talent land - guadalajara - exposing the job search

full transcript

auto-generated from the audio, so expect a few typos. the audio is the source of truth.

Let's go. So I don't really Spanish. I'm really sorry. So it's community English. Very exciting to be here today. Like I said, my name is Taylor Deson. I'm the VP of Global Community at torque.dev. If you have not been by our booth, please do so. We're really right there. We'd love to have you in a nutshell what we're trying to do at torque is we're trying to be your home base in your career. So what that means is at the end of the day, not everybody can find a job through a talent staff and company like ourselves. So me and my team make sure that you are engaged, that we do things for you throughout your career.

We do resume reviews. We do interview prep. We bring in experts to help guide you to do job search. So this QR code right here is to join our jobs platform. Which so if you want to join our jobs platform, please do so. We'd love to have you. I was told I have 25 minutes for this talk. I typically run this talk about 45 minutes. I'm actually speaking next week in the US at another conference. So we're going to be quick. But long story short, I've probably placed over 1,000 engineers in my career in new jobs. I've helped hundreds of engineering organizations scale up their engineering teams.

Everything I tell you today is just things that I have seen work for me that I want to work for you. My goal by the end of this talk is that you have hope that you have motivation in guiding yourself through the job search. But of course, we want to be here for you at Torx. So next slide. Cool. All right. So something about the resume real quick. Who in here thinks they have a good resume? Raise your hand. Anybody? All right. Fuel, I was actually pretty good. It's pretty good. You don't count. You work for me. So I want to go over some few important topics on how to write a really good resume to be seen.

First off, most people do not look at your entire resume when reviewing your resume. The first third of your resume is one of the most important parts of your resume. You need to make sure that you clearly communicate to myself the hiring manager what you do in bullet points. Some of you all like to write really long paragraphs. I don't read it. No one reads it. Everyone's tired of reading paragraphs. So please do bullet points, which is incredibly important. The professional summary should read like this. I have 10 years of dot net experience. 7 plus years of Angular experience. 3 years of Azure experience. 2 years of leadership experience.

Managing a team of 10 people. Plus, that is what that should look like. Again, most of you all do this like crazy paragraph stuff. Please don't do that. Also keyword, listen. Keywords are incredibly important. You need to have the appropriate technical keywords in your resume for recruiters and hiring managers to call you. Most of us do a control F search. If you are a dot net developer and you do not have a lot of dot net in your resume, we will not call you. I listen, it's not fair. I know. I don't make the rules. It just it is what it is. Also, tell me what you have done.

I'm sick and tired of looking at a Yale's resumes. And it's just a task list. It's a laundry list. I fix this bug. I wrote this code. This is what I did. That doesn't tell me a story. It quantitative is possible. How many users is your application supporting? How how approximately how much revenue does your application support get specific? That really stands out. Also, stop with the double call of resumes. Some of y'all with these do it like double call and if you know what I'm talking about, stop it. It's hard to read. I reject you immediately. Again, I'm sorry it is what it is.

I don't make the rules. I'm just trying to hire faster. Next slide. Awesome. So it's about networking. Welcome. You are networking. Congratulations. So again, most of this is not applied to you because you're here, but listen, you will not land a job if you sit at home. You just won't. If you stay if you sit at home and you hope a job finds you, that's not how that works folks. You need to go out meet people. Listen, I challenge you. I challenge you over the next 48 hours because you get out of your comfort zone. Could you have to understand something? One conversation could change your career.

Listen, I talked to some startup founders that are looking to hire, that are looking to raise around. Listen, their next fundraising could be one conversation away. Your next job could be here. But some of y'all are too scared to have a conversation with the person to left or right of you and that could absolutely transform your career. Next LinkedIn is the most powerful networking tool. Who in here actually uses LinkedIn on a day-to-day big little boy on a day-to-day school? That's not enough. You have to understand something. The hiring manager, the company that you want to work for is on LinkedIn. Most of y'all who in here likes to scroll through Instagram or TikTok.

