DAY 2 - Become the Obvious Candidate [Reverse the Search LIVE]

ahead and put a 2 in the chat if you are here for day 2. And we had day 1 yesterday. And let me just give you, give you the whole rundown. So day 1 was find what's costing you job opportunities. So that was going through all the different things that, that you need to track in the job search and finding where things are falling through and giving you strategies to overcome that. Then we moved to today, which is become the obvious candidate. And that is really all about landing more interviews. Okay, so many of you said more interviews is what you need. And let's make it happen. We're going to go through some, some major strategies tomorrow. If interviews is where you get stuck, if you kind of keep getting that silver medal, not quite getting that gold medal where you get that final offer, we're going to go through that. The high stakes interview, the later round interviews, we're going to talk about that tomorrow. So you don't walk away from these offers again. Then day 4, we're going to build your job shopping system. So really making sure that you're taking all the teachings because especially today, I'm going to be talking really fast. I put too much in this session, too much learning. So we'll kind of go back on day 4 and really make sure that you have a plan. And then day 5, we're going to put all this into examples and apply it. So that, that really locks in your head. I've noticed that when I give you examples, you all absolutely thrive. And so if you want to be one of those examples, go ahead and submit your question. We'll put the link in the chat. Submit your question. You can come on live with me and actually talk to me on this session and it'll be a blast. So submit your question. And also fun announcement. We're currently doing our early Black Friday deal, $1,500 off coaching right now. We'll also put the link in the chat. Where you can read more about our coaching program. You can apply. Applying means that you are not necessarily making a commitment, but we do have limited spots and we do only accept certain people. So just go ahead and apply. It's a very short application and, and you can then talk to our team more to make sure it's the right fit on both sides. All right. So today we are going to talk about first the insights from Talent Connect. That is the invite-only conference that LinkedIn flew me out to. And boy, boy, boy, boy, I'm sharing these things this week that no one else has heard yet. How we got here, how to increase interviews. We're going to go through strategy 1 through 3. And then we're also going to do a case study where you're going to see someone who has been through the job search recently and how they've implemented these strategies. And then we're going to go into an interactive Q&A. So keep putting your questions in the chat. My team is gathering them. We're going to do more interactive stuff today because that is the benefit of being live here together. So let's talk about some of these insights I got from this juicy, juicy conference. Okay. So first of all, let's talk about what are your pain points? Because yesterday I asked you in the chat, what are your biggest pain points in the job search? And you did not disappoint. First of all, you really harped on Not hearing back. And put ghosted in the chat if you've ever been ghosted. And just essentially not knowing why. You, you apply, you don't hear back. You interview, you don't hear back. And there's absolutely no feedback. The second thing is you keep seeing roles reposted. Some of them are put out there for a really long time. And you think, are these fake? Are these scams? And the biggest thing is that Your time is being wasted. Okay. There. This is the issue of the job search right now is you're just terrified that why are you going through all of this rigmarole to apply to these roles and your time is being wasted? And you all also make comments about AI conducting first round interviews. Put AI in the chat if AI has done any sort of screening for you in any of your job search. I'm super curious to see how many of you that has happened for. And this is, this is unfortunately here to stay. So let's talk about what are the high— what's happening on the hiring side. So some of the main concerns on that side is, are candidates telling the truth? Are they even real? And this is from boots on the ground, being in rooms with hundreds of talent acquisition and recruiting professionals. This is what they're saying. Oh my gosh. And so many people are saying AI. Wow. Incredibly zero AI screening. Okay. So Molly actually hasn't had any AI screening, but quite a few of you have. Chris, Emily, Elijah. Yes. Okay. So, so that's been happening a lot. Rigmarole indeed. Yes. Oh, this is not my scroll slides. Okay. So there's more noise than ever. How do we manage the process? So they're overwhelmed with applications. Since 2022, when ChatGPT first launched, the number of job applications has increased to about 250%. So these companies are struggling to break through the noise, as well as they're scared to make the wrong hiring decision. We talked yesterday about how they've reduced hiring to about 70%. Their workforce is about 70% the size, yet they're making 21% more money per employee. So they're scared to make the wrong hiring decision because I know a lot of you out there have actually hired for your own teams, right? And you can back me up on this. Hiring the wrong person is so detrimental. You've invested all this time into hiring them, And then when they're not performing, you have to do all of this performance management, all this stuff. It's too much. And so I want you to understand, because we talked about this yesterday, interviewing for jobs, going for jobs is performing a high-ticket sale. Your resume is your sales page. Your interview is your sales pitch. And you have to understand the other side of the table. In order for a sales pitch to be effective, you have to understand what they are going through. And so that's why I really want you to understand they're afraid you're not telling the truth. They're, they're overwhelmed with noise, and they're scared to make the wrong hiring decision. Now, when I was at the summit, here are some major stats they shared with me. One in three recruiters say it's becoming harder to identify. Real applications. That's, that seems congruent with what we talked about yesterday. 82% of talent leaders say identity verification will be a crucial step in hiring. Keep a note of this. We're going to dive deeper into this insight later in this session. And 78% of talent leaders say social signals such as mutual connections, endorsements, and comments will play a greater role in hiring decisions. Holy moly. Like I said, we're going to dive in deeper to this, but this is a huge wake-up call. This has, has not really been a huge focus in the past. If you'd said 5 years ago that the huge focus was going to be, are you real? Are you commenting on LinkedIn? I would have thought you're crazy. And so it's so important to know this as well as this is a screenshot of what we're going to see come November. So a lot of the things I'm going to tell you about today Get this done over the next couple of weeks because come November, LinkedIn's changing a bunch of things. What you're seeing on the screen right now is an AI recruiting assistant who is going to start asking you questions on LinkedIn. This is not a scam. I really recommend you can see this conversation happening here. You can even interact back, ask it questions, all that kind of stuff. But this is what's going to start qualifying a lot of candidates going forward. So look out for these messages, take them seriously. Your response rate will be tracked, and that will help you to get more inquiries and invites to interviews. Okay. Now, I want to reassure you, despite all this, maybe this is bumming you out a little bit, but we are still seeing lots of success with many of our clients landing 3+ interviews a week. And so this is your reminder that every success story is evidence that it is possible for you in the job market. I am so confident that you can make it happen. We just need to lock in and make it, make it happen together. Okay. And the fact that you're here, it's already huge progress. Now, some of you know me and trust me and kind of understand my recruiting background and all of that. But some of you And maybe we've just met. Put in the chat how long maybe you've been following me or whatnot. If, if this is— if we're new, hi, I'm Madeline Mann. This here is my first ever cubicle. I used to put all these— remember back in the day, you kind of like put all these weird filters on photos. This is my first cubicle. It says, hello, Matt, or welcome, Madeline, on it. And I worked in HR where I was responsible for reading resumes. Reviewing all of the feedback after every interview, and very clear patterns emerged of who was making it through to the end, who was being highly persuasive. And it wasn't the person necessarily who had the Ivy League background or the perfect pedigree, but there were other things that people were doing right and wrong. And so I thought that I would be the, the dream recruiter. Recruiter, and I would respond to people's messages to me. And so I went and I spent hours and hours responding to their applications and telling them why I was rejecting them, because I thought that that would be an amazing employer branding thing to do. Now, before I share what happened, I do want to see how long you've been following me. Okay, so about 2 weeks. Okay, David's