Episode 18 - Job Hunting Tips for Laid Off Marketing Pros

Watch the YouTube video version above or listen to the podcast below!

Episode 18 - Job Hunting Tips for Laid-Off Marketing Pros 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: All right, welcome to the latest episode of Enterprise Minds. We have Dave, Alex, and Ruthie here. We are departing a little bit from our normal, um, episode formats, uh, to bring you a presentation from Alex, who, um, has recently been through the Job hunting, uh, experience and, um, came up with some insights and coming off of the, the HR episode, we figured this would be a great, uh, follow up.

Um, so he's going to do his little presentation. We'll do some questions at the end. And then, um, you know, the episode description, uh, for pod in the podcast or on YouTube, we'll have our email. Um, If you have any follow up questions you want to ask us by all means, send them in and we can, um, maybe do a special special episode where we answer your questions to the best of our abilities if we're able to, uh, so, um, kicking it off to you, Alex, take it away.

Alex Pokorny: All right. Yeah. And for any of our listeners who either have you been laid off and I'm sorry that you've been impacted and that's awful. It's an absolutely awful feeling. Um, or if you're looking for a new job and you're kind of trying to figure out the whole online application remote work aspect post COVID basically application process versus pre COVID application process and how that's changed.

Or if you're wondering about maybe a job change to a new company and one of the kind of the tips and tricks you need to know, this is for you. So this is a bit of some kind of research and insights on my, my end. And I'll give a quick story back end story for myself. I was laid off by a large company, worked for them for a number of years, um, job search for a while on a new company and found a.

Basically, it wasn't a great work situation, so I ended up with changing back to another company. So between those times, job applications galore, lots of dealing with all the fun online systems, application systems, LinkedIn tips and tricks and all that kind of fun stuff. And just being kind of the person that I am, I really was curious about the systems behind all of that.

I think that's a little bit of kind of SEO and in essence is we're always trying to figure out how does the machine work and. Why does this thing trigger this and why does this thing not and start to play around with that? And I started stumbling into the fun fun world of online applications and the systems behind that the software and how it runs So I'm gonna run through some of the tips and tricks and basically how to gain that system And how to work with it.

And then also some, just some general kind of points, insights, and advice that I found from different recruiters and different individuals in the industry who are far more educated than I am. And just to kind of share out some of those things because they're good things to keep in mind basically when going through this process.

Um, so let me kick it off. So I mentioned these systems. So, uh, they kind of go into the general category of APS, which is applicant tracking system. So if you think of workday, um, yeah, the Toledo tell there's a number of different ones out there. Even linked in can be considered one as well. Basically applicant tracking systems.

Um, yeah, They are places to post a resume and have a, an application process, but also it's a way to organize all the respondents. And that's really is the key problem of the pre and post COVID world of applications. Post COVID world, we're so heavily into remote that you are not competing against those in your local geographic market.

Now companies are so much more open to remote applications. Now they're looking country or worldwide. So they're having hundreds of thousands of applicants for a single posting. And just let's change it a little bit. Think about the hiring manager for a second. You're doing your normal day to day job.

You're trying to add some to your team. You post a job rec out there on one of these systems. H. R. helps you whatever it is. They get it set up and now you get 400 resumes within a week. How do you do that on top of your normal job? How are you possibly going to do that? Phone through 400 resumes and compare them all and even remember resume number one to 400 by the time you've read through them.

And also, how do you have time to read 400 resumes? Um, so that's really where these systems have changed things is they are now automating this 1st step screening process. And the way they're doing it really is basically SEO from 10 years ago. Um, what really triggered me on this whole thing was it was a funny.

Uh, job application that I was doing, I think it was a Adidas or if you're in Europe, Adidas, um, through pronunciation to the phone company, but, um, it looked like a cool job and it was basically the job title was my prior job title. So, and the roles and description was my old role in description and seemed like, oh, well, this is an easy match and be an easy transition.

And my resume of course must be perfectly tuned to this role because I mean, that's the job that I just had. So I did that successfully for some time. I mean, Should be fine and going through the application process went through it and some, you know, work days this or whatever they were using. And towards the end of it, it said, do you want to edit your keywords?

Which is, uh, and of course, as an SEO, kind of a trigger phrase to say keywords, it's like, okay, what is this? And what it did is it took my resume and stripped out all these stop words. So the, and, the, uh, of, or, I mean, all those little words, those are all stripped out, but also. The common phrases. So, for instance, the university I went to is the university of saying it kind of goes, keeps on going with the name, the university part that was stripped out, the specific school name was included.

And specifically within that school, there's the particular name college of business and the college of business part that was all stripped out. But the random name that's before that was included all in this comma separated, comedy eliminated line, just one straight line. And that was my resume. So it was pretty funny.

It was like, can you do you want to edit your keywords? And I was going through this thing. And so like, look, a bunch of terms that random people's names who happen to sponsor that college or university or whoever it was, he was the historical person that's named after. No, not really relevant to a job application going through this whole thing.

And I'm starting to realize this is the system. And reading more about it and understanding more. Yes, that's basically it. So it's a way to parse resumes and parse job descriptions and then do a match score between the two of them. So, once again, taking your resume, stripping it down to those keywords, taking the job description, stripping it down to keywords and then matching the two against them.

And then now all of those applicants are now ranked by a match percentage. So when you're the hiring manager, you can say this is a 90 percent match all the way down to a, you know, 1 percent match. And who's going to be in the interview slates and get that interview all the people at the top and who are never going to be read, I mean, the resumes will never be read and never be seen, those at the bottom.

