hiring for success from a tedx speaker!

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Hey everyone super excited to bring another episode of this podcast to you guys in this podcast Episode I had the wonderful opportunity to catch up with a fellow South Carolina that I ran into at code stock in Knoxville a few weeks back His name is John Rouda John is currently IT director at a company in the upstate in South Carolina and also part-time Professor at Winthrop so this podcast episode is pretty unique We're able to pull from his experiences from his hiring At his current company what he looks for when bringing on IT individuals to his staff We're also able to pull from his part-time experience teaching at Winthrop and some advice He has for recent college graduates who have just entered in the job hunt Few other housekeeping things.

I'm actually speaking at music city code June 2nd in Nashville that is Nashville's premier tech conference I also have the opportunity to speak in Chattanooga in August so any chat new listeners I will be down there in August more info to come on that next please please please rate this podcast in the App store would love for this podcast again a little traction in the market and allow people outside of my network to Discover this and use this as a tool for whenever they are unexpectedly Needing a job if you want to reach me social media is gonna be the best way that's at T-decent That's T D E S S E Y and that is for all things social media and finally if you don't have social meeting you still want to shoot me An email that's gonna be the best way to do it and that's gonna be Taylor at v a C O dot com hope you guys enjoy.

Thanks. Hey John Good good. Thanks again for joining me man. I appreciate it So we can go ahead and jump right into it so for the listeners Basically John and I crossed has I code sock I was gonna try to try to meet up with him and he had to head home Back to South Carolina for his kids baseball game, right? That's right awesome. So For for the few listeners that I have mainly my mom listening multiple times I guess give them an overview about who you are and And and and and what you do So my name's John route and I am an IT director I've been at this role for about 18 months and part of that I was the manager of a web of a development team for about nine years at an ISP and I've been in technology for about 20 years now Since the late 90s Also teach part time at Winthrop University and You can find out more about me if you want it John route of calm.

It's John J. Oh, hey, chan or a UDA calm awesome, man so So basically I so I know you know you're spoken You know at TEDx before and you definitely have a podcast around You know leadership especially on the technical side of things so I want to go ahead and jump right in and I Know recently I've done a lot of individual contributor interviews on my podcast and from especially the candidates perspective and What does that look like in finding a job and what job boards do you utilize and and how do you network over Twitter and LinkedIn and Etc. So I've been trying to get a little bit more senior leadership all my podcasts to talk about What's the look for win hiring what they you know what they hire for so I guess just I had a super high level.

What do you look for in a candidate?

And we can go from there Sure One of the things when I'm hiring a candidate I'm looking for You know more about the person and the personality and how they fit in with the team more so than I am their skill I'll do have to have some skill obviously To do the job but skill can be you know taught and amped up and ramped up but the more important part is how they fit with the team You mentioned how a network or look for employees one of the ways you know through teaching obviously but local events is really important You know meetups there's a lot

of meetups in the area and that's a great place for me to find talent Find people that are speaking at the meetups not just going But but even the ones that are going go there to improve themselves which is a big quality that I'm looking for when I'm hiring someone I don't want to hire someone who's been in the same role for a long time and has no you know desire to advance into Improve themselves Absolutely, so I know obviously you teach it a winter part time and I deal with a lot of individuals coming out of code school up here National with that National

software school and obviously you know with Vanderbilt and and Tennessee state and just all the colleges We have up here Nashville You know as as a hiring manager.

What is what does that look like on your ends? And what are some advice that you can give some some entry level or some college kids coming out With obviously graduation being here and it I'm having just occurred. What are some suggestions and tips that you can give? Definitely go to as many as you can find out where you fit in Talk to talk to the presenters whenever someone finishes giving a talk I know like I give a lot of talks and whenever I finish I'll offer people to be hanging out afterwards and talking to them And whenever there's not that many people hanging out afterwards and talking to me.