been 2 and a half years or so. 1 year. 2 years. She's legit. I love that. 3 and a half years. Oh my gosh, you, you're in the lead right now though. I think I maybe saw someone say— oh yes, Kimberly says 5 years. Wow. Um, since you appeared on my For You page, says Emily, in 2020. Oh my goodness. Okay, I think you might be in the lead. Uh, okay, so So guess what? I ended up giving feedback to candidates and it was a terrible idea. It was a disaster. I got so many angry emails back and I learned the lesson that people do not like feedback that they did not ask for. And so I had a new idea and I actually want you to put in the chat, put phone or email in the chat. Would you prefer to be rejected for a job after you've already been in the interview process via phone or via email with an option to hop on a call? Phone or email? So I had this idea that, okay, I'm going to stop replying to applications, but instead I am going to give a courtesy call to anyone we reject after they've already done at least one interview with us and decline them and explain why. Because I thought that was the most civilized thing to do. So I then asked my— well, one of my coworkers caught wind that I was doing this and he goes, are you sure? I don't think that's such a good idea. And I said, well, let me put it up to a poll with my coworkers and they will decide. We'll get it. We'll get everyone's opinion. Okay. So I'm seeing some email with a call. I'm seeing some phone, phone. I don't know. I'm seeing a lot of phones. Email's fine. It's almost like it's almost 50/50 here. Okay. So here's the results from my coworkers. So we had 82% said, I would prefer to be rejected over email. Madeline, what are you doing? Stop giving people rejections over the phone. You're getting their hopes up. It's an awkward conversation. And I started hitting my head against the wall. I thought, I am so dumb. How can I help people? Why do I? Why do I need to help people? I'm so passionate about this stuff. So guess what? You know the the how the story goes. I started a YouTube channel, and I edited every video myself. I I edited all the thumbnails. I you know did all the the research for the descriptions and the the keywords and all that stuff. And it it took over twelve hours a week on top of my um on top of my full time job. And for two years, I didn't even make a penny. I was like losing lots of money doing this. And after the first year of doing it, I was, I was the one who had a YouTube channel that had just a few hundred views per video. And I truly felt like an absolute failure. It's like, why am I doing this? No one's seeing this. But I was getting some hopeful comments. Some people were saying, oh my gosh, why do you have so few subscribers? This is some of the best job search advice. I have seen online, and those comments made me keep going because it's just like you. You are a professional, and you likely know you're quite good at what you do. You would be an excellent employee. You have a great work ethic. You would be, you know, thrilled to work at a company that valued you. And so it's just a little bit frustrating when others are not recognizing that. And so I knew something had to change, but I ended up getting laid off. And put laid off in the chat if that's ever happened to you. It was from probably, I would say, my favorite job I've ever had. Um, I wouldn't have left that place had they not laid me off. Um, and I was laid off with 50% of the company, and it was, it was horrible. It was horrible experience. And I thought, okay, this is my moment. I have time now to focus on this channel and revamp it. So I used a big chunk of the money that I had set aside from my severance that I'd gotten from my job. And I thought, okay, I'm going to invest this and learn how to be noticed, right? How to make sure that it's not just the content is good, but the marketing side, the sales side, right? The part that we're all learning about today is how do we get seen? And I'm seeing a lot of people in the chat saying, uh, that you have been laid off. It is way, way too common. I'm so sorry. And so this really turned it all around for me. Um, I started getting incredible success stories and the subscribers went up, the views went up, and I started getting opportunities to get on all the major news networks and the major publications and got a a book deal with Penguin Random House and all this amazing stuff. But the best part of all is that you all kept knocking on my door and saying, Madeline, I want to work with you. I think you've got a good vibe, which I know my vibe isn't for everyone. But for anyone who's ever trusted me with their career, I just want to say thank you. And these are some of my clients that have just made all of this so, so worth it. So let's go ahead and dive in. Go ahead and close your other tabs, mute your phone, Lock the heck in because we got to dig into some of this stuff. Okay, so the first thing, if you are not getting enough interviews, you need to make sure that you need— you're getting optimized online. Sourcing is this idea that there are a lot of recruiters mainly on LinkedIn. There's other sourcing platforms, but LinkedIn's the number one, one. And They are searching for people for their open roles. Why do they do this? Because it's faster than going through a pile of applications. Also, if company only has so many roles, only so many people to hire, are they going to wait for the perfect applicant to apply, or are they going to go out and pick a top performer and say, hey, come work with us? So they try to be competitive and they do that. And so My clients, a lot of them report getting over 50% of their interviews through getting sourced specifically on LinkedIn. And the wonderful thing about this is that when you set it up, you start getting these opportunities passively. It's not like you're applying, applying, applying for these opportunities. They come to you. And for example, this is one of my clients who said, I've gotten 10 recruiter outreach messages this week about roles I didn't already apply to, which is so crazy. I just Just a couple months ago, I wasn't getting any. Okay, so this is possible for you. You can go from pretty much nothing to changing the game if you are optimizing correctly. Another client says, after revamping my resume and LinkedIn with SJS tools— SJS is my coaching program, Standout Job Search— I finally landed messages from beauty recruiters. And she goes on to say that she had focused on— she was only getting tech recruiters. And this is another thing I want to kind of break your, your mind from is a lot of you might say, well, yes, I am getting messages from recruiters, but it's not for the right roles. And that doesn't mean that you're never going to get the right opportunities. It's probably just your, your profile is currently sending out the wrong signals. Her profile was sending out tech, tech, tech. And then when she used our strategies, it was like, oh, okay, now, now we're sending out the signal beauty recruiters come to me. So yes, there will be scams, and I think that some people spiral downwards and they get distracted. And now our clients, they'll just bring us any sort of message that happens, and we just give them feedback of, hey, yes, no, go forward, don't go forward. And, um, a few things you need to check for: legitimate email addresses. Okay, so no Gmail. Gmail is usually a, a surefire way to know that it's a scam. No requests for payments. So a legitimate company will never say, hey, there's something wrong with your resume. I'll send you to someone who will optimize it for you. It'll be great. They'll never say that. They'll never say, hey, buy this computer for your first day. We'll reimburse you. They won't say that either. They need to say a clear role. So if they say things in the message like, we have a role in your field, scam. If not an overemphasis on pay, especially daily or weekly pay. So especially if you hear a message that says, we have a role in your field that pays $400 a day, immediately no. Immediately no. I'm so sorry. There's so, there's so many. Um, yay. I just got into SGS today. Excited for what's to come. Yes, it's so good to have you here. And I will say, y'all, I would say if you are, interested in the program, go ahead and apply now. We did get a lot more applications than we were expecting day one, and we are having people join pretty quickly. And so we are running out of spaces. No, there's still more, but we just were not expecting this much enthusiasm so early on in the 5 days. So if you are getting an inkling, go ahead and apply. You can still talk to our team. There's no commitment there. But Sod, I'm so excited that you're in the program. I'll see you in there. Okay, so oh, and so this person mentions I did the LinkedIn workshop this week with Madeline Mann. A few tweaks, bam! I had three recruiters reach out to me with roles. Inbound is so much easier. So it really can just be one afternoon if you're working on things. And I was reading, I was rereading this comment, and I was thinking this session that I do, the LinkedIn VIP session, is so valuable that I'm actually going to give it to you. For free. So if you enroll in my coaching program by this Friday, so it's going to be a fast action bonus. If you pay in full and you enroll by this Friday, October 23rd at 9 PM Pacific, we're going to throw in this LinkedIn VIP session, a workshop with me where we're working through. I'll give you feedback in the moment on your profile to get these rapid results. And so, you know, if you're already planning on joining the program, just make sure you