landing an interview (solo show)

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Kind of a crazy more, not that you all care. So I bought a new Dell monitor last month, literally last month to the date, July 16th. I bought a new Dell monitor and I was so excited. So I was using this huge 34 inch curved monitor. And while it's good, it's so big. I just want smaller, right, more compact. So I bought like kind of like the one step below like the studio display for Dell, right? And literally I'm not kidding. You know, it just died on me. I'm back on my old monitor 34 inch curved monitor. I think I was having sold this yet.

But literally it died on me. One month, one month, one month. And the Dell, I think I'm just gonna go studio display after this to be totally honest. All right, few things. This one, a few housekeeping things. I wanna give a shout out to of course, Gun I O for hiring me if you need hiring in your organization. Especially on a fraction like quick side of things. Like we can definitely help you with that. Endorse AI. As another company I really, really like Endorse AI. As a software company. This is mainly for my recruiter friends if you listen to this. Basically they do software to wear if you.

So typically the way resume, typically the way resumes get found right now is it's time stamps, right? So let's say the job's been open for three days and you submit your resume in the first 24 hours. Depending on how the recruiter searches, they may never see your information because you submitted it first. And they could be looking at well, who are the people who submitted it most recently? What Endorse AI does is it uses AI based off the criteria. It's important in resumes and it bubbles up the best person to the top, which is incredibly important right now. Brian, my guy, it's good to see you this morning to form our guests of the show.

Go connect with Brian. Hope you're doing well, man. What else? Dad's in tech. I have a dad's meet up in tech. Our first meet up is a few weeks away. Do I have a link on here? I don't. Let me hold on real quick. Let me do a quick search. So basically, so I have felt called, I guess you could say, I listen, I talk with a lot of dads, right? Typically dads are a little bit more senior in their career because at that point, they have kids and you have the other other. And I talk to them just about the challenges they are facing, right?

Like, hey, how do you balance working from home? How do you balance, you know, turning off, you know, work in the evenings, right? I mean, I was talking to my barber yesterday about like how me as, how us as dads get impatient when our kids like don't listen after the 16 time, right? And how to be, you know, gentle and respectful with them, right? So basically all that being said, I created a dads group, right? So go to this tech-dads.be-hive.com. That's a mouthful. But go to tech.dadsbe-hive.com. Go sign up. Our first meet up is September, 1st meet up is September 6th. September 6th, 12 to 1.

I have no idea what I'm going to do to be totally frank with you, but it's going to be a blast. And we're going to build this thing together. There's already 190 dads already signed up. So even if you're not a dad and you want to be a dad, would love to have you. If you're a dad and all your kids are growing out the door, it would still love to have you. Actually, it would definitely have you because I need to learn from you. So again, please go sign up. Ian, it's good to see you. Yeah, I don't know what to do with these lives.

I don't know to do LinkedIn, to do YouTube. So if you are not in my texting community, let me know. Text live to 615-235-5650. Again, 615- Sally, absolutely. Again, it's good to see you this morning. All right, so let's get it nuts and bolts. So I tweeted yesterday, I'm going to pull up this tweet. Twitter, Twitter, I'm going to pull up this tweet real quick. I tweeted yesterday and I said, all right, y'all, would love to know what you're dealing with, want to help you, yada, yada, yada. And somebody said, getting interviews. And I said, what's your biggest bottleneck you think? And this guy says, I have to think it's with my resume, which sucks because I revisit countless times and to get it where it's at now.

I also pay someone to go over with me, place put up for improvement. So we're going to talk, we're going to break down some things on this. And basically like, I want to just kind of guess nuts and bolts with it. First off, you're resumes incredibly important. So let's, let's, I don't have a resume immediately available. But the one thing that I say all the time and, oh, final thing, I forgot to tell you, I forgot to tell you. So, sorry, I'm all over the place this morning. So basically, Kelly Vaughn and I, Kelly's sister's actually in the chat, Katie, hey, Katie. So Kelly Vaughn and I are launching a Discord channel where you can come in network but also get help with your resume and stuff, right?

