tactics around the job search (solo show)

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So I'm going to go and get into kind of some nuts and bolts of things this morning. And we're talking about some job search stuff, right? Nick, it's great to see you brother. Really, really great to see. I'm going to get you on the pod by the way. Just let me have my second kid, let my wife have more second kid, and let me be a parent again for a little bit. And we'll get you on the pod of promise. So basically some kind of some observations I'm seeing right now. I tweeted this just now, but listen, I think you need to be flexible, right?

So if you're having a problem, finding a job as a junior developer or a developer in general, maybe pivot a little bit, right? Maybe look in the QA, maybe look in the analyst work, maybe looking at customer support, right? Let's say you just graduated boot camp and let's see you have a great personality. Let's say people have told you time and time again, you have a great personality, but you're like, no, I want to be a developer. Then I don't know, maybe looking at customer support. One of the things I've really realized, especially kind of growing, you know, in organizations and seeing how things work is, organizations want people to stay who get the business, right?

So let's say you're a developer and you come in and you don't have any existing experience with the business. It's going to take some ramp up. But if you started this thing, where you started in customer support or marketing, and you had a deep understanding of the business, let's say you were a account manager and then you eventually went over the IT side of things, you're going to have a deeper understanding of the business. And that's what people want in today's world, right? People want a deep understanding of the business. You know, I used to as I started recruiting, we, I used to be told a lot that like companies needed, like if I was recruiting for a healthcare company, recruited the company, we'd be like, we need healthcare experience.

And I was like, that's dumb. I was like, I was like, what, why does somebody need a healthcare experience? Right? They can just code. It's, it's very nuanced, right? And I think all of us who are watching now, I see the comments or people listening this in the future, like companies want people who have the knowledge of their business because it makes you a better person within the business. And so that's what I'm saying. If you want to get a job and you are struggling finding a job and tech right now, start with, yeah, dominant comes in here. I've seen a few people landing support tech writing email market rules.

Yeah. I mean, literally there's so much, like just get into the company, get into the company, get a job, get your football going. And then grow your career again right now in this market. Listen, I don't know when this is going to end. We have a discord for gun IO. If you're not in it, we'd love to have you. There's some chit chatter yesterday in the discord about like, when is this going to end? People were tagging me. I was like, listen, I thought this shit was going to end Q one of this year, right? I thought we'd be out of this by Q one, but we're not.

And so, so again, like it's one of these things where again, you got to be flexible. Thomas comes in with a little bit of a, a little bit of a brag. I love it. I got one not stuff. Everybody started my photography again. I love it. So I'm ready to do your good. So some Prince. Hey man, that's awesome. You got to have hobbies. You got to have hobbies 100% I love that for you dude. Yeah. Yeah. We'll definitely get Nick on the show. Um, another thing I was, um, you know, I've been thinking about too. So I have a podcast unicorn finders, right? And unicorn finders, a podcast focus on finding startups and founders and really cool shit.

Probably haven't heard of yet. And one of the things what I've realized is that a lot of founders can't even answer the, hey, what do you do? What does the business do? What, like, what's your background? What does the business do? A lot of founders can't answer that. So like I want to tell job seekers, especially junior, like if you're struggling with that type of stuff, like just know, I talk with founder starting companies that can't answer that. Now that is alarming 100% that's a long. Right? I totally get that. But I just want to say like listen, the about me statement and answering that.

Like, hey, tell me what you do. Like that's the first question anybody asked you, right? Like, like let's say we're like, Richie, let's say let's, let's say you interview with Richie, Richie, you're like, hey, tell me about yourself. What do you do? Right? If you can't answer that, like succinctly and like concisely within like 90 seconds or so, like Richie's vibe in the interview is going to be like, ah, I don't know about this person, right? And I'm telling you, that's the same way for me. When I talk with these founders and I'm like, hey, what does your company do? How do you make money?

And I think they can't even really answer what are their business does. Like, again, I'm telling you it sets the tone for the entire interview for the entire conversation. Like, now I struggle with it, right? I do a lot. I tell people I have corporate A, B, B, right? So, so again, like really now you're opening kind of business statement. If you're a founder, know what your business does. Be able to tell me what your business does and how you make money and the people you serve in 90 seconds. And if you're a job seeker, please tell me about your background, listen, but I will tell you this as a job seeker.

