talent marketplaces - what are they? - solo show

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All right, what is a talent marketplace? So talent marketplace is a company that basically has talent on tap that have already vetted that you can pick from. So think like Instacart or DoorDash, but like for developers or whatever the the the area of skill set is. And I didn't know anything about talent marketplaces. This is an area that to be honest with you if I knew as an agency recruiter, I'd probably promote it more because it's another avenue to get connected to opportunities. So also by the way, if you have questions that you want to ask me about the job search, please ask them, I will answer them.

So talent marketplaces. So for gun IO, for example, we have like hundreds and thousands, not hundreds. We have like a few thousand developers on our platform, right? And so what does that mean? That means we have taken on people on our platform. And that you can pick from our current inventory, right? So it's like going to Kroger or whatever. Now the biggest thing that people ask is like, what's the stream of staffing company and a talent marketplace? So and again, I've only been working in talent marketplace now for the last like, again, seven months, I'm still learning. But in my opinion, if you call a staffing company for the most part, they're probably going to go out and find that talent when you call them.

If you call gun IO, depending on the amount of roles you have, like we're working on 10.net roles right now, fully remote, by the way, senior principal.net remote roles. So if you are interested, side into my DMs. But so we have to do a little outbound recruiting. Like any volume, we have to do outbound recruiting. But like if you need a reactive helper for a part time role or a, you know, a backend developer full time, like we can service that pretty quickly. Initially, staffing companies are going to have to go out and find those people, right? We have them quote unquote on tap. That's the biggest difference.

Another big difference, too, again, I don't know how all talent marketplaces do this is talent marketplaces also vet their talent, right? So at gun IO, we have a technical talent team, right? So one of our best technical talent guys we have was a former CTO of a publicly traded company, right? Like, like, he's legit, right? We also have two other people are a technical talent team that have been a VP of engineering and also an engineering manager at a huge consultant world, worldwide consulting company, right? So we have talent at gun IO actually taking out the talent that you will receive staffing agencies. Listen, I work for staffing agencies.

We didn't have that right now. Now I do have to say as somebody who is very fairly technical, I would say, I'm not very technical. I was a fairly technical. I can obviously train my teams and I have trained my recruiting teams to be fairly technical. So we did it miss a lot when it comes to submitting resumes, but the end of the day, I'm not a developer. So we have developers on our platform. Again, our technical talent team, text out developers. And I think talent marketplaces do that because the whole point of talent marketplaces is, is you have the talent already available ready to go.

Right now, why do you get to a few comments tune in, Robert? It's good to see you. Mel, my guy. It's wonderful to see you buddy. How you doing? Christian, thank you for tuning in my guy. It's good to see you. Michael, it's wonderful to see you as well. So you're probably Ashley. Tell you, that sounds great. That's the downsides of talent marketplace as a job seeker. And I'll talk about it from a company perspective. I don't care. I'll just be straight and honest. From a talent from a job seeker perspective, a talent marketplace probably isn't the best because for the most part, it's mainly senior level.

Right? Like gun IO mainly senior, right? Like we sometimes get mid level roles, but mainly senior. Right? Now you're probably like, well, staffing agencies are the same way. Yeah, but I've actually placed a few junior developers at when I was at a staffing agency. Right? So definitely, maybe we can actually get some more wide variety of roles. Talent marketplaces are more or less very more niche. Right? So some of the talent marketplace players you've probably heard of up work is one, like even fiber is one, even the big one in our market is top-tow. Right? So those are the big players in the talent marketplace world or not big players top-tow is the biggest player.

But the biggest thing is is like there is a central place where you can come find talent and it's mainly senior, but it's very niche as well. Right? Staffing agencies are a little different. Now I do have to say when it comes to being a job seeker that I would still look up talent marketplaces because there's a lot of them and there's a lot of variety. Right? So you have up work and terrain, which what I have heard and y'all can create me if I'm wrong, up work and terrain are more mid junior level, like just and also kind of cheap. Right? Now just a lot of talent, a lot of different jobs, the quality of jobs, the quality of jobs wasn't quite there as well.

Right? Now our side of things were very high-end. We vet all the job opportunities coming to us. Again, it's much more high-end when it comes to that stuff. So that's the biggest thing. Like up work terrain from what I've heard is more like churn and burn. To be honest with you, a lot of the sentiment that I've gotten around talent marketplaces as I've been with them for the last seven months is, oh, it's a race to the bottom when it comes to pricing, right? The bottom pricing always wins. That's not true. For us with gun, you set your own right and on top of that like our technical talent team matches helps match you with the roles we have that are best fit for you.

