give back to job seekers, right?

And Matt's very passionate, and I love this in managers that want to help people, even though they're not a fit for the team. And so Matt, I want to just dive in super high level. What, listen, the market's nuts right now. How can job seekers separate themselves in the interview process in your words? Well, I'm staring at one of those ways right now, obviously Taylor. One of the things that you have done, and I think a lot of us you have networked with, have run with, is all of the new tools that we didn't have years ago, one of them being linked in. Yeah. To any job seeker out there, one of my most rewarding experiences, all of my most rewarding experiences on LinkedIn have been connecting with you just because you did reach out, because you did DM.

If I had to insta, probably distill it into one piece of advice, it would be do not hesitate. It doesn't matter whether you think that the job is attainable. Reach out to that hiring manager. If you can connect with them and ask them questions, then even if you don't walk away with the job, you've walked away with more potential to find your job. So do not hesitate. I love that. And so, so I've gotten some pushback from this. I've gotten some pushback when the people like that's weird. salesy, the managers know what you want. Matt, how do you like to be approached from job seekers who are maybe sliding into your DMs and maybe what type of questions should they ask hiring managers to not sound weird?

Well, first of all, it's important to acknowledge that humans aren't built for digital communication, right? So it is going to feel weird and all you can really do is just set a friendly tone. You know, if that means a smiley face, fine. Make a smiley face. Just help them to understand, look, I know I may not get a job, but I really understand that you may have valuable advice to give me. If you're asking for advice, you may walk away with a job, but you'll definitely walk away with advice because who doesn't like to listen to themselves talk? You know, that's also how we're built.

Yeah, I mean, literally that's what I say. I mean, listen, especially in tech, right? Like, people, they love to hear themselves talk. And so my thing is, is like, if you engage in a hiring manager, and you said it, right, and I want to, I want to dig into that a little bit advice. People don't know what to ask. They're like, what do I ask? And it's like, listen, like, ask for any give, give an example of maybe, maybe a good question. This great guy reached out to me through a mutual acquaintance. I'll go ahead and give you his initials. T.G., I believe you saw his comment earlier, Mr.

T basically just wanted to figure out how we even approached a tech interview, right? And by asking that question, what we really did is we opened the door to everything because I was on camera with him. We talked a little bit and I gave him some focus tips like make sure you got something pretty blank behind you. So the interview is focusing on you. I gave him some feedback and mannerism. So especially for the entry level person who doesn't necessarily have all of those cues that you know but don't really recognize in an interview room by having that conversation, it really allows them to figure out how to interview online, even if it's their first time.

So I love that. Yeah, I love it. Yeah, one of the big one of the big questions I'm interested to hear your thoughts on my question. I tell especially junior developers, but even even also this question for junior developers is I would message a manager be like, hey, Mr. Manager, do you got six minutes to talk to me real fast? I'm trying to level up my interview game and I would love to know what you like to see in Junior Developers Interviewing. Yeah, absolutely. And you, mom and I asked what I was doing in Junior Developers Interview. There's the vanilla stuff like a code repository.

You literally cannot have too many code repos if it's your entire portfolio, right? When you've had a few years on the job, you can start talking about experience, but until that point, I mean, a manager is probably not going to look through all of your code, but if it's public, it's accessible and it's compilable, I guarantee they're popping into a couple of apps and maybe even throwing a couple of senior engineers on it to see if you're worth that initial interview. So that's one thing. I love that. Yeah. Um, be super honest on your resume. Yeah. Yeah. You know, if, if it has to be half a page, do half a page.

Um, basically, I won't call it patting the resume, but when you add that extra content, be a hundred percent crystal clear on that content. You got to be able to speak to it. Yeah. I'd be able to speak to it. Absolutely. So I know it's tempting because it feels pretty blank, but that's okay. Because it's our expectation that it's going to be pretty blank when you've got that junior level. Well, let's not even talk juniors, man. There's a lot of senior engineers that pad the stats as well, right? I mean, that can go across the board. Yeah, that is absolutely a universal lesson. I don't care if you're going in for VP.

