nashmicro meetup

full transcript

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Hey everyone, hope you guys enjoy this episode that I'll be bringing to y'all. I had the opportunity to speak at a local tech meetup called Nash Micro. It was all things hardware related. It was way over my head. I had an awesome time hanging out with everyone and talking about their stories, working with recruiters and some tips on how to find a job in today's tech market. Quick announcements for everybody. I have the extreme opportunity to be able to speak at code stocks next month in Knoxville. month in Knoxville that will be hanging out with everybody out there. So if you're in the Knoxville area, I would love to say hey and introduce myself.

So come find me. Another thing as well, if you want to reach out to me, social media is the best way. That's going to be at T. Dessin, T-D-E-S-S-E-Y-N. And also if you want to rate this a podcast in the App Store on Google Play or Apple Store, we'd love for this podcast to gain a little traction in the market and be used as a tool for other people outside of my community to help find a job. Hope you guys enjoy. Thanks. I know some of you guys know me here and I know I did a quick intro but we had a few people walk in.

So I'll give a quick rundown of who I am and kind of give you my goal of this kind of hangout session. and kind of give you my goal of this kind of hangout session. So my name is Taylor. I am one of the million and a half recruiters here in Nashville. And I have been in the Nashville area now for five years. I do realize there are a lot of us out there. And so what my goal is that these meetups is to basically try to give everybody a behind the scenes of what us recruiters do. So you guys, one, know how to navigate us, and two, are more successful on your job search.

Yeah, so I mean, so I'm with a company called Vaco. I've been recruiting for seven years now, which, Vaco, yep. So that's kind of like dog years in the recruiting industry. So I started in our junior practice and then I kind of, like I said, kind of got top of the food chain there and then had the opportunity to interview for our Charlotte and Raleigh office. At the time I was calling into the Bay Area and getting hung up on by tech individuals and so I realized I needed to work in a local market where I can meet people eye to eye and gain their trust.

And so I moved to Raleigh. I was in Raleigh, North Carolina for a year, got super invested out there. A lot of cool tech happening got invested specifically with the .NET meetup. I had the opportunity to speak at their code conference for two years in 2015, 2016. My talk is recruiter suck use them. And basically it's what this talk is. It's just to tell all of how to work with us. So a year later in Raleigh I got a call from my mentor here in Nashville. Some of you guys know him, Scott Gordon, and whenever your mentor calls you listen. And so I had the opportunity to come back here and kind of fill in and kind of work alongside of him until he moved and kind of over traveling roles.

So basically what I do now is I manage a team of eight individuals, seven on site, one off shore. We've tripled in size since I've been in Nashville. And I specifically work with developers. So I know a lot of recruiters recruit on a lot of different areas and that's why none of us know what the heck we're talking about. So I try to get as deep as possible on the dev side. But I still do a little infrastructure and functional work as well. So my goal, I mean, really, I want everybody to sit down. I want to sit down with you guys. The last thing you guys want to hear after hours is a recruiter talk at you for an hour or however long this session we want to go for.

So basically, I'll turn it over from you guys at this point. I mean, I gave this talk at Music City Code last year. I actually got accepted to speak at Code Stock next month Knoxville and then my plan is to speak in Chattanooga and a few other places as well because I really do feel like we're extremely misunderstood and there's a lot of us who are really bad at their jobs but I also want to educate you guys on the right questions on how to work with recruiters if you guys are ever on the job market. So that's kind of what my goal is for this conversation.

Not technical, not as cool as what you guys went over but I definitely want to be kind of a tool and instrument for you guys as well. So that being said I mean I don't know if anybody has any burning questions on how recruiters work. Sure funny recruiters story. I love I love funny recruiters stories. I worked for a boss for 11 years and they shut us down with this to Mexico right. I built a factory automation. Awesome. So when you development stuff, that's what I mean. But I like to come here and learn from you guys, and slowly pick up at least a little something.

So anyway, look for a job. You know, I'm old school, you know. I started working to give you an idea. I was working professionally in 87, so, you know, for me, at that time, everything was a newspaper, you know. And then, it's kind of, when you're a low guy, you know, who doesn't want nothing to do with you because 15% of $15,000, which is my first job, you know, there'd be nothing to be grand for placing me. So eventually, I have to go look for a job. So, you know, I read papers fly online, and also, you know, I get picked up by a couple recruiters, and the common ones have my name around there.

So I get this guy and he says, I got this job for you at this company, let's just call it a national city and leave it there. And I said, OK, I'm kind of, it used to job, you know, I'll take something, you know, I never been without work. And I go down there and visit the place. His one, his ace was 97, 98 degrees and I got my little suit on, you know. Sweat through the suit. I know how they smoke people show up in jeans and shirts. Yeah. I'm the whole guy. I don't do that. And I show up to the other guy.

