humanizing hiring in tech w/kelly vaughn (closing keynote from connect.tech 2023)

I appreciate it. Sweet. I could not be more caffeinated. I have had so much black coffee. I texted my wife. I said, my cortisol levels are through the roof right now because we're all trying to, like, lower our cortisol levels, be less stressed. And I'm like, ah, let's get it. We try to stick to— Um, there we go. Yeah, we're just gonna get a bunch of McDonald's and I'm gonna be fine.

Cool.

Tone down.

You're fine.

Yeah, I can't. I just yell all the time. No problem.

We call that projecting.

Yeah. I just project.

Check, check.

You've got the denim above and you've got the denim below. Oh, that is true.

All right.

You ready, guys?

Let's do this.

All right, so first off, thank you again for coming out. We appreciate it a ton. Um, it means a lot. Also, just want to give— can we get it all clapping up for Pratik and Vincent for kind of putting this together? I really wanna, you know, and one of my talks talk about community building and not going through your career and life alone. Communities like this are vital, right? And I think a lot in this world right now, I think we do take a lot for granted. Please do not take this for granted, right? This is special. This is a special community. If you are not exhausted by the end of these 2 days, you have done something wrong. Today's talk is something that stemmed out of a conference that we did recently where basically Kelly didn't want to speak and I said, I don't blame you, and I was like, why don't we just chop it up together? She says, absolutely. So this is our 3rd time doing this. The point of this is really to have a conversation. I think when it comes to hiring in tech, there's a lot of smoke and mirrors. Being a recruiter, the recruiting industry kind of leads the charge in smoke and mirrors, let's be honest. And so this is a conversation we kind of, you know, break down walls and and have real conversations with you all. So there's a few ways to ask questions. We're gonna start off here with a little dog and pony show that we always do, but you can ask questions. If you don't wanna raise your hand and ask publicly, scan the QR code up here. I literally have the thing in front of me. So do that and I'll answer your questions.

So go ahead. It's all anonymous as well, so.

It's not anonymous. Your name's gonna be up there with your Social Security number.

Yes, there you go. Oh, you can also upvote your favorite ones.

Yes, yeah. And then, Or you can ask questions via the mic and I'll make sure that we provide time to do that, or raise your hand. So, Kelly.

Yes.

One of the questions I'm getting a lot right now, and probably the individuals out here are probably thinking too, how's the job market right now?

Before we get into this, I have a better idea.

Oh, that's good. You have better ideas than I do.

Let's make people stand up and talk to each other.

There we go, there we go. So one of the things I'm passionate about is networking, and I can't believe I missed out, 'cause I told Kelly, this is why I told Kelly to remind me. So everybody real quick, pause your phones, pull up LinkedIn, I'm gonna give you 90 seconds to talk to the person to the left or right of you, connect with them. I'm not asking you to share your bank account information or Social Security. All I'm doing is asking you to connect on LinkedIn real fast. Everybody pull out your phones, open up LinkedIn, and connect with the person to the left or right of you. Do you have LinkedIn?

I do. All right, I hope you all have an opportunity to connect with our speakers one-on-one.

All right, so, uh, we're gonna go ahead and start out on the topic of where the market is heading and where it has been. Listen, last 2 years it has sucked, let's face it. Who in here over the last 2 years has gone through a job search? Raise your hand. Everybody look around. You're not alone, right? So that's what we're So Kelly, you know, I'm starting to see trends that are trending up. What have you been seeing?

Yeah, I've been seeing the same. One, I've been seeing more job openings starting to list. And how many of you have gotten a DM from a recruiter lately on LinkedIn about an open opportunity? That right there is a really good sign. So we're starting to see more jobs get listed. We're starting to see more recruiting happening. So this is a— you know, there are still companies that are going through layoffs, so we're not out of the, you know, out of it all yet. But no, things are absolutely getting better. Yeah, there is one thing I want to point out.

The reason why I say that is I want to start off with this conversation with that because there's been a lot of doom and gloom. And so I want to tell you on my side, a lot of my recruiter friends are getting jobs. There's a lot of job postings that are going out there now of hiring for recruiters. Typically when it comes to the job search, the recruiters are the telltale sign of where the market's heading. I would say probably the only industry that's been hit worse than engineers the last 2 years has been recruiters. A lot of my friends have gone through the job search. I've had to lay off an entire team of 14 people at my last company, and I also left my last company in 12 years, right? So I have also been affected. So it's been rough, but we are seeing obviously signs heading in the right direction. So I want to start off with that, a little positivity, a little positivity this afternoon. All right, so let's talk about— so Kelly and I chit-chatted today and we were sharing that one of the reasons why we started this talk together is because we always text each other screenshots of people in our DMs, right?

I'm so sorry, I told you.

Yeah, yeah, so like if you send a weird DM to either of us, you've probably been blasted between both of us. Sorry, not sorry. So I want to go on the topic of Messaging people, how to network online. You and I chatted about this a little bit over lunch and our third cup of black coffee. So talk about the importance of being online and networking via social media.

A lot of the jobs that I'm posting these days— I posted a mid-level full-stack engineer role about 5 months ago, I want to say. Within 3 hours, I had hundreds of applicants. It is a— it's still a tough market out there. There are a lot of people who are still trying to find a job or find a better job, especially a lot of people stayed where they were during the pandemic because it was hard to find something else and, you know, you need money. Uh, and, and so it's really, really tough to set yourself apart from hundreds of applicants. And I know, doom and gloom, I'm sorry.

Yeah, no, we're back, we're back to it.

This is, this is hiring, I guess. And this is why it's so important to be networking, because, you know, when I'm going through applicants, I'm going through a bunch of resumes. When people have messaged me on LinkedIn or Twitter or sent me an email, wherever it happens to be, expressing interest in one of the particular roles, and I take a look at their portfolio or their website or whatever, they're more likely to get to that next round because I'm searching through hundreds of resumes. I'm going to seek out those who have also reached out to me.

Yeah.

Because it's a lot to go through.

Yeah, I mean, I think name recognition is huge. I was talking to Kelly because I really wonder— that's why I love chopping it up with Kelly because she's on the other side of it, right? I preach it from the recruiting side, she preaches it from the hiring side. And I asked her this question, I said, Kelly, if somebody interacts with you consistently online, do they have a better chance of standing out in the stack of interviews? And you said?

It depends.

Damn, developer answer.

Uh, no, I say it depends because one, when you are messaging me and having conversations with me and building a relationship with me, I am more likely to, you know, remember who you are and put you through when you're applying for a new role at my company. But if you're incessantly messaging me and sending me a Twitter DM and then a LinkedIn DM and then you call me and then you send me an email, people do actually do this, or you comment on one of my posts saying, hey, I just sent you a DM, can you read it? I'm much less likely to actually put you forth for a role.

Yeah, yeah, be chill, please. All right, so there we've already got a ton of questions through the QR code, so let's go ahead and dive in. But again, I wanted to really, really talk about the importance of standing out online. If you are not doing it, you are missing out tremendously, right? We romanticize a lot of the things of the old, right? A handshake, which is important, a thank you note, which is important, but you gotta understand we live in a virtual world in today's society, right? Zoom calls, Microsoft Teams, bless their hearts, right? Like, at the end of the day, like, we live in a video world, so you have to be present virtually. If you are not, you are missing out on networking with the people across the world. So I wanted to start getting into these questions here, and there's a lot of good ones, so I'm just gonna go from top and go down. What are ways we can mitigate our biases during the interview process and identify good developers who don't necessarily necessarily fit our mold. Low-key, use my company, gun.io. But how—

how would you— That's a good plug.

Yeah, that's a really good plug.

Uh, have a very representative hiring team. Your whole hiring panel should be diverse as well. That will definitely help to negate some of those biases. But I think the first step of being able to negate biases is to recognize those biases. In fact, you're asking that question, means you're already at the first— on that journey to where you should be.

Mm-hmm.

