little rock tech fest 2019

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 really excited to be back from a fairly long vacation in November? Me and the wife took two and a half weeks and we flew out to Seattle and road trip that all the way down the scene Diego And then obviously Thanksgiving happened so it's been a great three weeks kind of really pumping the brakes a little bit And taking some time off so really excited to start putting out more podcast episodes And so this one is extremely special to me. It is actually from my talk at Little Rock Tech Fest in Little Rock, Arkansas back in October. The conference was incredible.

It was, the energy was incredible. The questions were great. The people were just unreal. And so I would advise for you to turn down the volume a little bit when you listen to this podcast and to my talk because I was yelling because there's a really, really big room and I had no mic. So just prefacing that now for our below your speakers. And so, and actually, fun fact, this will be my last talk on the whole recruiter's suck, use them for a little bit. So I am kind of sun setting this talk and rolling out a new talk for 2020. Because after speaking at these conferences, I talk about leveraging LinkedIn and I'm like, do people actually really know how to use LinkedIn?

Do people actually know how to use Twitter? So my new talk in 2020 is going to be, I mean, the title is, how to leverage social media to land you your dream job. And so I will be actually pulling up LinkedIn real time in my sessions and really showing people how to leverage LinkedIn and Twitter and other social media tools to expand their network and obviously find the job. So really excited about that. Hope you all enjoyed this specific episode. I also, a fun little fact, rolled out a text messaging platform. So if you want to text and be a part of my texting community, you can text 833-305-0058.

Again, if you're driving one more time, 833-305-0058. And if you want to text job tips or and NASH jobs, basically what my goal is to share specific job tips about ones every day or day or so on how to leverage your network to find a job. And then also I send out basically all the jobs we have that I'm working on within the development community with the NAS jobs keyword. So if you want to be a part of that community, feel free to text those keywords to 833-305-0058. As always, if you want to reach me, Twitter is where it's at for me. So it's at tdesintd-e-s-s-e-y-n.

Obviously, I'm on Instagram. If you want to check out my road trip highlights, you can check it out on Instagram. And then if you want to just reach me about old-fashioned email, which I absolutely love, it's pretty simple. Taylor at vaco.com. Hope you all enjoy this episode. Thanks. Can't wait to hear me okay? I'm not gonna, this is very interactive. This isn't, there's no live code samples or anything like live coding. So if you were here for that, This is not it. You are more than free to leave. So I'm really excited to give this talk. This is probably my last talk on this topic for probably definitely the rest of the year, if not next year as well.

Somebody's using a mic next door. It's very loud. So thank you guys for coming out. I am super honored and beyond grateful to even be selected to speak at a code conference as a recruiter. because as many of you know, most people hate recruiters. Hence, my talk, recruiters suck, use them. And so over the next 50 minutes, my goal for this talk is for us to have a really open and honest conversation about how to work with us, right? Recruiters are kind of this black hole for the most part, and people don't know what to ask, how to work with us, so they'd rather just not, and hopefully they can just find a job.

Also, I'm totally open to talking about how to write a resume. I have some PowerPoint slides I'm going to go over. I've actually hated PowerPoint. I'm really bad at PowerPoint. And so I finally incorporated a few slides, so we'll definitely go over that. A little bit about me, just my story and my background. So I'm from Nashville, Tennessee. I work for a company called Vaco. Vaco is a national practice. So we have offices all across the country, and even some across these. Basically what my job is is I only work with software developers. So I'm kind of like a developer advocate, I guess you could say.

Nashville and I helped connect the software developers to hiring managers. I've been recruiting for eight years now. I've been recruiting just developers for the last five in Nashville and I moved up to Nashville to do music like everyone else. I was a drummer, Stilemma drummer. I don't really know how that works out. And so I kind of found Vaco through a friend of a friend because I was tired of playing in the hockey talks until 3 a.m. And so I've been doing this ever since and I love it. I spent some time in the research triangle area. So I was actually just out to Raleigh code this past weekend, speaking out there, and then hopped on a plane two days later and came here.

So it's been a whirlwind past two weeks. I'm really passionate about this. No questions are off the table. So I'm done talking about myself. The next 46 minutes are completely Q&A. I will answer whatever questions you have. I obviously can sit up here and talk 46 minutes without taking a breath. You can ask my wife, but I prefer not to because at the end of the day there is a lot of conversation that has generated every time I do this talk with people who don't know how to navigate recruiters or how to write a resume and what not. So all that being said, I want to open the floor to y'all.

If you have any questions, you're going to have to yell or stand up. But is there any questions about working with recruiters or anything like that? Yep. In the back. How recruiters fees handled? Yeah, so that's a good question. So recruiters fees basically, we have two types of fees, right? we have the direct higher salary, right? So if we place you at 100k, we negotiate a fee with our clients, right? If it is a contract to hire, our clients give us a rate and we have to work within those rates, right? A lot of people ask me, well, what is your markup? It literally varies for every single position.

My goal as a recruiter, if it's contract to hire, is to make sure that you get a raise, that you get compensated for the out of pocket benefits that you have to pay for. And if that works out, then great. I know a lot of recruiters tend to cut people down on rates. Usually we have flexibility. And so I would highly recommend to make sure that you get what you want as a contractor or contract to hire. I think why, if you talk about the employer. Yeah, the employer, yep. Yeah, so there's two types of recruiters too. There's agency recruiters and there's corporate recruiters. I'm an agency recruiter.