I want to show him my best presentation show in Syria. And I walk into a plant. And the plant, yeah, there's a manufacturing plant. And there's no air conditioning. It's like 107 shots. Like, okay, it's so hot. They have a semi backed up on a flatbed with fans on it. They're hanging out watermelon. And they say, that's not too bad. We only had two people pass out today, right? So I'm like, oh shit. You know, so anyway, I go through the whole interview process. And I guess felt pretty good about it, but my boss was, my boss to me was, he's gonna be a dick, okay?

But I could work with him for a while until I found something else. I'm just being honest with you, you went on a stage, but it is. And I've been applying for some other jobs. They called me up and said, hey, can you start work? Yeah, next Monday or something. It was a couple days down the road, so I started Monday, right? Yeah, I got one of my life's city. Yeah, I got a job, honey, but it sucks, you know? And she goes, well, I know, because it's like, freaking hot in that place, you know? She goes, what's my wife telling me? Oh, it ought to be nice around Christmas time.

I was like, deep in that. Nice, honey, that's great. Well, you're sitting up, be a lion, nice, air conditioning, and you can tell the way out, you know? So, comes around, I won't say the fooders name with Bob or Bill or something kind of. Comes around and that's Friday before I'm supposed to start on Monday, I get called into another company, not through a scooter, just with a right to rent the contact. And they say, hey, we want you to come work. It's like hot day. Yeah, I'll go there, you know, anything other than Sweat Come on, they sell Walp in their city, you know.

And so I called up the recruiter and I said, hey, I got a problem here, you know, I have another dog offer and I'm afraid I'm going to have to take that. And I said, would you like me to call up whatever's name was John or something and they charge apartment and let him know or is that something that you prefer to do? So what do you think he answered? Well, he should have answered. He would have preferred to do it. That's what he said. He said, I prefer to do it. And I said, OK, that's fine. I'm really sorry. Sorry, you put a lot of work for me and you appreciate the connection, right?

Hey, I'm not gonna write. Okay, well thanks, I put also my good idea, you know? So that's all done with, right? I was like, well, I'll burn that bridge, you know? So a bit. Two bones later, he called me up. I had more of a guy, this is Bob. I got another job for you, you addressed him. I'm like, yeah, dude. You are with the public hall of big backing yet. I guess, you know. Yeah. Because it's the right service. Yeah, I guess. So anyway, that's my record. That's my record. That's fantastic. Yeah. I mean, we I know you're not. I mean, I know that that story happens even now.

I mean, we deal with that all the time. I mean, especially in today's tech market, especially in Nashville, and I mean, it was the same way in Raleigh. I mean, people get offers. People get counter offers. We have people who are supposed to start on Monday and then do the exact same thing, get another job offer. And I'm glad that the recruiter communicate that to the manager. Do you ever know if he did that? Because that's usually my thing. I've heard horror stories in a sense that the recruiter doesn't communicate. At least I never show up. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I never had a call from them.

So I'm going to use that. So I think I'm going with it. All right, good. So yeah, I mean, that's it happens. It happens a lot even now. And we still have to combat that. And that's why I try to be a little bit different in my approach in regards to building relationships. I think a lot of times, you know, I actually I compliment that recruiter for calling you back because he obviously still, whether or not he wanted a long-term relationship from a business perspective, he still stayed in touch, which I kind of like. Because ultimately with what we do in our industry, We need to be top of mind.

I mean, I send out anybody that works with me, that I've either placed or that I know is good in town. I have an email, kind of like check in list that I send out because there's, whenever you start a job search, so I was out for recruiters, we're a little numb to the job search process because we do it every day, right? We're the only individuals that sit down with you the first 30 seconds, we know how much money you're making. I grew up Southern Baptist. I was raised to not ask for salary. And now I'm in a job where I sit down with an individual.

I don't even know. And I say, hey, how much you making? What do you want to make? And so I think with us is that I think you've got to focus on building relationships and being transparent and being a partner with somebody. And so that's that's the chance to be able to tell the reviews what I'm making. Really? Okay. They call me and I don't, look, what I make doesn't mean a thing to you. I said to me, there's two things that are going to convince me to take the job. One, that the company is interesting, that the work is interesting, and that you're going to pay me at least this much.

Absolutely. And when I ask guys, I go listen. And obviously I don't ask for something that's unreasonable. For sure. My title level, you know. for sure. Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, I would say, you know, I usually ask guys, I say, listen, money, money isn't everything, but it's something. And so I usually try to get, you know, an accurate range. But, you know, I have a lot of individuals who don't tell me what they're currently making. That's fine. I usually tell individuals this, I go, I can submit you got a quarter of a million dollars across the city of Nashville, but ultimately our clients going to decide what you're worth.

So I need at least a bare minimum. What I usually do is I would say this is what I'm making. Now I'd like to do at least that if not better. Yeah absolutely absolutely. Yeah I mean my money's different and and listen y'all interrupt me because I can sit up here and talk for a long time but you know I know rates and out and contracting with recruiters can be kind of weird. We're kind of slimy and I feel like a lot of people can be like oh with a recruiters like I've talked to some candidates and like, yeah, I'm getting paid like, for the same position that I'm recruiting on that was filled by another candidate who I know, I've had conversations and they're getting paid like $15, $10 an hour under than what I was offering.

