creating a job that does not exist w/aaron harmon, sr. recruiter

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Enough of me running my mouth. Kylie. It's good to see you Richie It's good to see a man Jordan mark Erica We got we got some of the crew this morning again y'all continue your comments say hey But I want to go and get into it. So I think it's gonna be a great conversation So Aaron let's get the people with what they want who are you? What do you like your background a little bit and obviously we'll go from there. Yeah, yeah, so When is Aaron I've been if you're talking about recruiting background been recruiting about about eight eight and a half years now started out at Arotech, kind of stumbled my way upon Arotech with the larger, you know, staffing agencies, you kind of get pulled in and had a really diverse experience with Arotech, which is really cool.

Working in a really small office, I wasn't the typical like, hey, you're going to work on light industrial, hey, you're going to work on engineering, hey, you're going to work healthcare, I got to kind of work on anything. So, I had some really cool people that I met at Arotech, great trading and development company. I still talk to my leaders and directors that I work with. Kind of develop a friendship from that point on, but that's what led me, I think, prepared me for Tesla when I worked there for just over three years after the five at Aerotech. So, yeah, they kind of had a mixed bag of background with recruiting.

I'm not a one-trick pony, which nothing wrong with that, but I've had to get my feet wet in a lot of different industries, a lot of different companies, a lot of different types of recruiting. And yeah, that's kind of what's kept me around. Like I've been able to change my scenery quite a bit when it comes to what I get to work on. And that's been a big plus. Yeah, I love it. So man, a lot to go over today. But the main thing is your job search, right? So listen, like I want to get folks, Aaron and And I kind of joked about this backstage, about how some folks get a little frustrated about other people's successes.

Listen, I want to celebrate Aaron on the show. This is what we're doing. But Aaron, I mean, I mean, I see it as how long did it take you to find a job? I think it was right at four weeks, four weeks. You know, it wasn't to be completely honest. I got, you know, I made it through the first round of interviews. I'm sorry, first round of layoffs. At Tesla, so I thought I had this, you know, unfortunately false sense of security. And was laid off, it was the 19th, it was on Friday. And they was like, man, like, and it was an interesting feeling because it's like, you know, in the job search board, like there's a ton of people looking for work and there have been for months, even, you know, the past year has been great people that just can't land jobs for one reason or another.

And my initial thought was like, I'm so far behind, right? So I wasn't planning on leaving. I didn't want to leave Tesla. I love that job. And I'll say that to everybody, I have this so far. And it was such a cool place to work, like super challenging the managers and even like the employees were like getting jobs with it. Like everyone there was super cool. And that kind of made it why I was so shocked, right? Right. What type of roles did you recruit on at S-Lab, by the way? So I worked primarily in vehicle engineering. So like technician level in lower. So we had a devoted engineering recruiting team.

And then that was all engineers. And I was basically anything other than engineers. So for the teams that I supported, there were dedicated like GNA recruiters or dedicated supply chain logistics recruiters. But and the groups I supported, one of the main pieces of feedback we would get was like they didn't want to have five points of contact. So when I got added into these groups, I was like, hey, I'll take care of all of it for you. And it was low volume, so it wasn't anything where it's like, hey, we need 20 of whatever. It was usually one or two at a time. Okay, awesome.

So, man, let's talk about the job search, right? First off, you got laid off. How did you feel? And what did you do those first few days? I mean, you did a great job documenting your search, which I of course loved and followed along. And I know the rest of the LinkedIn stratosphere did too. So just talk about, walk me through kind of the first week, How did you feel? What did you do? Just kind of walk me through that. Yeah, honestly, I was angry. There's no other way to describe it. I was super angry about it. Didn't like the way it happened. And I don't think anybody does, right?

The mass layoffs, it's usually a phone call or email and it's like, hey, your role's been impacted and probably a nice date, right? So, excuse me. So, yeah, honestly, my immediate thing that I did was go to Val farm employment, because that can take multiple weeks, right? I think that that is like my best advice is whatever state you're in, go to the state unemployment website, open a claim, started immediately, get the benefits that you have available to you, because that gig, it took like three weeks about to kick in, right? So, and I went straight to LinkedIn. And, you know, I kind of was hoping like, hey, like this is gonna kickstart my jobs, or try like, you put the green banner up, I'm a believer in the Green Banner.