I work with a lot of different clients in Nashville. And then the corporate recruiters are the recruiters that actually work with the end client, with the company. But yes, we work with our clients for the fees. So if a recruiter asks you to sign your life away for money, don't do it. That's a huge red flag. Also before I go any further, I want to pull up my social media handle. I actually am pretty active over Twitter in regards to job search tips. So if you want to follow me on Twitter, that's my information. Instagram, I just really post pictures of my corgi the entire time.

So that's not really business related. And then I actually have a podcast. So I'm actually streaming this right now, and that's streaming. I'm recording this right now. Basically, my podcast has all of my talks for the last two years. Since every talk is Q&A, there's different content out of every single talk. So I'd highly advise you to still go and listen to my past talks because depending on what questions are asked, the conversation goes that way. Cool. So we talked about fees. Again, it varies at the end of the day. but don't sign your life away if a recruiter makes you obviously sign anything for money.

What else? It was a good first question. I need to give out prizes like the first person who like asked a question. Yes, in the back. Okay, okay. How's that work? So they're gonna get a question. So the gentleman in the back is on a six month contract to hire and he's gonna go full time after three months. First off, congrats. Because that means you're very good at what you do and the client sees that and they don't wanna lose you. So congrats to you on that. So his question was, as a recruiter, what does that look like for us? So we have an agreement in place.

And again, this is just me, right, Vaco? I'm only one recruiter. I'm always cautious with people who attend this talk, because I don't want them to go back home and be like, well, Taylor, in Little Rock said this. And so we need to do this. Or you get really loud to the client, and be like, hey, Taylor said this at Vaco in Nashville. I'm only one recruiter. But typically within our contracts, if you go full time before the six months, the client pays us. So again, it's no harm to you. It's actually a testament to you. And if you were my candidate, I would buy you lunch to celebrate and you'd go full time, and then that's it.

So again, no harm, no foul. We work it into our agreements to obviously get compensated off that. Good question. We got two in. What else? Yes. What about the recruiter? I mean, it feels like at the end that you've been lied to that the recruiter must know about this the whole time because the company has employees working on these us. Right. So, you know, how does it work? Like, why is it like being a potential employee in all something, you know, Alport something and then fine on and then what, you know, and said that, well, this doesn't even meet their legal requirements Right. And then backing out, like, why waste those two weeks?

So two weeks, just, so your question is regarding offer letters, right? And getting to an offer? Getting to an offer? Getting to an offer and how things kind of get weird? The year again. Yeah. And then why would they prefer, I mean, the company already has certain people working at the company on visa status, certain visa status, but then that individual who got the offer is on that visa. and they say no, is that essentially kind of the concern? Yeah, I mean here's the deal, right? So I know recruiters get a really bad rap and rightfully so because a lot of times during the interview process, things go south at the end.

That seems to be on both sides, right? So I'm gonna be honest, right? I'm not perfect, right? I sit up here and I talk about recruiters. I have had deals go south because I haven't asked the right questions, right? So sometimes it's the recruiters fault, right? The recruiter maybe didn't ask enough questions from a visa status perspective. They really didn't understand. But other times too, HR and clients change their minds a lot. And sometimes it just gets super weird at the very end of offers. I mean, I had an individual get an offer. The individual didn't know that they had a visa status so they couldn't work in the US.

And I got them an offer. Surprise. So at the end of the day, it's on both parties, but I would probably take the onus on the recruiting side to really listen and to understand, from a visa perspective, what you have and what the client wants. Yeah, I guess I got an impression that everybody really liked me. Right. And the recorder himself. Right. I used to back up a week. And then it was like, sorry, you know, they're not gonna be able to meet. I'm like, well, you should have known this in the beginning. Yeah. Did you, did you find out all about this? Yeah. you know, offering me anything, like that was really, really putting into a weird situation.

Correct. And they just say, you know, get back to this one, the situation, you know, when you're here. Yeah, yeah. What I feel, I cannot see now, see, it could be the client being a little weird. Yeah, listen, the interview process gets so weird sometimes that it's not always on the recruiter, but unfortunately for the most part, it usually is. Right, so it's really understanding and listening to the job seeker and what they want. And to find a recruiter that does that is very hard to do. So. This is about the application. Okay. The land that's something that's an application. It's all online. Mm hmm.

Okay. So who's the hiring manager? Mm hmm. This position. Well, you can go on businesses.com and the hiring manager, you know, we'll get it. Which is untrue. Right. Right. It was they think because it's going to be some automated system set up that is going to scan and you will look at those key words. Right, right. And if not, the resume is coming out. Otherwise, there is some assistance. Right. It's like a pile of 150 rooms in the city on the table. Right. They need to really shuffle through and whatever they feel like they're going to bring it on to the table. Right. which I feel like it's unfair to them.

Correct. Because I don't think they have enough knowledge about what's correct. Yeah. And so she brings up a great point up here, right? Please, please, please stop submitting your resumes to job postings. Stop it. I'm going to say something. If there's one thing you get out of this talk, well, there's a few things, right? So this is like one of the things. this talk, re-engineer your job search and partner with a recruiter first, interview recruiters like you're interviewing companies and then let them do the work for you. You will be surprised, one, how easy the job search comes after that, and two, you won't disqualify yourself from submitting your resume all around town.

I have a bunch of good engineer friends in Nashville who have blanketed the town. I mean, just flat out, submitted to 56 places. Well guess what? But I can't work with you anymore. My job and recruiters jobs are to know the hiring managers, to know the developers, the team leads, right? And when you submit your resume to the client, it completely disqualifies us working together. So you're right, it is unfair. And so I would stop it right now. From here on out, everybody in here taking note with me, I will not submit to job postings. Great. Thank you for that. That was great. Yes. The question is can recruiters help you get freelancing clients in exchange for commission?

