35 interviews with 0 applications w/jordan kohl, staff software engineer at twilio

full transcript

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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. All right. Good morning everybody. Happy Monday. What's going on? It's good to be with you all. I came back with tan and a head cold. So I can't hang anymore. I'm getting old.

I am my back hurts. So I literally went to my brother's 30th and Austin last few days and I'm an old man. So here I am. But I'm very excited to hang out with Jordan this morning. Jordan and I met on Jordan's last job search before he ended up at Swillio. And Jordan wrote a blog recently and I reposted it on Twitter and I put on my website, vaco.com backslashtaylor. But Jordan wrote a pretty great blog on how he landed 35 interviews with zero applications submitted. And for this show, obviously over the last few months, I've been very heavy on the hiring manager side. Hiring manager, culture, leadership, and I think that's incredibly, incredibly important.

And, but you know, I actually realized, I was like, man, like there's a lot of people, there are people getting laid off. And I was like, man, I haven't had a lot of like specific job seekers. And so I'm very excited, probably for the next, I think little bit, I think there'll maybe some other leadership engineering, hiring manager thrown in there, but for the most part, it is job seeker heavy moving forward. So Twitter space is what's going on. It's great to see you all this morning. Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, and TikTok. Yes, Jordan, you are live on TikTok, but you don't have to dance this morning.

So that's great news. So for those of you who are tuning in, good morning, two things I want you to do this morning. First off, comment, say, hey, don't lurk in the shadows. The reason why I say that is because you need to bring visibility to yourself. We'll talk about this, I'm sure, with Jordan. But you gotta bring visibility to yourself in a job search, right? People don't know who you are unless you are visible online. That's just the way it is. Don't shoot the messenger It's just the way it is. And so one of the reasons why I have this show is for it to be a networking platform So if you don't comment and you just sit back, no one knows you're watching.

We're not in the metaverse yet I say it's all the time. We're not in the metaverse yet with goggles. I'm even though that would be pretty tight But basically we're not there yet. So the only way you can bring visibility to yourself is to say hey I've had a lot of people message me on the side and go, hey, I want to let you know I've met so many amazing people through your show. So that's what I want this to be. The next thing I want this to be Q&A or heavy Q&A Jordan I are gonna dive into obviously his story and his recent job search, but also you have a staff engineer at Twilio Live that can answer questions that you may have so take advantage of it because this doesn't happen often I want to give shout out to a few people who have tuned in this morning Erica Linkedin user it's great to see Ricardo Jessica Ralph my guy on my team John Omar Ralph comes in till is a great company have some friends that love working there Janine Chris Arthur.

It's great to see on this morning type way John David Scott We got the crew today everyone wants to hear Jordan say say word So all that being said I'm gonna go and stop talking Jordan give the people what they want Who are you? What do you do and then we'll go from there? Hello everyone, Taylor, thanks for having me. My name is Jordan Cole. I'm a software engineer and staff, software engineer, as you said, at Twilio. I've been in software engineering for like 14 years now. I was kind of front-end focused, but I've definitely been more full-stack as a place. I've always been really focused on interviewing, conversation and so all the stuff that you put out, I was really excited about Red All and kind of tried to apply it to my job search.

That's awesome. That's awesome. So let's dive in, man. So you and I met, I think over Twitter, the power of Twitter before your last job search. And I didn't realize you had this crazy amount of success until you DM me, you're like, hey, I'm gonna put out this blog, y'all the other. So I want to go and start, and you and I kind of talked off here a little bit. Let's start with kind of the insecurity and the overwhelmingness, right? I know I kind of like obviously teep that up heavily, but that's one thing I wanna get across today is because I talked to so many senior engineers And they're just as terrified.

They're just as worn out of the job search as the junior folks. And so, Jordan, can you kind of talk about your mentality as you entered into the job search and then kind of how that shifted or what things have changed? Yeah, for sure. I mean, to be honest, like this is one of the first times I knew the job search where I wasn't like desperate looking for a job. And so that for me helped, you know, ease a lot of anxiety because definitely all my past job searches have been like, you know, I need to find something now because I'm mad as toxic or, you know, going through financial problems or whatever it is.