That's me, right? I admit, that's why I did last night my hotel room so I passed out, right? Don't do that. Get on LinkedIn, like a post, comment, engage, listen, I'm telling you, it changes your career. I was a typical recruiter that recruited engineers. I started to engage. I double-triple down on LinkedIn, as this man knows right here, right? And I completely transformed my career because of it. It works. Listen, it's the weirdest thing, but now online is the place to network. So if you're not in a Discord, if you're not using LinkedIn, listen, we'd love to have you on the tour Discord. Quick sell there.

But please, use LinkedIn to credible, powerful networking tool. When you're using LinkedIn, there's three ways to use LinkedIn to be successful. First off, post, just post. Now, a lot of people are like, I don't know what to post, what should I post? I don't know, I'm not a content creator. Listen, neither am I. Neither am I, I'm not Mr. Beast, right? Listen, all I'm asking you to do is to document your day. Who in here learns something interesting today? Raise your hand. Anybody? Great, three of y'all, perfect. So, write about it. Hey, listen, I went to Taylor's talk. He's the best speaker ever. This is what I learned about LinkedIn.

Boom, post it. Tag me. You know what happens when you tag me? My 30,000 followers, see it. There you go, my man gets it up here, right? So please post. Next thing, slide into people's DMs. I am openly encouraging people to slide into DMs here. Be professional, don't be weird, right? But listen, go for that. Hey, hey, so, so I saw you've been posting about hiring. I actually do that. I do that. Like I had that skill set you want. Here's what I've done with love to talk. Right? Listen, I go for that. I just had a podcaster, founder of a startup in LA who raised $40 billion series B round.

I was like, there's no way I get him my wife, listen to the podcast. I texted my wife and I said, guess who's coming on my podcast? She was no way. I said, yes, because you know why? I just lived in DMs. I go, hey, man, listen to your podcast. Love it. Do you want to come on my podcast? He goes, absolutely. Literally, like I shoot way out of my comfort zone. And you'll be amazed at the people who actually say yes. Next thing, liking comment on people's statuses, right? Engage, it's incredibly important, right? Don't use AI for comment on LinkedIn, right? Just do an LOL, ha, ha, this is a great post.

I don't need some AI, slap on LinkedIn, knock that off. Also, listen, right now in this market, what I've seen is people genuinely want to help. If you talk to me, I will try to help you. That's why we created the Torque community because I want to basically bring all my friends from the 13 years that I've been doing this thing and basically you have access to it. I have hiring managers from some of the biggest companies in our Torque Discord. I have all these people who are willing to help us. And people want to help use that to your advantage. Go for the ask.

It'll transform your career. Also, one conversation, Dave, listen, who is on the job searching in here? Raise your hand. Anybody actively looking for a job? Yeah, listen, yo, one conversation, right? You're at a conference today. You should have many conversations. But when we leave here on Friday or Saturday, listen, continue that clip. Have a conversation today. Message someone on LinkedIn, get them on the phone, get them doing a Zoom call. It changes your career. Next. All right. Let's talk about interview. And you didn't hear feels like they are good interview or raise your hand. Two of y'all, right? All right, so listen, let us go over some interview tips.

First, I'll find some commonalities. Go to their LinkedIn, see where they went to school. Right? Look at some of their past post on LinkedIn. Incredibly important. Find commonalities. I went to a big football school in the States, University of South Carolina. If you message me about football, I'm going to respond back to you. Right? Not soccer. Football. Not proper football. Anyways, do the small stuff. All right, listen, I can't tell you the amount of hiring I talked to that interview people that do not know what the company does their interview in for. Not that off. What are we doing? Research the company. Do the small things.

My big thing right now is people that are getting jobs over you are not better than you. They're doing the small things better than you. Right? And so this is incredibly important. Next thing, figure out the problem. They are trying to solve. I recently went through a job search. Right? I bring a lot to the table. At least I think I do. Right? And so when I interviewed with the company, I said, hey, what are you trying to solve? They're like, well, we've never done really social media. I said, well, I got that lockdown. Right? They're like, we've never done conferences. Okay, I got that lockdown.

