Guidance Counselor 2.0 + Finding Your Next Job w/Recruiter Richie Lampani

All righty.

What's going on, everybody? Good morning. Uh, I told, I told Richie, uh, backstage, uh, that Richie is my first guest of 2026. Um, and so, uh, congrats, Richie. Congrats. You're the first.

Thank you. Thank you.

Uh, you know, it's, it's, it's funny, like internally, like obviously like virtual events and in-person events are obviously kind of like our bread and butter and And a lot of my team members are like, hey, like, you know, do you have guests and stuff? I'm like, dude, I just got back from paternity break. Like, I am just trying to catch up right now. So, uh, shout out to Richie for raising his hand. Um, you know, I'll, I'm, I'll say this now, and I know Richie's gonna make some connections for me afterwards, but, you know, for those of you, uh, tuning in now, I mean, I, you know, one of the things— so I've been doing this show 6 years this year, which is crazy to think about. We're I think we're at or over 500 episodes now, which is nuts. And, you know, I've definitely kind of, uh, positioned this pod. Yeah. Yeah. 507 was the last one. So, so, so we've had over 500 episodes and so, you know, and, and I've, I've really kind of taken the, um, really kind of taken the stance of like, hey, you know, I'm gonna kind of silo into the engineering community. That's kind of been what I've done.

Mm-hmm.

And taken a lot of stories of people, uh, from engineers who found jobs in and engineering leaders on how to hire. And the landscape is shifting right now. I mean, and Richie and I are gonna get into it today. But what I really wanna do, Jeff, it's good to see you. Also, my texting community is not working this morning, so I'm not able to text and alert the troops. So hopefully everybody will eventually tune in.

Yeah.

I'm just getting a loading bar right now on my texting app I use. But so I really want to try to kind of focus this show, at least this year, on kind of 2 areas. It's getting more recruiters on the show because I, because I think from a recruiting perspective, we know the ins and outs, you know, and, and we really, really, uh, buddy, get a plant or something. I took the plant away.

It does look like a passport.

Yeah, yeah, my passport photo looks terrible. Um, but, uh, yeah, no, I, I got rid of the plant. Um, but for me, like, I really wanna focus on 2 things, getting recruiters on the show to talk about, you know, the recruiting market, what they're seeing, because it, the landscape is shifting. So I want people to hear it from other recruiters. And I also wanna get developers on to talk about AI, to talk about how to prepare yourself. Um, I have Aaron Francis, the great Aaron Francis coming on next week. Um, Aaron Francis just launched his, like, really this bootcamp around, like, how to practically use AI. We're gonna talk about that. Um, it's called faster.dev and And so, you know, just that, that, that's my focus. So if you're a recruiter that listens to this, um, and you want to come on the show, I would love to have you. I know Richie's gonna make some connections. So just to let you all know, um, on kind of how I'm framing this show up, at least for the next few months, recruiters and developers who can really give practical tactical insight into how to scale up using AI and how to use AI, et cetera. So that being said, uh, first, first, before we dive in, um, I want to, uh, give, um, you know, a quick shout out. First off, uh, if you are watching this, would love for you to check out the Torque community. We got a lot of good things going on. Um, we are going to some in-person events coming up. I'm doing something in Nashville. My guy Jason, who's on the stream, is coming in town. We're, um, sponsoring— we're the premier sponsor with Oracle on a data conference, um, in Nashville. So if you do want to drive to Nashville, um, uh, for the day, uh, we do have a discount code for 15% off. It's TORQUE26. And that again, that is for the DataTune Tech Conference. Also too, it's not working right now, but if you want to text me to get updates of when I go live with guests so you don't miss it, shoot me a text, 615-235-5650. Or if you have any questions on the job search, I always check this number first. Would love to have you a part of that community. Our Discord is popping off as always. Again, something I'm really proud of. We took this thing over from like zero messages a month to we're averaging around 10,000 messages a month. A lot of people helping each other. We have some technical channels, we have some goofy channels. Um, so we'd just obviously love to have you. And also too, the official coffee sponsor. Uh, let me, let me get the coffee bag. Shout out Caleb. Um, he's in Nashville, he's a founder, Seek Coffee. I did not realize this, but most of the mold— most coffee has trace amounts of mold in it, which I did not realize. Um, and so, uh, uh, Caleb founded a coffee company that does not have mold in it. Um, it's great, it's fantastic. If you use the code TDESS, you get 15% off. I'm probably going to tap on his shoulder to get more of an overarching benefit to the TORQ community, so more to come there, but would love, uh, for you to check that out. All right, so Richie, enough with me yapping, man. We finally got some people in the, in the chat. Let's give the people an overview. Who are you? What do you do? And we'll go from there.

I'm Richie Lampani. I, uh, I've been in recruiting like 14 years next month. So I started—

Are we old heads now? Are we considered old heads?

Yeah, I never thought I'd make it this far, honestly. But I came from music, so I toured with bands, booked a music venue, um, went to Robert Half, learned a lot, hated it, made no money, moved to New York, moved to Chicago, and And then, uh, you know, now I own part of an agency and I own Rebel Talent, which is a fractional head of talent. I'm the head of talent for a geospatial agency that works with DOD. And then I do some other stuff.

I love it. I love it. So, um, so, so let's get into it. You know, I, you know, obviously I was, and it's, it's good to see everybody now. It's good to see you, David. It's good to see you. Um, uh, Chris, Amelia, it's wonderful to see y'all this morning. Um, so there's a lot to unpack here. I guess let's just give a little state of the, state of the market right now. What are you seeing just in general with jobs? And again, right, this is why I want recruiters from different backgrounds, different areas. You're playing in the DOD space. We don't do a ton of DOD, um, but I know Ron said obviously has a whole DOD space. But for this conversation, our community, you know, we're not heavy DOD, but obviously you have a really good, um, grasp on just the general market. What are you seeing jobs-wise? Uh, what's maybe falling off? Just let's, let's give some basic kind of overview.

Yeah, I mean, first, I'm seeing recruiters get hired. And that's always good. That's a good market indicator.

