state of the economy w/ the jobfather, jermaine murray

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Hey folks, my name is Jermaine Elmerry. You got to say the whole thing like a tribe called Quest. Or online, you can call me the jobfather. I am a career coach, technical recruiter. One thing about me, I am also an advocate for people that look like me in the Black community. I have a goal of trying to help 500 Black people get new jobs in tech. So far I've helped 385 Black people get new jobs in tech. And I like doing things like this show because you never know what kind of information or nugget you can give somebody your perspective that starts a spark in their head that changes their whole life, whether it's tomorrow, next year, the day or after.

But I was someone that was lost completely and it's just because no one was really telling me the information I needed to get. So I kind of, hopefully, I've kind of positioned myself and try to be a platform that, you know, especially people in my community, to reach out and just get perspective on like how to get some of that guidance in life. So I'm kind of curious and we may have talked about this last time I've been so long. If I don't remember it, no one's going to remember it. What got you motivated to kind of create what you're doing, right? I love a good OG story.

Why are you so passionate about what you do, man. Oh, man. The joys. I tell you what, man, the joys of live streaming at home when a fire alarm goes off. Ironically, that was then confirming that they've completed the fire alarm test. That'll be the last one of that. To be honest and be a little bit transparent. Please, please. You know, so I went to school for broadcasting. Okay, right? I was trying to be the Black Larry King when I graduated. I love it. And I actually had a job hosting a show on SiriusXM as a co-host for what's called the Norman Knight. Oh, for real?

I didn't know that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was positive, man. My shift was 10 PM to 2 AM, right? But I loved doing that. And then the show got canceled, and I just had a hard time getting back into the industry. Everything that I did felt like the wrong move. And I hit a breaking point when my dad, my dad was like, yo, back in my day, I would have just taken my resume and walked into the office and handed it to them. And this is how down bad I was. I was like, you know what? That sounds like a great idea. What else I got to lose?

I did that and I got laughed out of the building. I went to a Sports network here in Canada called TSM walked in the building There was a nice Jamaican lady and I was like how can I help you and I was like I'm here for a job And I just dropped my resume After spending like close to $700 of someone to give me my resume It was a six page resume. They gave me for six months of experience, right? I drop it on Right, wait, they created a six page resume for six month of experience. Yeah. I All right. Here's deal. That's awful, but also kind of impressive at the same time Yo, I think I still like like knowing what we know now.

Yeah, like that's that's impressive to get six pages I six months yo, and you let me tell you something man like I Only had like eight hundred dollars in my bank account Like this was, this was, this was a Hail Mary shot. If I've ever done one. Like you know when you watch basketball and like it's not even, not even like a buzzer beater from a professional basketball. I'm talking like during the halftime show when they bring someone random down on the court and they're like, well give you a million dollars if you can hit this shot. That was the type of Hail Mary shot I was taking.

That's nuts. So, and like, you know what, bro, I'm going to see if I can fight it and I'll send it to you. I think that's a great LinkedIn post. I think that's a fucking viral. I'll put it up. I'll put up my origin story, but I still have, I know I still have the resume. But yo, like at that point I was so lost, man. Like I was like, I'll take it. Like any resume I have made was never six pages. So at the very least, like this is something different, right? Oh man, was it different bro? I don't know like I don't know how many Jamaicans you know outside of me But like if you ever want to humble yourself or lower yourself esteem piss off a Jamaican woman I swear to God.

I know I know a little bit about Jamaican culture Justin Samuel who runs who runs render So I Memes and stuff on Instagram. I've learned a lot about Jamaican culture bro I'm like she cussed me out and one of the things she said to me was You basically came in here No plan no idea who to meet no idea what we're doing and you have the audacity To give me a six-page resume She's like if if you were the HR manager and you had a thousand things to do and some random kid walks in and drops a six page resume Yeah, she was like, why would you read this?

And she gave it back to me. And I went in the car and I was like. It's cried in the car. No, I was like, I was like, yo, she's right, why the hell would I? Why the hell would I think a six page resume would fly? Like, would I wanna read that? Yeah. And that made me go home and research everything on how to make resumes and whatnot. I love that. And then I made certain makes it a really good resumes. It got to the point where, I got to the point where my friends and I were basically gambling whether or not I would get callbacks on my resume, right?

