gamecocks, recruiting, content, and the job search w/ corey jones

full transcript

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alrighty what's going on everybody good morning excited to hang out with y'all today just me myself and I um my guest April uh she is under the weather so she had to cancel yesterday on me first thing so it is just me this morning talking to you hanging out answering any questions you may have I'll rant I'll ran on a few things um I will I will rant on a few things um but definitely here to answer any questions you may have uh let's see you're checking all right we are good on LinkedIn sweet awesome say hey we'd love to hear from you again this

is a networking platform is what I say yo Thomas what's up my gu good to see your brothers good to see you again it's a networking platform right so I'm just a conduit as they say I don't even know what a conduit is a big word first thing in the morning on Tuesday I'm just a conduit so I just want to help you network easier and what I realized is that networking networking is about having something in common that's it that's all networking is right so this show is the thing that I want you to have in common with other people so you know I

want you to comment and say hey so other people can DM you in the DMS right I I talk about networking all the time but the big thing around networking is like Hey listen like you got to go for the ask right go for the ask shoot some DMS off right and so but we're not in the metaverse yet right we're not in the metaverse yet we're not we're not like hanging out in our goggles Apple Vision Pros so the only way I know if you're watching is if you comment so please comment let me know where you tune in from I know Thomas is

coming in from Austin um what else uh want to give a shout out to a few kind of brand Partners we got going on um first and foremost obviously gun IO listen if you're hiring got a pretty cool little platform it makes it easy to hire if you're in the job search listen let us be a tool for you right now we only accept really five plus year Engineers because listen we're just we 're just like any other firm out there companies just call us for senior engineers and so the reason why we don't accept Juniors or sometimes mids is because you won't have anything

right so again um uh but if you're mid plus um and looking for a job or just even want to pick up part-time work or whatever ever go uh use the platform I think it's pretty cool um to be honest with you I want to give a shout out to endorsed AI as well listen endorsed AI if you're a recruiter internal recruiter agency recruiter or even a hiring manager at a startup um typically what happens is when you submit your when resumés come through the only way to sort them is through timestamps right so you either search you either start searching resumés based off of

when they came in first in or last in right well the candidate the perfect candidate for your role could be like wedged like in the middle of everything and so what endorsed AI does is basically they like use Ai and when canids come through your ATS it sorts them based off the relevance so you're not going through timestamps so I think it's a really cool technology I think it's huge um so go check them out if you're in a hiring spot let them know I sent you uh what else um I want to uh also too if you're watching um I want to celebrate you

this morning so if you are watching um I want to uh and something's good happened in your career whether you got promotion or raise or whatever would love to celebrate you this morning um so throw it up in the comments if you're weird about celebrating yourself which you shouldn't be because that's where a lot of people really mess up in the job service don't know how to talk about themselves um uh we need to work on it right but I'm using this as the time for you to talk about yourself let's thr up in the comments you got a raise a title change you deployed

code and it didn't break whatever it is would love to celebrate you this morning Dominic it's great to see you my guy um again for those o f you tuning in we got all the platforms Facebook LinkedIn YouTube Twitter Instagram and Tik Tok going as well so again thank you'all for hanging out this morning all right so I'm going to go and get into kind of some nuts and bolts of things this morning um and we're talk about some job search stuff right um Nick it's great to see you brother really great to see you I'm Gonna Get You On the Pod by the way

just let me have my second kid let my wife have our second kid and let me be a parent again for a little bit and then we'll get you on the Pod I promise um so basically uh some kind of some observations I'm seeing right now I tweeted this just now but listen I think you need to be flexible right right so if you're having a problems finding a job as a junior developer or a developer in general maybe maybe pivot a little bit right maybe looking to QA maybe looking to analyst work maybe looking to customer support right let's say you just graduated boot

camp and let's say you have a great personality let's say people have told you time and time again you have a great personality but you're like no I want to be a developer um then uh I don't know maybe looking to get customer support one of the things I really realized especially kind of growing um uh you know in organizations and seeing how things work is um organizations want people to stay who get the business right so let's say you're a developer and you come in you don't have any existing experience with the business it's going to take some ramp up but if you but

if you started this thing where you started in customer support or marketing and you had a deep understanding of the business or let's say you were account manager and then you eventually went over the it side of things you're GNA have a deeper understanding of the business and that's what people want in today's world right people want a deep understanding of the business you know I I used to as as I started recruiting we I used to be told a lot that lik e companies needed um like if I was recruiting for a Healthcare Company recruiter the company be like we need Healthcare experience I