That's that's the first screen system. It's a piece of software that you have to beat. So frustrating a little bit, but also as an SEO, I mean, that's a gameable system. That's a system you can work with. So let's talk about how to basically get around that and make use of that information. The 1st thing to think about is formatting.

This is kind of an odd 1 thing about, okay, we're talking about keywords. No, formatting is actually 1 of the top things is basically is. Your resume, if it's in some very pretty, very interesting, you know, artistic looking Word doc or whatever it is, or PDF, it needs to read clearly. So take a look online for an ATS compatible resume.

And what it really is, is basically the format has been stripped out of it. It's a very basic and plain. Resume. If you want to bring off a printed copy to an in person interview, you totally could. You could also, you know, send an email pdf of a nice printed artistic version if you really care about that.

But really the stripped down version is the ideal version because you want it to basically parse through correctly. You want under sentences to basically still be able to connect. Uh, the next thing is basically is what kind of keywords should I be including? Jargon really doesn't help. Uh, if you're looking through the job description and there is particular, you know, industry specific jargon.

Sure, that makes sense. You want to have a match against that, that'll work. But if you're used to the career you have in the corporate world and love the internal phrasing on things, that's not going to be helpful because it's not going to be matching those job descriptions. So try to think about what was the role that you did?

What kind of things did you actually do? And try to use as much plain language as you can to. Go right through that. Um, there's a method out there, speaking of when you kind of get through the ATS to the human side of it, since we're just talking about resumes and. Phrasing. It's called the star method, the situation kind of analysis results, basically the tactics and analysis results.

I'll go through that, but it's a great way of talking through what was going on. What did you do about it? How did you react to it? It's a great way when you get to that interview stage. But going back to the ATS stage, we're really looking at those, those keyword matching and one beginner kind of way to do that just to make sure you have a resume that you can apply to many different jobs.

Is to use LinkedIn. LinkedIn has a premium feature. You can pay for it by month. And really you only need the first month of it in the US. It's about 45. Not sure what the equivalent is elsewhere. I think the pricing may change, but what that will do is it will bring up the resume help. You can understand it of Google searching for LinkedIn user experience wasn't great, but look for LinkedIn resume creator and you can import your current resume and you can get it reformatted to be a T s compatible.

The other benefit about that is when you're applying to these various company websites, let's say, upload your resume and you go upload and then suddenly a lot of your dates don't work and job descriptions are being attached to 1 job and have to another job in a T s compatible 1 will import much more cleanly.

There still might be some modifications, but it'll be a lot faster when you start applying to on company websites. Um, the other piece about it is their keyword tool. So you can put up your resume basically in like the left hand panel and think about the right hand panel. It says type in a job role that you might want you to type in job role, director of whatever manager of, and they'll say, Oh, the job descriptions we've seen posted with that title.

Here are the common keywords. These are in your resume. These are not. So then rework your resume to get those keywords in there and then type in another job title. And another job title and another job title. And now you have one resume that has a decent match score towards the kind of generic job description of these different roles that you're looking for.

So one resume to rule them all. Yes. Turn it off for a second here. That can really work. And that can do a pretty good job. It's a little bit harder. Um, if you have a job that gets a ton of applications to it, you're going to want to do a higher match score than that. So, from what I've seen from recruiters online, they talked about pre COVID being about a 70 percent match rate was okay and was still worthy of basically getting into the interview panel.

Now they're looking at a 90 percent match rate, which seems crazy. How on earth is my very unique background going to somehow match this job description? We're not talking about a density score here. We're talking about a match rate score. So you're going to have extra text. Yes, because you have a different background than other people.

But what we want to do is basically how much can we match with that job description? Good way to do that if you're trying to really get this one particular job, let's say,

They've got a great job out there and you really want that job. I would not use that, that generic LinkedIn created one. That's good for if you're going to post to a lot of different jobs and you're just thinking, you know, apply to five different jobs. I don't care. I had a bad day. I'm just going to go for it.

That's great. But if you're looking for that one specific one, try GPT, chat, GPT, GPT 4 is a little bit better. Post the job description and then post your resume and say, compare the two and tell me what I'm missing in my resume and it will even rewrite your resume for you. So you start including some of those terms.

So you can prompt it by saying, um, I'm going to enter a job description and then I'm going to paste in my resume and I want you to update the resume. So it better fits and better matches. What my, what the job description is, so that I have a higher match rate and we'll say, okay, please post the job description and say, okay, please post the resume.

You can paste those two things in and then it will give you the updated resume and you can, we can edit as you see fit the next one that will give you a much higher match. Right? So that's A little bit more work. It's pretty quick. I mean, it's still just a few minutes of your time, but a little bit better, a little bit better improved a resume.

Do read through it. I have noticed sometimes for GPT ads and pads, things that definitely were not accomplishments that I've had in my past or I've The way that my current phrasing was past tense versus future tense, you know, or present. And I mean, the tense has kind of got screwed up with different bullet points that I was trying to throw in there, things like that.

So do read through it carefully, see what it changed, tweak as you need. And kind of keep moving. Um, let's see what else. Uh, retitling past roles. That was one of the first piece of advice I ever got from a recruiter. I've been in this industry for quite a while. The industry phrases and names and common titles have changed throughout that time.

And she started reading through and she's like, why, why would you even have these? There's no point to this. Plus your last corporation, that's a very unique internal job names, but that really doesn't describe what you did. And for this new company, what they really need to know very quickly is what did you do with this past company and use a term and phrase that's relevant to them.

That also allows you to retitle it to something that's more fitting of today's more modern terms or update it to be more specific to what your job responsibilities really were versus what the job title happened to be. So feel free to do that. That's perfectly fine to do and to update.

