interview with chris spintzyk

full transcript

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

What's going on podcast listeners? So I've been doing a little thinking over the next few months I'm gonna start introducing you one by one to my recruiting team and our technology team here in Nashville We have so many different players actually over 20 believe it or not And we all have different years of experience in different ways that we navigate the recruiting process And so I slowly want to get you introduced to every single one of them on my team So this first interview is with a dear friend of mine and an industry veteran and to be honest, you probably already know him. His name's Chris Spinsick.

Chris has been recruiting for over 20 years and in the national market for a very long time. So we had a wonderful conversation on his point of view on how you navigate recruiters and the job search. So I hope you all enjoy it because I know I really did. Also, please rate and review this podcast in the app store. I really want this to gain traction and be discoverable to other individuals. And that will not happen unless you rate and review it. So please do so. I'm really excited. I'm heading out to Raleigh code on Thursday and being out in the Raleigh community over the weekend and speaking at that conference, I've spoken there twice before in years past and the conference is fantastic and the people are even better.

So really looking forward to sharing that session with you next week. And if you need to reach me, my social media handles are at T. Dessen, T-D-E-S-S-E-Y-N. But if you just want to reach me over email, my email is taylor at vaco, V-A-C-O dot com. Hope you all enjoy. mentors. Chris, the Spinman and or Spinny two bags, Spinzick. So Chris, thanks for hanging out, man. I absolutely can. So, so the point of this conversation, I just want first off to get to know you better, right? Or get the, the, I say the audience, which is essentially my mother listening to my podcast like 40 times.

Love modes. Yeah, there you go. So I guess tell the listeners a little bit your story, right? So how long have been recruiting where you from originally, how did you come to VACOG? Just kind of give me the whole story. Okay. So originally from Chicago, moved down here in 1994, kind of jumped into the recruiting business right when I got here because I was in the recruiting business back in Chicago. Didn't immediately get into technology was a generalist for the early part of my career, then was really, really lucky and got the opportunity to work with some venture capital firms out in California building their management teams for their portfolio companies.

But then, September 11th happened and the dot com bomb happened. And so I had to kind of refocus and focus, decided to focus on doing stuff locally versus across the country and have been kind of in technology in Nashville ever since. That's awesome. That's also a long time. That's a long time. I competed with make-out for 10 plus years. I know. I know. I know. I finally asked to join the team and then, you know, realized shortly soon after that I I should've asked a long time ago. Yeah, or super stoked to have you. So talk to me, kind of your position here, Vaco. What do you do?

So if people are looking on the market, and just how to reach you? Gotcha. I'm on the direct placement team. What does that mean? I do full time per placement for technologists. Awesome. A little bit of everything. If anybody needs to get in touch with me, it's really easy. Spin at Vaco.com. Is that really your email? Spin at Vaco? awesome. Spinning two bags I think is too. And then also speaking of nicknames we need to come up with a new nickname because what did you just do just now? The hot chip challenge. Yes. Spinning two chips are spinning too hot. I like too hot. Yes.

Spinning two. And you survived. I did. You literally just ate a really hot chip and now you're talking on the podcast. Yes. It's been a crazy Friday at It was painful. I'm not gonna lie. You didn't sweat you sweat you didn't sweat at all I cried did you yeah, okay cried and my mouth filled with with spit Spin spin doesn't sweat. He just cries. I just cried So man the job search process can be crazy You know, obviously you've seen it in your 20 years of recruiting Let's kind of go super high level for everybody listening, right? Because I know a lot of them are tired of hearing me talk.

What's kind of, let's just start from the top. What would you recommend as a job seeker right now in this market with the digital age kind of going on? Like, all right, spin. I got fired today. Now what? Okay. Sorry for you getting fired. Thank you. Thank you. I didn't. Thank you. It's just a podcast. Yes. It's really awkward. But the first thing I would encourage somebody to do is to take stock of what they want to do next. Because the aspect of, hey, I just need a job and I'm willing to do anything because I need a paycheck that's not the right way to approach something.