do it by Friday because, you know, full enrollment and all of the bonuses and the discount all end on Tuesday next week. But I would say just go for it. All right. And then we have going back to my insights from Talent Connect Summit. Now, LinkedIn is the main place to get sourced for corporate jobs. And here's the things that I learned from that conference that we really need to dial into. So make sure you're writing these down. So first of all, verification matters. You know, on your LinkedIn profile. Okay, let's go to your LinkedIn profile. Let's see. Okay, so you go to your LinkedIn profile, go here. See this? There should be a badge, like a kind of like a whatever badge there. And you will want to verify in 2 minutes. Maybe you've already verified, but this come November is going to be extremely important. I got to see into LinkedIn's new LinkedIn Recruiter and what they're going to do to it. And it is really focused on where there's an entire giant button that says filter by people who are verified. And I guarantee you a lot of recruiters are hitting that button. And if you're not in the verified bucket, it's likely that, that you are not going to get as many outreaches. So make sure you're doing that. Um, active profiles matter. So showing you're getting endorsed, having recommendations on your profile, commenting on other people's posts, having a photo, all these things are going to matter so much more because trust is at an all-time low. And then as well as optimization matters there. I learned the way that these, they're crawling these profiles and there's a lot to it. I'm not going to get into all of it right now, but I will say more is more right now. So make sure that the information is all tied to your target role, but you having more information on your profile is going to be highly advantageous and make sure it is optimized and tailored. And if you've never been sourced, just know it is absolutely possible for you. This message came from someone who is has quite a niche career, and I've actually had quite a few people. I had someone who works in textiles. As soon as I helped her optimize her profile, she started getting a bunch of inquiries because even though it was a super— there's not that many open roles, but she really stood out because she was one of the few who really optimized her profile. So this can actually happen for you. And I love this. One of my clients said, I started implementing LinkedIn strategies that SGS gives, and he shows this graph of like an immediate up into the right tick of attention to his profile. So That's always cool to see. So I'm really showing you this because a lot of you will just keep putting this off and keep putting this off. But I want you to know how big of a difference it can actually make for you. So get it done because people less talented than you are getting found right now. And let's change that. Okay, so put, put I will in the chat if you are going to focus some attention on LinkedIn. I want the commitment. Okay. The second way to really make sure you are getting more interviews is, of course, applications. And I put, I put the sourcing first because you want to set that up first as like a machine that's running. And then, okay, now we can focus on applications. Now, of course, you're not surprised. This is a component of the job search. What I found, I was like banging my head against the wall of how can I make it so that job seekers are more successful in the job search. And I saw that the average person spends 47 minutes per job application. So you guess what I did is I started applying to jobs for my clients. Like literally, like I started sitting down and just saying, okay, if I am this, if I'm this, this client and I have to go search for jobs, what does this feel like? And I sat down and I was like, this is hard and this is time-consuming and this is very administrative. So what I did actually Is I made it part of my coaching program. That initial trial was more of just me seeing, just really getting in the shoes of a job seeker. But what we did is I added to my program where we have a team that manages your applications for you, that submits them for you. And here we have one of my clients says, first off, wow, you guys are amazing. I've gone from no progress for months to having 5 separate companies reach out to me this week to get something on the books. So that was from us applying for him. I also have another person who said, you all are doing a great job. I see you've been working very hard. We landed another interview with company. Great work. I'll prep for this interview because basically it just, it just takes so much work. And then she was then able to focus her attention towards prepping for the interview. Now, yes, some companies are using AI to sort resumes. That's not— not all of them are. And so, but I actually think it's good news when a company does use a bit of AI in their process, because as long as you're targeted and qualified, that's going to help you to show up. Because right now, if you are trying to get attention of companies, if it's just a human recruiter, You could have actually a very good optimized resume, but because there is— they have to physically go through all of the resumes, they could just not get to yours. But if there's some sort of sorting and you've done the hard work of optimizing your resume and it's actually a really solid application, then AI can actually be to your advantage. Okay, this is, this is pretty hard to read. I wonder if I can actually try to make this a little bit bigger for you. So I need you to avoid autobiography syndrome and put autobiography in the chat if this is you. So it's this feeling of we need to tell our best accomplishments. We need to tell all the different aspects of our own story to really show how impressive we are. And a lot of us share too much. And I will say, I went back and I read my old resume and I was thinking, it wasn't terrible. I was like, Ooh, I probably could have gotten even more opportunities had I known what I know now. And I had autobiography all over that, that thing. So here, you might not be able to totally see it right now, but it says there's a second bullet there that says featured on radicalcandor.com and SHRM for a 6-week feedback training that yielded a 29% improvement in direct feedback. Okay, what do you think is maybe The error I made on that bullet? I'm curious to hear your thoughts. Featured on radicalcandor.com and SHRM. And just for context, you know, I come from an HR background. So my job is to, you know, of course, build onboarding programs and performance management and all this kind of stuff and, and do a lot of training. And so I'm curious what, what you all think here. So I will say, okay, some people are saying that they've gotten over autobiography syndrome thanks to SMM. I used to have an extreme case of it. David, yes, I love to hear it. And Rick asks, what's the difference between autobiography and telling a professional's truthful story of yourself? Okay, I'm glad you asked. So Here's the thing. The reason why this is autobiography syndrome is my job in HR is to get the company results. Um, saying I was— that the training was featured on by this really cool author, uh, Kim Scott, and SHRM, which is a very prominent HR, uh, organization, that is impressive, but that's not what the company wants. Remember I kept telling you earlier You need to know your customer. This is not knowing your customer. This is saying, look at me, look at me. I can get media attention because I'm so good at what I do, which is kind of OK. But we have to talk about— we have to talk to what the company cares about. So, so here is a change that I made. So I— it says developed a 6-week performance management training program. Okay, already pause. I added keywords in there, performance management. They are going to be scanning, recruiters can be scanning for that. ATSs are going to be scanning for that. Okay, so already I'm starting to focus more on the skills and the keywords. Okay, so developed a 6-week performance management training program. That's helpful. That improved direct feedback by 29%. Fabulous. That shows I'm good at my job. Now, I also included there earning recognition from Sherm and Radical Candor. That's kind of an afterthought. It is still impressive. We put the links in there so they can go and see the articles and all of that. It's still impressive. But notice I'm starting to think in the mind of the recruiter. I'm starting to think in the mind of the company. And so that is what I'm talking about. You need to shift. And it is quite complex. And we go line by line by line through our, our clients' resumes to make sure that this is not happening. And so we have this client says, I've got 3 interviews scheduled for next week. This is the most momentum I've had in a long time. And so that is what happens when you're starting to make these changes and you're starting to think in the mind of the actual reader. Okay. Let's move to the third piece of you landing more interviews, and that is networking. I'm curious, why do you think— why do companies love networkers now more than ever? And I'll actually make myself a little bit bigger again. This is, this is actually a time when companies are actually very thankful for, for their networks and all of that. And So what we're seeing here is that companies are currently overloaded with applications, so much so that a lot of them are saying, I don't really want to open this role up to everyone on Indeed and everyone on LinkedIn because I don't know if I can get through all the applications and