Right? So again, I think what's really cool about talent marketplaces is it puts the power, at least how gun does it. It puts the power back in your hands. There's staffing agencies. And listen, I tried to get my team not to do this, but at the end of the day, it happens. When it comes to staffing agencies, like if we have five roles that could be a fit for you, I hate to say it. Most staffing companies are only going to show you the roles that are most that they can make the most money on and move the fastest for. Now, I tried to make sure my teams never did that, but at the end of the day, that's how it works.

Right? If you work for a, if you ever work for a staffing company, especially if you're a senior dev plus, make sure to ask them, Hey, are you showing me all the opportunities right now? Are you holding anything back? Because again, I mean, I know Richie's on this call right now. Like I know Richie won't do that stuff, but there's a lot of recruits out there who play God when it comes to this stuff. Talent marketplaces, you have access to all the jobs that we post and you have the ability to submit your resume to everything. Now, we again, our technical talent teams do evaluate your profile and we pick which ones are best, but you can see everything and you can submit to everything.

Does that make sense? Does that make sense? So a few more comments here. And again, if you all have questions about your job, this is a Q&A as well, but I still want to go to talent marketplaces. I've never looked at them as well. Taeya, render was fun to me. Yeah, I would. I mean, I would to be honest, I would. Joyce, it's great to see you as well. Is there any questions around talent marketplaces? Anything around the jobs or something? Honestly, I'm going to keep laughing for a few more minutes. Bill wrap up again Friday's just me, but also very short as well. Taylor, do you take recommendations for potential jobs?

Because I may have more. Taylor, do you take recommendations for potential jobs seekers that might have more experience? Robert, can you expand on this a little bit? I mean, I think recommendations are always best. Referrals, recommendations are always best. So can you expand on this a little bit more? What do you mean by do you take recommendations for potential job seekers? Let me know on that. It's good to see you. Good morning, good morning, Brandon. Hey, agencies. Yeah. I mean, listen, agencies get a bad rap because listen, there's a lot of money to be made in the talent people business, but it's also incredibly stressful.

Right? Like we don't sell like a t-shirt. We sell people, but that sounds awful. But at the end of the day, it's what it is. Right? And I get agencies have a bad rep. That's why I would make sure to really vet and make sure the vibe is good. When I worked in my last company, a lot of people are like, well, like what? Like how do you pick a good recruiter? It's five. Like if you like, it's like, how do you pick your best friend? You're just just vibes, right? And I know people roll the razz in me when I say that, but it's true.

Like if you're not feeling it, move on, there's a lot of other agencies and there's a lot of bad ones. So you got to, well, once you find a good person, like it's more like, like for me, it's less the agency and more of the person, right? Because like people like, oh, I hate Robert half or I hate tech systems. Yeah, yeah, but there's some good recruiters that I know at those companies. So you got to find the recruiter. Don't focus on the companies. Brandon comes in here. They're terrible at reassignment. Yeah, I mean, listen, this is something that even in my last, even in my last company, we focused on it.

It's really, really hard. The reason why I brain in a lot of agencies are terrible at reassignments because they're not technical enough to sell you in the other opportunities. Right now, again, in my, in my experience, that's why I go talent marketplace because we have a technical talent team. We can sell you another opportunities, right? We are CTO can vouch for you with another CTO, that type of thing. Let's see, is WG or I don't know anything about WGU whatsoever? I'm not even interested in questioning because I have no idea. Andrew, good morning. Robert comes back. I know someone on LinkedIn that has many years.

Yeah, sure. Yeah, if you want to send them over, absolutely. I'm all about recommendations referrals. I think to be successful in your job search, it's all about recommendations and referrals. So you absolutely should take advantage of that. A few other things that I wanted to talk to. So I talked about talent marketplaces. Let me know if there's any question about talent marketplaces. I would look them up. Again, I would just Google like software developer talent marketplaces like see what pops up. We're going to pop up my buddies over G2i, Gabe Greenberg, Donna Miami, you're going to pop up top towel. And I'd be interested to hear your thoughts and whatnot.

I do have to say, I've had a lot of DMs about this. I want to address this this morning. We've got a lot of people DM me about, hey, when is Gun IOs platform going to open back up? I've got a lot of DMs around this. And I know y'all are ready to go. You want to be a part of Gun IOs platform and I understand that and I love that. We should be opening up in the next week or so. I hope I don't keep saying a week or so in the next week or so if you know what I mean. But I'm pretty sure I'm almost confident we're going to open it up.