Why is that? Why is that?

Because if you need people, you gotta have recruiters to find them typically, right? Yeah. And even with all the apps and the accessible accessibility of applying online, you still need somebody to at least filter, right? So if you're even startups, if you're 20-person startup, you got to have somebody in there to kind of position it for you correctly. Otherwise, you're just— it's just, it's a craft, right? So recruiters, salespeople, we're getting a lot of salespeople. And this is from my, my day job. And then also agency, we're getting reach outs from companies that we maybe haven't heard from for a while.

Yeah.

And new that need specialized— it's still pretty specialized. I'm not getting front-end devs yet, you know, stuff like that. So we're still in Senior level hybrid, you know, kind of thing that's been going on with a little more volume now.

So, I'm interested in your thoughts on not a lot of front end. Uh, you know, I've been saying that. I, I, I'm not saying front end devs are dead by any means, but I do think market saturation hit 2 or 3 years ago. And I feel like, I, I feel like, I feel like you're in for an uphill battle if all you're doing is front end. What are your thoughts on that?

I think that it— yeah, we saturated, especially, and I've heard you say this, React. I mean, I can, I can find some— I live in like an old people home neighborhood, and I can find a React developer in here, probably. So that unfortunately, that's one of the ones that got hit. It also is one of the things that if you go on any, the 2 JavaScript on the vibe coding, it's always React and it's always Node, right? So if people can get out of paying somebody and they can figure out a way around it, they're gonna figure that those might be dead, that, that, that particular— you gotta learn something else. I'm still getting Angular devs, Go is popular again. Things like that, reach outs for that, but not React. Like, they're never gonna hire an agency to find a React developer. No, no.

What, what, so I know you mentioned Go. What, what does it look like from like a backend perspective? You know, I've been saying for a bit now, I think, I think if you've ha— if you've had any interest, I think you need to get a backend. Um, not only backend like, uh, software web programming, but also just backend data, DevOps. You know, I think obviously with a lot with AI, huh?

Yeah, it's, I haven't gotten anything that's, well, we did, we hired a couple of what, Um, again, we're a pretty new startup, so, um, the other orders I'm seeing are like end-to-end production stuff. So C#, .NET with DevOps skills.

And then, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. I talk about, uh, kind of that specialist comment you've made. I mean, I know you and I have been pretty aligned with all of our content on LinkedIn, but talk, talk about specialists versus generalists right now and kind of what companies are wanting, especially from a specialist perspective.

Oh, you mean in terms of tech?

Yeah, in terms of tech.

Okay. I mean, if I just go to my own personal what searches I have, if we're looking for someone, we need them to be very specialized in AWS and know a bunch. And he just switched up, but Java for us is huge. But they can't be like, I've done Java for a year, it's got to be deep Java knowledge. So yeah, the generalist, it's weird, right? Because I just said a developer that also knows DevOps and then all this other stuff. But so it's, I don't know how to—

Yeah, I know what you're saying. Yeah, you said generalist, but then you're also saying specialist. And I think that's the problem of it is that I think that's, I think that's the landscape is you have to be a generalist, but also a specialist in multiple different skills. I think they call it a T-shaped developer. I think that's what they call it.

Yeah.

Um, but you know, I, I, I do think you have to be a specialist, especially within the backend ecosystem.

Mm-hmm. Right.

Right now. What, what are you seeing? What do you see? And, and we're gonna get into some practical tactical stuff here. I just wanna give kind of lay of the land. I mean, obviously AI vibe coding, you know, you and I were chit-chatting back, backstage about how we vibe coded some apps, et cetera, et cetera. What, what are you seeing? I mean, I, you know, I've listened to some podcasts, you know, especially mostly technical. Shout out Aaron Francis and Ian, um, you know, they've kind of gotten some really good information. They keep saying that like the, the stuff on X is like bleeding, bleeding edge.

Mm-hmm.

And they don't think it's going to get into enterprise for a while. What are your thoughts on kind of what you're seeing from that perspective around AI?

As far as enterprise devs or enterprise apps going into VibeCore? I, I guess I'm lost a little bit. So, yeah. I think it's gonna be who's— so if you get people— so first of all, it's just like when we were— it's like when we're recruiters and all of a sudden Indeed comes out of the blue, right? And we're like, I'm not— that's not gonna hurt us, right?

Right.

It didn't really. Um, I don't know that we have seen the true cost of AI in terms of money or anything else. So I'm not sure. It's, it's kind of a weird place for me. Um, I know that if I put my brain into it as a recruiter, I can figure out how to make an interactive better than any other ATS I've worked with that's functional. So that to me says, all right, if, if the recruiter can do that, yeah, then I don't— then when does a company say, hey, figure out how to do this shit?

And we're not gonna—

I'm sorry, I don't know if I'm allowed to swear on here, but yeah, you are. Figure out how to do this. And we don't need to pay Workday or Greenhouse or whatever. It's also ease of access, right? It's also having somebody willing to do it. I don't know. It's a weird world. I see all this stuff on X. I don't think anybody knows what they're talking about when they talk about AI. So for me as a recruiter, daily, I use AI to kind of organize my day. I don't use it for screenings. I don't use it for filtering. I don't need to, and I don't think it does anything better than what we already had before. Not really.

Sure. Um, are you seeing job specs come in? They're like, hey, we need this person with some sort of clawed cursor, anything like that? Is that coming in yet? Just, just, just—

No, but that's— again, it's never gonna come in for DOD.

Sure.

Um, and, uh, even my clients are either either DoD-specific or adjacent. So I've worked in this space for— we were doing— right when I got started the company 4 years ago, we— our first order was something to do with homomorphic encryption. So for DoD.

Yeah.

So we've been in this space for a while. But I have an order for— with a big pharmaceutical, global pharmaceutical SaaS company. And the It's a site reliability, uh, product stuff. So they want them to have an understanding of AI, but there's not— it's nonspecific. Like, it's not— they're not saying, hey, we want you to know Codex or whatever the new thing is. So yeah, yeah, no, not really, not yet.

