q&a on the job search (solo show)

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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. 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, tailor at vacovac.com is how to get in touch with me old fashioned email social media at tdsintd. dessey. And then 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 righty, good morning, good morning folks. Good morning. Happy Monday. The sun is shining. I have good coffee. I was right with the world. Say, hey, we'd love to hear from you. It's good to be with y'all. Just a solo show today.

Have a few more solo shows. The reason for that, my calendar kind of got weird and I blocked out dates that should have been blocked out so then guess couldn't book it. And then, I don't know, fan just kind of got a little haywire. But that's okay though because, you know, I love the solo shows and I've been so heavy on guests, which is great. Again, I love having guests on the show, but being able to be with y'all in the morning, just hanging out with the community is something I love a ton. And so welcome say hey, we'd love to hear we tune in from TikTok.

It's great to see you this morning. Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter. We are live on this Monday morning and hopefully I can provide a little bit of value to you all this morning when it comes to the job. So let's face it. I mean, listen, the job, the market's just does and you know what, even if I can't really do anything immediately for you. I still want to just be here for you and just know that I'm in your corner. I can answer any questions you may have this morning. Also too, for those of you who are tuning in on TikTok, on Facebook, on LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter.

But why don't you have your rundown with guidance counselor 2.0. So guidance counselor 2.0, for those of you who do not know was born out of COVID. So I'm a recruiter. I've been recruiting now for over 12 years. And I realized that all the conversations I was having day in day out with IT folks was probably pretty applicable to everybody. And so I was like, there's got to be a better way to get back to the community and give back to people. And so I started to go live like this three years ago. Eight, eight minutes, 12 minutes a day. Kind of like what I do today with just solar shows are kind of short into the point.

And so I started doing that. And over the last three years, it's morphed into me having some amazing people on the show from Netflix. I had a LinkedIn engineering manager, Google, you name it all the way down to junior devs who just found a job. Who landed a job from their job search. And so this, so that's what this is. But then what I expanded on this because I want this to be a networking platform. The reason why I tell people to comment to say hey to engage is to bring visibility for yourself. I'm one of the things that I've realized when it comes to networking on social media is you just have to be, you have to be there.

It's show up. You have to be present. And we're not the metaverse yet. So I told people to say hey to comment to engage because I know a lot of people that have found jobs that have found mentor mentees that have made friends on this show. So I've had a lot of my guests tell me Taylor, I get blown up. So thank you all. So I basically what my goal is, and it's kind of my ethos for the rest of my career is basically to develop this like tidal wave or not tidal wave. That's not a tidal wave. This is a whirlpool to develop like a whirlpool.

And basically creating networking whirlpool that if you want to be in part of my ecosystem, I want you a part of my ecosystem. And I want you to be able to network with others. And so that's why I tell people to comment. Listen, if I were you, I would network on the back of my two shows. I would network off the back of guidance counselor to Puneau. What this is, I connect with every single guest, I would connect with every single person that comments every day. Right. And go back. That's that's why I tell people if you are watching this show. And you watch it in the future when I'm not live, please comment because people still connect with you still people still do this.

Also to Q&A show, I do it live for Q&A. So definitely tee up some questions for me today. I have some general thoughts that I want to go over. But definitely if you have any questions, throw them up. Again, TikTok, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter. Would love to hear from y'all today. Also, I threw out a question. 9 30 AM central or 11 AM central, the overwhelming response was 11 AM central. So I am going to try to start to do that. To be fully transparent, that kind of cuts into my appointments. I usually run my appointments at 11 AM. But we're going to figure it out.

It seems like everybody wants to watch it 11 AM central. So I'm going to do my best to figure that out and maybe try to change up some times very soon. So I want to get to people who have said, hey, a lot of y'all here today. I'll show up. It's good to hear from you. Fritz and John, David, Erica, Alex, Randall, Tae-Dae. I love it. Chris, Allison. It's great to see you. More in LinkedIn user. Pretty sure it's Jonathan, J.C. What's going on? Michelle, it's great to see you. Ricardo, love it. DeAndre is good to hear from you. I like this. I've already had at least 30 folks from here reach out already.

Listen, this is what it's all about. This is it. This is what networking is. All networking is. Is messaging people that you see and say, hey, we'd love to connect. We'd love to be your friend. Chris is great to see you. RJ, Randall, Christina, Brett, RJ. How do we get the crew out? Stay Jeff, Bill. Let's see here. David comes in and goes, I wanted to say that it's true. I connected to someone during the show that ended up laying in the job. So I wanted to say that it's true. I connected to someone during the show and ended up laying. Wait, David, can you confirm you landed a job from this show?

