lay of the land w/ me :)

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Hello, hello. Thanks for listening to guidance counselor 2.0. Well, 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 for 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 vacovac.com is how to get and touch me old fashioned email social media at tdsintdessey. 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. All right, so let's dive in first off again. If y'all have any questions about the job search, please let me know. I would love to hear you. I love to hear from you Mitchell. What's going on? It's great to see we got a lot of people this morning.

So the first thing I want to talk about is just the interview process. And the big thing I want to talk about is the fact that you need to stop comparing your story and your career with other people. I see this all the time. There are so many people and listen, I'm saying this for myself too. Like I am lumped in on this. I am, you know, I'm constantly looking over my shoulder. You know, I know there's a lot of people out there who are constantly looking over their shoulder as well. And they're always comparing where they're out in their career with somebody else that's maybe of their same age, their same skill level, whatever.

And I will tell you this, y'all, you got to quit it. You just got to quit it. And where you out, absolutely where you out. And so I hope for you all today just focus on your own journey, focus on learning, focus on building relationships, focus on taking the next step in your career. But I beg you stop comparing yourself to others in your industry because it's going to steal your joy. Right. This entire career process is something I have to tell myself consistently, time and time again, especially in the recruiting world. For those of you who do not know in the recruiting world, most recruiting companies, like you day send a score card out at the end of every week.

So like you know exactly where you stand every single week with your peers. And it can be overwhelming. It can be exhausting. And so the one thing I've had to do is is I stopped looking at it. I've stopped looking at the score card because I had to stop comparing myself to other people because I'm on my own journey. My journey is very different than everybody else. And so I want to focus on my journey specifically. And so I want to tell you that that's one of the things I'm seeing on the job search right now. Another thing I'm seeing on the job search right now too.

I just want to reiterate it because I this can never be told enough. Be intentional and take the job search in your own hands. I feel like a lot of times, especially with permanent positions, permanent, full time, direct hire, salary, whatever classification you want to say from a perm direct hire, salary perspective, a lot of job seekers think the companies like know what's going on. If it's a perm job, that's not true. I don't know if you've been noticing there have been a lot of layoffs happening. The layoffs have happened because basically when it comes to when it comes to the job search, job seekers think they're in a more comfortable space if it's direct hire.

But the thing is though, a lot of companies just hire that way because they've always hired that way. They don't put intention out behind it. And then you start seeing what happened at Peloton. Right. Then you start seeing what happened at GoPuff. Right. There's there's just a lot of ballooning that's happened over the last two years. And I will tell you this is a job seeker. But some stuff a lot of stuff is out of your control. A lot of your stuff's out of your control. But what I'm saying is there's a lot of job seekers that don't ask good questions that don't interview, that really don't take the job search in their hands.

And so that's another thing I want to I want to encourage you all to do when you're interviewing, please make sure you're asking enough questions. Please make sure that you're interviewing the company just as much as they're interviewing you because like I said, you don't want to get into a spot where you don't ask a lot of questions. You take a job in six months later. You want to leave. I will tell you this. I've had more individuals reach out to me over the last six months wanting to leave a job that they took last year because they jumped at it. Right. They're offering a ton of money.

They jumped early. Right. They offered this benefit. They jumped early. And then now I'm getting DMs by all these job seekers saying, hey, Taylor, I want out. Right. This isn't something I was promised. And so again, be intentional when it comes to that. If you have any questions again, regarding the job search, please let me know. LinkedIn user. It's great to see you tomorrow. It's great to see you. Raymond, it's always great to see you. Cody, it's great to see you as well. I want to move on to to to to the hiring manager side. LinkedIn user, another, I love it. Which so many people here today, I love it.

When it comes to when it comes to the hiring side, I want to speak on some things that I'm seeing right now. Again, there's a lot of companies that just hire because that's the way they've always done it. Right. So like they only look at direct hire because that's how we've always done it. Right. They're not looking at contract to hire. They're not looking at contracting. They're not looking at, you know, managed solutions. Right. Here at Vaco, we have a software consulting arm at Vaco. My buddy runs at Jake on unicorn finders Jake Shepherd. They have their own consulting arm. They've dealt with Netflix and the Emmys.

Like we have a legit software consulting arm at Vaco and a lot of companies. Now it's it's on the recruiters to educate, but a lot of companies only hire the way they've always hired. And when it comes to that and when it comes to that, you really need to make sure that you evaluate all options when you're hiring right now. Companies are four options, right? Direct hire, contract to hire, contracting consulting, slash man and services, slash solutions where you want to call it. Right. And a lot of companies right now are just saying, Hey, we need, we need 10 developers at $160,000. And it's like, well, why, why is it 10?