Most of you all ramble. So the shorter, the better. If anything, would I end that end, hey, tell me about yourself and you kind of do your thing at the end of that sentence, say, hey, is there anything else you'd like to know, right? Keep that door open, keep that conversation going, Lincoln user, it's good to see you. Don't know who you are, but LinkedIn user is great to see you. Read my guides. Wonderful. See you as well. And Nick out here 100 something that I said. Once I've got a few other things, interviews right now, listen, Dan Mall tweeted something on the Twitter sphere a few days ago.

That obviously went crazy for those of you who didn't, who are not on tech Twitter and deep and tech Twitter drama. Dan Mall posted something. Dan Mall's in trouble. He's been on the show before around like his buddy got rejected up for seven rounds. And basically the discourse around it was like nothing should be a shoe in, you know, even seven rounds, you know, and then there was like an argument like, well, you shouldn't have seven rounds and bought a lot of a lot of lists. I'll just say this right now folks, be prepared to go through the gauntlet when it comes to the interview process, right?

Companies right now, and I'm seeing how my company is right now are super picky, right? Like a lot of companies don't want to use the hiring. I've had so many folks that I DM that I'm friends with like, hey, we love to step up your organization. They're like, oh, we got plenty of engineers right now. All right, we have plenty of engineers through job potions. So we have plenty of referrals, right? And then like the companies that are using me to step up the organizations right now, they're extremely picky, right? I mean, it's like, hey, this person's missing this one thing, right? Or this person is not, you know, it doesn't have a plastered all over their resume.

And it could be a very minute skill. And so if I'm a job seeker right now, kind of a few things. One, just prepare yourself to go through a gauntlet of interviews, right? Second thing, follow up games got to be key, right? Like if you don't hear something from somebody, you know, follow up with that recruiter, hey, is there anything else you need for me? Is there anything else you need for me? You know, check in, check in, check in. Because again, like, so like, you know, this person's submitted to a buddy of mine. He's like, hey, this person doesn't have this type of skill set.

We want to see more of it. Well, it's a skill set that probably isn't going to be listed a ton in a resume because it's more of like a secondary skill set. So now we're having to go back to the candidate. And so again, quickness speed is key to everything right now. Like speed is the game is the name of the game, right? So, you know, let's say I'm working with Dominic. I love this. The only thing I want seven rounds of is Minigolf. Yeah, 100%. So it's that I'm working with Dominic right now. And let's say like, you know, if it, let's say I need something from Dominic and Dominic doesn't get back to me for over 24 hours.

Like, that's an opportunity for like, Dom to miss out because like they could go with their second choice or their third choice, right? So again, speed is key. Want to get a few, Richie comes back coming about yourself question. If you aren't excited about what you do or your skills, it's hard for us to pitch you. Yeah, again, like, like one of the things that I hear time and time again, from Canvas is like, oh, I don't, I hate bragging, right? Richie, I'm sure you've probably heard this too, right? I hate bragging. I hate talking about myself. So if you're talking to a recruiter right now, you need to talk about yourself.

Like you need to talk about it. Like like, like, like, risk yourself up as a kid. Say you got to bring the risk to recruiters, right? And so again, talking about yourself, know how to sell yourself, especially to recruiters because recruiters are the one that are selling you to the companies, right? We are your middle man, middle woman. We need to know everything you do within your career. Tiana comes in here. What do I do? I build systems that allows it and you used to feel like they want to come back because of you I, man, love that. That's great, Tiana. Love that. Love that.

I know that's perfect. Love that so much. Reed comes in here. If the boss has found us, know how or why they are in business, it's going to be a very tough with employees. Yeah, 100%, right? And again, like interviewing startups on unicorn finders, like me and Dan, who's with the unicorn finders, I'm telling you folks, I'm not making this up. The first question we ask a founder when they come on unicorn finders is, hey, tell me and tell us about your company. Like what are you guys trying to solve? What's the business model? Tell us about it. I'm going to be honest with you, I think 50% of people we bring on the pod.

And again, Dan and I have been doing this for four years now. 50% of the, I guess we have brought on the pod cannot answer the question of what is your business do consistently, right? Jason, it's good to see you buddy. I know how you were techs bear with me here. So I'm incredibly important. So Paul up on interviews insane and insanely important right now. Again, I tell people all the time, the only reason why I got my job at gun is because I followed up a week later, right? I was told by a CEO, hey, we won a higher VP of marketing, that VP of marketing can't go through.