So I think one of the things that I would do is, what we do at Spot that's been really helpful is we write down a document that outlines, here's the job that we're looking for, here's what we're hiring for, here are all the rounds of the interviews that we'll have, and here are some example profiles of what we're looking for, here are some example questions of what we're looking for. One thing that's really, really important for a really good interview process is training. Nobody is a natural interviewer on either side of the table. And you have to go— you have to train your team to interview well, to ask the questions, you know, react as you should during an interview, understand what questions you can and cannot ask. Because a number of questions that I've come across that people— we actually have a training and we do like true or false, which of these questions should you actually ask? And the number of people who get them wrong, you know, it's as simple as what is your favorite book? That is not a question you should actually ask during the interview process.

I also don't read.

Okay, that's not the question.

Great question, Nathan. I appreciate that, buddy. It means a lot. Another thing I want to get to here, how important is a GitHub portfolio for experienced job seekers who have mostly been focused on company work? I'm gonna answer this real fast. In the 12 years I've been recruiting, I've only had one hiring manager ask me for GitHub profiles. Now, that's just me. I am only one recruiter in a very, very small sea of recruiters in a very small sea of hiring. But at the end of the day, for me, in my experiences, there has been no emphasis on GitHub portfolios.

Yeah, we absolutely do not ask for it. I might, if I'm just curious about some of the projects you've linked to on your resume, I'll absolutely look at your GitHub then. But I'm not asking you and judging you based on your GitHub profile because I know a lot of the work you're going to be doing is proprietary. A lot of it you cannot share, and that shouldn't be held against you.

Yeah, absolutely. And I've worked with developers in the past throughout my career who have asked me this question. I would try to at least have something that you can share throughout your interview process, throughout your career. Like, I've hung out with enough engineers at this point where it's gonna come up where you probably gotta talk about something you've developed, right? A lot of interviews that I actually really like What engineering leaders do is when you— when they ask you to bring something to the table and you talk about it, right? So I would have something that you've either done on your own or maybe a past project at a company, but I would at least have something. Is that fair?

Yes, I've had— I have interviewed somebody before who every single, like, can you provide me an example of a time that you solved a technical challenge and how you went about solving that? And they would answer, I can't, I'm on R&D.

You can't plead the Fifth through the entire interview.

I don't know how— I don't even know if you could code at this point because you haven't given me anything to work with.

Don't be that person. All right, so there Anonymous comes in. A lot of focus is on standing out and being unique as a candidate. What if you don't feel like you are unique or have something that stands out?

I love this question.

I do too. There's a lot of different ways to answer this. You are special. For real. No, I mean that. I mean that. You are special.

Yeah, everyone, everyone has something unique about their journey. Even if you graduated from a great high school and then you went to Stanford and got a CS degree and then you're— you ended up at Google. Like, you know, I've seen, I've seen so many of them go through the interview process and they're all slightly different. Your background, your, your experience, your interests are all different. Everything you are interested in can be pulled into something to make you stand out and make you unique.

So I got a question for you. Do you like a hobbies or interests section on a resume?

I honestly love it.

Why?

Because it's something unique about you, and I've actually— it's turned into some really interesting conversations that I've had with people.

Who in here has an interest or hobby section on their resume? Raise your hand. Fair amount of y'all. Yeah, absolutely. Out of the people who raised their hands, how many of y'all have had a conversation about your interests and hobbies during an interview? Right, a lot, a lot for sure. Yeah, Mark's over here just saying amen, right? So like, again, incredibly important to have that because I will tell you this, even if you don't think you're special, putting something that you're passionate about will resonate with somebody, right? That's why I'm so passionate about putting yourself onto the internet. Like, one of the reasons why I met Mark is because Mark, huh?

It's true.

Yeah, it's true. Yeah, I thought you'd disagree with me. I was like, hell yeah, I'm speaking, not you. But like, at the end of the day, like, I met— I saw Mark put himself online talking about not being alone and I slid into Mark's DMs.

He's really good at sliding into people's DMs. That is how it works with Taylor.

I wish my wife would hear that. Because I was not with her. So all that being said, I mean, again, incredibly important. People will resonate with the smallest things that you don't think is important. It absolutely is to somebody else. Moving on.

There's also a microphone that should be handed around if anyone has questions out there.

Yeah, we got one. We got one. We got 2. I'll start over here. Let's do it. You're about to meet your staff man.

Tell us your name as well.

Stand up. Okay, my name is Ben, and this is gonna sound a lot more— less important than the mic should imply, but you said you should not ask about their favorite book, but now you're saying that their hobbies and interests are important, so I don't know how those square, or what am I missing?

No, that's true, that's true. Uh, the reason why I mentioned that you shouldn't ask for your favorite book, because You can bring religious texts into it, and then you get into territory that you shouldn't be talking about during interviews. Interests can fall into that line, you know. They're— that does sound a little bit contradictory, and I totally understand that. I am not— I am personally not judging you based on the interests that you're putting on your resume, but that is something I would watch, you know, depending on what you're putting on there.

Well, also too, at the end of the day, you are offering up that information on your resume. You are not being asked that information on a resume. So that's the biggest difference. As an interviewer, you can't necessarily always lead, right? You can't always, because that gets you into trouble in certain areas. But if you offer up that advice from the get-go, it's safe.

Yeah, I'm not asking you what your interests are in the interview process.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I saw another raised hand, sweet. Hey, my name is Will. What's up, Will?

What's up?

Curious, how, in y'all's opinion, how important is it in terms of how concise you make it? One page or 2? Like, we're including hobbies, But can we go to 2 pages if we have the level of depth that 2 pages, you know, would be required? Alright, listen, motherfuckers. I don't know which fucking guidance counselor— I curse, by the way, especially in the afternoon at conferences, so I do apologize if you're offended. I'm sorry. No, you're not. I'm not. I don't know who the fuck is telling people that it just needs to be a 1-page resume. But cut that shit out. It can be 2 pages. Y'all get this. It could be 3 pages.

Please don't send me a 14-page resume.

But don't, don't do 14 pages. I'd honestly say 3 pages at the end of the day is probably the max. But go ahead, Taylor. Sorry, I had to get that off my chest.

No, I think you covered it. Follow-up? No, but seriously, I want to be able to read your resume quickly, so I don't care if it goes to a second or third page as long as it's well formatted. And I just don't want to be reading 14 pages. I'm not going to read your 14-page resume. That's simple.

So what grabs your attention on the first page and compels you to move on to further pages?

Actually, Taylor, I want you to talk about the top section.

Yeah, so anybody have an objective portion on their resume? Yeah, cut that shit out.

Delete it.

It was how I could add value to them. What I could do for them. I don't care.

I don't care.

Because here's the deal, that's subjective. What you think you can add value, they may not need. Well, then they don't need me. Well, there you go. But I will also, I'll tell you this though too. I'll tell you this. And I'm super passionate about this. If you can't tell, I'm sweating underneath this jacket right now. This light's not helping. I feel like I'm a pastor. So I'll tell you this. The summary portion of your resume is the single most important part of your resume, is the most overlooked part of your resume I've ever seen. So what that means is the objective part at the very top, get rid of that. Bullet pointed, 3 to 5 bullet points of overall of what you've done in your career. For example, if you are a .NET developer who has done .NET for 10 years, it's 10 years of .NET development. Then you start breaking it out based off frameworks and tooling you're most experienced with. So then it's, it's It's 4 years with .NET Core, it's 3 years with Angular, it's 2 years with Azure, and then you list out the different services in Azure because there's a fuck ton of them. And then you have a BS degree in computer science. That summary portion, if I read that and it is clear and concise, I call you. I don't even read the rest of your resume.

I do. Just know somebody's reading it.

Got it.

What else do I want to add to that?

There you go. Does that make sense?

I think that's good. Cool.

Yes! Come on, come on, my guy, run, run!

I told you you're gonna get a workout in today.

Come on. Since we're on the topic of resume, how do you demonstrate soft skills so employers know you're not like a douchebag?

Mostly I talk to you. I can pick that up pretty quickly. You know, soft skills are something you can't really demonstrate so well. You could— I don't care if you list out like, oh, I'm a really great team worker. I—

Stop!

Everyone, you're also probably really good using Microsoft Word.

I swear to God, I'll never put that on my resume. I'm fucking terrified.

Not everything provides the same level of value. When it comes to soft skills or anything involving the interpersonal side of things, It should shine through in the conversations you have.