was like that's dumb I was like that's dumb I was like why what why does somebody need a healthcare experience right they can just code it it's it's very nuanced right and I think all of us who are watching now I see the comments or people listening to this in the future like companies want people who have the knowledge of their business because it makes makes you a better person within the business and so that's what I'm saying if you want to get a job and you are struggling finding a job in Tech right now um start with yeah Dominic comes in here I I've

seen a few people Landing Support Tech writing email marketing roles yeah I mean literally there's so much like just get into the company get into the company get a job get your foothold going and then grow your career again right now and this Market listen I don't know when this is going to end um we have a Discord for gun iio if you're not in it would love to have you there was some chit chatter yesterday in the Discord about like when is this gonna end people were tagging me I was like listen I thought this was GNA end Q one of this year right

I I I thought we'd be out of this by q1 but we're not and so so again like it's one of these things where again you got to be flexible Thomas comes in with a little bit of a a little bit of a brag I love it I got one not suffering but I started my photography again I love it start Studio you're gonna sell some prints hey man that's awesome you got to have hobbies you got to have hobbies 100% I love that for you dude love that love that for you um yeah we yeah we'll we'll we'll definitely get Nick on the show

um another thing I was um you know I Ive I've been thinking about too so I have the podcast unicorn finders right and unicorn finders is a podcast focus on finding startups and Founders doing really cool you probably haven't heard of yet and one of the things what I've realized is that a lot of Founders can't even answer that hey what do you do what does the business do what like what's your background what does the business do a lot of Founders can't answer that so like I want to tell job Seekers especially Junior like if you're struggling with that type of stuff like just

know I talk with founder starting companies that can't answer that now that is alarming 100% that's alarming right I totally get that but I just want to say like listen the about me statement and and and answering that like hey tell me what you do like like that's the first question anybody asks you right like like let's say like Richie let's say let's let's let's say you interview with Richie Richie's like hey tell me about yourself what do you do right and if you can't answer that like succinctly and like concisely within like 90 seconds or so like Richie's vibe in the interview is going

to be like I don't know about this person right and I'm telling you that's the same way for me when I talk with these Founders and I'm like hey what does your company do how do you make money and like they can't even really answer how what what their business does like again I'm telling you it sets the tone for the entire interview for the entire entire conversation right now I struggle with it right I do a lot I I I I tell people I have corporate add right so so so again like really nail your opening kind of business statement if you're a Founder

know what your business does be able to tell me what your business does and how you make money and and the people you serve in 90 seconds and if you're a job Seeker please tell me about your background listen but I will tell you this as a job Seeker most of y'all ramble so the shorter the better I if anything what I would end the that end hey tell me about yourself and you kind of do your thing at the end of that sentence say hey is there anything else you'd like to know right keep that door open keep that conversation going LinkedIn User it's

good to see you don't know who you are but LinkedIn User it's great to see you Reed my guy it's wonderful to see you as well um and Nick out here 100 something that I said um want to talk about a few other things um interviews right now listen um Dan Maul uh tweeted something um on the Twitter sphere a few days ago that obviously went crazy for those of you who didn't who are not on Tech Twitter and deep in Tech Twitter drama Dan Maul posted something Dan Maul's incredible he's been on the show before um around like his Budd got rejected after seven

rounds and basically the discourse around it was like nothing should be a shoe in you know even seven rounds you know and then there was like an argument like well you shouldn't have seven rounds and blah blah blah blah listen I'll just tell you this right now folks be prepared to go through the gauntlet when it comes to the interview process right companies right now and I'm seeing on my end companies right now are super picky right like a lot of companies don't want to use to hire me I've had so many folks that I DM that I'm friends with like hey would love to

staff up your organization they're like ah we got we got plenty of Engineers right now or we have plenty of Engineers do job postings so we have you know plenty of referrals right and then like the the companies that are using me to staff up their organizations right now um they're extremely picky right I mean it's like it's like hey this person's missing this one thing right or this person is not you know it doesn't have it plastered all over their resume and it could be a very minute skill and so if I'm a job Seeker right now kind of a few things one just

prepare yourself to go through a gauntlet of interviews right second thing followup games got to be key right like if you don't hear something from somebody um you know follow up with that recruiter hey is there anything else you need from me is there anything else y ou need for me right you know check in check in check in because again like so so like you know this person who I submitted to a buddy of mine he's like hey this person doesn't have this type of skill set we want to see more of it well it's a skill set that probably isn't going to be

listed a ton in a resume because it's more of like a secondary skill set so now we're having to go back to the candidate and so again quickness speed is key to everything right now like speed is the game is the name of the game right so you know let's say I'm working with Dominic I love this the only thing I want seven rounds of is mini golf yeah 100 per.