And so that pressure, that time pressure, definitely a big difference. But yeah, I mean, even as a senior engineer, every job interview for me is scary and nerve-wracking. And especially when you look at the technical interview parts of it, it's never, I never know what I'm gonna get, right? Like you can study all the late-code stuff you want, but the actual trivia questions you get may not have experience with. So for me, it was like 50-50. sometimes it'd be something that I had experienced before and I'd be great at it and I feel like, you know, Keena world and at the time, it would be something I'd never done before and I would just struggle and I felt like, you know, I started sweating and interviewers looking at me and they wouldn't be talking, I'd just be so nervous.

So like I definitely, you know, fail tons of interviews. Yeah, yeah. So what clicked man, I mean, obviously, you know, the reason why I wanted you on the show today is to go over the blog you wrote 35 interviews with zero applications submitted. I mean, I think people struggle with that. And I've tried to put myself in the job seeker shoes a ton. Right, it's like, you know, sometimes for funsies, believe it or not, I'm over here kind of clicking around, like job postings to see kind of what the job seeker goes through, right? I've been very blessed for it. I've been a Vaker for 11 years of my career.

And so I haven't gone through a job search. And so how did you start your job search and then when did it click to stop submitting applications? Yeah, I mean, so for me, I think in the past, I've always been kind of going into it and be like, okay, I'm gonna hunker down and I'm gonna try and submit as many applications like a stand. And for sure, I've gotten the advice about tailing or resume tailing and replication and cover letters to the job you want. And so that's great and it helps a lot, but it's also draining, right? It's a lot of effort to put it 30 minutes an hour into every single application.

And so going into it, I wanted to do something different and I read your course and I kind of, these things aren't new, the things you're talking about, the idea of promoting yourself and having, trying to get hiring managers and companies to come to you, that all makes perfect sense. It's just hard to do, right? But your course, like, just laid it up perfectly, what I need to do, especially for LinkedIn to help improve my profile. And so, you know, by the time I started to actually, you know, actually look, I didn't actually do any applications. I just turned on the setting for LinkedIn, and then it was just like a flood of recruiters.

Like, every day I was getting 10 to 20 messages. So then it became about like, like how do I filter and try to limit the amount of contact I'm having? Yeah, so and also for the record, I did not bring Jordan on to like give me props for the record. But thank you. So let's talk about, man, let's dive in, right? Because I think that's another thing, right? Keeping track of interviews, keeping track of companies, how did you even begin to know what companies to look at versus others? I mean, did you have a rhyme or reasons to all that? Yeah, definitely. I mean, there's some other, I want to shout out to another person I really like their content, which is Vermeet Sethi.

And he puts out a course called Dream Job Company. And I took it a few years ago. And kind of part of that whole course is really just like, you know, figuring out what's important to you and going on finding those companies and targeting them and like, actively trying to join that company, right? So I did, you know, things like networking with engineers that worked at companies that I liked and was interested in kind of get a feel for how they worked. But ultimately, yeah, I just crudged a spreadsheet of things and say like, you know, I want a company that's remote. I want a company that's this size.

I want a company that, you know, focused on these things as a product that I would use as a customer. And so that kind of helped me sort of, you know, set the initial field of companies that I've been able to talk to. Yeah. Now, did you keep up with things like, like did you keep everything up with everything? Like on a Trello board, did you have an Excel doc? Like, like what was kind of your process there? Yeah, definitely had a Trello board and just, yeah, every single interview that I did, a very single touch point and had it like, you know, set up for updates, doing everything.

So I knew the next time I was expected to talk to a recruiter or a hard man, do whatever it was. What was, what do you think? I'm trying to, trying to collect my thoughts here. I have so many questions. What? So obviously, what were your top three drivers? Because, you know, we, we talked about it in the recruiting world, right? We just actually had a class of ACO. They were like the top drivers and we're trying to learn how to listen to candidates better and really dig into that. What were your drivers and then maybe what's some advice to people who are looking right now, especially trying to figure out what their drivers are?