We change our processes a little bit. Basically what we used to do is we used to tech screen you before you even got on our platform. What that is done is we have realized that that is allowed us to not have basically the supply that we need. So what we're doing now is anybody can sign up. Anybody can be obviously added to our database. You have to complete a profile. There is a little bit of an algorithm when you complete the profile about years of experience, what your technical skill set is, where your salary is and how it fits to our current book of business.

But do you want to interview with anybody to take any code assessment? So if you've passed that and you've completed your profile, the profile takes about an hour to complete. You can get on our platform and have access to all of our jobs. Now when I say access to all of our jobs, you have access to submit to all of our jobs. It doesn't mean you're going to interview for all of our jobs. We are still going to go through the vetting process on our end to make sure we send the best available talent as well. Let's see here. What else? I want to talk some just kind of some tidbit things lesson again.

I'm looking at resumes daily right now. There's a lot of poorly formatted resumes. Please go to unghosted.live. That is my other endeavor. Unghosted. I'm going to unghosted.live. Unghosted.live is the web page for me and Alicia Noven. We do a monthly series. It's actually next week for the record. It's next week. We are going to be going over resumes. I want to touch on resumes because it's so vital. I don't want to be a resume coach. I do review resumes. If you want a resume review, yes, I do that on the side. I'm never going to turn that down if somebody wants to do it, but I don't promote it.

For me, the most consistent issues I see is poorly, not even the content. The formatting, the font, too many bold, too many as tile size, too many words. I would say in my experience, 50% of resumes that suck are literally not even because of the content in the resume. It's just how they're formatted. Go to unghosted.live. Check that out and fix your resume folks. Fix your resume, please. The next thing I want to talk about as well is basically, I'm getting caught up on comments on Instagram. It's good to see you, but I don't know if you're still watching, but it's good to see you.

The next thing I want to talk about, too, make sure your LinkedIn is solid. Again, a few more tips on LinkedIn. Make sure your title, which is the thing under your name, the words on your name, is very SEO focused to you. My experience and my experience, your LinkedIn is SEO on the web for you. Does that make sense? Do you have a portfolio page? Your LinkedIn is the SEO, like, is the web page for you when it comes to the job search in today's world. Make sure your LinkedIn has enough appropriate technical jargon in that and tells a story effectively enough so people can find you on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is the one place where there's so many eyes at. People are like, I don't need a link. Listen, if there's two things you absolutely need on your job search is a resume in LinkedIn. I get a lot of pushback. Why just want to send my LinkedIn, listen, I would love HR and companies to accept LinkedIn. That's not the case. Have a good resume, have a good LinkedIn, have a good headshot. Those are a few of the pillars I want to talk about today. But I think that's it. I think that's all I got today. I'm going to end a lot early today. Any last questions as we wrap up here today?

Again, for folks who have tuned in late, we talked about talent marketplaces today, talent marketplace. Check them out, especially if you're in the software industry, Google software development talent marketplaces, you're going to realize a whole slew of them. I would get your contact information in all of them or as many of them as you can handle because it is incredibly important to get into their databases to get open to opportunities. Again, talent marketplaces are not staffing agencies. They're different. I would have I would have a bunch of friends in the staffing side and I would have a bunch of folks in the talent side. I think both of those will be tremendous.

So that's all I got today. Again, shout out to render ETL for being the premier sponsor of the show. I appreciate you guys a ton. Again, it's great to see you. Thanks for tuning in, man. And Valerie redid my resume following unghost alive and it was so informative. I hope this was good for you today. Again, I know it wasn't as long as usual, but look up talent marketplaces. I think you'll enjoy it. I'd be on the lookout on my page to when it comes to talent marketplaces. When I open up gun Ios page so you can go ahead and submit your information. Again, network with people today.

Take the time DM them. If you like this episode, please share it. You all know the drill and I appreciate you all next week. Just want to let you know we got a huge roster. So Monday we're off. That's MLK day Tuesday. My dear friend Ben Pyle who is an AWS guru and CTO out of Dallas is coming on the show. I have a VP of engineering coming on the show, Tim on Wednesday and then Thursday unicorn and finally we have a startup coming on and then it'll be the end of the week. So again, thank you all so much. I appreciate y'all the best.

Nashville folks stay stay stay dry stay stay safe with this cold weather coming in. It's like Chris just said if y'all need anything, please email me Taylor Dessen at gun. I also for the record, please don't DM me on LinkedIn. If you need me on LinkedIn, do not DM me on LinkedIn. My LinkedIn inbox is wild. I will not get back to you for a month. I checked them. I responded about once a month. So do not DM me on LinkedIn. Please email me Taylor Dessen at gun IO. Y'all have a good one. We'll see y'all next week. 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-dessen on all social media handles and I hope you have a fantastic day.