how to navigate internal recruiters w/ principal recruiter aaron harmon

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

all righty we're live so uh it takes like a minute to two for people to tune in uh But for those of you who are tuning in, Aaron's already on his second cup of cold brew. So Aaron, I have to ask, do you have a spot in Chattanooga you go to? Like, do you have a good coffee shop anywhere? I do. I do. Unfortunately, I don't live near any of the ones downtown, but there is one called Drip. It's called Drip Kitchen and Coffee. It's family owned. They got a couple of locations. It's about ten minutes in the house. There you go. Can't make it there.

It's... That's so funny because literally this is from a coffee shop called Drips near my house. Yeah, I go with the old cold brew Stoke. Yeah, Stoke. They sponsor Wrexham. Really? Yeah. That's cool. I'm obviously a big fan of documentaries based off all the content we put out, every documentary based. Yeah, they are the stadium sponsor for Welcome to Wrexham, or like Wrexham's football, so soccer. I still can bulk at Costco. I love it. Dude, Costco. I'll tell you this. Shout out Costco Hendersonville. They had some banging samples this weekend. It was great. It's basically the closest thing we have to like a playground. Pretty much.

Like an adult playground. Yeah. So I don't know. Good morning. We do have some people. Yeah, it's early. Shout out. So shout out to Aaron. Shout out to Aaron for making this happen. Aaron is a busy man. Honestly, I am grateful that he took time to do this, even though it's early. I think it's going to be great content. But Aaron is a busy man. So we had to do this an hour early because of Aaron's meeting schedule. So Aaron, thank you, my friend. I appreciate you. I appreciate the invite. For those of you tuning in, welcome. um uh to guidance counselor two point oh uh midweek edition um I'm gonna be honest with you I'm tired um and Aaron's a little under caffeinated as well still even as he's on second cup so we're gonna get through this together um but I think it's gonna be a great conversation today so um I've I met Aaron through LinkedIn.

I really liked the, really liked the content he was putting out on LinkedIn. Aaron's got, Aaron's one of those guys. He'll never say it. Aaron's an influencer on LinkedIn and he'll never say it, but I've never seen a recruiter get as many comments and engagement on a, on a post. And so he is yeah, definitely message him and say, Hey, I am, I'm a link. Great to see you LinkedIn influencer. Because that is who you are. You're a LinkedIn influencer. And so this will be a good conversation today about really how to navigate internal recruiters, right? I think there's a lot of questions. We're coming at it from an agency side.

But even like we were backstage, and we'll get to it here in a minute, like Aaron even had some contrasting thoughts and contradicting thoughts to what we talk about, right? About resume templates and whatnot. So it's going to be a great conversation today. So again, if you are tuning in, welcome. know it's a little bit early time i want to get through some housekeeping things as always first off app right listen i'm an app right hero love the dev rel team at app right um i want to say i love the product but i don't know how to code um but i think it's good um so you should check it out that is my sales pitch i think it's good So you should check it out.

But Jason Torres, my business partner, is a upright hero as well. So go check them out. Tell them a talk boy sent you also to listen. We got a lot going on in the tort community. One of the things that Aaron and I were talking about backstage is just the importance of events getting out from behind your computer. So we got a lot of things happening. So go check out Torque.community. We got a brand new refresh, repaint. The page is refreshed. It's pretty. Let's just say that. It's pretty. So go check it out. It's got testimonials. It's got links to everything. So if you have not checked it out, go check out Torque.community.

Also, listen, when I do go live with guests, um, like Aaron and, uh, you want to be kept a loop, shoot me, uh, shoot it, shoot me a text, just say live. Um, it'll automatically lump you in. Um, and I shoot this text out every day, um, to folks. So if you don't want to miss it or you just want to be kept up to date, definitely, uh, definitely join, uh, join this texting community. Uh, what else? I think that's it. All right. So Aaron, let's, uh, let's give the people what they want, man. Who are you? What do you do? And we'll go from there.

Yeah. So my name is Aaron Harmon. I've been recruiting almost ten years now, which is crazy to think that's crazy. And then we're getting old. Yeah, we are in the same breath, though. I feel like, you know, there's I feel like I still don't know how to do a lot of things. Right. So there's a lot to learn left in the recruiting industry. It's one of the it's a weird industry to be in because you can do it for a long time and still learn every single day. Yeah. New rec or new. new individual that has a different mindset or a different tactic on things, you're always learning.

So that's something that I like about it the most. But yeah, I've been starting the agency side. Who did you start with on the agency side? Aerotech. I didn't even know that. Aerotech. Nice. Nice. I was there five years. Nice. Okay. There you go. yeah so stuck with recruiting the whole time you know i think the agency general agency push is like hey recruit and then get into sales and i was like no no i i like recruiting i want to get good at this right so yeah and yeah stuck with that learned a bunch i learned a little bit about a lot of industries i did and did not like as far as recruiting goes and what i what i enjoyed and what i did not enjoy what I was good at.

Right. So that propelled me to get into the internal side, which, um, is a whole different beast in itself. Small company, a big company, you know, whatever industry it is, it's just the, the core functions the same, but it's, it's a different animal. Yeah. And you were at Tesla for a bit. Yeah. Uh, what, what, what, what did you, what type of roles did you hire at Tesla? Um, A little bit of everything. So I was hired to do battery cell manufacturing and never touched it. Battery cell manufacturing. Never touched it once. I got hired. I think someone went on leave. I filled in for something and then I ended up owning that.

And then Somebody would call our boss. Shout out, Kevin. Great guy. Miss working with him all the time. But they would call him and say, hey, we need extra help. And then me and a couple of other people on our team were this kind of like, I kind of call it like a cleanup crew. And, you know, fill surge racks or fill the kind of hard to fill racks that were bogging their teams down. And then we would. own those departments for those types of roles. So we have this like mixed bag of positions from I mean, I was hiring parts runners and then I was hiring crash test technicians, right?