Yeah, I mean, I think, to be honest, compensation was a driver for me. I was at a company where I was really comfortable. It was very light back. I loved working with everyone. I really enjoyed it. So I didn't want to leave, but they were a really small company and just limited it so that there just wasn't the ability to grow up in terms of compensation and just like, you know, my own skills and networking, all kinds of stuff, right? So for me, I wanted to work at, you know, much bigger company. And throughout my career, I worked at all kinds of startups, but I've never worked at a public company.

And I was kind of like the one thing that I've always wished I had done was worked at, you know, a big name company that I'd have my resume. And so yeah, that was one of my things was like, I want to work at like, you know, late stage at the, you know, at the, in terms of startups, like, late-staters only think I'd be curious to look at, but otherwise I was really targeting public companies. Yeah. And culture. With a certain salary too. Yeah, exactly. And so, yeah, I mean, honestly, like, the ability to have public stock is like a game changer of compensation, right?

Because then you can start to like, totally change what you're looking for, right? You can be flexible on compensation, you can say, like, you know, I'm willing to take less salary and take more stock or vice versa, right? So that offers a lot of flexibility. Don't quite get all the time it starts. Yeah. So, and I interrupted you. So the first driver was money. Second driver was obviously company size slash offerings. And I think you're about saying culture. Was that the third one? Yeah, for sure. Like I said, I was leaving a really good company that had a great management team, a great teammates. And so I just wanted to try to recreate as much as possible.

And so it's always scary. That's, to me, that's one of the biggest things about switching jobs is just like the figure they're going to be the wrong choice, right? They never really know if it's going to work out, if it's going to be too stressful or, you know, there's potential for toxic or whatever, right? It's just hard to tell. And so, yeah, that was definitely my main driver is trying to find the right fit for me. So I want to give a shout out to a few more folks for diving to our next question. John, David, is here. Omar, Omar, I was at Nashville, NTC.

Cameron, what's going on? Barrett, former guest of the show, Torrance, Kaitlyn Morgan, Nicholas, LinkedIn user, Kylie, what up girl? Kaitlyn, Cameron Porter, Alowale, Happy Monday. So we got the crew out today, Jordan. So first thing I wanna talk about are the next thing, not the first thing, because we've been running our mouths for 11 minutes. How did you figure out what your compensation range was? Were you underpaid at your last gig by kind of the market, right? I mean, to me, it's like, it's interesting because I think there's like levels, right? There's different tiers of compensation. And I was good in that like sort of like, there's like A-B-N-C tier I'd say, right?

There's like, there's the A tier, which is all the stuff you see on levels at FYI, right? You see these like insane compensation packages, people making $800,000 million and a lot of stock. And there's that B tier of like, you know, late-stage startups of people that are making $200,000 plus. And then there's like that seat here. You can work in sort of like the Midwest. And if you're making 150,000, 180,000, you're doing good. And so I was kind of like in that seat here, and I felt like I was at the top of the range there, but I feel like I need to sort of do something to break into those next years.

So yeah, it was looking at stuff like levels, looking at forums and Reddit and asking people. And then just seeing examples from other people that I've called on Twitter. Taylor Poindexter was someone that I followed for her job search. She was really inspiring for me. She's great. Um, and then, um, so, so you, you said, all right. So you said Reddit, you said levels.fi and you also said, just, just following certain people actually on Twitter is, is, was, was a good idea. Yeah. I mean, there's lots of people, um, you know, I can't think of other names right now, but like there's people that post on Twitter and post on like, uh, do like, you know, blogging on our blogging on YouTube and stuff that talk about conversation and we'll cover specifically like, you know, this is what a software engineer will make at Apple or whatever, right?