You know, a lot of times the recruiters can undercut and so, and that's what I always try to do. I always try to make sure people are being compensated at or above market and are happy. And then we take care of the back end. I mean, I know I was given this presentation and one individual asking, they go, how much percentage do you mark this up? I don't have a specific percentage. Like what kind of a principal you're dealing with and what level you were recruiting at, you better guys make it half a million a year or you know when the guys make it 80 a year.

Yeah, it's gonna be different. Absolutely, absolutely. So money, I mean money's always interesting. I always, you know, and I'm talking about conversation right now because your conversation kind of led me this way. But I know it's kind of this topic that everyone kind of doesn't want to really broach, especially with recruiters. They're like, oh, well, as long as it's an easy conversation. Let's just keep it that way. So I mean, I don't know if you guys have any conversations, any questions about how to deal with rates with recruiters or contracting, because I'm an open book when it comes to that. Well, obviously, there's multiple ways to retire.

Yep. contract to hire you, there's contract, there's what comes in. Yeah, absolutely. And we do all of it at Vaco. And I tell people this, like this market is a, at the end of the day, Nashville is a permanent market in a sense that good tech talent is going to be rewarded. And so I know a lot of individuals I deal with, they're like, oh, I'm not really comfortable at doing a contracting gig. I'm not really doing interest, I'm not interested in contract to hire. So I usually ask them, I go, all right, what are your fears? And what I usually say is this. Typically, the word contracting with individuals in IT, or just in general, is you work with the recruiter.

That recruiter gets fired halfway through your project because they're terrible at their job. And the turnover rate in the recruiting industry is ridiculous. Your name gets passed through a handful of recruiters. You never know who you're working with. You don't know who your contact is at said company. And then all of a sudden one day your contract comes to an end and you're like out without a job. And I would say that's kind of most of what contracting isn't this marketing. So what I tell people is that one, you want to partner with the recruiter that you can trust. All right. So the question is how do you find that profile?

So I'll tell you what I think is a good recruiter from a profile perspective. But again, like I said, this is only me. I'm only one person. I've been in the local market now for about five years. I'm still learning things about this market. If you work with a recruiter that just got out of college and he or she's only been in the market for six months, they're not going to know anything. And on top of that, most recruiters, I have this one guy that I know I'm linked in. worked at Vaco a while back and his his his 10 year at every company is a year and 10 months like you can go to his LinkedIn everything is like a year and 10 months a year and 11 months a year and nine months two years and so I usually tell individuals if that company's been if that recruiter has been with that same company for more than two years that's a good start and I would say in the local market they at least got to be in local market for a year to have any sort of wherewithal because like I said I don't know everything about this market yet I mean I was talking to you just now I was like I've never heard of that company before you know and so yeah but that's what I'm saying though right I mean I mean obviously we recruit for a lot of the big ones yeah It's like, yeah, I've got this job working for X, Y, Z for a developer.

Okay. You mean the one that I saw in Indeed and Monster Career and Plaster Diving Where, is all of that? Yeah. Okay. So why should I take the risk of getting my salary marked up by 50 to 20% by you? You know that company, what's your connection to that? So I'm gonna interrupt you, that question right there is not asked enough. What you just asked, if every single developer, or I, again I speak most from the dev side because that's what I work in, but if every individual asked that, they would be much better off and they'd be able to weed through a bunch of crud because most recruiters would tell you on the phone, oh, I mean, uh, no.

Like if you work with me, I will be able to tell you every single hire manager I work with. And when we got the job order and how long it's been open and how many people have interviewed. I bet you, 9 out of 10 recruiters can't do that. So, yeah, so I mean, and that's another thing. So I actually have a podcast which is why I'm recording right now because I do this to get this content out to everybody who listens because I got involved in a Twitter conversation today about one of my buddies who I placed in Nashville with another developer and I didn't know who this developer was and he quoted, every recruiter says, I'm not like other recruiters.

And then of course my thing is being different, right? So, and then my buddy looped me in on the conversation and then just a lot of gifts happened afterwards. But basically what my goal with this podcast is when I spoke at these code conferences, individual to come up to me and go, hey, that was great. Do you have any PowerPoint slides? Why don't I don't do slides? Because you guys aren't gonna learn anything for me like pulling out a PowerPoint and say, this is what you need to do. So if you guys want, I've actually interviewed a few senior engineers in town already on my podcast and we go over kind of contracting versus direct hire where we just touched on and what type of questions to ask recruiters?

But I would absolutely do what you did. Who do you know? Who do you send us a link to your book? Yeah, absolutely. I'm on every Apple and Google Play Store. It's Guidance Counselor 2.0. But yeah, I'll post it in the meetup. That's true? Sure. I use anchor to push everything. So if anchor pushes the stitcher, yeah, yes, I'm on there. But another thing too, a lot of individuals don't ask recruiters to hard questions. You got to. absolutely have to because you're gonna wear yourself out because if you allow us we will take up all of your time. Oh, and I've seen it happen to a lot of people.

