Episode 17 - AI and Job Applications, Marketing Careers, and Interview Experiences
Watch the YouTube video version above or listen to the podcast below!
Agenda
The impact of AI on job applications
LinkedIn's labor market data
The increasing trend of remote work and its implications
The mismatch between job seekers' preferences and employers' offerings
The cost of job applications
The role of skills in job applications and descriptions
The issue of 'ghosting' in job applications and interviews
Episode 17 - AI and Job Applications, Marketing Careers, and Interview Experiences Video and Podcast Transcript
[Disclaimer: This transcription was written by AI using a tool called Descript, and has not been edited for content.]
Dave Dougherty: To the So Um, we're doing a little bit of a special episode, uh, today, jumping into the weird and wacky environment known as, uh, HR and the job market. So, um. We have a couple of topics and it's queuing up to a little side research project that Alex has been doing, uh, which we may do as a special episode.
So, um, more to come on that. So I have brought today, uh, LinkedIn as of this recording day, which is. September 8th. Um, LinkedIn came out with some labor market data that applies, you know, back to, um, July and June of 2023. So we'll use that as some context as to where things are, are kind of going, um, or where they stand now and how they're changing.
And then, uh, Ruthie, what have you decided to bring to the HR episode?
Ruthi Corcoran: I was going to talk about interview questions or rather interview experiences and then I realized that all of mine are very boring. And so, um, if you have a fun 1, feel free to sprinkle it in, but I'm shifting my topic to what you guys look for, um, in in future teammates or in employees or managers in the case and sort of what are the qualities that you look for above and beyond the skill sets?
Um, And if there's any other thoughts that come to mind around, like when you're, when you're hiring for stuff, what are you looking for? Or reverse when you're interviewing, what are you looking for from the employee?
Dave Dougherty: Um, yeah, Alex doesn't, uh, doesn't have his own since his topic warrants an entirely separate episode. Um, kicking off with the, uh, LinkedIn labor market data. So they, um, You know, they have a lot of data from everybody that's applying a lot of the job seekers with their applications. They've just done a lot of announcements on integrating AI into the profiles to, you know, rewrite your about me or, um, some of your, um, skill section, your headlines.
Which I played around with the other day just to play around with it. Um, and it was interesting to see what it came up with based on what my profile was and they say they're leveraging the database of. All the professionals and how they're writing it, but you know, um, it's fun to play around with, but make sure you keep, can we just
Ruthi Corcoran: pause there before we go on their report?
So now you can have LinkedIn automatically generate your about me. Is that what I just heard you say?
Dave Dougherty: And it'll optimize it for like their system basically. There's also only for the premium things, but if you're going to do, there's a number of things on the premium side where like, if you just bought a month and did all the things really quickly, you would get all the benefit without having to pay for a year.
Currently
Alex Pokorny: about 45 bucks a month. So, but also with just straight up LinkedIn posts, you start writing a post, just the whole community. Say to help you and you can type in very little and it will generate quite a bit. So.
Ruthi Corcoran: What is the point?
Alex Pokorny: That's been my question. I was like, waterfall, basically just the bots create the content, we get to read the content, and everyone can reply, and then use AI.
For the replies, also in messages, in mail, also as AI suggestions for the messages. Because if you build it
Dave Dougherty: up enough, you get all of the benefit without having to do anything. Which has always worked. That has always worked.
Ruthi Corcoran: For those listening, this face palm is real. Um, and when it really comes to mind, and I know this is a divergent, but I think it's an important one.
It's very much on topic for the things that we have talked about in the past, which is, okay, so I'm not on, I don't participate on many social media channels anymore. I used to, right? And it just, I don't have the time. I don't have the patience for it. The only one that I sort of dabble in occasionally is LinkedIn.
And because Most of the time it's because Alex and Dave are saying, Oh, there's this thing on LinkedIn. You should check out this post and take a look. But this to me is like the ultimate in why would I bother with LinkedIn anymore? Right? The whole point of it was that it was sort of some sort of signal of, you know, semi validated.
Here's what people have done in the past. It was a way for people to talk in a professional space on social media to connect with other people. But now to your point, like it's bots writing for. People, maybe? But like, do you really read that much on LinkedIn? Maybe this is my bias because I don't much, like I said, I don't participate in much by way of social media, but it feels like, like my initial reaction to what you just described is Microsoft introduced AI into the platform.
And that in and of itself is going to render that platform almost useless for actually signaling information about people.
Alex Pokorny: Well, this is one of those fundamental
Ruthi Corcoran: questions because everyone's going to do it anyways. Sorry, I'll
Dave Dougherty: stop. No, it's not. I think it is one of those things where there's an underlying assumption that more productivity equals good and everybody is optimizing to that.
And that's not necessarily the case. Right. Um, do I need to be able to create 12, 000 posts? Like instantaneously? No. Why? Because I can't remember all the things that that I'm putting out there, sort of under my name, right? Um, so I can't back up what it is I have been saying, but it's all it's basically just like a virtue signal of, Hey, I'm really productive.
I'm a thought leader in this space. But then if you get into a meeting, and people start poking around on, okay, do you actually know your stuff? Because it seems like you do, because you posted, you know, 12, 000 times on LinkedIn. You're probably not going to be able to back up, you know, that perception, right?
Um, there's, you know, there's that interesting case study, uh, with Betty Crocker, instant cake mix, where when they first introduced it in the fifties, it was too easy, so people wouldn't buy it. So they had to change it to just add an egg so that they actually felt like they were doing something, you know, in order to justify it.