You, you made a comment backstage that I want to bring up. You talked about testers. Um, you know, what, what, what are you seeing with Uh, what are your thoughts around testers? Because, because I think you made a pretty good point around that backstage. I want to bring that up.

I think, well, I think that we— I saw so many QA people get laid off right after that big burst because, because right after COVID we were doing a ton of QA, manual and automated, and then all of a sudden it went out and away, it went away. And then we saw a big burst of like SDET Which managers were thinking was somehow going to eliminate, just like everything else, we thought we were going to eliminate and combine a position. So either you're going to be an engineer that can actually QA your own stuff, which most do anyway, right?

Right.

Or we're going to have to, with vibe coding and the attempted replacement of everyone, we're going to need people to check all the shit that got built during this mess of, oh, we can get AI to replace everybody and save some money. It's gonna be messy. So I think QA will probably be big, but it'll be QA related to, um, AI. So yeah, we haven't seen— it's not really that regulated yet. So yeah.

Yeah, I agree. I agree. Um, all right, so let's dive into kind of some job search stuff. Uh, kind of some basic thoughts on your end. Um, where, where are people, uh, what, what are people doing well that's causing them to get hired? Let's start there.

For me, so for me, it's— I'm— I've been doing this a while. So I really think the biggest thing is latch on to the recruiters that at least appear to know what they're talking about.

That's kind of what I've been saying too, right? Yeah.

So like, I, I'm hiring, or we're hiring a guy that I think I put him up for. He didn't take it, but he turned down an offer for me 3 years ago. Love the dude. Like, it's like one of those people that can do pretty much anything. Um, turned it down, took another job, and I had something open. I knew, I kind of knew that I could grab him. I'm hiring him 3 years later, even though he— or my company is— even though he turned me down 3 years ago. So do it the right way. Latch on to those recruiters that, like me, I'm, I'm here. I'm not gonna go get another job.

Right.

If I do, it won't be, it won't be any— I'll be outside swinging hammers. But, um, People like me that are in the space that have been in the space. Nothing against the new people, they got to make connections too. But usually if they're coming in and don't know or don't care, then it's not really worth keeping the connection. But that's number one, recruiters, I always refer you to the— like anybody hits me up on the C, like VP, you know, I've introduced you to a bunch of people. I don't get those roles. You guys seem to get them a little more often.

Yeah.

So we network, like me, Sean, Adam, you, Mike Podetto, even like we throw each other candidates. So it's, you know me, like if you're skilled, I'm gonna pitch you to somebody else too. And I'm not asking for money. I just throw the referral.

Yeah.

That's big. Applying is, you still got to do it. This is what I hate about new recruiters. They're talking about, we don't use online applications, blah, blah, blah. You're closing your toolbox if you do that. So shut up. Like, you're still gonna have your apps up and your boss wants you to have your apps up. There's no reason to limit tools. Still apply. Um, clean resume. You do that resume show, it's pretty good. Um, clean resumes, LinkedIn, just matching and make yourself discoverable. I don't even post half my jobs anymore because I usually have somebody in the ATS for it.

Yeah.

I might throw it up if it's niche, but Not so much.

Yeah, yeah, this is good. There's a few things I want to unpack here. First off, how should people— so, you know, I've been kind of big on what I call like the BCC trick, which is basically just getting the recruiters that you like or that seem to know what they're talking about and just ping them once a month if you're still on the market, being like, hey, reminder, this is what I do, here are my salary ranges, here are my requirements, here's what I'm good at. Is there, is there other ways you'd want people to check in with you? Because Again, I'm just trying to get into people's brains that are watching this or listening to this in the future, um, on the best way to stay in touch with recruiters after 3 years.

Honestly, like, just that. Don't, don't be crazy about it. I have people that try to check in with me twice a week and I'm like, dude, just stop. Like, I don't have anything for you. Um, yeah, once, once a month is probably fair. Uh, drop me a DM. I'm not always gonna answer. I just sometimes I'm busy. Yeah. Um, showing up, especially people like me and you that do have kind— you have— you post more on X, or you haven't posted a lot lately anyway, but yeah, yeah, we're on kind of both. I don't really post on X because I don't get it. Um, but so dropping on the comments, like, there's people— like, if I see you and I know you've been around and like you're looking for a job in my space and that's why you're around and you ask me a question, I'm probably gonna answer it.

Exactly.

Like, um, interact. Like, I know it's so cheesy and it sounds like I'm trying to, uh, trick people into helping my—

yeah, boosting engagement.

Yeah, I don't care. I, I think if I've accomplished one thing in my LinkedIn career, I don't care. Like, I'm not trying to be famous from it.

Sure.

So, um, it's fun, but I post whatever. So interact with me. That's a good way to get me to remember you. Don't be negative to people at all. Like, I block people that come on my stuff for that.

Huge.

That's great for recruiters. I'm big on asking for mentorship and nothing else. So I tell everybody when I, when I sit down with them, or when, you know, they're struggling, and I go to help them, find people that are great at what you want to do and just talk to them. I have We do the— I do a thing at the colleges now where I just go talk and help them with LinkedIn and resumes and stuff. And those kids hit me up if they're interested in tech or recruiting, and I answer them. I want— I like people that are hungry. And I'm not really a mentor for tech, but I tell them to go find— there are a lot of logistics and business, and I say, hey, this guy has been doing logistics for 20 years. He's happy to talk to you. Look for mentorship. That will help you find a job faster than anything.

Yeah, I mean, and, and I'm not opening up my DMs when I say this, but I've never had anybody ask me for mentorship. And now I've been kind of in a weird space where I've kind of straddled the line between like tech and then marketing and branding. So it's kind of been like if somebody were to look at me, they— which has been, I think, in my perspective, one of my biggest issues in my career is people don't know what to do with me.

Mm-hmm.