Yeah, yeah, don't put team player, great communicator. If you've worked consistently in your career for the most part, you probably should have that. If, now this is why I love content. Raise your hand if you put shit out on the internet consistently on a weekly basis, not a daily basis, a weekly basis, raise your hand. Everyone's got work to do. That's how you show yourself you're a good communicator. I'll tell you this again, Lawrence, Mark, some epic content creators, these motherfuckers know how to communicate. You do, amen.

He does.

Yeah. Because I see them consistently on my LinkedIn, on my Twitter, I know of them. That's why I have another talk, it didn't get accepted at this conference, thanks, Pratik. But it's social proofing your career. Which is incredibly important. It's a whole other conversation in and of itself. We have so many questions.

Are you checking your phone as you go?

Yeah, I am, believe it or not, but they keep coming in. Yes, Noah. Yeah, one of the things that I discovered, having been a hiring manager at multiple places, the resumes that I was able to read and distill stuff from and actually get something out of were ones that were an offer to do something for me. And not an ask for something. So that's, that's what the person was bringing, was an offer. The other thing is, is the most important bullets that I saw when I was reading them were ones that were concrete examples of a particular situation, of what they did in it, and the outcome from it. Because then I could tell things like soft skills, I could tell things like how they related to people, I could look and see how they want work, and the way in which they brought value to the job. The idea being is why— yeah, you and I disagree about the objective, but the summary is really, really important because that then tells you some things about the person and what they can bring to me as a hiring manager.

Right.

And that's the offer, and that sells a lot better than an ask. I want a place where I can grow. I want a place where you will do all these things for me. Well, okay, but what are you going to do for me in return? That and above the fold, really important. When you're talking about that, if I could see that in the top part, I might read the rest of it, but that one went into the stack because I wanted to— Yeah, he makes a really good point too. I think most of y'all that write all these like, like bullet points of like, I did this, I did that, and this, this, did that, like, no, no, I need quantitative—

Use numbers.

How did you use the— how did you move the needle? I saved the client $300,000 by doing X. Yeah, exactly. By spending No, no, we didn't spend anything. He paid us his bill that he owed us from the last time around.

My husband has a bullet point on his resume that's something along the lines of like, saved the company— this is a joke— but saved the company like $700,000 in appointments. Well, what's not outlined on there is that the fact that the company is going through bankruptcy, so they were just selling everything.

Uh, real quick, I want to get to a few of these because they keep coming in. Y'all are amazing. We're gonna go the full 3 hours. What is your number one green flag in hiring a candidate? It got 7 upvotes, by the way. Yeah, if you upvote, I'm going down with who upvotes. So this is the most upvoted question so far.

Okay, so 2 phases here. Before I have seen your resume, referrals do work. That is a major— somebody else is saying, yeah, I vouch for this person. That's usually a good thing that I'm going to be excited to talk to you. You don't have— like, ask for referrals. I like— just, this is something I'm really, really passionate about as well. If you're applying to a company that you have never, you know, you don't know anybody's there, you can reach out to people on LinkedIn. And I encourage you to, if you're interviewing anywhere, reach out to people who currently work there, people who no longer work there, and ask for their opinion. How is their working experience there? Because one, One, you're building a really good relationship with somebody. If you're going through the interview process right now, who can vouch for you? And 2, if there are any red flags for the company, they might let you know that, especially the ones who have left the company.

Yeah, my green flag is Bob's.

Of course it is.

Uh, listen—

Taylor is secretly like Gen Z.

Yeah, it's TikTok. Uh, here's the deal. Um, I— there, there is a lot to be said for bringing energy to an interview. Right, we right now, you know, you had multiple hundreds of resumes for a job posting. One of my friends who we probably all know online, she was interviewing for a role, they got 1,000 resumes for a staff engineer role. 1,000 resumes, right? She told me, she goes, I don't mean to be this person, but I was looking for anything to reject somebody. If you are not coming up to an interview and showing up to an interview and absolutely bringing the noise, And just like, you should be exhausted after an interview. When I was interviewing 3 months ago, I would— it was the most exhausted I've ever been. Because it's basically like giving a keynote every single interview. That's the amount of energy you should bring, because if you're not, somebody else that brings it— people want to work with people that energize them. People don't want to work with a knob on a log, so don't be a knob on a log.

People should also do a little bit of research about the company before you start interviewing. That seems like a really basic question, But I have had plenty of interviews that they had no idea what my company did or hadn't been to the website or started talking about a different company. And like, I understand that, you know, you're interviewing for a lot of places and sometimes the wires can get crossed, especially in the world where there are 900 companies that end with AI. Uh, so I totally understand that, but it's really helpful if you like take notes about which company you're interviewing with If you know the names of the people you're going to be interviewing with, look them up on LinkedIn. See what they're interested in as well. The more you can do to pull in their interests as well, that's when you start to get those vibes and you can start to actually build relationships with them during the interview process. My engineers often say their favorite technical interviews that they give are the ones that go over way longer because they've gone well past the actual questions that they wanted to answer. They spent another 30 minutes just selling the candidate on joining our company because they enjoy talking to them so much.

Yeah, absolutely. Uh, next question: is it hopeless for junior devs right now? How long should it take to find a first junior dev role?

How long is a piece of string? Like, that's a, that's a tough question to answer.

Yeah, I was about to say, I don't, I don't know.

Uh, exactly.

You know, here's my, my thing with junior engineers is this, uh, it's always been tough.

It has never— yeah, honestly, it hasn't ever been— there hasn't really ever been a time where it's been easy to get your first role as a junior engineer. It's just, it's, it's one of those things that either companies are not hiring very often for junior engineers, or there are companies who are hiring for junior engineers for the wrong reasons, in that they're trying to save money and they are not prepared to do the training required for a junior engineer to come on board.

Yeah, for me, it's not hopeless. Whoever asked this, it's not hopeless. You're just gonna have to work. And what does work mean as a junior developer? Network to ever-living. If you are a junior dev and you asked this question, you are here right now, my goal for you is to try to connect with every single person at this conference. And then I would spend the next 3 to 6 months following up with every single person you met here and try to learn something about the company they work for, What they do, how they got their start in tech. Be inquisitive, be interested, and keep asking questions. That's how you move the needle when it comes to networking. It could take 6 months, it could take a year, but you have to be intentional when it comes to job search success as a junior developer.

You're missing a very important piece of this.

Well, that's why we do this together.

Content.

Content. I mean, people are really freaking tired of you and me probably talking about content.

That's true. Yeah, share your learning journey. Share what you've been working on, some projects you've been doing. where you're getting stuck. And these are the kinds of things that I have hired. There's one particular junior engineer I hired, his very first dev job, who I found him from Twitter.

You stole him from me! Oh yeah, you're right. Yeah, he did work here. He did, and I love him. He's great.

He's wonderful. Yes. No, I mean, I found this individual from Twitter who was sharing his journey on One, learning to code. 2, what kind of projects he's working on. And 3, the struggles of interviewing as a junior engineer. So he was commiserating with others as well who were going through the interview process. But he, he's such a fantastic individual and someone who I got to know really personally. Just like, we're friends now, and it's because of what he shared. Like, his story really resonated with me. So I encourage you to publish content, whether it's on Twitter, whether it's on LinkedIn. Write a blog. I don't care if this is one-on-one content that somebody else has written. Your voice is going to bring something unique to this conversation.

Kelly and I literally talk about the same stuff, but she has a different audience than I do. I have a different audience than her, and we write differently, right? So, but we basically talk about the same thing. There is, there's more than enough data and content out there for everybody to share around the same thing. Next question: Do recruiters and hiring managers care about Cover letters.

I don't remember the last time I read a cover letter.

I barely know what a cover letter is, thank you. Yeah, in my opinion, the summary portion I just outlined, that to me is like a mini cover letter, right? Now, if someone asks you for a cover letter, the best way I know how to describe a cover letter is give me— if I ask you what are the 3 most 3 greatest accomplishments that you've had in your career, you need to be able to rattle that off to me. That's your cover letter. But that's just me.

I do think there is value in cover letters when you're changing careers. And like, my sister is switching from being a chemist to going into data, being a data analyst. And so she has a cover letter she wrote about why would a chemist be applying to this job here, and she could bridge that with a cover letter of that case. But for the most part, for like senior engineering roles, for example, I definitely do not ask for a cover letter. I'm pretty sure I just hid the COVID letter field on the actual application form because I don't want you to waste your time writing one either.