so let's say I'm working with Dominic right now and let's say like you know if if if let's say let's say I need something from Dominic and Dominic doesn't get back to me for over 24 hours like like that's that's an opportunity for like Dom to miss out because like they could go with their second choice or their third choice right so again speed is key um want to get a few uh Richie comes back about yourself question if you aren't excited about what you do or your skills it's hard for us to pitch you yeah again like like one of the things that I

hear time and time again from candidates is like oh I don't I I hate bragging right Richie I'm sure you've probably heard this too right I hate bragging or I hate talking about myself listen if you're talking to a recruiter right now you need to talk about yourself like you need to talk about it like like like Riz yourself up as the kid say you got to bring the Riz to recruiters right and so again talk about yourself know how to sell yourself especially the recruiters because the recruiters are the one that are selling you to the companies right we are your middle man middle

woman we need to know everything you do within your career uh Tiana comes in here what do I do I build systems that allows the end user to feel like they want to come back because of UI man love that that's great Tiana love that love that I know that's perfect love that so much uh Reed comes in here if the boss found doesn't know how or why they are in business it's going to be a very tough for the employees yeah 100% right and again like interviewing startups on unicorn finders like me and Dan who who's with me on unicorn finders we C I'm

telling you folks I'm not making this up the first question we ask a Founder when they come on unicorn finders is hey tell me tell us about your company like what are you guys trying to solve like what's the business model tell us about it I'm gonna be honest with you I think 50% of people we bring on the on the Pod and again Dan and I have been doing this for four years now 50% of the guests we have brought on the Pod cannot answer the question of what does your business do consistently right Jason it's good to see you buddy I know I

owe you a text bear with me here so incredibly important so follow up on interviews insane insanely important right now again I tell people all the time the only reason why I got my job at gun is because I followed up a week later right I was told by the CEO hey we want to hire vpa marketing that can that vpa marketing Cate fell through I didn't know that but I knew based off my experience in the recruiting world that things change rapidly week by week so I just followed up with my CEO a week later he goes you're right thank you for following up

we'd love to hire you our VP of marketing candidate fell through if I never would have followed up I probably would have never heard from him until the end of the month or may have never heard from him right so that's incredibly important keep following up uh another thing too listen when it comes to um when it comes to interviewing like be pleasant right I I can't I can't stress this enough right now I know some of y'all are disgruntled right I I I understand it it is it is it has been a grueling last few months few years year and a half really I

get it some people are not happ y with their situation and I understand right some some of my close friends are very unhappy with their situations but people can feel and sense negativity like they just can't and so like when I'm in interview stage I'm sure Richie can Richie can test this too if he's still watching like like when we're in an interview and like we're talking to developers or you know whoever and hiring managers and you're out here kind of grumpy you may have been tired you still may be like angry you know at at your last company we can feel that right we

can feel that and and and and it it it really puts us off we're like ah I don't know again I'm telling you and listen I know this is a lot of pressure y'all I know this is a lot of pressure but right now in this market every single interaction every single interaction is a meaningful connection right when I say meaningful I mean like literally every the way you phrase emails the way you speak the way you smile the way you Converse an interview all that stuff is so incredibly important during the interview uh I had some a lot of comments come in here um

Jason people across the board need to elevator pitch everything learn learn a summary to dialed in to sell yourself yeah 100% right like for me I'm the intersection of content community and sales right so like like I kind of I honed in on that during my last interview job search before I ended up at gunio was like Hey like what do I do I am the inter ction of a Content machine a sales engine and a community Builder right and I basically use all those things to funnel Revenue back to the business that is what I do right and I nailed that and once I

nailed that I could start to see how the interview is interview changes right now right now if you ask me what I do I kind of give you a tongue and- cheek answer like I have corporate add I do a lot of things but that's still the same Community content and revenue um let's see here uh people Jason people don't want to jam with people that c an articulate yeah % 100% um Thomas need to ask uh need to ask any company you work with how many users they have and how your skills um implemented features that posibly affects those users love that love that

as well uh let's see here what else Dominic comes in here I think so many candidates don't want to experience discomfort in the hiring process they're often already an insecure yeah so I think Dominic I'm really glad you brought this up um yeah in reality they need to do the opposite and Riz like maniacs yeah I mean listen interviewing is very uncomfortable and I I am not going to to to say otherwise it is uncomfortable but but but I think when it comes to this stuff when it comes to interviewing and I say this all the time if if a company wants to interview you