manage everything. And so networkers position themselves as someone who can actually help them have a shortcut. So let's see, some people are saying— Emily's saying prove you're a real person. Molly says, um, social proof. Um, yes, trust, says, um, Antonelli. Yes. So really it's the fact that essentially they save a ton of time. So imagine if, if someone says, hey, this is— this— I've been talking to this person He's really good at this. We've been networking and all that. He would be great for if we ever have to hire X job. And they go, yes, we actually were planning on hiring that job in 6 weeks. So let's all interview him. And if he's good, then maybe in the next 3 weeks, we'll bring him on. You know what you just saved them? You just saved them hours of interviews. You saved them hours of reading applications. You and deliberation, all of that because you were just one candidate. So networking, you are actually doing a favor. And so many of us actually think of it as the opposite way when really this is one of companies' favorite way to hire is just someone raising their hand saying, I'd be amazing at that. And then them just cutting the line. And I'm sure a lot of you have experienced that. I know several times in my career roles have been created for me. A lot of people I know, they kind of got a role through this type of manner where there wasn't— it wasn't necessarily posted online. And I also think of my client Kathy. So she was trying to land a job in the sports industry, which is one of the most competitive industries you can try to go for. And she started reaching out. She started getting tons of responses. I saw someone say in here that they're not really getting responses. Yes, I've been networking and getting ghosted, says Shelley. Exactly. And so, you know, I would say that a lot of top people at top sporting companies, the NBA, F1, she ended up landing a job with the FIFA World Cup, right? They were all responding to her. And everyone in the program kept saying, how, how are people responding to you? And truly what happened is she just used Uh, our networking tools. So basically she went here, see networking. Um, we have all these things of, you know, I want to find someone to network with. I have a networking call coming out. I need to reach out to someone. Someone hasn't responded. We have all these different scenarios. And so she would basically do this. I want to reach out to someone. And then she would put, you know, who, who she's, she's reaching out to. Um, and it— what you should say to someone when you're reaching out completely depends on a bunch of things. Such as, have you talked before? No. Who are they? Are they employee or a hiring manager recruiter? You send different messages to these different people. Okay. So, and then is it, you know, are you going to do email or you can do other ways. So you need to think through all these different aspects when you're reaching out to someone, because it's not just— you can't just take a simple template and be like, all right, I'm going to send the same thing to everyone. You said something different to a hiring manager than to a contact you don't know, to someone who you do know. And that's what she did. And she was getting tremendous response rates. And, uh, she was actually here at this live, if you all came to this live like several months ago. Um, and like I said, she ended up landing the role with FIFA. And it really goes to show, if you approach people in the right way, there are so many people who are willing to help. And so I want you to track progress in interactions over applications. Yes, you should also track applications, But when you're looking back on has this week been productive, look at how many interactions you've had. And if you've had a lot of applications put out, also look at how many of those applications have I reached out to someone at the company about and also build digital proximity. So I have a tool called the Hidden Job Finder where it gives you suggestions of communities to join where you can rub digital elbows with people and, and all of that. And really what you do there is I think a lot of us don't like the feeling of a cold email, right? It doesn't feel great. But if you're building digital proximity, such as you all are here together right now, you all have digital proximity with each other. So you already have a connection. If you met up with someone or even digitally just started messaging back and forth with someone, you'd say like, hey, I saw you at Madeline's masterclass today. Now it's not really cold email. Now you're connected by space and time. So I would say that, that building digital proximity. Now, this session isn't exactly ideal. I would say focus more on something that's more directly related to your industry or your target role. And so we got this, this message. We do a lot of our interactions on Slack in my program. And it says, I now have a coffee meeting with a new connection. Connected to a healthcare recruiter. It's so exciting to get responses to my outreach messages. So y'all, people are responding. I think a lot of us tell the story in our head that people don't respond, but that is not my experience. She wrote back in a— I reached out to a hiring manager. She wrote back in a couple of hours saying she appreciated and respected my proactivity. Right. We're building that trust. We're building that rapport in the right way. I just had a great networking coffee. She told me she loves to find jobs for people. And this is an important lesson for you. Not everyone will help you. And we're all adults here. So they can just choose to say no or to ignore you. That's fine. But some people really like helping others, like such as before I actually went fully into job search coaching, I was constantly helping people at the master's program that I graduated from. I was doing informational interviews with them to like help them in their career. I was— anyone who reached out to me randomly on LinkedIn, I would help them. It made me feel amazing. Being live on here with you doing these free sessions feels amazing to see you benefiting. And a lot of people feel that way. And so I want you to put a number in the chat. How many interactions have you had in the last week? Would you say, you know, around 3 or so? Okay, maybe it's time to focus on some more interactions. If your number is from a 4 to a 9 interactions, okay, you're building some traction. And if your number is 10 and above, I would say that that's some really solid momentum. So I would say put your number in the chat if you're— and of course it can be approximation. Of approximately how many people did you comment with on LinkedIn? How many people did you talk to in line when you're getting coffee and mention your job search? How many people did you reach out to at your target companies? All those types of things. So I think that can be really great. Okay, so let's see. All right, so we're saying 3 to 5, 5, 4 to 9, and then mostly new people, 3 to 5, a 0. Dead emoji. Zero. Does an interaction mean the other person responded or does cold outreach count? I think, you know, ideally the person responds. I would, I would more count it the response. But even, even the actually reaching out is what we call a leading indicator. So it's kind of showing that there might be results. So I do think that measuring leading indicators is important. As well. Okay, so it looks like we might have some work to do, my friends, with interactions. Okay, can we make sure to do it? So, uh, so these are the main 3 ways to get more interviews. And the question is, how much time should you spend on each? So I'm curious, like percentage-wise, how much do you spend on applications? Percentage-wise, how much do you spend on optimizing for sourcing? And percentage-wise, how much time do you spend networking. So the percentage of the time you're spending actually on your job search. So I would say my recommended amount is about 30% of your time on applications, 10% of your time on sourcing, though it should be like almost 100% of your time at the very beginning. And then maybe just slight maintenance as you go on. That one is kind of flexible because I think once you've set it up, you don't have to do that much. And then about 60% of your time. So about double your time than applications should be focused on networking. Now, our clients, what we do now is we do apply for them. So they now have this 30% of time back. So that can either be allocated more towards networking or towards rest, rejuvenate, focus, prepare for interviews, all of that. And so I think that this part is like so administrative. That it can be really tough. So let's see. Yeah. Okay. So yeah, folks are kind of starting to kind of do their calculations here. And so this is what I recommend. So let's dive into someone who has gone through this process recently. He really, it was, he joined my coaching program and there was some back and forth and some trial and error. figuring out exactly what his approach was going to be to make sure that he is going to be the person that these companies are looking for. And let's talk about his journey and see how it went for him. So let's see, Brian, welcome. Hello. Hello. Your audio works. My audio did not work at the beginning of the session. Well, it's so good to have you here. If you could, we are here talking about really making sure that we are landing more interviews, landing more offers, all that kind of stuff. Tell us about your job search. Give us a little bit background of also like what profession you're in and where were you at before you and I met?