I don't care what anybody else says about it. That's my bottom arguments, people get into a buffett. I know. It's a tool that's used to be more visible. So I'm gonna, I'm like, my thought was, I wanna be as visible as I possibly can right now. And yeah, I made the post while I was still angry. It's pretty short and sweet. And then it was Monday. I was like, I need to post more, right? I need to post my background. I need to post what I've done, who I am, what I bring to the table. Why did you have that thought that you need to post more?

Because in my perspective, I feel like LinkedIn algorithm likes you, obviously, a lot. So I see your post a lot, but you're out here saying you needed to post more. Why did you think that? Like, give me kind of the peel behind the onion there. Man, I just felt like, you know, what I post, right? And like the more that posted I test level is like a drop in the bucket of like what I bring to the table. And like the five years of air attack, I don't talk about much. But I did so much, like I literally worked on, I staffed for a company building the largest aircraft ever to be made, right?

Over real? Right. So it's like, and that's called Stratolontas. It was with scale composites, he was a prototype company, it built that aircraft, right? So like those projects, nobody really knows about, right? So I wanted to highlight what I did prior to Tesla to what like the experience that got me in the door there, right? You know, Tesla, yeah, it's a household name, but even there, like I wasn't part of like manufacturing, like I wasn't working with the teams that were building the cars. Like these teams are testing the vehicles, right? So I wanted to make sure that that background was shared and shared in the way that I wanted to be shared versus like just what our resume said.

Yeah, that makes sense. And talk about, so obviously you started posting, you know, talk, walk me through kind of like how do you organize your day? I'm always fascinated because like when I was on the job search last year for the very first time, my entire career, you could say, it was very eye opening for on how I structured my day. You know, I was, before I was laid off, you know, people would say like, you know, I would say you need a job search from nine to five. And then after when I was on the job, I was like, nope, I can't do that.

Talk, talk about like how you structured your day, how did you get through it? Did you have any processes that work for you? It was honestly chaos, man. Like it was like, it was just like 100 miles an hour the whole time, like I had no strategy. was just I'm gonna apply, I started to apply much of places and like surprisingly, like there are remote jobs out there, like they're being posted, whether or not you're gonna get a call back or an email from them is even story, right? But it was nice to see that there were some option out there. I'm like, okay, like those roles open after like two or three days of me panicking, like I need to start being a little more strategized here, right?

Okay, okay. And like, and this is kind of, you know, some of the advice that I give, right? Like I didn't go straight to like talent acquisition directors or talent acquisition managers, right? I was talking to like staff or peers, principal repeaters that were active on LinkedIn like asking for like, hey, you know, I don't see it on a website. Do you have any openings, right? Yeah. And then even though the companies that did have the openings, right, I was trying to figure out like, I was doing bullion searches like crazy through LinkedIn trying to find who is the person in that department that I can talk to.

I love that. I have. Okay. So originally, real quick, so originally you like panic applied and you just were mass applying and then you're like, Aaron, get a hold of yourself. We got to be more strategic. And then you went to running searches. You would see a job posted on LinkedIn and then you didn't apply, but you went, you went to try to find the person. So obviously we're recruiters. You would go and maybe find who, who were you kind of looking for? Like head of people or like. It varied. I was going with first connections first, right? So that was my focus. Like who do I already have connections with?

And I'll go click message and be like, okay, how have we talked before? And those people that I would target first, because there was something prompted a message in the past. So it was more of a warm out reach. But when I was doing cold out reaches, it was like very direct. Like, hey, I'm looking for a role, I'm looking for a mode position in X, Y, and C capacities. Do you have anything? If you don't, do you know of anyone that I can talk to? Right? Not like, hey, let me know if we have anything. It's like, I want to direct answers. Yeah, cause I'm wondering if you have any other tips, especially you being a recruiter and getting DMs, obviously working on Tesla, do you have a strategy?