But like the fact of the matter is, is that like nobody's been like, yo, I wanna get to where you're at. can we chat? And like, I would talk to them, and nobody's done that, which, which to me is crazy. Like, like, if, if, if, if you want— if you see somebody and you want to get to where they're at, I think it's a massive thing to do.

Uh, it's scary though, right? And the thing with the younger generations after— because so I got into music by asking for mentorship.

Yeah.

And I was taught that by my grandpa, you know, like, yeah, yeah. So younger people, like our kids, they're scared to ask their teachers about their homework, man. Like, they're not gonna ask somebody to mentor them. So, and it's not that— I mean, they're not scared of very much in life at all. But it's that, it's that authority. So they don't think— I don't know what it is. It's like a weird disconnect, like the communication.

My dad Yeah, my dad from an early age was like, always ask questions because people are willing to help you more than you think.

Yeah, absolutely.

Like, and I, and I, and I think too, I think like, and I've kind of taken this mindset through like building the Torque community. Like, like we all, like the way to, the way to build communities over shared suffering. And I think if you put that out at scale, everybody is, the job search right now in the landscape of the market is a shared suffering. You, if you're a junior or staff level, you got to go through it. And I think people are willing to help. Um, I, I want to get to 2 comments here. Why is it called the BCC trick? Because I don't have any other clever name for it. And you just BCC a bunch of recruiters on an email and check in with them.

It's, it's, it's—

Jason works with me. It's not that complicated, Jason. Um, all right. Uh, this, and this is cool. Hired a 0 to 1 PM at a VC client who applied. Yeah, it still works. Like, applying still works. The problem is, is when I was recruiting pre-AI, we would get hundreds, if not 1,000 applicants for a role. Then that was pre-fake resumes and pre-bots and pre-op— okay, I mean, I can't even imagine. I mean, Richie, when you post a job, I mean, I'm assuming you get hundreds of, of resumes.

We have, yeah. And we have this whole thing right now, because I do, I work for, we only provide data to the intelligence community, right? So everything we do is tracked. And I put up like a, you know, a geospatial data scientist, but for geospatial, I am not kidding at all when I say I did 4 screens. They look, the resumes look so good. And I'm pretty good at catching the fake ones. Yeah, the CTO or director of engineering tagged 2 people for me to talk to. I booked the screen, 100% fake, probably North Korean. I'm doing the screen and I'm like, what is happening? This is so weird.

Yeah.

And, um, we have to escalate that now. So on that one job, there was— I think I cut it off at like 75 or 80.

I'm—

I talked to like 2 people that were good. There was probably 20 fake resumes in there-ish, something like that. And we used to get them. I'm sure you've seen those old C2C ones. They all look the same. They all work.

I mean, back when I, I tweeted this, uh, I still call it tweeting, uh, I tweeted this like last week or 2 weeks ago, like, I wish I used X more when I was like a heads-down recruiter because some of the stories, like, I remember screening a guy for, I believe it was like a DevOps position. He was great. And, uh, and I walked him in the first day and it was not the guy that I screened.

Oh, I had that in New York. I— same. I've told this story, dude. I did a SharePoint dev. This guy's making like $150 an hour. He was awesome. He came to the office in, in, uh, Herald Square. I worked for Addison back then. Walked him into the client the first day, which was tight, and big advertiser in New York, right in Grand Central Station. Um, the guy, his name is Mike, went to walk him into work because we used to do that. Went to walk him into work, totally different guy shows up.

That's nuts.

That's crazy. The HR lady is like, who's this? And he's like, I'm Mike. I'm like, no, you're not.

You are not Mike. Yeah, we've had that. We've had people Uh, I know we're getting derailed here. We'll, we'll bring it back. I got— there's a good question about Eduardo in the chat, but like, we had another guy. We placed a Salesforce architect at a client in Nashville and he was great. He was, he was doing great work. It was the same guy, but then we got pinged by some folks from the client and was like, hey, his IP is in India. Like, basically, like, and this guy was having his buddies do the work for him, like logging in.

Mm-hmm.

into his workstation and doing the work for him. So yeah, it's been, it's been, it's been crazy. Uh, uh, Eduardo comes in here, goes, uh, which would be the best way to stand out in this AI era? Let's, let's, let's say resumes first. Do we need to bring back the pictures on resumes?

Dude, I've been railing against that for so long. I just teased the guy for this too, because he, he was like the super coolest guy and we were interviewing and he sent me his resume. I was like, what are you doing? It was so big. You know? Maybe. I don't know. I think the main thing is, is that within the AI world, just don't, don't use fully AI to make your resume is a big thing. Like, I see the same resume over and over now. It's like, I know exactly ChatGPT's phrases for everything. So just write it, just write the resume and make it in ChatGPT and rewrite it. So it's not All ChatGPT.

Yeah. Like, like I've, like I've, I've done some, some like one-on-one work with some people and I mean, and, and I feel like I'm cheating the conversation, but I'm like, have you dropped your resume into ChatGPT and asked it for blind spots on your resume?

Mm-hmm.

Or ask it, are you missing anything as it relates to your career? Because I think, I, I think that's one way to use it. If you're gonna use it for your resume, I think being able to like, plug in the holes. But yeah, I mean, I, again, Jason and I talk about this all the time, but please don't use AI to fully write your resume because it's the same templates and all that. Yeah. I mean, Jason brings it up here. I mean, a picture, you can just fake a picture. I think, I'm not saying you should put pictures on your resume because like I said, it startles me, but I think it's more paramount now than ever to maybe include a a LinkedIn, your, your LinkedIn link or an X link or something to really like social proof yourself. Mm-hmm. Um, I think that could be a good tactic. I'm curious to hear your thoughts on that.

I mean, yeah, so that, that's, we had a guy, this guy's name was like Chris Maloney, just for, just for, uh, I can't remember his last name, but I got the app, I got the actual resume. It was a good resume. I, like I said, I interviewed him and it was not, it was not an Italian guy that showed up. It was somebody from some other country. I went back to LinkedIn because it was connected. It is the same guy. And then 2 days later he says, hey, somebody's been using my profile to make resumes.

Great.