Because one, that's not true. not going to be a happy just accepting anything and you're going to be searching for something shortly thereafter and so that's just not the right approach to take. So do some research. Figure out what it is that you really want to do. Start researching companies in the area and figure out who you really want to go to work for. Then you can kind of drill in and say, hey, have they hired people with my skill set in the past? Are they looking for somebody with my skill set now? know, if so, perfect. If not, you can, you know, you can plant, plant a seed there.

So you just got to create your list of, you know, start with 10 companies. Yeah. And say these are the 10 companies that, that, that I go to work for right now, if they offered me an opportunity. And then you just, then it becomes work backwards from there as to how to get into those companies. Do not apply online. There you go. There you go. I was about to say so what does that look like moving backwards. Yeah, moving moving backwards or working backwards, not moving backwards, where I'm reverse engineering is right. Reverse engineering it. Great, great, great, great term. What you want to do is you want to look at your network or you want to partner with a recruiter and you figure out how you're going to get in the door.

Either the recruiter can help you there. It's a client that they have. They can take your background to a hiring manager and open a door that way create a new client and a new opportunity for you. You have your own personal network that you can kind of leverage and reach out to folks and say, hey, does anybody have a personal connection inside this organization where they can, you know, make an introduction on my behalf. Because if you do apply online, which I'm telling you again, don't do it. You're going to go into a black hole and you're going to wonder why nobody's reaching back out to you and the days are going to pass and you're just going to get frustrated and because no action has happened.

Yep. We've been doing this for 20 years. Preach. And then I have only heard one person tell me that they applied online, got interviewed, and got a job. It's usually through your network. Absolutely. And listen like and spin consensus here a test to this as well. We're not sitting here saying you have to use your recruiter. But we make the job search a little bit easier. Absolutely. And so let me ask you this, right? Okay, I have those 10 companies. Yep, okay. Should I, so because I have those 10 companies, how do I find a recruiter that represents those companies? That's a good question because you're not going to be able to find that out on the front end.

Correct. You've got to do some due diligence on the recruit. You're not looking for the recruiter that represents those companies. you're looking for the recruiter that you want to work with. Because a recruiter is fully capable of opening a door at an organization. Using your background, their expertise, references from former clients that they've done work with, a recruiter can open and start a new relationship with a new company. You've got to find the recruiter that you enjoy working with that is willing to kind of invest the time to take you on as a candidate and work with you to find your next opportunity. So, one of the critters I have and I'm sure you've seen it, me post on LinkedIn is a two and two role.

And I want to know your thoughts on it and I don't know if I'm crazy, but I feel like it at least, you know, people are like, oh my gosh, like there's, you know, if you type the word recruiter in on LinkedIn, there's hundreds of recruiters, right? So it's like, how do I quickly skim recruiters to know who are good and who are bad? At the end of the day, you're not going to know who is bad off just looking at a LinkedIn portfolio. But the way my role is, look for a recruiter who's been with the same company for at least two years. Absolutely.

And within that local market for two years. Am I crazy for those kind of roles? So I want to hear your thoughts. I mean, the two and two rule is a spot on rule for a couple reasons. One, if you're looking for a new opportunity, you want somebody who can give some context, some advice and some encouragement as you work through that process. a rookie isn't going to be able to do that because they just don't know enough. Yeah, we were all rookies before. Yeah, absolutely. So you've got to start somewhere. But within the recruiting firm, rookie recruiters are tasked with doing certain things to help build their network and their knowledge and everything else and stuff.

And so the two years of experience is great to look at and in a great rule to follow because once they've gotten to that point, then you know that you're dealing with somebody that can probably help you. Good. I'm glad I'm not crazy. No, you're not. And the local market is key too. Right. Once somebody who understands the market, you know, the market changes all the time. I mean, I'm sure you're still learning about the markets. Absolutely. There are companies I've never heard of. There are people that I don't know. There's just new industries and, you know, And technology changes on a dime, and then the market has to adjust.

And so you want somebody who's been in the market to kind of give you an overall context of, hey, this is what's going on. These are the dynamics right now. This is what's going on with salaries. This is what's going on as to what roles are becoming more popular versus what roles are becoming less popular in case somebody has to kind of tweak their skill set or pick up a new set of skills. You don't just know that it doesn't just come from osmosis. It comes from being in the market every day and talking to people every day and gleaning that information. And so that's invaluable.