I didn't know that, but I knew based off my experience in the recruiting world that things changed rapidly week by week. So I just followed up with my CEO a week later. He goes, you're right. Thank you for following up. I love the higher you are VP of marketing can't go through. If I never were to follow up, I probably would have never heard from him until the end of the month or may have never heard from him, right? So that's incredibly important. Keep following up. Another thing too, listen, when it comes to, when it comes to interviewing like B pleasant, right? I can't stress this enough right now.

I know somebody all disgruntled, right? I understand it is, it has been a grueling last few months, few years, year and a half really. But some people are not happy with their situation and I understand, right? Some of my close friends are very unhappy with their situations. But people can feel and sense negativity. Like they just can't. And so like when I'm in an interview stage, I'm sure Richie can, Richie can test his too if he's still watching. Like when we're in an interview and like we're talking to developers or whoever in hiring managers and you're up here kind of crumpy, you may have been tired, you still may be like angry, you know, at your last company, we can feel that, right?

We can feel that and it really puts us off, right? Oh, I don't know. Again, I'm telling you, and listen, I know this is a lot of pressure y'all. I know this is a lot of pressure, but right now in this market, every single interaction, every single interaction is a meaningful connection, right? When I say meaningful, I mean like literally every, the way you phrase emails, the way you speak, the way you smile, the way you converse interview, all that stuff is so incredibly important during the interview. I had some a lot of comments come in here. Jason, people across the board need to elevate or pitch everything.

Learn, learn a summary to dial it in to sell yourself. Yeah, 100%. Right? Like for me, I'm the intersection of content community in sales, right? So like, like I kind of, I honed in on that during my last interview job search before I ended up at Gun I.O. was like, hey, like what do I do? I am the intersection of a content machine, a sales engine and a community builder, right? And I basically use all those things, the funnel revenue back to the business. That is what I do, right? And I nailed that. And once I nailed that, I could start to see how the interview is, interview changes.

Right now, right now, if you ask me what I do, I kind of give you a tongue and cheek answer like I've corporate A, B, I do a lot of things, but that's still the same community content and revenue. Let's see here, people, Jason, people don't want to jam with people that can actually go, yeah, 100%. 100%. Thomas, need to ask, need to ask any company you work with, how many users they have, and how your skills implemented features that positive effects those users love that, love that as well. Let's see here what else, Dominic comes in here. I think so many candidates don't want to experience discomfort in the hiring process.

They're often already in insecure. Yeah, so I think Dominic, I'm really glad you brought this up. Yeah, and reality, they need to do the opposite and risk like maybe actually. Yeah, I mean, listen, interviewing is very uncomfortable. And I'm not going to say otherwise. It is uncomfortable. But I think when it comes to this stuff, when it comes to interview and I say this all the time, if a company wants to interview you, they are interested in you. So please take that into account. Right? And I understand being nervous. Some people have been out jobs with months. Some people have been out with jobs for over a year.

I get it. I understand. It is stressful. You want the job. But I'm telling you, like people, like people can read the rooms, right? Hiring managers are typically hiring managers because they can read people or recruiters or typically recruiters because they can read people, right? Like we want people who are comfortable, who are excited, who are energetic, right? And so if you come in already nervous and shipping over everything, it's not going to be a great vibe at all. Yeah, the want should outweigh the discomfort 100% without a doubt. All right. A few other things. I'll answer any other questions you have. Few other things.

And we talked about resumes and LinkedIn lately. Get involved in the Slack or Discord. Again, I mean, I'll talk about this all the time. Slack and Discord are going to be where it's at right now in the job search. where are Slack, Discord and recruiters, right? Recruiters can uncover a lot of roles. Slack, Discord, I mean, like if I were you all, I would just create a Slack Discord and with like some of your buddies or friends like in your area and just crowdsource your job search, right? Because here's the deal. It actually makes a lot of sense to make friends with people in your skill set because if they're interviewing for roles that you are, only one person can get the role.