So we don't do, and again, I don't know exactly to a certain point. I know there's a lot of freelance companies out there. I know one that we've worked with is gun.io. Their business is around hiring engineers for part-time work. On our end, everything that we do, now we get three-month contracts, six-month contracts, But in regards to freelance and not making sure we're on the same page, freelancing part time or full time? 40 hours a week or like 20 hours a week? Which one? Part time or full time? Yeah. So most of our clients are set for full time work. The part time stuff they can usually find on their own.

I usually tell developers I work with, we don't get remote and we don't get freelance. Why? Because companies can find that on their own. Companies come to us for positions they can't find. So, yeah. Yeah. So, if I were you, I would look up freelance companies in your town or in the southeast and connect with those individuals through LinkedIn. Yes. Gentlemen to that. Yeah, ma'am. Yeah. Yeah. Ghosting? Yes. Yeah. Are we talking about dating life? Are we talking about others? Yeah. Ghosting. Ghosting is not only for Tinder. It also is in the job search as well. Yeah. I will tell you that kind of what I went, just said just now, take the time to work with a recruiter on the front end and really get to know them and only partner with two or three of us.

And so here's a quick rule. If there's another thing to write down to get out of this talk, is the two and two rule. A lot of people get hit up by, how many people in here get hit up by recruiters on LinkedIn weekly? Raise your hand. Yeah, my point, exactly. So everyone's like, who do I work with? How do I weed them out? So most recruiters that are bad at their jobs usually have to jump ship every two years or so, 18 months and two years, because we're heavily commissioned. And so the people who can't make placements and build relationships have to jump around to get their base salary raised up.

So that two years, if a recruiter has been at the same company for two years, they're probably pretty good, probably. Not 100%. I don't need any messaging. be like, I worked with a recruiter that's been there for two years and that goes with me again. The other rules, so two and two, that they've been in the local market for at least two years. I've been in Nashville for five years. I'm still learning about companies in Nashville. If you're going to work with a recruiter who's been at the same company for one year and in the local market for six months, you think they're going to be able to have the knowledge to work, and do you think they actually care?

Every unique interaction that I work with day in day out in Nashville, I know that if I don't treat you with respect, words going to get around that I suck. And to be honest with you again, I'm going to sit here and admit there's one guy in Nashville, my business partner had lunch with and he goes, well I don't know why Taylor's so good at Vaco. He did terrible with me. A little back story, he was on his phone during the whole lunch so I didn't really talk to him, but that's beside the point. So that's what I'm saying, right? the relationship with two or three recruiters and then I will promise you they should not ghost you.

That was a good question. What else? This is good stuff. I see some people writing. Any other questions? Literally no other questions. Yeah. Alright, good. Resume. What do I care about? What do I not care about? Right? So this is one of my slides and again If you need me, feel free to email me at the end of this. My email's Taylor at vaco.com VACO. All right, resume writing. Resume writing's kind of this tricky thing. No one knows how to do it. How many pages should it be? Should it be just one page? I've been in this industry for 20 years. It's only one page, right?

First off, I want to kick the guidance counselor in the shin. Hence why my podcast is guidance counselor 2.0. That says your resume should just be one page. Yes, if you are new in the industry, if you are new in the tech industry, Yes, it needs to be probably just one page unless you actually can document specific side projects that you've worked on. In regards to what looks good on a resume, that's everything I want to see on a resume right there. I don't know what it is, but in regards to resume writing, the developers' resumes that I edit to make it look like this, more times than not get interviews with our clients.

I don't know what it is about this format, but it works. And again, I can send it to you. So the things I want to see on a resume, right? Your summary, your first part, summarize what you've done, right? So if you're a senior.net engineer with 15 years of experience, put, hey, 15 plus years of.net development experience. The last three years have been specifically focused within.net core with an Angular 7 front end. I'm just throwing out buzzwords. Don't know what any of this means. I'm just saying, right? So that's where I put the summary, right? buzzword super high level, right? Even if you're not in tech, right?

If I'm a recruiter, five plus years of recruiting experience, right? Years now, five years working with software developers, right? Keep it super high level. Professional experience, right? You need the company. I would not take the years like that, the specific position held, and what location you're in. Now, all the bullet points and stuff get a little weird, right? So the, so the, the italicized part is basically summarizing what the company does if you're not a big company. If you work for a smaller company in Little Rock and I'm a national and I talk to you, I want to know what that company does at a super high level.

Basically, like you're describing it to your mom or dad. Then the first bullet point, I would actually describe specific projects that you're working on. Hey, listen, I work at Facebook. When you go to the globe, the notification and click that, That's the widget I work on. Again, describing it super high level to your mom or dad or stupid recruiter like myself. Yes. That's a good question. I probably should have added this. If you worked with multiple positions within the same company, what I would do, current position that you're at right now and non-bold, put the month and years that you're holding that position and then obviously do this outline.

Then if it's your previous, so let's say you're a tech lead right now, outline the responsibilities, and then right here, in non-bold, put senior developer, and then outline the responsibilities with the date. A lot of people don't know how to do that, keep everything under the bold, the top bolded part. Then technology's used, right? That's really important. Us as recruiters, I don't know what we're talking about. We just control F search things on resumes. So you need buzzwords, right? If you do pin testing, right, you need to put it up there, right? Because us recruiters don't have any idea what pin testing is, right? So we just control F it.