Doing like full blown crash tests, right? So it was everything under the sun, which might've been to my demise there, right? Because I wasn't a specialized recruiter, I was a generalist, right? But I think that generalist mindset got me to where I am now. So I'm very appreciative of that experience. I love it. And then where are you at now and kind of what do you focus on? Yeah, so I'm with PDW Performance Drone Works out of Huntsville, Alabama. We build small unmanned systems for the military, heavily designed and engineered for the military. So I am a team of one currently, as far as recruiting goes, everything under the sun.

Corporate manufacturing, engineering products. How many people do you think you've extended offers out to at this point? This year, over a hundred. I had a conversation. I think we have some pretty stiff hiring goals for the next five years, which it'll be a pretty good trajectory. Not a huge spike, but a very gradual and hiring curve. So I'm looking forward to it. It's cool to see a lot of the new faces. I'm remote, but I go down there quite often. And I can go down there as a new person, right? Like, Hey, who is that? You know? And it's like, it's someone that, you know, I might've talked to two or three months ago and I forgot what they looked like or things like that.

Right. So it's so cool seeing the new faces and we're in the new building now too. So we've been in a new building since July first and we're really proud of that too. That's awesome. Yeah. I saw the video. I saw a nice little video. I think you reposted it, Aaron. So to let you know, Aaron and I, uh, you know, we also, your dad, your dad, how many kids you got again? Two. It sounds like our daughters are about the same. Aaron and I always message each other on Instagram, kind of dad-daughter type content. Shout out to you for... balance setting out a hundred offer letters and also balancing kids as well man I mean it's it's uh it's a challenge yeah I don't get in the whole personal stuff on LinkedIn um like I'm a pretty private person but yeah people only realize I have kids sometimes I'm like yeah I'm married I've been my wife for almost fifteen years that's awesome uh got got two little ones got a dog um yeah and then you do golf sometimes right you and i've messaged about golf a little bit whenever you have any time yeah yeah i do enjoy golf my dad's a lifelong golfer got me into it i worked at a golf course did you really yeah yeah that's awesome i used to watch the golf carts man i picked the range that's awesome i'm actually my first official when i say official like i had to pay for it i made my first official golf scramble on monday Oh yeah.

So like it's me and three guys, um, they're actually from my church and, uh, we're gonna, we're gonna all, uh, go out there and, uh, you know, try to hit the ball around the, the, the course. So about a hundred balls, I plan on losing all of them. So it's gonna be great. Yeah. It's gonna be great. Don't, don't buy the expensive ones. I'll tell you. No, I'm, I did. I I'm doing the refurbished ones. Um, uh, cause I don't have the funds for that. All right. So let's just start out, dude. Let me give you kind of a softball question and then we can kind of chip away at it.

Where are job seekers really missing the mark right now in your eyes when it comes to the job search? I don't think people fully read job descriptions. And I say that with a grain of salt because some job descriptions are just not that great or they're very vague. So it's not the fault of the... of the applicant or the job seeker because sometimes job descriptions are just trash and that's the reality of it. But when the job description has requirements explicitly stated and you don't meet those requirements or you're not in the industry of what this role is, the the, I guess, desire to apply shouldn't be there, right?

But here we are, in twenty-five, we still get people that work in non-adjacent industries that don't meet any of the qualifications that are applying, which is great. I love everyone shooting their shot, but it's unrealistic sometimes. And, and, and so let me ask you this. Yeah. And Jeff, uh, so I said it. So Aaron's Aaron's a busy guy. We had to work around his meeting schedule. So that's why we're early. So, so Aaron, I, this is the, this is the morning morning show that we're both trying to wake up on. Um, so, uh, so let me ask you this. How, how do we, how we, AKA the job seeker, how do they portray?

So one of the things that we teach a lot within the torque community, we're doing resume reviews today, by the way, for anybody who's watching, um, now in the future we're doing our resume views this afternoon in the torque discord you know one thing we always say and one thing i'm really big on is having kind of this top part of your resume what i call the professional summary right where it's like you're kind of hitting um the must-haves the nice tabs of of of the job description so it's kind of laid out really easy to you is there is is that a good way is there other ways that you want to see like hey here here is a here's how I can't has exactly what's in the job description.

Like, how do you like a resume to, to, to look? Yeah. So I, I definitely don't recommend tailoring your resume to every single rec. Right. Um, every single job posting, right. You know, you can specialize and you can edit some certain things. Like for example, like if you're a software engineer and it's like hey you have to have experience with c and c plus plus right that's like must have it that's what they use and it's stayed in the job description and you have c plus plus listed one time on your resume at the very bottom probably would probably put at the top right yeah so yeah you can you can again, with a good job description that has clear requirements, you can create a little bit of an edit there and appeal to what the job description says.

Now, as you and I both know, every recruiter has their own preferences, right? Whether they want to say it or not, recruiters have preferences. i don't typically care on format right like you know which is crazy to think about like knowing you because you and i've exchanged some texts like you're kind of like me we're both kind of grumpy um and you know we both have very strong opinions the fact that you don't really dig into to format is kind of wild to me Yeah, yeah. You can literally hit Control-F and find the keyword you're looking for, right? Okay, so I want to highlight that.

Easy. I want to highlight that because I talk about it, and people, I'm sure, are tired of me talking about it, but most recruiters just Control-F. I mean, that's how I started. I didn't know anything about anything, and I was just out here Control-F-ing skill sets so it's like and listen whether you like it or not if a recruiter doesn't know the in and outs of java and you have job and you have spring boot on your resume but not the word java a lot of times oh so true yeah you you could get rejected so talk about the importance of the control f and just actually just when i say littering that's like a bad term but like making sure your resume has the skills.