So literally it's called defrenzone.ll. Yes, we did that. Go sign up. We are going to launch the Discord in two weeks. Basically the way it's going to be is like, there's going to be a free tier where like anybody can join, think of it like kind of like a, like a Twitter where like people can post all the time. I'll be in there posting all the time. There's just going to be general stuff, right? Then we're going to have different tiers based off where you want tier one is going to be resume linked in reviews tier two. You're actually going to have seminars, webinars that we're going to host for people, recruiters, hiring managers to help you.

And tier three is direct access to Kelly Vaughn and I for your job search. So we're launching that here in two weeks. Go check on that. It's going to be great. Kelly's fantastic and Katie is in the chat right now. Katie is so good to see you. All right, so first off resumes. Incredibly important right now. So getting the interview is very difficult, right? And I will tell you this, a mass applying your resume is not going to happen right now. And again, I'm going to go back to Kelly. One of the reasons why I'm going in with this was Kelly is because Kelly's a director of engineering.

I'm a very senior recruiter. We've seen it both ends. We both share our war stories together. So it allows like why don't we just have a community and share it together. But the biggest thing is that Kelly sent me a screenshot this week as she's hiring a mid level engineer and she had over a thousand applicants, for a mid level engineer role. Do you really think your resume is going to get seen? Right. So this is why it's so important to network. And when I say network, let me break this down. So Brian, Brian's in the chat right here. I know Brian's about the show, Brian Walter.

Brian is a VP of engineering. Brian, I don't know if you're working yet, but he wasn't VP of engineering. So like if I were you, I would mess his Brian. Brian, I'm sorry about this. I would, I would all of us, if your other job starts to mess his Brian, but like, hey Brian, tell me to mess with you. Hope you're doing well, right? And what I would do, whatever do is I would also continue to engage with Brian. Brian, Brian posts about random things. Sometimes it's marathon running, Brian does marathons or hiring strategies. And I would comment and engage. So for example, I want to give a shout out to Ricardo.

Ricardo, he is always here. Ricardo, I need to like bless Ricardo with some swag or something because Ricardo literally is like always the first person to comment on this show. If Ricardo ever needs something, I am going to do my best to help him, right? Taeya, another person. Taeya is always here. Taeya needs help. I'm going to try to help her as much as I can. Same thing with Mark. Mark's always here. Mark from Minnesota. I know that. Why? Because Mark is consistent. He engages. He stays on it. Katie, I know Katie kind of a cheap mode because I know Kelly really well, obviously, in a case, sister, right?

Eric, Eric's been popping in recently. I'd probably do stuff for Eric too, right? Again, like this is how you do it. You engage, you network. You have to understand something, the internet, the internet, when I say the internet, I mean LinkedIn, LinkedIn is like going, if every time you open up, I think the coffee's kicking in right now, I apologize. Every single time that you open up LinkedIn, every time is like going to a networking event. Do you understand that? Let me say that one more time. Every time that you open up LinkedIn, it is you going to a networking event. The problem is, as most of y'all just scroll and don't engage.

Literally, I want to give a shot to dominant. Dominick's another great one, right? Dominick has always been consistent. He has also always like helped me and engaged with me and like, and like, and like, I will always help Dominick, right? Jason Torres, and like again, these guys and gals are always here, always engaging. That is what networking looks like folks. That is what's gonna get your resumes to the top. That is what's gonna get your resumes to the top right now. Kyle, it's gonna see you Ryan, it's gonna see you as well. So for me, like, you gotta do the work like that. Now, you're probably telling me Taylor Taylor, what you're saying though is like, what you're saying though is like, you're basically saying that like, this is like gonna be overnight.