So like, that's something really useful. Right. I love that. Talk about, talk about culture for a second, right? I mean, I think, you know, that's something I've been thinking a lot about too. Like, if I'm a job seeker and I'm interviewing, how do I get a really good feel of a company? How, how, how do you or how did you get a good feel of what you're walking into or do you think you did it get a good feel? I think I did. Yeah, I mean, it's helped having a decade of experience interviewing and stuff. So I have a set of questions that I can go to.

I've sort of cataloged every possible question, questions to ask, product managers, questions to add, hiring managers, questions to ask, other years. Yeah. And so like, yeah, I mean, for me, like one thing I always ask like, immediately is like, you know, what was your last vacation? And, you know, telling you asked, you asked the hiring manager that? Well, yeah, I asked everyone, yeah, for sure, because everyone has different answers, right? Like, yeah, hiring managers, like, you know, managers are stressed and, you know, dealing all those different things. And so like, they have different answers and software engineers have different answers. So yeah, I think it's, it always kind of people love our, I think, and so So they kind of like just go with their honest answer.

And it really helps. I didn't apply the culture of how hard and how often they work. Yeah, I love that. Is there any other? I may have to get those questions from you. Is there any other phone questions that you're proud of that you ask like that? That's kind of different? Yeah, let's see what's in there. Good one. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I definitely always like to ask, what is your actual day and week look like? And like, I try to get them, give me the specifics of like, what are the meetings that you have? Like, how many meetings do you have? And what are the ones that you have every single week?

And what are the ones that you have every single day? And like, that really helps give me a pretty tough, like what the actual daily work is gonna be like. Okay. What, so I wanna dive into, kinda going back to what we were talking about, off air, right? When it comes to kind of some imposter syndrome stuff, right? and the overwhelmingness of a senior engineer. Like I said, junior engineers that watched this list, and I've had so many senior engineers reach out to me that want to shut down their job search, because they're too overwhelmed. They're taking too many code assessments. I think the job search affects everybody almost the same no matter your seniority level, but you kind of made a comment off-air that I want to dive into about not having a traditional kind of background.

So can you talk about that briefly? Yeah, for sure. I mean, I got into programming and web development in high school and was just building stuff on GeoCities and AngelFire and around. Yeah, my space. Yeah, exactly. And so I always knew that I wanted to do that, but at the time, there wasn't a lot of stuff. There was like Devry and then it kind of ran and stuff. There wasn't boot camps and even at college, there was computer science, obviously, but there wasn't, I wanted to do like front end development. So there wasn't kind of that weird intersection of like visual wrap design and programming.

And so I kind of, I didn't really fit into the one and I ended up leaving college and just going doing work. And so yeah, I've never had that like solid computer science background. So it always felt definitely like in a posture when it comes to like, you know, anything with doing the algorithm and then leak code testings and graphs and all that stuff, I feel like out of my depth there. So having that be the barrier to entry to get into a lot of these jobs is scary for sure. We will. You know, I've talked to a lot of senior engineers in the past that kind of get to the point where they're like, I'm not even going to interview if they have a coding test.

I have thoughts on that. If you can pull that off, great. Did you have anything like that or kind of any demands at all? Not demands per se. It just sounds bad. But any kind of criteria before diving into a company? Yeah, I mean, I think, and so I applaud the people that are want to stand up and just like, no, I'm not doing that. Like, I think that's really important in this industry that senior engineers use their clout and their position to be like, no, push back on hiring practice. They're just, you know, bad and especially for junior engineers. I think that's important for people too.

Yeah, for me it was like, I kind of acknowledge like, you know, if I want to get to that, that age year that I mentioned, like I'm just going to have to do these coding challenges. Yeah. So I accepted that and just, you know, When I failed a lot of them, but I passed the ones that mattered. But yeah, I think for me it was like, I'm not doing take on stuff. Like, there's something that's like an hour or two, I'll do it. There was one that I did for a video game company. And I really liked the company, I liked the team, I really was excited about it.