they are interested in you right like so so please take that into account right I I understand being nervous you need a job some people been out jobs with months some people have been out with jobs for over a year I get it right I understand it is it is stressful you want the job but I'm telling you like people like people can read the rooms right hiring managers are typically hiring managers because they can read people recruiters are typically recruiters because they can read people right like we want people who are comfortable who are excited who are energetic right and so if you come

in already nervous and tripping over tripping over everything it's not going to be it's not going to be a great Vibe at all um yeah the want should outweigh the discomfort 100 % without a doubt um all right a few other things I'll answer any other questions you have few other things we talked about resumes and Linkedin lately um get involved in the slacker discords again I mean I talk about this all the time slack and discords are going to be where it's at right now um in the job search um there are slack discords and recruiters right recruiters can uncover a lot of roles

slack discords I mean like if I were y'all I w ould just create a slack Discord and with like some some of your buddies or friends like in your area and just crowdsource Source your job search right because here's the deal it actually makes a lot of sense to make friends with people in your skill set because if they're interviewing for roles that you are only one person can get the role so what my thought is and I and and I've talked about this for a long time is I think you should hook up sync up with like five to seven people that are kind

of in your skill set range and essentially just like crowdsource the job search be like hey here are all the jobs I found today I to these why don't you submit to these and again you're like Taylor that's stupid I'm not going to send any jobs to any of my friends to submit here's the crazy thing y'all like there's azillion other submitt going on right now too right so you might as well all help each other um another hack that I like I talk about a lot I haven't talked about lately is the BCC hack so I would find as many recruiters as you enjoy

and tolerate and then put them on a BCC email so let's say you have 10 recruit that you like put all them on a BCC and then email them once a month just updates hey hey friends you know you can you can you know just say hey friend and kind of mask it like it's a BCC email here are updates here's where I'm interviewing here's what I'm thinking here's my resume what are your thoughts right and and that BCC hack again the job search is about covering as much ground at scale as possible right so if you email if you BCC 10 Recruiters on one

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

recruiter is like being married to like 20 women at one time it is very difficult to keep up with everything right so like again followup followup followup is key as well um Brian comes in here types to Hype yourself up for the interview review the company website that jumps out to you is there anything that really yeah I mean like you know uh one of you know I doubt whoop will ever hire me but like one of my dream jobs would be like to work at whoop right I I love the company um I think what they're doing is fascinating athletic space like like I

could tell them hey like whoop I I've always wanted to interview for whoop here's how I use whoop in my day to-day especially at conference speaking right or let's say I I interview at I don't know uh again this is this is if I wasn't kind of in this weird role that I'm at but like if you interview I was actually talking to Dom because uh Dominic's on the show right now like Dominic loves hiking in nature right I told him if I were you I would like Google every single hiking nature company who has open software engineer en rolls be like hey I spend

so much time outside I understand this business um here is here's my experience and why I you know think I can bring you know what I can bring experience to this right um again companies want people who are excited about it um Lawrence it's good to see you my guy it's great to see you also we didn't get a selfie at render I'm kind of bummed about it um LinkedIn user I've been on a team of interviews that I can attest to to the small sometimes Petty things that lead a thumbs down I've seen teams vote down people due to shoe style too prepared too

cocky too dressed up yeah I mean listen this is this is this is a uh Richie recruiters I love that I love that uh pully before it was cool yeah 100% um this is okay this is this could be an entire live session in and of itself you may read this and be like this is stupid this is I can't believe this happens but I'm telling you folks people create so when I do my one-onone coaching sessions people have people I I tell people this in my sessions that people create narratives in their head based off your resume right so if your resume is like

if if if I if like you're if your resume is too condensed and kind of Mumble jumbled my mind's like ah this person may be unorganized and again and again that may not be the case I understand that right and again I know that's bias and stuff and I try to get I try to not have bias but at the end of the day we're human beings bias is going to be formed whether people even realize it or not and so literally I've seen this right I've seen like I haven't seen the shoe style I've seen I I've seen the two prepared before I've definitely

seen two cocky the two dressed up I have not seen that yet so again like like and again I don't want you to read this and go into a tail spin and be like oh my gosh they're gonna critique me just again be aware of what's Happening do your research etc etc uh let's see here what else we got a few more comments um it definitely comes through yeah uh if you love what the product does 100% yeah yeah 100% um I tell people I it's like bank fishing um have more than one pole in the water yeah 100% again the job job searches Tools