That's what I'm saying. There's no quick fix to this. This market sucks, right? Trying to find a job right now sucks. Like, I'm not gonna sugarcoat it, right? Like, it is hard work. And so you have to be different. And if all you're doing is writing a generic resume, right? And I have a bunch of lies. I'm not, like again, I can go over an entire resume. Like, I have so many resources on resume, right? I'm not gonna talk about it. The big thing for me is like that first part, that professional career summary where you edit the entire summary of your career based off the required skills for the role you're submitting to.

That's the unlock right there. And again, I have a lot more content. But all that being said, you gotta do something different and that's the way to do it. So Heather comes in here. Heather, it's great. So you're getting more in it from KCM, not hiring yet, but this startup scene is ramping up over the summer and fall folks. Innovation has happened to me in the lay off smart folks, like to work with us, exactly. Again, network, right? Like, like literally Heather, Heather, we need to bring you on the show again, just to talk about this stuff. So please email me so I don't forget.

Heather comes in again, look at the startups that are profitable without VC. Even if they're early stages, long as they got paying customers, possibly to hire in soon, absolutely. Again, like, it sucks to find a job because there's so much supply on the market, right? Because again, you gotta think about what happened in 2021 and 2022, like the entire market sucked up every single person that aspire to be a developer. You, if you were aspiring developer, they would suck you up and hire you. Now they let go of everybody, right? So then there's this like flush of like all these people in the system, right?

But people are still hiring, right? I'm not not saying that. Companies are still hiring, right? Like, there is still a lot of opportunities out there. The fact of the matter is that you have to go hunt and you have to go network, right? Heather, amazing resource. I would absolutely go connect with Heather, should or DM, say, hey, I was gonna see a young Taylor show, we'd love to stay in touch, right? Heather's amazing. Again, also, if I were you, right? Here's another networking strategy. Get on my podcast, go to Spotify, about to say Shopify, go to Spotify and go through all 400 guests I've had on my show.

What episode am I at right now? I am at episode, I'm at episode 398. Now, not all 398 episodes are people that are in hiring, but a lot of them are. And so like, I would say at least 150 episodes are people who are leaders in organizations and IT organizations. I would use my podcast as a way to network. I would listen to the episode, I would take three pointers and I would message. Heather and I spoke recently, I would go listen to Heather's episode and say, hey, Heather, I listened to your episode and guidance counselor 2.0. Would love to connect with you. I love what you said, bang, bang, bang, bang.

I would go listen to Ryan Burgess's at Netflix or a former Netflix, be like, hey, Ryan, would love to connect. I heard you on Taylor's podcast. Fun fact, Ryan's coming on the show next week. And say, hey, I love this, this, this, you're gonna get, that's the intentionality you need to have people. That's the intentionality. I would, I would Google their names and if they're on a podcast somewhere, go listen to them before you slide into the DMs, right? Like, you gotta do it. You gotta do it. And stay on people. Like people are crazy overwhelmed right now. People are gonna, I ain't got time to, like if you don't message me three or four times at this point, I love you.

I do. I love everybody. I really, really do. But realistically, you will not hear from me if you don't hit me up three or four times. And I'm not even like an actual recruiter right now. Like some of these recruiters are like in the weeds right now, right? Kelli Vaughn, that thousands of resumes she's gotta sift through. She ain't gonna remember you if you send her 1DM. Well, I'll never forget I was career counseling somebody like a few months ago. And they're like, yeah, I just thought like, if they didn't get back to you, like they didn't want to talk to you. And I was like, you're, you're, you're, no, no, no, you need to follow like three, four, five times right now.

Now you gotta be tactful in the DMs, right? And I'm like, hey, I've sent you four DMs. You haven't responded. Don't be like that, right? Be kind, right? Yes, babies do take it out of the, yeah, we are struggling right now. Let's see here. Heather comes in here too. You will get a much better look from the early stage start. Yes, I would also agree with this. Highly recommend. I think Heather brings up, again, Heather, please email me so we can get you on the books. This is your spitfire right now. And I want to interview with it. So like for this, yeah, again, like, see, Kelly doesn't even answer her sister's text messages.