So this person was bold enough to copy the— in that what was weird, Taylor, is that he had Discord as a job. And I'm looking through because I didn't hit all the bullet points at Discord because it was a couple years ago, a couple, 5, 6 years ago. And he had in the Discord job that he worked with Retina, which is our product for geospatial. Like, we built it, and it had a word in there that was shit. He stole it from our, our website. So that was maybe some due diligence on my part, but He— the guy had a LinkedIn, he had the GitHub connected. There's no way for me to tell that somebody in another country stole the experience, linked the LinkedIn, linked the GitHub. I mean, he's never getting a job because I'm gonna catch it at the end. But what a waste of labor that is for me.

Yeah.

I'm not sure. We're— we've been working on a fraud engine, me and one of my buddies. And, uh, it's, it's hard because what do we— we gotta almost go to an IP search and then maybe a verify on some of these jobs. I don't know. Yeah, ID verify. I don't know.

Well, I think too, so, uh, Eduardo, yeah, Torque template again. Like, uh, my guy Jason, we created a, a template that is— that looks normal, human. Um, uh, again, which, which helps. Uh, Eduardo coming in with some— a lot of good comments here. I need to do more networking. I don't live in a big city. And I think going back to what Richie said, I think you showing up, Eduardo, this is networking, right? So if Eduardo were to message me after this for something, I'm gonna get back to him.

Why?

Because he took the time to show up.

Right.

And that's what Richie was talking about. And I've put out a Substack this last week about how I think everything, and I'm looking at consumer product good trends. I just got an email newsletter today From a creator thing I follow about how landlines are making a comeback.

What?

Like, I just, like, I just think this, like, I think we're getting to, we're getting to a point where the sea of AI, everything's coming commoditized. Everything's just, it's starting to just become so much noise that I think people are gonna want to strip it back down. And so I think real human connections, and again, this is what I'm proud about with the Torque community, just how much, you know, how much conversation happens on a daily basis. is, is I really think like it comes back to commenting on Richie's post, DMing him, hey, great post, staying on top of, staying on top of him, checking in with him once a month. Like, I think it's, it's unfortunately it's doing things that aren't scalable that's actually going to help you the most.

Yeah, I mean, me and you, I think I commented about one of your shirts 4 years ago, you know. Yeah. So I almost worked with you at one point. Did you know that?

I think so.

Oh yeah, yeah. I interviewed with Vayco. Yeah, I talked to Joseph. I think you were busy, but yeah. So that was through network, and I was in a bind. I needed a job. I needed a job right then. I was with a horrible agency, and because I, I commented on your post, I met Joseph Jewell through that. Yep, just kind of screwing around on LinkedIn. Yeah, got referred into that company. I met another guy from there while that was all going on, but That's what it is, right? Me and my job, my pretty good job that I have with DOD came from networking with someone on LinkedIn, an HR person, picking up a client, and then she liked me enough when this internal job came open, she put my name in and it was gold. And that's where my job came from, right? So yeah, absolutely.

What, um, uh, so postings, you know, it's kind of a necessary evil. You know, I talk about the job search and tactics being tools in your tool belt, right? And, you know, I'm, I'm not a tool guy. My wife is the handyman of the house. I'm not— barely know how to use a hammer, right? It's crazy. Um, and, and, but I say, you know, I know personally that you can't build a house with just a screwdriver. And I feel like a lot of people, the— is the job applications is people, I'm only gonna use a screwdriver. Right. And I just feel like you have to look at, at, at different, um, uh, at different verticals or different buckets. Let me ask you this. What are your thoughts? I mean, I mean, do you think— and I know this is kind of a leading question because I know what you're probably going to say— but do, do you think that talking to agency recruiters and just recruiters should be a part of your weekly cadence when you're on the job search?

Yeah. I mean, yeah, I don't know. So the thing about LinkedIn is that most recruiters are not saying I'm a tech recruiter or I'm a— even their taglines, everybody's got different stuff, right? So it's hard for people to tell. Look at their jobs and look at what they're posting because I will get hit up by procurement people. I'll get hit up by every different job and I just, I can't answer everyone. And so if it's not related to what I'm doing, I'll probably skip the message unless they ask me a very a question I can answer. So make sure they're in your space if you're gonna hit up recruiters. Really, that's the main thing.

Yeah, go— yeah, yeah, I mean, yeah, definitely. And again, right, it's— it takes time. I think I've said this time and time again, I think we as a society confuse activity with productivity, especially when it comes to job search. People like, I've submitted 500 applications, and it's like, it's like, it's like, okay, that was activity, that's not productivity. And unfortunately, productivity is Trying to, you know, get, get talking to 5 recruiters in a week, that's not scalable. And it may seem counterintuitive to actual activity, but that's where the productivity comes in, is really trying to slow it down.

Well, we're in that— it's like a self-fulfilling prop. We teach everybody, and especially in agency, you got to make 100 phone calls or whatever a day. And our whole society has been like that. for so long, like, they teach you that volume will eventually lead to—

How I was taught when I was a vaco.

Right, right. So, but that's not— it's— we're not in that world. I can, I can fake volume. I can, I can create artificial volume. It's the, it's the real connections that really matter. And there's not really a metric for that yet. And I think once they figure it out, they'll probably measure that too. But, um, yeah, I The biggest thing for me, I honestly, when I needed a job last year, last summer, I decided I was gonna go get a job. I— the agency thing was killing me. And I started applying and I was like, God, seriously, I did like 50 apps. I did a bunch of interviews, got ghosted a couple times. I'm like, I need to talk to people I know because this is stupid.

Yeah.

So even if you don't know anybody, I see people get hired all, all the time in the comments on LinkedIn. So like they make a connection. There's especially like the most resilient group, the transitioning teachers. I've seen tons of them go from teaching to customer success and things like that. They met all those people online. It's possible. I think it sucks that you gotta put so much work into it, but that's the world we're in and applying sucks. So yeah, you have to do it though. Don't not do it.