I just did a coaching one-on-one session yesterday and I told the individual, give as much information on the initial message, because people don't have time to go back and forth. Do you have advice for folks who want to network in the DMs, but are maybe you struggle to create these DMs? I would say just be like short and direct, right? Like, excuse me, there were a couple like pretty lengthy messages that I would type up, but it was personalized like, hey, like, I, you know, I'm looking at your company because I'm interested in industry, and this is why I'm interested because I have this background, right?

Like, I think I could bring watch the table and bring a lot to this team, let's connect, right? More if it was just like, you know, a company that I was applying for that I was doing some research on that I don't really know, it was a little bit more like, hey, I applied, here's a link to the position. Are you the point of contact for this? If not, who is, right? So it would vary. I didn't have, I don't think I sent the same message twice. I'm not talking about like, I'm looking at your esteem establishment type message, right? Because I want to make it personal.

Yeah. And talk about the importance of personalize the message because I still feel like a lot of folks, I feel like a lot of folks still try to approach LinkedIn, like they're talking to their 75 year old grandma in terms of like how they word things. And I really feel like normal conversational speak is taking over the business world. And I think it's, I think it's a great way to break down bears. Can you speak to that a little bit? Yeah, so I think you have to appeal to your audience, right? If you're, and you know, if you're talking to a director, right, like I'm gonna be a little bit more business professional, right?

But if it's a, if it's a, a, you know, somewhere in more of an individual individual contributor role, I'm gonna do more conversational conversation. Yeah, it's gonna be, hey, like, you know, love to connect with you. Let's chat about what's going on at your company, right? Versus the, you know, hey, Mr. and Mrs. whatever, you know, I mentioned this in your role at your company because X, Y, and Z, right? So you have to appeal to your audience and what's cool at LinkedIn is like, you can look at someone's profile, see what they're posting, see how they communicate, right? Okay, does this person strictly job postings and they're not really posting anything else?

like they could be all business. This is just post and talking about their weekend plans. Hey, let's talk about those weekend plans in my DM, right? So that, you know, a little bit of research, right? You know, and you can't do that when you're panic applying. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. Talk, you know, again, I wanna give you a shout out. I mean, you are a, and I comment on one of your posts, you're kind of literally like an entire marketing, marketing department, like I kind of am too, but you're like on another level. And I mean, how many how many impressions have you gotten? Like, like you sent me a stat.

How many eyeballs saw your content over the last time? The last I looked the past years, it's over 30 million. 30 million. Yeah. Yeah. So that's you made that's that's you. And I don't want to make this about a content. I think because people probably so freaking tired of me talking about content. But can you just speak to people who may have zero followers on LinkedIn, why you should post things. I mean, it's all like, I'm a private person. I don't post on anything but LinkedIn. Yeah, for the record, me trying to get him on the podcast, you all like he was even hesitant. I was like, I was like, give me your email.

I'm sending you an invite. So I try to test. Yeah, so I'm pretty private. So I don't talk about like myself. I know like a lot of creators that I'm friends with that are great people that are like do it more personal. I make it get, you know, 10 times many views as I do, right? Which is fine. But yeah, like it's important because like when you're, like if you're in a position where you are looking for a job or a passive looking or even just trying to like sell a product, right? I can say it especially. If people know your name, know who you are, it makes the conversation start so much easier.

So it becomes a seamless transaction versus like, like people are like, who are you, what do you want, right? Versus like, if I messaged somebody that I've connected with, I mean, I'm talking for like, they know who I am and, and what I'm looking for and the reason why I'm messaging them, especially with job search. Well, in prime example, I post my vlogs because people connect with things differently. I'm pretty sure you and I like became BFFs with our love for corgis. Oh, yeah. I'm pretty sure you messaged me from a vlog. Are you going to go get them? I love it. A corgi has not made it upon actually, I wonder if I should, I'm gonna go get mine.

You have them? Look at that. He's a chump. I have no idea where mine's at. So I got to find him. He's the cutest. There he is. Oh, I hear. Hold on. Hold on. I got dog hair all over me. On a show. Walter. There he is. She's a hit Aaron. Say hit Aaron. She got heavy. I had to put her down. Boys. Fit. Yeah. So, but the reason why we connected is because the corgis. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's incredibly important because people can. Thomas comes in here. The corgi show. Yeah, again, that is, that is, that is never, that has never been done before.