But they gave me a take on that was like, okay, this is gonna be a minimum of three hours. And when I looked at it, I was like, mmm, it's probably gonna be eight hours if I wanted to do it right. And so I was like, I'm sorry, I just come to pass on this, because it's not, you know, I get it I get it and it stinks too. I mean I talk about this on the iron side like you miss out on good engineers Like yourself because you're out here Doing a three to eight hour coding assessment Let me let me ask you this how you know I think one of the biggest things people deal with not even in the interview.

Let's be honest in life in general's rejection Did you have to like put on a different ball cap during the interview process? You're like you know what like it's it's Who cares or it's not about you know, it's not you know, it's not about me or Just in a sense of like, you know, I can't please everybody type of thing. Like, did you have to have a certain mentality? Yeah, definitely. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, the thing that helps the most really is just practice. So, you know, I was here with the advice. I don't think to it, but like the advice is like, you know, go interview, you know, regulate like, even if you're not looking for a job, it's useful.

It's a skill, right? So like and part of that is accepting rejection and being comfortable with it. So yeah, I mean I never you know I was was disappointed when there was jobs I was really excited about it didn't get or teams I like I didn't get to move forward Was like yeah, it's still you know, it's still difficult, but yeah, I think you just have to you know practice it and help to them Yeah Now did you find the job at Tullio through their recruiter or did you have a hiring man to reach out or how did that work? work. Do you remember at all?

That's a good question. I want to say that the my manager that was the hiring manager position reached out to me, but it might have been a recruiter. Okay. Yeah, definitely talk to the recruiter first for sure. Okay. Okay. Awesome. Do you have any tips for people to kind of get past the initial recruiter screen? I mean, obviously I kind of preach some things, but I didn't know if you had any tips or tricks to share. Yeah. I mean, you know, you're linked in course that I think making LinkedIn kind of like your job search portal, it worked amazingly well for me. Like in the past, you know, trying to submit applications and trying to, you know, apply online is like, it's just kind of like a black hole, right?

You just don't really know what's happening or not getting feedback. But making yourself visible through LinkedIn and getting recruiters to come to you, flip the script, right? So then it makes it so you're not, you're not one of, you know, hundreds of job applications. You're the one person that recruiters currently contacting right now, right? So like obviously they're talking to a ton of people, but if the crew's already calling you, you skip that first step. Right. And then from when it comes to just overall, you know, kind of cadence of interviews, how did you follow up? What was your kind of like 48 hours, 72 hours?

What was kind of your vibe there? Yeah, I mean, so another goal for me for this job search was like to try and get multiple offers. Like I've always heard about this concept and, you know, I researched it and it makes a lot of sense. And to me, that's the key to unlocking that next level of compensation, right? Because companies will give you what is the market, and what is the common at the bottom of it. But until you start having multiple people fighting to get you that offer, that's when it starts to explode. So I was really focused on that. So whenever I got deep within the final stages of an interview with any company, I was always communicating that with every other recruiter as soon as I started talking.

I'd be like, hey, sounds really exciting. It's really good for me. But just you know, I'm already at the on Funnel Stage of the internet company. And that like just spit out the process every single time. Yeah, absolutely. So Barrett comes up, and if you all have any questions, please ask here as we kind of get to our last, last time it's the show. The hard part is filtering out the recruiters you can tell are spamming that aren't actually looking for your skills background. You know, Jordan, I didn't know if, you know, I always tell people you don't have to comment back. Like that's my big thing.

Like you don't always have to message every single recruiter. Did you have any tips for kind of filtering out the spam that obviously is recruiters? Yeah, I mean, and that's another thing that helped with LinkedIn, I think, is that, you know, I had that built-in automatic reply, right? So you can just be like, declined, declined without message, but like, yeah, I made it my goal to just like reply to every recruiter as soon as possible. And I think part of that for me was like setting up a framework ahead of time that was like, here's the things I'm looking for, you know? And it was beginning with that.

in your message, like, like, like, there was your message, hey, so even if it's spam, you had a like message, like a template that you just sent out every time? Yeah, exactly. I think, um, I think from the beginning, you know, at the beginning, I was like, you know, I just want to see who's available, what's who might be interested in me and what I could be a good fit for. And so I didn't do that as much. I was just like, I'm just going to talk to everybody. But then once I started to actually schedule interviews, it started, you know, getting companies that weren't interested in, then it was like, yeah, to spend more time filtering.

