wild a** market w/ jermaine murray

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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 t s 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. Jermaine, let's get to people what they want. Who are you? What do you do? And we'll go from there. Hi everyone. My name is Jermaine Murray. You might see me online as Jermaine Jupiter.

And I'm very honored when people call me the job father because I get people offers that they can't refuse. As a godfather fatty, there's no, there's no higher, higher title or higher compliment. I like to say I'm a technical recruiter by day, recruiting for engineering roles at a FinTech in Canada called Wealthsimple, and I'm a career coach at night helping people with their resumes, interview prep, and also getting their foot in the door when it comes to tech. I'm a DEI champion and as somebody from the Black community, I've made it my life's mission to help as many Black people get into tech as possible.

right now I'm tracking towards helping 500 people get into black people get into tech and we've been tracking since 2019. We're currently I told you it was 315 earlier but I just remember we actually had two people hit us up last night so we're at 317. We call 317 black people find new jobs in tech. And it's kind of turned into my quote unquote life's work. You know, and I love every second of it. And I shout out to you, shout out to render ATL. Tech is such a land of opportunity. And we all, we all deserve to, to eat its fruits. 100%. 100%. So we got a lot to dive into today.

First off, I want to, we were talking about your background. So I asked your main point a lot. I was like, Hey, man, like, how did you get into like recruiting, posting things online? So Jermaine, if you want to go ahead and start that story again, or maybe cut it in the middle. But basically, if you want to give the people just a background, how you got to tech recruiting, and then what got you into kind of content creation, putting yourself out now the internet? Yeah. So I, I had a non traditional background in CUTEC. I was telling Taylor Eiligar that I actually went to school for broadcast.

And when I was leaving school, I had every intention of being the Black Larry King. I have a bit of a deep voice and I gave myself. Great voice, great voice. I sent you out there. Great. I gave myself the nickname Audio Chocolate because I'm a ridiculous person like that. And I even went as far, I kind of made some headway into the industry, landed a co-hosting gig on Sirius XM show called Norm at Night and talked basketball over the airwaves. It was good for about 18 months and then we got canceled. And I looked at trying to get into radio the same way an artist might look at trying to make it big as a musician or as an actor.

So I literally took every job that I could to sustain myself while I pursued this thing on the side. Things kind of culminated in to me paying a resume writer, 650 bucks to write me a resume. They gave me a six page resume that covered 18 months worth of experience. And I was so desperate at this point for a job that I actually, like some of the shit my dad was saying to me was making sense. And I'm talking like this is an old school 1960s born Jamaican. So the advice he was giving me was like, take your resume, walk into that office and give it to somebody and that will get you hired.

And like I said, I was so desperate enough that that shit started to, I was like, you know what? I'ma try it, because I ain't got enough to lose at this point. I remember I had my ping-polo. I was driving around the downtown corner, multiple copies of this six-page resume, right? You were looking at what the damn novel is. Yeah, I was walking over the dual tank. And it had it in it. Like one receptionist at this sports station called TSN Jamaican Lady, she's like, she's like, darling, I'm gonna be honest with you. This is not how you do things. Like, we must- But that said it'll work.

She's like, did you just do this on my day? The same my day anymore. It's your day. So I was pissed because she told me like, she's like, and you're giving someone a novel for months of experience. Like, she's like, come on. Would you want her? She said, this is what stuck with me. like if you were in that person's shoes would you want to read this would you read it and I said no and that made me go home and it made me it made me try to not only like I was pissed at the resume writer but it made me it made motivate me to understand where this resume writer went wrong and how I could not repeat it better resume so I taught myself on how to make good would resume and I cracked the code.

Like I figured out like resumes are supposed to like summarize your sales pitch. The same way I would sell to people at my jobs is how you should be selling to your resume. And I always sell from a value standpoint. I don't try to push the sales on to people. I try to build as much value so they see like, shit, I wanna buy that. And it's the same thing with the job search. It should be shit, I wanna hire you, right? So I made my resume speak to the fact that I build value and relationships and one thing led to the next like I was getting bear calls for my resumes and then my friends were like you'll keep make us resumes and I'll make you resumes.

They started getting bear calls that things kind of just started like just kind of tumbling. Yeah. And one day I was at my job. I was working at Enterprise as a branch manager, right? And they made you clean cars in suits. You have to wear suits all throughout the year. So It was it was a little bit just after I got I cleaned the car a dirty ass Ram and 30 degree weather and I remember came back and I could feel the sweat dripping down my chest underneath I've been there church service. I grew up selling Baptist church service on Easter You know it, you know it, you know it.