You're right. Yeah, it's just, it's just a tool in your tool belt. Uh, here, here's a random question, uh, random question. Is in— is InMail to a recruiter with a resume attached better than a connection request with a note? This is a very—

Does a resume come through if you're not connected? I don't know. I don't know.

Well, an InMail— an InMail is one of those things where like you kind of have a little bit more juice in inside LinkedIn. So I think you can attach something in an InMail. I personally don't like InMails. I think, however, LinkedIn— LinkedIn needs to change. Like whenever I get an email for InMail from somebody, It, it, it's always spam. Now that's just me. Uh, I, if, if you're very, very specific in the wording and the copy of the message and make it stand out, I think that'll help. But I just think the InMail feature within LinkedIn is not good. Um, and, and also too, like, my thought, Roxy, is like, I would just send a connection request.

Yeah.

Stay on them a little bit, engage with them, then fire it off.

Yep. I, uh, I don't accept unsolicited resumes through LinkedIn. If I don't ask for it, I really— I'm not gonna do anything with it.

Yeah.

And it's a downloadable file too, so that goes back to my job. I can't be putting stuff on my laptop that I don't know is safe anyway. But I've had that on my away message when I had one, is please don't send me a resume here. I'm, I'm not gonna look at it. We need to talk So, um, the message is really gonna get you the conversation over a resume, I think, if you don't know somebody.

Um, so, uh, let me ask you this, going to— so any more advice to the job seeker side of things? Because if not, I want to transition to kind of some interview tips or in prep. Any more General thoughts on the job search?

One thing I've been telling people is think more broadly. So we, we have all the engineers and everybody trying to stay up in that, stay in that SaaS, soft custom software, like just that little niche, manufacturing tech, hospital tech, all these things need people like you. And everybody's still in this SaaS lane. Just think outside the box. You're more likely to get a remote job or interviews quicker.

Well, you said, you said something about like teachers getting customer success support job stuff. Like I think now. You need to get into tech in a different way. Like, I think now more than ever, sometimes the traditional approach won't work. Like, in my perspective, hiring somebody who can come in as a customer success person, understand the business. Also, that's another thing I wanna say. Are you seeing like— I think I'm seeing it, but again, one of the reasons why I'm having recruiters on is to fact-check me. I feel like industry depth is, is a thing now. Like, I feel like companies really want the industry. Have you seen that?

Yeah, I mean, just a pattern. It's— I, I— that was happening before. Yeah. Um, yeah, I mean, you always see that. We— where I work, they don't— we're going outside of our hiring pattern is to hire outside of geospatial. So the last couple of people we brought in, we didn't want geospatial people. We wanted people that came from banking and stuff like that because their foundations were stronger in what we needed.

Yeah.

As far as like Matt, the engineering manager, is always like, I really don't need more people that are theory. I need people that can get— they— he calls them bulldogs. They want people that are bulldogs about code. And they tend to come more from banking and places like that. So we're going outside of industry to recruit.

Interesting. Okay. Yeah, but I do want to highlight this. This is something Jason and I've talked a lot about too in our resume reviews, is adding context to the companies you work at on your resume, especially if they're not big, right? So, you know, if you work at a Bank of America, you obviously know what that is. But if you work for a smaller bank, I would outline in your resume in a description Oh, yeah, I love that.

Yeah, the little italics like this company. Yeah, I think I got that from one of your— not your Ghosted or something. I think I saw you and somebody else chop it up and that I put them on everybody. Anybody asked me to help with a resume, if I don't know the company, I put a little italic description right underneath the company. And it does help because I'll be on screens and be like, what is this? What is it? I don't even— I've never heard.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Um, so, so let's kind of, let's kind of go into interviewing as we slowly start to wind down this conversation. Again, for those of you tuning in, if you have any questions, you got a recruiter on the line. Ask, ask away, we'll get to them. Um, let's talk about interviewing. What are just some basic, uh, things that people are missing out on and/or doing right that are really separating themselves right now in the interview process?

On an interview?

Yeah.

I mean, for me, and as somebody that's interviewed, I've— I just interviewed again last week because of this. I— fractional is like, I'm always interviewing for stuff. Yeah. So yeah. Little baby stuff, but they still want to interview you. Confidence, I think, like, it's really important to be able to brag about yourself a little bit. I made a joke about always bragging about yourself. But I just, I think that one of the reasons I got my job now is because I wasn't afraid to say I'm one of the best at what I do. And that's how I closed the conversation. And I didn't sit there and brag the whole time and act like I knew everything, but I made sure they knew I was confident going out of it. Because, and with devs especially, I've met some devs that are like, crazy narcissistic. But the majority are like, I'm pretty good, and they don't wanna talk themselves up, and this is what I did, and they seem to get really nervous because of that introvert kind of feel. Dude, I wanna know. I wanna feel confident. The whole industry is risk-averse right now. So if I talk to somebody and they're kind of shaky through the whole thing, I'm nervous about making an offer, honestly.

That's a good point. That's a good point. What about, are you still, let me, I wanna talk about kind of follow-up, like how to approach follow-up interview. That's kind of been something that's, that's, you know, talked about within our Torque community a little bit, and at least in my peripherals. How should people follow up? I know there's this, you know, I always say the follow-up is not annoying, it's your tone in the follow-up that's annoying.

Yeah.

How should people approach follow-up, uh, maybe after an interview, or maybe if they haven't heard from you in a bit?

I'm a huge proponent of a thank you note, and that accomplishes a couple things. And I know There's recruiters that advocate against it, which is crazy to me. But when the first follow-up is going to be your thank you note, I never send it right away. I'll write it the next day or have people write the next day. And I'll just cover what we covered, a little bit of what we covered. And then some stuff maybe I thought of after, but be careful about like, you know, I want to— if we were talking about—

You meet on LinkedIn or an email, or do you have a preference?

Any email. I don't think most people are gonna— I don't know. I think an email, you have the email from the event invite. So just use the email with video screen. Anyway, a little bit of covering why you're a great fit. Thank you note. I think following up with the recruiter, like I would hit, I would hit a recruiter like 4 or 5 days after the first time and say, hey, where are we at? And really, for, for talking to recruiters, because a lot of recruiters don't know how to be, how to reject people.