Yes. I had a, I had a part in creating this cake. And then sales went through the roof. I feel like we're going to get to a similar part with AI, where if it's too easy, you just, you're just not going to do it. Cause there'll be too many ideas for you to be able to try to do. Um, and there's going to need to be some, some friction there to actually have the value.
Um,
Alex Pokorny: I kind of wonder the quality of content, but quality of posts. I mean, there's a few things there, so it depends. And it could be totally that LinkedIn is optimizing for the wrong thing. They're trying to get more word count, more posts, more some sort of activity figure that they're going after. Remember from YouTube, that doesn't always work well.
It turns out you can throw people down some pretty bad rabbit holes. And people will watch a lot of minutes, which is the wrong metric for the platform. I'm wondering from the improvement of content or quality of content, Is it improved based on people's grammar is better because you have AI assisting, you know, their grammar or are the insights better because AI could suggest some related links and Um, I mean, there's some ways in which it could elevate the quality of content, but also it would definitely, to your point, hide the individual.
So that individual, like probably in their emails is maybe not so good unless they're using, I guess, Google Duo or Cohort or something like that, Copilot from Microsoft. Yeah, that's gonna be an interesting world.
Dave Dougherty: Either that or it puts more emphasis on everybody becoming a video star. Um, where, you know, the only posts you'll actually take will be, you know, screen grabs or, um, you know, walkthroughs of, of their thinking.
Like, I know my feed has exploded with video stuff lately, where it's not just enough to, you know, have an idea and just kind of mention it. You've got to actually like screen share with you talking about it as you go through. And that, while I appreciate the authenticity of that. Like, I just don't have that amount of time to sit and spend on any kind of social media.
That's not how I use it. That's not how I choose to spend my time, you know, unless it's something that hits me exactly in that moment. You know, like there was that Will Reynolds thing where it's like, Oh, this is an interesting thing that he's doing. Totally different concept from the way that I would, you know, approach something.
Um. So it's, you know, it's shareworthy because it was interesting. And again, it was so different from the way that I typically view it. I wanted to actually like, Oh, Hey, check this out. This is kind of a cool use of GPT and his plugins. Um,
Alex Pokorny: which we can throw that link to the notes. Yeah.
Dave Dougherty: Yeah. Um, okay. So anyway, labor market data before.
Um, Ruthie's mind's blown even more.
Ruthi Corcoran: I'll save my notes for later. If anyone's wanting to hear more, you should just let me know. We can talk about signals and dampening and, and what the future of interviewing looks like given everything you guys just talked about. I mean, there, there's a lot more to unpack, but we shall proceed with the schedule.
Dave Dougherty: Right. So yeah, just laying some context into the spot that we kind of find ourselves. I think that everybody that's, you know, that's been around and paying attention for the last year or two years knows that it's a weird market. Um, there's the recession that never came. There are, or is still coming depending on what your leadership believes.
Um, so, you know, there are strategic moves that are made off of that. So, um, You know, according to Lincoln's labor market data, um, the global labor market declined in its hiring rate, uh, is 3 percent slower than, um, uh, between June and July. Um, the pace of decline is slowing in some of the more developed, you know, countries, places like us, UK, Australia, Netherlands, Sweden, et cetera.
Um, but that's just kind of a baseline. That's not necessarily the interesting stuff where the interesting stuff comes in is based on LinkedIn's data. All of the job seekers are actually applying to more positions. As they said, it's a more intensive job seeking, um, for the people. Um, so a 25 to 30 percent increase in the amount of applications.
Each job seeker is submitting. Um, then the interesting thing that stood out to me is a clear mismatch between what the workforce wants and what management is trying to go for. Um, Again, based on their data, purely remote jobs are shrinking. Um, however, 44 percent of applications using LinkedIn, um, in July of 2023 were for remote positions, um, so there's a huge chunk, uh, however, only 9 percent of the job postings in the U S um, offered remote work in that same period.
So, you know, tiny bit with a huge amount of applications there. Um, and that. is pretty as down from 18 percent in the prior year. Uh, hybrid was 13 percent of job postings, uh, which has increased, uh, from 8 percent a year ago. And hybrid is getting 20 percent of views and applications from the job seekers.
Um, which, you know, if, if you do the math, the in person piece, the job postings. For in person roles, it accounts for 36 percent
of applications. So, um, kind of that mismatch between the workers want the remote, they want the hybrid, they want the options, right, whereas the management. necessarily is trying to bring people back. Um, and, um, and the mismatch in priorities there. And you, you know, you've seen that in any number of news, uh, articles on, on how, you know, company X is demanding that people come in and they're tying the bonus compensation or even your own, you know, portions of your paycheck to how often you are in.
The office building, uh, which is kind of bonkers. Um, but yeah, so anyway, that, that jumped out to me. What jumps out to you guys? What are your thoughts on the, um, hybrid in person or remote
Alex Pokorny: situation we find ourselves
in? I think some of the part with the remote, just looking at those numbers, there's always multiple ways to look at any kind of figure. The other piece about it is, let's say I'm a CPA, certified public accountant. I'm applying to all the jobs. A certain level of expertise or years of experience or something like that.
I'm, doesn't matter if I'm in wherever, I'm going to come across that remote job. So a lot of job seekers are going to be seeing those remote jobs just because they're looking for a job title and the location is either where they are or remote. A lot of people that are going to be seeing that remote job to be shared a little bit and viewed more publicly.