Um, prove your dog is always the last place you'd expect him to be. I had no idea where he just came out of nowhere. nowhere. So yeah, it's incredibly important document, do your thing. And I want to talk about a little bit about obviously with the title of shows, create a job that does not exist. That happened. I'm out of breath. Finding my job at gun. Also, nice, nice cup. Finding it, finding a job that was not necessarily there. Can you talk for that and maybe help people can position themselves? Yeah, I mean, so in the recruiting world, you know, if you're not in the recruiting industry, it's there's, you know, everyone's like, oh, like, like, there's this black market for jobs, right?

It does exist, I'm gonna be honest, but it's not, it's not this like profound thing where there's like hundreds of jobs that aren't posted, right? But like, when you're recruiting, right, like an internal standpoint, especially, right, your managers like, the like, hey, we're looking to hire, you know, sales executive, right? So most times, sales executives know sales executives. Correct. So that's very much like, hey, like, you know, talk to your talk to your coworkers, your peers, whoever and get some referrals, right? So while I'm working on like a job description or like getting rec approvals, whatever it is, like these, the people that are in the roles are already already recruiting, right?

So like there's many times where like like somebody could be submitted to a hiring manager before the recs even posted. So that happens more times, it happens more than you realize, it still isn't a whole lot. So like on a recruiting standpoint, especially right now, like if, let's just say a company's looking higher or recruiter, right? Well, if they put a posting up, they're gonna get 500 applicants in 24 hours. Right. Does their team have the bandwidth to take care of the type of an applicant so appropriately? probably not if they're looking to hire a recruiter. So hey, let's start doing some DMs. Let's start talking about, let's go through our networks and see who's looking, we can just send them a job description versus having to post a position.

And people can say what they want about that process, but sometimes that does create a better candidate experience. Sometimes it does not. So we obviously want to give people an equal opportunity to apply. I do think jobs should be posted, but sometimes it just isn't the case. I think people are looking to, if they're like preferring a referral or if they're wanting to do things a little bit untraditionally, it just depends. I think Jason come here two dog dads in their core. He's talking about the job hunt. Yeah, dude. I mean, it's a great, great way. Donnie, Donnie was just on my show yesterday. I'm an ADP of engineering creating social media content for technical folks is typically not in our wheelhouse, but seems to be an assessee in today's job market.

I mean, I've been talking about this for a long time. I think like every single person I have found, every person that I've talked to that creates content has found a job because of content. And let me ask you this, Aaron, did this job come because of content? Yeah, so the individual who messaged me, it was actually a few months back asking for referrals for a position and we connected that way and kind of just like, hey, like, here's some referrals, hope they work and we've, yes, they connected and messaged back here and there. And then it was like, hey, we have this position that we're talking about being remote.

Would you be interested in something like that? So that's what sparked the conversation. What brought them to me, could it have been content? Hopefully, you know, but we connected through LinkedIn. So I never met them before, didn't necessarily know the industry they were in or what they did or anything like that. It was just like, hey, you know, basically helping out somebody else that might not have the network that I do, and get their name and what they're looking forward to a few people that we're looking at the time. I mean, listen, here's the deal. I don't think you have to post-content. My brother is a group, what is he?

He's a group product owner, which I can mean, a pretty senior group product owner at Eventbrite. Like, he's not on social, like at all. And he's done a great job. He actually does a hell of a job networking through interviews. And like so like for me like he's been able to find every single job because he's networked during the interview and built relationships, right? So the so he doesn't post There's there was one recruiter always at Vaco my last company who like beat me every year by like $200,000 in GM and that dude never posted a peek. He was not online at all, right? So like you don't have to be online to be successful but it's not gonna hurt and to be honest with you around the job search, it really, really helps bring visibility to who you are.

So again, Aaron's probably the fourth or fifth God that I've brought on the show recently that has found a job indirectly or directly through content. Yeah, and that's something like, I don't, like to to your point, we don't have the post-content, right? But when it comes to the job search, like that's what I think it helped. Like doing my job, like getting applicants like a LinkedIn post, it was minimal to be as far as qualified applicants. It definitely brought a lot of eyes of the company, which was nice. I don't think Tesla necessarily needed more eyes on the company, but as far as to the departments that I hired for, it brought a lot of views to the job posting.