Yeah, we don't. We hate it. We hate it.

I still hate it. I'll do it. I hate it. But I hate it. I'm not like, I hate it. But I know I have to do it. So I just do it. Um, don't— I know, I know people are in bad spots right now. But you're never gonna get a positive answer by making a recruiter feel bad for you. It's like, it's like, I get it. But don't throw all the personal stuff in the follow-up. Like, I know you got to make rent. I know this and that. Usually the recruiter can't move it anyway. And they're trying. Yeah. Um, I had a guy the other day hit me up and be like, well, I'm hoping this happens. So this and that, and I don't have an answer. So it's like, okay, I feel bad, but I can't do anything about it. And I'm less apt to reach out with no update if this dude is gonna make me feel bad every time I talk to him. And that's psychology. And I like him, and he might get hired. Um, but It doesn't do anything for the conversation. Keep it factual, you know. Have you heard anything? Once a week is fine. I don't think every 2 days is necessary. I'm telling— my brother used to say this— I want it as bad as everybody else.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like, I'm not holding out. I'm not—

Richie's gonna get paid when he places you, so it's not like he's hurting himself, right?

So I'm not gonna be like, oh, wait a day. I got the offer, I'm gonna wait a day to hit them up. Or I mean, at most, as long as they're tolerant of me, I will hit— I will text the hiring manager once a day. That doesn't mean I'm going to tell my candidate every day what's going on, because that's— most people wouldn't even like that. But so there's— the market is such that people are anxious. I get it. But recruiters can't move it. Not usually. I can at my internal job because they trust me a lot more. But Sure. As far as anything agency, if I hit up those people too much or go for feedback, that's not going to happen, and it's going to probably wreck the relationship for me too.

So yeah, I mean, one of the, one of the word tracks that I say, knowing— because again, I mean, hearing you say it, Jordan's on the chat, uh, recruiter sales, uh, aficionado. Um, you know, one of, one of the word tracks that I say usually, so like I usually say like 4 emails is a pretty easy cadence for a follow-up. You know, first email, hey, I haven't heard from you, just want to follow up. Second email, hey, listen, I know things are busy, um, just let me know when you hear something. Third email, listen, I know I'm probably— I think self-deprecation goes a long way when you're reaching out to recruiters. Hey, listen, it's my third email, I know I'm probably annoying you at this point, would love to just know something. The last email that I would send is, hey, I haven't heard from you now. And give them a time frame because sometimes, listen, listen, in the world of recruiting, I don't know about you, but time is like real weird in the world of recruiting. Like, we don't know if it's been a day ago or 3 weeks ago. Tell Richie, hey Richie, listen, I haven't heard from you in 4 weeks. No worries. I'm most likely probably rejected or out of the running. Can you just let me know? That lets the recruiter off the hook. To then tell you if it is bad news. Because I will tell you this, I'm not perfect.

I had—

I have sat on negative, bad feedback.

Mm-hmm.

Because I haven't wanted to share it.

And then you forget.

And then you forget. So then if you follow up with me after 4 weeks, like, hey, I haven't heard from you, I most likely probably am out, I will—

I will—

that gives me the permission to be like, yes, you—

Dude, if I do that, yeah. If I, I've done that, and I'll tell you what, if I do that to someone, and I really don't, I hate, I'm crazy. My inbox is like clear every night. But if I do that to someone, I'm, I'm probably gonna try to find you a job. Like, that's the one time, like, if I fucked up that bad, I'm going to try to figure out who else I can talk to about you.

Yeah.

For me, it's like I don't give bad news on Friday, and I know some people don't care, but I don't do it anymore. I've had too many where I just vomit out and people are like, man, you wrecked my weekend. But also, I'm one where if the hiring manager's not quite sure, I'm probably gonna say he's one of those, or she's one of those people that are sure when they know you. It's not probably gonna happen.

Yeah.

Ultimately, people, as far as recruiters, yeah, give them an escape hatch. Yeah. But if you haven't heard from— here's the thing.

Back to that. Shorter.

If, if their boss or hiring manager is excited about you, you are gonna know. And if it's 2 or 3 weeks later, and you— there's not good news coming. There's not. So if you need it for closure, actually, I wrote a book about this. I just— it's coming out March 31st. I have it right here. It's called Unfinished Rooms. Um, it's about closure and everything, right? So that hurts a recruiter. If the hiring manager leaves the recruiter hanging, that's a— that leaves doubt in their head. People want closure and everything. So most often, people are going to opt for closure, whether it's the recruiter, The hiring managers have other stuff going on because that's not a title, right? We talked— me and you talked about this before. Sure. Um, the recruiter's main edict is recruiting, so they're trying to fill that role. It's— if it's been 3 weeks and they haven't talked to you, they've already closed that loop in their head. Yeah. So there's a reason. And if their boss wanted you, you would have known already. Yeah.

I think one thing I want to emphasize, um, uh, in, uh, here at the— here at the end is, is I think If Richie rejects you, or if another recruiter rejects you, I would always ask, Richie, thanks for your time, really appreciate you. I totally get that this one didn't work out. Do you have anybody else in your network that I should speak to?

Mm-hmm.

I feel like that's like a huge thing that nobody does. So like, when, when, when recruiters did it to me in Nashville, there's 2 recruiters, and even to this day I still send all of my connections to 2 recruiters. Again, you have to understand, some of the ethos of a recruiter is to help. We want to help. And so like, for me, I get so many people nationally like, hey, Taylor, I know you're not like actively in recruiting anymore, who do you know? I always send Hunter Mitchum. He's in Nashville, he's a hell of a recruiter. He was my biggest competitor when I was heads down recruiting. And then my guy Will, uh, back at Vaco, who kind of took over my role. So like— Recruiters will share other contacts with you as long as it's a good experience. Don't, don't be out here being a jerk and then, you know, Richie rejects you and you're like, can you, can you help me? Because he's gonna say no. But Richie will, will connect you with other people.