Yeah. So that's the thing, you know, I, to go back to what you were saying, the recruiter should know enough about the rec to be able to find other keywords. Right. So like, for example, like if we're looking for someone who has QML background, I type in QML, it's not on there. hey, I'm not gonna just throw the resume in the trash. I'm gonna go through it, right? Because this person has been a software developer for the last ten years. They've probably touched it somewhere. Let's see the industries they've worked with. Let's see the platforms they've worked on, right? And do another screen through it.

That just gets the control F and the keyword search and gets me started with the right section of the resume, and then I can look through everything else. I don't want to look through the whole resume to find what I'm looking for. I want to find that first and then see the full picture after the fact. seven seconds, thirty seconds, ninety seconds. LinkedIn will tell you forty different time frames someone spends on a resume. But if the resume is good, I'm going to look at it. Right. If it if it matches what we need and it's the correct industry, the correct skill sets, I'm going to spend as much time as I need to to make sure that I'm not missing something because I'm not an expert.

Right. Like I'm not the expert in manufacturing, engineering or or product development, right? But I know enough about it to know what we're looking for and what fits well with the company. So if it takes any extra time to find that, I'm going to invest at that to make sure we're not missing anyone. And I'm not doing anybody a disservice by just looking for a keyword. Yeah, absolutely. Do you think that's the difference between agency and internal recruiting? Because agency, man, like if you don't got it, like we just move on. Yes and no. It depends the format of the agency, right? So for example, if you're working for a very specialized headhunter where it's like, hey, I just work in A, B and C industries, as you were saying, like you used to focus on three buckets, right?

Whereas the bigger legacy staffing companies, you can submit candidates to other account managers, right? So if you find someone that's really good, you're like, hey, this doesn't fit my rec, but it might be good for somebody else's rec. They should be talking to that person because You know, when it comes to commissions, as long as a recruiter is willing to direct, the account manager is happy. You know what I mean? Yeah. So they should take that extra time to cross recruit. Yeah, absolutely. That isn't always the case and not always able to do that if there's no recs. Right. No recs for it. Then, as you said, hey, we have to move on.

Right. Because we can't we can't help everybody. And that's just the reality of hiring. yeah absolutely what jason my co-worker uh asking good question here because again we do we do resume reviews all the time how do you know it's good like how do you know because like you're saying the format doesn't matter but then you're also saying you look at things like like where do your eyes go i think that's a great question like like when you open up a resume where are you looking first i'm looking a quick summary right you know it The quick summary is what I look at, but if it's, if it's the buzzwords, the multifaceted thought leadership, you get great, great things to be right.

But if it's full of filler words and it doesn't really tell me who you are, I'm going to go right to your experience. i'm looking at titles i'm looking at companies if if i know the company great if i don't i'm looking it up looking at tenure real quick right you know things and i'll start with that tenure is not a deal breaker contract roles are so popular now yeah it was crazy when i started in like nobody wanted contract nobody no If you're a contract person, it's because, oh, no one wants to hire you. Well, now people want that contract because they want the diverse portfolio of work.

So what I recommend, though, is if you're doing contract work, write contract, right? The best advice I tell people when creating a resume, answer questions before they have to be asked. So if you're like, ah, like, I don't know if I should put, if I was laid off or like, if it was like a reduction in four, so if it was contract, put it on there, right? Like if it's a short-term thing and you did a couple of jobs here and there, write contract, write laid off due to budget cuts, right? Answer those questions. Cause people could be like, oh, this person's a job hopper based on tenure alone.

And not even look at, not look at the content of the resume because of the tenure. And that's unfortunate that it happens. But if you can answer those questions and address those quote unquote red flags, yourself and own it, say, Hey, like, this is, this is my story. This is what I was doing. I love it. Then that typically can help. now but again I'm looking at tenure I'm looking at is it easy to read please please use bullets that's all I say like thank you please like people like they write massive paragraphs it's like dude nobody reads in paragraphs anymore yeah yeah so um I think Jason has a another comment down at the bottom I can't read it there you go immediate no I don't know if I have an immediate note unless they just don't meet the requirements.

So if someone worked, let's just say in hospitality, they worked at the hotel chain, they were GM or they worked supervisor of restaurant or housekeeping, and they're applying to a warehouse management role. They're two different industries, the operations side, the management side, team leadership time, all that translates, but there's no direct relation to the industry and the new role right now. That's where, in my opinion, I don't ever I'm never going to say you have to create a cover letter. But if you're changing industries, if you're going from, let's just say the hospitality piece to a logistics type of industry and you have and you know you have that kind of cross relatable skill set that can match, write that cover letter, explain yourself.

Right. Because if I look at it, I'm like, well, this person doesn't meet any of the requirements, but they have a cover letter. I'm going to read it real quick. Okay. Now, if there's no cover letter, Hey, I don't know what you're, there's no context. Exactly. Yeah. So that's why I'm never going to say it's a requirement, but if you are changing industries, if you're wanting to kind of get your feet wet and do a new industry or do something just differently in the past, that's where I see the benefit of a cover letter. That being said, The day and age we are in now, the opportunity to change industries or change job scope is very difficult because you have this pool of candidates that meet all of the requirements already.

And then there's someone that meets ten percent, right? But they have the aptitude and the ability. But you're going up against candidates that maybe already have five years of experience because there's so many layoffs and everyone's looking for work. Again, it happens. I see it all the time. People, you know, going from X to Y and it's possible, but the opportunities are far fewer now. Absolutely. Jeff, Jeff, expand on this. Is this a new normal and what part? Expand on that real quick for us. Let me. So interesting thought about cover letters. Right. Because, you know, we get we get that question a lot from an agency side.

