music city code 2019

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What's going on podcast fam super excited to bring another episode to y'all But first off just want to say hope everyone is enjoying their pumpkin spice lattes and the 90 degree weather Ice coffee until the day I die for me But hope everybody's enjoying getting into the fall spirit with it being 90 degrees outside This episode is Specifically from this past weekend and music City code So Music City Code is here in Nashville every year. It's around 900 people and it was actually sold out this year. So shout out to that crew. They just do such an amazing job organizing this event. And obviously speaking across the southeast over the last two years, it's just always absolutely fantastic being at home and seeing so many people and so many friends.

So this session is great. There's a ton of good content that came out of it. As always, my sessions are Q&A. I always feel like it is a way to tailor each session towards what people really want to hear and it really tailors the conversation. So I hope you all pick something up from this session and the next few weeks are going to be crazy. So basically what's happening is I'm heading to Las Vegas this weekend for Vaco's company wide conference. I have a unique opportunity to sit on a panel with my dear friends Dan Thompson who leads up our Tampa office and Jake Shepherd who is in our technology division in Raleigh.

Us three are speaking on personal brain and what does that look like today within the recruiting space. So extremely blessed and extremely excited about that. Then I get back. I have another talk at National Software School and just again helping software school graduates navigate the job search which can be super overwhelming. And then I'm heading back out to my second home in Raleigh, North Carolina. I had the opportunity to be accepted into the Raleigh Code Conference, so I'll be speaking there. And then I get back that Sunday and that Wednesday I'm flying out to Little Rock Tech Fest to speak down there. So crazy next few weeks.

And my goal is to try to document as many conversations as humanly possible. So I can share that with everybody from personal branding to obviously any sort of conversations I have within the conferences and then obviously my sessions. Please feel free to rate and review this. Like I said, and then if you need to reach me, follow me on Twitter at T. Decin. I'm putting out a ton of content around the job search process and working with recruiters and everything in between. And I hope you all enjoy this session and can't wait to bring more to you all. Thanks. We appreciate it. We are now.

What is it? Essentially day three of this conference. So a lot of conference fatigue. You in here truly is feeling conference fatigue, raise your hand. So go good, only half the room. So I expect the other half to ask all the questions. So for those of you who do not know me, I know some of you do. My name is Taylor Desen. I am a recruiter, believe it or not. Please don't leave. So I am super blessed and super grateful to always be presenting at Code Conferences as a recruiter because at the end of the day I do not code even though I've been pressured to do so.

My problem solving skills are pretty terrible. So I'd be a terrible developer. I work for Vaco. How many in here? Raise your hand if you've heard of Vaco. Sweet, awesome. So I'm the recruiting manager. I manage 11 recruiters. Still try to find time to recruit and then also kind of do the whole podcast, Guidance Counter 2.0. And obviously do the whole speaking thing. For those of you who are like going to these conferences, so I'm actually, so next week you can't come. Vegas for my company conference. I'm actually speaking on a panel on how to build your personal brand. So that's next week in Vegas and then the first week of October I'm going out to Raleigh code in Raleigh, North Carolina and going to speak out there kind of the same talk and then I'm heading out to Little Rock Tech Fest.

That's a new one for me. Super, super stoked to be involved with those guys and girls out there. That's the following week in October. So just let you know and then earlier this year I spoke at Code on the Beach in Jacksonville. So again, super blessed to be involved at Code of Commerce's. I absolutely love meeting everybody. A little bit more about me. I moved to Nashville in 2011 from South Carolina. And I went to University of South Carolina, major in business, and barely knew how to turn on a computer. I moved up here from music. I did some studio stuff on Music Row, played down the hockey talks to Keila Cowboy.

I don't think it's even called that anymore. And then did some touring. And I kind of found Vaco through a friend of a friend. I was on tour. We broke down the middle of South Carolina. And in the middle of August, I don't know if you all have frequented South Carolina in the middle of August. It is not a place to break down. And after that, I said, I am done. And so kind of found recruiting, starting our national practice. So kind of think of the type of recruiter that Cole calls you. That's not in the city you live in, tries to pitch you on an enterprise client that you've already been called for 15 times.

