interviewing and recruiting w/todd libby

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foreign [Music] what's going on everybody happy Tuesday a little bit of rush today running a little behind it's good to hang out with my guy Todd this morning I'm excited to hang out with Todd uh met Todd on the conference circuit you know again I I want to give a shout to Todd um you know uh I talk about um and Todd I think has has done one of the best jobs with branding that that with his so he loves La lobsters we'll talk about that we'll introduce yourself but I want to give a shot and there you go in your picture right now you

got you got Lobster posters so again really excited to hang out with the brand Master himself Todd um on the show real quick for those of you tune in welcome good morning uh guidance counselor 2.0 say hey would love to hear from you Todd would love to hear from you let us know what you're tuning in from also the reason why I say this is because this is a networking platform um you know you're like Taylor how's this is a networking platform I go live every day if you show up and say Hey you can network with other people in the chat and I've had

people I'm not I'm not you I've had people find a job through this show I found apprenticeships mentorships um all of it so uh please comment say hey the next thing ask questions um I get amazing individuals like Todd on the show Todd I wanted to talk about accessibility today by the way a little bit because I just don't know much about it would love to get educated more but as Todd questions this is one time where you can ask questions and not get billed for it so ask questions finally I want to give a shout out to that conference uh the coffee sponsor official

coffee sponsor of the show I'm drinking it right now um listen I'm gonna tell you this the way I love the way coffee smells that conference coffee beans not only does it taste good it's some of the best smelling beans um that I've ever tasted um so definitely check that out I want to get to people who've tuned in this morning Becky Richie ra nt rant rant yeah yeah toddle Todd will bring the heat Mark it's good to see you last week in Milwaukee where she's moving to Atlanta so hopefully that move goes well Richie uh our guy Lawrence what's up big dog Lawrence is

in the building and I'm here for Todd I don't blame you I'm I'm here for Todd too Chris Michelle Alan it's good to see you from Ottawa Canada I love lobsters too JC Brady uh Eugene from uh from Chicago moving to Seattle we got a lot of bunch of people moving that's awesome vain it's good to see also great name Bane uh Jonathan great to see you from Dallas as well and then Joe and Micah from Mississippi I love it bill from New Jersey we got Full House Todd everyone's here to see you um to see you all right enough of me running my mouth

Todd let's give the people what they want who are you what do you do and then talk about lobsters real quick all right so who am I I am Todd Libby I've been doing professional uh web development and accessibility for going on 25 years now so it's been a while um a little bit of everything throughout my whole career I I'm self-taught I taught myself design and development and ux and all that front-end stuff and all that back end stuff and so uh it's it's been a trip and um originally from Portland Maine which explains the lobsters because boy are those lobsters good so um

now I'm living in Phoenix Arizona where you don't find very many lobsters out here but scorpions out there they're not lobsters they're scorpions but I do have a place in Scottsdale that is amazing and has real you know honest honest to God lobster rolls and they're good oh I talked with the owner and he says yeah I go to I go to Maine every every time you know every year or whatever and I said oh yeah really and he goes yeah I go to this certain place I go I know where that is you know where it is is he legit it's legit it is

legit so shout out to me Jason's famous lobster rolls in Scottsdale Arizona hey Masons if you're looking for a sponsor hit m e up um I I will eat all the lobster rolls all right so here's a question Tom before we dive in we're going to talk about the most important topics what is the best type of lobster sandwich because I so I didn't realize this there's like different types right there's like cold with butter hot with butter mayonnaise I mean can you break that down for the audience because we're hitting the hard-hitting topics this morning yes we are so um my favorite is cold

with mayo cold with mayo and then what is that is that like a certain is that Maine still is it Boston because I hear there's like that's considered a main style Connecticut style is hot butter with lobster okay that's it okay plus you get the hot dog roll you you know you toast it on the flat top and boom hungry hungry then you have certain places like one I used to go to in a place in a town called Scarborough Maine shout out to bite into Maine uh write these down is anyone writing these down someone write these down hurried Mayo uh Chipotle mayo uh

it's just man you can have lobster anyway so when I buy Lobster meat now I like to put a little Old Bay seasoning on it love obey love obey I use QP Mayo not the the Americanized QB but the the Japanese uh kind there is a difference one's got one uses egg yolks one does not um and then uh you know just a little bit of uh Old Bay on the top oops a little sounds that's all you need that's all you need I love it um hey let's talk about accessibility real quick before we kind of dive into stuff what is it I mean