I've always said I've never dealt with cover letters because your agency recruiter is kind of your cover letter. Yeah. Right. They take the time to meet with you. They take the time to craft your submission to the client. They kind of do a lot of the selling for you. But I think when you're going internal, I think you bring up an interesting thing that I think cover letters are good for career switchers. Do you think cover letters are good also for like somebody who's been in the industry a lot or not really? It can be, you know, so it's like, for example, if someone's been in, let's just say, an engineering manager role, right, and they're applying to an individual contributor position, then that's when they can say, hey, in my last five years of being a manager, I was also a player coach, right?

So I was in the weeds. I was spending fifty percent of my day coding, programming, whatever it may be, and explain that in the cover letter. Because someone can see that and say, oh, their manager, it isn't a good fit, right? Well, this person managed maybe a team of two, team of three, right? When their main function was doing rather than leading. That's when you can explain that. Yeah. And I'm not sure what Jeff was referring to as far as- No, no, Jeff, just referring to the time. No, Jeff, this is just a one-off. This is just a one-off. This is just a one-off. Yeah, yeah.

And again, like we discussed backstage, I am a team of one at one company of thousands of companies in the US, right?

So there are so many- ways to be seen and to be heard this is just my my experience right so yeah yeah i follow that instagram he's a he's a barbecue guy and he always says i'm gonna do this how i like doing it yeah you do it how you like doing it right yeah so yeah that's that that's kind of where i where i stand with it right there's a million ways to recruit there's a lot of wrong ways but there's a lot of right ways to yes yes this is what works for i always say the same thing this is just this is

my career what's worked for me doesn't necessarily um doesn't mean it's like the golden standard let me ask one of the things that jason i talk a lot about in our resume reviews we do in our torque discord is um we do uh we we really try to harp on company description if it's not a big company and i think it kind of lines up to what you're saying like if i'm working for another drone company that you haven't worked for um I would put that in your resume because then you can see, oh, I didn't know what this company was off the rip, but

the fact that you talked, you said, hey, it's like a two million in revenue, blah, blah, blah company that allows more context to your resume.

Thoughts on that? Yeah. So my resume has the employer name is hyperlinked to the website of the employer. OK, cool. So I know that. So I'd say information security thing like shouldn't click links that you don't know that, you know, they're they're sourced from. So that I after I did it, I was like, probably, you know, wasn't a good thing because it could be flagged by your information security. Now I know now that I know more about that. So the perks of being a generalist but i do think um you know a quick you know here's the website or you know the industry or style of company right like agency like so for example like we have a marketing role and someone worked for a company i look it up i can't find it well it's because it's a marketing agency right they they work on behalf of hundreds of companies right correct but i didn't know that right so going back to the time piece, like not every recruiter is going to take that time to go find out what this company is.

So you got to try to give it to everybody. Like in your resume, you can, you have to assume that someone reading your resume doesn't know what you do. Right. So now, for example, if it's, you know, an adjacent, an industry adjacent role, the recruiter should be educated enough and should have their own done their own research and know their competitors know the market. Right. But the, hyperlink or a quick you know this is an automotive company a tier one automotive supplier or you know iso certified clean room environment right all those things can be added it's not a requirement but again for the smaller companies it does help the recruiters out because again it answers the questions before they have to be asked Yep, absolutely.

I want to, and Jason comments right here, in corporate, your cover letter will rarely ever get read. Again, like, yes, probably, right? And again, I think it's a mixed bag. I think I would say just have one ready to go, right? And again, I think, again, it goes back to, it's like what Aaron just said, it the the buzzwords fill like not the buzzwords the filler words have got to go right i think the biggest issue i see with cover letters is it's just riddled with i'm a great communicator i'm a great leader i am passionate about the industry it's like that's cool and all but like i want to know like what you've done and how it relates to this opportunity Yeah, yeah, you know, in chat GPT and in grok and all that stuff like that, you know, there's they all look the same.

They all sound the same, right? So like there's a portion of our application where you can basically copy and paste the cover letter by people that just type out a few sentences. Yeah, yeah, I don't copy long. Exactly. Give me your elevator pitch that I can read in thirty seconds. If you want to do that again, I'm never going to require that. But if you want to write two or three sentences and I can check it real quick, it's literally right below the resume in the ATS. So it's not like it's a separate function that has to be done outside of the resume review. that can be very impactful if you want to do it and and to jason's point sometimes people just don't don't have the time to look through resumes i'm sorry look through cover letters because of the workload or the applicants that they have but in my opinion if you have a hundred applicants and they all they're all you know on part of what you're looking for see who wanted to share a little bit about themselves right see if you can if you can differentiate one from the other and that cover letter could be the differentiator In some situations.

Absolutely. I want to I want to get into I want to start talking a little bit about like communication strategy outreach for job seekers. Right. I'm sure you get a lot of DMs on LinkedIn. You sent me some. Yeah. You sent me emails. Right. You screenshotted emails to me. what, how, how do you, how can somebody stand out? How do you like to be approached? What do you think some best practices are? Like if I really want to work at PDW and I've submitted my resume a few times and I haven't heard from you, how, how do you want to be approached? Cause I think this is where I think, you know, one of the things we consistently preach in the tort community is like, Hey, you got to do outreach.

You got to do outreach, et cetera, et cetera. but like what's a tactful way to do outreach? So I'm, it depends on the day, right? I'm being honest. Like there's, there's days where I have set aside for sourcing the days where I've set aside for meetings and interviews. Right. So if I'm going to, if I'm in a day where I'm back to back meetings and interviews, I'm not checking my LinkedIn. I'm not, I'm checking the next day. Right. It's your point. It can get back. It can get backlogged pretty well, pretty easily. So yeah, If you're going to do outreach on LinkedIn, my best advice is keep it short.