So what my thought is, and I've talked about this for a long time, is I think you should hook up, sync up with like five to seven people that are kind of in your skill set range and essentially just like crowdsource the job search. Be like, hey, here are all the jobs I found today. I submitted to these. You want to use submit to these. And again, you're like, Taylor, that's stupid. I'm not going to send any jobs to any of my friends to submit. Here's the crazy thing, y'all. Like, there's a good you're dealing with other similes going on right now too, right? So you might as well all help each other.

hack that I like, I talk about a lot of happen talked about lately is the BCC hack. So I would find as many recruiters as you enjoy and tolerate and then put them on a BCC email. So let's say you have 10 recruiters that you like, put all of them on a BCC and then email them once a month. Just updates. Hey, hey friends, you know, you can, you know, just say, hey friend and kind of mask it like it's a BCC email. Here are updates. Here's where I'm interviewing. Here's what I'm thinking. Here's my resume. What are your thoughts, right? And that BCC hack, again, the job search is about covering as much ground at scale as possible, right?

So if you email BCC 10 recruiters on one email, you're hitting 10 recruiters at one time, right? I can't tell you the amount of times that when I was in a traditional recruiting seat, where I was working, I would never forget one of my buddies who was a Ruby engineer, I was working on the Ruby role and he emailed me. goes, hey, and recruit or call me about this role, are you working on it? And then I submitted him to it. I didn't even think about him. And the reason for that is just because we can only handle so much, right? And so like the best thing I say is like being a recruiter is like being married to like 20 women at one time.

It is very difficult to keep up with everything, right? So like again, follow up, follow up is key as well. Brian comes in here, types to hype yourself up for the interview, review the company website, jumps out to you, is there anything that really can, yeah. I mean like, you know, one of, you know, I doubt whoop will ever hire me, but like one of my dream jobs would be like to work at Woop, right? I love the company. I think what they're doing is fascinating athletic space. Like, like I could tell them, hey, like, Woop, I've always wanted to interview for Woop. Here's how I use Woop in my day to day especially conference speaking, right?

Or let's say I interview at, I don't know. Again, this is, this is if I wasn't kind of in this weird role that I'm at. But like, if you interview, I was actually talking to Dom, because Dom and I saw in the show right now, like Dom and I love hiking in nature, right? I told him if I were you, I would like Google every single hiking nature company who has open software and your own roles and be like, hey, I spend so much time outside. I understand this business. Here's my experience and why, you know, think I can bring, you know, what I can bring experience to this, right?

Again, companies want people who are excited about it. Lawrence, it's good to see you, my guy. It's great to see you. Also, we didn't get a selfie at random. I'm kind of bummed about it. Lincoln user, I've been on a team of interviews that I can attest to to the small, sometimes petty things that leave the thumbs down. I've seen teams vote down people to do shoe style, to prepare to cocky to dress up. Yeah, I mean, listen, this is, this is a, yeah, Richie recruiters. I love that. I love that. Pauli before it was cool. Yeah, 100%. Um, this is, okay, this is, this could be an entire live session in and of itself.

You may read this and be like, this is stupid. This is bullshit. I can't believe this happens, but I'm telling you folks, people create, so when I do my one on one coaching sessions, people have people, I tell people this in my coaching sessions that people create narratives in their head based off your resume. Right. So if your resume is like, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, like, you're, if your resume is too condensed and kind of mumbled, jumbled, my mind's like, all this person may be on organized. And again, and again, that may not be the case. I understand that, right?

And again, I know that's bias and stuff. And I try to, I try to not have bias, but at the end of the day, where human beings bias is going to be formed, whether people even realize it or not. And so literally, I've seen this, right? I've seen, like, I haven't seen the shoe style. I've seen, I've seen the two prepared before. I've definitely seen two cocky. The two dressed up, I have not seen that yet. So again, like, like, and again, I don't want you to read this and go into a tailspin and be like, oh, my gosh, they're going to critique me. Just again, be aware of what's happening, do your research, et cetera, et cetera.

Let's see here. What else? We got a few more comments. It definitely comes through. Yeah. If you love what the product does, 100%. Yeah, 100%. I tell people it's like bank fishing have more than one pole in the water. Yeah, 100%. Again, the job job search is tools in a tool belt, poles in the water, whatever. Now as you want to have, let's see here. I've embossed at least two hiking companies. 100% love that. Bianca, my girl, what's going on? It's good to see my manager at Microsoft and I connected over earrings. Yeah. Again, I mean, I'm all about. So I'm glad you brought this up, Bianca.