Does this person have pin testing, right? So complete tech stack for front to back, even if you're not working within an angular front end. But you've had interactions with it some way, shape or form, it needs to go on there, right? So the recruiter or non-technical person knows that you've been in that ecosystem. Again, recapping technical skills down here. Another recap, right? So if we control F it for people, right, the non-technical individuals, they can find it again within the technical skills and then certificates in education. Is that your question? Cool. And again, we're kind of flying by to see your pantry right now. I'm talking real fast.

I've had two ice coffees this morning. If you want more, if you want more information after this talk, find me afterwards. I will answer any and all questions and we'll go from there. Yeah. So how many years of experience did you go back on your resume for the types of positions you want to get called for? So now there's a way to summarize. So let's say you were doing mainframe codeball work 20 years ago. There's still a lot of that out there. If you want to come to Nashville, let me know. Basically what i would do, i would still notate it like this, right? Company so-and-so, mainframe developer location.

And then what i would do is i would just put a super high level functional verbiage, right? So like mainframe developer for this application that supported this business. And just leave it at that. Because the more tech jargon, right, i had a speaker last night go from the speaker last night go I get called for PHP roles. Now I worked on PHP 20 years ago. I said is it in your resume? Is it in your LinkedIn? He goes yeah I said don't call me about PHP roles. I said recruiters don't read. So if you have PHP in your LinkedIn even if it says do not call you're still going to get called.

Right? He goes oh that makes sense. Yep. Yes. Do you want to come to Nashville? Yeah, I mean, so addresses, I don't really care really. I mean, I would say take it off, right? The only thing you need is your name, your phone number, and your email. And that's it. I wouldn't have any more than that. What else? I feel like I was starting to finally get warm and like talk, so this is great. Keep going. This is awesome. Say what? New what? Oh, oh. Oh, oh, I see. So the question over here is kind of redefining when I say like new to the industry, right?

So I'm all about like notating content that's applicable, right? So if you've been coding for three years, but you've worked on some pretty intense projects in those three years, and you fill up a page with pertinent information, it's OK if it's two pages, right? I wouldn't go any more than three pages. To be honest, I look at one or two pages and I'm done. But three pages isn't bad. Don't go 17. Literally working with a guy right now that has 17 pages. Exactly. Yes. Do you want to move the Nashville? I'm just kidding. Keep going. All right. If I wanted to have a project list, can I have a separate document for project list, or would I have that incorporated in my version?

So that's a great question, right? So the question is project lists, right? So if you work within specific projects within your organization, I would absolutely include that on your resume. Yeah, don't have a separate document. In my mind, if that makes your resume three or four pages, that's okay, right? Applicable information, not fluff, right? So if you can outline all your projects, now, what I would do is if it gets too long, sure, I'm fine with you having another document, but it really needs to go on your resume. That's a good question. Yes, both, right? So the question back here is, do our clients actually see your resume?

That's actually a great question. So yes, they see your resume. Now, Vaco's trying to get into the managed solution side of things. So spinning up dev teams, we have two dev teams working right now, one JavaScript one.net. Our clients don't see the resume, because they don't want to see the resume. They just want us to pick dev team for them. But for the most part, if you are interviewing with the end client, they will always see your resume. Now, I would also piggyback on that. I would ask the recruiter to see your resume before they submit it. Sometimes recruiters falsify information on your resume. Believe it or not.

If I change something on one of my developers' resumes, I ask them if it's okay. So again, having that relationship, that's kind of the underlying tone through this entire talk is having a relationship with the recruiter because I'm telling you, like most of the developers I work with, they don't even like, they're like, you know what, don't even send me the jobs, just line up phone calls. Right? But again, that takes time. That takes time. Yep. Cover letters. Don't use them. Next. No. Yeah, so cover letters are thinking of the past, right? So that's what a LinkedIn is for. And I'm going to go ahead and go to my next slide, which is about, which is LinkedIn writing.

So this is somebody's LinkedIn. It's buddy of mine in Raleigh. I would say this LinkedIn is a little too overkill in my minds. On a LinkedIn, most people are like, how do I write a LinkedIn? Your LinkedIn is not your resume. He made his look like his resume. I'm fine with it, but in my mind, your LinkedIn is your cover letter. And on top of that, your LinkedIn should only have three sentences per each position. Here are what three sentences that would include in your LinkedIn. First sentence, what application you are working on at a super high level like you described it to your mom or dad.

Second sentence, you're specifically what technologies you are utilizing currently or within the last few years and then the third sentence is again your entire tech stack from front to back. Right so what that'll do is I'll allow the recruiter or any other job seek or job person to look at your LinkedIn say okay this person works on this widget with this technology for this many years I'm gonna call them and again if there are other recruiters in here I'm sure they have different other thoughts on Linkedins, right? For me, for my two cents, your Linkedins should be brief, and your resume should be in depth.

But no cover letters. Also, stop putting your Dagon picture on your resume. It's weird. That's what your Linkedins were. Actually, follow me on Linkedin, by the way. I actually long-form all of my Twitter content and post a little bit more paragraph stuff, and I posted it the other day. It was my first post that kind of went viral. It was awesome. Everybody was laughing. It was great. That was a highlight of my week. Anyways, what else? Yes? What about salary range when you're negotiating it? Yeah. If you're ready to talk about it, how do you know that your counter is not going to get you out of that group?

That's a good question. So the question was regarding salary negotiations and if your counter doesn't disqualify you, right, and just general probably salary guidelines too. So this is an important question. First off, y'all need to have some diagram confidence in what you do and how much you make Stop asking for less. Right, there's been a lot of conferences over the last few months, every senior engineer I talk to, they're always like yeah, I just do this. It's like man, be confident. Stop beating yourself down. I'll tell you this right now. I'm giving you, I'm empowering you to ask for the salary that you want because the market is still very good.