Hey, this is my name. I applied to these positions in the past. Here's my resume of my contact information. Would love to chat with you about this position. If you're not the recruiter, could you send me who is right? It's short, sweet. It's direct. It's this my resume. This is what I applied for. Can you help me? If not, can you help? Can you help me find who can't help me? Yeah. The five paragraph email about your educational background that's just not where you were born what time you were born what yeah like that's not required on a first message so that's why i like short and sweet and direct now also a little bit of humility right like hey like you know you can say like i've applied three times i haven't heard back from anybody like that's gonna catch my attention like nobody should apply to three to four jobs and never hear back from someone right so if i see that like be honest right don't don't be rude and be disrespectful but say hey like i've applied a couple times haven't heard from anyone can you look into this for me absolutely hey send me send me your email address and i can look you up in our system right yeah um The.

LinkedIn to me seems to be the best way to find recruiters still because it's so searchable, so visible, right? You can look at, I can go to someone's page, look at all of their post history and see what they post about, what kind of roles they post, the industries that they support, if they're agency recruiters, you can do all that yourself, right? So on the job seeker side, I would like to empower job seekers to do a little bit of research on the recruiters. to find out who they should talk to, at least get a headstart and narrow the funnel down. Now that same advice can be given to recruiters when they're doing outreach too.

Hey, narrow the funnel down. Don't just spray and pray. Outreach matches is looking for candidates too. So it goes both ways. Well, a lot of times too, you can see who, so I did a quick call yesterday. It was a referral. It was a developer wanting to get into recruiting. So we talked about being a sourcer. And what did that look like? And i quickly showed him on linkedin if you go to jobs and type in sorcerer you can see all the jobs posted and you can all usually see who's posted the job yeah right and so like one of the strategies i said is hey like i would mess this person and just be like hey i saw you had a sorcerer posted i'm trying to get into recruiting do you do you have any thoughts for me i've been a developer do you think i should post like like like i i think even kind of going to maybe even a job poster right like You know, like if I were to see you posted, I'm going to make like a I don't know, drone developer.

That's not a thing, but like embedded engineer, right? I like, do you think could be a good tax? Like, Hey Aaron, I saw where you posted an embedded engineer role. I have these skills. You know, I guess this doesn't make much sense. Like, should I apply? You're probably going to say obviously yes, but like, I guess, I guess it goes back to saying like, Hey, maybe I've applied three times to an embedded engineer role. and I have these skills listed in a job description, where do you think I'm missing the mark? I'm sure you're probably gonna be like, oh shoot, like this person has applied three times and it looks like they have the skills.

You're probably gonna help them out because of it. Yeah. And I'll be the person to say like recruiters, make mistakes like flat out, you know? Yeah, we're humans. So many of the recruiting teams since twenty twenty two until now are lean teams, right? So they'll have fifteen, twenty, thirty recs. They'll have a hundred applicants depending on the role, right? I can post one rec and get two applicants, post another one and I get thirty, right? So yeah, no rhyme or reason to it, but we do make mistakes. So like, for example, you know, if this person has the requirements right and that message could could be like hey i have you know abc experience that isn't on my resume but it actually applies i'm like okay my mind like that that could have been a cover letter right again if or better yet put it on the resume put it on the resume right if if you meet the requirements for the role but your the experience that meets those requirements is not listed on the resume it's hard for recruiters to identify that because we don't have the going back to the lean teams topic we don't have the ability to call everyone it's just not we don't have time of the day to talk to every single applicant and that's sad because i think everyone should get a shot to be seen and be recognized but the reality is we don't have the the bandwidth to do so when we have x amount of wrecks open and you know like Let's just break it down.

Say a twenty racks open. You have three candidates, two or three candidates in play for each rack. That's forty to sixty candidates that you are managing at one given time. And then you're dealing with more inbound applicants, more in outreach. It's it's it's a lot. I don't think people understand the volume of people that recruiters have to keep in touch with and manage. which is why I'm so big on follow-up, right? So it's like, you know, one of the things that I've talked to a lot of people about is like, Following up with me three or four times is not annoying. The way you're framing the follow up and your wording can be annoying.

Yeah. Right. So it's like I think self-deprecation goes a long way. Right. So like I always tell people there's there's three immediate follow up messages that I would send the first like like so let's say I was job seeking and I was trying to get to you be like, hey, Aaron. Listen, submitted my resume. I haven't heard anything. Here's where I'm a fit. You know, let me know if I'm off base, whatever. Second follow up. Hey, Aaron, listen, I know you're crazy busy, right? Just want to follow up again. Last one. Hey, Aaron, listen, I know I'm borderline being annoying at this point, but I just want to close the loop on this.

That's three messages. And I'm pretty confident that you wouldn't find those annoying because of the tone of them. It's usually the tone of the messages that really turns us off. Yeah, you know, and and I think that's a good tactic, right? Because it's like, hey, I'm persistent, I'm confident, but I'm I'm also aware, realistic and aware, aware of the situation at hand. So I like to follow up and I've even used this tactic, right? Like if I'm talking to somebody, I know I'm backed about like I have, I think eight interviews today scheduled. Right. Which is awesome. I love it. Like no complaint with that whatsoever.

I touch a lot of conversations. I'm like, give me forty eight hours to get back from the team. Yeah. Give me forty eight to seventy two hours to hear back, get get feedback, so on and so forth. If you don't hear from me by Friday, call me. Yeah. Like, yeah, it gives them. I guess power, right, authority. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You don't hear from me. I need you to call me because I could get busy. I could be out sick. You know, I could get pulled to a different different strategy or a different different hiring initiative. Right. This you can put on the back burner.

So call me you have my phone number you can text me like because all my first interactions are phone calls you have my you have my my cell phone number you can text me you can email me all my initial Outreach is email right so you have three ways to contact me yeah I don't mind that right um I will say if you have direct contact to your recruiter and you're texting them or calling them leave a voicemail with your name I get all the time, hey, checking in on this position. I have to look up in the ATS who this is, right? And you can search my phone number.