And I remember I sat down and I was like, what the fuck am I actually doing here? I was like, yo, I hate this place. If I talk to one more customer, I might catch an assault charge. Like, I'm... I hate this. Yeah, yeah. And I said to myself, if you could do anything in the world, you know, and get paid for it. No judgment, what would you do? And the first thing that came to my mind is, I would love to get paid to play video games. And I was like, yeah, that's exactly what I want. I want to play, I want to get paid to play video games.

And I said to myself, Jermaine, you know how much work, these Call of Duty guys put in for esports. Are you willing to put that in? And I was like, no, I just want the free video games. So I started thinking, I was like, all right, what's the next best thing? I was like, if I can't be a pro gamer, I can work around games. Right. So I was like, all right, let me make a, let me go make make a list of companies. Let me go of like gaming companies I would want to work at PlayStation Square Enix. I wasn't a big Activision guy, but I was a big Bethesda guy, right?

My thoughts. So let me go on PlayStation's website and I'm going to look at every single job that they have. And whichever job makes me go, I think I could do this, I'm going to write it down. I'm going to do more research and see what I need to know to get that kind of job and what I have to learn and whether I can do it. I stumbled on a senior technical recruitment poster Posting I actually still have to see but I look at it I look at it now because Jermaine today to get the job now But what they were asking for I said myself I could do all of this The only thing that's missing right now is the X amount of years of experience so if I have to come back to this bitch in five years to work at PlayStation I will but I know I'm gonna get a job as a technical recruiter and I got my start in agency and I just went on to different opportunities, moved to the French part of the country, didn't learn French, moved back to Toronto and here I am.

I love it man. I love it. So the question came in from James, what's the current big myth you see over and over when someone comes to you asking for help with their resume? How to beat the ATS system. If I have to, if I have to, sorry. Yeah, if I could just cry, whoever is spreading this rumor about the HCS having an AI that auto-regizes the name, it's not. Like, okay, there are over 450 HR systems out there. And I can't say whether or not one of them don't have it, but I do know that most people use like greenhouse, lever, jazz HR, because like companies ain't trying spend big big money on HR, even though they're trying to spend big big money on hiring people, right?

So 95% of the time, unless it's like a Google or a Facebook where they would just make that shit for fun. Yeah, right. Any time you get a rejection email from a recruitment from a place, the email may be automated, but the person, but yes, a person pushed that button because they saw all your resume and you're like, nah, this isn't a good fit. Yes, push a button. Send the rejection email tomorrow. And that's how the process goes. Yeah. Let's see here. Jordan goes in, it must be real, because there ain't no way 100 jobs deny me immediately. So I will tell you this. We may need to talk about your resume and how it's written, because that's a lot of job.

But so for us at VACO, we use a system called Broadbean, which is essentially an aggregator for indeed, dice, whatever. And we go through and flag stuff, and you can mass message people if you're flagged a certain color. So Jordan, it's probably still a person, a lot of recruiters go through and flag and then send out the mass email. So again, also, either reach out to me or Jermaine, because you also shouldn't be submitting to 800 jobs. And I would also say that like 800 jobs, it may be 800 jobs for you, but at those 800 jobs or 800 different recruiters who can to them.

So like I would say it would, it's most likely is your resume or what you're targeting, right? One of my favorite lines from Jay Z is there's nothing wrong with your aim. Sometimes you just got to change the target. You know what I'm saying to me as a job as a job seeker that always meant like you know You beat yourself up when you're seeking a job if you don't try hard enough or putting up Applications and like you're putting all the effort that you should right to get the job But because you're you're targeting the wrong job because you don't look at the right skills that are lying Or you're not saying your skills in the right way You're not getting the traction that you need but if you found your lane you've not taken you 800 jobs to get to that next stage in the opportunity process.

Yeah, and I'll echo this. So my other podcast, because the guy can't have too many podcasts, Unicorn Finders. We went live yesterday where we focus on products and companies specifically, and we went live with a company called Culturally Tech. They're based on a national day one. The National Technology Council Diversity Inclusion Award this year. But basically what they're doing is they're going to unrepresented areas and basically showing, hey, there's other ways to get into tech other than software development. And so I will tell you this, Jordan, if you're only gunning for the software side, like I get it, I get it, but data analysts, business analysts, maybe even a project coordinator, there's maybe a technical recruiter, right?