Be prepared to talk about it if you list it. Because it's all for the game. So there's a question already coming in. Again, if you all have questions, one of the reasons why I have this platform is, There's no place to get direct questions to a hiring manager in this open spot. So definitely ask them So LinkedIn user what holds more value skills or Experiences and I'm assuming own personal kind of projects Versus real world which Think I know the answer yeah, it's both. Yeah, I mean it depends on your level you have to figure out LinkedIn user that if all we have when evaluating you for a junior level position is your skills and what you've developed while you're educating or on your own time that's what we're going to use and when we start looking at you for met or senior level we're gonna we're gonna look at both yeah so the one thing I will add is experiences tell us a couple of things they tell us what you've done in the past, but they also have a lot of hidden meaning in how your soft skills are.

How do you, how do you work with others? So those experiences sometimes can be the value add, especially when you're in a competitive position where you're like going for that senior spot. Yeah, absolutely. Uh, Daniel, it's good to see you. Leo, it's also great to see you too. Leo, I saw your DM. I will get to it. I promise. I'm just a little slow in DM messages. Um, so let me let's talk to the interview process. That's right. So we talked about networking, right? You're talking about reach out. It's okay. It's awkward. We're not meant to do digital. It's fine. Ask question. Ask for advice.

Oh, we got we got another question coming in. Question for Matt. Mr. Fessler. Did you include your prior work experience as a professional chef when applying for a tech job? That's fascinating. Absolutely. Did you really? I did a little blip, little blip on the resume. Well, it was more than a little blip because I started out like everybody else where in the beginning, it was all the experience I had. And all that I could really do was communicate, hey, look, here are the things that I learned on my own. Here are the things that I feel like add value. And here's my work ethic. Because, man, if you want to talk about a work ethic, even training to be a chef is a backbreaking pursuit.

So if people understand that, and it actually did help me out because as part of my breakout position, I got interviewed at a place in New York City as a high-rise in Manhattan and they had a fully functional kitchen. So we actually cooked lunch as part of my interview. Are you serious? I am dead serious. They had a fully stocked fridge like all the coffee making stuff. It was pretty fun. That's amazing. Grant comes in, Matt, one of the best guys I've ever worked with, we've bonded over my Somalia experience. That's awesome. I love it. My food and his wine. There you go. I love that.

So let's dig into the interview, right? I feel like I feel like interview process is broken and we can talk a little bit on the hiring manager side as well as the job seeker side here. As a job seeker, what's some things job seekers should keep in mind the interview process? Because it kind of gets a little cluegy. And what's some just encouraging words for the job seekers? Be patient and provide feedback. We are a physical world that's moving digital. My boarding interviews are not the practical thing that they used to be. A lot of companies are reacting to this by putting out the proctor tests, the lot of this stuff.

I've never done leak code, but everyone hates it. Yeah, I've heard the same. I've never done it either. I've been curious a couple of times, so I have an account. I've just never used it Give feedback, but give feedback to the higher measures high reach need to get feedback to the job seal I don't know that obviously hiring managers to the job seekers, but job seekers you know You may not get the job You're improving the odds for everybody else by giving feedback on how well or not well something worked in that interview process You're not always gonna have a hole to make that comment but your recruiters talk to talent acquisition Let them know that sucked it didn't work at all.

Yeah, I love that. I get better so How how should You know, I'm curious if you have any special sauce because I feel like the interview process right now on the flip side is very much beat down Right, it's more of I always say that normal hiring processes is not why you should work. No, wait a minute. The traditional hiring process is not, hey, we want you, let's just figure out, let's ask you some questions and make you work. It's typically convince us why you should work here, right? It's kind of more of this kind of like beat up mentality. How do you structure your interviews and maybe some advice to hiring managers to improve their interview process right now?