you know it's not type of roles that recruiters work on a lot um you the Mars um Homer you know are obviously some some huge advocates in the space can you kind of educate give me a 101 of what accessibility is and why companies need because you're so passionate about I love it I feel like that's something about the accessibility Community I love passion I love that people care about their craft and I really feel that in accessibility space so can you expound on that sure uh accessibility is leveling the playing field on you know and you can even go further than digital but I'll

stick with just the digital space okay websites apps making them accessible for people with disabilities is first and foremost okay uh there are so many barriers on the web that people run into I have family members that um with disabilities okay um and this is how I got into it it's how I got into accessibility originally was seeing the looks of frustration anger uh ready to give up because something's inaccessible and it doesn't take a lot to make something accessible people think it's it's a lot of work and it can be if you've waited until the very end or even halfway through a project even

sure if you focus on accessibility and bring it into the beginning of a project every project you're going to find when you get to the end of the project is going to be less stress is going to be you you're not going to have to go back and and fix things sure and it's not a high priority because there hasn't been a focus on education universities you have rarely have I seen it in University uh boot camps I have no I've heard of you know make sure you have alt text and that was it you know five minutes five minutes of that yeah so um

it's just making sure digital you know again websites web apps are accessible even PDFs uh PDFs are notoriously inaccessible if not done right so uh when those things are made accessible for people with disabilities that carries over everybody else wins hmm I love that I love that um so let's so now that we got accessibility um and lobster rolls which is really when I think of Todd I think of those two things so you've done a great job um I I do want to talk about your I mean really the you know you and I have chatted a ton off air about recruiters and all

this stuff so let's just kind of kind of open this up man I mean some general thoughts some observations some things you want to get off your chest that we can you know talk abou t live so my biggest gripe besides being contacted is there are a few and I'll start off with the let's start off with the recruiter side yeah um I know that and I was thinking about this the other day um recruiters to me and I I barely know a thing about it but you all seem to be like one of them um cattle dogs or sheep dogs you're hurting a bunch

of people into the pasture or back into the barn when they leave a job and they're finding a new job right you're hurting those people around you don't have time to go hey you know I'm gonna focus on you for x amount of time sure I mean you got a it's like a Turn Style in a big city correct at in a Subway you know so I get that part I I get that recruiters are wicked busy but when you message me make sure you spell my name right yeah I have two D's not one D my name's not Ted it's not uh it's not

Ted it's not Todd with 1D it's not Tim it's not Tad no please get my name right yeah right that's that's the bare minimum I I ask right sure sure and then the other thing is please make sure that you when you see my title that you're messaging me about an accessibility role or as I move from accessibility trying to over to developer experience or developer relations sure that side of things not data entry I don't do data entry don't want to do data entry that's not my forte I'm not web three I'm not web five I'm not you know uh crypto I'm not you

know nothing to do with the blockchain or anything like that I'm accessibility devrel or Dev developer experience yep that's my biggest gripe with for the recruiter yeah yeah and Todd and I talked about this so we we uh we had a good laugh um I was I was doing a session um at uh Magnolia JS shout out Kayla and Richard in the crew but um you know Todd asked a question and that's when I really love Todd Todd was like you know why am I getting messages on a Sunday and and and I will have to say you know I and Todd and I talked

about this I think I think there's a lot of recruiters that are behind their numbers and they're trying to work on the weekends um and I think it's incredibly annoying um you know and and also too yeah I just don't know why recruiters can't spell good I I I mean I just it's it's it's the most it's the most baffling thing to me um and we just we got to be better we just got to be better and it's exhausting um and and and I don't know why we can't read a LinkedIn profile I don't know why we can't send an email appropriately but man

just if we could fix the Small Things it would make a huge difference yeah definitely um and those are those are minor things but when those minor things add up to when I'm being contacted by four or five you know yeah it's just it's like is is there somebody that's listening there's somebody that's actually reading my profile yeah um another thing too is and and I can see where recruiters really don't get the whole gist of the role that might be open but I had an experience recently where the recruiter contacted me about a role gave me all the the specifications and everything all the