Like there's a lot of ways you can get into tech without actually having to be a software developer. So. You know what's actually something that people could do that's actually jokes to me. I would encourage you to search up Boolean string searches because recruiters use those or we use what's called X-ray searches to use keywords to find people throughout the web, right? It's just basically telling the database to be more precise with the search findings. You could use the same thing to search for jobs, right? So if you don't know the particular job title, if you use Boolean string searches based around your core skills on an indeed, on a Google to see what job postings pop up that are relevant to you.

Yeah, 100%. Love that. So let's move on to the next topic here. And kind of what you're champion right now, black representation, representation tech. I think I was down in Miami with the Renderer, a TL crew, and was a part of a panel, watched a panel about Anthony May's let it. He's a rock star, if you haven't kept Anthony, go connect with Anthony. but he was also on the show. I mean, Jermaine, what are the biggest issues you see out there and how can, what advice can we give to hiring managers to kind of make the process fair and inclusive to everybody? So I kind of low-key want to fight every hiring manager that comes to me about the diversity or black and second.

I mean you both, literally what I said off air. Because I want to fight with them because it always comes to me at the worst time in their process, right? Yeah. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? So companies, like this is literally, this is literally a conversation that I had. Hey, Jermaine, I work for ex-company. Yo, we wanna get more black people working here. I, oh, that's amazing. Yes, tell me more. What y'all looking for? Yo, so right now we're looking for more black people because we know that that's a low representation. So right now the roles that we're hiring for, looking for a senior sales force architect.

We should end the show just like that. Like that's how we end the show right there. That was exactly. Yo, yo. That's it. I'm a dude. Sam. We're only wanting like super senior architect leads staff principal. So I you want to get them from the niche community that's been marginalized that have had to fight racism every single step of the way? Nah. I like if you know if you're not if you're not coming to me with those junior or intermediate roles. Yes serious You're not serious because you think that black people and any modern life people need is Support support and sponsorship right? Yeah, people to be invested in their growth even if that means they grow away from them I look at it.

I look at it like this There are a lot of black people on these platform platforms your tik tots your Instagram Twitter that make these platforms poppin'. Clubhouse was an afterthought until black people got on clubhouse and made that shit a $4 billion valuation, right? So when you're hiring for your intermediate hire, as you know, you're gonna get 100 applicants, right? Right. Just based on representation or demographics, you get 100 applicants and black people represent 10% of the population, which is Canada numbers, by the way. And black people represent 10% of the population. you get 100 candidates. At best, you can say from the math, 10 of them might be black.

If you're hiring for one intermediate person, you have 100 applicants, 10 of them might be black. If you don't prioritize seeing those black people first, chances are you're going to meet a bunch of white people that qualify for your job before you get to the black candidates, right? So flip the script, go through the lower ratio first, right? Because you might, you'll see qualified people on that, And then you might actually be able to hire some of them, right? But coming to me after you exhaust, are you filled all your easy to hire roles? And then you want to talk about diversity? If my dad has to say, if I kick you, you'll poop.

And it basically means if I kick you, the bullshit's gonna come out of you, right? So like, you know what I'm saying? Like don't come to me with that shit. Oh my God, I'm so glad it's not just me. I'm so glad it's not just me. I'm about to lose my mind. I'm glad I don't have any hair. I ripped it out at this point. Well, so, so, Mel, it's great to see a big dog sponsorship. Talk about, yeah, talk about this more. What it like, I'm kind of curious, can we unpack that a little bit? And it may be just kind of a common term that I may be, you know, overseeing sponsorship means people could be white allies, could be management that are in play that essentially advocate for you to get positions in the company.

Yes, gotcha. You know what I'm saying? So should be like, you know, someone advocating to hire a junior, and then when the time comes, you know, they either push that junior into an opportunity, where they can level up, or if it could even be as something as simple as like, you're in a room full of people and like, like your advocate is in a room full of people and they're like, yo, who should we get to do this job? Your advocate pushes your name forward, right? Sponsorship, mentorship. Just literally like that. Everybody's back. You know what I'm saying? Just having somebody who's a champion, you know, I think when it comes to this, it's intentionality.