So a little back and forth on that one. Um, but I definitely, I mean, to the point about Other news articles talking about the desire from the employee's standpoint and the anti desire from the employer's standpoint, um, you got a mismatch and there definitely is a mismatch. Some of this is, I think, just sunk costs where you have a bunch of real estate because you have a building, you have a long term lease, you're locked into a 5, 10 year, 25, who knows year, you know, rent, lease, own, whatever situation, you invested a ton of money.
Like each office, even though it was stupid, fuzzy cubicle walls are thousands of dollars. It's, it's insane what companies pay for a lot of that stuff. So the cost that they've sunk into having a space for employee is significant and they want some kind of return on that return being, I guess, usage. But yeah, I, I struggle with that one because there's productivity gains from being remote.
Um, but I think there's also a threat of burnout too. Of we're not taking the same number of breaks as we did in the past, because it's the next meeting is 3 clicks away. You close, you click on the next meeting, you hit join. You're in the next 1. You used to walk from meeting room to meeting room. You used to have side conversations.
You used to have more kind of a chit chat because there's people in the meeting room and you're waiting outside or not everybody has arrived yet. And to one of my prior employers, I always thought from an hour long meeting, the most important minutes were about the 5 to 10 before and the last 10.
Because 5 to 10 before was when everybody's still kind of milling in and getting into the room, people are chit chatting, they're more open. And they're talking about, Oh, actually this VP just slammed down this thing and I got to focus all my energy on that. Yes, we've been working on this project for three months, but I don't have any time to move this forward.
And they will be realistic with you and real about you and telling you what the context, greater context is going on. Not just that project or that meeting, but they'll tell you that greater context in those informal chitchat moments. And then the last five or 10. When you get down to business and say, Oh my gosh, we're about to leave this meeting.
Who's going to do what? And all the work gets assigned out. And those are the only minutes that are like, I mean, the discussion in between usually is fruitful and, you know, moves things in the right way. But those minutes on the end was actually when everything happened. And what I've noticed a lot with remote is that we stick to this straight agenda of this particular project, but we lose that greater context.
We don't really understand where people are coming from. If they, you know, had their kid in a hospital last night and they're barely awake right now and then we're asking like, you know, where's your stuff of this, you know, project. You need to have that context. And to miss that creates a culture change.
And the way that we work with each other and try to reintroduce some of those elements so that we can. Create their social bonds and connections, because if work is just work, it's very easy to leave that company. You create a community and create bonds, you create loyalty. So I think that's the other struggle from the employer's standpoint, is they don't know how to present that culture.
And they're really, really stuck in the culture that they had that was in person, and they don't know how to transition into A new way of doing things. Is it Slack? Is it teams? Is it both? Is it that on top of five others, you know, technology, communication technologies, is that emojis? Is that what makes people happy?
Like, you know, what's it take. And then, I mean, speaking from a generational difference, you still have problems between newer generations who have very, very particular thoughts about how emojis are used or gifts. And then older generations who are more gift heavy, but they don't understand the emojis and context.
I mean, like there's. Communication issues. I mean, there's core communication issues just from having a team of 5 who likely are a variety of ages. Go that
Ruthi Corcoran: 1 because I think there's the cultural aspect, which is. Which is key, and I think Alex, you outlined a number of the different elements that go into that sort of.
It's really hard to build a community. In a remote setting, um, and particularly if the prior culture came from a very strong in person situation like that transition, super difficult. Um, you need the, you need, you need very specific things in place. You need leaders, you need tools to understand the leaders.
You need people to be able to facilitate those and that sort of segues into my related thought on this topic, which is there's also a pretty high transaction costs on information exchange that. That, um, seems to exist more in the remote space than the in person space if you're missing some of those basic tools and facilitation pieces, which is if I'm a manager of a team or a manager of a team of teams, the information flows might not be as rich than if I'm down the hall or getting coffee and I can go, Oh, Hey, like what you've been working on or like, what's, you know, what's aggravating you like that in a, Sort of brushed by the hall conversation way easier to do than, you know, manager approaches employee.
Tell me what's the problem, right? Like, that's a very different dynamic and so I think that the information flows very differently in a remote setting takes a lot of adaptation to get to a point where it's a seamless and it's a very different way of working. And I've, I've seen a couple of different, um, blog articles, Bloomberg articles talking about, you know, decreases in productivity, um, since sort of the onset of COVID and the sort of shift to remote work and there's sort of a question mark around, like, where is that coming from?
Is it remote work as such? Are there shifts in the way people are working? And maybe that's some of the things that we see the different, um. Companies hiring and wanting to do in person. Maybe they're reacting to that or perhaps it's a perception of of decreased productivity. Or we're sort of, maybe your team is doing stuff, but because you don't have the proper information flows, you're seeing a slowdown, um, not because people aren't working.
Maybe they are, maybe they're slacking at home. Maybe they're doing their laundry, right? That could be, um, or maybe you're just the transaction costs of that information flowing has has changed. So that was one of my thoughts. Um,
Dave Dougherty: I wouldn't classify laundry as slacking. Like anybody who's got kids knows that the sheer volume.
Um, Of laundry is a job in and of itself.
Ruthi Corcoran: True story. But if I'm in the office, I can't pause to go put my towels in the dryer. Like that, that's not a thing that happens when I'm in person all day. That is a thing that happens at home. I don't know. It's a, it's an interesting, it's an interesting one. And I know that some of the backlash to companies saying like, we got to be in person or we're going to, we're going to do, we're going to have a heavier emphasis on person is now you've got companies and recruiters who are saying, who are taking the approach of, Hey, you want to be remote come work for us.