That was me. I did it for two years. I called into the Bay Area, dealing with Yahoo, Disney, Sony. A lot of individuals hung up on me. And after that, I realized I needed to make connections and build relationships. And so I moved to Raleigh, North Carolina. I was in the research triangle area for a year, got super invested within the dev community specifically. Kind of found my niche there, and had my first opportunity to speak at a conference very first time and just absolutely loved it. And I moved back to Nashville in 2013. I've been here ever since. I only worked with developers. So a lot of people in here know me through kind of working together.

And yeah, that's just me at a super high level. And the point of this talk is super conversational. So my dad worked that same job for 25 years, not in tech. And he quit his, he left his job because it was essentially killing him. And he looked at me and he goes, what do I do? I don't know what to do. And so after that moment, I realized I needed to be more vocal about how to navigate the job search. From that front and then the other front as well, there's a lot of people in here who hate working with recruiters. How many people in here have been hit up by a recruiter that's a very templated message and you don't respond back to them?

Raise your hand. Pretty much everything here, exactly. So my goal during this next little bit is to help you quiz developers. I have 10 questions on how to stump developers. I mean, now recruiters, whenever they call you, and really just to break down the barriers of working with recruiters. So nothing's off the table. This is all Q&A. I can talk about pricing. I can talk about how we do things from a qualifying and job order, how many recruiters you should work with, how many who, you know, how do you weed out recruiters. So all that being said, I'm opening up for questions. So who is the first person to kind of get things wrong?

Everything starts rolling pretty well after the first question is asked. So, first question. So I heard that, yeah, so, yeah, I heard of, in the bay area, there's essentially like agents. Like, I've heard that developers can hire recruiters to go find them jobs. That's not how it works here, unfortunately. So, there's two types of recruiters in the market. There's agency and there's corporate recruiters, right? So, corporate recruiters are recruiters that work for the actual company. And then there's agency cruisers like myself, tech systems, Robert, half, et cetera. Those are agency recruiters. And so that's kind of the two models. And we are obviously employed by our clients to help them find talent.

So that's kind of it in a super high level. I wish people could hire me as like a 1099 to find them jobs because that would be sick. But that is. Yeah. Yeah, no, I literally read. Yeah, I literally read an article. When I was in Raleigh, one of my architect friends sent it to me. He goes, hey, you need to do this. And it was literally like agents for developers out in the Bay Area. So that would be pretty cool. But yeah. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So does that answer your question? Awesome. Good deal. What else? Well, here, yeah, I think so. Yeah. I'm legally.

Yeah. Yeah, I'm with Baker. What else? Any questions on, again, I can go. over a ton of stuff, but I obviously don't want to speak at you. So I want to actually just have a good organic conversation. No salary negotiations. Yes. I write online that they said don't tell a reading, just give them a range. What's the benefit of your salary? Yeah, that's a really good question. And I hope I answer this for you correctly. So the people who've worked with me, I say this to everybody. The more you get, the more I get. So I'm always going to try to push for as much money for you as possible.

But at the end of the day, the client decides what's your worth. So the joke is I could submit you at half a million dollars, but ultimately the client's going to say what your value is. I would advise you to give both numbers to be totally frank. With a recruiter you trust. So if it's some recruiter off the street, I wouldn't go into all the financials. I would just tell them your desired. But if you're working with me, I want to know where you're where you want to be at so I can kind of have a range, right? And then I also want your minimum, right?

If you're at a hundred K and you're like, man, you know what? I can do 95. That's not a big difference, maybe even 92. Like that helps open up the window a little bit so I can send you more opportunities in kind of a wider range. But if it's some recruiter off the streets, I would just give them what your desired is and then just leave it there. So is that? All right, Ken's got two questions, so he's putting the team on his back this morning. What else? Was there a danger or a murder? Maybe they think it should be higher, and they submit you at a higher rate.

Is the chance that you might lose that opportunity? Possibly. Yeah, I mean, so I would make sure you're pretty lock and step with that recruiter. And heck, yeah, one more dude. Let's give it up for the sky. I don't know what sky's name is, but. Yeah, so I mean basically you got to be locking stuff with your recruiter so and I'm going to kind of go off the script a little bit with this question to kind of tie in something. So I'm really passionate about screen out recruiters and if you get anything from my talk this is one of the things how to screen out recruiters I would use a two and two rule, right?