Oh, so much, so much, Taylor. Yeah, I know. I just saw your brain break on that one. Yeah, I just saw your brain break on that one. Yeah. I've never been a big adherent to the whole, why should we let you work here? Right? I have money. I want to pay you to do work. Show me that you can do that work and show that you're not going to murder people in the parking lot when you get off work. Very, very low level of expectation. But just saying, just saying you got to not be a terrible person and know how to do your job in my perspective.

Yeah, we want the best people, right? But we understand that it's a really big puzzle and that person is one part of that puzzle. Right. You come to me with the skills and I have an opening. I'm going to give you a shot because I know you're going to fit in there somewhere. Right. Right. And but like so how do you structure your interviews? because I'm curious and I don't know if you have any special sauce that you do that's netted success that you're willing to share. So I have two peers at Navi Health in the engineering department that would be Dwayne Settlemeyer and Aaron Bashir.

Okay. Aaron Dwayne and I have a process where we come in, we do an overview and we have an agreed-upon format where we're all present and looking at that individual at the human aspect, right? Overview. How do you work in agile? How do you work with others? How about these specific situations? And then based on that initial screening process, we have a general idea of where we want to guide them in the organization and we set up a second panel of that more technical stuff. So it's not really rocket science. It's mostly just focusing on are you going to be a team player and a good person to work with.

Okay, let's get you over to somebody who can take a look at the technical skills. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's fascinating because I wanna compliment you on one thing you just said, is you three are on the same page. You three know what's going on. I feel like right now at companies across the country, there's just no rhyme or reason for interviewing, right? It's just kinda like, who's available? Ask some questions. And let's just figure it out. And it's just like, and then the candy gets a bad experience. So props to you for having that. Props to the two of them, because if we weren't able to collaborate, it would be a broken paradigm just like everything else.

So thank you. Yeah, I mean, hiring managers be intentional. So we had a few more comments come in. Let's see here, Steven, it's great to see you. Chris says, don't break the guest brain. Almost had one too. Yeah, Sarah goes in, I never get to share my ideas and I never get to information on how to improve. So she makes an interesting, Sarah makes an interesting comment, I wanna dive into, hiring manager feedback. Matt, do you give it to a certain extent to candidates? Absolutely, absolutely. It's frustrating to me because it feels like in some situations that possible and some it's not. Like it's always harder to give feedback to candidates via the contract to hire path, simply because there's at least one more level, but we'll try.

If we're not proceeding with the candidate, we try to give that feedback, and encourage it to get down to the candidate. With the full-time employee path, it is a little easier because you're typically working more directly with talent acquisition. Sarah, the one thing I wanna say is a lot of hiring managers try to leave space in that interview at the end for you to ask questions. I know it's a bold move, but there's no reason that you can't give your feedback there. It's not what they're looking for. Here we go. But if you can take 30 seconds, I swear, you will stand out if for no more reason than you did something other than ask what the compensation package was.

But do you think that could hurt people though? I mean, you gotta be tactful, right? Like you can't just railroad the hiring management. Like this shit sucks and sorry world live on the internet. But like you can't just say that, right? So do you have a way to phrase that, Matt, to hiring managers? Yeah, pause it at first, negative second. I mean, it's the same way that you give constructive criticism to anybody. It's got to be in the toolbox. I really enjoyed this conversation and I particularly like the section where we talked about this. However, I became a little frustrated or had trouble showing my skill set when we got to this.

Yeah. tracking, you still have to keep track of those things that really threw you off or just graded. Yep, absolutely. Let's see here. Great question from a homod up here. I love this. Hi, both a question. I have one year of experience as an intern junior full stack developer front and focus. Now I want to get to back in cloud. Any advice with this experience? Thanks. Oh, so much once again. I can tell Matt's trying to distill and you've done an amazing job on this episode of distilling your answers very simple, but I can tell your brain is just working overtime right now. You know, the try answer is the obvious one, Muhammad.