Yeah, again, that's why I love Kelly because she's intentional. Yeah, what's up, Mark?

I don't have a microphone.

You don't need it.

Go ahead.

All right, so no, he doesn't need it for the recording. Ah, for the recording. For the recording. For the recording. Okay, so in context of the COVID letter conversation, I'm gonna disagree with both of you on this one, and I think it's contextual. I think for you and the people that you come across, for sure, it just doesn't matter. But I have— so we talked about standing out, right? I've written cover letters that talked about why the product that I'm applying to be the engineer for, like how I— how it changed me or how it had an impact for me to make me stand out. And I've gotten feedback that like Oh, you did that. That was thoughtful that you put real-world examples so you understand what we're working on. So now we want to talk to you more. So I won't say, you know, don't ever do a cover letter, but I do think it depends on who you're talking to and the org. Like Kelly, you said you hid the COVID letter?

I don't ask for the COVID letter on the application form. I also don't make you upload your resume and then enter in all the information again.

Right, so then I want to say that if I'm applying to your company, I would not send you a cover letter.

Right? Correct.

But if I really want this job, though, I'm not gonna lie to you, I'm gonna write something clever and email somebody something just because I'm gonna stand out past the other candidates. Now, if you look at my email and you mad and you don't like it, I don't wanna work for you anyway then. You know what I mean?

No, I completely agree. And frankly, I will say, you know, we have the one resume, like upload your resume field. People do upload, you know, just combine the PDF with their cover letter and their resume. And that is one way you will get me to read your cover letter because it's the first page of the document.

Yeah, and again, you know what's fun about this entire conversation is everybody has their own opinions, right?

Absolutely.

We're just speaking of what we've seen, but again, at the end of the day, Mark has experience at a firm, so there you go. Let's get that gentleman right there. Hey, my name is Matt. What's up, Matt? I was wondering, in recent interview rounds, like, it seems like the interview process is like a month to 2 months long for a lot of things. It's like Excruciating. Do you see that trend continuing, or like, are companies changing that, or can you talk to that at all? Honestly, that's why we created this panel, so we can tell y'all in here who keeps doing that shit to knock it off. It's— why, why are we doing that? Why?

Why?

Why? Because you're not sure? Then be respectful to the candidate, right? Hey, listen, we all go on dates. Either we're married or we try to date. Right? Let's say someone— how many people in here either have been drug along or drug somebody along? Let's just be honest here. Raise your hand. And dating. I cannot be the only one that either has been drug along or has drug that person along. I've been on both ends of it, right? Right? Why do we do that? We're not sure. We're not sure. Right? You need to set expectations and be upfront with that candidate. Cut it off at the second one. Hey, listen, we're really not sure about you right now, but at the end of the day, we want to be respectful to you and cut you loose so you can go pursue other opportunities. And I will tell you this, if you're cut loose and that company calls you back, you're probably more willing to go back because they showed you an ounce of respect. Sorry, I get really heated with that.

Are you sure?

I need a hug. Any thoughts on that?

Oh, where do I begin?

I know, well, that's why I like you, because you don't do that.

No, I don't. I think it's really important if you're a hiring manager— how many of you are hiring managers? How many of you tell the candidate up front what the interview process is? How long those interviews are? How many? Thank you.

There's a lot of hands raised.

How many of you are raising your hands right now? This is, this is something you want. Somebody who is interviewing with your company, they're spending time to talk with you just like you are spending time to talk with them. You need to show them the same level of respect you expect to get out of them. You should show them more respect, honestly, because they're interviewing a whole lot more than you're interviewing right now. It is way more stressful being on the other side of the table than the one who's actually asking the questions.

So I, I use Twitter to poll the crowd of my developer friends. I tweeted this a while back. I said, if a company gave you, set expectations and gave you specific responses of why you got rejected, would you be more willing to recommend your friends to that company? You know what the overwhelming answer was?

Yes.

Listen, you gotta understand something. Interviewing is marketing for your company. It's the first date. How— so, all right, so I see some heads nodding. Let's do a little introspection here. How would you feel going through your interview process right now? Would you like it? I see a thumbs down. I see a thumbs up. So we're batting 50% right now. It's not— that's okay, right? Just be mindful of that. Be mindful.

I think If it's a little bit more than 50%. you're a hiring manager, you should be advocating to fix the hiring process and do whatever you can do at your company to make the interview process enjoyable for those who are going through it. I, I don't know if I should share this story.

You should share it. Please share it. Do it, do it.

So, uh, I was talking to somebody recently and, uh, we were talking about, you know, just the, the stress of technical interviews. Like, how many of you have done a system design interview before?

I don't even know what that is.

That's from Hector. Taylor.

All right, sounds good.

So this individual had commented on how particularly for mid-level engineers, these interviews are very stressful. And I was like, yeah, absolutely. And they were like, yeah, but it's okay, it should be. Why shouldn't an interview be stressful for anybody? If your interview is stressful, if you do not want to be on the other side of the table being on the receiving end of that interview, your interview process is broken. It should not be stressful for people to get through the interview process at your company. And the longer these interviews drag on, the more unknowns you have about this interview. You don't know when, you know, you're on round 6 and you might have 7 more interviews. You don't know because these companies go on and on and on and on and on. About these interviews.

Well, it's so funny. You want to hire somebody for who they are, but your interview process doesn't let them be who they want to be. All right. So question. Hi, my name is Vijay. So as an international worker, so I had my graduation CS graduation in my own country. But when I work here, if I want to grow or go to the next level, if some my managers they they said about I have to do some graduation here to give the importance to the hiring HR people to look at my resume and everything. Is it correct to the people giving the preference for the graduation is doing in US, or is it fine I have the graduation in my own country?

Can I take this one?

Yeah, you take it.

This is bullshit. Absolutely bullshit. I don't care if you have a BS degree. I don't care if you went to college. I'm not looking at how you learned how to code. If you're self-taught, if you're from a boot camp, if you're a second, third, fourth career, if you went to a CS program, any— anybody who is telling you that where you got your education from is not good enough is not a company you want to work for. Thank you.

Yeah, I agree. All right, uh, next question. There's so many fucking questions. What do you think are the most important non-technical skills to look for? Vibes. What about you? Vibes.

Always. Critical thinking.

I'm terrible at that. I could never work for you.

I want to know how you think. You know, I think that's one of the— system design interviews are tricky because I think a lot of companies do it wrong as well. They're looking for a right answer or a particular solution. The purpose of a system design interview is to understand how you got to the solution you arrived at. If it's wrong, you're going to have a conversation about it. I want to know in that interview how you're responding to feedback. If somebody's pushing back on a particular idea, you shouldn't be combative during that. But I also want you to, you know, if you're like, well, this is— I've done this before, this is how it worked in the past, and this is why I truly believe this is the way I would build it. Because that's also like, okay, no, I guess you're right, you know. I would rather you also stand up for yourself in this interview as well. I want— this is, this is all about communication. It's all about how you're communicating with those that you're interviewing with. I have been through a number of interviews where I have been blatantly disrespected, which is baffling, but you know, people are gonna be people. The, you know, the way that you communicate with your— with the folks that you're interviewing with really, really helps you. You want a way to stand out? That's a really good way to stand out.

Yeah, be direct. I mean, I think we live in a world where we're kind of like, you know, keep your mouth shut, you know, don't, don't say what I tell you what, when I interviewed at Gun.io, I mean, I shot my CEO and co-founder straight. I said, this is why you need me. I think you're wrong in these ways, and here's why. Listen, some people are like, whoa. But you know what? He respected me, and now I'm there, right? And we've gained respect for each other through the interview process because of it. Yeah. So actually, I have a question too.

Yeah.

So Kelly, you mentioned the NDA thing earlier for the interview and the critical think. I think this was just a good segue. I would love to hear your thoughts on what people should be saying If they're like, oh, I'm under NDA, and what the reality is of what they can share during an interview.