So two years of experience within that market and then they've been with that company for at least two years. Now, I got absolutely hazed by my team because we have a lot of new recruiters that were training up and a lot of them are under that two year mark and so they go, great, no one's going to work with us now. And I go, listen, it's just a general guidelines for all of those weird people that slide into your DMs that you're like, who are these people, right? So again, just a super high level to weed in and out. And then I would only work with two recruiters, really two at most three.

you need to be locked in step with them for that reason. So you don't want to work with a recruiter that's going to try to be greedy for himself and mark you up everywhere and disqualify you for opportunities. Usually I tell my people that I work with, I'm like, hey, listen, if you're open to it, I'm not pressuring you, just give me a two week, let me submit you everywhere and just let me line up interviews for you. But again, those people know me at this point and they know I'm not going to price gouge them and try to mark them up competitively within the market.

What else? Yes? Yes. You do whatever you want, man. What do you want to do? Do you want to code for the rest of your life? Great. Do it. Transition. First off, make sure the recruiter knows what he or she is talking about, right? I would say that's a big thing. I mean, I joke a lot with my developer friends where I just say like, you know, microservices and like cloud and like.net core. I don't know what the hell any of that stuff is, right? So, for me, I would say find a recruiter that at least is somewhat competent or at least just ask good questions, right?

So if you came to me and you were like, hey, Taylor, I really want to move into like, you know, data analyst or, you know, a BA or any type of different role. I bet, all right, listen, like, it's going to take some time because we've got to find that right opportunity. But yes, absolutely. I think the market is so good right now, still, that you absolutely will be able to kind of transition if you want to make that transition. I don't know if that answers your question. Okay. Yeah, I mean, listen, I know some data analysts that get paid more than some developers and I know a lot of data analysts that price out.

Yeah. Great. And that's a good question. So that's where you find a recruiter who knows what he or she is talking about so they can absolutely tell a story. So in our industry with a little bit of storytellers as well, because we paint the picture for hiring a man. If I go to Ken, I got a can that for you, he's a .NET developer. He's been a .NET developer his entire career. But he's really passionate about working more with, maybe reaching here, but end users, with the business a little bit more, not being a hold up behind a computer, do you have an opportunity within your business that we can transition him into?

But most recruiters aren't, one, don't have those connections, and two, aren't willing to have those conversations. If you find somebody, because I'm sure Ken will be like, sure, yeah, that sounds great, let's see what we can do. But again, it's having a recruiter and a recruiting company who has built build the rapport with the hiring manager, and then also understand the business side of things and being able to transition to two. But again, it's going to take time and screening a recruiter. A lot of people in today's market submit their resumes everywhere. Stop that. Stop it. Because you are disqualifying yourself from possibly working at that company, because in today's market, the recruiters drive things.

So what I would do is, Now, my brother up here, he found all of his jobs without a recruiter, without me. So it is absolutely feasible to do that, but at the end of the day, most of the market is driven by recruiters. So if you're about to go on the job search, start screening recruiters first. And then they will represent you to opportunities and I will tell you your entire job search will change. Job postings? Yeah. I would still stay away from, I mean, listen, I'm only one recruiter, and this is my two cents. I'm very cautious to over speak, because if you talk to tech systems, they're gonna say something different than me.

If you're gonna talk to somebody else, they're gonna say something different than me. But for me, a lot of those job postings, I have missed out on the opportunity to work with candidates on so many occasions, because they submit the resume to job postings from the company before I'm able to speak with them. And I literally have to go, we know the manager. We place the hiring manager and I can't do anything because you submitted your resume. Yeah, I am a product at Ticketmaster just to interject. This is a good conversation because when I started Ticketmaster two years ago, I had a buddy that worked there and was like, yeah, you would be a great cook for this job.