So again, not a big deal. You will get much better look. Yeah, so I think this is an amazing strategy that not many people talk about. Like a lot of people are just going on and like submitting their resumes to like big corporate environments, you know, yada, yada, yada, yada. Like that just doesn't work. It just, it doesn't work right now, right? I would go to product hunt. I would go to tech crunch. I would go to just Google like fastest growing, you know, companies. I ink 5000 just put out their yearly list. Go to ink 5000 and just start searching. There's like three or four startups in Nashville that are growing like crazy.

And like, I wouldn't message them. Like, hey, one of those guys, one of the companies on the ink 5000 for Nashville was on my show twice, Brian Dowdy, VP of Engineering at SNAP. Message him crunch base. Yeah, take off. Yeah, crunch base is great. Right, go to crunch base, right? Look up companies, right? You have to do some research, right? I would abandon, I would abandon submitting your resume. Now, I, I had to hot take, I understand. I'm a little spices more in the coffee kind of hit. I would, I would abandon that strategy, 100%. Yes, but LinkedIn has 15 DMs per month limit. I would buy LinkedIn premium.

I saw some, I saw some creator, you know, I giggle out on TikTok because there are so many career coaches. By the way, there's no, listen, hot take here. I'm feeling spicy. I'm feeling spicy. Career coach is so. Let me, and let me tell you why. I saw a career, the amount of career coaches on TikTok right now are just absurd. Be very careful with who you talk to, right? Be very careful. Bonnie, Bonnie, are you saying that you have 15 DMs per month limit? All right, with premium, let me know about that. But I do have a solution to that. So be careful with career coaches.

Like, I'll never consider myself a career coach. Most, most people who can actually help you in your career are not career coaches to be flat out, to be totally honest. You need to find somebody who's been in, who's been in your industry like who knows it. I would talk to a scene, season, senior recruiter in your market. I would pay them hourly, would a really good recruiter, right? I want to give a shout out to random recruiter on Twitter. Yeah, be demure, be mindful. Yeah. TikTok trends are wild, y'all. I still don't know what demure means. But like random recruiter, I follow a few recruits.

You know what I need to do. I'm going to put this down. I'm going to create a recruiter playlist on Twitter for y'all to follow. I'm going to put that down. I don't know how to write recruiter. Recruiter playlist on Twitter. So y'all can all follow them. Random recruiter is amazing, right? He's great. I have a few others I follow on Twitter. To me, a really good recruiter who's been in your industry for a long time is worth their weight and gold. I would pay them whatever they charge and just sit with them for an hour and learn from them. They are absolutely worth it.

I feel like I'm worth it too, right? So if you want to do that, shoot me DM. See here. So Bonnie, so I want to get to here. 15 LinkedIn has a 15 DM per month limit. She, a body says she has LinkedIn premium. My advice to that is the notes feature, right? So let me go to my LinkedIn. I'm a share screen real quick. Let me go. I need to find somebody who I don't know to show y'all how am I hurt? Present. Come on. I love doing this. It's kind of like riffing real time with y'all. All right. So we see this. See it.

All right. So Bonnie, this is how you get around the DM's. So I don't know. I don't know Phil, right? So what I would do is connect at a note. You know, hey, hey Phil. Can't type. Hey Phil, looking to connect with .NET devs. Just wanted to say, hey, send. Boom. Right. So that being said. So what that'll do Bonnie is you can send unlimited amount of notes if you connect with people, right? And here's why it's incredibly important. Again, do not miss out on this people. Please do not miss out on this. If you are not sending a note, when you reach out to somebody, you are losing out of the lead on the opportunity to network with somebody.

When they accept your friend request, that DM goes to the top of their inbox. Let's see, or plus one on coaching. Yeah, 100% thank you. I appreciate this. Advice for recent bootcamp grads trying to get. Yeah, so Mark brings up a great question here. My advice for bootcamp grads trying to get that first job, especially in small markets. This is going to be a hot take. I would try to go around to every single small business, friend, family, and ask if they need something built, right? I'll never forget, I'll never forget this story. I talk about this all the time. I never forget this. Is that basically there was a two-year react engineer back when I was recruiting a while ago.