It is the greatest grader on the other side of the fence. It's been happening all the time. Oh yeah, it's a great company. You're gonna move up and up and leave the whole. People are happy, they're active, they're developing. Do you know they never ask that of the actual people themselves and then they get in the job and find out oh well, you know, half the management staff is left in the last six months and you know, they've been downsizing the only reason you're there is that you're cheaper than their 20-year employee, you go at vacation and benefits. You know, I mean, I will say I don't always get it right.

I'm not sitting here and saying I've got a thousand. You know, I just to share my past experiences, I mean, we got, we were, Veko was asked to staff up a startup in town. Super exciting, right? Greenfield, everything new, I mean, nothing from the ground up. And I'm super jacked about it, right? Super excited. It's like a recruiters dream, right? To be able to place all the hiring managers and the hiring managers love us, and then we just place all the people and make all the money. So I placed one of the directors out there. New management comes in, placed another senior engineer out there, new management fires everybody.

I felt terrible because I tried to pride myself on putting people in places to succeed. And that was just a disaster. And so for us, things happen. But I do try again to say, hey, listen, this is, there is one healthcare client in town I recruit on. And I've talked to everybody, like, hey, if you go on Glassdoor right now, they're terrible reviews. But look when that review is done because they cleaned house on leadership three years ago. And since then, it's fantastic. And most of their Glassdoor reviews are from satellite offices and that are nurses. It's not core IT. Yeah, glass dorming lesson some I mean I think there's some I would say it's kind of like a Yelp review for restaurants Absolutely right there so so my dad my dad was part owner of Outback Steakhouse for 25 years in my hometown and One of the best managers have ever worked ever worked for him and so he He, I'll back to the thing for a little bit where they needed their customers to do the survey and that's what management was judged on.

Well, guess who filled out the most surveys? The people who had a terrible experience. Right, exactly. So, I approach everything at super high level, but what I would do, I mean, I had a developer call me on the way here and say, I got him an offer today and he goes, hey listen, I need your advice on this. What should I do? If you don't feel comfortable going to the recruiter and saying, hey, I need your advice on this, I wouldn't work with them because I've only been working with this guy for a month now. So I got a question for you on your contract.

Yeah. For those of us that are interested in becoming contractors, I guess you got two questions. One, what's your feel for your legal liability as a contractor to the worker performing? You know, and number two, if you see yourself working relatively short term gigs, say six months and less, and that is your goal. How do you find a recruiter that you can work with and say, look, you know, I want to, you know, work six or nine months a year and I'll work whatever hours it is, but then I want to offer a couple months and then you find me the next gig. You know, that kind of thing like that.

It's so funny you're asking that, because I'm working with a guy right now that wants that. His project's coming to an end, being in April. He wants six months, and then his lease runs up here. He's got to house in Florida, and wants to do some traveling. So he just wants six months. So first off, from a contracting side of things, so everybody, when I say Nashville is a permanent market, there are perm jobs everywhere, full-time salary, that's kind of the vernacular I use. So I usually tell individuals, I would say right now the market is still very good. Right now it is feast, it is definitely not famine.

And I would say to let you guys put it in some sort of scale is I probably have 25, 30 development positions that are contract or contract to hire right now. And that's not even counting permanent jobs. I probably have close to 50 development orders right now that we're working on. Now, pure contract gigs, coming to you said, because Nashville's such a permanent market, everybody doesn't want to lose that knowledge training. They don't want to have that knowledge go out the door of their product. So it's a lot on the recruiter on the front end to be very upfront with the client, say, hey, listen, this guy wants six months, and then he's going to head on.

Because I think there's a way to position yourself in the market as that way. But I would also probably partner with a little bit, like I would say in general partner with two recruiters. That's it. That's all you need. I actually worked with I. I still amatted him. He ended up in L3 and I am working with family. So it was funny. But he, you know, he and I met and he was only working with me and in his connections. And Adam go a few rounds and I had him in a final round before he took his current position. And so what I would do is I'd probably partner if you just want contract three to four recruiters.

I'd probably double it. And then specifically say, hey, listen, I want this rate range. Give them a range. Give recruiters ranges. Because if I get a gig, if I can squeeze out 55 an hour for you and you only and you say I want 60, and if the recruiter says, well, what if I, you know what I'm saying, just like you want to give a range. So that's how I would approach the contract side. So answering your first question with the legal, what do you mean exactly by that? Well, I mean, I guess my realm is a little bit outside and outside of your field, but not totally.

Like, let's say you're brought in to develop a piece of code for a mobile device in somebody's opinion. Your job is to develop this functionality right there in that code. Will you go in there? you work on it and you create a total disaster, you don't meet any of the goals that they wanted to. In fact, you have happened to incorporate spyware or virus into your code, and you leave that. Are you legally on the hook? So I will say it never gets there. And I know that- Not intentionally you haven't done that, but you do it terribly. Yeah, so typically terrible people are fired pretty quickly in this market.