I was like, okay, I'm gonna apply. And the next day I got declined by the internal recruiter. It was like, no, you're not qualified for this job. Two weeks later I got hired and the internal recruiters said, hey, I need you to apply for this job on the website. So it's in our system. I said, already apply, you need to apply to the marketing. So it's the same thing with these. In my experience, the internal recruiters, a lot of these large companies aren't really pushing my eye-willing data. So they don't know what's going on. And so they disqualify you. And if you don't have a connection in the company that kind of gets you to the next step, it's like.

Flossed. Yeah, you're lost. Yeah. So, if somebody has a visit by the right way and then you want to stand back for them, why can't you still do that even if they're right? Because they're not going to pay us for something in their system. Yeah. So, it trusts me. Yes. I have called her in Mount Miller and what if I do? Do you have a connection there? He does. I'm always completely open if I don't have a connection at a company. Or no, if we're not working for a company, I will always do my best to make introductions. Right? Like, I don't work with STR, but if you want to go to STR, I'll hook you up with Connor and see what Connor can do.

Right? But at the end of the day, like, doing the right thing is always the right thing. Right? Connor. It's not the point. And so I always try to make sure that my people find a good landing spot whether it's a bit with me or not. And I always tell people like if you're interviewing anywhere in Nashville, just hit me up and I can give you the good, bad and ugly. And I try to do that with my canets as well. You know another thing about, just about, right. Correct. And I bet it's refreshing to hear that. Yeah. So I'm going to pivot, that's a great transition to something else that I'm pretty passionate about.

Who in here has done contract or contract to hire? Yeah, what's going on? Contract to hire, one, two, three, four, five, six. Who in here is scared to do contract to hire or contract raise their hand? Great, awesome. This is going to be great. Skip ahead, don't look at all my pretty slides. There we go. So, if the second thing to get out of this talk is these are 10 questions to Stumper Crewters and to specifically weed out what contract and contract to hire options are available and are viable, right? So if you do, if you get anything out of this, the 2 and 2 role and this is the most important, I'm not kidding you.

I had a developer. I don't know if you meant to do this. I had a developer. I spoke at a .NET user group in Chattanooga and he's at TVA and they're having some layoffs and he's open to come to Nashville. He used my questions on me. He emailed me and it made me so happy. But I know, does anybody know Seth Alexander? Seth Alexander actually used these questions on two recruiters and none of the recruiters got back to them, back to him. Completely stumped him. So contract contract to higher is in my mind, just as safe as full time. I think there's obviously a little bit more risk, but it's about the same.

Especially if you have a recruiter you can trust. So my thing is, I don't always get it right, but I try to give at least 30 days. It's usually like three weeks or so. And it is an opportunity for developers to be able to work with different technologies, projects and also try before you buy, right? So let's say you get into an environment and I place you full-time salary, right, and you hate it, I can't work with you. If you're on contract to hire with me and you call me up in three months and be like, bro, they promised me.NET Core and I'm doing VB.NET, get me out of fear, I can probably do that.

Now, you have to know what questions to ask from a contract to contract to higher perspective, because you need to qualify the order yourself, because I will tell you this, 99% of recruiters don't really know how to qualify in order, and neither do their sales folks as well. So these questions right here are all the questions that my team, both on the sales side and the recruiting side, ask our hiring managers. How long is the position open? Why is the position open? If it's contract to hire, if it's contract to contract to hire, does the budget, is there approval? to bring you on full time, conversion salary, and it goes on.

Right? One of the biggest things that I want you to get out of these 10, one of the most important questions is how many people has the recruiting team placed with a whole company, and how many times, how many people the recruiting team has placed, or that recruiter is placed with the company. I can tell you within every dev team in Nashville, if I have placements there, I can tell you if it's my first or my tenth. There's one company here that my team has pretty much placed all 15 of their developers. And it's contract to hire. And I will tell you, I can give you specifics.

It will convert after six months. You will get the salary submitted to you at. We have 15 people that have done this. I can connect you with those people so you can talk to them. Come on, man. Come on. Let's go. We're talking about recruiters. Yeah, we're talking about recruiters and your job search. It will help you. This talk will absolutely get you more money down the road. Any questions on this? Yep. Yep. You're a high-rate. Salaried. Salaried, yeah. You're a high-rate. Yep. Yep. As long as we have the contract in place. There are exceptions, right? My job is completely gray all the time. But I would say like we try to be respectful, right?