Um, let's see what else, uh, LinkedIn speaking of since we're on the topic of it. Um, if you were laid off. Please do post what you're looking for and looking for work green banner. There's always been questions about it of, is this going to be a stigma against me? No, it's not recruited are looking to fill slots.

That's really what that gets down to. The more you get to know them, the more you realize that's their day to day job. They're trying to expand their network as quickly as possible, find people who are well qualified for these roles and then fit them in. And then move on to the next job because they're not just working at one, they're working on many.

So whether or not you're, you know, being too bold about you're looking for a job or not, if you've been laid off, go for it. Say that you're looking for work and please do post publicly. I'm looking for this, these titles. I can't tell you how many times that happens. I can remember at least two or three that just come immediately to mind.

Or somebody posted, hey, I'm looking for, you know, a new job. These are the kind of titles I'm looking for. And literally one or two posts later, I saw somebody who I was connected to saying, hi, I'm hiring. Does anybody know somebody with these titles? I was like, actually, yes. And I was able to comment and connect those people like that.

That made it very easy for me. And it also means it made it really easy for that person's network to help them. Think about that for yourself. You're trying to get your network to help you. Make it as easy as possible for them to be able to help you. So make it clear if you want to put that in your byline or your about me or some statement like that on your, on your particular profile that can help to wondering like, Hey, I think I know somebody maybe who is a UX specialist who kind of had an interest in accessibility.

Let me see if he's around. Oh yeah. He's actually looking for work that I can verify very quickly by going to a LinkedIn profile and pulling in that. So make it obvious and. Try to figure out what you're looking for. Um, if you're curious about different job roles, look online. Honestly, look through LinkedIn or look online from other systems of what those job descriptions look like, what those pay, salaries, kind of bands are, what the work life balance is.

Those demands can definitely change as you kind of move through different roles. Um, especially if you're going from kind of more of the implementation side of things, from the kind of technical implementation side, those are more technical skills. If you're looking at more managerial, you're moving down to soft skills.

So especially once you kind of hit that entry level manager role or you start having those leadership roles, the demands on you are going to significantly change. And the kind of skill set that you are really going to be recognized for is going to shift dramatically from being an expert in the field.

To be an expert with working with people. So thinking about your next role and where you want to go. Start looking at those job descriptions, see what those kinds of responsibilities look like. Go and compare. I even used GPT at one point to say, uh, compare my resume to the job description for this blank.

And I just had to look online, which is now once again has access to the internet and it pulled in a job description and said, your resume is missing these things. And it was. Particular phrasing that I noticed that I used was I was on a team versus leading the team. And I was like, well, no, I was managing that team.

So I should update that language. I, I didn't in the way when I wrote the resume or when I had gone through it, but I realized that those little, those little phrase changes do make a considerable difference in reading basically that person's job description saying what kind of history do they have?

What kind of experience do they have? And saying, what, what did they do on that team? Um, other linkedin tip when going through the application process with linkedin, if you're looking through that, take a look through their filters. There's some really in depth filters and you can really drill down to exactly what you're looking for.

Um, if you're in the job searching, kind of. Mode or definitely bookmark different filter sets and go through those and just be purposeful in what you're trying to apply for. So I'm looking for a director or whatever full time remote or in person or whatever it would be and kind of filtering down to those specific ones, just applying to those jobs and then being done with it.

That way you're not endlessly scrolling on LinkedIn through just jobs or recommended for me jobs, which can be a pretty lengthy list. Um, also updating my resume, updating my LinkedIn profile, and I noticed the recommended jobs from within suddenly changed to being the jobs that I really wanted versus the ones before, which were a mixed bag.

It really wasn't that useful of recommended list. So, even their system was really recognizing those terms that I was typing and updating. Um, 1 of the thing with LinkedIn, uh, if you're missing skills. You can check out the website VolunteerMatch. They are a fantastic organization. You can look for online or remote ones, especially if you sort by relevancy.

I was able to do technical SEO work for a particular non profit. I ended up being in my local area, surprisingly it wasn't, if you're looking for one locally. But I contacted them on a Thursday. By the next Tuesday, I had a call with them. The following week, I had a wrap up email basically about a separate issue that was related.

And that was it. That was the whole volunteer experience that I had with this organization that just had some really specific, hard, technical questions, which were fun. Definitely. I definitely enjoyed it. But it's also something I could put on my resume saying that, and especially in resume language, during this month, I worked and volunteered for this particular organization.

If you're missing, let's say CRM skills or social media skills or something else, you could do a short term volunteer work, help out an organization, learn a bit about it, and then throw it on your resume. And now you have one, the keyword match piece, if you're missing that. And to an insight into maybe a new area that you might be interested in or an area where people are interested in pursuing a little bit further or doing another volunteer or short term contracts and like that.

So definitely worth checking out. Certifications also help. You can always list those on your resume, you know, put it at the end, just say, you know, certifications or accomplishments or whatever else. Just create a section and you can list down everything, everything out there, including software, you know, may as well name them all.

Yeah, and if you want to use some of the old names, I've noticed that with job descriptions, I can't tell you how many times it's not Google search console. It's Google webmaster tools, things like that. That's pretty probably relevant. So, um, and then I'm going to be asking Dave and Ruthie to throw some questions in chat towards the end of this.

I'll switch over to chat and we'll start doing a little bit more of that kind of conversational style. Be. We're pretty fun to start seeing kind of what they've, what they've reacted to so far. And as Dave mentioned, check out the email address. Please do comment to us and let us know your questions.