you know requirements and ticked off the boxes and everything and then I went and I did an interview and then when I did the interview they're like oh and this this this and this which wasn't mentioned in those in those you know items that were on the original list and I'm going well I didn't know about this yeah well and that's and that's why I really encourage folks we have some comments come in here as well I want to get to those but um you know I think the the reason why like you're right going back to your Turn Style like her I love that

sheep hurting that it's so true so agency recruiters like myself um uh basically like we we sheep heard I think that's like the best analogy I've been in the industry for 12 years I've never heard that analogy but because we're not compensated to take time with anybody which sucks but we're not like like we're only comped played if I place Todd in a role even though as much as I love Todd I can't sit down with him and have coffee with him right and so it really really stinks and so that's why I got big into con engineering community because I can't help everybody to

put in perspective we meet let's just say on average 10 people a week 10 people a week the numbers in our industry is we only are able to place one of those in a job what what industry what industry out there that has like a 90 basically fail rate it's high right so um I do want to get this comments here yeah Garrett comes in here goes yes yes getting the the name things resonate with people Todd yes yes getting the name correctly is the easiest thing to do when it's right in front of you lose credibility I I got a message the other day

I was Tim I was like really really guys really Tim and it happens to me too um a lot of comments about Magnolia um uh Todd Todd you're back right you're back next year this year I am I am back this year uh it's a it's a new talk so what's the talk on deceptive patterns and the fast framework that I'm more the that we are working on in the w3c as a optional set of guidelines for accessibility that sounds great I don't know anything what you just said but it sounds great um uh uh Eric uh because people Eric's recruit to because people are

working way too fast and we do our best proofreading when we hit send and get a nasty did you read my resume nice Temple yeah I mean we're just moving too fast just slow down a little bit slow down yeah um you know you're working with a great recruiter when they spell your name correctly they demonstrate you read your profile then send you a customized Reach Out message they understand the role they are working on absolutely is there anything else that you want to see Todd from a recruiter ideally on the first message because I I love these questions with Engineers because I'm giving real-time

feedback to recruiters like how do you like a message to be crafted do you want it long do you want a short do you want it formal do you want it informal are you okay with misspellings like talk me through that right so I personally I am more of the the shorter email mine's like two sentences and a bunches uh you know we don't miss the name that's right um get the name right and you're off on on the rights seriously um and a shout out goes to Hank or I I'm sorry AKA Homer short emails you know I know we you know we're not

getting into a relationship we're not going out on a date where you know you're looking to place me in a role right and I'm looking to be in a role that fits where I'm at you know what space I'm in um um it can be semi-formal with me I don't mind it can be formal I don't mind that either um what I'm looking for is just to make sure that if I get the sense you're reading my resume your you know the name thing aside if you're hitting all the points that I that I look for which is you know get my name right and

make sure you put me in an accessibility devrel or Dev uh you know I'm fine with that anything else is a bonus to me yeah yeah so and making sure that you know you've done your due diligence as far as finding out what that role entails in communicating back to me what it entails yeah so that I'm not hit with oh yeah and we do you know we're big on you know and I'm just gonna throw a technology out there we're big on uh angular right but what if I don't have angular experience I did personally I have I have a little bit I'm relearning

stuff um but what if I don't know it yeah I' m the type of person that will go into a technical interview and I do every interview if I get to the technical interview my brain says sorry kid I'm going on vacation you're on your own so you know and I and I fail miserably I can't tell you the amount of times I have failed miserably in a technical interview because I panic my brain says you're not you're not right for this role hmm or you're gonna you know you're not gonna answer the question correctly are you gonna get the correct question wrong well let's

talk about that for a second have you have you been able to get over that at all are you working on it how are you working because I think a lot of people I mean I mean you're I mean you're you're you're definitely not I mean there we go Lawrence you're you're not alone there um I'm just curious any any tips or tricks that you're working on to share with people because I know everyone has the same issue yeah it's it's tough It's really tough I've had you know interviews where they've had me share my screen and do the coding right there and I'm like

I can't work with somebody that's over my shoulder I went I do where I used to live I drove what I think three or four hours to uh Connecticut one time years and years back for a role and the guy stood right behind me over my shoulder watching me code I said I can't if you asked me just to type words on a screen I would still fail yeah brutal yeah and Michelle comes in here some of the best Engineers don't interview well no they don't they don't I've experienced it I've experienced that yep so I've been working on it I haven't had to I

haven't had to do it for a while because you know I just got out of a role not too long ago but in the meantime I had been doing some side stuff some Consulting and some accessibility auditing which I'm still doing that so it's been a while and I'm pretty sure if I were to you know interview with a company tomorrow and I get later on in the week I get to the uh technical interview it would all come back because I've been out of the loop with the interview thing for for a little while now um what am I doing to work on it