And that's, I try not to have a compound answer. Do you want to answer your honest question? I don't know. Like to, like, but, like for example, all of our clients. You don't normally see that. I don't. I get off the bed. Yeah. Right, yeah. I mean, typically for us, so, and again, Vayco, we pride ourselves on building relationships and, like, I check in with my guys every week And we check in with our clients every week. Or not every week, let's be realistic once a month, right? And so I got one guy, he'd work out of one of my clients, who's a database guy for two months.

And basically the manager was like, he's just not cutting it, we need to let him go. That's it. Sorry. I got another guy for you. Yeah, go ahead, no, I love it, I love it. No, that's what I'm saying. Oh, oh, you. Sorry. We can cut him, I got another call, I hear what you mean. I would say where we were deficient, I'll make sure that we got him covered. But that's exactly what we do, right? That's exactly what we do. And believe it or not, that guy left the door Friday and I had another guy to see it on Monday. Yeah. I mean, if he trusts you and you own up and you say, you know, okay, just tell me what I'll look for.

You know, well, he didn't have this particular okay, I got another guy here for you. Absolutely. And another, just, just on a pop to my head to share if a recruiter, kind of going back to you and kind of who do you know at the company, if a recruiter sends you a stock job description that you can find online, they don't have a direct relationship with a hiring manager. If you work with me, you never get an official job description. Every single, every bit, every information that I send you is directly from the hiring manager. Now, sometimes can come back to bite me because a lot of times managers call me up and go, Hey, I need a.net guy that has Angular 5.

Click, and then you're like, wait, what? What do you guys just do with that? So we usually try to get more information, but a lot, that's what a lot of times, a lot of times, because we're seeing that as a partner, we try to be an extension of your HR, and so that can kind of bite us in the butt. But I would say that if you get a stock job description from a recruiter, don't work with them. that you're just going to waste your time. So you're saying that if you're really well connected in a company, you've been working with them for a while, that they're not out publishing those jobs out in the...

Not necessarily. Not necessarily. So... Or do they dual sort of... They dual. So the way it works, so there's internal HR, and then there's what we do, which is agency, slash third parties, whatever could convert. You want to throw it in there. So we basically, so the way the chain works with this, and this is why our jobs are, it's not rocket science, like we're not building that. But what happens is that, so the way it kind of chain command works is hiring manager says, oh I got budget, have a dot net guy. So what is that hiring manager going to do? He's going to ping his team and say, hey guys, who do you know I'm looking to hire a dot net person and their team goes, I don't have anybody.

So then the manager was, okay, we're going to send it to our internal HR. Our internal HR puts up the job postings. Posting's been out for 30 days. We haven't found anybody good. Okay, let's call up BECO. So by that point, we're like what? 40 days behind, 45 days behind the eight ball at that point. And so, you know, a lot now, there are times where the candidates submit their resume to the job posting internally, but we can still represent them. So that happens a lot too. A lot of that is because HR realizes that they can't get to everybody because internal HR also recruits on like admin assistant positions all the way up to CFO level stuff.

And so obviously their bandwidth is probably fairly good. I've never worked in internal HR so I'm just kind of talking right now so of course some internal HR persons go listen to my podcast and they're like you don't know what you're talking about. But for the most part, that's kind of how the chain of command works on getting a job position. Well, I mean, having somebody there to represent you, we've got a difference in the world. The judge, when I was doing a hiring, you know, you stack a resume like this, that came in. I looked it up on my body and I recruited to help me weave through them, you know.

I'm like, dude, they're like 80 or 100, I ain't gonna throw this shit here out. It's terrible. we read them out so we just started to pick up the criteria you know that if they didn't have ten years out of school when you were in the trash can I didn't care who you were or you didn't have a master's degree you were in the trash can you know so having a guy like you I could have thrown away a great candidate just because I had to pick some random criteria to weave through things and have an opportunity to come in and say hey look I've talked with this guy to talk about his background I think he can fit with you talk to him you know yeah I mean Typically, typically we do pretty well in regards to match a man, I'll always get it right, but there's very few times where I completely missed a mark.

But, you know, there's always a chance of air, but for the most part we get it right the second time, and we have a pretty good success. The issue is there's like 9,000 other recruiting firms in Nashville that we also have to go up against too. So that's obviously a challenge. Any other questions? What's the, you kind of talked about the process. Yeah. Like you have clients that companies are looking at, but you also have been individually looking for a job. Correct. So it's like two correct graders. So I am very open in saying that for the most part recruiters are pretty bad. Very well aware with that.

But I have to defend recruiters for a second. this very rarely happens. And I'm gonna address both ends with your question, but our job as recruiters is to meet 15 new people a week. New people. So that's not people that I placed, that's not people that I met last week, that's new people every single week. If you do the math, I'm bad at math, that's why I'm a recruiter. Let's do easy math, 10 people a week, 52 weeks and you're five for the 20 people. I've been in the mark for five years. How many people is that, like 2,500? Some people? Thank you. To flip.