And I use that term all the time. I'm sure people watching this show is like, Hey, I'm Taylor, do you know what word? The I word again intentionality. But when it comes to hiring, especially, you know, underrepresented individuals, Like you have to have intention. You can't do the same thing you're always doing. You can't because what you've done for so long has got you where you're at. Yeah. And if you want change, like you talk about, you got to go to different avenues. Yeah. Are there HBCUs in your city? Are you going into those campuses and actually putting your brand out there, helping getting back, right?

Especially recruiting companies, And that's why I'm just so blessed to be with the render ATL crew, like they're intentional, they're doing it the right way, and they're just out there and they're being a part, they're being involved, they're being a part of the culture, the ecosystem, whatever you wanna call it. And I think so many times hiring managers sit on this kind of this throne and recruiters, and no one's willing to actually go in and do something about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it's cause like too much of the industry is like transactional, like, you know, like in for like when you were internal, like you're hiring management, you're stakeholders, like a lot of people are just happy to be internal and they're afraid to like really like call people out on their shit, right?

Yeah. And when it comes to like agency and our external recruiters, like the management is pressuring them to just do the hires that make the most sense or that. I used to, I used to fucking hate this word. Like, Durane, only talk to people that are closest to the dollar is what they use. We use that term too. We use that term too. I'll fucking hate it because that means, I'm not, that means you don't push back on hiring managers. They're like, you don't give me anybody with a funny name. That means you don't push back on hiring, on like, you don't push back on the thinking that like, you know, I used to get in charge.

It's the fact that least resistance is what that is. Sometimes you have to have some resistance to make a change. Exactly. I used to get called out on my agency jobs because like, I'd be submitting rounds of candidates and they'd all be black and they'd be like, you can't be the black recruit just submitting black people. And I'd be like, what the fuck? You can't over represent for an underrepresented group. Get the fuck out of my face. And like, it's always, I'm always there for a limited time afterwards. I'm always there. I'm out. Yeah. I mean, honestly, like we need more of you, right? I'm not just saying that because you're on the show.

I think, you know, I think it's, it's, it's, it's going back to just being intentional, man. It's just being intentional and I love that a ton. So let's see here. Elliot comes in. I love it. Elliot's looking for an associate react dev role slide into Elliot's DMs. I love that a ton. So much. So Jermaine, let's go kind of as a wrap up here and time has flown by. Of course, I knew it would be less seven, ten minutes or so. Talk about other tips, talk about other tips to recruiters right now. I want to lean in on the recruiting industry, not the hiring managers, not the job seekers, the recruiters out there.

What can we change? What are some simple things that we can change about our industry to make it better? I think our industry, industry wide, we need to do actual training on what it needs to be. I want it needs to use empathy because I do a lot of what I do, and I'm motivated by a lot of what I do from trauma of just knowing like certain situations and shit that people be in. And like, I see like, I see like a lot of people use recruitment and the fact that we're by default gatekeepers as a way to like look down on people are like, you know, not not get people their their their paid dues or shit.

And I think we need to do a lot more when it comes to like empathy and understanding people's situation. But also, I want to do everything that we can to eliminate the toxic messaging and thinking of like working on closest to the dollar, right? Or the path of least resistance for hiring as you as you said. Because it makes all of our it makes a lot of relationships where where interactions with the recruiter is very transactional and impersonal. And that's where we start getting the bad rep on recruiter. Recruiter used to be a bad word. When I went to my first tech meetup. I would still say it still is kind of sort of.

It's got better. I went to my first tech meetup. They had an open mic where they're like, you'll introduce yourself. And I will never forget this. I said, hi, my name is Jermaine. I'm a recruiter. And I got bored. These niggas bored me. They bored me. They were like, boo! And I was like, I'm like, oh shit. Like, I'm glad I've tried standin' and call me before, because I know how to, I know what to do to get booed. I suck. It sucked, completely sucked. So I did it once, got booed off stage. I was like, never again. I did refereeing for a job once.

God, almost got to a fight with a mom. Said never again. So, it is like, you know, people don't like recruiters. And so I embrace the fact that I'm a recruiter. I like, I low key admit it in my personality trait because my thing is like, you know, how can I help you? Like, who can I link you up with? Right? If it's not now, you know, hit me out, hit me back up in a couple of weeks and we can see who we can link up with. And I've been trying to try different ways and different platforms to make accessing my network easier. But like, yeah, man, like when you reject people for instance, don't just like sometimes if you had like gone through multiple interviews, interviews, I don't even send the rejection email.