Sure. So hi, everybody. Glad to be here. My name is Brian Peebler. I am currently what's called a group product manager, which is basically a director-level role. managing a product team in a specific area of the company that I work for and work in. And I've been— actually just crossed my 1-year anniversary yesterday with the company after getting a job with the great help of this program. And so I've been in the tech industry doing software, hardware, IoT stuff in like large companies and small companies for about About 30 years now. So.

And so when you were— what were— what was going on in your job search? I mean, you know, not everyone gets a job search coach. So what was going on in your job search that kind of triggered that?

My job search. You remember the dead emoji and somebody put in the thing? That was my job search. So I got laid off. I was a member of an executive team at a medium-sized— actually small to medium-sized tech company. And got one of those Friday afternoon, hey, can we talk for a minute over Zoom? Even though I'd been with my boss, seen him face-to-face like 6 hours earlier. Can we talk? And I ended up getting laid off that afternoon. First time in my whole career I'd ever been laid off from a, from a role. And you know what? It's funny. I came out of that and, you know, I was financially OK. I was like, oh, you know, I'll find something. It's not a— it's, you know, this shouldn't be a big deal. I mean, it's a big deal, but I was pretty confident that I was gonna find another role pretty well, pretty easily. And it did not happen that way. What I found very quickly was the combination of being a 50-year-old person in the tech industry combined with the general state of the job market then, with that I was looking for director and up-level roles. was a pretty tough match and was going to be a real slog. So that's kind of where I started. And yeah, go ahead.