Yeah. That's a lot. So a lot of times the biggest complaint with recruiters is, oh, they never called me back. Now, I try my best to get back with everybody, but there are people that follow through the cracks. I'm not God. I miss out on some follow-up, right? And so I always encourage developers or candidates that are in the job search. to like, hound recruiters. I'm talking about like call, text, email, like stay on them. Oh, 100%. 100%, literally everybody I meet with, I go, hey listen, I want to place you, but I'm probably not. But I want you to stay on me, because if I have a position three months from now, like, I'm gonna call you first if you stay in my inbox.

But Emi doesn't say something that if they're calling you and calling you that says a few things right First of all that they're eager but to that they're willing to put some effort into 100% Keeping people in a relationship and you know, I tell people you know when you talk to recruiters You know like you say you know who's have their own interests But if you lie to them they can't place you the right job exactly if you tell them oh, yeah I'd like to work that job and I said this, you're not really interested at all. How do you possibly do your job? So it comes both ways.

You have to know who you're talking with. They have goals that we will and to tell you what they really want and what they can do and what they're real history. So it looks all the paperwork. Absolutely, and to answer your question, so at Vaco, in most recruiting companies, it's a one-two punch, right? So I'm the one that hangs out at meetups, and geeks out over tech, and actually listens to podcast, and kind of knowing what's going on in the market. We have our salespeople who are running around trying to chase after CIO, CTOs, and managers to try to get the job orders. And so it's kind of this like this relationship where they get the job orders.

I feel them. But it's a truly agency because like when you talk to a recruiter, their guys, they're going to slot. They don't really care about you because there's three or four of you. And I'm right into that many circumstances. Like, you know, I've get placed a couple of years ago and I get tired because I wasn't going to promoting and stuff. Right. Right. I'm not one year anniversary date HR came to this. Okay. So you actually got two promotions. We just couldn't give them to you because of our agency treatment. We would have to pay commission back on that. You know, and I've had to happen a couple of times where- Were you contracting through that recruiting company?

Or did you go direct? It was a direct placement. That's weird. So I mean, I've seen several things like that where it's not like any other brokerage where you have representation on both sides which is kind of one sided in the replacement market. Yeah, that's weird. I mean, if my only reason, my only thought with your scenario is, so our contract is a certain percentage of first year salary, right? I always tell every individual I work with, I am on your side when it comes to money. The more money you get, the more money I get. Absolutely. So my only thing is, is maybe that client was like, So ours is first year's compensation, which technically, we don't enforce this, but if somebody pays a bonus the first year, we're technically supposed to get comped on that, but we don't do that.

So I guess my thing is maybe that client really took that agreement to the end degree and didn't give you anything until that year and run up So they don't have to pay back the recruiter. It was two promotions. It was a lot of money. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, that never happens to us, because mostly it was just first year salary. The position I was in, I mean, I had already applied to the company and I get lost in their stack. And the role I'm in. Yeah. A recruiter sent me in and I gave an agency just to represent me for that one role.

Correct. Well, once I interviewed for that one role, I got turned down for it. They HR started to clip him to the pay for it. But no, he's applied to this manager's role. from the engineer role and hired me and low on the hold of Rickard Swoopson, and it's like, oh, I represent him for that too. Changed the whole conversation. Did that affect your rate though? It did. Who are you working with? These guys flew out in the middle of the night. Huh. Yeah, I mean that's why I love these type of conversations because I only know my, I only know Vaco and I like to hear other people's stories because I have will never talk to you again.

And I'm not later in calling again. We don't have stories. I mean, there's no, you have a son that in paperwork and they don't. What's this thing in the contract? They were calling me just a unit. They go in there and say, we're representing, you know, like, how much do we have to come to us to? And if I case, I able to take an archive, look here for the patient, or you know, I said for the business, you know, like the only thing I have, only communication. So that's weird. The opposite? So I can defend that a little bit. Oh yeah, so he's had the opposite where recruiter won't work with him because he's already talked to a company.

But a lot of that is rec specific. So that happens. So I mean, I try not to give out client names too much so all these podcasts don't get around and everybody starts listening to my podcast to pick off my book of business. So there's a few companies in town that if you submit your resume to their job posting, you're off limits, which stinks. But it is what it is. And then for certain positions, if you've interviewed an X position with Y manager and I call you with another firm and I call you as a have, this position with Y manager and you're like, oh, I've already interviewed you and I go, well, that stinks.

I can't represent you, but let's hang out and let's work together on other positions, too. You know, I mean, it's all about the long game in our industry. I always tell people, I don't care if I ever place you. I just want to hang out because you never know one day what's going to happen. And I think if a recruiter doesn't have that mentality working with you, I would be weary. Now there are some successful recruiters at Vaco across the country, across our company, that like smile and dial, right? Call you, never meet with you, submit you to jobs, make a lot of money, I'm just not in that, right?

I wanna try to meet with every single person. Will I remember you? Probably not, it's really weird at code conferences when people come up to me and they go, hey, remember me and I go, I don't, I'm sorry. Oh yeah, sure, it was great. Yeah, sure, it was great. But, and that's another thing too, I talk about a lot of people don't want to go in and meet with recruiters. So what I would do is I would stalk them on LinkedIn and kind of see that criteria that we spoke about earlier. And I would recommend to go meet with them because why would you not want to meet with somebody who you are basically putting your next step in your career in their hands?