There's no reason for you to take less. Now, if you're not qualified and the recruiter can back that up, then maybe you need to come down a little bit. But don't let a recruiter beat you down so they can make some more money. Now, another reason why I would say partner with a recruiter is because they know salary information within the market. So I had lunch with the senior engineer at Eventbrite. Eventbrite's got a pretty big dev team in Nashville. We sadly don't work with them. event bride if you're listening to this podcast I would love to work with you. But all that being said he was like hey listen like here's my salary is it in line.

He goes I've never had this conversation. I said yes it's fantastic. You need to stay where you're at. He goes okay good I'm gonna be honest with you I had no idea. I tweeted that literally I had a few developers DM me they're like oh my gosh I didn't even think about that. Right use the recruiter as more of just your general specialist within the tech market within your city. Right, counter offers, talk with the recruiter about it. Right, hey, recruiter, listen, listen, I'm at 100 now, I really want 115 to jump, is that too much, the recruiter needs to be able to shoot you straight.

If you're not using a recruiter, then that's where I would still have a recruiter on the side, hey man, like Louis, I had a guy get an offer, he was one of my good friends, got an offer with a client. His current client countered him, and he called me and we had a 15 minute phone conversation because of his two offers not through me. Right, you need to have these recruiters in the markets that can really be your eyes and ears and equip you with all the tools to find a new job. With the client, right? Then is there a resource like a website where you can go and see what's the upper limit and lower limit for a particular role?

Sure, I mean, yeah, I mean, you can go to, there's a lot of websites out there that does like salary averages within the city, but honestly I've seen those aren't really right to be totally frank with you. If you're negotiating with the recruiter, that's where you have to have that relationship. If you don't have the relationship, then yeah you're probably gonna have to do some research. Yeah, I don't have a silver bullet answer for you on that, but. When you get your information from, you get it from the floor to tell you that this is a rain. Yeah, yeah, yeah. VACO prides itself on building relationships with hiring managers.

So if you work with me on any development role in Nashville, i will never send you an HR generated job description. I will always send you exactly what you're working on Day one within the specific application. And i will also know the rate Rangers as well because we work directly with the hiring managers. Most recruiters should do that Which brings me to one of probably the most important Ten questions in this entire talk. So feel free to take pictures. with the recruiter, ask them these 10 questions. If they can't answer these questions for you, don't work with them. All these questions I work with, all these questions are questions that my sales team asks that I know for every single job that I send you.

Are there any questions about these questions up here? I love all the picture taken. This makes me happy. Yeah, I will. Yeah, I will. Who the heck are you working with, man? A lot of people. Yeah, dude. The recruiters who don't share client information and manager information get out of here. That's so stupid. Like every single job that I get, I know who the hiring manager is, how many steps there are, and if I don't know, I'll find that out for you. I'm kind of giving you all a second to kind of read through this and see if there's any questions that I need to clarify.

They wouldn't tell you. Did you ask them why? Yeah. I mean, yeah, I think most recruiters do that, so you don't go around them and work with the client. But like at the end of the day, it's a relationship business, right? Like I want you to trust me to work with me, so I'm going to tell you, right? So I think that's a stupid thing recruiters do. I have no idea why we do it. And so I would ask, I would ask, I'm not kidding you. I spoke at a chatnuga.net meetup a few months ago. A developer used these questions on me. He's my own questions on me for a job.

It made me super happy. And I answered all of them but one, and then I went to go find out the other one. If I were you, I would just have this saved as a signature in your email. And I would just send it to the recruiter. Hey, thanks for hitting me up. Can you answer these? If you send that to a recruiter, they're going to be like, where the hell did you get these things from? They are going to be shot. How many people in here know what dice is? Raise your hand. The job board dice. OK, good. That's better. I'll be terrified for a second.

So let's talk about dice real quick. So you get fired from a job. Ah, crap. I got to get my resume up. What job boards do I use? So dice is really important. I love cats. I have one, by the way. Hence the cats. So, DICE is extremely important. This is the recruiter view of what I see when I log on to DICE to search your resume. And we can search on all these things. Every time you log into DICE, we get notified and we run searches on it. So, a few of my developer friends, they log on to DICE to just check in with their stuff, make sure it looks good and I immediately text them, hey man, what's up, are you okay?

They go, what's wrong? I go, you're on DICE, they go, how do you know? It's like, bro, every time you log in, Like, I get notified. They go, oh, I'm fine. But you need to make sure this is up to date. DICE is extremely important. It's technology only. And so when I search a developer on Career Builder, I get construction workers and just a wide variety of things. If I type in the word developer within DICE, I specifically get developers. So make sure this is updated. Also, indeed, is becoming a thing. I think Indeed does a pretty good job of resumes and all that. So I would absolutely do Dyson Indeed.

LinkedIn, Dyson Indeed, and you should be able to find a job. If you don't want to use a recruiter, if you're just adamant, you're here at my talk because I'm here to convince you to use a recruiter and you still don't like me. I would hold yourself to having one unique interaction a day or intentional interaction a day with someone in your network. So my dad was in the restaurant industry. He worked at the same restaurant for 25 years. It was essentially killing him, that major back surgery, and he just quit. And he looked at me one day and he goes, okay, what do I do now?