Yeah. So when— what did— when you say things weren't going well, like, what, what do you mean by it wasn't going well? Like, how long were you searching? What were you doing?

Well, before I joined the— before I joined the Job Search Coach, the program, I was— I think I had been looking for almost 9 months. And, you know, doing what I thought were all the right things. I had a professional, very highly regarded— I mean, very highly regarded resume person come in and we did interviews and all that stuff and tailored my resume and frankly was just not getting any traction at all. I was getting very few interviews, very few leads. And it was starting to get really concerning. I mean, I was like, Wow, this— is this ever gonna happen for me?

Right. So you took the step to invest in yourself, um, with someone else, which I don't blame you for. It's okay. But you came around. You came around eventually. But what— even after— so you had been laid off, it'd been 9 months of searching, you had already spent money on someone else. Why the heck did you still, still do this program?

You know, it's funny, I love audiobooks, and I was— I live in Sacramento, and I was driving up to Tahoe, and, uh, I started listening to your audiobook, and, um, and I was like, this is a really practical program. It's very different than everything I had heard before. Um, yeah, exactly. Um, so I started listening to the audiobook, and I'm like, this makes total sense. And by the way, 97.3% of the things going on in this book I'm not doing. Um, so maybe I ought to take a different approach. And, uh, and so that's how I ended up in the— and I remember when I was evaluating the program, I was like, you know, there's a lot of really scammy stuff out there. There's a lot of like, there's a lot of just crappy programs out there. And, and I'd been solicited by people and this one just felt different. So I, that's why I signed up.

Okay. So let's get into the nuts and bolts of what actually you did to be successful. So you had already had 9 months of grinding and trying to make it happen. What are some of the things you did that then were different, that then got different results?

Well, I think the first thing was, was a complete resume revision, which was painful to do because I'd spent several thousand dollars on that person to be not named in this, in this seminar, but in this program. But I would describe the process of what you lead students through as turning your resume into a guided missile. So if you think of like, if you think of the way they used to shoot down planes in World War I, where like they just shot a bunch of stuff up in the air and hoped that it hit a plane, right? And by, you know, Vietnam and sooner, now they're shooting heat-seeking missiles that are going exactly after the target that they need to get to.

Hmm.

That's the process that, that this program took me through. And, and I, I, you know, and I'm not just saying that to shine anybody up or anything like that. I mean, it really was a systemic logical way of tailoring your resume so there's nothing on that resume that doesn't actually resonate with the target company you're trying to get to, um, and cutting everything else out. And everything that's there is absolutely focused on what it needs to say. It's still true, absolutely true, but it's exactly what it needs to say in order to get the attention of Of recruiters.

Yes. And we talked about that a bit today. That was on a few of my slides of avoiding autobiography syndrome, like sounding really nice and, and verbose and, and strong accomplishments. But yes, I remember with your resume, it wasn't that it sounded bad at all. It sounded really solid, but it wasn't cutting to the core of, okay, here's exactly what the companies are looking for. And immediately them going boom. And that's been a theme that we've been talking about the past 2 days is in order to make the high-ticket sale, you need to know your customer. And that's what I feel like you, you went from putting something together that, that was, was obviously showed you were competent to something that spoke to the person hiring you immediately. Um, okay. So what else did you do?

Well, the other thing was, um, the, the scariest part of being out of the, out of out of a job during that year and a half is the AI transformation was really happening. And what I knew was that there was a lot of stuff. A, everybody was looking for AI experience. It was almost a non-starter if you didn't have AI experience in coming into a product tech job. So I knew everybody was looking for that. And B, I knew it was moving so fast that I was actually missing things. So there was a lot of learnings. The only way— well, in my mind at the time, the only way you could learn that would be that, um, that you actually have to be in the company and working. And so one of the things that your program emphasized that I was really appreciative for— um, and by the way, I apologize, there's a noise in the hotel here, but I hope it's not too bad. Um, one of the things that the, um, uh, that your program absolutely emphasized was you have to take the bull by the horns and you have to actually go build an example, whatever that is in your industry. It doesn't have to be AI, but you have to go build an example of an artifact you can bring to the table that says, here's something I did, that they can see what your work looks like. I dug in and started to play with Replit and Lovable and all of these AI prototyping tools because I'm a product guy. I started playing with those and I started, I got an initial client that wanted me to build a little app for them, and so I built a little app for them. Then I was like, well, wait a minute, maybe I could build an app that was a virtual me that you could interview me. I built an app that was called Interview Me. I built it in Replit over a weekend. I didn't do a line of code. It was all AI vibe coding stuff. And I sent that— the company I ultimately got a job from, the first thing I— the first was the first company I shared it with. And the cool thing was, another tip you had was trackable emails. And, uh, the cool thing was I sent that to them after the first kind of screening interview, and I saw it bounced around the company. So you can see on those tracking tools who's opening your email, and I could see it bouncing around the company, and I, and I could almost predict at that point when I was going to get a callback for the second interview because I would see it get opened by like 3 or 4 people and I'd be like, oh, they're going to call me today. And boom, they'd call me that day. So it got attention and I, and I got feedback after I got the job that that was a big reason I got the job is because they were looking for people that were proactive with AI.