And that's a very successful strategy on the flip side. So I suspect that these sorts of mechanisms, we're going to sort of see an equilibrium come out. We're just not there yet. But
Dave Dougherty: I think one of the things that has been a common through point of all of our discussions this year has been are you paying attention to the right metrics or commonly understood, quote unquote, right metrics.
Um, could actually be the ones that are harming you rather than the ones you should be paying attention to. So I think that's one of the things where the management has to challenge itself to be like, okay, do these old lines of thinking in terms of productivity per person? Um, are they good enough? For the situation we find ourselves in now, right?
Because you have to allow some slack in order to create the culture of, um, what you want it to be. Right. Because you're going to have to, if you're doing fully remote, you will have to invest and prioritize like online trivia things or silly little get togethers or team meetings, or all of these things that will.
quote unquote, take away from your productive time. But really, honestly, if people feel a part of something, they will do more work, they will do better work, because they're invested, right?
Ruthi Corcoran: I think that's an important point. I just want to pause on and like emphasize here, which is, if it is indeed a cultural phenomena that we're we're running up against with the shift from in person to remote, and we're missing the communities, then To that point, the answer might be get people back in person.
That's where we built a culture. If that's not actually feasible, because now we're in a different world. The answer might also be, you've got to invest in the team building stuff, which can't just be online trivia. No one likes online trivia. Okay. Maybe that's a very strong statement, but
Alex Pokorny: maybe I'm not one of them, but some people do that's
Ruthi Corcoran: button pushing, like actually building teams is things like Oh, we're gonna fly people in and spend a week together.
We're going to go and do a company retreat. We're going to do meaningful get togethers, not just will happen to be in the same room every once in a while, like that, that doesn't cut it, which is a big ask and you better be sure that it's a cultural problem and not something like information costs. I
Alex Pokorny: wonder if It talked about kind of the normalization of this and where this goes.
I wonder if a lot of this really is just getting to, I think properly, a life work balance, but trying to figure out how do you set that up in a way where people are productive and they care and they're connected to their work, but they also are able to take care of the rest of their lives as well.
There isn't such stark interference as
I'm stereotypical 80s, 90s kind of employee where you better be in your office from nine to five. Otherwise, you're not going to be around anymore. Like, there's, there are many changes that we're going through as a part of this. Some of it, I think, is much more friendly to families, to, you know, caregiving, to the rest of life that just interferes with the workday.
You have to somehow work around,
Dave Dougherty: hey, I remember, um, you know, you talk about work life balance. I tried to get one of my favorite European colleagues to apply for a remote kind of management role. I said, you would be perfect for this. You need to do this. And they came back with why I will lose vacation time.
I will work harder and I'm going to work weird hours. No, I'm going to stay in Europe. I can't argue with that. You guys have a better system, you know, for the workers. Um, so yeah, it is, it is an interesting change. Um, and I think needed to, um, There
Ruthi Corcoran: was another element of your, um, report that I wanted to talk about, which was that, um, increase in application numbers.
Um, it was sort of what could increase an application per person. Is that what it was?
Dave Dougherty: Yeah, so more intensive job seeking. So it's 25 to 30 percent increase in the number of applications people are submitting.
Ruthi Corcoran: So I don't, that, I'm curious about the technology question behind those numbers. Because the phrasing makes it seem like people are more intensively applying.
They're spending more hours applying, which may be the case, but, It could also be easier to apply. And then I think, you know, the advent of AI, we probably don't see it fully reflected in the numbers that were just shared. But I bet if we look at 2024 numbers, we might see that even further increased because now all of a sudden you have an AI helping you apply for a bunch of stuff.
So the cost of per application is much, much lower. Are
Dave Dougherty: you familiar with ladders? So it's shtick is that it will only apply for things 100, 000 or more, um, for a salary. So one of their sales pitches is that you will, uh, for an extra amount, they will automate your applying. So anything that fits your job role, they'll submit your cover letter and your application, um, for you on your behalf.
So then you just get a summary report of all the things that, um, you applied to. Without doing any of it. Right. And it's like, that's one, that's one particular way. I don't, I see why that's appealing. Um, again, personally, I don't, this is where I think that's too efficient. Um, and. You know, based on that technology piece, it is fairly easy on LinkedIn to filter things very specifically to remote roles in this section, targeting this particular, um, job title, easy apply, you know?
So then you just go up, up, up, up, up, up, up. And now all of a sudden you have 300 job applications. Um, it might be to companies that you may or may not. enjoy working for but if you get your foot in the door then you at least have a foot in the door um to have those conversations and or practice your uh your interviewing skills if you're out of practice
Alex Pokorny: right two quick thoughts one there's a whole resume scanning systems ats those that can inform that are out there that look at basically it's a keyword match score between your resume Essentially the cover letter depends on the system and then the job description.
So it strips it all down to basically base keywords, strips your resume down to base keywords, looks at the match percentage. What I've been seeing from recruiters is they used to allow 70 percent match and above. Now they're at like 90 percent match and above because they're getting basically so many applications.
So if you had a default application, default resume, your match score is not going to be great. Um, heard of some success of basically throwing stuff into chat GPT or GPT and saying, I'm going to send you a job description and then a resume, please compare the two and improve the resume. The better fit the job description and they'll say, great, paste them.
You paste both in an update, basically create an updated resume that includes more of those terms and the higher match percentage. So if you're just blanket applying either via automation in ladders or, you know, a little bit more manual with easy applying LinkedIn, you're not getting the benefit of that, um, basically having something very personalized and tied.
Right. Um, one real quick thought though, we need to come up with a better phrase. For human centric or too machine, too bot centric, something shorter than that of saying like the process is too artificial and the process is not human enough, human involved, my own human, myself involved. I don't know. We got to come up with a phrase like that because we got that problem.