And that react engineer sent me his resume. And it looked amazing. I was like, dude, your resume is incredible. And I was like, how many years have you been doing this? He was two years. He was like, how much have you been being paid? And he goes, nothing. And I was like, what are you talking about? He goes, I've volunteered my time the last two years to get experience. Now, volunteer in your time for free is a very hot take. And I understand that, right? Like, I know people sometimes don't have the ability to. I'm not saying work 40 hours for free. But I'm saying, like, for example, Jordan Ryerson, I'll shout out Jordan Ryerson, Jordan Ryerson, help build the unicorn finder's podcast website that we use.

I didn't pay him. He literally said he goes, I use that website as a way to get hired at my first tech job because they needed experience and I had experience. And he built it. It didn't take a lot of his time. If Jordan, if you're watching, we'd love to know how much time it took you. I mean, he still goes in and experiments will stuff and fix stuff for us. I need website help. I have ideas. If you're a junior developer, I have ideas. Message me. I'll work on a project with you. I got all types of ideas. Right? So again, like creators, creators, you know, I need stuff built.

I think a lot of creators need stuff built. But yeah, I would just ask, like, just ask, like, hey, I'm a developer. I'm trying to get experience. What do you, what do you need built? Right? And then what happens? Because again, y'all, I hate to say it again, nothing's ever enough in this market. I know that's very, I know that's very demoralizing, but like just having a capstone project or having just your project coming out of boot camp like is not enough anymore folks. Like it's, it's, it's not enough. You got to, I need to see that you built something for somebody. Let's see here.

Always send a note, Dudley fans say, yeah, that was it, Geoff, that was it. No, not really. What else? Any more questions as we kind of wrap up here about 20 minutes in. I usually make these little shorter, but I got a little bit of a rant. Here's the deal, y'all. You got to do things differently. You got it. Like I would show up to as many streams as you feasibly can. Like streams are such a great way to get to know people, right? Like, you know, virtual coffee, you know, Danny Thompson has his own Discord. James Quicks got his own Discord, Coder Dads, Emmet, Emmet has his Coder Dads, go network with Emmet.

I mean, there's just so many ways, like you've got to be in like two or three Discord or Slack channels at this point. Like if you're not, you're like heavily heavily missing out at this point. If you need anything, Holler, again, I'm gonna throw this up here. If you want to see your 615-235-560-text-live. If you want to be kept in a loop of when I go live, shoot me a text here. This is actually my texting. This is one of my texting numbers that I use. So feel free to join that. Let's see here, JC comes in, because I learned from a previous Taylor show about two of these two nonprofit orgs you take with, oh, look at this, sweet.

Heck yeah, there you go. I don't even remember that. There you go, JC, coming in close. So did you, man, I love it. Do I appreciate you? I appreciate you. So yeah, text live. If you want to get updates on these shows, who I'm going live with, I do text out every single morning when I go live, who I'm going live with. I don't expect you to be here. I just, you know, some people don't want to miss it. So text me, otherwise y'all, busy week next week for sure. Let's see here, who do we have next week? So next week we got Chris Gardner, Chris Gardner, out of Huntsville, he runs DevSpace.

So he's come on show Monday. Tuesday, I have an amazing recruiter. I saw her post, I don't know her, her name is Liz, but I saw her post some really good content. So I shot her DM. And we're gonna talk about follow up strategy for candidates on Tuesday. Wednesday, I have my dear friend Ryan Burgess, former engineering director at Netflix, coming on the show. So yeah, it's gonna be a heck of a week next week. I appreciate y'all, y'all, a good one. If you need me, email me or text me on this number and have a great weekend. See y'all Monday. Peace. 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 T-Dasting on all social media handles.

And I hope you have a fantastic day.