Exactly. And that is something we really emphasize in the program. We get pretty creative with— you don't actually have to have a job, a paying job to build experience. And you sometimes have to get crafty with it. This is an unpaved path, but it's the fastest path. And I think that so many— and this has even gotten more serious since your job search is a lot of these companies are demanding AI skills. But AI being commonplace has only been around for the past couple of years where it's been really heavily used. And yet some of us have been unemployed. For the last couple of years. So we're like, how do we do that? Well, there's other solutions. And I love— and I— and you and I worked very closely together on this and we built things together. And I'm eternally grateful for that and your contributions. And it really, it allowed you— I remember you just had this confidence, this newfound confidence of now feeling like you didn't have this gap, that you actually had a lot of things to speak to. And that was really powerful.

Yeah, no, it was— I mean, I'll be honest, and I know there's people sitting in this audience today who are in this space. I was in a pretty rough place. Like I said, I wasn't financially devastated, but like I had taken a huge confidence blow. And just the act of like, okay, I'm gonna dive in and start doing this gave me— because then I'm like, oh, this isn't some— it's new, but it's it wasn't something that was like this mystery. It was like, oh no, here's what it is. And now I built something and I understand how it works and I can show somebody that I can do it. And I'd gotten some experience at doing it so I could talk to, in my case, how that would be used in a product development process. Mm-hmm. So the other thing I would coach people is once you build that artifact, build your story around it about, again, guided missile, how does that relate to the job you're trying to get? For me, it was Hey, I built this prototype and I would actually— I built out a— I believed this, that, hey, I think we can do product development differently where engineers and product managers and UX people can collaborate around a prototype instead of a written PRD or a Figma file. And that initiated some really great discussions and interviews that turned it more into a discussion than an interview.

Amazing. And so one another thing we talked about today Is I've been really trying to convince our good friends here to take LinkedIn seriously. Did LinkedIn play any sort of role in your job search?

Yeah, absolutely. I, once I, you know, we tailored the LinkedIn profile too, and I started, I started to get sourced. In fact, after I kind of relaunched, you know, Brian 2.0, Job Search 2.0, I started to actually get people reaching out. Through LinkedIn. And, you know, as everybody should use that as my primary tool for networking and for trying to expand my network and all that kind of stuff. So it, you know, LinkedIn is— should be at least one of your home bases in this whole process. Like after I got my job, I'm like, I don't want to look at LinkedIn for about a month, but then I'm back to you got to be on LinkedIn because, you know, you never know when you need the next job. Right. You can, you can get that Friday afternoon meeting any time these days. So you got to, you got to keep going.

Totally. So for, for those who might be considering, we have some folks who are currently applying to the program and all that kind of stuff. What advice would you have if they're trying to decide whether or not they should do this?

A couple of things. One is I would at least take a scan through your book. Right. I think that book is a great encapsulation of, obviously, of what you do. So like for me, that was a real— like looking at that book and going, okay, this isn't just some pie-in-the-sky person. This is someone who's got real background and going and just understanding the basic premise of what the program is. I think that's important. And I would ask great questions of you and your team, right? I was very skeptical coming into this. Because there are so many people out there that are offering really crappy— just, they're just trying to take your money. And I'd had a person that I had no result with. So, you know, I would ask all the tough questions you want to ask about how it's going to be. And then, you know, if you're in the program, if you do get into the program, my advice would be take all the steps seriously. So this program has its It's designed in a stepwise way that actually one thing leads to another. And so you kind of got to like, if you're going to be in it, be in it and do all the steps. And if you— you don't have to understand why step 2 is important, right? You will once you get to step 6. You're like, I'm really glad I did step 2.

Yes, exactly. Exactly. And some people— I call it a slingshot. So sometimes in order to go really fast, you have to pull back the slingshot. So it almost feels like you're moving backwards, but then you let go and you soar so much faster. And that's really what I feel like you have to do. Um, so amazing. Well, thank you so much for coming on, Brian. I'm gonna send you away. Oh wait, so, well, well, why don't you tell us your, your results, right? So— Oh

yeah, yeah.

I guess, I guess we kind of spoiled the results, but what, what ended up happening? You got the job, right?

Yeah, I got the job. I'm, I'm a year in now. I'm actually— I mean, as important as getting the job, it was the right job for me. Um, I love this job, and it's, by the way, it's a very intense job. I'm sitting in a hotel room after working 11 hours yesterday and went to a concert last night. That was fun. But, um, but, uh, I'm in another city. Like, it's, it's an intense job, but it's intense in a way that I enjoy. Uh, and the culture's right for me. I was at a Previously at a very toxic company. That's where I got laid off. It's just been the right place. It's a fully remote company that knows how to run a remote company, which is actually a skill set. So yeah, it's worked out for me and it's worked out for me financially, culturally in the company. And I'm a happier person today than I was a year ago, that's for sure.

So it's amazing. All right. So good to have you on here, Brian. I'm going to send you away with a Wi-Fi high five.

There we go.