Few things on this. One, again, use something to create relationships. That's why I do this live show every day. I don't really do this live show for coming to content's important, but also two, I just want to give you an excuse to DM with other people. Hey, I saw you on Taylor's show. That is a thing. When it comes to stuff like this, I know people, I know people in Nashville that wear brightly colored glasses or I know people who wear a certain color jacket for everything. It's like those things really matter. Also, too, another thing I was doing a resume edit session this week or last week.

One of the things I found interesting and I've really started to talk about is have a hobby section on your resume. I've talked with a few recruiters too. Richie, if you're still watching curious to hear thoughts on this. I think hobby sections right now are incredibly important. The girl I was editing her resume for the other day, she had sailing. You don't really see sailing anymore on your resume. For me, I was like, oh my gosh, you love sailing. We got into a whole conversation about it. Again, a little Bianca said here, use anything to build relationship and connections with because then Bianca got off probably the interview and then she probably, if she did, could have messaged the manager on LinkedIn.

Hey, it was great chatting with you. Again, this is the earring girl. I hope to hear from you. Now Bianca is earring girl now. Certain Hawaiian shirts, yeah, 100%. Brian, beards, yeah, you have a great beard. Fantastic beard. Again, all this stuff goes a very long way. Speaking of beards, how is that? Gun I-O. A few of us spoke up, an engineering leader meet up in Vancouver virtually. We did not go there, which we did, but virtually. One of the guys had a crazy mustache and we were chit chatting beforehand and he talked about how he does beard competition type stuff. Then I was like, oh, what am I guys does it too?

I showed him my contact. He was like, oh, I know that guy. Again, we immediately hit it off. Richie comes in here and goes, I think as long as it's not he real estate on the resume, not something, yeah, 100%. Again, I'm just talking about just like once in line sentence. I'm not asking you to do a lot of this stuff. Let's see here. Definitely, I made a cute thank you again. Yeah, often do well. Yeah, 100% Bianca, you're fantastic. I don't doubt you do well interviewing with anybody. Awesome. Alex is great to see you. Thanks again for tuning in. Appreciate it. All right. Any other questions before we wrap up here again, kind of some key things we talked about today, you know, again, the energetic and interview process, the small things matter right now.

You know, make sure that you use anything in the interview process to connect with the other person. What else? What else do we talk about today? I think that's I think that's about or be prepared to go through a ton of interviews right right now. It's just speed, responsiveness is key. Right. We're on a lot of topics today. Lot of topics today. So again, I appreciate y'all hanging out with me and saying that's it. Hopefully you got some out of this. If you like this episode, please share it. I feel like this could be a resource for a lot of people. Again, check out Gun IO if you're on the job search or hiring.

Would love to help you there. Yes, if anyone is going to scenic city summit this Friday, hit me up at some chat. Lucas spoke there a few times. Alex, any good tips for baking high energy conference when you get a tough question. You know, here's the deal. Faking high energy is kind of an interesting thing to say because like I fake stuff sometimes too because I'm a definitely an introvert. But like for me, when it comes to just be curious, right, I think one thing when it comes to interviewing is if you get a tough question and you don't know it, be inquisitive. It'd be like, hey, listen, love this question.

I have not used this before. I've not done this before. I've done something like this before. Here's what I've done is that close. Right. I'm not really big in baking anything. But when it comes to having a tough question, ask questions, be engaged, try to like be extremely interested in trying to find a solution to the tough question, which will come across is not necessarily high energy, but it will come across as very interested, which is what a lot of companies want to do right now. So hopefully that answers your question. I appreciate y'all today. So tomorrow, so the rest of the week. So again, recap, this is the last week a guidance counselor 2.0 is probably for a month, month and a half.

I have not taken off. So I had my daughter four years ago. I started guidance counselor 2.0 four years ago, basically, when she was born. I have not taken really any substantial time off. I'm going to be shutting it down for about 30 to 45 days, starting next week. So tomorrow we have Matt Walsh. Matt Walsh is a recruiter extraordinaire. He and I engage each other a ton on Twitter. So we're going to talk about that. And then and then Thursday we have a mental health startup coming on unicorn finders. Alex, that's awesome. Man, yeah, my, my big boy is due July 4th. So look at us having kids at the same time almost the same time.

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. to your 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-test and on all social media handles and I hope you have a fantastic day.