Happy to answer it. Happy to research into it. I'd be interested in seeing what other people's experiences are as well. Let me get through a few more here and then I'll switch over to those chat questions. Um, the mental health, so during the application process, it's not fun. It really isn't. Excuse me. I have a bit of a cold.

I can't cough in here. Um, what I found, what worked for me was applying to jobs during the mornings of Monday, Wednesday and Friday and taking Tuesday and Thursday completely off. As much as possible, basically Tuesday, Thursday, if HR, some representative reached out to me saying to schedule an interview, I would schedule the interview, of course, and reply to that.

Aside from that, I was not applying jobs and was trying not to think about it on Tuesday and Thursday. I do a lot of DIY woodworking stuff as a hobby and I would purposely set projects. Up so that I'd be working on them all day, Tuesday, all day, Thursday, to take a break from this stuff because it can be endless and not every ideal job is posted today.

You might be posted in a while. So even if you're endlessly applying and applying and applying for 12 hours and 14 hours, 16 hours a day, it doesn't mean the best job or the ideal job is out there or the job that you're going to get. It's out there either. So there's a timing aspect to this. Well, if you're wondering about applying while still interviewing for a job, you know, you're interviewing for one job, but I saw another one come up.

Should I apply? The answer is yes. Basically that process takes somewhere between four and six weeks. Just think about the app applying to things in the first week. You'll hear back from HR in the second week or third week. We'll interview in the week or following and then the second round, the week following that, the third round, the week following that fourth round or final offer or whatever else in the weeks following that.

It's a long process. It's not quick. So think about that and think about how you can kind of stack that up. So if you're partway down the interview process with one job, Keep applying for this next one because it'll start to overlap and you'll start to get to that final point. It won't be at the end thing like, should I apply to this one or that one?

No, just keep, keep going. You never know what's going to happen to those roles. Uh, there's a few times I was a final candidate and then, um, something happened, ended the quarter, they pulled the job rack, ran out of budget, you name it, and it all ended. I was really quite excited about the jobs and it didn't happen.

And now I can say in the months following. Since I connected with them on LinkedIn, those people, they got laid off. So whatever happened to the department apparently didn't go well. And if I even had been hired by them, you know, That wouldn't have lasted. So you never quite know exactly what's happening with the company as well or where exactly they're at.

Maybe they're hiring ahead of demand that they're hopeful for, maybe it won't pan out or maybe they're hiring and the next quarter's budget will be poor and now they'll be doing layoffs. You never know. So just keep on going. Speaking of connecting with people, uh, if you ever apply to a job, find someone to connect with at that company.

Easiest way to have some kind of connection with that, if you do have the LinkedIn premium account, you can, uh, send messages to people who are a third connection. So if it's you, you don't know anybody in between, and then that person, that's a third connection. If you know someone in between, they're a second connection.

They're someone kind of one step away. Uh, if they're just one step away as then you both have someone in common, basically you can respond to them and send them a message. Definitely do that. Definitely reach out. And an easy way to do that is to basically look for that company. So current when you're searching on LinkedIn, currently working at a company and then has the title of HR or talent acquisition, um, or recruiter.

Add those people at as many as you can. There's a limit to how many people you can have for a week. You can even just search generically on LinkedIn for the phrase recruiter or talent acquisition and just add them. They are very frequently adding you back because they're trying to build their network as large as possible so that they can fill candidate slots.

But that also means now you have a connection point within that company. So that's hiring manager who might have been an unknown third, fourth plus connection. Now they're connected. And now you can message them and doing that, um, some people call it cold applying when you're just applying, sending off an application, but not saying anything.

And then versus Warren, where you're actually reaching out to HR or the hiring manager or somebody, it may be an employee or a former employee and saying, Hey, is this a good company? Can you tell me a bit about it? That helps. That helps a lot to get that person into an interview slate. So definitely give that a shot.

Um, also, I'm a big fan of the Pomodoro method. Um, especially if you've been laid off, your calendar has shifted. You don't really have a defined schedule anymore. Uh, take a look. There's some free timers online for the Pomodoro method. Basically, you use a focused amount of time to do a specific task, and then you take a break, and then you do a focused amount of time to do this specific task, and then you take a break.

A break, basically that kind of back and forth allows you break it up, but also allows you to sit down and say, I'm going to apply to three jobs and take a break. I'm going to apply to two jobs and take a break instead of I'm going to scroll and listen on LinkedIn, looking at jobs in general or ever. So it kind of helps break things up.

Uh, when applying to jobs, this one caught me one time, um, copy and paste the job descriptions and send it to yourself to personal email. So let's say you see a job on LinkedIn, copy and paste the entire thing. Send it in an email to yourself so you can keep a record of it. I once had to ask a company for a job description because I couldn't remember what on earth it was that I had applied to.

And it wasn't online anymore, it wasn't available anywhere. Wayback Machine didn't have it, nobody had it. So, a little embarrassing. Definitely keep a copy of it. It's also really nice when you're doing remote interviews because you can easily prep by pulling up that email. You could even have the thing up on one tab or one side of your screen and have the job description there so you could be referring to it and, you know, working off of it while doing that interview.

A couple last points here. Um, fractional work. I know some people who have made great careers out of this. Basically, they have taken on a number of roles. So they're either doing part time or contract work, but they're limiting the number of hours to one day a week or two days a week. And they're working for multiple companies.

It's a lot of different deadlines. It's a lot of different things to kind of keep on track of. But if you're a person who's looking for something freelance or you're not really funding much that's full time or paying sufficiently, you could take on multiple roles at the same time. Just work with those companies to understand that.