And like nine times out of 10, I was getting callbacks, right? So probably like three, after three, four times, they stopped betting with me because they're like, you know, we know you're going to get the interview. But then they asked me to make resumes for them. And I made resumes for them and all my friends got, we all got our first like adult jobs from those resumes. That's awesome. Yeah. So, but I was just doing it on the side because my whole intention was to go get back into radio. Yeah. Oh, OK. So I also was also just holding down so many different jobs because, like, at the end, like, to me, my goal was to get back into radio.

So I worked a bunch of sales jobs, a bunch of retail jobs, manual labor jobs. Like, when I tell people I've had over 30 jobs in my life, I'm not lying. Yeah. because my goal was always, I said to myself, like it's kind of like acting. And you know, you always hear about actors waiting tables or like doing an odd job here or there because they're just, they're trying to make a living until they can reach their end goal, right? Which to get acting to pay for their lifestyle. So I was treating it like that. And I picked up a bunch of different jobs. And then at one point I was like, I need to get into tech.

and I got into tech. And the job father thing kind of started when I saw that tech had all these opportunities, but a lot of the people that were getting the opportunities didn't look like me. Like I had never seen somebody, the only person I saw, like the first six months of being a tech recruiter, the only person I saw that was Black that got an offer, a tech job offer was me. That's not ideal. No, not ideal. I started trying to like target and get more black people in and I started feeling fulfilled and one thing just led to the next. I love that.

I love that. Yeah, I mean, again, you've built something special and, you know, I'm definitely rooting for you. Appreciate you. Always. So, man, let's, so let's, I do want to touch on something, you know, I don't know about you when it comes to content. I always get really, I kind of ebb and flow on certain topics, right? Right now I'm really big on answering. Tell me about yourself question. That's what I'm really big on right now. Another thing I'm really big on is taking maybe a step back in your career, but not even a step back. Just maybe it'll look different as somebody who's worked so many jobs in their career wanted to be, you know, a personality on air.

Now's doing this. I mean, you've pivoted a ton. And so can you walk through kind of the mental mindset of maybe it not working out, maybe the way you wanted it to, but at the end of the day, it still worked out. I mean, can you talk about that? Yeah, I can actually sum it up in a JZ quote. I think there you go. Even better. Nothing's wrong with your aim. You just got to change the target. Damn. And that concludes today's episode. But I would say I would say that that was that was it. that was kind of like, I had a moment where I was really enjoying what I was doing and I felt like I was really, really good at it.

And like, I'm like, I'm a 90s baby. So I grew up, you know, with the, I grew up hearing the stories about Michael Jordan. I grew up, you know, seeing Kobe and Shaq and it's just, I saw like, when people are at, when like someone was like, at the apex of their abilities, right? There's like an ebb and flow in life where things just not only seem like to work out, but like they're in their flow. Like even if like something, like even if an obstacle comes their way, it doesn't disrupt their flow. They just adapt and move on. Right? Correct. And I had never felt that way in any of my jobs where I felt like I could be the best.

And like, even if jobs where that were good to my skills, Right? Like even when I was high performer in some of these jobs, I never felt like I could, I was like the best at what I was doing. I didn't feel like I was getting the best out of myself. Right. And when I got into recruitment, like I got into tech because honestly, I wanted to play station. Like I wanted to work for PlayStation and my whole goal was to like reverse engineer how to work at PlayStation. So it was like, I think one of the big things that people could do in their careers is just be a little bit more, be a bit abstract with your goals.

Oh, I like that. But firm in them, like know where you're trying to go. Right. You'll be ambiguous at how you get there, right? I think that's important. Cause I feel like a lot of times people, and again, I'm just so deep in the software engineering world, right? I wanna be a senior dev. Yeah. And then it's like, all right, well, you know, you can't find a job. Listen, you may have to go take, and I'm not, when I say this, I don't mean this in like a negative way, but like you may have to go take a QA job, right? And I have a bunch of QA people in my inbox sometimes when I say that, they're like, what's wrong with being a QA?

Listen, there's nothing wrong with being a QA. But the thing is, it's just not exactly what you wanted to do. Right? Go be a data analyst or go be a business analyst or something. But like sometimes your journey, very much so your journey is gonna be like this. My journey has been like that over the last three, four years. Yeah, my therapist has been actually getting me to like, I'm deep in my feelings with my therapist right now too. side. Hey, yo, I did a I did a year of therapy. One of the things I love about tech is that I worked at a company called Well Simple and they gave us a $5,000 stipend towards mental health.