If you cannot share anything that you have worked on or talk about anything that you have worked on, I might recommend finding a side gig to— not a side gig, just a project to work on, something that you can show what it is that you've been doing. Because if I can't see a single thing that you've built, you can't talk about anything in any sort of detail, We can— if you, if you literally cannot and you, you say that, ask about doing a hypothetical situation. Ask if you can say, all right, well, I'm under NDA, I literally cannot talk about the projects that I worked on, but how about we use this particular, like, made-up situation and I'll tell you how I would approach building it or how I would approach solving, you know, a particular technical issue with that.

Amazing. And this gentleman also has a question.

Yeah.

Yeah, I just wanted to circle back to references. You mentioned how that they were important, and I just wanted to understand how that works for you, how it fits in, and specifically if they are always, say, in person or live on the phone, or if they're in written format and the values of them. Because I've had people say, I'll be a reference for you, and it, it's hard to get something written from them. So what's your preference and how should that best work? You go first.

All right, I'll take this first. Once again, a lot of companies do references wrong. Number 1, you should not outsource your reference checks. The hiring manager should do the reference checks. Number 2, the reference checks— you usually are not picking up on any major red flags during the references stage. It has happened before. I have decided against hiring a candidate because of what their reference said. You should have a general idea if you're asking somebody to give you a reference. They should probably like you. It's a good, you know, real low bar, real low bar, real low bar.

I've had a reference I called, the guy goes, yeah, he's not good, and I was like, what?

Yeah, I've definitely had one say like, you, they cannot work alone, like they need, they need all the help they can get, and this is somebody who is applying for like a senior level role, and that isn't, that's obviously a red flag for me because I expect you to operate at a certain level as a senior. Um, other, other things about references.

I think they're dumb.

See, I don't think they're dumb.

Well, I do.

But again, it's how you approach the reference checks, because I'm not— I, I've seen your resume. I, I don't— I'm not going to just be like, did they work at this company? Would you hire them again? I want to know what are your strengths, and as your— as their manager How can I best help them grow in their career?

So it sounds like they're always live for you. Did written references have no value?

They're always live for me.

All right, so I disagree with you on that. So there, as a recruiter, we use a software called SkillSurvey. Has anybody used SkillSurvey at all? All right, no. So SkillSurvey is actually pretty cool, and I have found that people are more willing to give— people are willing to give more data When they can fill out something on their own time instead of getting called during the workday to give a reference for a person. Now, I understand where you're coming from. You want to speak to the person, yada yada yada. But I'm actually a big fan of written references because in my experience, and we did, we pioneered this software for two years at my last company. The amount of like, like really good responses, and you had references. Saying like, hey, you should be careful with this person more times than not because that reference felt safe to put it down. Like, I forgot, like, you can make it anonymous or not, but that person felt more comfortable giving that on their own time than over the phone during the workday. But again, both sides of the story.

Absolutely.

Both sides of the coin. Cool. All right, so we have 5 minutes left. So here's the deal. There's a crap ton of questions, and I feel like the vibe's pretty good in the room still, right? Good vibes. Um, you are more than welcome to go get a drink and leave if you want to. We will fully excuse you to do that, but we're gonna keep going. I'm just gonna keep fucking going. So you guys are more than welcome to go and get some drinks. Bring— you can bring drinks in here. I don't know if that's legal.

I hope you can.

I hope you can.

I don't hear a no, and if I don't hear a no, then you can do it.

Yeah, so go get drinks now. We appreciate you coming out, but we're gonna keep going through these 5 questions, so So strap in, here we go. Alright, so is there a bias towards hiring a candidate with a CS degree versus self-taught? I didn't think y'all would fucking leave, damn! No, I'm just kidding. Is there a bias towards hiring a candidate with a CS degree versus self-taught?

It depends on the company. I think there are companies that still require CS degrees, which I think is absolutely ridiculous. But it's really, really dependent on what the company wants and what they're looking for. I think that— I think there are still definitely companies that I would say are biased towards it, but not all.

Yeah. Also too, and y'all don't feel bad if you want to go, you can go, but we're just gonna keep answering them because I want to give the respect to everybody who's submitted questions. For me, honestly, I would give more bias towards self-taught and boot camp over CS degrees. In my experience— yeah, yeah, clap it up for that. In my experience, CS degree individuals come with no sort of real-world experience. There's an air of cockiness to them, and they feel like they deserve a seat at the table just because they went through the degree process.

Harsh.

Harsh high five, Taylor. Yeah. So, so for me— You can run the mic. Yeah, so, so, so, so hear me out real quick, right? That's a little harsh, and I understand that. But there is a level of humility that comes with career changers and self-taught developers that cannot be taught. And if you're looking for a team player that can come into your organization and move the needle and listen and they understand where they need to be and their value, like self-taught boot camp, in my experience, in terms of just soft skills, fully trumps it. But I also, again, I understand both scenarios.

It's totally okay to have a CS degree.

Yeah, yeah, it is. Just don't be a dick, right? Just don't be a dick. It's that easy. Walmart, you're not a dick, dude. You're so nice. All right, how can I spot a legit recruiter from spam?

Ooh, buddy.

Ooh, buddy. Yeah, first off, if it's a— so I'm gonna listen to this. I'm gonna just be real simple with this, right? Put an emoji in your name on LinkedIn. Put an emoji in your name on LinkedIn. Oh yeah, because that— the people, recruiters who use spam messaging, I never use them, but I know there's tools out there we can blast, and what they do is they catch the emoji in the message.

Put it like I put it at the beginning of my first name.

Yeah, yeah, so do that. That's one hack. 2, it's vibes, y'all. Vibes.

Right?

Someone's gonna message you 3 fucking paragraphs, you gonna read it? No! It's probably because it's templated. When I message you, when I was a traditional recruiter, I'd have misspelled words, 2 sentences, I could barely complete a thought, and I'd be like, you wanna just talk? Right? Just be smart about it. Now, I'm also gonna give you permission. Do not respond to every recruiter if you do not want to.

Yeah.

'Cause they've already moved on. They've already moved on. I'm still sweating. Go ahead.

That was really distracting. You're good. I'm sorry.

All right. Wait, before you go on.

Yeah.

Microphone, hold on. For the recording. Bar's taking advantage of being in the front row. Sure, okay. But so respond to recruiters. So I respond to recruiters and please help me fix my thinking about this. I'll tell you why I respond to recruiters. Because I'm old enough that I was around when the candidates were begging recruiters for opportunities. Sure, sure. And I remember the two 2008, like, market crash and when we were all in the offices looking to get any help. So I'm always trying to hedge my bets in case that happens again. But am I wasting my time is what I'm asking.

You're not wasting your time because every— you don't have to respond to these recruiters. But if you do choose to respond to these recruiters and you're not interested right now or this isn't the right role, but at some point, maybe 2, 3 years later, you are looking, you now have a relationship with a recruiter and you can reach right back out to them. Yeah. Yeah.

But yeah, you're not wasting time, especially if you have time, do it. But if you're stressing yourself out, you're like, oh my gosh, I have all these DMs and I can't answer them, don't worry about it. Like, don't put that stress on yourself. Life's stressful enough. You don't need recruiters to help you with that.

A lot of— Instead of recruiter.

Yeah, instead of recruiter. Again, like I said, 2 senses, a bunch of misspellings. A lot of focus is on standing out and being unique as a candidate. Oh, wait a minute, I already did that one. Check. During the recruitment hiring process, when is the proper time to negotiate compensation? First off, who in here is comfortable negotiating compensation? Raise their hand. Okay, here we go.

It takes negotiation, takes practice.

Uh, yeah, some thoughts on that during—

yeah, hiring managers who are still in here, how many of you list the compensation on your job description?

Or recruiters? I didn't have to day one. I didn't know you're supposed to do that. I did from 2011. If you're in California, do it.

California law.

Yeah, there's a lot of states.

There's multiple states that now legally require it. You are going to save a whole lot of time if you just talk about compensation up front.

A whole lot of time. I don't know why we hide it.

Exactly. It should not be a taboo topic. Now, I would also not recommend— I'm sorry if anybody here works at Netflix, but going the Netflix route of like, the compensation range is somewhere between $100,000 and $900,000.

Come on!

I'll take $900,000.