You really need to train yourself. Okay. If you want to focus on back in cloud, go in, take all of the free education you can, track of those classes because in the lack of formal experience saying I've done this and then I went out and got my own Azure account and created this proof of concept both of those things whether it's plural site or YouTube keep track of what you've been doing so you can discuss it in that interview that helps you break in. Yeah I love that I also think too I think making sure you communicate this in the interview with another company. Right so if you're interviewing for another full stack job or a front end focus job, that's fine.

But say, hey, listen, if there's an opportunity to an organization in this job to do more back, and I would love to do that, make yourself electable, communicate, because if you're hiring managers, don't know, they're never going to be able to set you up for success. So definitely communicate that. Let's see, we got another question from James, former guest on the show last week. What are your thoughts on bending your requirements with related experience compared to someone that you really like for the team and their wellness to learn. So if you're talking about, yeah, I might need clarification. If this is like four years of experience or four years of college, then to me it's the person and not the education, right?

Right. Yeah. Education has some advantages, but sort of people who've been sitting in their basement doing it for five years. Right. Right. Maybe I interpreted that correctly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Now, and I think it's probably close to what James was what was wanting as well, but James definitely clarify. Ellie goes, I like giving the feedback to recruiters about the bad hiring process that you listen. We, so I will tell you this, I'm all about you telling us the experience. Unfortunately, hiring managers are stubborn, most of them are and they won't improve. A lot of the times, a lot of the times, man, I'll consider you stubborn.

I, a lot of the reasons why recruiters get bad reputations is because the hiring managers on the other side aren't doing the work, right? And so, but I would definitely communicate everything, right? Let us know about the experience, what could be better, because a lot of times we do try to go back to the hiring managers and say, hey, listen, you talked about this, you didn't tell us this was part of the job, so definitely keep that chaining communication open. And the good news is, Elliot, that they also tend to package it in a very palatable fashion. So if you give it through your recruiter, there's more chance that it's gonna be well received.

Yep, absolutely. So here's a question from James, and I think James chimed in these from Montana. James, that's Montana, right? Yeah. James goes, classic question, checking at the egg, what makes a candidate stand out for you, stand out to you a good versus a great engineer? Critical thinking and drawing outside of the lines. But let's, so, okay, here's my pet peeve. We talk about critical thinking, we talk about good communication, but we don't define that, right? Let's talk critical thinking. Like, what does that mean to you? Critical thinking is the person who asks the questions before they give the answer. They're fully defining the problem, right?

And then if they hear something in that question that they don't agree with, which they feel might lead them or the solution is straight, they're picking it apart. So you have to be ready to ask questions before you give your follow up Ansel and you also need to be willing to push back on the poorly formed question. Yes. Push fast because this shows that you are actually thinking about the question you were just asked and the solution you're trying to provide. Yeah and I think another thing too and this isn't necessarily what makes a good versus great engineer but I do want to highlight this because I'm getting a little bullish on this topic.

We always talk about improving your communication skills in the interview process. One of the big things is, and I'll be interested in your thoughts, Matt, but basically, if you don't know the answers to the question, just don't say I don't know and that's it. Right, we talk about good communication because good communication is asking questions and keeping the dialogue going, right? Kind of like this show, right? You have to keep it going. So if Matt asked me like, hey, do you know how to write a Variable? I don't know. I'm just making things up and I say and I say No, and then I just sit there Then that's awkward, but if I say you know Matt I don't know how to write a variable, but I've done something similar.

Here's what I've done and then expound on it Yep, that's bad. I love that because it just shows that you are teachable. Yep. Yep. That's great resource second half of the question just real quick for James, sorry, I'm gonna hog a little bit of time here. Go ahead. Simple fact is if you are willing to consider any approach, then that means you're leaving the door open for innovation. So people who think outside of the textbook solution for any given problem are gonna stand out because hiring managers understand that that's an agile mind that can probably go further than most. So yeah, yeah, I love that I love that and then I do apologize my dollars having to melt down the background if you can hear it Dominic what networking resources would mr.