in a tool belt poles in the water whatever analogy you want to have um let's see here I inboxed at Le two hiking companies 100% love that Bianca my girl what's going on it's good to see my manager at Microsoft um and I connected over earrings yeah again I mean I'm all about so I'm glad you brought this up Bianca um few things on this one again use something to create relationships right that's why I do this live show every day I don't really do this live show for for I mean the content's important but like also too I just want to give you an

excuse to dm with other people right hey I saw you on Taylo r show like that is a thing when it comes to stuff like this like I know people there's this um I know people in in Nashville that like wear brightly colored glasses or you know I know know you know people who you know wear a certain color jacket for everything right it's like like those things really matter and also too another thing I was doing a a a resume edit a session this this week or last week and one of the things I found interesting and I've really started to talk about is

have a hobby section on your resume and I've talked with a few recruiters too uh Richie if you're still watching curious to hear your thoughts on this I think hobby sections right now are incredibly important like the like the girl I was editing her res for the other day she had sailing you don't really see sailing anymore on on your resume and so for me I was like oh my gosh you L sing we got into a whole conversation about it so again I love what Bianca said here use anything to build relationship and connections with because then Bianca got off probably the interview and

then she probably if she did could have messaged the manre on LinkedIn be like hey it was great chatting with you again this is earring girl I hope to hear from you soon right and so now Bianca is earring girl now right yeah certain Hawaiian shirts yeah 100% um Brian beards yeah you do have a great beard have a fantastic beard um which goes you know again all this stuff goes a very very long way Speaking of beards I was at um gunio uh a few a few of us spoke at an engineering leader meet up in Vancouver virtually we did not go there which

we did but virtually and um one of the guys had like a crazy mustache and we were chitchatting beforehand and he talked about how like um he does like beard competition type stuff and uh and so then I was like oh well one of my guys does it too and I showed him my contact he's like oh I know that guy so again we immediately hit it off um Richie comes in here goes I think as long as i t's not key real estate on the resume not something uh yeah yeah it could yeah 100 per.

I mean again I'm I'm I'm just talking about um uh I'm I'm just talking about like just like once in line sentence not ask you to do a lot of this stuff um let's see here definitely I made a cute thank you yeah again yeah often do well yeah 100% Bianca you're fantastic I I I don't doubt you do well interviewing with anybody um awesome Alex it's great to see you thanks again uh for tuning in appreciate it um all right any other questions um before we wrap up here again kind of some key things we talked about today B um um uh you know

again be energetic in the interview process um the small things matter right now um you know make sure that you uh use anything in the interview process to connect with the other person um what else uh what else do we talk about today uh I think that's I think that's about or be prepared to go through a ton of interviews right right now it's just it's just uh speed responsiveness is key right we have a lot of topics today a lot of topics today so again I appreciate y'all hanging out with me say that's it um hopefully you got something out of this if you

like this episode please share it I feel like this could be a resource for a lot of people again check out gun iio if you're on the job search or hiring um would love to help you there yes if anyone is going to Scenic City Summit this Friday hit me up that's in chat noua spoke there a few times Alex any good tips for faking high energy conference when you get a tough question you know here's the deal I faking high energy is kind of an interesting thing to say because like I fake stuff sometimes too because I'm a definitely an introvert um but like

for me when it comes to just be curious right I think one thing when it comes to interviewing is if you get a tough question and you don't know it be inquisitive be like Hey listen love this question I have not used this before I have not done this before I've done something like this before here's what I've done is that close right I'm I'm not really big in in faking anything um but when it comes to having a tough question ask questions be engaged try to like be extremely interested in trying to find a solution to the tough question which will come across is

not necessarily high energy but it'll come across as as very interested which is what a lot of companies want to do right now so hopefully that answers your question I appreciate youall today so tomorrow so the rest of the week so again to recap uh this is the last week of guidance counsel 2.0's probably for a month month and a half um I have not taken off so I had my daughter four years ago I started guidance counselor 2.0 four years ago basically when she was born I have not taken really any substantial time off I'm going to be shutting it down for about 30

to 45 days um starting next week so tomorrow we have Matt Walsh Matt Walsh is a recruiter extraordinaire he and I engage each other a ton on um on Twitter so we're g to talk about that um and then uh and then Thursday we have a mental health startup coming on unicorn finders um oh Alex that's awesome aome man yeah mine uh my baby boy is due July 4th so uh look at us having kids at the same time almost the same time so Thursday unicorn finders great mental health startup therapy um can't wait to share uh uh that one with you and then Friday

we'll be back Just Me Myself and I so again appreciate you all we'll see