So, okay, so I come into Vaco and I meet with you. Do I stop there? No. Or do I find another recruiter? You? First of all, if you can do whatever you want. Right. Exactly. You can come in to Vaco and not meet with me. Exactly. And meet with me instead. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. When we went to Taylor, you know, that works too. You have to do what's comfortable for you. So I'm not here to say, Taylor's not here to say, you work with one recruiter only. And they've got all the answers for you. What would you recommend? Work with two. Yeah. Three at the most.

You're not getting kind of what you think you need from the other two, but anything more than that and you're just inviting chaos to the party. Yeah. You know, two to three recruiters can give you an honest assessment of the market, can probably give you context around just about any company that you're interested in. Because not every firm has the same club. We all have the same clients. Correct. a lot of them. Some companies have clients that other companies don't. And so that's what you're after is you want the diversity there. And so between the two or three people, you're getting an accurate picture of what opportunities are out there, how your skill set fits within the market.

Salary wise, are you right within the ball? Are you in the ballpark or are you pricing yourself out of the market? All of those things are vitally important and you're not going to figure that stuff out. If you're just applying everywhere all over the place and just hoping that somebody calls you back. Yeah. So, there's a lot of job postings out there. Absolutely. There's company job postings, right? So what we call end clients, there's recruiter job postings, there's even in some cases internal recruiter company, internal recruiters that are titled a a different name within that company, you're saying I shouldn't post my resume to anything or submit my resume to any postings, is there a validity to submitting to a recruiters posting?

There's validity. There's validity there because now you're talking to an individual. You submit to a recruiters posting and you're gonna get some sort of feedback one way or the other. You're gonna have a conversation to figure out whether the fit is right, you know, when they disclose to client to you, is this a place that you want to go and work. So there is validity there, but you've got to be careful. Because if you start doing that, now you've invited, now I've got seven recruiters that have my resume. And they're calling you and everything else. You've got to do that very carefully if you're going to do that at all.

So, but what would you say to people who were like, well, you know what? I've submitted my resume to Vaco 10 times. and I have yet to hear something back. I am tired of a co. What would you say to those individuals? I'm sorry that you've had a bad experience. That's normally not how it goes. Yep. And if you're interested and you want to see kind of what our brand of service is really like, shoot me an email, shoot Taylor an email. And if we're not the right person working on the search, we can find the right person and basically say, I need you to reach out to this person.

They apply for your role or they're looking for this kind of role, whatever it is. And it's the same thing. Now you're working in network. Now you're talking to an individual who can give you the advice one way or the other. Because there's probably a legit reason why nobody reached out to you. maybe that is you've applied for a role that you think you want to do and where your career aspires to. But your resume doesn't reflect that. And so the recruiter said, wait a minute, this isn't a fit here. You've got to have an individual conversation and explain why that is. And so sometimes it's better to just reach out to the recruiter themselves, reach out to Taylor, to reach out to myself, reach out to anybody on our team and say, hey, I saw this job posting on your website.

It's something that I'm interested in. Can we talk about it? Because if it's not their job posting, they can find the person who's and is, and they encourage the connection and the conversation I have. Yeah, and educate people on kind of how, we all post jobs. Absolutely. So we have, so my team, we have what, 10 recruiters. Yep. Your team is six. Six. Yep. Which is essentially recruiters and sales. You guys work kind of both sides of the life cycle from a recruiting perspective. Right. So you have 16 people posting upwards to 10 jobs a person. Yeah. So we're looking at what over 150 job postings, potentially a week that are out there.

Yep, absolutely. And so people have to understand that, hey, if your resume is, you're not getting called and you keep submitting, then we need to look at, well, we, you need to look at how is your resume written, right? If you, are you a junior candidate and you're submitting to an architect level, right? Do you only do .NET and you wanna do full stack JavaScript, but you're submitting to full stack JavaScript, right? So again, it's kinda going back to what we said, you kinda need to not do postings and actually DM the recruiter, or a recruiter at the company. Absolutely, absolutely. So we have, okay, I got fired.