I feel like it did a bad job But but I remember the ones that sit around and talk to me and there's the ones I'm gonna be able to connection for and if I'm gonna hire someone later That's probably one of the people I'm going to to go for but that's also where you can gain knowledge if you stop by After watching talk to the presenter you can ask them anything you want and they're gonna be more than happy to spend time Telling you those answers and helping you out Get comfortable talking to people. That's one skill that I feel like a lot of People graduating college right now, but they don't have the way that I had or maybe you had when we graduated college When I think back on it when I was in high school and I wanted to ask girl on a day I had to pick up a phone and call saying And I had to talk to her mom for a little bit and convince her mom to like hand the phone over because it was a landline and You know you had to build that that ability to communicate Nowadays, it's just a swipe right, you know My wife Yeah, so it's a different skill that when you go out in the job force that person that's interviewing you Probably grew up in that air where they had to pick up the phone and they're gonna expect someone to be able to communicate verbally In a way that the person right of the college might not be ready to do Absolutely, so what are some suggestions that you would give?

I mean, you know if I'm a college grad up here in bandi listen to this podcast You know, I'd say I'd say well, I feel like I'm pretty good at talking to people What what would be some suggestions for some grads to for from an interviewing perspective? And just you know, maybe how to get practice and along those lines Sure Well, go out and interview there's lots of there's lots of places that you know You can get you can get that practice and get those interviews, but in order to get that interview you've got to have something that That will Help you get there. Yeah, you've got to have something on your resume or portfolio or something that will In tie people to giving you that interview for sure so let me let me ask you this from a From scaling teams.

I mean obviously. I'm sure you've been a part of scaling teams throughout your technical airship career like what do you look for? You know, I know I talked to Andrew and Brad from cotank lives Obviously helped put on code stock You know kind of what they look for first, you know senior engineers versus junior engineers like we've kind of harped on junior engineers a little bit What does it look like from a senior engineer perspective? You senior developers or senior IT people that you interview with like what do you look for? I mean, obviously you look for skill sets, but You know from a soft skills perspective and and how they get along with others I mean, what does that all looks like to help scale a team better just in your experiences?

One of the things that I asked for I asked when I'm when I'm talking to someone for a senior position If they can't came from another position another senior position It's more of a lateral move for them. They had that experience I want to ask them about how they've mentored others along the way I expect someone that's in a senior role for me whether they're senior engineers and your developer Any role that has senior on it at the end of it a beginning of it I expect them to be able to mentor and and lead other people in one way or another So I'm always asking have you done that before and if not I ask well How would you go about doing that because you know?

I've got right now my team. I've got a junior engineer in a senior engineer and one one niche and I want to know how that senior engineer is mentoring that junior engineer Absolutely that makes sense so from a In regards to just the mentorship side of things I'm seeing this more on social media on Twitter And this may be just because of the developers I'm following is there a push For senior engineers for more mentorship Within teams. I just feel like I'm seeing that more for senior developers kind of being quote unquote loud on Twitter Do you do you see that becoming more of a trend?

Yeah, I do I do think it's in there is a push to for more mentorship And I'm not I don't know if it's I mean I do think it's important to have a mentor For me I was able to found you know I still have a mentor today, right and and I plan on pretty much having one first of my career If I can But for me it is helpful to have someone that you can bounce ideas off of that you can talk to and I think it's important to have a good mentor That doesn't work for the same company you do that doesn't have that that biasness that could be you know Put towards you because you know if you work for the same company And I'm mentoring someone I'm not gonna encourage them to go find something else because they've outgrown their current role Yeah, that's that's a That's a very very good point now.

Let me now for the individuals who you know maybe Right now is listen to this be like well I feel like I don't need a mentor or I feel like you know I can just kind of be an individual contributor and be okay What I guess what would I guess some advice be those individuals who aren't seeking out mentors being? Yeah, well, they're right. They can they can go about it without a mentor and they can just be an individual contributor and be okay But in life do we really just want to be okay? Yeah, or do we want to be good at something? Do we want to be happy?

That's a whole other Convocation right there And so I had a headache and employ that worked for me at my last job and he asked if he could You know if I could be his mentor and that's all I'm now I said you report to me I'm not gonna be your mentor And the day I left that company and you know turning my nose that I'm moving and going to this this role over here He said now can you be my mentor and I said yeah, yeah now now I'll go yeah, you know and Since then I think it's really helped him out, but not that it helps me out You know when you mentor someone else you get just as much benefit out of it as the person you're mentoring And there's there's relationship that comes from that, but there's also Things that he can help me see the perspective of someone that I want to hire You know if I want a higher person I need to see things from their perspective too.