You're going to do X number of hours basically for them for these different things. If you have a fair amount of experience in the industry and they're looking for somebody who's entry level, that really may be pretty appetizing to them to say, Hey, we'll get someone who's an expert instead of someone who is entry level and they'll just be more efficient about the job and they'll be working for us less hours.

It could be a pretty good work situation for everyone. Headshots definitely worth doing, getting professional headshots done. There are a number of AI tools out there now. If you have a number of like social media posts or at least two firms. It's clear face photos, you can upload those and they can automatically create some headshot styled photos of yourself.

They work fairly, fairly well for what it's worth for LinkedIn. It's probably good enough, no need to get professionals basically at that point. Cover letters. I think they're kind of a waste of time. Um, but if you really want to do it for a job that you cared about, use chatgbt. Um, what's the average timeline to find a new job right now?

It's about five months, uh, to a little bit longer than that. The tech industry definitely had a huge amount of layoffs early 2023. But if you look at the tech recovery since then, more jobs have now been posted. So we're starting to see basically it's kind of moving back up. So yes, job market was bad, but it's really improved a lot.

Currently, um, last two that I'll do before we get over to it and the comments, uh, fake job percentage, just something to think of mine. Keep in mind when applying to jobs. There might be this great job out there. It doesn't necessarily mean that it really exists. And let me explain that. What that means is.

The manager might have posted the job before they actually got a budget for it. That happens more frequently than not. I was shocked by that from the company I was at. We had strict policies about it against that. Um, it might be a job where they have an internal candidate in mind and they're just doing external candidates for legal reasons, or they're just expanding it to fill a policy check.

But honestly, they're not looking for anybody else. They've already got somebody. Uh, it might be a job posting that's old and it's just in the system and occasionally gets updated, so it looks like it's been posted last week, but it wasn't, it was actually a over a year old job, no one's ever thought to delete it, could have been already filled.

There could be a job where the hiring slate or the interview panel has already started, but the job description is still out there. The applications are still technically open, but they're not looking for anybody new. That percentage is pretty high. So keep applying. Don't think about just this one job, that this is going to be the job and I'm really going to hope for this and just wait for two months to see what happens.

Keep going, keep applying to things. And the last thing, um, just headspace getting laid off from a corporation. I thought I was going to just go to another corporation. So I started applying only to corporations. That's kind of a mental headspace that really was limiting. So what I did instead was saying, here's my current salary.

Here's basically what I want for my salary, you know, above or current or even below. Um, here's the kind of job style that I want. So corporate versus agency versus freelance contract, you name it. And what I did is I put some markers on my calendar, personal calendar, instead of just a reminder after X number of weeks.

Start applying to my ideal job, but also the next tier down to kind of expand my job search. That way, no matter what I'm doing with my entire job search process, I'm applying to what I really want, but I'm also being realistic about what's out there and getting a job. So however that works out for you, eventually you'll find yourself into a role by using that process.

All right. We got a lot of questions.

Yeah. Thanks for thanks for running through that.

Dave Dougherty: Um, I know this is a topic that will resonate for a lot of people. Um, so, yeah. So the 1, the big thing that kind of jumped out at me. While you were talking is all of the, uh, you can see my dog,

Alex Pokorny: um,

Dave Dougherty: um, was the importance of copywriting and how that hasn't changed, even though we've had all these discussions on AI and the robots can do the writing, you still need to go through and.

Know how to phrase things or get it like 80 percent of the way there and then polish it, right? I mean, was that what you were that's at least the gist that I got from you.

Alex Pokorny: Yeah, basically there's two layers The first layer since there's these hundreds of applicants within 12 hours These systems are definitely being heavily used for taking the top of the top section of who has a high match rate So there's the software that ATS system.

That's the first layer. Once you get through that first layer. Now, you're in your second layer. It's Okay. Let's say there's 15 people at the top hiring managers, not going to interview 15 different people. They're probably going to interview five. So they're going to start looking through some of those resumes.

They're going to start sorting those down. Absolutely. That's where the copywriting piece kicks in. I mentioned the star method is a good way to kind of organize your thoughts. If you need it, um, you can talk about times where you saved a bunch of hours of per week. Um, XKCD has a great calculator on. A task and how long, if you repeat it daily or weekly, how much that time adds up, you can see that it adds up very quickly.

If you do a task every day, you can save five minutes off of it. We've all done something during our work week where we've saved ourselves a little bit of time, um, made something a little bit more efficient. There's always some kind of way that we can kind of pull up some metrics, even if you might not have dollar value metrics, which are absolutely key if you have them.

I mean, that's fantastic. If you had the ability of something e commerce or something, we had public figures. Um, that really does. I mean, yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's your second stage. You're trying to interest that individual and say, Hey, I'm, I'm a great fit for this job. It's part of saying I can do the job and I've done the job before, like showing off kind of how your experiences have already done some of these things.

So I'd be an easy fit. Um, or I'm used to your industry. I understand our passion and I want to go further in this industry. I've always wanted to work in X industry. Here's my connections to it. Something like that. You can absolutely copyright your way as a persuasive argument towards that hiring manager.

Yeah,

Dave Dougherty: I know the star method, if you want to work at Amazon will be absolutely essential. I've talked to some friends that work there and, um, that is their preferred method for, um, you know, tell me about the situations of blah, blah, blah. And I find it really helpful just to get that kind of elevator pitch.

So you're not waffling a little bit where, you know, here's the situation. Here's what I did about it. Here's how we executed against those ideas. And then. You know, this happened, um, just makes it so easy to take a lot of important events that you'd be proud of in your career, uh, and be able to talk about them clearly, succinctly, and, um, in a way that's engaging and

Alex Pokorny: not raggy.