Right. Close to $900,000. We're just taking while we're at it. Yeah, I mean, for me, front end, right? And again, this is hard. I went through a job search 4 months ago, right? I was scared to talk about it. I'm up here talking about it. So like, listen, I'm not— you're not alone, right? I struggle with it, and I'm very loud, as you can tell. So again, like, it takes practice, but do not be ashamed to bring it up. I think a lot of times us during the job search are so terrified to bring it up because we don't want the offer to fall through, right? But you also do not want to get into a situation That is bad.

I'm interested in talking about it at 2 points. At the beginning, if it is not clear what the compensation is, ask. If the hiring manager or recruiter, whoever it is you're talking to, can't talk about it, it is your decision as to whether or not you want to continue on with the interview process. And then at the very end of the interview, I— and you get an offer, you should always, you should always counter unless there, unless there's a very specific need that you, for some, you know, you really need this job, you don't want to chance it, you're happy with the compensation, it is okay to just accept it. I will say that. It is okay to just— I did not negotiate when I actually— I was given 2 options and I chose which option I wanted. Like, that's how— that's the way I approached it. You don't have to have a negotiation conversation if you are happy with what is on the table. But if a company rescinds an offer because you decided to negotiate, that is not a company you wanted to work for in the first place.

Is a pretty-looking portfolio website really important, or is my GitHub profile a way better way to show my full-stack dev skills?

My website is the, uh, the basic Vue template. I have not even renamed the default component from hello whatever it is. I don't care what your website looks like.

Yeah, I mean, for me, in my experience, I've never had a hiring manager go, send me somebody's website, or send me someone's GitHub. They're like, What can you do now? What have you done recently? Can you walk through something you have done recently, right? I interview on my podcast, and a lot of y'all have been on my podcast in here already. For those of you who haven't, don't get mad, just message me and we'll get you on. But for me, one of the most consistent things I hear time and time again from engineering leaders is they just want to know how you think and how you walk through a problem. They don't— obviously what you've done is important, but that's what they're focused on. Not if your website's pretty or your GitHub's got a bunch of green.

It doesn't have to be pretty, but this is especially for more junior engineers who are looking for your first or second role, this is where your portfolio can be beneficial so I can see what kind of work you've been doing and how you approached building it. I don't care what the website actually looks like as long as there's content on the website that I can look at. And again, this is, this is particularly important for those who are earlier in their engineering career.

Why is there a lot of ghosting from recruiters?

Yeah, Taylor.

Yeah. We suck. We really, really do. The reason why you're ghosted is because there's 2 types of recruiters. There's agency recruiters and in-house recruiters. Agency recruiters like myself are the ones that give you— that give the recruiting industry a bad reputation. The reason for that is because we get paid very low— we get paid very low base salaries, like very low, and we are 90% commission They're sales. They're sales. We're sales.

Yeah.

They. I'm not really in that anymore. I graduated.

He separated himself from that group.

Yes, I separated myself from that group. So for me, we don't get placed, we don't get paid to be your friend, which is why I wanted to get out of that industry, which is why I'm thankful Gunn picked me up because I can still be a recruiter but I can love on you a little bit more, which I'm very grateful for. Recruiters don't get paid to love, they get paid to place. So if you don't have what they need, they're gonna move on. Do not take it personally. It sucks, I get it, but just move on.

I've also gotten a rejection. I'm sure some of you have probably gotten this experience or had this experience before. Gotten a rejection email from a company like, I don't know, 9 to 12 to 3 years later. Like, oh, we've now filled this role. I'm like, great, I completely forgot I applied. That's awesome.

Question.

Yes.

So in giving out some of the advice, I know that some of the personalities are a little strong. I think that part of what needs to be received, especially for the juniors, and as you say you don't really pay a lot of attention to it, what's going to be translated into is don't do it, right? So you don't necessarily want their GitHub to be up to date per se, but in order for them to show you the skills that they're doing, that's probably where they would have come from. So they should be doing them, right? In terms of like that, if you're coming from boot camp or somewhere else and that's how you're actually practicing, even though you're not necessarily going to look at it, they should continue to do it because that is the practice.

Yeah.

Right?

And again, this is also why I separated the junior engineers, like looking for a junior job from, let's say, more senior or staff-level roles, because you probably, like, that is again where you're gaining your experience. So I absolutely encourage you to continue doing so. if you haven't started yet.

But again, I will also say, and I understand there's two sides to every story, but for me, any junior— I've placed 3 junior developers in my career. Every single hiring manager that I worked with wanted to see the projects they've done, and it's never gonna get up. But again, I understand where you're coming from. I answer with a project list. That's where I— so go ahead. Yeah, I get that.

I get that.

Yeah, so— So, but yeah, it's more along the lines of communication. Communication is huge as well. Yes? If you're more on the junior side, let's say there's a perfect job out there, you apply for it, and you're not selected as the final candidate, is it appropriate to ask the recruiter why you weren't picked as the final candidate as an attempt to maybe further develop those skills that prevented you from getting the opportunity?

You know, I think it's perfectly fine to ask for feedback. If it's not given to you directly. I will say there are plenty of companies that will not provide that feedback for legal reasons, that they could get into some particular dicey legal trouble if they say the wrong thing giving you feedback. So I— that is one reason why you might not be getting feedback directly from a hiring manager or a company that you— for which you applied. Just also, I think it goes the same way if you do reach out for feedback and you don't receive it and you don't get a response, don't take that personally as well.

Yeah, I think that's a really good point. Yeah, there's— I've always tried to get feedback from my candidates, and there's a lot of hiring managers that won't give me feedback. So especially if you work with a recruiter, they don't give you feedback, they're probably— they may be asking for feedback. But I think a lot of times it's just hiring, it's on the hiring side. So yeah, feedback's kind of a weird tricky thing. For hiring managers in here, I know there's a lot of HR stuff. Listen, if you keep it strictly around the skill sets, Right, hey listen, we needed strong— I'm making this stuff up— strong AWS serverless or EC2, Lambda, and S3, right? And if they only have one of the 3, in my opinion, it should be okay to tell the candidate, hey, you only had one of the 3 things we needed, right? Now if you start talking about their personality, that's where it gets very, very hairy. But if you can keep it consistent on the technical end, like you give feedback, right?

Yeah.

How do you give feedback?

Uh, if so, first and foremost, if you are going through the interview process, if you have made it to any round whatsoever, you're getting a phone call from the recruiter. And I know for some people that is— that could be a little bit awkward to have that phone call, to get the rejection over the phone, but the purpose is to have a conversation and to provide that feedback as well.

Yeah.

I, I find that a lot of emails that go out are very impersonal, and if you've taken time to talk to somebody at our company or multiple people at our company, we owe you the respect to have a conversation with you to explain why we're— why we decided to move forward with a different candidate.

Absolutely. What can be considered red flags to be careful of in a job posting? I swear if I see another ninja needed.

How many of you are ninjas?

How many of y'all are rock stars? I was. I moved to Nashville, I was a rock star.

That's true.

I'm a guru. There you go, you're a guru. There you go. I mean, for me, listen, I don't know if there's necessarily like— I think they're like beige flags. I think that's a trend on TikTok, beige flags. Lawrence knows what I'm talking about, he's on TikTok more than I am. So for me, I think it's vibe. If you read— you're probably like, Taylor, you gotta get a new word. Listen, if you read a job description and it's cold and sterile, how's that gonna make you feel?

Is that job description giving you the information you need though?

Boom. Yes. Well, I don't know, usually not. In my opinion, if job descriptions do the things that you need, there's— it's usually written in a better format than you have ColdFusion next to React.

But you're looking for a vibe even in a job description?

In my opinion, a job description should have a mission of what the company does, right? Millennials and under, I read a stat, I'm not gonna make it up, but I know I've read it somewhere, may have been TikTok, in that our generation and under is mission-driven. Right, so I want to know what you're trying to solve. I want to know what the position I'm walking into solves, right? Then I want to know the nice-to-haves and must-haves, whole other conversation in and of itself. In my opinion, if a job description has those things, I'm gonna get a decent vibe off of it. But if a job description's got a bunch of HR bullshit jargon in it, it's probably not gonna give me the information I need.

I will say, remember, a lot of job descriptions are wishlists.

Yes.

You don't need to have every single thing listed there to apply for the job and to get that job even. And I think that, that would be what my red flag is. If it is just a list of technologies that don't really make any sense together, but it is an extremely long list that I don't know a single person who has it. Oh! Another red flag! Do you have like 22 years of, I don't know, React experience?