How do you say something is too bot like
Ruthi Corcoran: about that a lot? Right? So this is hiring. These are the people that you get to work with. And on the 1 hand, maybe going forward, you want to hire for the skill set. That's very good at with working with different machines. Right? Yeah, that is something you're filtering for in in many cases. Um, but that's that's perhaps not the only skills that we want to optimize for.
And so I'm thinking, you know, both as sort of somebody who's going to be hiring in the future. How might I. Structure the the job application itself the hiring process in a way that makes it so that I can find the right candidate knowing that the the number of applicants is going to be growing and growing with the ease of applying to lots and lots of different jobs like that's sort of a curious question.
And then on the flip side, how do I, as a job seeker, like, what role do I play in that? How much do I optimize? How do I make myself stand apart as more human, so to speak, in a world of bought and written resumes? Um, that
Alex Pokorny: is, yeah. So this is going to be my last one on this was, um, I think in my future thought, I'm still sticking with the idea that LinkedIn will become the new.
Um, because it's just the behemoth that's out there, but to the next point of what's really missing is that we have job descriptions. That are heavily based upon experience and resumes that are based on experience and what both really need is skills. And from the job description writing standpoint, we need a better system or better way to help us put down complex thoughts.
So I need a supervisor who can handle tough employee situations. Um, also million dollar plus. Contract negotiations and some other things like these are actual skills though. And then from a resume standpoint, you also need a list saying that I've done tough situations with this. I've done this, this and this specific enough or through skills tests, which LinkedIn has some, but they don't really, really push with the job description saying you need these skills to pass, to apply to this job.
We're still missing the skills element all across the board and so we're just talking about ourselves and our general experience by years versus specific skill sets.
Both systems are failing at that so I think it's across the board.
Ruthi Corcoran: And what right there's, there's the skill sets, but now we have these lovely AI tools that can help you write those, um, which maybe this is a topic for another episode. But 1 thing that you're your last couple of statements. Had me thinking is like, what's the price tag on this?
Like, how much should I or do I maybe not should let's just do I at the moment as a job. Applicant have to pay in order to even just compete in this market. Like the fact that you had said, like LinkedIn has all these AI premium features and it's at least a 45 per month. Maybe you can just do it one time, but that means it's 45 just to play the game.
Like that is an important dynamic in our
Alex Pokorny: labor market.
Dave Dougherty: There's an important distinction too, with human psychology and behavior, where we will always. underestimate how long it will take us to get the new job, right? So you'd think, Oh, it's just going to be 45 bucks a month. I'll do it the one time. And then, you know, I'll have my job and, you know, I'll have an offer in two weeks.
Nah, you know, the one interview could take you six weeks, depending on the type of company that you're here, you know, going for. And that's one thing that at least, uh, I do think there's, um, There's a split between the large incumbent players. Where, you know, if you, if you look at those descriptions, they will say apply on company website.
So they are adding friction to the process just because they won't accept automated, whatever. I think the companies that will accept the automated ones are probably going to be the smaller ones that, you know, the people are wearing multiple hats. They need the role. They probably need the role more, um, more than the other companies, but.
You're just going to have to put up with that flood of applicants because you're doing the, you know, easy apply. Right. Um,
Alex Pokorny: yeah. Yeah. There's expense on all sides too. Thinking as a smaller business or agency, I mean, I have LinkedIn recruiter, I think a month that is over 200 bucks. Um, there's some of those systems are way more than that, too.
Dave Dougherty: Ruthie, you look sad. I
Alex Pokorny: am. Yeah, I think, I mean, you mentioned about cost and the barrier to entry on a piece of it. I think there's a knowledge barrier to entry, too, and Dave alluded to, like, doing a smaller, more focused episode talking about some of those learnings that at least I've picked up on. Um, in the last year and kind of how things are different from in person to remote and the application process and systems behind things and how to optimize against those systems, deal with it, all the rest of that kind of stuff.
I mean, Dave, we talked about it a bit. And. So your comment was that I'm a person who basically looks at systems and gets really involved with them and gets really focused on, okay, what is the greater system that's creating the situation and trying to tear apart each piece of it and trying to understand how those each element of our work, which is not a skill set that are an interest that a lot of people will spend the time towards, nor do they have that kind of time to spend it towards that or interest.
To spend it on that kind of stuff. So that's really difficult and it's painful to see because sometimes on LinkedIn, you'll see people's posts saying, I know this is not as professional as I normally am, but I'm on my wits end. I've been doing DoorDash and gig work because I'm trying to make ends meet, but now my credit cards are maxed out with payments and I need a job.
And I want, and they say, you know, I've applied to 500, 600, a thousand jobs, whatever it was. And I always wonder, based upon just some knowledge of how some of these systems work and the barriers that exist due to those systems of, were they applying in a way where they're going to win against this current setup, this environment, or were they playing and getting stuck by the barrier, throwing resumes against basically a wall that is always keeping them out?
You never know, but it's just, man, it's painful to see a lot of people are technical recruiters and recruiters that got hit really hard with a lot of the tech layoffs. So they at least will know, but others don't.
Dave Dougherty: Yeah, well, and that's a good point. If you look at the, you know, all of the slowdowns are not.
Equal in the types of industries, right? So, you know, um, tech employment is down quite a bit this year. Um, you would think that some of those would be savvy enough to figure out, okay, this is how this is kind of working, you know, moving forward. I will say, you know, my comment on, on, um, one of the reasons I enjoy being friends with you is that when I get frustrated and at my wits end at that point, my initial instinct is to just say, F this burn it down, which is not at all your reaction.