I just I gotta tell myself you know if I have I can do it you know hmm I've tried everything I've actually talked with somebody who's you know he's one of the one of the best people I know um Mike Montero and he says it's okay to say you don't know yeah and I'll say I don't know or I don't know but um I can get the answer I can find the answer or I can ask somebody for help that knows the answer because I know a ton of people that would know the answer well let me ask you this and we got some more

questions I mean I want to get to in a second Megan I see your question definitely good question we'll get to that in a second do you think like I think one of the problems in interviews is that so many people just say I don't know and stop but I feel like if you can kind of keep going like Hey listen I don't know is there you know because I know a lot of times like different companies use different jargon I think in the engineering space sometimes it's not always a one-to-one so it's like hey I I don't not quite following what you're saying can

you maybe describe it differently or give me another example because I feel like that's where like that's where you can kind of keep the interview going have you seen that with um yes so I was one of those people that was like I don't know I have no idea yeah and that was it and then finally you know I get to the point where I don't know but I can find out I can ask somebody I can ask for help I don't mind asking for help I'd ask a teammate um I mean I've had interview questions technical about accessibility with some big accessibility companies yeah

and I've failed miserably and I mean you know I don't know but I I I'd probably look and they are like well this interview is over you know which is like I I don't know I mean it's just a whole nother conversation and of itself I just feel like that 's just absolutely absurd like it needs to be a conversation and if you're gonna dock somebody because they don't know one thing like you're what it what are your what are your expectations in a person I don't have one of those photographic memories I mean I have very few people do very few yeah I have

25 years of space junk floating around in my head right um recently I found a folder it's about an inch and a half two inches thick and it had ideas I've written down since I was like 12 or 13 when I was coding in basic right it's crazy and I'm like my brain's like oh maybe that maybe you could do that and that would work and you can sell that put make an app out of that and I'm like no no I can't take any more on because I've already got enough up here that's real you push stuff out but more stuff comes in it's

you know it's like a meat grinder yeah and that's and that's where I think I think again companies need to I think we need they need to recalibrate right they just need to recalibrate um I I want to get to a few people um right now Megan is a great question and Todd I think this is great for you to answer is there prep recruiters can do to help with that I guess with that AKA like the brain block and stuff prior to interviews I have my thoughts but I definitely want to hear from you first um you know I don't know I really don't

want to see from a recruiter to help you well if I guess how many people are gonna be yeah I mean style yeah that kind of thing how many people are going to be there I've had you know oh you'll be interviewing with so and so but then I get five out of 16 people on the call you're like wait a minute it's like a group it's like you know I'm doing this in front of a live you know studio audience now yeah yeah and it's like you know it's almost like stage fright yeah you know especially if you're not prepped for it right and

Megan I'm gonna tell you this is a recruiter so this is what I get my team to do first off I get every single name of the hiring man just gonna be on the call you know you should know a recruiter should know especially any recruiter agency or internal we should know second thing is you should have a good idea one of the things that I make my team do is debrief with candidates but after they've interviewed now we're not out here trying to get all the answers to the questions or the questions but we want to know the topic so that we can help

recruit more too yes if you are the first person that interviews for the job you're a guinea pig and you know what Todd I tell I would tell you that hey Todd listen this you're the first guy that's interviewed I'm sorry you're the guinea pig YOLO right but I'm still going to get the interview manager notes for the job not just the job description because the javascripts usually suck I'm gonna get the interview notes I'm gonna get who's on the call I'm gonna get um the style of the interview like like there are some rounds where I've been like hey this is gonna be rapid

fire you're gonna get on the call and they're gonna they're gonna pound you with cs-based questions for an hour right and like and like I I prep that so Megan I I think the more information you can give a candidate better and in my opinion as a recruiter we should be spending way more time prepping the candle for the interviews than anything else definitely you know uh I don't want to be surprised when I go into an interview or feel like I've been ambushed or you know the of that kind of a feeling um you know one of those oh you know you're meeting with