It's easy to do. But if you're like, hey, this is John Smith. We talked last week about the software role. Checking in. Great. I immediately know who that is, right? Or the voicemail from the random phone number that we talked to the whole time. We're always making outbound calls. We don't always save phone numbers. So we do outreach. You do reach out to a recruiter with their direct line of contact. on phone via phone leave voicemail or message with your name and ideally the role that you spoke about right just so the recruiter can get a quick shot of who who's reaching out to them yeah uh so i i have i have this trick i want to bounce it off for you to make sure that it's that it's a good trick um When it comes to agency side, I would say this doesn't quite work for an internal side because you guys are just so reactive.

But I call it the BCC trick. There's no clever name to this. So what I would do if I was a job seeker, and let's say I spoke to ten recruiters, agency recruiters, right? Not Aaron. More on Ronstadt and Tork and yada, yada, yada. And let's say there's like ten or five. Let's just say five recruiters I like. I would email them. once a month and BCC all of them and just refresh their memory on who you are, what you're looking for to cover more ground. Because there was multiple times when I was recruiting agency, and I'm sure you probably dealt with this, where agency recruiters have their favorite candidates.

We just have our favorite candidates. We work with you a lot. We know you're good. There was one candidate in Nashville. His name was Ben, and I was working on this role, and I forgot about him. He was a perfect fit. He got called by another recruiter and he messaged me. He goes, hey, I got called by this role. Are you working on it? I'd like to work with you. And I forgot him. So I called the BCC just to stay on top of everybody's mind. Thoughts on that? I like it on the agency side especially, right? Because the agency side, you can, depending on the agency model, they can have a very wide array of rec club and clients, right?

So we can't, now I will say that that's when it gets into the system side, right? So like, you should have a portion of the ATS or an Excel of your pipeline candidates that are your first. I hear my first ten people I'm going to call for this skill set, for this skill set, for this skill set. Right. I will put on the recruiter to have the the organization side but i also understand the real the reality of it is that it's chaos you know agency is very speed to market um and you might have someone on the top of your mind you're going to call first that isn't on that list right that you talked to yesterday yeah i forget about the person you talked to a few months ago that was a really good fit like ben but the the check ins, like again, the tone, the the demeanor of it is can go a long way.

Yeah. So I like it. I like being followed up with. I have no issue with someone checking in like, hey, I applied. I spoke. I I'm no, no lie. Yesterday we had someone email me, interviewed with us a few months back, wasn't selected and was like, hey, I've been thinking about it ever since. Like, I would love a second shot. Yeah. um I keep thinking about you guys I'm looking for work can we have another conversation we'll talk to him today right so even if you reject it right like even if you're told no it's not a no forever right unless you do something egregious right and you you know really bomb the interview which again the reality of it does happen but the follow-up you know with the recruiter especially if you have the email address a phone number like it's okay to do that it's the recruiter's job to be accessible to the candidates that they're working with, right?

Now, there's a lot of back and forth of what the recruiter's role is. Do we work for the client? Do we work for our company? Do we work for the candidate? It's all of the above. It's tough. I'm telling you, being a recruiter sucks. It's hard. It doesn't suck. Let me rephrase that. It's just hard. It's just hard. You have to play both sides of the fence. You have to advocate for the company or the client that you're supporting. You have to advocate for the candidate as well. Doing that is a very fine line. do you um do you like i i think one of the issues um that i consistently saw is the lack of um not motivation the lack of like intensity with follow-up like if i reach out to you for an interview and it's an interview for a job i expect for you to get back to me within the next hour And I feel like people – I don't know if you're seeing that right now with this market.

Maybe people jump on a little bit more. But also, too, like when you finish an interview with a recruiter, like I'm sure you probably – like if a candidate interviews, they email you immediately after and be like, hey, Aaron, I thought the interview went well. Maybe I missed here. So that way you can go – like I just – There's two things here. Let's talk about just speed to follow up. Are you dealing with that? Do you deal with candidates who you reach out to and then you don't hear from for hours? I will hear from people for weeks sometimes. Are you serious? I will say that the folks that are serious about the job search and that are truly looking for a new role, they have their notifications set up on LinkedIn.

They have notifications set up on their email. They're getting dings when they're getting text messages, right? Speeds everything right now. Things are not muted, right, when you're looking for a job. They shouldn't be, in my opinion, right? Now, there has to be a healthy boundary. Don't look for a job send up sundown every day, like give yourself a mental break. Sure, you need it. I was in that situation not long ago. Yeah, wear yourself out job searching. That is difficult. I do empathize with the job seekers looking for new roles right now. But the speed does help. Now I will say, you know, the first applicant, even the first applicant, if you're not qualified as the tenth applicant, it doesn't help you, right?

But when, to your point, if I reach out to you and like, let's say I go through, I'm looking for a mechanical engineer, just random, random title here. I send five outreach messages to connect and I send an automated booking link. And the first four people book the next day and that person books two weeks out. Right. Yeah. You can't do that. My, my next email to that person two weeks out saying, Hey, thank you for booking. Appreciate the quick response. If you become available anytime sooner, please let me know. Sometimes they don't, they don't know that, that we need somebody right now. It could be, you know, on the government contracting side, a lot of it's like pre-award stuff, you know, and they're, they're very familiar with like, Hey, this, this role could, could close Jan, Jan one.

When I'm like, no, I need somebody October one. Right. Right. We don't know that. Right. So that, following up with the recruiter, it's also our responsibility to create the urgency if we don't see it, right? Now, if they don't reply and two weeks later we talk, you know, hopefully we have some people already in the process by then. But, and then again, that's where the transparency piece comes in. Like, hey, you know, we opened this two weeks ago. We have a couple of candidates already in later stages of the interview. What we're going to do here is I'm going to get your information to the team, but we're not going to bring anybody new until we finish out this process, right?