It's not just one way Yeah, so so I think it's as a beneficial relationship and yeah, you can be okay without a mentor But I doubt you'll ever be great without a mentor. I love that. I need to write that down. I mean like make a t-shirt out of that or something So so let's kind of talk about your hiring processes At your company. What does that look like so walk me through how you guys interview? from start to finish And I'll kind of ask you some questions based off that Yeah, so I think it's pretty typical at least it is at the the last couple places I've been where I've hired people People apply online typically or we have are the you know sent to us through a recruiting agency and Most of the time though if they're vetted they're always vetted before they come to me.

Yep Usually twice usually by the recruiting agency and through our human resources and department So the person's vetted it in a way that they have the on paper. They have the skill sets that I'm looking for sure But that's where it ends. It ends on paper. What happens after that is usually there's a phone interview And on that phone interview I want to see if the person feels comfortable talking to me If they can tell me about some successes they've had now if they're right in a college I want to know what they did in college I want to know if they volunteered for someone if they had an internship if they You know work for free on some projects for fun Do they have any side projects that they built to build a website for their church or you know their fraternity?

You know what would you do for fun? I want to ask those kind of questions I'm also going to ask what do you do outside of work to to continue growing? Do you do anything for your Whatever niche you're in if you're a fun and developer do you you know go to meetups do you you know check out the latest Work WordPress you know themes that are out there and see what you know what they're doing in those those ends Would you do check out newest framework and you know JavaScript or jQuery or whatever you're working at to to see what's what's out there That's not related to your current job Yeah And honestly that a lot of that goes the same way for the senior levels after the phone you're going to be if that goes well Then we do a face-to-face and I usually don't ask a whole lot of technical questions.

I'll ask one or two one or two technical questions, but I'm more about How they how they do what they do not not necessarily what you're doing, but how you're going to go about it Are you alone wolf and you're going to kind of work by yourself or are you willing to open up and help the team around you? Are you willing to ask for help which is a big problem? I've had with people that I've hired you know a while back Where I've hired people that that were really good on paper. They interviewed well, but then they never asked for help They would struggle to struggle with something and not ask for help.

I want somebody that's not afraid to ask for help Um because we're all we can't be graded everything. Yeah Yeah, I agree so so so you guys do one phone screen and then straight to the outside. Do you do any? I know you said I'm doing many technical questions. So do you do any whiteboarding exercise or Any fizz buzz or any of those other buzz words I'm not about? Um, I do not okay It's pretty pretty straightforward interviews And my last job one of the processes we has the person to come in they would interview with three people like if I was the hiring manager for them Then they would interview with One person on my team without me And usually I had that person I would ask them to you know find out how well you would work with this person And then find out their their roughly find out their skill set of where they would fit in our team If they'd be one of the junior people or one of the senior people And then they would interview with me and I would ask them You know the chronic questions that I talked about and after that they would have a brief like five or ten minute interview with The director which was which was my boss which mostly he would just give veto power.

That was it. Yeah He really found something he didn't like about the person he would veto it but for the most part it was just just a formality Awesome now I mean and again The last with speak with Andrew and Brad and now speak with you. There just seems to be a theme that in today's tech world it may not all Be about your technical experience But more about the person who you are. I mean would you say you've you've seen that throughout your career in IT so far So then again, I'm sorry. Yeah, yeah, so so for what I've seen it's it's there's been more of a focus in the last few years I feel like at least what I've seen in talk to managers and developers that there's more on emphasis on soft skills now than there ever has been before I think you're right and Why that is I'm not a hundred percent sure I can I can give you my take on it.

Yeah. Yeah, I'd be interested I think a mediocre developer was really good soft skills that can interact with the business Can understand the problems that people are facing and come up with a solution to solve those problems is better than a superstar That's a jerk to work with not Interesting, you know, I heard it Said best Neil Gaiman gave a commitment speech that people can Google Neil Gaiman comments from speech It was awesome But one of the things he was talking about was freelancers and he said, you know to be a good freelancer. You have to be good at three things Making sure your work is done on time Number two making sure that you're A pleasant you know pleasant person to work with right and number three putting out good quality work and he said in reality You just have to have two out of the three You know as long as your your work is great and you always get it delivered on time It's okay if you're not the best First of all, but if your work is occasionally late If you're pleasant to work with and it's always good work people will excuse that And then if you put out good work and you are You know Or if your work's not the greatest work in the world, but you are pleasant to work with and you always deliver on time Then people will accept that too.