Can you confirm that? Let me know. For real. Let me know that. David, that's incredible. Emmett, what's my favorite interview question? I don't have a favorite interview question. I hate interviews. Let's see here. James, it's good to see you from Columbus. And again, TikTok, I see you all tune in. Great to see you all. All right. So I want to some thoughts here. Right. And if you have questions, please, please, please, please, uh, please throw it up. I do want to get to John here. John comes in, Mr. Consistent. He's always part of the show. The market has changed a lot. I remember a little over a year ago.

You were saying, make sure you have a pulsing and spell computer. Times are tough. Yeah. I mean, listen, so yeah, you can't spell react anymore and get a job. Right. It's quite the opposite. And listen, I just, I want to encourage y'all today. Right. I want to encourage y'all today is a little bit of a pet talk Monday. But please, if you have questions, please throw them up there. If you have questions, I'll just, please don't mouth there. I will answer them. But, but, but I want to tell you this, you got to do something different these days, folks. If you're just mass applying and that's it, like, like, I'm telling you the grind, like, listen, listen, I am working harder than I've ever worked before.

And I'm not telling that to brag. I would. I'm telling, I'm the reason I'm telling you that is because I'm having a grind. Right. Like, I'm not sitting here like, what y'all see with me post on Instagram, by the way, if you haven't followed me on Instagram, I'd love to connect. I love connecting with tech folks on Instagram because it's like kind of like different type of content. But it's like, I'm not out here just putting out content. Right. I'm out here trying to, you know, get job opportunities and create opportunities for people. Right. I'm very, very fortunate. My team put four people to work last week.

Right. We're so blessed where we were able to do that. But it's a grind right now. And I will tell you this. You can't keep doing what you've always done to find a job. You've got to be different. Junior Devs coming out of boot camp. Your, your capstone project is not enough. Right. Get a volunteer project or two. That may not even be enough. Find a mentor. Right. These are the things that you have to do to be successful right now because it's like John said, it's very, very difficult. Let's see here. Look at this. So David. All right. David props to David. David found a job because of this show.

That's why I do this. I just got goosebumps. David, I'm so happy for you. I am so, so happy for you. I'm so happy for you. That's what it's all about. On a scale from when I tell you how strong is our coffee today? Oh, yeah. Shout out that conference. I keep forgetting Clark. I'm so sorry. That conference. Come to it in July and Wisconsin. They are also the coffee sponsor for guidance counselor 2.0. He does sell beans. It is the only tech conference that sells coffee. It's really good. Let's see here. What else? Kind of going through here. All right. Question. Here we go.

Question Taylor, when you get to them. Any advice for freelancers right now? I'm switching from software engineering to web design. And I want to use the amazing network I've built to help small businesses. I can speak from a place of experience. I think it is a path for me right now. Any advice for freelancers right now. I'm switching from software engineer web to design. And I want to use the amazing network. Here's the deal. Allison, I think. I think. So I've talked to this with with my buddy, Brandon Arbe from from a content perspective. If you can give people tangible goods, when I say tangible, I mean like photography, videography, design help, even website help.

I I would do for free right now. I would do for free. The first thing for free to get sticky. Right. So I so I've talked with Brandon Arbe, my my content guy who helps up my content. And I said, you know, and he's a videographer. I said, if you're a videographer, I would literally go into businesses right now and say, hey, listen, like, I know you probably don't have any money. Let me develop a 20 second. Real for you right now. Listen, I know free work that you can't overload yourself with a bunch of free work where you're not making any money. You got to pick and choose.

But that's what I would do right now. Right. A lot of people that I know that I've gone in from an internship volunteer free work perspective have eventually gotten a full time job there because they've given before they've taken. Does that make sense? Giving first offering that resource, giving them a mock design on something. Hey, listen, would you mind if I redid your logo for you? Well, we don't have the money. That's okay. That's okay. And then, you know, obviously, you know, create it for them. Let's see here. What else? See your Michelle. Yeah, yeah, David. I know also also Clark. Great. Clark's here. I'm going to be live with Clark here at 11.

So I'll post that on my Twitter as well. Again, that conference. Clark's doing amazing things. Please go check that out. Let's see your fiber dot conference level. Yeah. I mean, listen, yeah, it's not, it's not the best, but it's something. Right. Like, fibers kind of this place. If you don't know about it, you can go to it. You can plug in your profile. People can hire you. It's great. Let's see here. What else? Yeah, everyone's everyone's giving props today. But again, that's so so cool. Let's see here. Here again, we have so many people helping. Let's see here. What what advice would you buy? I can tell a format of my CV several times, but I keep getting back back down for a mobile US.