Bye. All right. Well, huge kudos to Brian for coming on, for sharing his experience. And yeah, kind of the vulnerability of going through a job search and, and having there be dead ends. And so now we're going to move into our Q&A. So our team has been collecting the questions in the chat. And as a reminder, we did talk about this earlier and I saw some questions about it in the chat. Be sure if you are planning on joining the program, I would say join before this Friday. Everything kind of goes away, our Black Friday and everything goes away on Tuesday, October 27th. But if you do want the LinkedIn VIP session, a workshop with me where we all work through your, your LinkedIn in real time, just pay in full by this Friday, October 23rd, and you will get that absolutely for free. It's a $2,000 value. All right, let's get into the Q&A. And as a reminder, if you do want to come on live with me for Friday, we're going to do an interactive Q&A where you can come on and ask your questions. We can discuss your opportunity. We can— you go ahead and there's a way to submit your questions and we can get you on in the chat. All right. So let's get into the Q&As. Moving over here. Moving over here. Um, let's see. Um, ah, someone just ordered a copy of my book. It doesn't say who your name is, but I'm so glad that you did. Okay, so let's see. Uh, what do you mean by fake candidates, says Melody? How are they defining that? So it's truly like these are not real people, so they're not tied to Like their LinkedIn profile is wrong. Their their experience is made up. Maybe their their name is likely made up. That is what I'm talking about. And what does a successful networking call end up like? I reach out to people even when I reach out to people to talk to people even when companies are not hiring, says Vanish. So. It depends. So yes, I would say making a target list of companies is a good start where you're proactively reaching out to those people at the company. And it actually takes a lot of the pressure off. So if you're talking even to, say, a hiring manager now, quote, hiring manager just means the person who would end up hiring you, but maybe they don't have any active roles. That takes a lot of the pressure off of the conversation because now they're just networking. Now they're just building their own funnel. And so that can actually be a really good time to actually get on the hiring hiring manager's calendar because you cannot get on a hiring manager's calendar if they're interviewing right now, because that would mean that you're getting the interview, but you can proactively talk to them before. But yes, it could be talking to other people at the company, talking to— and just know that anyone you know most definitely knows people who have jobs. So it's— I have this process in my program called the Golden 20, which helps you to get closer to finding people who might be good through your own network as well. So, yes, there's so many good ways of doing that. All right. Let's see. How do you optimize LinkedIn while still employed without putting a target on your back, says Tamika. So I would say for that, You definitely need to optimize it, and you need to make this a habit. So you should be updating your LinkedIn profile every quarter, I would say. And so start now and never stop. The active commenting and all that kind of stuff. I think what people often do is they only update their profile when they have made it to the next role. And even from what we showed in today's presentation. That needs to not be your approach anymore. So you need to build a habit of being someone who just has active maintenance. And then when you land your next role, you're still continuing to update and to comment on things and all of that. And, and, you know, never be commenting on recruiters' posts. Don't like if they're posting about an open role, don't say, oh, you know, great role or don't even like it. But if it's someone talking about the industry, Focus on that, you know, talk about the industry and all that kind of stuff. I think that'd be great. Rick says, how can I network with hiring managers and recruiters to land interviews when I don't have mutual connections? So my motto is you don't have to know people, you have to notice people. So their job is to hire people. It is, is their job to build their network. So you need to come in having done your homework. If you ask for 15 minutes of their time, show that you spent 15 minutes of yours to prepare for that ask. So that's what's really going to stand out. Now, I would probably avoid reaching out to recruiters. They get the most inquiries and they're also not really decision makers, even though they are gatekeepers. So I focus on networking more with people within the company. It doesn't even have to be the hiring manager. It could even just be someone who, you know, has, you know, is, uh, even on the team. It could even be an intern who went to the same university as you. It— that intern knows more people at the company than you do, so you need to not undervalue that connection. All right. So we have our other questions here that say, oh yeah, so they had a question for Brian. Okay. Oh, oh, oh, Simpo says, anyone knows what to do with big gaps on the resume? I would say that gaps are not super essential to cover up or anything like that. I would say sometimes you can just explain it with a very short line on the resume. You know, this is time spent nursing sick parent or, you know, was in graduate school, like whatever it is, right? You can just put a very like short line there. The bottom line is no one expects you to work continuously until you die. That just, just doesn't make any sense, even though it seems like the expectation. The only reason why companies get weird about gaps is they worry that maybe you are potentially an underperformer if you keep getting terminated. Or if it's a recent gap, are you no longer as skilled as you were a year ago, 2 years ago, 3 years ago? So that's another component, is they want to make sure you're still sharp. So that is another thing to overcome, is really focusing on how can I show that I am still sharp Which there's lots of ways to do that. I coach a lot of my clients have recent gaps. So that is, that's, you can totally do that. Okay, perfect. Oh, yes. And that was, that was the question here. Perfect. Amazing. So let's see. How do I interpret a third-party recruiter wanting to catch up but never responds after 2 follow-ups? Says Longhorns. I one LinkedIn message and a phone call over two week period. We have interacted a few times before. So first of all, I love that you're following up. The art of the follow up is something that a lot of my clients do. And when I talked about Kathy earlier in this presentation, where I mentioned she had this amazing response rate, her response rate wasn't necessarily high on her first email. I helped her a lot with following up and guiding her on exactly what to say there. And so actually, her response rate got super high. Super high because of the follow-up. So anyways, I just want to acknowledge that for you. So I would say that the third-party recruiter is probably just busy. Likely, maybe they had an open role that you were good for, but then the hiring team got reprioritized, and now they're saying, "Okay, let's put this on pause right now." There's a lot of things that happen, and it has nothing to do with you. Absolutely nothing. And so then this person kind of got caught up in other things. And their intention to catch up with you is still there and it's still pure, but maybe some other things took priority. So I wouldn't take it personally. And in your future follow-ups, do it effectively and they will come back. I actually have some pretty— my clients, when they follow up, they can follow up sometimes 3, 4 times. And the person, you know what they'll do when they finally respond? And Kathy even said this in her— when she came on and explained her situation, she said They say thank you. So if they say thank you for following up, oh my gosh, you're so kind. You're so patient. Thank you. And so, so that's really important. Okay. So I'm seeing if we sign up for your program, will you be my coach or someone from your team? So it's me plus other people, other coaches as well. And I do coaching calls every week. I'm constantly, I mean, everyone's, you also have like a private Slack channel where I'll be in there as well. Um, and there will be other coaches as well. All right, so thank you so much for coming on. Remember, tomorrow is the big day. It's the interview day. It's the day we focus on how do you make sure that when you get into these later round interviews that you are actually acing them. Go ahead and put a Wi-Fi high five in the chat. Definitely come in live tomorrow. It is so great to interact with you, as well as we have some, some special Time-sensitive things tomorrow as well, and so it's been always a pleasure. Thanks so much. I'm going to send you away with a Wi-Fi high five, and I will see you back for day three, day three of five. Keep coming back day after day. It is absolutely my pleasure. Let's see. Let's get some of this this love on the screen. Oh, I'm seeing Karuna saying thank you. I'm seeing those. Those pink hands popping up on the screen. Wi-Fi high five. Yes, I love it. Thanks so much, everyone. Shag, Chris, um, Nessa, amazing. Rick, Liz, y'all are the best. Wi-Fi high five.