Yeah, that's true And I would and I would rather find someone who is you know mediocre development wise But is a good leader and good communicator and can understand people's needs because if you spend a lot of time building something that's fantastic But it doesn't mean to the people that you need to build it for Then you've just colloscally failed. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, it just To me especially on the recruiting side and kind of what I see You know most most candidates that I submit that get rejected I mean for example, I have one Data developer that submitted a database developer the other the other week that The manager goes Technically this guy was there, but he literally just from a communication perspective of lack where we want it because we sit so close with the business That you know if if a business user, you know, ran into him, you know in the break room and that communication wasn't there and that business individual would ask them a tech

question That that communication wouldn't be there So there's no way that they'd be able to have a you know a conversation that would go well and so You know, I There's just more of a pattern that I see with communication skills and Working well with others more than than the technology side of things Yeah, one of the things that I did when I when I first started this new role I wanted to make sure my team communicated things as simply as possible So I did a little thing I call a staff advance You know some people would do staff or treats for people go away

But I wanted to to move our team forward so I called her to staff at banks love it Love it.

And what we did is we went went up over just communication basics and I said, you know We want to make the complex seem simple We never want to talk about how hard it is or how complicated it is. We want to make it seem as simple as possible I love that. We don't ever want to speak in acronyms You know use real words that people use outside of work Yeah, pretend like you're talking to your grandmother whenever you're talking to anybody and In the company that means you're gonna say yes or yes, man And you're going to be very very simple with your words.

Yeah And that that's really changed our culture here Those are time where people were afraid to you know ask people an IT about Personal computer problems, you know like somebody would say I had a call yesterday We did security awareness training that we sent out for the whole company and someone called me just to say hey Can you explain to me what you know what a password manager is? You know, it's like yeah So you know I explained it in very simple terms. I could have said oh well It's a you know software that uses encryption algorithms a store Passwords and you know randomly generate.

No, I just said hey It's a thing that manages our passwords and it keeps them in a way that you don't have to memorize them and it makes them Random in unique for every site and it gives you alerts of things get you know Attacking is a good thing to have You know sit in an ice blight way and people are more comfortable asking you again And they're also going to go up to their boss and say man that IT group is really really you know helping us out They're great people first as wow what jerks down there, you know Yeah Yeah, absolutely So so I what I'm hearing is that you could almost work on improving your communication skills by talking to your grandma Yeah You're getting I love it.

I love it. Well, I mean John. It was it was great Having you on here.

Is there anything else that that that you've seen With market trends or technology trends that you may want to leave people with If you're coming right out of college and you don't have any experience And all you have is a resume with some projects that you worked on in college Glamfir and make a you know build build a portfolio make sure you have a website with your own domain name Yeah, do something that that's going to set you apart from everyone else I have one thing about resumes That's an important to me as a hiring manager that probably no one has ever said on your

podcast or probably anywhere else is Be specific about your fonts You know don't use times the aroma or generic fonts that come out when you open up word You know that's one thing Sure that you've taken some time and effort make sure your resume is very specific to the company that you're that you're Building for and make sure it's something that stands out just a little bit And they don't want it to be all really you know non-professional fine But you want it to be just slightly different than everybody else's You know because as a my last position that I hired for was a desktop

support manager And you know we're getting 30 or 40 resumes a day And then you're scrolling through.

I mean they're all they all look insane They're black and white word documents with times new Roman fonts some bold headers and some basic text But then you get one that's in Helvetica font That's got like a little bar across the top and all their names centered and they have a little logo for themselves I want to take a more time reading that one than I did the others And now that's good man. I like that. I like that. I'm actually picky About the font as well. So you're the first person. I've talked to That that shares my belief in that so that's good. Yeah, it really is important And if I just see you know times you remember times you're having times your remnants And that's the Helvetica.

I'm like whoa, yeah, this person knows a little bit About about the way yeah that perception to matter the way things look do matter, you know Absolutely awesome man. Well John thanks again For hanging out with me. I really really appreciate it and And hopefully I will run into you again here soon. I had another another code conference. Yeah, it sounds good All right, thanks John