And that's what I appreciate. Um,
which is what, you know, I get up, I walk the dog and then I'm okay. Um, so yeah, I do think that, you know, many people are stuck in that because this is not a skill set that you would. Be taught in school how to think, right? What were you told when you were going to school? It was go to school, get a job, have some network, a tiny bit of network that most people underutilize anyway, and you'll get some jobs.
That's it. You know, that's the other thing with the LinkedIn AI posting, right? It's one thing to be the quote unquote influencer that has X number of followers, but how many of those followers or those, you know, friends on Friendster are actually going to help you with your job search when you need help.
Right, and not just hit the like button on your post, you know, um, which there should be some sentiment switch like if somebody is saying their dog died, don't give a thumbs up as an option. That is a mixed signal. Like, you know, um, anyway, Ruthie, you wanted to say something.
Ruthi Corcoran: You covered it a bit. Put a finer point on it, which is you've got at least to two groups.
You've got the folks who have had a job and are now all of a sudden in the job market. And the last time they were in the job market. Everything looked very different and the systems were quite different and they don't even know that it's changed or they might have an inkling that they don't know what to do about it.
And then you also have, say, the student market who's coming in. They're being told go get a job. Yeah. Some of them, sure, like savvy with the technology can figure it out, right? Um, but it's a bit of a different world. It's it's hard to teach that in a college course. Let's say you wanted to, it's still going to be difficult in part because it's rapidly, rapidly changing.
It's like trying to teach SEO in a college course. Well, what's your syllabus? Are you updating it regularly enough? Like, that, that is
Dave Dougherty: probably a core update between the beginning of the semester and the end of it. So good on you. Just listening to a
Alex Pokorny: webinar, someone talking about a page search, particular thing, that course that they're teaching and.
One of their main frustrations is exactly that they have to update their decks constantly and there was once there was a major change that came through and she literally was going to present the topic the next day about how to do this and which was no longer valid. It was like, yeah, turn around and redo everything which homemade professors do that.
You know, my, uh, my parallel that I've used in the past of kind of remote versus in person is basically it's like applying to jobs out of high school, there's an application, there's an interview, and applying to jobs out of college, there's an application, there's an interview, those are very different situations.
The qualifications, how you present yourself, is going to be very different between those two types. You're going to learn so much about what it takes to hit the bare minimum, basically, for the post college versus the post high school. Very different situations, but they look the same. It looked like an interview.
They look like a resume. They look like an application. So that's in person versus remote just as different.
Dave Dougherty: Okay, so we've been talking on this for a while. Let's let's pivot to something a little bit more uplifting and talk about any weird and wacky or benign. Uh, interview experiences. Um, Ruthie, why don't you kick us off?
Ruthi Corcoran: Well, they're
Dave Dougherty: really boring. I don't have any interesting... No, I know. So, let's lay a baseline, like you do for any marketing project.
Ruthi Corcoran: I mean, I've had... Here, here's a fun tidbit that is still very on the benign side. I've never done an in person interview, ever. All of my interviews have been over the phone, and there was one video, and that was it.
Dave Dougherty: Really? See, I find that interesting. That is, that's an outlier in my world.
Ruthi Corcoran: In part because in most places I was sort of moving to a new location, um, either moving to a new location or COVID hit.
And so we were all remote. Um, sure.
Dave Dougherty: How have you made that work? I'm curious about that, the like, Hey, I'm not in your area right now, but I will be. Hire me. Um,
Ruthi Corcoran: You know, How does that work? Um, So usually it comes with a context setting, and sort of a bit of storytelling about, here's sort of, Where I am in my life and what's happened.
And this is why I'm looking to move to the area. Now, the downside of that is if the employer knows that you're already planning to move to that area, it's really hard to argue for the employer to move you. So that puts you in a disadvantage. So there's a trade off there. And in in all the cases, I opted for doing the context storytelling of, you know, hey, I'm going to be moving to the area looking around, you know, X time frame or in 1 case, like, I just got engaged and I'm moving.
So this is what's happening. And we're, we're looking to to locate. Um, so that's, that's a big part of it. And honestly, it hasn't. I don't think that's been an impediment to in any of my job searches is I'm. Thank you. Like I'm not in your state. Like, I haven't found that to be an issue. I think perhaps it is more if you're angling to have the employer move you.
Um, but again, haven't been in that situation.
Dave Dougherty: Interesting. Alex, what about you? I was trying to
Alex Pokorny: narrow it down. Some
Dave Dougherty: weird ones, man. Yeah. I mean, with your, you know, Pygmy goat stories, you know, Yeah. A lot of weird jobs.
Alex Pokorny: Yeah, there's some variety there. Um. Yes, 2 in particular, and these were odd ones. Um, 1 was an unpaid internship. I didn't get it for a city that was nearby.
So it's like a summer internship for the city. And I think it was just based upon the spaces that they had available, but it created a really. Really intimidating room because they basically had one little like school blue chair Against a big table with five or six people seated behind the table So you're just sitting in this chair facing this giant table of five people that you don't do not know and they literally just did one question each and they just kept popping back and forth between people always asking these random questions and You're just sitting there on this far too small chair just no arms to it and you're just like sitting there being like I'm trying to answer your question.
Not be intimidated. This can be, this was like a post high school kind of a job or something like that. So unpaid internship. Come on, people. They're volunteers. Not really on books, even. I mean, just, just put them. Don't have to do that big of a
Dave Dougherty: deal. Yeah, I feel like Ditch Digger isn't much of an interview.