Bro. And yeah, I will always I got like I got laid off like I got laid off from them in like 2022 was the best thing that ever happened to me. Okay, I we'll talk about that here in a second. But keep it keep going. But they gave me like they had like a mental health benefit and I went to therapy for like a year consistently every like every two weeks bi-weekly. That's unbelievable. You know what I'm saying? And like that's, but like therapy only works when you it's like going to the gym. Like therapy only works when you have it consistency like it's gonna be a lifelong thing for me.

And one of the things that my therapist has been getting me to do is to more chase the consistent consistent leveling middle ground than the unexceptional highs, right? Oh, good. Because when you change the unexceptional highs, you feel everything in waves where if you're just, you know, straightforward, you don't get too high, you don't get too low. So, um, yeah, like, you know, when I tell, when I hear people about their job search, I'm like, you know, um, you always got to look at things and like almost two timelines that you're working on simultaneously short term and long term, right? Like what are your long-term goals and then what are your short-term needs?

Cause you're short, like you can pursue being a software engineer, but like, unless you're, unless you got an a-herit-ins, or you come from a like a family that can support you, or you have a support system in place, or maybe just like a lot of savings, right? You're gonna need to do something in the interim to be able to feed yourself, house yourself, and live, right? You don't get the best performance if you don't take care of yourself. that includes resting and just actually living a life. So if you got to do a QA job, right? And then you got to do a sales job and then you got to do a sales engineering job and then you become like a self-raing engineer, right?

Does it matter what you did before that or does it matter that you got to the goal? I'm just saying. Jermaine, I hear preaching on Tuesday. I love it. Yeah, I want to get a John's comment too. And John, there's nothing wrong with this man. I recently started looking in, I know you're not saying that. I'm just saying like, I recently started looking for QA and B and Roles. I think that's smart. Yeah. You can't just, I feel like all of us are just like this when it comes to our careers. And it just doesn't work that way. Nah, you know what? You know what the thing is too?

The reason why I'm always like, yo, have that goal in mind is because, all right, let's say John wants to be a developer, like his goal is to be a software architect, like later on in his career, right? Yeah. If you're having that trouble getting that first like real foot in the door type of job, you go for like a QA or a BA role, but you know you wanna be an architect. You start thinking about what makes a good software architect, and you make sure you document and you pursue opportunities that will build onto that skill set, right? When I was becoming a recruiter, I didn't think to myself, shit, I don't got HR.

I thought to myself, all right, let me break down but I think it makes a good recruiter. Technical knowledge, right? Charisma, passion, and an aptitude to basically sell someone on an opportunity, right? Interview somebody. I'm like, I went to school for broadcast. I had an interview show. Like I know how to manipulate a conversation to going away where I need to get the information I need to convince someone that something's a good idea, right? So you break it down on that core skill. Like let's say John wants to be a software architect. If you go in as a VA, you're instantly or immediately in the position where you're dealing with stakeholders, right?

Which is part of software architecture, right? So maybe you find out how to deal with the most difficult, you know how to deal with the most difficult, either resources in terms of the development team or the most difficult stakeholders. And then when you finally do eventually get your, your dev position, right? You start leading into like trying to work with the most difficult stakeholders, right? because I promise you, if you go into an environment and you're like, yo, who the hell is the most difficult person to work with? I wanna work with them. They're gonna give it to you and they're gonna look at you crazy, but if you can figure out how to make a relationship with this person, it's game over, right?

Absolutely, absolutely, I love that. Jermaine, you made a comment about quote unquote, leaving that job was the best thing that's ever happened to me, even though it sounds like a pretty good deal, I would argue that happened to me as well. Talk about the importance of, I guess maybe understand, like coming to the realization that everything happens for a reason and sometimes you're probably on the better side of things. Yeah. So in general, have you read the Alchemist? No, I don't really read. I'm more of a coloring book type of guy. You're killing me. But the audio book. That sounds good. If anyone is curious, read the Alchemist because I think maybe you told me to do this on our last time.

I think I did. I'm sorry, Dad. I'm sorry. I think I did. But basically, because the alchemist talks about, like when you find, the whole theme of the alchemist is basically that when you find your calling, the universe puts things in places to make you succeed, right? And that's why I'm like, whenever you find your lane or whenever you find the place that you're supposed to be in, sometimes you get rewarded for your leap of fates, right? So, and that's why I'm like, it's always worth trying things out, right? Having a goal in mind and just taking multiple leaf of faith, the leaf of faith.