There's AI tools out there to help you do interview prep. Um, there's also people in your network that will probably help you do interview prep questions, or you could even ask people who have hired for a role in the past, or, you know, companies that you're interested in working with saying, Hey, I've always wanted to work here.

Is there any kind of tips or tricks that I should kind of keep in mind when thinking about interview prep, when talking to your company? Um, is there certainly things that I could really highlight that would help showcase my abilities and how well a fit I am for your company or your team when there's ways to kind of intro those conversations or you want, um, and as well as get recommendations.

Uh, there have been two times now where people reached out to me. I didn't know them, but they wanted to work at the company I was with. And they said basically that, can you connect me with the hiring manager? Um, this is my background. I think I'm a good fit for this role. Maybe we can talk. And I absolutely did.

I absolutely helped them just because the hiring manager is looking to fill up a team. They're looking for good people and you're helping that hiring manager find good people by connecting them. So you may as well reach out and you may as well connect with people. Well, and so that's

Dave Dougherty: kind of a good segue into, um, two different questions that, you know, one of which I asked, and then Ruthie asked something similar.

So, um, hers was how important are connections in the new world of hiring? For example, does the importance of knowing people go up because of the volume of app. Applications, um, or is it the same as always? And then relatedly mine, uh, was, did you do a lot of the coffee talks or the informational interviews to build that network to, you know, um, yeah, just to have that face to face.

So you're not just a, a number in the pile.

Alex Pokorny: Yeah, that speaks pretty well to this, too. I mean, I talked a lot about kind of the tech specs kind of side of things. Definitely not the human side of it. Um, absolutely. Networking is huge. I mean, you think about some of those numbers that can be pretty daunting where you see a job at, let's say, Facebook or Google within a couple hours, it's got hundreds of applicants.

And you're thinking, God, why would I even throw in another application? I mean, sure, there's somebody who's well, you know, already got a good fit. Answer is no, there isn't. I guess the majority of those people. Probably have absolutely no skills applied to that job, but they're just playing wildly anyways.

So there's a good chunk that absolutely have nothing to do with that job and have no experience with it. So keep that in mind that that group is also applying to this same role. There are people who are outside of the bounds of the role. So it could be this is a job posted for Europe, Asia, U. S., local area, you name it.

People are going to be applying from outside of it anyways. So we got a good mix in there. You got a good mix of people whose resumes are poorly formatted, are not going to really fit well, even if they do have skills, even if they're in the particular area, those probably resumes are going to get excluded too.

You got those who have terrible jargon, poor match rates, those aren't going to get selected either. So keep cutting down this number and keep cutting it down and down and down. Eventually we'll get down to the set that basically is a good fit for the role, high match rate basically from the system side.

And the next part is, and they know somebody. Those ones will get the interview, all the rest of them will not. So of that huge giant number, there's actually a very small percentage that are really going to be the ones who are going to get an interview for that role. And having those internal connections is absolutely a key piece of trying to get yourself up on top of that list and making sure that you're part of that interview panel.

Anytime that I was a part of a company where somebody had reached out to the interview slate. Even in two cases where I was a stretch for that job, I still made the original interview slate. Like there's no question about it. So connections are key. Um, coffee talks and kind of networking expansion kind of efforts huge, especially if you're trying to switch areas, get into a new area.

Uh, if you've always been an agency, you're trying to look for an in house corporate role. That's enough of a switch to think about, Hey, I should probably get to know some people who are kind of on the other side of things, the kind of the client side or the outside. If you're looking to go freelance or agency and looking for help or some questions of kind of how to get started, absolutely worth doing.

Or if you're trying to get into a agency or a new place, Having a key contact in between and saying, Hey, I reached out to this person who recommended that I should talk to your company about a role. I noticed you had one opening. I sent out an application, but let's talk about it. You absolutely can get yourself into that interview panel that way, too.

So those, those conversations are huge. The other piece that I really liked about doing networking conversations was thinking about my next steps. So Who do I know or not know in this case, I even reached out to some people I didn't know. I was able to talk to them. They were just willing to give me some of their time of people who already have the title that I want and how did they get there?

And that helped. It helped a lot because I was trying to understand, like, did you really need experience in all of these different areas to get to this job or did you just need to stay at this company long enough to be the one who basically just ended up with this job? Um, Was the company growing at this time?

Were they doing kind of a bottom up thing where the team got so big they now needed a manager or were they doing a top down thing where they just hired a new CMO who hired a VP or a director and now there's a whole new digital marketing arm that never existed before. They're hiring top down and now you're hiring out a team underneath of those people.

Like what's totally changed is growth companies versus replacement roles versus, you know. Companies that are doing expansions or acquisitions, you can now start targeting different companies at different points to saying, Hey, I know Nike just fired your agency. Maybe they're not, maybe they're moving in house, right?

Maybe I should start talking to my Nike people again and trying to like get that role again, if I want to work there.

Dave Dougherty: You know, it's interesting you bring that, that up because, um, the context of different things changes things massively for whatever reason. Um, so when I, when I first started, um, At my most recent company, I did exactly what you described, but internally to try to figure out what is the pathway here for career.

And, um, I went ahead and emailed one of the SVPs who was on the corporate. Board of directors who I had no business emailing.

Alex Pokorny: Massive company. That was tens of thousands of people work this company. He had

Dave Dougherty: no reason to meet with me, but he actually said, yeah, I'll give you 15 minutes. And he made it an absurdly early time.