I send a calendar with a feedback link saying like, yo, you didn't get the job. Let's talk about it. And it'll be like, it's a 30 minute call. Five minutes will be about why I didn't get the job. And another 25 is me trying to figure out where they can go, where they can apply. Before the pandemic, I used to invite candidates at me to network and the other man said, I'd be like, yo, I can break the ice for you. And I'd be like, I'll tell one of the stupidest knock knock jokes. Nobody will laugh and all the awkwardness will be, I will absorb the awkwardness and I'll make you introduce people.

I'm like, I'm making you know. Listen, now I'm here as well, where Caves Big Dog. No, no, no. No, no, no. No, no, no. You know what I'm saying? It's just like, you know, I don't know what it feels like to be awkward in social settings because like I've been like the court gesture or like the class clown my whole entire life. So like the embarrassment beat out of me, right? So if like, but if you understand why that's a superpower, because like all my friends are introverts. So like, yo, if I can make it simple for you by like getting a little laugh or just like everyone on, like all it is just getting people on the same page.

And like, again, if you make, if you make shit so awkward around you, everyone else is gonna feel normal. I love it. That's a quote right there. I also think too, I think, and man, I'm just gonna give you props. And for everybody you guys connected with Jermaine, please do. Jermaine, I just realized I don't even follow you on Twitter or LinkedIn. So that's going to change after the show. But Jermaine, I just applaud you. And I'm not bullshitting with you. I think what you're doing is amazing. And the recruiting issue need more of you. And so just thank you for everything, man. I know it's not easy, what we do.

Especially probably the amount of connections you give away. I want to highlight this because no one talks about it. But Jermaine probably gives away so much of his network for free and make connections for free that people don't even know about. And so again, Jermaine, just again, thank you for everything you're doing, man. For real, I think you're a rock star. Like somebody posted in here that they're looking to hire a minority for a react role. Like please send me a DM. I love to broadcast out to my network. I got 30,000 followers on Twitter. Yeah, yeah. I'm on LinkedIn, so I'd love to just see if we can get you some hires.

a lot of them are black people from or from marginalized community. So like, you know, say I love intention like that. You know, I don't know if it was Elliot. I think I was. Love and touch like that. Shout out to Elliot. Shout out to that company. Um, because that's also what makes people, black people, people like me feel like you're real about it. Cause you're not afraid to say it like, yo, trying to like prioritize here, right? Right. It's not, you're not trying to give away anything. It's just fucking math at the end of the day. Yeah, yeah. So any last bits of advice, man, as you wrap up here, for job seekers, hiring managers, recruiters, you know, we got a few minutes left so you can kind of spit some truth if you want.

I think the biggest thing that I noticed when I do interview preps, when I do resume rights, when I do anything with job searches that people are afraid to to throw on a horn or talk their shit. Listen, you're doper than you think. You know, if you like, I already know that you own every single little mistakes that you've ever made in your career, your life, and you were like a badge of shame. All I'm saying is if you're gonna have that energy for your mistakes, keep that same energy for your wins. You got to own the fuck up and the achievements. So it may, it may, if it sounds like bragging, yo Kanye West changed music off of the, off the fact that he was just bragging.

You got to brag. I, that's, I'm so glad you brought that up. don't know how to talk about themselves right now. You think you bragging, you should be, if you think it's bragging, then it's worthy of you bragging. Is it bragging? That's a point. How is it? You're bragging. How is it going to hire you? You don't know what you're saying. Don't brag about yourself. I watch TNT every morning and every morning Shaq wears his big ass ring and he looks at Charles Barkley and he goes, you didn't win no rings. I still won my rings. it's a good thing. But thank you for having me on the show.

I appreciate it. Yeah dude, absolutely. So y'all go connect with Jermaine again. Thank y'all for hanging out with us this morning. If Jermaine gets to render, I will have my crew down there and we will do a sit down live session with Jermaine and I and that I think will be incredible. So again, go check out renderatl.com. Go follow Jermaine on our socials. Jermaine, stay on as I wrap this up. and y'all have a great weekend. Happy Friday. You have a wonderful, wonderful weekend and I'll see you Monday next week. Got a whole new slew of guests. I can't wait to share with y'all. See y'all have a good one.

Peace. 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, tailor at vaco.com or at Tdastin on all social media handles.

And I hope you have a fantastic day.