And I go, what do you mean, what do you do? And he goes, how do I find a job? And when your dad comes to you, I grew up in a Southern Baptist household, right? You never talk about salary, right? And now in my job, I'm like, hey, my name's Taylor, how much money do you make? So it's kind of this huge, different mind shift. So when your dad comes to you and says, I don't know what to do. Like honestly, that's the motivation for me speaking at conferences. I don't care if you're in tech, right? This is applicable across all industries. And so I told my dad, I said, you need, since you're not working, and so mom doesn't get mad at you, you need to have one coffee, one lunch, one phone call, one Skype call, a day with someone in your network, three months later, he found a job on his own.

And he's been there for three years. You have to hold yourself. If you don't wanna use recruiters, which again, right, you may be in an industry here, Right now, we're like, you're not in tech, right? And you're like, well, how do I find a job in general? One phone call, one coffee, one lunch a day, with one person in your network that you want to work with, or work for, or work with that company. It will completely, it will snowball, and you'll be able to find a job, because that's essentially what I do every single day. Yes. Zip recruiter, yeah, it's just another tool. I haven't used it, if it works for you, great.

But I've never used it. Yeah, I can't I can't really speak to it. So yeah Well, it's just good stuff. We got 12 minutes. This is awesome. Yes, okay Yeah, so that's a great question. So the question back here was alright. I have a friend that hasn't worked in a few months and How do they speak to that space on their resume? Job searching and in the time of taking off is storytelling, right? No one talks about it, right? So like for me when I work with the developer who's been off work for two or three months, okay, tell me why. Well actually I was working 80 hours in my last position.

Or I had a death in the family, really just was not in the mental state to get back to work. If it's literally just hasn't found a job in three months, that's okay. But I would highly advise for that person to continue to do things within her field to educate. So then there's some sort of like, you know, yeah. So it's like, hey, so again, everything for me is in tech, right? Hey, I've been out of work for four months, but I've been taking Pluralsight courses on .NET Core. Okay, great. That's perfect. I'll put that in there, right? How many hours a week would you say you average Pluralsight courses?

Five hours a week? Okay, great. I'm gonna put that in there, right? And I'll just tell the client. It's all about storytelling. Yes. Yeah. That's a good question. How do you find recruiters? So trying to best answer this if I was like the job seeker. In my opinion, if you have time at night when you're in bed and you're looking at your phone, I would go to LinkedIn, I would type the word recruiter and I would use the filter within your city and start looking at the 2 and 2 rule and see which one qualifies with the 2 and 2 and shoot them a DM.

How many people in here have a Twitter raise their hand? How many people in here are actively on LinkedIn every day? Raise your hand. It's only about 25% of the room. So that's kind of my next talk for next year, is really leveraging social media and personal brand to help find a job. It's incredibly important. A lot of the engineers that I know and national from code school are always on LinkedIn, liking people's statuses, commenting, sliding into people's DMs. I don't know if you guys know Gary Vaynerchuk, he always talks about it's going down in the DMs. It's so true. I gave a career panel two years ago in Nashville.

It was a wonderful panel and there was two engineers on either side of me and I asked that question to a room of 80 people and I said, hey, how many people in here have DM people on Twitter to ask them for a coffee or lunch or an interview and the only two people that raised their hands were the engineers on side of me that found jobs through it. You have to try to get off the traditional way to find a job, job postings, right? Like that whole thing and really build the relationships, build the relationship with the recruiters, right? Build the relationships through social media.

Like there's a lot of engineers I know across the country that I've never met that I would ask to stay at their house if I was in their city just because I've communicated over Twitter. Now that may be a little creepy, but I don't think it's not. Especially in the states tech world, right? Leverage the tools that you have available to you to build relationships with people in your community. But yeah, it takes a little work. Or you could just sit back and wait for them to DM you, and then you can do it from there. That's another way too. Yes, yes. What's the difference between your head?

Headhunter recruiter. Headhunter is not nice, and a recruiter is nice. I don't know. They're the same thing. Headhunter sounds terrifying. You're a headhunter. They go, well, just work with people. It's fine. What else? Yep. I shouldn't be. No, yeah, I mean like the whole salary thing, like you don't need to be afraid to tell the recruiter, right, like for me, I really wanna know, I really wanna know where you're at, what your absolute bottom line is, right, so if you had 100K, but you'd like to see positions at 90K and above, but you really wanna be at 115, I need you to give me all those data points.

Because I work on jobs day in, day out, And if I don't know your minimum, I may not send you a job that you may be a fit for because it may be a few thousand dollars off. Now I know people are scared to give where you're at with recruiters like money wise. By the end of the day, the more money you get, the more money we get. So it behooves you. It's my only fancy word I know. It behooves you to tell us all those data points. Yes. How do you negotiate pay rates in the lowest? Lowest paying state. Right. Right. Well, you work around that by building.

So the question up here is if you work with an individual, right, in a low paying state, and you have to negotiate with the client to get a raise for that person, it's all about relationships. And I know you're probably like, all right, Taylor, we got it. It's about relationships. But literally, I have been in positions where I needed to get money for my developers to get them paid. And because of the relationship that my team has with the hiring managers, we were able to have a real open and honest conversation with the hiring manager to get them a raise. But you won't know that unless again these are all indicators those questions I put up right.

If that person cannot answer all those questions they probably don't have the relationship that they need to be to negotiate for you. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. So again, continuation of that question, basically, if a hiring manager says, well, we don't have any budget, right? So what we do as recruiters is we try to show product or we try to show So candidates that align with that salary after a while and then come back and say, okay, you've seen seven resumes from us. Do you still want to see that person's resume that you actually like at $20,000 more? That's what we do. But again, it's not always, sometimes clients just don't want to pay.