Yeah, ChatGPT experience.

Yes, I need, I need 8 years of experience working with OpenAI.

Or bun.

There we go.

See, I know things.

He gets so excited to talk about tech, like in the room.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I said the right word.

I said the bun word. By the way, someone said we need to do a podcast. Oh yeah. Before we jump to the next topic, I did want to ask a question about the job description thing. So Kelly, you just hit on it that it's a wish list. But why y'all be lying though? Because let me tell you why. This is what I mean when I say y'all be lying. With these job descriptions. If it's a wish list, why not put the word wish list on there, right?

Yes, yes, that is a green flag for— that's great for a job description. I want to know what are the absolute must-haves for this, what are the nice-to-haves. I don't require you to have these, but it would be cool if you have them, but I'm going to spell it out as a nice-to-have.

Don't even put nice-to-have, put wish list.

Like, use a different—

so here's the reason I say that. I think nice-to-have still gets interpreted as if I know these things I love that. Then I'm going to be, you know, like, in, right? But if I don't know them, I feel like as a candidate potentially that somebody who does know is going to get the nod over me, even though they're not a part of your hard requirements.

You see what I'm saying?

So I think we need a different term that lets people know, like, apply anyway, right? Even if you don't know them.

I completely agree.

Mark bringing the absolute heat. Uh, all right, so just to give you an idea, we are 30 minutes I'm 10 minutes behind on the questions. You said we should make content to have a better chance of being spotted and eventually hired. What do I do if I'm against being on social media? Can I start with this?

Absolutely.

My brother has zero social media presence, like zero, zero. My brother has done a tremendous job about finding jobs through networking. He networks through interviews. It's the most wildest thing. Is like the GOAT at taking these interviews and endearing himself to people, and then they keep calling him for jobs. And he just does it for practice because he listens to what I say sometimes, right? But he has zero social media presence. So if you're not going to do social media, you need to be at conferences, you need to be at meetups, you need to be— when you get interviews, you need to try to keep up with people somehow. But in my opinion, it's kind of a necessary evil. But again, that's just That's just—

we've hired people. We have, we have engineers on our team at Spot who do not have any kind of social media presence whatsoever, that were not hired because of their social media presence. So I will say that is, that is what I qualify as— this is, this will give you a leg up, but this is not a must-have. Yeah, if you are uncomfortable putting yourself out in public on social media, send an email. I'm pretty sure you probably still use emails.

Yes, yes, I love email.

Wow, somebody actually loves emails.

I love emails. What? You got a question? All right, sweet. Sorry, Will. I hope you just— like, if you're gonna apply somewhere like Black Airplane or wherever, right, and we're gonna hire you, it's because you know how to produce production work, not how to follow a tutorial and build up a GitHub repo of like demo stuff, right? And so I'm asking them like, hey, what are you building? Like, what are you really building? Like, get off the train tracks and like come up with something and start building an application, right? And if you need some ideas, like, I'm happy to help you or whatever it is, right? So I would love y'all's opinion on that. Like, I loved your initial, like, how you should be networking, Taylor. Like, you're— that's fantastic advice, and I think I'm gonna add that to my response. But that's kind of my general response is like, I want you to be building something on your own.

Absolutely. If you are in a boot camp and a bunch of other people are in that same boot camp and you don't build anything except for those projects within the boot camp, you're going to look like everybody else. This is, this is exactly what I'm talking about, bringing your personal interests into the work that you're doing. You can pull data from anywhere. You can build like a fun like web app or app or whatever you want to do that is not a tutorial. You need to escape tutorial hell and actually build something. I want to see your creativity.

Yeah, shout out Jordan Ryerson on LinkedIn. Jordan DM'd me 2 years ago. He goes, hey bro, I just, I'm doing a self-taught thing, trying to get into tech. Do you have anything that needs to be built? I said, actually I do. I have a podcast.

I love that.

And I actually need our webpage built. He built it, theunicornfinders.com, I think. And it's my other podcast because a man can't have too many podcasts. And guess what? He just recently got a job in tech.

Oh, cool.

Because he had specific production experience that's live and that we use consistently. It's not hard. If you're part of a religious organization, go ask Ask if you live near— like, all these places need websites. Like restaurants, if you live in a small town— I got this question the other day, what if I live in a small town and I can't network? Listen, if you live in a small town, I bet you 99% of businesses don't have a web presence whatsoever. Just a Facebook. You're right, just a Facebook, right? And I ain't checking your nanny aunt's Facebook, right? So again, ask them to build something for that company, right? Fairly important.

And especially if it's like a local business that is selling things, like a brick-and-mortar store, I have spent over Almost ten years in e-commerce at this point. Shopify is really easy to get started and build something, and you have a custom website, and you're also helping a local business get online and selling their things online beyond just in store.

All right, next question: What should newbies in the tech space be doing to get on your your radar for a role since you're Mrs. Hiring?

Send me a message. We didn't talk about this actually specifically. What? When it comes to sending me a message, I get a lot of. DMs about, hey, I just applied to X role, I would love to get 15 minutes of your time to ask you questions and tell you a little bit more about myself, when would you have time? The answer is never. Like, I just don't have time for these things. What I will do though is if you say, hey, I just applied for this role, super interested, I have a few questions, here are my questions, if you have a moment to respond, I'd really appreciate it. I am much more likely to respond to that message than I am to find magical 15 minutes on my calendar to give you that time to actually talk to you.

Yeah, I didn't even sit with my wife for breakfast for 15 minutes, I'm still hearing about it a week later. So again, no one's got time for anything. All right, next. Is attending in-person meetups and events still important for networking in an increasingly remote world? I think I've already addressed this, but hell yeah, right? This is where the bonds strengthen, right? The gentleman— again, Mark. I'm just using Mark because Mark was recently in my pocket. Mark and I can really hit it off. Mark is a brother from another mother for sure. I love this guy dearly. Being able to hug him yesterday when I saw him after never meeting him in person, it was awesome. It was awesome, right? Beautiful to watch. Yeah, just the 2 big dudes just sitting there watching. But I'll tell you this, when I was on my job search recently, actually, so I had 12 leads, 12 promising leads. 11 of those 12 leads came from these things. 11 of 12 came from these, right? Now, I'm incredibly bullish on content and the importance of scale and how it can reach the masses. I can talk, You know, I can talk to somebody in Australia and then I can talk to somebody in California at the same time. But when you can shake hands and hug them, if you're not a hugger, just shake hands. If you're not a shake hand, maybe just a wave. It just goes a lot further.

I think it is helpful, but it's still one of those things that is not necessary. You're not, I mean, I'm speaking to a crowd of people who are literally at a conference right now, so it literally doesn't apply to you. But there are a whole lot more people in the tech industry who are not going to conferences and they're doing perfectly fine in their careers. So if you're here, You know, and you don't really want— you don't enjoy this experience and you're like, I don't know if I really want to go to another conference, that is totally fine. You're still going to be really, really solid in your career.

Yeah, um, I, I know people are here to talk to you guys, but I just want to say I was a junior dev looking for a first position last year and I got one, uh, November last year. My advice for people who are in that position, because a lot of questions are that, was I went to these conferences with cards printed out with QR codes going to my portfolio site, and I kept asking people, what do you think? I don't, you know, not hire me, hire me, hire me. Can I get some feedback? Can I get some feedback on this? Do you have some time between this next talk and the talk we just did? And then like they look at it and go, well, this is pretty good. I got someone I need to talk to, talk about you to. And that worked out really well. So I just wanted to— I love that advice. That's awesome, man. That's awesome. If you could wave a magic wand and improve the recruiting interview process to make it less costly and taxing, What would you do? I mean, I think we kind of talked about that, but if you want to answer that real quick.

Shorten your interview process.

God, I mean, 2, 3 rounds, right?

No, obviously you need all 7 rounds and you need to talk to every single senior leader at the company. And you probably need to run a half marathon while you're there too, you know, just in case. No, there's literally no reason to have to go through that many rounds. If you're not, if you're not getting the signal you need from the, you know, 2 or 3 rounds You're asking the wrong questions. You've got the wrong people on the panel to actually get the answers that you need.

How many rounds do you do?

Don't ask me that question.