so and so and then I get on you know the call with so and so and they're like oh and by the way uh so and so and another so-and-so will be joining us on the call it's like oh okay now I'm you know this is uh turning into a block party so you said uh let's see here we need to wrap up here soon man time flies Todd dang um practice interviews are so important even if you aren't looking for a role it's so important um Todd you any do y ou do any sort of practice at all any any thoughts on this I

don't that's it that's fine very bad habit I don't you know usually and I think this is from how I work is I just jump in with both feet [Music] yellow same YOLO so uh Alan comes in at Shopify we expect that people will consult stack Overflow Google documentation chat GBC during an interview it's about being resourceful not that hard people and you wonder why you know it's you know Shopify it's good people it's not a coincidence if you can dumb down the interview process and make it more human you're gonna get better talent that it's just it's not rocket science um let's see here

do you think it would help if if you were able to work through questions they would ask on your own before the interview I know some managers that actually do this I've interviewed a few on the show that actually give like the questions to the test yeah I'm sure that would help that would help me a ton um let's see here cool I love it um all right Todd last few questions as we wrap up here first off thanks again for hanging with me this was fun I know it would be yes it was um uh for so first question we can maybe talk a

little bit about your talk um uh what tools Technologies Frameworks things are you seeing in your neck of the woods that are interesting especially expression in the accessibility space um well I'm seeing more and more accessibility overlays which are bad okay um you mean like thing uh it's for something it's it that there are companies that say hey we can make your website access fully accessible with one line of JavaScript and in my my talk that I did last year one line of JavaScript does not make your website fully accessible just like me putting on a pair of Nikes does not make so that's just

a that's the bottom line when I so um so so so that is a trend that's happened in accessibility space that you're starting to see these companies pouting that they can like solve everything by yeah that makes sense yeah i t's it's snake oil it's it's Rift um but tools to help uh their browser extensions for Firefox Chrome um Safari is getting much much better with you know what they're implementing in in their browser um especially with CSS lately uh there are tools like color contrast Checkers um and if anybody wants any information about any of this stuff and if you're on Twitter hit me

up on Twitter I'm on Twitter I'm on Bluesky I'm on Mastodon um no yeah I'll be more than happy to answer any questions yeah um Eva comes in here AMA 508 compliance is legit complicated I don't know how you'd even do it with JavaScript so section 508 is U.S government okay and that's accessibility and that's a little different but that also is based off of they do their testing in a unique way but I think their testing is really really how they test stuff is really really good um but it's also based off of wikag guidelines so web content accessibility guidelines awesome um last question

let me wrap up this show is called guidance counselor 2.0 for a reason because we had in middle school high school maybe College we had some guidance counselor 2.0 or we had guidance counselors but now as adults we don't really have them what would be your biggest piece of career advice to don't let companies that ghost you get under your skin [Music] um because boy isn't that a pet peeve of mine yeah that a company interviews me and puts me through three four five rounds of interviews and then I don't hear anything for two weeks and then I get a recruiter emailing me oh they've

gone with another candidate that's my time wasted I feel yeah don't waste my time uh if I were to tell my younger self I would say in that in that time where you're waiting just keep on doing the work and keep on sending out those resumes and talking to people and networking get yourself out there I love it put yourself out there I've written articles for Smashing Magazine CSS tricks that's how you know I originally started getting myself out there two years ago I did virtual conferences you know when covet hit and everybody was doing virtual conferences um and now you know doing the live

stuff I mean I'm fortunate that at connect Tech two years ago I spoke in front of nine people that was my first live talk and it's like that couldn't have been any better because had it been a full house yeah did I wouldn't have done it yeah yeah absolutely so absolutely um that's awesome well y'all uh Todd thanks again for hanging man stay on real quick so I can say bye to you off air but y'all please go connect with Todd um uh and um hope you enjoyed this episode um tomorrow I have Jonathan Martini so Jonathan Martini is part of my Discord channel so

is Todd um and uh Jonathan actually just found a job and he found a job um because he uh set up notifications push notifications on his phone for certain people and certain companies and he actually got the job because the notification pushed on his phone and he applied immediately so we so we're gonna talk about the power of just like some detailed things within the job search so we're going to talk about talk to Jonathan tomorrow about that so see y'all tomorrow morning at 9 30 a.m Central y'all have a good one Todd appreciate you buddy a ton can't wait to see you again thank

you we'll see you