To me that just doesn't make sense to me. I try to meet with guys like 15 minutes. I feel like I've left you guys out of this conversation. I'm sorry, I'm very sorry. I didn't tell that out. But I mean, I try to meet with her 15 minutes to put a face with a resume and just shake your hand because I know a lot of recruiters don't want to meet with people. Make a difference, too. Yes, if you met somebody. Yes. How do you get past that first layer of recruitment? I just had lunch with a very, I guess, great recruiter. And I could tell him he was just filling me out for the real placement of that recruiter.

How'd the stake on the guy? That was about the most advantage. There you go. Hey, worse comes the worst. You can always get a free lunch out of us. Right? I mean, he's coming. He shut me down because I was like, well, it's interesting. I'm not really 15 minutes. It's so much time for that lunch. It's easy. You know, can I talk? Can you set the conference call with this company? So you can't give me answers. listed that would look jagged in the company. See if there's interest there. Right. Didn't want to talk to me after that. Right. So going back to your lunch question.

So I try to meet people in the office as much as possible because I don't have time to chase you guys around town because that gets expensive. But if people are willing to come to me for lunch, I try to do that. But yes, 15 minutes isn't super long time. But even my lunch is like 30 minutes. I'm known in my office as like the quick launcher. I'm not really good at sitting in the same place for the fact that we've been going on 39 minutes. I've been going on 39 minutes now. I'm like, oh, people are getting tired of me. I hate hearing myself talk.

So. I think that's a great insight that self-good fooders will like to meet with their potential clients because I've never thought about it and never met any of the ones who placed me over the years. Yeah. And some people, and there are a lot of guys I work with that I call and they're like, hey, I really don't want to meet with you. I'm like, okay, well, they hear some give and take, right? If you don't want to meet with me, then show me some references. Let me kind of do my due diligence then. Let's work together on this. Now, to answer your question about kind of get past the first initial meeting.

So I'm going to be honest with you, I do a lot of initial meetings. The reason why I do that is because unfortunately the candidates don't pay me. Our clients pay us. And so at the end of the day, our clients are going to send us some jobs now. There's some agents in San Francisco. I've read about where the recruiters but the developers pay them, which I think is awesome. I did get a lot of stuff on that. I had two good recruiters. I paid them a stipend. That's awesome. And they just kept paying a different job. Yeah, exactly. But you know, it's not there's a company here.

I get a call from a different recruiter probably once every month or two a month. Sounds about right. I meet with a high mistake on them. You would think that they'd get captured. a lot of steak dinners or lunches. That's a job all these hours. You don't tell me why your conversation goes with your recruit so I can pull off that job. Well, after $100 for the expenses, someone would have to clue that... We don't. We don't. Because in a lot of times, like this month, it was the same position, two new people working on it. Doesn't surprise me. Doesn't surprise me. And being in charge of our recruiting team, I mean, I really try to make us not look like idiots.

But right, great, hot in the hog, man, that's fantastic. I usually, I mean, but we do step on each other's toes a lot. But going back to the initial meetings, I take initial meetings with individuals, but that's where you have to use your, what we talked about is how to look for recruiters. If a recruiter hits you up and he's been in the industry for six months, like it's probably just to get to work towards his numbers. So we're responsible for meeting 15 people a week. We're responsible for submitting so many people to jobs. At Vaco, we try to break the stereotypical metrics because what happens is you have nine people take you to lunch in three days.

And so we try to counteract that, but at the end of the day, it's saying, all right well Susie Smith called me from XYZ recruiting firm. Let me go look up on LinkedIn. All right well she's actually only been, she's been recruiting for, she was like a hair stylist last year, nothing is hair stylist. And then now she's recruiting for six months. May not be the best time to, and now what's your free stick? I'll follow me and go ahead. I'm starting to tip my balls. Do you care to take my balls? Do a combo. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, you know what's funny? My brother worked at a mobile dev shop in town.

And they started giving when recruiters would cold call their front desk. They would give them my number. Which is fantastic. So I mean, I would say that's my tip on that, right? Is to work with guys and girls who have been in the market for a substantial amount of time. So I was like this last opportunity. I was interested in that to have a conversation with someone. Or at least the person you've had the rag, and I couldn't get past this great guy, you know. And his final comment to me was, thanks for that thing, the rag's posted on our website. So I contacted him to rag, found it, it wasn't something, I wasn't in horror stories, it's just awful.

It makes my stomach turn. That's where I would say partner with two firms. Because typically two firms in this town can cover you. Going back to your initial thing about what recruiters, they call me about the same stuff online, like that's kind of where Vaco excels. We do work with the big companies in town, don't get me wrong, but we a lot of times get a head start sometimes, right? So that can obviously counter, that kind of contradicts what I said earlier, but a lot of times managers call us up first before they even reach out to the own team. They're like, hey listen, I had this press in me.