So so here's the deal. I this is not my specialty. I do not specialize in like labor laws from like US and like out of the US. I will just tell you this that most clients that I work with just they there's a lot of labor laws hiring people outside of the US and a lot of companies just don't want to deal with it. And so they just need people in the US. That that's all I can say. This is I'm good at a few things and talk about a few things. This is not one of them. Let's see here. Yeah, Nicole going going kind of back to going back to kind of the the volunteering thing.

Look at the things in your life. Where do you go church where your pets that are create them free. I love that. Right. Just evaluate parts of your life. People. You know businesses. You know to help them. I love that so much. Let's see here as someone who interviews potential devs for our team. I can confirm that we have raised the bar on what we're looking for for people that we haven't gone crazy and won't if we haven't seen anything about it places are still hiring so don't worry too much right now. Yeah. People are still hiring, but I will I will say what James.

I will echo what James just said. You can't get by being lazy anymore in the jobs are great. The last two years you could be lazy. You could be like. Hey, I you know, I can just go you know, I don't have to research the company. I don't have to ask questions. I can just show up and answer some questions and hopefully get a job right. It's not like that anymore. Right. Again, I posted about this the other day. I had I had one guy. Two guys interview. One guy. When they when when when when he was asked they go. You know, why do you want this job and or or something like that.

And the guy goes. We'll cause I don't have one. right. And then while I understand that's an appropriate answer. Like that's not the best answer that can be given. And so basically all that being said, it's like you got to do the research on the company. You got to ask questions. You got to come prepared. But people are still hiring but but but but people are being picky now. So you got to be aware of that. Cool. Any other questions. I think that's it for today. Again, I just I just want to encourage you all today. There's any more questions. Please open up there as I wrap up here.

You got to do something different. You got to be different. You got to be uncomfortable. Right. Like if you if you are sitting at home, sending out, you know, sending out like, you know, all of the, you know, mass applying and only working a few hours a day. Like the job search is exhausting. And you're going to have to grind and you're going to have to be uncomfortable and you're going to have to do all that. And so again, I would just encourage you all to be be be uncomfortable more often. Because that is what's really going to elevate you next. Alex goes. You really got to get people's attention right now.

Coffee chats. Yeah. Listen. Listen. You know, we who is I talking to the other day about like you can't buy people lunch. Right. If you're trying to network remotely, like you can't buy me like we can't meet for lunch, but you could door dash me lunch. Now you're probably like, I don't have the budget to door dash food to everybody. I would pick and choose. Right. If you're trying to get a manager on a call like you like you may need to go. You may need to go door dash him some food. Right. If you came to me and say, hey, I'll buy you lunch.

If I can have 30 minutes of your time. I'd I'd may listen to you right food talks coffee talks right so you're going to have to be aggressive like that stuff. And so yeah, exactly. I totally agree with that the whole like so you know I've been preaching like do you have six minutes? You have seven minutes to chat. I got a question. I think you may need to add a little bit fuel to the fire throwing a coffee throwing a lunch right and post post mates. Something Randall comes in here. I snagged a contract gig last year and it turned into a full time job in two three months.

Don't be afraid. Yeah, listen. This is huge. This is huge. You got to be open to contracting contract to hire part time even part time. Right. I'm actually like just like Loki. I'm sewing part time gigs to my clients to get my people in the door to get them sticky and then will eventually turn into more work. So I have a bunch of free resources on here. I also am creating a notion page. I tweeted it this morning, but I guess you can't access it yet. I don't know how to undo access for notions. So we'll work on that. I'm creating like an in depth how to guide all of the written material that I've put out for the last two years.

I'm compiling it down into one notion page for job seekers hiring managers and recruiters. It's a big project. It's going to be slow going once I get public release on that. I will put put it in the chat on one of these lives. I'm going to see here. What else? Yes, Fritz and good luck to your endeavor. Any meetups in Nashville anytime soon. So I'm going to schedule a meetup in Nashville probably next month. I know I did up in Hendersonville, but I may do it downtown. So more to come. Michelle on that. Let's stay in touch for sure. Let's see here. We'd love to connect absolutely.

Yeah. Clark. Yes, you are right. And Michelle, that's the goal. That's the goal. This is the goal. The goal is to make a book. The goal. But we got to get it all one place. So anyway, all right. Yeah. That's enough of me running my mouth. Thank you again for hanging out with me today. I appreciate it. Tomorrow. I actually just had a guest book tomorrow. Chris Holland. So Chris is a director of engineering. He's coming on the show tomorrow. A lot of great thoughts already like what he has. I have a discord channel. If you're not the discord channel, let me know. I'll if you want to be in the discord and you're not in there.

Put it in the comments. I will comment back to you. And yeah, I'll see you all tomorrow. 9 30 am central. Love y'all. 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-dessin on all social media handles. And I hope you have a fantastic day.