So that was a big plus. To your point, it also can be a very big distraction. If you're trying to recruit and you got a high volume and you got some priorities, don't post. Do your job, right? Especially if you have a hybrid role where it's part producing part management, right? Like the producing part is the most, you know, like you are a producer through it through that first and then talk about management and content and sales and strategy. I want to bring up, I want to go back to creating the job again out of nowhere. So I do have to say some of the black market jobs come from recruiting agencies, agency recruiters.

Because we and your experience at Airtech, I'm sure you can speak to this, we have relationship with the managers. We can kind of advise them on kind of like what a position if they're if the relationship is there, use a lot of agency recruiters can advise the company on like what they should hire and kind of create a role based off what they're hearing from the manager. So like that's why I'm really big on like you need to have kind of a collective group of agency recruiters who you at least can tolerate because they can send you stuff. I think with me with Gun.io, like they were looking to hire a sales person, but they weren't necessarily looking to hire somebody like me.

So I think one of the things you can do, and Aaron, I'm curious here, thoughts on this, is like if you can get an initial phone call with somebody, listen to their problems. I would literally ask, hey, what are you guys experiencing? What are some difficulties that you guys are having and why are you looking to hire this role? So at gun IO, they had no social media presence. They didn't have anybody really running like social media. They didn't have anybody really truly building community or know how to build community. And they were looking for a sales person. So I was like, well, guess what, guys.

I agree with me. And so they talked and then they kind of created this role for me, even though they only have one sales person just spot open. I was able to sell myself, but I had to listen to hear the company's problems and where they were short. So I'm curious to hear your thoughts on that Aaron. Yes, like an agency role in an even in term recruiting world like qualifying the rec is number one, right? And that's one of the main positions like why is it open? And it's like, okay, like what problems is gonna solve like in this person's role, right? And like that works in sales too, right?

You know, like, like a product or a service, right? If they have a current vendor like, hey, why are you entertaining a conversation if you have a current vendor or a current part than you, it's right, like what's going on that we can solve. So that's very important, in my opinion. And being able to come in and knowing your worth, I think is half that battle to you, right? Like the, you can be as confident as you want, right? But you have to be able to answer that question and provide a solution. And not everything is like solutions oriented. Like you don't have to save the company, right?

You have to provide some sort of value proposition that somebody else might not have and that's difficult to do You know like you don't want to sound overconfident right and like you know pompous But you have to show up and say like hey like I can do x y and z and right and you know proof points a b and c But I've done in the past. Yep, absolutely absolutely Alright, so as we're kind of wrapping up and again time flies when you're having fun with friends if you have any questions please ask them. But Aaron, so we talked about how you felt at the start of the job search.

Obviously overwhelmed, frustrated, you mass applied out of pure panic. And then you're like, I got to get a strategy, started to be intentional to DMs. Is there anything else that you did throughout your job search that was working? Any more advice to folks who are also searching right now? I just kind of want to make sure I kind of get all the knowledge out of you because you're so good at this stuff. Honestly, man, like some of the, some of the people that, that reached out to me, people that I'd hardly talked to before at all. So I think one except accepting the help that's given to you, I think was a big thing.

Like, it's like, like you get all of the like, you know, like, let me know if I can help, right? And like, that's very nice to the message, but it's like, I'm not going to ask you for help because I don't know what you can offer, right? But it's someone that, that like, I had someone from, from General Motors, I'm not going there by the way, but reach out to me like day after. It was like, hey, like I can get your resume to the TA manager. Like we have no openings. I'm gonna tell you that right now, but like the olive branch, right? Like accepting olive branch.

That was something I think I don't know if you know Clay Gill, shout out Clay Gill. I know the name. I know the name. He post this morning about like accepting help like, yeah offers about you coffee. It's not like, oh, like no, I got it. It's just, hey, say thanks, right? Yeah. And that's something that I think if you have the benefit of people offering help, like take every conversation you can get. Also on companies that I had no idea who they are and what they did, or if somebody facilitated that introduction, right? That was a big thing. And then just being very direct.