It's like, can you use the shovel? Yeah,
Alex Pokorny: do it. Fantastic. You showed up and you showed up on time. Congrats. You got the job. Yeah. We're not paying you anyway, so whatever. Um, because that was one odd one. There was one. Um, I did, I was a luggage handler for an airline once, it was during college. So the lovely person who was throwing your bags around, as well as the person who's on the tarmac, those fun little orange sticks guiding the plane, you get to do both those jobs, which that part was a lot more fun than throwing bags around.
Um, part of that post, uh, 9 11, at least in the U. S., it had pretty strong regulations on who and who cannot be, on the tarmac and inside of planes where there are no cameras. So big piece about that is you get a background check. So an FBI level federal background check, which is lots of fun. So I was thinking great fingerprints, send it in.
I've done jobs like that before. Government kind of works. So you have to do backgrounds, whatever. It turns out they contracted out to local, basically private investigators. So I was at this, I was like, can I meet you at a park? I'm like, uh, hey. He's like, I'm gonna be in the brown van. I was like, this is weirder.
And literally sit next to this guy in this random brown conversion van that's all beat up and covered in food wrappers. And starts asking me random questions about my background. Cause he was the one who had been subcontracted out to do the, the background check. And then after that, I guess he calls tons of people that I know and gets references and all the rest, investigates basically all the whole background.
But to do the initial information, that was his thing. And I was like, this is the strangest aspect of him. You should have maybe gotten the car, Alex. Like... Yeah, exactly. I know, it was just like... You should
Ruthi Corcoran: I
Alex Pokorny: was like, we're in a park. It's good enough, man.
Dave Dougherty: Anybody with earpieces around? Like, were you?
Alex Pokorny: I guess those are some of the more memorable ones. There's been a bunch, but a lot of it is just kind of standard in person. You do a couple of rounds of it and. You know, kind of moves along.
Dave Dougherty: I, okay, so I'm curious about your guys take on this, but, um, So I, well, I have two stories. So one is, um, leveraging all the information sources I possibly can to craft my messaging.
Um, and, and two is being successful doing what you're not supposed to. That's my, that's my cue. So the first story is when I was first getting out of my master's program, I had a whole lot of just random experience of, you know, helping friends start things or, you know, being a ghost writer, freelance writer, contracts, you know, whatever, whatever gig I could find.
Right. So I didn't have a whole lot of quote unquote legitimate experience. Um, so I went through and I can say this now, cause I've, you know, I became friends with the guy who ended up hiring me. Um, but I found out through. an open Facebook profile and his LinkedIn profile that he was a Vikings, Minnesota Vikings season ticket holder for like the last 20 years.
And one of the previous random jobs that I had done was to help a friend, um, sell Zuba ties. And so as I went to the interview, um, I wore the loudest tie. That I own it is purple, yellow, and white here, uh, in the Zuba pattern. So Vikings colors. Yeah. So psychologically hacking, right. Um, very, you know, I would like to say subtly, but there's nothing subtle about this time.
Uh,
but then we ended up. Just talking about the Vikings and video games and all of the things that, um, he was interested in and it ended up being like, yeah, we could hang out, we could do work together. And that was why I think I ended up getting that job. My other favorite interview story is. Um, I didn't think that I would get the job.
So I said, great, this will just be good practice. Um, it was at a coffee shop. So that was automatically kind of weird. Um, because it was with, you know, bigger company and about halfway through. I just said, all right, guys, look, you know, I appreciate the time. Um, but if, you know, if it's going to be like a micromanaging environment, or something where I don't have the freedom to just be kind of like set off on a problem, I will implode.
And I will probably bring down some people around me unintentionally. So we should just stop the interview here. I'll pay for your muffin and your coffee. Thank you for your time. You know, um, I'm, you know, I'm willing to walk away from this interview because I just, I know myself, I can't fit in that environment.
I found out later that by doing that, They knew I had what it took to stand up to some really, um, intense stakeholders within the company. Um, and that was the reason I ended up getting the job was because I was willing to throw it.
So not necessarily what I would advise people to do, but it ended up working for me,
Ruthi Corcoran: something that's exceptionally important, which, you know, we've talked about the crazy filtering process and getting your foot in the door to begin with, but then once you're in the interview, I mean, I w with the recognition that in some cases you just need a job, right.
That is fully there. And sometimes you just need to do it, but in the cases where, you know, maybe you already have a job and you're looking for a better fit. I think this is, this is. The perfect scenario for this. Be yourself. Do bring to the table who you are and what you're going to do on a day to day basis.
Because if you don't, if they're not going in with eyes open for who they're hiring, and you're not going in fully honest, you're going to end up in a not great situation. Because all the, like, you can't hide it for that long, or at least, well, maybe some people can. I can't, right? So it's like, I better be straight with, here's what we're bringing to the table, because otherwise you're just going to end up miserable.
Um, and this is particularly true if you're trying to get away from a current position, or if, you know, the current spot you're in just doesn't fit. Don't set yourself up for failure for your next position. Make sure they know what they're getting into as well. And maybe that's, maybe that's your most valuable asset.
Alex Pokorny: That's a really good way also to start a relationship with a manager. I mean, that's one of the difficulties you always have as a manager, basically, is how do you work with that particular personality? Theirs versus yours, versus the rest of the team, versus the stakeholders, individuals that they're going to interact with.
How do you make an environment that basically is going to work, you know, for this particular person? And everybody's completely different. I mean, very, very uniquely different in terms of, I really need this, I need some time every day to just, to work through some stuff. I need to just have my head down for some time and not be bugged by...