But again, it's finding a recruit that's willing to work for you as much as humanly possible. What else? You guys got a few more minutes. Yeah. Yeah, so this is a great question. So how many people in here have been promised something from an employer and did not get it, raise their hand? Exactly. Then you call me. No. Yeah, I mean it happens all time, right? So I got a guy, I got this guy an offer. It was $25,000 more than he was making. I'm not getting underpaid. $25,000 more he was making. His current company countered with another $15 grain on top of that. So I helped my friend get a $40,000 raise.

Well, guess what happened? That other $15,000 that they promised him never happened. What did he do? He left. Right now, everybody in this room has the power over the company. Now, I'm not excused to go in and ask for a raise or a quit and just be an absolute not nice person to people. But at the end of the day, the individuals in this market, especially in tech, if you have any sort of experience, the junior development side is extremely competitive, so not as much. But you have the ability to negotiate in this market. And if that doesn't happen, if you promised something that you were not given, I would absolutely start working with a recruiter and see what else is out there.

And stop taking counter offers. Stop it. Like, how many of y'all been in bad relationships? You don't have to raise your hand. Me? That like literally like, you know, your ex was like, all right, no, no, don't break up with me. I'll do better. Maybe your wife said that last night. That's not holding on to the conversation. Um, yeah, this isn't that type of talk. But the thing is though, why did it take you threatening to leave for the company to give you what you want? And that's why I would absolutely again, have people in the market that you know to where, if that happens, a little bit right on the wall, meshes that person on DM, hey man, I never got the raise, I never got the promotion.

You have the power in this market to demand what you want. But obviously be respectful. What else? A few more minutes, two more minutes. Yeah, yeah, so the whole misconception with contract to hire and the work contract is freelance. So we're going back to the freelance question earlier. Recruiters have benefits, they should have benefits. I have benefits. VACO has benefits that we give to our candidates that are contract to hire. Ask to see those on the front end. So for recruiter calls you have, hey man, contract to hire. Like contract to hire for me is essentially actually, no, you're actually full time with VACO and then you're full time with another client.

There's no, like, you have benefits, you get paid biweekly, you have the same pay schedule like I am and then after six months you just go away with other other company. So if it's a contract to hire, ask the recruiter, hey, do you have benefits before you move on any further? But it's the same thing, right? The whole contract to hire, in my opinion, I would recommend contract to hire. I've had so many engineers I've worked with recently that I've gone full time off the GIGO salary with the end client and they want out three months later. I cannot work with you because if I place you, we have contracts in place where I'm not allowed to pull you out and you're on your own.

There's this one guy that I'm working with that I placed a year and a half ago. he hates the company he's at and he keeps texting me, hey man, can you work with me? No. Three months later, hey man, no I can't. Well how about if I quit? Well then yeah, yes, then I can work with you. So in my mind, actually contract hires the way to go because you can try as well before you buy and if it doesn't fit, the recruiter can roll you off onto another company. Cool. So that's 11.50. You guys are more than welcome to leave. I'm gonna be up here answering questions.

Take my business card, stickers, pass them out to your friends and thank you all for attending. I really appreciate it. Come in. Oh, you're a defias. Oh, this is a great resume. Don't do the back. Don't print it on the back. Just do two pages. Nothing to really matter. Just kind of, I like it though. I didn't want to have the staple of all this stuff. Yeah, so my thing is I like this. I would try to break it down a little bit more, maybe with some project stuff. Maybe? Less stuff. Just more project based work if there's been specific projects you've taken on or worked with within the company Okay, but aside from that man, it's great.

Cool. I like it. Thank you. Yeah, dude And look at the rest of my that's good. I would be happy to get that Thanks, man. I love it, man. Yeah Okay Love it man, what you doing what you need to be doing? It could be the next Gary Viner. Thanks, man. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. You got like LinkedIn right now? Yeah, dude. Yeah. So I'm on LinkedIn. Follow me on Twitter. My LinkedIn is Taylor Destin, just my name. I'm literally wearing the exact same floral shirt and my LinkedIn profile. So don't judge me. This is my favorite shirt. Yes. LinkedIn Brief Meant. Yes.

I'm on a last week project. One is high level job description. Yeah. High level overview what you're working on. Yeah, yeah. Language used. Yep. Specifically. Specifically. Yes. What's the last one? Complete tech stack from front to back that you're working within. Right, so if you're primarily UI engineer working with Angular, but you're still working within a .NET platform, put the entire tech stack that you're working with in all the tooling. Okay, perfect. Yeah. Everybody, absolutely. I think you, hey. I heard you're statistic somewhere that if you take most people except counter offers are gone with the three to six months. Oh, it's so true. It's so true.

It's awful. So I could say what? And literally my dude, who. Why are we leaving anyway? Exactly. My dude who took the counter left three months later. Yeah, a lot of times go fire you anyway. Yeah, because they know you're looking. You know you're looking. Yeah, it doesn't work. Yes, what's up? What are the new skills that a new environment needs? I'm going to be a new graduate. Nice! What skills would people look like? Data, everything's data right now. Are you talking about within technology though? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so most junior devs that I place, it's got some way shape performed with database SQL scripting or querying or some other buzzwords.

I don't know what they mean. Okay. Yeah, dot-est fusion Nashville. But even then, right? right like I placed a junior dot netdev he's primarily doing sequel I don't know what it is within the tech stack but Like everybody wants these junior devs no sequel like listen full JavaScript's hot But I very rarely get a junior JavaScript role. Yep. Yeah, sequel. Yeah, I mean I mean if you can go in and know you know how to query and inner hour joins and maybe some store procedures like you Know no no no but the thing is though yeah, I mean I don't know what it is But it sounds like it's simple and that's all people need to know Man that's come on man zero to I don't know it depends it's up to the company right I always say like hey listen like I'm like how much money you make or how much money do you want?