And so yeah, Laura came up with a list of things like here's the compensation I expect, here's the amount of PTO I want, here's the product I'm interested in, the industries, and so yeah, I would just immediately reply that list and be like, hey, do you have anything to piss this roll? If not, I'm sorry, I'm not interested. I love that. And just to give the people an idea, what do you think that response rate was after that first message that you sent back? Like 25%, 10%, I mean, what do you think? Yeah, I mean, it turns out moving forward with a national interview, you know, probably, yeah, like 20% yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's low, right? And that's what I want to get across to people is like, that's why I think submitting your resume is so much more stressful because the amount of just conversations that you have to sift through in general is already exhausting. And then on top of that adding submitting your resume everywhere, it can just be an absolute mess. And so I, but I, but what I tell people is you're, you're probably not going to get a lot of responses back. Like you're just not. And it's not you. There's just that much spam and that many people just don't respond back. Torrance comes in, what's your advice for junior devs on how to optimize your LinkedIn with no prior experience?

Yes, great question. I mean, I think it's about showing like what skills you have, right? Like, I mean, obviously, if you're interested development and look into, you know, getting an industry, you've probably done a lot of it yourself. And even if you're not getting paid for it, there's still stuff you can talk about, right? And that's what everybody's looking for, the hiring manager and the people you're going to interview you. They're looking at like what skills you have and whether that's like, you know, side projects or volunteer experience or whatever it is, like there's stuff you can you know, talk about. And it's still, it's all about keywords, right?

Like, you may not be a staff engineer somewhere, but you could still say you work with JavaScript, you work with React, you have experience with this and that, right? Like there's keywords you can still put in there that will help you. Yeah. And also any volunteer experience, any actual work experience. I always go back to this example. I was helping a senior.net developer to start a COVID in 2020. And they, they were trying to work for a company who's just heavy Azure. And he didn't have any Azure in his nine to five, but he actually has was helping like this, he was a nonprofit or something, basically stand up something and that was his pet project using Azure.

The whole thing was an Azure, like heavy Azure. Literally, he didn't get the job, but he got the interview because he had that on his resume and there was enough there. Another story I have, two-year developer, he hit me up, his resume looked great. I was like, man, this is awesome. I was like, the last two years, you've been doing a lot of JavaScript. I was like, how much you been getting paid? He goes, I have it. I go, what are you talking about? He goes, for the last two years, have been volunteered five to 10 hours a week writing code. And in his resume, I mean, I couldn't tell a difference.

So definitely showcase any side projects that you may have. Annie, it's great to see you. Cameron comes in. I found that helpful to having a set of criteria I need in order to switch positions. I also added the emoji to my name to see who actually sends me a legit. So Jordan, did you do this? Because actually, I think this is always a good thing. That's smart. I'm not in training like that, but I'm going to take that tip, I'm sure. Okay, there you go. See, look at this. This is what I'm doing is a lot of things. Jordan learns things. Barrett comes in, good idea on response.

That's the route I take now. No, but here's what I'm looking for. So here's why I appreciate this and I don't want this. I don't want us to move on about this. What this does is it shows that you know why you're looking. Or at least that you have parameters. I think a lot of times, and especially if you've seen the last two years, obviously it's kind of tailed off a little bit just because of the economy right now, which is fine. It's a lot of people who are just bouncing just to bounce and just to get more money. Listen, if it was just more money, I've talked to a few developers like this.