So it was kind of painful to do it. Um, but I got up and I did it. And it was really interesting to be able to pick somebody who's at the top of, you know, Fortune 100 global enterprise, how does this work? How do I do it? Um, but I've never actually done that for a newer potential role.

Alex Pokorny: So that would be something to, yeah, to think of.

I can't think of a time where someone on LinkedIn who presented themselves as someone who actually has a background in our field and said, you know, I have some questions about whatever that I didn't accept and respond to them. I don't think ever. I get a lot of spam messages from people offering like building services.

So I'm excluding those messages from the people who actually are like, Hey, I saw that used to work at this company. You know, how was it? And man, there's been a few people that I've, we've had some very long conversations about, you know, work and where they want to go and everything. I mean, it comes spiraled into the company, broad conversation.

Absolutely. I mean, why not, why not help people, especially because, you know, think about the industry, the industry is not big. It's growing, sure, but it's not big and reputation matters a lot. You know,

Dave Dougherty: and it's interesting. So I, man, what was it? It was last, last year around Christmas. And I guess this guy just felt really

Alex Pokorny: charitable.

So he put out

Dave Dougherty: on, um, If you're interested in a resume review, send it my way first 200 people to give it, um, to send it over. I'll, I'll do it. And he was the head of search marketing for Apple at the time.

Alex Pokorny: And so I'm like, ah, what the hell I'll do it. Yeah. And so

Dave Dougherty: he, he got back to me. He's like, man, I've, I've been flooded.

I'm not going to hit the turnaround time I pitched in the message. But true enough, he set up a little screenshot video where he walked through it and, uh, gave me some pointers and, um, So, you know, said, especially if you wanted to get like a, a role at, you know, Apple or some of these other tech firms, you're going to want to switch this way and that way.

And, and I wasn't necessarily looking at the time, but it was like, just to get that feedback was, was pretty sweet and, you know, hats off to him for opening himself up that way, you know, just to be. Inundated by by people,

Alex Pokorny: what a

Ruthi Corcoran: brilliant way to scout for talent. Right? If you're trying to get a sense of who's out in the field at this point, and like, who's in the hiring pool, that's a really good 1

Alex Pokorny: level roles or new area that you're trying to bring to.

Ruthi Corcoran: Yeah, and to that point, I think I left in the chat. I'm an apologies. I had to step away a little little girl woke up from her nap early and we're dealing with all kinds of daycare bugs this week. But, you know, if I'm a hiring manager, and I know that HR tech is filtering for this stuff, I want to know what my candidates include so that I can make sure.

That my role descriptions match what my candidates will have on their resume. Like it's a two way street. And so I imagine that's another, um, asset that this, this gentleman, um, was able to get through this activity.

Alex Pokorny: Yeah. What kind of terms do you, should you have, right? What do you have on the, what do people have on their resumes right now?

Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Dougherty: I mean, it was a, it was a good connection, you know, us. Sid connected for a little bit after that, but it's just, I don't know, the random things that pop in once you start talking. Um, one other thing was, you know, you talked a lot about LinkedIn, but were you leveraging Glassdoor, ZipRecruiter, Ladders, Indeed, all these things that, that we hear about.

Um, and just for clarity sake, we have zero affiliation with any of these platforms. This is purely You know, job hunter to job hunter to, you know, people who are just mildly curious, wherever you are in your, your employment journey, we feel yet that's what this episode is about.

Alex Pokorny: Well, I will add a kind of a side kind of hot take, but I really think that LinkedIn will become the new resume in the future that we will just import LinkedIn applications and that'll be it.

We won't do resumes anymore. It is getting so integrated and built into any system out there that I, there really isn't a second that I can think of that really even comes close. A few notes on LinkedIn, just real quick. There is, especially with the filters, you can get to one that is easy apply jobs only, LinkedIn resume, the resume that you created, not your profile.

Um, and applies to the job, and you might answer one or two questions and then you're applied. You can apply to hundreds of jobs within an hour doing that, even with copy and pasting the job descriptions, email it to yourself. How do I know? Yeah, Netflix movie for a bunch of jobs, a couple hundred applications by the time the movie is over.

Like, it was not hard to kind of burn through tons of applications like that. That's going far and wide though. And that kind of is like the two ways I've really heard of people where they're hiring kind of journey is either the bulk method where you're just applying and the very guided specific targeted way, which you're trying to get informational interviews, coffee talks, networking, whatever you can do to get into particular companies that you're interested in that you've heard are growing.

Um, that maybe are in your area if you're looking for a hybrid or in person role, whatever it is, you're targeting them and you're really going after them. That's a very different approach. Then you're taking a list of maybe 10 to 20 companies and you're just going all in on them, commenting on everything, connecting to everybody you can, adding everybody you can, really getting into them versus the bulk approach, which is just a high scale, get a job kind of approach, which will get you a job and a ton of interviews.

If you're looking for practice, that will get you a ton of interviews with the easy part. Um, but it won't necessarily be the job that you really want. Glassdoor is super helpful for understanding internal issues. I gotta admit, it highlighted so many red flags before like the first interview or second round, that it was like, these are things to keep on track of.

And then during the conversations, it was like, oh yeah. These are definitely problems at this company, you know, like things that they're stressing about, like your availability. Um, so you really are available throughout the workday, the entire workday. It's like, why, why is there emphasis on this? You start looking through the LinkedIn comments or the Glassdoor comments.

It's like, Oh. Wow. The recording software they have on people. This is ridiculous. They've got some major trust issues and some really bad managers. So there's Glassdoor super helpful, especially when you're kind of validating those interviews and really thinking about those companies and serving those offers.