It's the messages that can be one person, or I really need to start the day with, you know, talking to somebody and chit chatting to kind of get me going and get me involved in the day. And that's the way I kind of start off, or I just really need a punch list. I need to hit that punch list, but it really needs to be defined out for me.
So I know exactly when I'm doing it, when I'm doing a good job or something like the range is all over the place. So that's a really good way to start a relationship too. I gotta be careful not to. Detail it out too much for this person is that there and see that as micromanagement, then you walk away from that and you back off.
Ruthi Corcoran: He has great dating advice. Like, just be, just be open.
Alex Pokorny: You.
Dave Dougherty: Yeah. Speaking of which that actually brings me up to one of the things that I cannot, uh, get my head around. Um, which is this phenomenon of ghosting. I find it so disrespectful. Like I do not choose to live my life that way. Um, I, as a, as a coworker, like.
I'll give you a couple of chances because, you know, I know life gets in the way or something comes up. Uh, but if you do it, you know, three times in a row, forget you, uh, no more, um, that's just complete disrespect. And, uh, I don't choose to work with people like that. Um, What, you know, I've heard it on both sides where employers or potential employers are ghosting job applicants and, uh, job applicants who either accept jobs or are in the process are ghosting, um, which, okay, fine.
You want to throw the interview. You don't want to get the job. Don't show up. I get that. Like that to me is a little bit more acceptable, but if you already go through the process and you accept it, and then you say. Well, you don't say anything. You just don't show up like mad. Forget you like, you know, what are your takes?
Clearly I get worked up more than
Ruthi Corcoran: I don't know. And I haven't thought about it too much. The only. The only commentary I have is just that I think our, our technologies and our ways of working make it, I guess, psychologically easier to ghost, um, because you, you haven't perhaps put in as much time and effort if you're just, if you're just sending an email or if you're just hitting that apply now button, um, or if you, all you have is an automated system on the employer side, um, goes to, that's the only thought I've got, I guess it seems, it seems Curious
Alex Pokorny: to me.
That's a really good point about the technology. I mean, you stop responding to the emails. That's it. That's all you have to do is basically delete or throw them in spam or make a rule and you'll never hear from them again. So it's easy. A few clicks. I guess the other piece about it is just, I guess, going back to that phrasing of human or bot like and too bot like or too human.
I mean, however it goes. Some of this is just the impersonal aspect of job applications and interviews. If it's really impersonal, you really are stripping away a lot of the important aspects of the job application interview process. Yeah. So if it's so impersonal to a point where people are okay with walking away from the relationship, should have started and started to kind of foster and blossom, which is the start of a relationship between these individuals and a work, in a work environment.
Yeah, I could see how people would feel not ghosting them because You know, they answered the questions, but they didn't, they don't feel a connection there and not enough of a connection to care about the relationship. I guess, um, I've seen all sides of it. It's really frustrating. I can say as a hiring manager, had somebody who accepted a role and ghosted on their 1st day.
And eventually we dropped him because. They just eventually like it was a month or two later when they're finally replied and they're like, oh yeah, like I'm busy, you know, some stuff, some family stuff came up, which meant I lost the job wreck and my team shrunk by one because of it, lost a really good role, lost what I thought was going to be a really good person as well.
And the team suffered as an aspect of it because we couldn't get the job right back to repost it to get the next candidate or even pull in somebody else. Really frustrating. Super frustrating. Um, been a part of a situation where, company, definitely been a part of a situation where people have done multiple interviews, sometimes even final rounds.
Never heard from them. You know, really positive. We're doing great. Things are great. And nothing. Five rounds, six round interviews for the companies and nothing really annoying. It definitely leaves a bad taste. I definitely don't have any interest in applying to jobs anymore at those companies. Um, and also I don't think much of the relationships that I created with those people who I interviewed with.
So. That really is burning a lot of bridges to do that to an individual. They're worth an email. Just be honest. We picked somebody else. I'm sorry. Have a good day. No, whatever.
Dave Dougherty: Yeah. And to our point about every platform having AI now, how hard is it to say, AI, write me a thanks, but no thanks email. Simple.
You literally don't have to lift a finger. To do it.
Ruthi Corcoran: Like. To text the whole thing.
Dave Dougherty: Exactly. Yeah. And you can even have them send it. So I would, I don't know. I would be interested in maybe getting, um, getting an expert in maybe doing an interview and just seeing about some hot topics on. An expert on ghosting, Dave? No, on HR or. Yeah, getting somebody an expert on ghosting to show up would be hard.
Alex Pokorny: Let's not You know, we should just do that in the next episode just saying try and didn't show up And we could just say that for like the next three exactly. Yeah
Dave Dougherty: It'll be like the jimmy kimmel matt damon bumping Thing where, you know, um, if you don't know that, look that up on YouTube, it's hilarious. Um, so yeah, it would be interesting to find out, cause there are certain things too, where like this process is so fraught with rumor mills and, you know, yeah, but even though like, you know, the company is supposed to do it this way, but they're probably not.
just because I feel crappy and don't have any control over it. Um, so it would be interesting to talk about some of those topics too. But, um, anyway, thanks for sticking around, like subscribe, share, tell us what you thought was interesting, any weird and quirky experiences you may have had, uh, with your own.
Um, any sort of like regional differences would be fascinating to find out, you know, any, any of you guys in, in Germany, Spain, or, um, you know, South Africa, those listeners, I see you on the metrics. So hit us up. That would be interesting. It would be fascinating. Um, and, uh, Yeah, thanks so much. We'll see you in the next episode