And so the contract to higher type thing, I would recommend it for everybody. because it really gives you the opportunity to feel out the environment before you go full time. What other questions? Yeah. Number seven. Number seven. Oh, is that recruiter tier one vendor? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we work with some pretty enterprise clients in Nashville. And if it's a big client that you know, ask them if they're a tier one vendor. Tier one means they have all the positions first. They get all the positions first. And if they go, first off, if you ask a recruiter that, they're gonna be shocked. They're gonna be like, what?

And if they say no, we're a tier two vendor, that means they haven't gotten the position for... So internal recruiting usually has 30 days, right? So let's use an example like HCA, right? HCA in town, they have internal recruiters. Those recruiters approximately have that job for 30 days. Once they cannot fill that job, they release it to us. If you're a tier one, you get it after those 30 days immediately. If you're tier two, it could be another 15 days after that. So again, that doesn't apply to everybody, especially in definitely not startups. But if it's a big enterprise client in your city, that usually applies.

I see some people writing things down. That makes me happy. Yes? Audience member 1, right. That's a shitty recruiter. Yeah, I mean, again, right? If you're working through recruiter, I would not recommend to talk money with the end client because that can get a little weird because usually the end client is assuming the recruiter takes care of everything with that. I would ask these questions and I mean grill. Like hey, how many people will be placed with this team? Well none, okay. What's the conversion salary? 100K, are you sure? Yes. Can you forward me the submittal? Ask them for the submittal summary. And they go, excuse me?

You're like, just, can you please send over just what you submitted me at? We don't have to get into anything else. You can take out all the other information. Just send me the email that I can get verification that that 100K salary is in the hiring manager's inbox. And if a recruiter butts up against you, butt up back. I would do it. I've done it before. That answer your question. Cool. What else? I have a few other slides I can get to if there's no other questions. Yeah, so if you're doing contract to hire, So let's say you're on contract at 55 an hour. And let's say they recruit or call you, hey, man, hey, Connor, I got in position.

This contract to hire. You could pay 55 an hour and it converts at 100k. Just confirmed at 100k. Really, Taylor, it converts at 100k. Have you placed anybody with that company or that division? Actually, Connor, I have. Five people. So and I would always ask, man, if they've placed anybody with that company, It has to be introduced, right? Like, I mean, yeah, like, all right, if it's even if it's contract, right? Like, one of my dudes, I've placed them three or four times now, and then he was at one company for like a year or so. And I was like, hey, man, like, I know you're not there anymore.

Can you talk to my candidate real quick, just like five minute phone call, on how kind of they work over there? Sure, yeah, absolutely. I usually got to buy them lunch, but sure. Sure. Yeah, so number three ties into how many people they've hired within your team. And that's a question our sales people ask. Do you have the budgets? Now, there are sometimes where I have to tell my candidates, hey, listen, they don't have the budget right now. But the hiring manager specifically told us that he is going to go get budget over the six months. So that's one of them. How long has position been open?

If I call you and you ask me this question and I say, well, a year, red flag. And I do have those. But I can explain why. Long and persistent open, that could be a red flag with hiring processes. It could take a really long time. So if it's been a year, I could be like, Man, they absolutely grill you. It's like four or five steps. Which is why you use a recruiter because we shorten the interview timeline, right? It's a little invalid. Yeah, I mean ours is, we usually take out, ours is usually one or two interviews and you're hired. Yeah, but yeah, that's a very real thing too.

Yeah, like they're like dead set on Redux, but everybody else uses hooks. I don't know, I think that's a thing, right? I do that right, sort of. You're close. Thank you, I appreciate that. Sure, listen, for you, maybe, for me, no, right? I'm just saying these are to better equip you with everything. So it's like, if the position has been open for three months and they're like, listen, we just haven't found anybody, that's fine. It's just like, if they say anything longer, dig into why it's open. If there's any sort of amount of time that's not normal, Just dig in a little bit more. Yep.