Um, the other ones that you mentioned, indeed can be useful, a little iffy zip recruiter didn't seem to have much at the higher level technical roles, at least that I was looking for. So it seemed to have much ladders was a pretty small selection of jobs that was hosted there. And they seem to be cross posted already to LinkedIn.

If you're looking at monster or some of those other places, and just in general. Something I learned from the two of you, uh, if you're using, let's say you have your email listed and it's a Gmail email, you can add basically a phrase in front of it with a plus mark and you can basically have that as your email address, kind of like an appended folder to kind of filter version.

What that also does is it really helps you sort out the spam because I posted my actual email address. I feel like an idiot for doing this to monster. com and I can't tell you the amount of spam that I got.

I mean, it for a very short period of time had my phone number as well. And I can't tell you how quickly in within a day or two, I realized where all the spam texts and calls were coming from and I wiped my phone number off of it. So use a different email address or a separate inbox, you know, hire John Doe at gmail.

com or whatever your name is. You can use one of those. And just have it forward over to your main one. So you don't have a pain of going to inboxes. I mean, there's, there's ways to work around that.

Ruthi Corcoran: We should start a running list places to not post your email address ever.

Alex Pokorny: I was going to

Dave Dougherty: say anywhere.

Yeah.

Alex Pokorny: Interesting. Interesting. We have, um, job experiences. A lot of people have tried, um, kind of those same methods that I've talked about, either that kind of targeted method. It's hard, especially if you got laid off, to do the targeted method because you need a job. I mean, you need an income. So that one's, that's difficult to kind of wait for that.

If you're, you have a job and your company's not doing well, or you're just not seeing the growth or the new role that you really want to get to, there's no promotion ladder, or you're top of the chain that you're stuck in, or you're looking for a new job. Or you just want to try something new, start doing that target method now that could take a year to two years to really start paying off because you're getting to know people and you're trying to figure out a job before the job even opens, you know, trying to get basically in the door as quickly as you can kind of.

As we're networking basically into that role, that's, that can be a slow process because if there isn't a current job opening, I mean, how long is it going to take them to put together a budget to get a job, to get the job working through team to grow? I mean, that's like, yeah,

Dave Dougherty: and I'll, I'll just say for anybody who heard that and immediately thought, yeah, but I'm just slammed at work.

I don't have any time. This is the same. Stuff with, you know, internal training or anything like that. Like the amount of people that we know that we're with one company for years and years and years, and then we're laid off and realize they had no network outside of the company. That is a severe strategic risk, you know?

So, and. So please invest in yourself, um, take time to meet new people, um, even if it's just, you know, a coffee at, you know, eight o'clock on Friday. And that's what you limit yourself to. That's enough. That's

Alex Pokorny: just do it. Sure. It could be a LinkedIn message, just message, you know, five people that are in your area, your field or field that you're interested in.

And just say, I'm looking to expand my network, but I did have a question for you. I have this background. I want to know this, you know, make it something specific and totally they'll respond to it. Like just message a couple, you're going to messaging a couple, keep adding people, then nothing else. Use up your invite.

Limits per month by searching for that talent acquisition, you know, HR team, uh, recruiter, especially talent acquisition recruiter, add those people and just keep adding them. They'll add you back in eye ratio. So your, at least your LinkedIn network will grow and you'll start seeing more recruiter posts in your newsfeed, which will start showing you more job postings.

So your newsfeed will kind of change over from being the people you already know to being. No new opportunities.

Dave Dougherty: Okay. I have I have a hard out here coming up. Um, but there is a bit of a, um, kerfuffle with cover letters. Um, so there's, you know, do they actually matter versus, um. Do you have no excuse now that AI can write them?

Alex Pokorny: So

Ruthi Corcoran: at which point do they matter even less?

Alex Pokorny: Yeah, right. I know the whole AI question really always makes that, that, you know, the authenticity question always comes up. I think we could have a whole separate episode talking about AI and authenticity and how that works in the new world, basically with AI.

Um, cause the valuation of time and effort. No question about that cover letters. What I've seen from recruiters, so going from more educated opinion, um, they've seen it as something where you're doing a job change and you're trying to explain it. You have a long gap, um, in your background and you want to talk about it.

Uh, you have a particular interest or change in interest in this particular industry or role and you want to explain why basically it's kind of explain away. So you're going to explain away this issue or explain away that issue. It's a good way to do that. Um, if you're trying to show off and you're trying to say, Hey, I've got a really professional tone of voice.

You're going to have, you know, GPT write it. And then in the interview, you're going to sound very informal and casual. That's going to be kind of weird. Um, so just kind of keep that in mind that if you're using these tools, you're going to present yourself as basically being the output of these tools.

And if your interview doesn't match that, that's going to be kind of a mismatch there. So try to keep it personable or whatever your style is during an interview, match it to that and use the language that you would normally use. And always

Dave Dougherty: edit the

Alex Pokorny: outputs of AI. Yeah, that's the thing. I still haven't actually phrased that.

AI is, uh, generative AI is a blank page killer. I mean, that's it. It's not a final draft. It just kills the blank page that you're staring at. Gives you something to react to and something to then work on. But it's not a final draft.

All right. Well, perfect.

Dave Dougherty: I think this, um, we will monitor the enterprise, uh, enterprising minds gmail account for any questions, thoughts, comments you guys might have. Um, and, uh, please let us know what, what has worked for you. Um, what What frustrations you've run into and, um, we'll, we'll see about, um, answering those.

And the good news is that this did work for Alex. So it's not, you know, it's not just, Hey, I saw something, let me talk about it. Um. This, this did actually work for him recently. So, um, thanks again. We will see you in the next episode of enterprising minds. Take care.