Like I wasn't, I wasn't meeting around the bush. People don't have time to go back and forth. Right. And I mentioned it before in this podcast, I don't want to say anything over and over, But that really helped me. There were some companies that I was not connected with a single person there in TA at all. And I got interviews because I reached out to the right people in TA at those companies. That makes sense. Let's see here. Sally comes in and so many nuggets here in incredible chat. Where's your new home? So he's not announcing. I asked him before Aaron's announced. You got away from the LinkedIn announcement, Jason.

Sally comes in here and goes, how do you... How do you get experience on the resume when you've been self-employed for 10 years looking to segue into an in-house position? That's something where I'm not a fan of cover letters, but that's where I think cover letter could shine. When you're looking to do something different than what you've done in the past, the cover letter can explain how that could translate into the in-house role and then why you wanted to do that. And it's not the end all be all answer, but I do think those things can certainly help versus just sending their resume and kind of hoping for the best.

Yeah. Yeah, and I think too, Sally, like I think the way you write a resume with being self-employed is incredibly important. And I think a lot of people don't know how to write resume. Like I think you could pull a lot of stuff from your past to showcase, how it relates to in-house recruiter position. So Si, what I would do is I would go find a bunch of in-house recruiter position job descriptions, see if there's some things that you have done-ish in your background and write it in your resume. But again, it's really how you write a resume is incredibly important. Katie comes in here and goes, what sort of metrics did you use to make you feel like you are progressing in your job search, number of connections, applications, time spent researching?

So non-advertisant, non-paid post, I use teal. I've heard of them. It's basically like a job search organization tool. They have a Chrome extension where you can track all of your job postings, as far as what you're applying to, and the positions like when you apply your interest level in each one. And I did that, and the list is very long, unfortunately, I applied to hundreds of positions, right? And to be clear, like, you know, this, I was, I'm going to say, able to find something quick, but it wasn't lacking effort. Like it was literally hundreds of jobs I applied for. And I had, you know, maybe four or five interviews with a different company.

So it's not, it wasn't easy by any, by any means. But yeah, Teal was a big help on just staying organized. Like it's very quick, like, you know, easy applies. Great. I use easy apply. Again, Green banner and easy apply. They work, right? I don't know. It's just about them. They're there to make your job easier, use them. Somebody doesn't like a tool that's available. If there's someone in TA that doesn't like someone using a tool that's available to them be more efficient, like that's kind of what we want in TA efficiency, right? So yeah, that was a big help. As far as metrics was, I didn't track it to kind of go back to our previous conversation.

Yeah, I was gonna ask you, like, What did you hold yourself to when you laid your head down the pillow every night where you felt accomplished? Is there anything that you held yourself to? Man, not a whole lot of us. Not a whole lot. Really million man for four weeks. Yeah, not a lot of restful nights, honestly. So I was up late, I was up late, I was up early. I found like some companies were like scheduled posts to get posted and they'd be like midnight. Like I'll get up at like six a.m. Eastern time. It was posted three hours ago. I'm like, who's up at midnight posting these jobs, right?

So like, say what you want, right? But like be on the East Coast or Eastern time. Like I had a three hour, I had started across anybody from the West Coast. Why did I think about that? I didn't think about that. I've been like, nine o'clock at night when I'm signing off. Like people on the West Coast are still, still full force, right? So that's something that, you know, I didn't really have a strategy. I had industries I wanted to work in, right? And that's where I started, like what industry did I want to be part of? And then, hey, who are the movers and shakers in the industries, right?

And I wasn't even targeting big companies. Like I've worked for big companies, I've worked for small companies. It's a gamble working for either one, right? Especially in this day and age. So I was looking for companies that were leaders in their space and what they were doing. and somewhere that I could make a true impact and like that. It sounds cheesy, right? Like to be like, you want to make an impact and want to be part of the team, but like I do, right? Like I want to be like recruiting as a, as a thankless job and to have a company or a team that appreciates what you do is a total game changer.