Do you have anybody? And so that's where I usually say, get, work with two different recruiters and maybe three, but no more than three. So. That's why I like the arrangement. That's where basically I had agency. Right. And I was paying them. So I was in control. Absolutely. Yeah. And that's the only place that somebody exists is around the North Carolina and Huntsville. Yeah, I mean, there are people that I know that are their own recruiting company, and it's one person. And they kind of, you know, partner with both sides. So it's out there, for sure. Oh, maybe that person's all right. Maybe they have an input to a three company.

Yeah. And that's the honey hole. One man show. Absolutely. If you won that company, maybe that's a good deal. 100%. 100%. That's a lot of hits. But I would just look for duration. I mean, when it comes down to it's recruiters duration, how long they've been the same company, how long they've been in the market. I think if you can look at that, you'll be able to save yourself a ton of headaches. Well, that was where I got burned from the salary deal because the guy who placed me at the industry for years and was just rock blocking that company. That's a bad look. I'm sorry on behalf of all recruiters.

Any other questions at all? I mean, like I said, I can continue to talk. We can wrap up. I'm fine. But if you have any other questions, if not, what is the market like? It's so hard to find one thing that we built in our sector at other language. Yeah. Welcome to my world. From the language or native speaking language? That's awesome. Who you means? I'll tell you what, man. Yeah. No. It's man's hard. It's hard to keep top talent. It's hard to find good talent. There's so many jobs out there. The good developers know they have the upper hands. Not a lot of them are very nice to deal with sometimes.

There's those people who still want to write. Yeah, people skills. I mean, don't be a dick, right? I mean, it's a Scott Gordon thing, right? I mean, I think working, you know, I get it, you have to be stern with your career sometimes. sometimes we don't understand no really well. So you have to be starting with us, but I think there's no reason to be mean to anybody. And the amount of times, I mean, the conversations that we have with people out of town, who just treat us like dirt is crazy. I'm at the point in my career where I can just hang up the phone and be like, not, it's fine.

We have like new people who I'm training up, and they get crushed. I mean, just crushed. And so, I mean, it's definitely, It's definitely a process to find people in town and then dealing with obviously the jerks out of town is obviously another issue we have to do it too because they know their name isn't in town so they can act however they want to act. The market is great. People are hiring. There are just not enough good developers in town. And we have to educate, on top of that, then a salary discussion comes in, right? So it's like, we only want to pay a senior developer this, and you're like, good luck.

Good luck. Did you see players? Preach, you're preaching to the choir right now. One, literally, I had one client in town. A little bit was our fault, was my fault. But I didn't know how good this guy was, right? I was trying to get him to my town, submitted him to a client, JavaScript guy. And yeah, I didn't know how good he was. He's consulting, making good money, but obviously, everybody does on a 10, 99 basis, right? And so I was like, all right, well, I was like, I'm not gonna be able to get you that, but I can get you this. And he goes, that's fine.

He goes, anything north of 100. And so everything was fine and dandy. A ton of rounds of interviews later, which is another pet peeve of mine, clients were taken way too long to hire people. Especially using recruit, like you use us for a reason. Don't go seven rounds with a candidate. Like there's no need for us if you go seven rounds in two references later with the candidate. There was a, we submitted about one rate. After some finagling, there was about a $15,000 difference. They gave him $6,000 more and they lost the developer at the end of the day over $9,000 which is the equivalent of $4 an hour.

Now, again, I'm not saying it wasn't a little bit my fault for pricing better, but at the end of the day, this one client is still missing two developers because they weren't willing to meet him, because if they paid him that rate that he wanted, he probably would have left it a year anyways for another client in town who's going to pay more. And so what we try to do, now we try to be different, but a lot of recruiters just want to make money. We're going to submit this guy at $150,000 because we want to make 25% of his fee. Realistically, he's worth like 105.

And so we have to try to end then you have us trying to have real conversations with managers and it's like, hey listen, market rate, I mean, let you know what I deal with senior software developers in town. I mean, They cap out at 125, but to be honest with you, it needs to be higher. Especially for what clients are wanting, this whole web development 2.0, I was what I call it, like the whole microservice container cloud, buzzword, buzzword, buzzword. I don't know what any of it is, I just didn't know it on paper. All that costs so much more. Yeah, it's all in the cloud.

So yeah, it's all in the cloud, whatever that is. So it's just constant education. So I mean, it is a constant push and pull for sure. So. That would be a cloud argument case. Did it get right? I don't know. OK. I don't know. OK. So sorry, anyways, Mark, it's good. It just, clients have to move faster, and clients got paid more. And if they do that, they'll get the best talent. I have to say, look at Linkit and Granite, they're selling right now, but like they got the best talent. They have a great network and they pay well. You can do it. There are people in town that are paying well and getting the best talent.

The issue is that most pocket books, purses are controlled by the CFO, not the CTO. Lead link kits. No, they are not. Hopefully Amazon just kidding. I don't know. So anyways, thank you guys. If you guys have any other questions, let me know. But I appreciate you guys hanging out. Cool. Cool. That's all I got. Thank you. Thank you.