Because the last thing a job seeker wants is to finish the panel interview and you're hanging out. And then we're bringing somebody new in the process that has to do, you know, one, two, three interviews. And it takes two or three weeks. This person that finished that panel interview is like, well, what the heck? Why am I waiting? Right. So we have to create that urgency if we don't see it. Now, if it doesn't reciprocate, timing is a lot in recruiting. Right. So you can miss out if you're not checking emails, if you're not checking your spam folder, that first email from a recruiter. can very easily go to a spam because it's not a recognized sender.

Sure. In your Yahoo, Gmail, whatever it is, or it can go to a junk folder very easily. So I would say check the spam and junk folders daily if you're job seeking at least. Now, again, if it is a spam recruiter email, those are running rampant right now. Sure. Dude, the amount of spam text I'm getting right now is unreal. Unreal. I get no less than ten spam calls a day it's crazy the new iOS supposedly uh it fixes a lot of spam stuff which I'm actually very excited about um so so as you wrap up in the last fifteen minutes ma'am I have some rapid fire but you're just a wealth of knowledge um any any other things that maybe we haven't covered that you want to get off your chest um when it comes to this conversation I I know I think someone mentioned it in the in the comments there that I can't quite read it but about formatting and you and I discussed this backstage like format is not going to make or break it shouldn't you know a a qualified and respected recruiter should not disqualify somebody over sure format right if the meat potatoes are there I call it meat potatoes if that's there on the plate and it's just kind of funky looking like, but it tastes good, I'm happy, right?

So for example, like if I know a manager's like, hey, you know, this person has crazy format or hey, it's good. It has different colored fonts. I can select all, change the font color to black, change it all to the same size. because I know what the hiring teams are going to like now. And even even in the agency days, we would reformat resumes. So they all look the exact same. So nobody had that advantage or disadvantage from formatting. Right. And in this era, we don't have time to do that all the time. But the formatting, in my opinion, isn't something that I am picky about.

I again, as we discussed earlier, recruiters have preferences. Yeah. they shouldn't right they should be looking for the best qualified candidate for the goal regardless of what you know font color or font size resumes now if it's ten pages and it's it's size thirty six I'm gonna have a look some questions some some judgment there right you know as far as decision making skills yeah yeah joking of course but um that's something that I wouldn't put an emphasis on like Microsoft Word has great templates Yeah. Like don't pay, do not pay someone to create an HCS compliant. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I've, I've always said if you want the best res, if you need help, I do understand now being on the job search two times, I do understand you sometimes need somebody to help you write your resume.

I would go to an agency recruiter or a recruiter to help you write your resume. I would never pay. I mean, prime example, I still am mad at my dad like six years later. Not really. Yeah. but like he paid somebody. I was like, what are you doing? I was like, I literally rewrite his entire resume because it was all fluff. Yeah. So I, if you want to pay somebody to write your resume or help you write your resume, go find an, go find a recruiter who you like and they will help you way more. Yeah. Yeah. The whole ATS compliant thing. And that, that's just kind of breaking down some, like the whole LinkedIn fluff out there too.

It's like, if, if i come across a resume if i'm going through applicants and it says like resume file not supported if it doesn't gel with my ats and i can't view it in like the embedded view right next to that it says download and i click download and it downloads the ptf the pdf it downloads the word doc don't ever you send me a text file please um yeah i've got those those are wild um i will say word or pdf like Do you have a preference? We always sent PDFs and agency just cause like, so the client couldn't, you know, change it. I think, I think that's like an agency thing too.

Cause we, when the agency world, we did PDFs a lot too, because like, we didn't want them to like, I don't know if there was like a paranoid thing or what, but, um, I don't, I don't mind either way because again, like if you upload, if it's a, you know, a non non-current Microsoft word, um, like version, right? It could mess with the formatting when I download it. But again, I can select all, change the alignment, and make it all look good, right? And I don't mind doing that for candidates, right? The formatting shouldn't make or break a candidate if they're qualified for the position.

But again, and Jason and I talk about this all the time when we do resume reviews in the Discord. Like, People though, like people develop narratives in their head, whether you like it or not, based off what they're seeing. So you got to try to dial it in as much as you can because people do have narratives like, like, you know, so, um, Let me ask you this. With the last ten minutes we have, I want to talk about your last job search. I always find it interesting when a recruiter goes through a job search because we kind of have to eat our own dog food.

Anything that worked well for you? Anything that you would, in hindsight, not have done? I feel like you weren't on the market super long, or am I wrong with that? It was about... About two months, I believe. That's pretty good. It's pretty good. Yeah. I, I probably took an unhealthy approach to it. Right. I was like up super early, up super late, you know, just applying and networking, applying, networking. Right. But I think that that worked for me. Right. That might not work for everybody. You know, even even the job search eighteen months ago is not what it is now. Right. So, yeah, what what worked for me was having a bit of a presence on LinkedIn, you know, but that was not what got conversations, right?

Like people that I were like messaging were in mails that I wasn't even connected with. Right. Okay. So I don't recall who it was, but somebody sent me right in person I was connected with, never spoke to them before. They sent me an email, not email, a LinkedIn message that said, hey, I got six months of LinkedIn premium free for you. Here you go. Here's a code for it. And I was like, game on. I was in-mailing everyone, right? Because that, in my opinion at the time, in-mails is what's going to get their attention. That's not realistic, but that was the mindset that I had right then and there.