Well, because there's this big project. All right. Well, why don't, why don't you just give us that project? Right. Maybe you don't need to hire 10 engineers for the next five years. Maybe you just need 10 engineers for the next year. Right. And there's a lot of companies that don't take that extra thought when it comes to how they should evaluate their corporate roadmap or their hiring roadmap over the next year or two. You know, you, 10 salaries at $150,000 a year is a lot of money over five years. Right. If we did a project at Vaco, we took that project away from you for a year.

I'm sure you're going to save a little bit of money than hiring 10 engineers at 150k. Right. And companies think better, do better. You got to be more creative in the interview process. Another thing too, I see companies slowing down the interviews again. Right. We got to keep moving again, two to three weeks. Unless you feel really confident with your benefits package and what you offer to a candidate, you really, really, really need to not try to get in a foot race, horse race, dog race, whatever race you want to call it with other companies. Right. Because what happens is the companies that move the fastest.

So you could be a company that does not offer good benefits, that doesn't offer good pay. But you're fully remote. That's another thing. Like, are we still doing the onsite thing? Like companies like, listen, you can go onsite. You can go onsite. Listen, listen, listen, companies. You want to go onsite? Go onsite. Go onsite. Two, three days, five days, go onsite. That's fun. That's fun. But when your people start losing your organization, when people start leaving, you're not losing your organization, leaving your organization, leaving your organization, when people start leaving, don't, don't let me know. And they could not tell you I told you so.

Right now, companies, you've got to be strategic. Again, I had a conversation. I think was rich rate or yesterday. For those of you who did not watch it, go back to my YouTube, watch it yesterday. Rich rate or not. I talked about building culture remotely. One of the things we also talked about promotional paths and how companies need an I, the company rich rate or works for I think is brilliant. Evacore, you can work as an individual contributor. And you can grow within the company up to a VP level as an individual contributor. Right. So shout out. Evacore, they're doing it the right way. But what I'm talking about is companies, when it comes to the on site thing and building culture remotely, rich rate or set it best, you can build good culture remotely.

It's just different. It's just different. And the thing is, is that a lot of individuals out here don't understand that you can build culture remotely. It's just different. But then if you tie in, maybe a quarterly on site where everybody's intentional, that's important. Right. So I had a round table conversation the other day with people. I had a guidance, it was guidance comes with 2.0 in person. So the clips are going to start coming out. It was an amazing conversation. We talked about diversity, inclusion, hiring, job seekers. We talked about everything. Nothing was off the table. And for me, we talked about diversity in the workplace.

And we talked about how you have to be inclusive with even your activities. Right. Like do your activities within your organization include everybody. Right. Or if you're always doing the drinking, right, there are a lot of people who do not drink. Right. Like that's not an inclusive activity. Right. And so I thought that was fascinating. I learned out of that session, one of the many things that I did not know. But as a manager and as a leader in organization, it's developing, it's developing and a culture where people feel included in every activity. It's hard to do. But again, it's different. And I think you can pull it off, but it involves some intentionality behind it.

I want to go back to a few people have time chimed in since I've gone on my rant. Tiffany, it's great to see you. Tiffany was one of the OGs of the show. It's great to see you. John comes in and ask what the pay when going perm from contract to perm. So I want to highlight this real quick with what John said. So a lot of people, I still like the contract to hire model to be totally frank. I know a lot of job seekers don't a lot of hiring managers don't. But in my opinion, I think contract to hire is the best way to go.

It allows the job seeker to try out the opportunity. The company allows the company to actually really have a working interview of six months. It's basically contract hires like six months of a working interview. Right. And then at the end of the interview, you're like, Hey, you know what, John, you don't, you're not a fit or hey, John, you're a great fit. We'll bring you on. But John brings up a really good point here. You need to make sure you always ask for a hey, listen, I know if you're working through a recruiter, you're like, Hey, Mr. Mr. recruiter, I appreciate the hourly rate before I agree to this.

What is the expected conversion salary? Now I want to preface this. There is a difference. There is going to be a dip from your straight hourly to your salary. And here's why the hourly should account for benefits out of pocket costs, PTO and maybe some other fringe benefits that you maybe had that the maybe the recruiter tried to work into your hourly rate. When you go permit a company, direct hire to company, you have a salary, and then you have all your benefits. Your salary is going to be lower than your salary. I hourly, I do want to preface that. I've had a lot of people messes me the like Taylor, I've converted.