Yeah, absolutely. And that's the thing. Yeah, I mean, and the recruiters that try to safeguard, like they don't want to pitch you to other people because they might have you, it's just not that. I, when I was younger, I'm serious. Yeah. Oh man, I don't know why. Yeah. Um, I might be— there's some people in DOD that there's no way I'd be like, no. Yeah, you're waiting until I have an opening. But no, not really. I have even had the DOD recruiter a little network, man. And yeah, we throw each other stuff all the time. Yeah. I'm like, I don't know, this guy's awesome. I don't know what to do with him. Or she's got this. I don't know what to do with her. So, and we do that, like, we do that without asking. So just make friends with the recruiters that have been here for like this crazy, like talking about ATS robot stuff. And it's fun to play in that pool. But like, we've been like Amy Miller, me, you, some people that have just been around for a while, we just don't really care that much. I don't even think about that stuff.

No.

They see them arguing all day. I'm like, don't you have other stuff to do?

Yeah, I literally have no time to argue online. Uh, this always comes up, this always comes up. Does the open to work tag work? Thoughts, Richie?

Back on. Sure. Um, yeah, I, I— my— our controller that we placed— this is a weird one, but our controller that I just placed, um, end of last year, he was Green Banner. Um, uh, I actually found him through a Grok search. It was very weird. I was playing with something Um, but I saw him. Yeah, got him in for an interview. There's 2 green banner people on that. One of them got hired. Um, I'm trying to think of who else. I don't go looking for green banners or anything like that, but, uh, I do always tell people at least have the backend open to work on. Um, it just makes you open up to premium messages for free. Um, people are gonna approach you first because they know you're gonna move a little faster. But in my world, I'm head— I'm usually looking for passive talent anyway. No offense to anybody looking for work, but like, I have specific searches that I have to do, so it doesn't matter to me whether you're open to work or not, honestly. So, and, and for the green banner, you're gonna get hit by scammers, but that's just— that's life. You're gonna get hit by scammers. For— I get telemarketed all day. I'm not— my house isn't for sale. People ask me if I want to sell my house all the time. So this is part of the, part of the deal.

Yeah.

With the accessibility we live in. So yeah.

All right, man. So, uh, again, thank you for everybody who, uh, showed up. Um, if you have any questions, throw them up there. Um, but I want to get to some rapid-fire stuff, um, rapid-fire questions. Um, so Richie, thank you again, man. This is a great chat. This is exactly the chat I wanted. So thank you. And I feel like a lot of people got a lot out of it. Um, so first off, what's one tech tool app thing. It could be a mobile app on your phone to a desktop app. What, what is one app you can't live without right now?

Oh, um, damn, I'm all over the place, dude. I'm, I'm a— I, I love drama, so I'm on X all day. I like reading crazy stuff. Well, it like takes my mind. But as far as like work, LinkedIn, unfortunately. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely, definitely X for me too. My wife's like, you're always on X. I was like, it's, it's, it's literally our soap opera. This is literally what it is.

Yeah, it's so funny. I, I can't— I don't comment, I don't talk to anybody. Yeah, but I read it and I'm just like, what's wrong with people?

So yeah. Um, what's— okay, let me ask you this. So I know you mentioned it too, but what's the very first job you ever got paid to do?

Uh, paid to do. I mean, I had a newspaper route. I was a— I was— my parents owned a video store, so I was a clerk in the video store when I was like 13 or 14 years old. So yeah.

I love it. I love it. Um, uh, let me ask you this. Uh, what did you want to be when you grew, grew up? Like as a kid? Like what were your career aspirations as a child?

As a child?

Like back when you didn't know about anything.

I came from a big, uh, military and then education family, and I did not want to be in the military when I was a kid, so I wanted to be a teacher, and I stuck with that until for some reason I became a recruiter. So yeah.

Okay, I love it, I love it. Um, uh, is there— is this kind of weird question, uh, but is there a career mistake you're oddly grateful for?

Mistake? Yeah. Um, Oh, I quit. Yeah, I quit. I quit working at a venue. I was a, I was a marketing director and talent buyer at a venue, and I got pissed because I thought I could do it myself, and I quit that venue. But dude, they were paying me like $38 grand a year, um, and I was, I was almost 30 years old. And that led me into recruiting. And at the time, I was so— I begged for my job back after a year at Robert Half. I was like, hey man, I'll come back in as a promotions guy and hand out flyers. And he wouldn't let me come back. I was mad. I felt it was a mistake. But now I'm 14 years on this, in on this, and I do love this job. For as much as many problems there are in this job, I do love being a recruiter. So yeah.

Yeah, that's awesome. Um, let me ask you this. If I were to tell you tomorrow that you couldn't recruit anymore, but I'd pay you the same if not more, what hobby would you pursue? For your carpentry.

Nice.

I love it. I love it. That's cool. Um, all right, last question. We wrap up here. The show is called Guidance Counselor 2.0 because we've had guidance counselors in middle school, high school, and college, but now as adults, you don't really have a guidance counselor to turn to and ask for general career advice. If you can go back and tell young Richie something, what would be the biggest piece of career advice you would tell him?

Dude, enjoy the ride. That's it. I'm not— I'm not a regrets person. I'm right where I needed to be. Yeah, I love it.

I love it. That's awesome. All right, y'all. Well, thank you for watching today. I appreciate it. Um, next Guidance Counselor 2.0 will be next week. Next. Yeah, next, next. So next week I have a, uh, uh, salary coach coming on. Uh, he's outside of my network, but I liked his credentials, so he's coming on to talk about salary negotiations. Um, and then the following week we got Aaron Francis on the show, so Uh, you guys have a great week. Go connect with Richie. Tell him, uh, you said he was— it was good to have him. Uh, it was good to see him on Guidance Counselor 2.0. And, uh, Richie, stay on so I can say bye to you backstage. Y'all have a good one. Have a great rest of your Tuesday. We'll see you soon.

Peace.