So with that in mind, right? Like a lot of times, not to be pre-shurity thing, but not preach it, man. Come on. I'm not very religious, but I had a conversation with my mom's pastor once and he was just like, people always have this misconception that when Christ comes into their life, or when good things come into their life, that it's gonna help them maintain the status quo. When what really happens when good comes into your life is that it's a whole disruption, right? And he was like, when Christ comes into your life, it's a whole disruption. It's never peaceful. He's like, read the Bible.

Every time Christ comes into the picture, it's chaos. We put tables and things, right? I mean. like, like fishes get water and why fish is crazy. Fish is getting multiplied. What is that to why man's coming back from the dead. Like none of this is calm bro. I am sweating right now. And that he was like, he was like the like the devil is complacency. The devil is being he's being comfortable with your surroundings because like you can eat the power people underestimate the power of familiar, familiarity. We underestimate how scared we are of the unknown. So like the devil or evil or like your toxic situations will encourage you to stay for fear of moving on, right?

And sometimes they become so insidious, i.e. golden handcuffs, right? That's where I was at. That's where I was at. So like when the layoff happens, right, you're forced to like, again, with total respect to like financial hardships, it's being a tough market. 100%. When the layoff happens, you have an opportunity to remake yourself, remake your situation, right? To go and pursue the salaries or the opportunities that you've always wanted to do. So with me personally, though, I have always dreamt of doing a pursuing entrepreneurship. My dad was an entrepreneur. All my idols are entrepreneurial. Like I said, I'm a huge Jay Z fan. I've been listening to Jay Z since I was nine.

Like, like, I have this book literally right here. I'm looking at it right now. It's right there. Right? But like, I've always wanted to be an entrepreneur, but I've always been scared to pursue it. And like, as I was building up my platform, I started getting conflicts. like one job I got fired from because I totally just dropped the ball because things were just blowing up with my entrepreneurship. And I got fired, but I got another job. And that job was toxic. And I ended up at well simple. Well, simple was honestly great. It was one of the it was the first time I remember walking into an office.

And I was like three months into the job. And like they sent me like a like a present for hitting my 90 days. It was just like, you know, whenever you You'd think of like the good ass tech job opportunities, like the brilliant startup with the great people, that was it, right? I ever were thinking to myself, yo, I could see myself being here for five years and then going off onto entrepreneurship, right? And I was like, every one day I had this thought, I'm like, yo, this is the perfect job and the perfect company, but I'm still, I still wanna do entrepreneurship, right? So I was like, all right, when I turned 32, you know, I'm gonna flip a coin.

If it lands our heads, I'm gonna quit my job. You didn't watch conversion. That's why I said, and my mom always used to say, like if you wanna make God laugh, tell him your plans. Mm. So literally a week, literally a week before my one year anniversary, I got laid off. And I remember, I really, I really like, Like I was with the one like people from leadership and I felt so bad for her because like When you have an organization that cares you people in place that care But when the business decisions have to come the business decisions got to come Yeah, and like it was just brutal like she'd been doing like least like I think by the time she got to me This is like her 12th 13th conversation Jesus Christ And I spent a lot of the call being like you know what I'm just grateful because like Now I'm able to just like really pursue my stuff.

They were really transparent with us about like find like the difficulties of the market. Sure. So I even had a chance to like leading into the layoff to like start working on my own stuff and like it gave me an opportunity to just say screw it. Let me give myself three months and see if like I can just sustain myself entrepreneurship. Yep. And it's been 20 months since that. There you go. I think we're good. I love it. Last five minutes here. I don't know why even title episodes at this point because like we just spent 25 minutes not talking about state of the market.

But let's talk about what we were talking about before we went live. What do you see in man? I mean, I know you're getting questions. I'm getting questions. When will it end? When will it? When will the market rip? Are we seeing up tick? So what are your thoughts, man? I was, as I was saying to you like earlier, before we went live, you know, we have a friend named Sean Page, who's always like, who's said earlier that if you wanna see what the market condition looks like, look at like the recruitment opportunities out there, the more recruitment opportunities you see, the more the hiring and needs are coming.