I'm a real quick Katie because Katie sent me an email and I owe Katie a response. So Katie, I'm just going to literally answer it right now. I think based off your email, I hold myself to having two conversations a day, or like one conversation. At least one, ideally two, two, meaning one person that is kind of in your network that you haven't talked to in a bit, and then one new, net new person. If you can stick to try to do two conversations a day, you're gonna really like where you're gonna be on the job search. So that is what I would do, Katie.

I'll also answer the rest of your email today, I promise. Sean comes in here, I found that finding jobs in mid to senior management is difficult to get references for outside of the Media network. I almost feel stuck at my job because I can't get the job without stepping back in my career possession back into an IC role Sean this could be an entire live. I was saying this There's nothing wrong with stepping back into an IC role one of my buddies Kyle Welch Kyle Welch was an engineering manager at Eventbrite and took a step If you want to call it a step back as a senior engineer at Atlassian, right?

Like, like, I really think in terms of like, Sean, you kind of got to get this out of your head. Like there's no step back. And honestly, in this market, you kind of got to be flexible with what's going on. And if you if you miss coding a little bit, just go back and be a senior staff engineer for a little bit and then bump back up. Aaron, you got thoughts on this? Yeah, I don't think, you know, I'm up. I'm not harpests on titles, right? Like you could be there. There were lead technicians that were better than engineers, right? Or staff engineers that were better than the managers, right?

Like not every individual contributors cut out to be a manager, right? So like sometimes those moves aren't the right move, right? Like the natural career progression is like, oh, I'm going to be a senior level contributor and I'm going to go into management, right? Where, and they just don't don't do well management. And then we see that as the quote unquote step back, as you said, or they want to get back to what they're good at, right? So if what you want to do is consider to step back, like, don't be so caught up on that, right? Cause like you, if you have more that you can contribute to in a different role than, than so be it, right?

Like, and in recruiting, like I found so many companies calls the same role. I do different things. Yeah. Right. So like, like the job title, I wasn't really ever caught up on that. It's a whole lot. It was more on like what the resume said and like what you were doing in that role. Because like, and I'll give them on to like years of experience. Like someone could be at someone for 10 years. Someone that was ever four could have had more experience doing that. I see a lot because they were more invested in the company than role versus just checking boxes and going home.

Yeah, absolutely. We're going to wrap one more thing real quick, Donnie. Conversation is very linked and focused so far on curious weather platforms you have had success with regards to tech leadership. I think Twitter, I mean, tech Twitter is its own animal. It's tough to get going. That's my other platform, Aaron, I don't know. For the record, I've been talking a lot behind the scenes with a lot of engineers. I think there is a networking platform out there that can still be built that is a paid thing, like a bumble, like a Tinder or whatever. Not from that perspective, but like closed down, we have to pay for it.

And it's got components of both, because all you really have is LinkedIn. I think Twitter is a lot to use. So I didn't know if you had any more thoughts on this, Aaron. But I said before, I'm pretty private outside of LinkedIn. So I don't even have a Twitter or X. I might have one for 10 years ago or so, but yeah, I do think there are going to be, LinkedIn right now is the leader in this space, but I do think there are, with as many AI companies as there are right now in the tech world, I do think that there is bound to be something else it comes up, whether it be like a spin off of like a discourse, something like that, where there was different like, almost like a more civilized Reddit, right?

Where you can go in and talk to people about certain things and like the companies that are hiring, what they do, and have more like instant message type feature, like that will be really cool. Yeah. That opens up whole can of worms with ghosting, right? But if a developer wants to build it with me, let me know. I offer it. Yeah. And then our boys Joel turned it on my TikTok. He said, hey, Joel, it's good to see you, buddy. All right, so I will wrap up here. I want to give, kind of a rapid fire question for you real quick, four questions. I want to preface this.

You have a family. I know you love your family. You can't say family, OK? Like I preface everybody who has kids. We know you love your family. We got it. What do you do outside of work for fun? Oh. So I grew up racing motorcycles. most of my life. I don't do it now in my adult life with with the kids and things like that. But I still have few motorcycles in the garage. I like to tinker on stuff though. Like I'm big on pulling things apart, figuring out how they work, making them better and putting it back together. I don't know if it's that if it's an attention deficit thing or if it's a if it's just like I like working my hands back, I'm in the garage a lot.