Festival recommends to new developers with no coding background other new developers with no coding background because I guarantee that at least a few of them Have had exposure to recruiters and hiring managers. It can help you get further on LinkedIn to me. It's about making those first five connections and then exploring their connections. Ah, yeah, that's great. I love that. I love that so much. Let's see here and we're already close 30 minutes. Matt's got some stuff in production. So I don't want to keep him too long. So we're going to go through this real quick. Ellie, it goes. I've got a good bit of front experience.

I'm looking to build more knowledge based in the back end and cloud to become. I think this is the same way. Yeah, I'm taking action on learning like you, Mohammed, what else could I be doing? I mean, I think building a project, right? There was one guy who was a dot net Azure guy here locally and Nashville's working with him. He didn't have a ton of Azure, but his only Azure experience was actually, he was doing like a nonprofit type thing and standing up something for them. And he was using everything of Azure, durable functions and all that other stuff I don't know about, right?

And the company interviewed him because he actually had that project, side project on his resume. Yeah. Just one word for Elliot. To me, leading and contributing are two completely different paths. Figure out what you wanna focus on. It's nice to understand the technologies that you'll be leading, but if you do wanna go into people management, consider that carefully because the skills are definitely different. I'm sure you're already aware of that. But I would highly check out my interviews with Ben Henderson, Elliot, that I've had because he, I don't know if you know Ben, Matt, but Ben's a VP of engineering. He's a national, but he's a VP of engineering for company out of Phoenix.

He was my director. Yeah, he was, he was. Oh yeah, oh shoot, yeah, yeah, okay. Yeah, so that's right. Yeah, Ben's a good one. Learn a lot from him. Yeah, Ben's a good one. So definitely check out Ben's Ben and I's interview. Yeah, so James comes back in, gives a little more color experience. is greater, say you're looking for a PM and you have experience of two years compared to someone with four years, but the person with two years would be a great fit because they're critical thinking you just talked about this. But you can tell the four years experience may be more knowledgeable. You want to take a chance on a new hire.

I am willing to take a chance on a new hire, but only if there's something that makes them stand out. It's a simple fact. If we're measuring people, it's not just about what you have on the table. So I love James in that particular case, you may get beat out, but that just means the next opportunity, you're going to be super sharp and ready for it. Yeah, absolutely. Leo, thank you for the affirmation. So time is almost up. Matt, I always leave the last few minutes for the speakers to just say any wise words of wisdom. I mean, any other thoughts that you're seeing right now or anything you're seeing right now that you have thoughts on your super passionate about hiring or the job search?

Yes. What are the recruiters? Or if you're recruiters hiring managers, things are riskier and more vague than they've ever been. Work with your recruiters. Set up touch points. Make sure that you, and this isn't just because I'm on with a recruiter. Against recruiters, it is because it has been key for us, communicating with them and helping. I mean, it doesn't matter how big or how small the detail. them because they can use it to find you better candidates. And you grip about how much time you spend in interviews. Well, hey, that just means you hire faster and have less time in here. So that's my tech.

I love it. I love it. So y'all go connect with Matt on LinkedIn. And definitely DM him. I'm sure he'll get back to you with some some amazing thoughts. But Matt, thank you for hanging out with me this morning. Stay on real quick for you. And again, want to to give another shout out to my sponsor, Render ATL. Go check them out. I'm serious. It's going to be a great event. You won't want to miss it. I will be there. Guides counselor 2.0 Wava Booth will be live, videoing, everything. So y'all have a great one. I am off tomorrow. Have a doctor's appointment. Everything's fine.

Just have a doctor's appointment. So I'm off tomorrow, Thursday's unicorn finders, and then Friday we're back at it. Y'all have a great one. I'll see y'all tomorrow. No, not tomorrow. I'll see y'all Thursday. Peace. Hey, you did it. listen 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 T.S. and on all social media handles. And I hope you have a fantastic day.