It varies from, absolutely. Absolutely. What else? Who in here has a dice profile? Raise your hand. Good. This transitions into my next one. Cats. Big fan of cats. So this is what recruiters see on dice every single morning when we run searches for your profiles. We type in mileage. How many days you've logged on. So how many people in here have logged on dice and just gotten berated with phone calls. Well, actually just one person, so that's a dumb question. If you log on to dice, you will get called because recruiters search on how many days somebody has logged into their profile. So be careful.

I would absolutely use dice. I'm not sponsored by dice. I hope dice eventually hears my talk because I'm a I'm a big fan of dice, but you don't have to be in technology, but it's a solely technology focused job board. If I search developer and career builder, I may get like construction developers. I don't use career builder. I just don't, sorry career builder. Shh, Ken, my next thing, dude. Hang on. I'm gonna. But really, I would recommend dice. I would recommend for you to build it out now. Like go home on Sunday, be like, Man, Taylor's talk was so good. I'm so jacked up on dice.

And just fill out your dice profile. Now, because what happens is when you're on the job search, everything kind of gets really fast and you don't have time really to do anything because your day job is your job. And so I would take time to go ahead and fill this out and fill it out well and accurately. Right, the next thing is, is okay, Taylor, so I fill this out, what does my resume need to look like? So if I would, this is another thing I would take away. This is a resume template that for whatever reason goes over really well with hiring managers. If you go to Microsoft Word, there is a ton of resume templates.

I actually got this from a Raleigh office when I was there. I don't have numbers behind it, but I've specifically seen resumes that I edit to this format get interviews more than other resumes that I have not edited. A lot of people, I put a tweet out there last night about, and by the way, if you can't get a good picture, just shoot me an email, tailor at vacobut.com and I'll send all of this to you. And my business cards are up here at our vacobut, it's just tailor vacobut, it's not hard to remember. Any questions on this? This is really important. Yes, go. It's all caps and it has underlined and that's so ugly.

That's fine. Why does that work? It just does, man. I don't know. No idea. Well, because you know why. So think about right hiring manager, you're seeing so many resumes, right? Oh, I got here's another one. Ooh, summary. Wait, professional experience. Wait, where did they get their degree? Right? Yes, underlined, bold. Right? But for whatever reason, he may as a recruiter too, I look through, I mean, my job as a recruiter is to meet 10 to 15 new people a week. A week. I meet over 500 people a year. I've been doing this for five years in Nashville. That's 2,500 people. That's a lot of Daggelum resumes.

And I will tell you this, hiring managers are the same way, and for whatever reason, This just works. How many pages should that be? Good question. Great question. If I have a podcast because of this question, I want to kick the guidance counselor in the shim who said your resume should be one page. That's just dumb. I would say if you've been in the industry for any sort of substantial length, two to three, I would say at most three. But again, if you can put good information, sure four, but I would say three at most. Any other questions or questions? Yes? Yes? I do it with NSS students all the time.

So what I would do is I know NSS has their capstone project and they usually have two or three projects that they do. I would notate it as a job. Have you volunteered at all? Yeah, yeah, great. Yeah, so, okay, so I did this with my dad, he's not even in tech, get as quantitative as possible, right? So I used to serve tables at Outback Steakhouse, still a big fan of Outback Steakhouse. So if I told you, hey, I worked at Outback Steakhouse in Columbia, South Carolina, my job was to serve tables and provide great customer service to our patrons. Or if I go, I worked at one of the top 10 Outbacks in North and South Carolina that averaged over $5 million in sales.

I averaged around $1,000 a night in sales, and I was one of the top producers in liquor sales. Which one do you think the manager's gonna want? It's speak to, right? Quantave is possible. Mute City Code, one of the largest tech conferences in the East Coast, right? So, Quantave is possible. Yep. question. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 100%. Right. I mean, I think there, I think there's a big push in the dev community right now for just kindness, EQ, empathy, right. And I think if you were able to kind of show that you've worked on teams, you've been successful working on teams that you can be kind to others, right?

If you can pull that out in your resume, I think it's going to be huge. Yep. If you don't want to get called for cobalt programming jobs, Take it off, right? Yeah, I mean, I would say keep your resume tailored to the type of roles you wanna get called for. If you were doing vb.net, development, a few years back, I'd maybe just like, kind of shorten that just to .net development and take the VB off there and kind of shorten everything up. Put this stuff in your resume that you wanna get called for. Yes? And that means you just took the answer. And you answered my next question.