The backyard a lot working on stuff. So I'll of that. Yeah. If you couldn't be a recruiter anymore and money was not a question, what would you do? Man. I'm a mechanic. I hate working at other people's stuff. Other people's stuff is not fun to work on. I think any mechanic will agree on that. But yeah, I think some sort of a technician role. Like some of the technician role that Tesla were super cool. Like we're doing like R&D stuff. of like prototype, I like prototype and kind of doing building things from scratch, right? Like I build motorcycles from scratch. And that's something that I think I would do really well at, right?

Like testing and like testing the limits of what something can or can't do in some sort of a technician, I guess. I love aspect. Yeah. I love this, David. This made me cackle, spending spending time with my kids. I saved fighting for my life with wild animals. I love that. Third question, it just kind of fun. What's been your favorite piece of content that you've watched that you've read recently? There's content recommendations. I like people that post things that help other people. I like the comedy, I like the gift in the funny stuff, right, but that only gets you so far and make people laugh, right?

Like you have to be someone that, like in my opinion, like who I like to, you know, to see in interactive, or those that are getting back to, or there'd be the TA community, or giving back to hired managers, or job seekers, whatever it is, right? Like giving something that has a little bit of value to it. That's my favorite at least, as far as like any kind of tip or any sort of advice. That's not click bait. Okay, so we'll just change that. So you're the epic, let me ask you a better question. You're the epic LinkedIn creator. Who is one of your favorite creators on LinkedIn that you like, that you respect?

Mm, you. No, don't say that. I knew you were that. Don't say that. Let me think back, because a lot of people that I talk to a lot. Sure. All right, think about it real quick. Brian brings a great question. Mighty Ducks one, Mighty Ducks two. I'm a one guy. Oh, the original can't be beat. It can't be beat. You too? Yeah. No, no, no. The original, the original. original. It can't be beat. It can't be beat. I believe that like the seconds or sequels are never as good. So yeah. Money ducks one. Same. Good. See this is why we're friends. Corkeys and Mighty Ducks one.

Yeah. Yeah. Last question. Wait, what is far as some of I like to see their posts. I do like like Matt, Matt Herndon. I think he's UK based. I don't know about all that. I want to say he's Activision Blizzard. I believe so. I see a lot of things like Matthew Wall, people that are posting things that are meaningful. Yeah. And it's not just to get likes. It's not just to appease an algorithm, like things that actually make a difference. And it's social media. And you can, in the grants, do things drop in the bucket. but people that actually do things that are worthwhile. Yeah, I wanna hear a shout out to Andrew Lewis.

I love Andrew Lewis's stuff. He's a little bit more on like the recruiter side contents. But I think he's a really genuine guy and I like him a lot. I wanna say a shout out to Jason here in our comment section. He was someone that reached out to me, I've been with him a long time as far as connection wise goes, but he retrots me and provided a lot of help and advice on the job search too. So I'm going to get Jason to shout out and say, definitely check out his page of what he's doing too. I love it. All right, last question, we'll wrap it up here.

Thank you again for going along with me, man. I appreciate it. So the show is called Guidance Councilor 2.0, because we had Guidance Councilor's a middle school college, middle school high school college. But now as adults, we don't really have them. What would be your biggest piece of career advice to young Aaron at Arrowtech or before Arrowtech? Take more chances. Yeah. I'm a very old. Or I get the more. Yeah. I'm not a very calculated person generally on the career side. I am so but I would say have, you know, take more chances to have the conversation, you know, do the lunch meeting, go grab coffee with someone.

I think that's what I didn't do for a long time and I really enjoy doing now. Yeah, yeah, I love it. I love it. All right, y'all. Well again, thank you. The comment section has been great. Go connect with Aaron. He'll announce his new job soon. And we appreciate you, Aaron. and thank you my friends stay on, so I can say about you backstage. But y'all have a great one. Unicorn Finders tomorrow, catch up with the CEO of Fusion Auth. It's gonna be pretty cool, love their company, and they sent me some swag. They make great soft t-shirts. So y'all have a good one. We'll see you all tomorrow, Unicorn Finders 9-3 AM, Central.

Peace. 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 finished 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 T.S.

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