Let's partner with a recruiter. Do I meet with a recruiter or do I just do a phone call? You can do either or you can do kind of the happy medium between the both. I mean, you do a video call, do a Zoom or a Skype or a FaceTime or whatever other technology I know I'm missing one. And have that conversation. I mean, if you're comfortable just talking on the phone, I mean, you can get as much information, you know, during a phone conversation as you can face to face or via video, it's just whatever you're comfortable with. A recruiter is going to kind of agree to meet you where you want to be met.

We've got a bunch of meeting rooms here at Vaco, so we've got folks coming in here to visit with us all the time. But I know we do video calls and we do phone calls. I mean, we do it all. So it's all personal preference. Absolutely. I'm really big on at least meeting the recruiter face-to-face, whether it's video or in person, just because, I don't know about you, man, but if I can like shake somebody's hand and see them across the table or over video, I'm just gonna feel better about a person, not a person, but just building a relationship with that person. Absolutely, absolutely.

I'm a big believer in the phone is a great tool. Text and email are great tools to secure a face-to-face meet. Absolutely. That's my belief because so much more comes out in person. You miss those nuances on the phone. Right. And so I'm always a big, a couple companies. Yeah. You know, and just kind of shoot the breeze and everything else and stuff where it's casual enough that you feel open enough to just kind of express yourself and be you versus feeling like, okay, I'm all buttoned up and I'm gonna get the robotic answers and just tell you the stock answer to the question where you're not really getting anything from anybody.

I mean, that's a bad way to kind of start a relay. That's not a real relationship. And so you wanna be able to, and that's why you have to interview recruiters and research and figure out who you're comfortable with. I mean, if you're getting good vibes for somebody, then that's who you want to work with. If you're not, you're not, and that's okay. So I keep hearing you say the word relationship over and over again. I know recruiters kind of have this used car salesman meant just image. Is their validity past us finding you a job to use a recruiter? Absolutely. I guess just go into that just for a few minutes.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, just helping you find a job is one of the things that we do, but what if you're not looking, but there is something that you eventually wanna do down the road. It's a good conversation to have with the recruiter saying, hey, if you ever come across something like this, this is what I'm really interested in moving my career towards, and so I'd be interested in opportunities like that. Absolutely, that's something that we pay attention to and those are conversations that we love to have. Plus helping you find a job in the immediate turn. I mean, the average 10 year for folks in IT in one position is two to three years and you're ready to go do something else.

So you want somebody that you've already, who's already invested in getting to know you a little bit so that you're not starting from scratch every time. And I think it's also too like market intelligence, right? I mean. Oh, for sure. You know, I had lunch with a developer yesterday and you know, he was like, what about this company? What about this company? What have you heard about this company? And like, we weren't able to have an open and honest conversation. It's like, listen, if you want to go there, you're probably not gonna get the warm and fuzzies, but you're gonna get overpaid. And you're gonna make a lot of money.

But do you want to work 70 hours a week? He goes, no, if I got two kids, and I go, whoops, you probably stay away from that. Right, so, yeah, I think a lot of people can get so focused on, oh, I gotta work with the recruiter. But if anybody who like sports, we're almost like your agent. Yep, exactly, right. I mean, you know, it's one of these things where it's like, we help you move up from a salary perspective in your career. We help you navigate companies in town to where not to go to, right? We help you write a resume. We help you negotiate benefits sometimes, right?

Especially on your side, mine's a little bit more of a consulting side, but especially you with your sign on bonuses or anything like that. So yeah, I mean, I really do. I mean, we are absolutely your advocate in the job search. And that's what you want. A great, a great parallel between the agent and what we do. I mean, there's a, there are a lot of parallels there and a lot of similarities about how we approach the business all the way from top to bottom. So I meet with you. We have a great meeting and kick it off. You sent me some opportunities. I unfortunately didn't interview well.

Okay. It's the first time I've been on the job search in five years. I got nervous. But then I don't hear from you for a bit. Did I do something wrong? No, no, no, no. I mean, it's not like that. It's, if you don't hear from us, one, we're gonna give you the initial feedback. Correct. Hey, man, this is kind of what went down. You know, they liked you for this. You didn't interview very well. This is something we'll have to work on the next time around or whatever. But if you're not hearing from me or Taylor or any other recruiter that you're working with, it's not because we don't have you in mind for things.