You're linked in. Yes, yes. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Nice. 100%. Still, I would still put that in there, but were you in any agile environments within your systems administrator experience or helped with anything? Yeah. Bring that to the forefront. So you want to obviously tie it in. I want to see your technical. Actually, one of Lauren Ice friends that Lauren worked with, he was a sysadmin and he transitioned to development. Right, it's just but I and I worked with him a little bit on how to write his resume what brings to the forefront You know what's what's not brought to the forefront right and and then go into your question your LinkedIn should be a place That should kind of be your new CV and in my perspective again my two cents So did so this is the profile of one of my good friends in Raleigh his name is David Green even though I took off his Information I'm still gonna say who it was so David actually hired somebody to write his LinkedIn.

I was upset that he didn't let me do it Now I would say, is this a little overkill? Possibly, right? So at bare minimum, your LinkedIn should have three sentences. What do you do at a super high level, right? So Brandon does, hey, I, and correct me if I'm on Brandon, hey, I help with the new platform, a Ticketmaster, that helps with their customers and rewards. What is it? What is it, something like that? Fan-based marketing. Fan-based marketing, right? Your first sentence should be about how you talk to your mom or your dad or somebody non-technical like me. Right, first sentence. Second sentence is what technologies are you primarily using?

Right, so if you're playing primarily in the UI with React Redux, put that in there with a little AWS, right? Your third sentence should be your entire tech stack and leave it there. Because what that does is that allows recruiters, when recruiters search on LinkedIn, we literally just search for .NET or React or Angular. That's all we search on and then the zip code. And so those three sentences will be able to direct recruiters to you for the positions that you want to be called about. Now this, he's going to get called about a lot of things, right? But he kind of does everything. I don't know if that answers your question and kind of bringing your older stuff to your LinkedIn as more of like a full, hey, this is what I can do.

And then obviously tie in your resume to more current stuff. Third sense is entire tech stack, right? So like if you're in a full .NET, you know, Angular on the front end.NET, C-sharp, mid-tier, SQL back end with Azure, right? That's probably your entire tech stack. Let's be honest, if you're a front end engineer, you're probably playing more with Angular than anything else. And so that's why I would put the two senses where they are. Any questions around LinkedIn stuff? Yep. Or the search for whatever. Correct. OK. Yeah. Yes. Yeah, I mean, in the summary, only remote options, please. Typically, we don't read. Tip recruiters are like, well, maybe this time.

So yeah, we don't really read, but I would still probably you know, take that even on your resume as well. Also, congrats for getting all those remote gigs since 2007. That's awesome, man. Yeah, great. You're staying with it. I love it. So make sure that's notated a lot in bold, maybe. Maybe I should just have like a one page that says remote only for recruiters. Yep. So on this is a good thing. Yes. So I don't actually search. So I may have misspoke. Dices is zip code. LinkedIn is the greater Nashville area. So that's how those searches kind of go down. I'd probably put Nashville proper.

Yeah. Correct. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, correct. Correct. Let's see here. What else? Any more questions? I just want to make sure I'm covering the high point, but we can keep going for sure. What else? Yep, how do you break up with a really crappy recruiter? It's not you, it's me. No. I mean, I would just listen, recruiters are kind of like the annoying boyfriend girlfriend. You just have to be really direct. Like listen, I don't want to be represented by you or anybody in your company moving forward. I'm really sorry. Taylor's obviously better. I'm just kidding. Yeah, no, I mean, it sucks. I mean, it really does.

It is an awkward conversation. I mean, I haven't had to fire really any developers, but I've come close. And it's not you, don't worry, Lauren. But it definitely is a conversation that is hard to do. By the way, what has this thing done? Five minutes, OK. By the way, I'll stay. We can keep rolling. please fill out the comment cards. That is kind of like my way to improve this talk. So please fill it out if you do leave. But we can keep going. I've literally done this thing for three hours one time. So, yes? Probably. the what? The dice. Yes, correct. Yes. Correct. Correct.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I've thought about this too because so when I post jobs as a recruiter, I have to put in a zip code even for remote jobs. But in the title, I say it's remote. And so I don't think there's gonna be a silver bullet to that. If I were you, I would maybe put the big city zip codes in your profile. So like New York, Atlanta, Miami, Orlando, just kind of mid-major to major cities in the US. Because that's probably where the larger companies are, to a certain extent that may allow remote. Ooh, I just heard a few light bulbs going on that one.