The offer is lower. That happens. It's okay, but it shouldn't be tremendously lower. Should still be in the ballpark. Dominic, it's great. See, I love, I love all y'all out here. We got, I didn't do more solo shows because y'all just showed up in droves. They dacks. It's great. So you thank you so much for watching. Dax is not being a lurker. I love it so much. Looking for a front end dev, looking for my front end dev in the US. I love it. Ralph, my man, it's great to see you buddy hybrid or all remote is the way to go. Yeah. And listen here to do with hybrid.

Listen, I'm fun going back in the office. If there is a specific reason, right? If there's a all hands, if there's a specific meeting that really needs to be in person. But again, I just, every leader I've talked to, yes, it is harder. It is harder. It is harder leading remotely, but you're able to keep your talent longer if it's remote. Andrew, it's great to see you man. Ralph, so many job seekers are looking for other opportunities once they are told to go back to the office. Yeah. I mean, listen, I, you know, there's there's been a lot of smoking mirrors. That's happened with this, hey, we're remote and things are changing.

So again, companies, I posted some TikTok the other day. Now, this is a general report. This is not a tech report, but there's like 11.5 million jobs open right now. 11.5 million jobs in the US have opened that are open right now that don't have people for them. 11.5 million. Let that sink in for a second. Let that sink in. There's some companies I need to hear that. Right. Again, this is, there's those are all tech jobs, but there's 11.5 million jobs open the US, million jobs that do not have people for them. Do you think your people are going to stick around for an on site?

Change up? Like it happened. It's not going to happen. Um, let's see here. Um, yeah, so Shrata comes in here. I'm currently a full time PM real firm. I was turned down my several companies today and they're coming. He's didn't don't believe in remote work. Yeah. I mean, listen, it's definitely a difference of thought. I think the problem with most leaders right now is they really try to recreate the on site culture with the virtual culture. And it's just not same thing. It's just that same thing. Um, all right. Y'all. So that was it. Um, that was some thoughts on today. Um, I appreciated the ton.

I do want to give a shout out again. I didn't do this the first time to my brain sponsors. There's first off brain, the 78 go check them out content creation. If you as an individual want to get involved in content creation, I think you should. And if you have a little money, um, I would highly recommend to reach out to my guy because I think content creation is one of the pillars that I think could really separate you in the job search. In my opinion, if you have $400 to spend a month, I would have somebody help you develop content on the job search, then like paying for, you know, $400 of how to write a resume, right?

Just to be totally frank with you. Also render a Tl if you haven't checked it, listen, I was on an ambassador call with these folks last night. Uh, it's going to be crazy. I'm not going to lie. I'm so excited. It is going to be nuts. I'm going to react Miami in two weeks. If y'all are there, please find me. Let's get a picture or something. Um, I would love that. I'm going to react Miami next week, actually. Very excited about that. Very excited about render a Tl. So you need to check it out. Use a code to gc to dash zero. It's going to be fantastic.

Ah, let's see here. Um, Barrett comes in. I've been burned every time. I've tried contract to hire. We'll do that again. Listen, I get it. I get telling you it's not the end. I'll be all I prefer it, but there's a lot of horror stories. It's got to be done well. And most companies do not do it well. Um, Becky, I agree. We're remote, but just had a company gets together last week. It was great to go on the same page together and bond, but we really work well. We're motley and I love it. There you go. It's not hard. There's not hard companies. It's not hard.

You got it right here. It's not hard. I like it on side better. Listen, I get it, man. I get it totally understand again. I'm just talking about for me and my thoughts, but again, at the end of the day, hiring me, you need to know there's just a ton of opportunities elsewhere. And they need to be careful with that. Um, let's see here remote tool COVID copy and pasted in million postins. Yes, seriously, exactly. Um, all right. Y'all, thank you. We're good for hanging out with me today. I appreciate a ton. Y'all go connect with somebody on this chat. There's a lot of people on this chat send, send one person to DM, send one person DM, let them know it was great to see that on the show and then move on.

But just build a relationship today with a complete stranger. Y'all have a great one. Happy Tuesday. Tomorrow morning. I'm going to be live with Eric Yeager. Um, Eric was on the show last year. Eric is a manager at Amazon, software manager at Amazon. He has some amazing thoughts around hiring, retention. He's very, very good. Um, when it comes to all that stuff. So you want to miss it, not 30 am central tomorrow morning. Eric Yeager from Amazon. Um, and then unicorn finders Thursday. And then I have a render, ATL speaker on the show. Friday. All right. Y'all, hey, share this. If you have somebody in your network that needs to hear this, whether it's a hiring manager or job seeker, share it, I would love that from y'all.

You guys have a great one. And I'll see you all tomorrow morning. 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 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. Yes, and also social media handles. And I hope you have a fantastic day.