It's because based on all the discussions we've had, there aren't opportunities that are right for you. And you don't want me calling you saying I don't have anything for you. I mean, yes, we can be friends and we can do all that and we can shoot the breeze if you want to and I'm the biggest believer in having this conversation. You are. But to have that happen repeatedly, after a while, you're going to say, spin. When you keep calling me for it, your only answer is, dude, I got nothing for you. Nobody wants to have that happen over and over and over again. You want to hear from me when it's like, dude, here it is.

We talked about this and you said if this kind of opportunity came around, you wanted hear about it. Well, guess what? You're going to hear about it. Because I got it. And then we dive in. And so, you know, a lot of times it's that reason only. Hey, I don't have anything that's a fit right now. It's not that I forgot about you or don't care. I just don't have anything, you know, that you might have. But the same kind of way goes both ways. I mean, if you're not, if you're still researching companies or you find an opportunity online where you see something and you say, wow, that's something I'd be interested for.

Pick up the phone and tell us. So I think you just hit a point there, too. Like, I think there needs to be follow up, more follow up from a candidate side as well with us, right? So I not put this into perspective. And listen, I'm gonna be the first to say, and I speak of conferences about this, is that we have a bad rap. And rightfully so. Follow up's usually pretty terrible. But the question I ask everybody in these sessions is how many of you all have actually followed up with a recruiter? in very few hands erased. What are your thoughts on that? It is a two-way street.

I mean, again, we talked about this a little bit ago, that this is a relationship that we're building. No relationship works if only one person is putting any effort into it. I mean, that's bound for failure. You should be reaching out and updating us on any situation, any situational changes. Hey, I wasn't really looking before, but I'm actively or aggressively looking now. Hey, I'm really interested in this company. I've been reading about them and all the stuff that they're doing here in town. Is this somewhere that you can maybe help me get into? Or, hey, I've been doing a lot of thinking and guess what?

I don't wanna be a developer anymore. I'm interested in moving into QA. Yep. Okay, let's talk about that. Let's figure out what kind of a move that would mean and what kind of roles would be interesting to you. Those are conversations that can be initiated from the can inside because you only know what it is you want to do next or what you're thinking. I mean, I can do a lot of things where I can't read my answer. Yes, absolutely, absolutely. So as we wrap up here, the job search can be overwhelming. It can be paralyzing, it can be a very stressful ordeal. Absolutely. Give the listeners a few words of encouragement And just your overall just saying, hey, it's gonna be okay, give the job seekers kind of a few words of encouragement.

Absolutely. The first thing that I would always say, if you're not getting a lot of responses, and you're kinda looking at it and saying, what's the issue? Don't blame yourself, don't think that there's something wrong with you, it's the process itself. Especially if you've gone ahead and applied a bunch of places and you haven't heard anything, That's the process. That's got nothing to do with you. It's your resume is in a black hole. Right, right. So take a deep breath and instead of beating yourself up or applying more places, really nearly and doing it all over again, start using that time to reach out to recruiters, if you haven't already.

Take the time to do a research in the companies that you really and truly want to go to work for. Because if you really and truly want to be someplace, you're going to find a way to get in the door. I mean, you're just going to, I mean, it's the matter of determination and everything else. And I think everybody's got a little bit of grit to it when they're really after something they want. And so, just refocus, re-center, start devoting your time to the activities that are going to get you somewhere. And applying online to a bunch of postings is not yet. So stop doing that, stop doing some of the things that we've talked about and you're going to see things don't change conversations are going to happen, movements going to happen and pretty soon you're going to be in the spot that you want to be in and where you belong in.

So that's that's that's that's all good. That's awesome. And we'll spin. Thanks again for hanging with me. Absolutely. Hopefully we can do this many more times in the near future. For sure. So just one more time. and how can people reach you? Spin at Vaco.com is the easiest way to get me. I'm on Twitter, I'm on Facebook, I'm on LinkedIn, if you punch in Spinman on LinkedIn, I will come up on the guy at the pink cowboy. You can't miss me. That's awesome.