If it's just money, go get money. That's fine. Go get the bag. There's nothing wrong with that. But if it's not money and you can't specifically pinpoint what it is, you need to do that before you leave because you're just going to get frustrated. I didn't know if you had any thoughts on that, Jordan. Yeah, I mean, for me, it was like, you know, remote, like fully remote, 100% mode all the time was a big call for that helped filter a lot of jobs out and then compensation. Yeah, yeah, and it came to be that simple. It doesn't have to be this whole big thing, but just at least know why.

All right, so as we wrap up here, any other questions, please ask them. Jordan, I definitely want to, I guess the first thing talk about, you know, getting offers in, did you negotiate? Is that something that, you know, because I always recommend to negotiate? Now if there's nothing to negotiate, then don't be stupid and try to negotiate. But you know, did you negotiate on the Twilio offer or negotiate at all on the other offers that came in? Yeah, I did. Like I said, for me, the goal was to get multiple offers and that helped give me that leverage to be able to say, here's another company that's a potential competitor for me that's making this offer and so what can you do to help improve this?

That to me was like, I was getting everything was like my existing compensation plus 10 to 20% which was nice but not enough to take me away from a good position. So having multiple competing offer as well. So just like Skyrock and the compensation made like, you know, obvious that I need to make this jump. Okay, awesome. I love that. So the last question I always wrap up with because this is called guidance counselor 2.0. You know, we had guidance counselors in high school, guidance counselors in middle school, but we didn't we don't really have guidance counselors now. That's why I were the cult therapist.

But basically, I want to see you if you have any advice for your younger yourself around your career or the job search or if you could tell yourself something before you enter the job search this last time, what would it be? Just any sort of advice that you give your younger self? Yeah, I mean, you know, one of the things I did a lot of my career was I job hopped and like I have to kind of defend that for like the rest of my career. And so, you know, I definitely don't want anyone to ever like feel like they can't leave a job because they're worried about the rest of me.

Like, you know, for sure, if you're in a toxic situation, you should absolutely, it was possible. But at the end of the day, at the same time, like if you're able to stay something, even if it's like, you know, two years, instead of just one year, that helps it makes a big difference, right? So like, you don't have a little bit more consistency, I think would have been that big improvement for me. Yeah, I love that. Torrance comes in again. If you're looking for your first position, should you be lenient on compensation? I've gotten this question a lot at Midtrust, you're your thoughts, Jordan. Yeah, I mean, I want to say no, because the companies are a can pay you.

But it all depends on your leverage, right? It's really hard if you have, if this is the only offer you have, you have nothing else kind of going, then sometimes you got to just kind of take what they give you. But I think it's important to me, it's like what I would say is always negotiate, always negotiate. And so I definitely have seen pushback on that. I've heard about women and people of color who have had offers rescinded because they they just ask for like 5% more, right? So like, I'll be honest, like there is a risk out there. I know I'm not educated enough to say, you know, for sure, you know, no matter who you are, you should always go to skate.

But sadly, as a white male, like it's easy to say like, yeah, you can get an extra 5% to 10% if you can ask for it. So I think it's something that I will always consider because the bands and stuff is so flexible, like, and the people that you're asking for more money from, generally, I'm not the people you're gonna be working with, right? the ability to get another five 10,000. That makes it obvious that you're going to sign with them. Yeah. They're wanting to do that. Yeah. Absolutely. I love it. All right, y'all. Well, thanks again for hanging out with us today. Jordan, thanks again, man.

Stay on real quick as we wrap up. Twitter space is thank you again for hanging out with us this morning. I hope you'll have a great rest of your money. Go connect with Jordan. He is obviously in on this Twitter space right now. But again, Linked in everybody. Thanks for thanks for hanging out today tomorrow. I will be back tomorrow I have actually I have an engineering leader tomorrow But it's not gonna be a good one I promise but this engineering leader actually just went through the job search as well, so we'll talk both But Jordan thanks again, man. I appreciate you a ton. Y'all have a great Monday and we'll see y'all tomorrow morning Hey, you did it you 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. Destin on all social media handles. And I hope you have a fantastic day.