I've personally seen an uptick in both recruitment postings, but also in just, and this may be more of an anecdote, but I've seen more friends in the recruitment space, fine opportunities, right? So, it looks like it's an uptick. I will give a heads up that we're hitting him to Q4. So, really, on the American side, after Thanksgiving, it's kind of a wrap, right? Unfortunately, yeah. It's kind of a wrap until mid-January, early February. But that's context in case people feel like it's not taking up. But for sure. And that's why I wanted to talk about this at least before we wrapped up to get a little context.

Yeah. So the context around the timing, but it looks like more recruiters are getting hired. So that looks like a good thing. That honestly could change. But I'm hopeful. I think the best, like the most hectic hiring season has always been like that Q2, Q3 transitional period. Yeah. So April, May is one I'm interested to see what the market looks like. Same. Yeah. And on my end, I've had a handful of CTOs, VP's of engineering, reach out to me to use GONIO to staff up, which is good. And you know, same thing with Jermaine said, I'm seeing some friends get recruiting jobs and recruiting postings up and you know, any any good recruiters that I know that are on the job market have found jobs pretty quickly, which is always a good sign.

You know, a lot of people are asking, when do you think it'll be normal? I don't think we'll wake up one day and if a switch will be flipped. I just don't think it's going to happen that way. I think it's going to be gradual. And so that's why I want to continue to have guys like Jermaine on the show and I'll keep talking about it because I think there is hope right now. I think it will get better. Um, companies are still hiring. I would say a tip for you. Um, as we wrap up here is I would look at startups, right? I know there are kind of like inclusive startup list.

I think tech crunch may have something and look look up hiring like startups that are growing on the internet and try to go after those folks because I'm much more in the startup scene than to ever have been being at gun that's kind of our niche is like going after startups who need to go from zero to one and need engineers. So I'm playing much more in the startup space and I'll tell you this like there's a whole world out there that I didn't know about. So that's my recommendation. I didn't know if you had any thoughts on like where to look. I would say old ass companies.

Old ass companies too. Old ass company. I would say look at the look. Like boring types. Or more stuff that you're not thinking of like, like consumer packaged goods, like Lays, Coca-Cola, like airlines, like grocery stores and their head office type of thing. Like they all need tech, they all have, like they all need a rely on tech. That's, if a company's been around for 100 years, they are probably one of the more technologically advanced or at least good at adapting and relative to their business. I would agree. So I would also look there as well, because a lot of times they have the infrastructure to bring on that kind of hiring, right?

Yeah. Yeah, I love how you went and complete opposite of me, because I think it just shows. I don't think there's one answer. There is no one answer. No, having guys like Jermaine on it, I gave a presentation at Connect Tech, and some people got frustrated, like visibly frustrated with me during the talks. was a Q&A talk and some people called me out and I was like, listen, you can disagree with me. That's okay. Like I understand. Yeah. I could, I'm only one voice, right? But I got the microphone and you don't. So anyways, um, but, uh, well, Jermaine, as we wrap up here, man, um, any last thoughts, words of encouragement to, uh, to job seekers and just people in general right now that are in their careers.

Flexibility, flexibility is going to be your friend. Flexibility and networking will be your friend. Be flexible in the opportunities that you're pursuing. Think outside of the box. Think relocation, think contracting. Yeah, love that. Think companies that you, think companies that you see every day that you've never even considered, right? You take the train, think of the transit committee. Think of the transit committee. You're going on a trip, think of the airline. You pass a hotel every day, think of the hotel, right? all these things that you're not considering. Look everywhere, be flexible, and keep networking. Keep coming to these, keep building community, find out and figure out how you could provide value to other people and build your rep.

I love it, I love it. All right, y'all again, thank you for hanging out with us today. We appreciate it. Tomorrow, I have my dear friend Michael Eaton on. Michael is a prolific speaker around the engineering community. And you won't want to miss tomorrow. He's fantastic. Jermaine, thank you, my friend. Hey, where can people find you? Because again, people got follow Jermaine. Google the job father. You can find me as the job father on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, all the major social media platform. I need to do that. Yeah, you need to do that. I got the job father title on TikTok. I'm always going to call it Twitter.

It's never going to be X. Sorry, Elon. Always Twitter. You can really just change that shit back Twitter. Yeah, man. You're in Texas, right? You're not a monster. You're a monster. All right, right, right, right, right, right, right. The other white people's Atlanta. That's what they were calling. The other white people's Atlanta. I appreciate you, man. Thank you, everyone, for coming through. Absolutely. See y'all. Hey, you did it. You listened 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 at Tdastin on all social media handles. And I hope you have a fantastic day.