So... i would say what i would do differently is my my original post was like back in the market looking for works i was mad i was pissed off i was laid off i was like you know i'm just gonna post that i'm looking for work right but it didn't tell anyone who i was it told everybody that was pissed off and i was mad i got laid off right and like three days later i was like no i need to reinvent this i need to reintroduce myself to the network that might not know me right so and who I am, what I've done, what I can do, what I'm looking for, right?

All those things. But I didn't spam it, right? And again, it's very easy to be desperate, to feel desperate and to have that, like, I need to find a job. I got to post every hour that I'm looking for work. But I wanted people to know who I was outside of just what the resume says, right? And some of the people that I interviewed with, I didn't have the experience, right? But it's the outreach, right? It's how I approach them. It's the presence that you hold in your communications. That to me really helped me out, right? So when you said networking, like were you out here trying to message like head of TA, head of talent, being like, hey, here's who I am, would love to chat.

I mean, were you taken, was a lot of your networking calls, Zoom calls, were they like net new connections or the existing pre-existing conditions, pre-existing connections? Pre-existing conditions, yeah. We have a lot of those. Pre-existing conditions, yeah. So it was both. Okay. So like- Was it a fifty-fifty split, you think? Probably, probably. Like I leaned on my first degree connections first, right? Like that makes the most sense. That's the path of least resistance, right? and but it wasn't always the head of ta right you know the head of ta isn't necessarily always one's going to be making the decision to hire right so like recruiting managers recruiting leads um recruiters that have been with companies for a long time like i'm trying to remember the company it was um civil construction company, like nationwide company.

We actually work with them at Aerotech. I'm drawing a blank on the name. I knew them. I'm like, Hey, I would love to work for that type of construction background. Cause I come from a blue collar background. Sure. And that, uh, was just like hey like I'm gonna go after this and in that outreach them I was like hey I I am a recruiter but I come from this background product recruiting which you'll never find anywhere on yeah anywhere and this is and this is why I'm interested right and those types of conversations um outside of like hey I just applied here's my resume right it's giving context it's just you like you got to tell a story like I tell you all the time it's storytelling yeah yeah I got Sebastian says someone here I can't read it yeah yeah Aaron uh with your experience how would you recommend external candidates to stand out I mean I I guess I mean Sebastian I don't know if you can expound on this like quickly but like I know we've talked about like applying and stuff I I guess maybe outside of applying like how how can people stand out Sebastian, if you want to comment, let's Aaron, let's, let's, let's go on this route outside.

How can somebody stand out just in their job search? If you're interested in a company, my recommendation is to follow the company page on LinkedIn. Follow them on socials, right? Now, the recruiters typically aren't involved in socials, right? I don't see who likes our Instagram posts or our X posts, right? I'm just not involved in that. But on the LinkedIn side, right? I'm seeing who's interacting with our LinkedIn page, right? If someone's, if our socials, shout out Ashley, she's great. If she posts, hey, we're hiring, I'm looking at those comment sections. I'm looking at who's liking, who's engaging with our company page. And then even on LinkedIn Recruiter, you can filter to company followers.

I can filter to who follows our company, right? And again, in the grand scheme of things, a follower, it's a... It's one data point. It's a vanity term at its best, right? Sure. But it shows the folks that have looked us up before right versus just applying um engage with the company socials, in my opinion, especially on LinkedIn, follow the follow the company. I'll take a I'll take a playbook out of Darren McKee, you know, engage with the people's content. Right. Huge. You talked about yesterday on the show. Yeah. As you pointed earlier, you can see who posts who's posting the position and the recruiter can select or deselect that.

So they select that they want to be posted. They should expect to be contacted. Right. But if I'm if I'm seeing John Smith commenting about, hey, we'd love to work there. Hey, apply to here, blah, blah, blah. That's going to catch my attention. Now, again, the end all be all is apply. Apply to the role, but to be noticed and to stand out, engage with the person that you're trying to to connect with, right? You know, the comments, the likes, like I don't, I don't, I'm not, my head's not ten feet wide. I don't look through all my likes and comments, you know. You get a lot.

You get a lot. But I'm looking for seeing the people that I can talk to, right? Yeah. I look at people who view my profile on LinkedIn. I, you know, I can see that, right? So if I see people that are constantly looking at my profile, it's a skill set that I, you know, would probably hire at some point in time, even if they're not even if they haven't applied, I'm going to connect with them. Hey, again, taking a page out of Darren's playbook. I love that you check out my content. I'd love to connect with you. How can we help each other in the future, right?

that type of thing does make a difference to the recruiters who are active on socials. If they're not, hey, it's hard to figure that out. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. All right. So we're at time. Aaron, appreciate you, man. Let me ask you this. It's just the only question. What's your biggest piece of career advice, right? The show's called Guidance Counselor, because we had Guidance Counselors in middle school, high school, and college, but now adults, we don't. As adults, we don't. Well, if you could go back to young Aaron, What would be your biggest piece of career advice for him? Take risks. Yeah. Take risks. If you see the opportunity, if it's across the country, across the world, if you have the opportunity to go to a networking event, don't think about it.

Just do it. Yeah. You never know who you're going to talk to. You never know who you're going to meet. I've met... so many cool people in chattanooga by just hanging out i met one person and i probably know fifteen from this one person right that's crazy because we went and got coffee one morning yeah like as you and i did right yeah so yeah take take the risk get out of your comfort zone a little bit um again i understand people are very introverted that's that's a very common theme as we've all worked from home we've all been detached from the office spaces for a long time but Take the risk.

Get out of your comfort zone. Do something that makes you a little bit on edge sometimes, right? And you'll notice the doors that start opening up from that. Yeah, agreed. Agreed. All right, y'all. Aaron, stay on. Sorry to say bye to you backstage. Y'all have a good one. We'll see y'all next week. And resume reviews in the Torque Discord, one thirty central to thirty eastern today. Y'all have a good one and we'll talk soon. Peace. See you guys.