Yeah. So that's now, it will take time. And again, another thing too, looking for a job, you need to start about 30 to 60 days, probably before you think you need to. But my important, my thing I want to get across is know why you're looking to not only waste, so you don't waste my time in the recruiters time, but also so you don't waste your time. I have so many people that go, all right, I'm looking, why are you looking? I don't know. How am I gonna help you? Is it money? Is it tech? Is it remote? Is it commute? Is it your boss sucks?

What is it? But before you even enter the job search, have a little quiet time before you go to bed, pen and paper, and have a little self-reflecting for a second and really understand what's important in your job search. because you will never be happy in any job or during your job search if you don't know what's truly important to you. And also lean on the recruiters for market intel, right? Aside from using us, listen, I'm friends with a ton of developers that have never used me ever, but they just say, hey, what's the market? What are people getting paid? What's the hot trends? What should I look out for?

Right? Like, I had one developer at the same company that we placed 15 people at. He goes, he's doing contract to hire and he's about to go full time. And he goes, should I go full time? And I go, what do you mean? He goes, well, this is my first full time job. He freelanced for the first three years in his career, kind of a more of a newer developer. And I go, listen, I'm gonna be totally straightforward with you. You are literally a part one of the better dev teams in Nashville. He goes, really? I go, yes. I've been doing it for five years.

I've seen a lot of bad dev teams. I've seen a lot of companies break apart. I would stay. And he is. Right, so again, knowing it, like being, be with a recruiter who knows the market well enough to shoot you straight, right? That's super important as well. Apart from finding a job. Because again, this is what we do for a living. Some of us better out at another zero, negative zero. Jesus Christ, it's awful. Yeah, I mean, listen, right now, if you can pretty much spell react or just, or developer, you can find a job. Right now, and I know junior jobs are harder to come by, but I would say also please be networked in, right?

I think NSS does a great job of just the network as a whole. If you have not gone through NSS, network. So I told my dad this, I said, you need to hold yourself to the number one per day. One coffee, one phone call, one lunch per day. With somebody in your network that does what you want to do. There's one guy now, he just found a job. He was NSS, he was in construction. Finally found a job. up. He's hit me up a ton of times on LinkedIn. Hey man, what am I doing wrong? What I said, are you doing the one in one?

The one rule? And he goes, I am. I'm doing cop. I said, dude, stay with it. Just found a job a few weeks ago because one of his friends that he knew left the job and he got his friend's job. It takes time. Networking sucks. I hate it. And that's what I do for a living. It is exhausting. It, like I'm gonna go home and crash this weekend after this talk, right? Like it is exhausting, but it is the social currency of today's market. That is why I'm here. That is why recruiters exist, because we have to network to know the market and know what's going on.

And if you don't wanna use a recruiter or you want to just network in general, hold yourself to that one rule, One coffee, one lunch, one phone call, once a day, if you want to try to not use recruiters. But if you use your recruiter, we kind of take that burden off of you. I actually am rolling out that talk here in a few months. That's kind of my next talk. If you want talk, personal branding, I'm all about it, but we are wrapping up. So I'm gonna officially dismiss you all, if you guys wanna go, please fill out the cards. If you want to put them up here as you leave so I can just take them.

Be brutal. Listen, if I was boring or I like ramble or something, please let me know I've had a ton of black coffee so you know, don't really know how today went. But if you really liked it, please put what you liked. What would you like to improve on? I literally just started doing slides because one of my developer friends, Chris Demars, they may go to Chris to talk, Chris like gave me heck for like the last year to do slides, finally did slides. So anyways, thank you guys so much. I will stay here to answer any questions you still have. We can still stay.

Feel free to take a sticker. Those are my stickers. If you need a business card, I have them here. And thank you so much for coming out, y'all. I appreciate it.