I said I could submit you at half a million dollars But the end of the day the client decides what you worth same thing with skill set right so there's one junior dev I'm working with I think he actually takes out more like a lower mid even though he just graduated from code school Well, he just has it, you know what I'm saying? So it just, it varies, it varies. I don't, we have a pretty cool testing software tool that if you really want to try it out, I can send it to you, just email me. We test and react Angular node SQL, all of it.

And so that kind of, and we send that to our candidates to tech them out. And so actually a lot of my devs just wanna take it to see where they're at. So yeah. What's your email? Taylor at Baker. Taylor? At baco.com. At Baco. E-A-C-A? The ACO. Yeah, thank you. What's up? I'm late again. Say again. I sent you a connection. Good. Good deal, man. Awesome. Thanks, dude. I appreciate you. It's a proper etiquette that I'm one of the recruiters. Yes, I should have probably said that. At most, three, probably just two. Anything more than two will just get a little weird and it'll take too much every time.

Makes sense. Yep. And then you said that you find them or that you find them? Either, right. Depends what you want to do. I mean, if you board one night and get on LinkedIn and type in recruiter type in recruiter and in your area and just start DMing people to have that two and two rule. I think you'll be able to make some pretty good headway or if you're not in a super rush, just wait for people to message you. Okay. And then the other question is, I'm sorry I worked for a company I've been for three years. Okay. The language is called I have an issue.

It's very unusual. Yeah, yeah. How would I go about finding other companies that might want that type in that term into LinkedIn? Okay. I really need to give like a LinkedIn course because it's such a good tool. in that term to LinkedIn and then here I'll actually pull it up real quick for you. Well I'll put it in. Well actually I don't have Wi-Fi but yeah so yeah type in the LinkedIn and then type in like just you should just be able to press enter and then all the tools will pop up or all the companies or people so so probably the people will pop up that have the tools and just go to their company.

Okay, that's more. Yeah because it's a lot of demand on your job list. Yeah exactly right so it's like if you if that tool is with you know if you see a bunch a bunch of guys out of Denver that have that tool, I would just go to what I honestly I would do, I would message those guys and be like, hey guys, or hey dude, I have the same tool that you have as your company hiring and that way you build the connection with the person at the company instead of submitting your resume. That's a really good idea. Thank you, Pete. Yeah, man, absolutely.

I'm not at the belt. No, it's fine, man. I'm a networking guy. Yeah, yeah, we do a lot of networking stuff in Nashville. Okay. and like BG what is it BG IP or beat what all that stuff I never know what it is it's all made up okay what's up well anyway I was just wanting to get your sense of what that markets like still I mean still it's still hot yeah okay to my Juniper and yeah what do you what do you work with okay I've been I got that later on. Okay. Update my skill set. Yeah. I'm going to get some Cisco certificates.

Yeah, I would still say certificates actually hold its way within infrastructure. I call it infrastructure space more than the development space. It was like, you know, should I get a Microsoft server? Or should I get whatever? No, that doesn't help in the Devs side, but it helps in your side. Okay. Yeah. So, certs help. It also shows that you're studying, right? We're talking about being laid off. Hey, what are you doing to further your skills? Well, I'm actually working on my, you know, Azure cert or your whatever cert Cisco. Yeah. Sure all that stuff. It's okay Yeah, absolutely right and all companies really want to know is that you're just you're just further educating yourself That's it so Hey, hey if you anything shoot me an email for real.

I'll be glad to help in anywhere. I can are they here They never really go. That's crazy. That makes me happy. Where are they? I have more. I just thought I did. Where are they? I need to organize my bag. It's making me nervous. There we go. Yeah, man. I'm just business cars and get so boring. Yeah, what's up? I've been actually filled with 15 years. Yeah, makes me appreciate it. I've been 4-0 semi-leaving an adult. Do I put that on my resume? I did a small business with a second and I was doing my chest and my clock system, so I had that on some of my resume, and so I'm like, don't, and I'm not sure if it's good to have a business.

Sure, I think so. I mean, I think there's a way to notate it where you can still show your personal business is like it being legit, right? And when I say it's legit, like we know it's legit, you made money off it, but I think a lot of times the typical notion within my eyes, it's like, oh, sometimes the personal business they're actually not working a ton, right? It's more of just an excuse. But if you were putting in some hours, right, putting 20, 30, 40 hours, I would absolutely notate it that way. And then also having a side gate around is like consulting I guess.

Yeah. And just go pick and choose my own ways. Yeah. So sometimes I may have six months when I want to have a job. Yeah. But I don't even work my full time. I'm not doing my side. 100%. Do I still leave that ongoing? Yeah, I would. I would. And then they ask you questions. Yeah, right now I'm a hiatus because I want to focus on work with my friends and family. Correct. That's what it is. Yeah. If you're working with a crew, I would also ask them, like, hey, what is this company? How does this company view side hustle stuff? Because there's some companies that want you to be totally focused to their business.

So I would ask the recruiter before they submit your resume. Because if you need to take it off, you can take it off. But most companies don't really care about that anymore. But a lot of startups do. Because they want you to be totally invested. Yeah. What did you get a bad boss or manager? What is your situation like that? Bad boss or manager? Yeah. I mean, it happens a lot, right? Yeah, it happens a lot. I think trying to network with other people within your company, within different divisions is huge. You know, I mean, I... Hold on.