And we're actually looking for somebody to help bring in sales. So I can do that. Right? And then so guess what I did the next interview? I came up with key specific things where I've moved the needle and I said that in my interview. Right? Find the commonalities. Find the problems they're trying to solve. Figure that out and speak to that specifically in a job search or in the interview. Turn the interview into a conversation. Listen, some of y'all that I talked to when I interview, I'm like, hey, how do you done this? You go, nope. That is incredibly awkward. That was awkward. I hated that just now.

Right? Listen, if you don't know something, go, hey, I don't know. But I've done something like this. Or hey, I haven't done this. But is it like this? Right? It's incredibly important. Keep the conversation going. Bring in commonalities. Next thing, read the job description and bring a one page or to the interview. What I mean by that is listen. Well, I feel like I'm really, really good at reciting my career. I still can't remember everything. And so when you go into an interview, shot some things down as it relates to the job, if you're interviewing for a senior tech lead, well, you need to migrate an Angular code base to react.

And you've done that before. Give me specifics and walk into the interview with that written down. Because I will tell you this, you will most likely black out a little bit. Anybody in here doing the interview just black out, you're like, oh gosh, I've done it. I've done it. It's awful. Right? Have some prompts written down in front of you. Next slide. All right, the follow up. Listen, the follow up in my opinion is the single most important part of the job search. The single most important part. Why? Because you can talk to thousands of people a month. And if you don't check in with them, they're going to forget about you.

For example, I was interviewing at a startup before and up in torque that I worked for a year. And I got to the fun around. And the CEO founder was like, hey, we like you. But not right now. And I was like, so there's something called the Nashville, the Nashville No, which is like, it's actually a no, but they never really tell you no. So I said, OK, I said, well, knowing that, he was like, check in with me at the end of the month. This was the beginning of the month at the time. So because I know how to do this thing, I checked in with the founder a week later.

And I said, hey, Mr. founder, how did that hire go for you? Are you still open to hiring me? He goes, Taylor, thank you for your follow up. We'd love to go ahead and bring you onboard. Right? And here's the deal. What if I never sent that email? What if I never followed up? I would have never gotten that job. Now great, that job sucked. But that's not the point. So I mean said, make sure you follow up. Who uses Trello? Right, Trello? Anybody? No, that's weird. All right, three, y'all, right? So I use Trello. I think that's great. There's a lot of other tools.

We're working on some tools here at Torque to help as well. But again, make sure you know it. It's not always quantity. It's quality. Let me say that again. It's not always quantity. We assume in beans confuse activity for productivity. We've spent some bars right now. Let me say that again. We assume in beans confuse activity with productivity. Just because you shake a lot of hands and kiss a lot of babies doesn't mean you're going to find a job quickly. You got to shake the right hands and kiss the right babies to find a job. Don't probably go around kissing babies. It's weird. All right, thank you guys.

Listen, when you are talking to people and you interview with them, nobody says, who sends thank you cards anymore? Anybody, my mother made me send thank you cards back in the day. No, that's what I thought. Send a thank you overlink then. Hey, Mr. Manager, hey, Mrs. Sosa, it's great to speak with you. Really wanted to consider for the next opportunity at your company, let's stay in touch. Send. It's another touch point. It's another touch point. Use that feature. Again, 90% of your job search. I made that number up. But 90% of your job search really relies on follow up. Next slide. Sweet, that ends up.

All right, that being said, let me round it up a few more things. Community is everything. All right, listen, we're big on the tour. Where's you, John? We want to be here for you. But at the end of the day, we cannot go through the job search alone. We need the people around you. Listen, I encourage you to start a meetup. I challenge everybody to start a meetup. Now you probably went like, Taylor, listen, I don't know what to talk about. I was starting to be a listen. Start inviting people out to lunch. I love food. I love Mexican cuisine. It is unbelievable. Big fan.

Start inviting people out. If you love margaritas, right? Buy people out on Thursday and go drink a margarita together. I used to start, I had a lunch in Nashville where I invited 10 engineers every month. And we just broke bread together. And it was the most impactful thing I have done in my career. I will tell you this. People are lowly more than ever. We see it in tort time and time again. And I think people really, really need help. So again, I'm going to finish it out here. Go be fearless. Go have conversations, shake some hands, make some new friends. Join the tour community.

I appreciate y'all. Thank you. 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.