Okay.

We're, we're sitting right around 5 right now, uh, which is more than I would like, uh, but I, I do pride myself on, on our interview process even being 5 rounds. Uh, we're quick about it. My goal is to get you through the entire interview process within 10 business days.

Damn.

So the faster we can get you through, we don't want to waste your time. We will— we make decisions very quickly. We've got it, we've got it down to an art. And the fact that it really goes to say, like, if I get an email from a candidate who I've rejected saying this was a really, really great experience and appreciated and I learned a lot, that says a whole lot of good about our process.

I've hired a junior dev for the first time. It's anonymous, so I can't, can't call names. What are some good resources for developing an effective hiring process?

Hiring process?

Yeah, for developing an effective interviewing process for junior developers.

I need another 3 hours to talk about this one. This is something that I'm really passionate about. I think it's really important to, you know, when I was talking about how the interview process shouldn't be stressful, if it's stressful for anybody, it is junior devs who are trying to get that first job right now. If they're really, really nervous, prepare them as much as you can upfront about what it is that they're going to be talking about, who they're going to be talking with. The more detail you can provide upfront, the more comfortable they're going to be. I am not a fan of live coding during interviews either. I think, uh, I don't— I personally don't know about you, but I don't stand over the shoulders of my engineers and watch them code and then judge them as a— I mean, yes, I kind of do that, uh, but you know, we're all remote, so they have that added benefit there. Um, but your, your interview Your interview process should reflect the way that you actually work. So I would make sure you also should be training, again, training the interviewers to know how to interview well and how to create that safe space to allow them to thrive in an interview environment.

So I guess a question but also feedback. So I've been a development manager. I also run an organization that works with people who are trying to get into the industry. So giving them that feedback, one of the things that they often run into, and this is kind of an interesting aspect of that is that coding generally attracts people who are rather introverted because the majority of your time is spent looking at a computer. But on recruiting and other sides, there's a layer of extremely extroverted people who are identifying them based on criteria that the target audience is mostly going to be low in. So as a hack, I tell them to do most of the things you're saying, but it's very interesting that you lead with people who have identified what they wanted to do earlier and therefore to get a CS degree, you are biased against and are in favor of people who are switching tracks. So when people hear that, it's kind of disheartening, right? Because what you're saying is that having identified that earlier is actually making them less of a candidate in your eyes. I don't know that you meant to say that, but that's exactly what you said. Yeah, no, and I agree with that. I mean, I think I'm brash for a reason, to catch people's attention. But I also, at the end of the day, understand that I'm gonna hire and I'm gonna look at the best candidate possible, right? If you have a CS degree, great. If you have boot camp, great. But in my experiences, the attitudes that come to me from those 2 areas are pretty consistent. Now, if you come to me with humility and understand that you need to work as a CS degree, great, right? But I judge a person how they treat me during an interview and how they interact It's not necessarily where they've come from. That's just a theme that I've heard and observed. I would just add though that it's, again, the words you say are rather important.

Sure.

Meaning might have been different, but what you said was the opposite, right? So again, especially considering that there are a number of people who are on the spectrum who are in there, where your words are what matter, not the tone you intended to imply. Makes sense, for sure. For sure, for sure. I appreciate that. Going into an interview, the challenge is getting the candidate to tell you about their successes. And so as a hiring person, I'm going to ask you questions, but they might not always be exactly the question that you need to tell that story. And I hope when you're talking with candidates as well that you guys can encourage everyone to say, you know, have something that you're proud of that you can, that you can tell someone about to make yourself sound great Because that's what— that's all of these questions are there for me to have you tell me that.

Yeah, absolutely.

That's really one of— that's one frustration that I have with hiring is when people don't have those stories, those case studies sort of. And I don't know if there are other— as a question for you guys about this too is, as someone hiring, what are things that A hiring manager should ask to help draw those answers out?

One of the things that I like to set the stage for when I'm asking very situational questions that might require you to think about your answer— one, as the candidate, I strongly encourage you to look up common interview questions that you might get at the round you're in and practice Practice. Record yourself answering questions and watch it back. It is awkward as hell to watch yourself on video or listen to yourself on audio if you've never done it before, but the more you do that, the more you can hear yourself say these answers and the better you're going to become at them. As the interviewer, I encourage you to start the conversation with, these are going to be some situational questions I'm going to be asking you around these types of topics. Topics. If you need a moment to think about an answer, I encourage you to take that moment to pause and answer that, and then you can answer the question. I'm not expecting an answer immediately because some people, you might ask a question that will totally trip them up. They were expecting you to take it in one direction, you took it in a totally different direction, and they might have a really good answer for that, but they feel pressured to answer immediately. And to give them permission to pause and think about that. One of the engineers that I hired years ago, that was one thing that really stood out in my interview with him, is that I felt like at first every question I was asking, I just— there'd be like 5 seconds of pause before he actually answered. And what, you know, the more I ended up hiring him, and he— we worked together for a few years, and the more I work with him, the more I learned that he is just— he wants to think about the answers he's giving. And it is perfectly acceptable to To have that pause in there before you actually answer that question.

I obviously do not do that.

You know, Taylor has no—

Not at all. All right, uh, let's see here. So I'm gonna try to get through these. We're gonna go another 10 minutes or so. Um, if we can't get to all of them and you asked and yours was not answered, come find us afterwards. But, uh, we are— thank you guys for staying around. Seriously, this means so much. Um, what does it mean, uh, what, what, when does it make sense to pivot to a new technology or role if you aren't getting results in your So listen, I think you need to be aware of your compensation requirements, your on-site versus remote requirements. I think you need to be flexible right now. That's what I would ask you first. If you are having problems finding a job and you think it's technology, I would ask yourself, what are your like other requirements, right? Salary, on-site, maybe it's how you're coming across in an interview. Unless you're like still stuck in like ColdFusion days, Anyone here a COBOL programmer? There's a lot of COBOL out there. There's a lot of COBOL out there.

There's a government or banking job for you.

Yeah, seriously. But in my opinion, in my opinion, I think this is very situational. I think I would need a lot more information to answer this question, but I'd probably be more— I would ask yourself about the other things outside of technology than the actual technology.

I would also encourage you to not go chasing new technologies because that is a slippery slope where you become a master of none. You're just going to barely scratch the surface on a bunch of different types of technologies when I might need, you know, I need 3 to 5 years of React experience with TypeScript, and you've just been bouncing around to React, to Vue, to Bun, to this, to that, to that, whatever.

Hack breathing.

Uh, and if I— if you don't show any level of expertise in anything that you do, I'm going to wonder about your depth. And it's not about the breadth that you bring, it's about the depth that you bring. It's a little bit of both. Again, if you've only been a .NET programmer, you're hiring— or you're interviewing— actually hired a .NET engineer when we have a Node background, and he was so thoughtful and creative with his answers that even though he just— he's only barely scratched the surface on Node, he was able to talk about the depth with .NET and explain how that would pivot into Node and how he's, you know, been working on researching this. And, uh, he's one of my, one of my best senior backend engineers now.

Awesome. I got a 2-sided question. Um, actually, you made me think of it. Uh, if you're an interviewer and you're interviewing somebody, it's a stressful situation, they start using profanity, should that be a flag? Especially if they're going to be at a customer client And on the flip side, if you're in an interview and you start cussing, is there a graceful way to handle that? Or a good way to back out of it? Why are you asking that question? It just came to me while we were talking. Just came to you? Alright, so as the guy who curses a lot, you gotta read the room. I'm not like this in an interview. Like my recent job search, now, now, 4th round interview at lunch with my CEO. I let it rip a little bit because I got the vibe, right? Again, if I'm interviewing for a banking role, also I'd never work in a banking role, let's just be honest, but like you just got to read the room, right? Now I have had people start cursing at me and yeah, it's a turn-off, it's a big turn-off, I get that 100%, but if we're, if I've worked with this person as a recruiter for 4 years and I know their family and I know who they are and we've broken bread together multiple times and they curse at me and I'm fine with it. But I would say initial, yeah, be on your P's and Q's, 100%, for sure.

And if you are interviewing somebody who is using profanity and you're not comfortable, you can say, hey, I want to take a moment and make sure this is a professional conversation that we're having. I would prefer you to not use profanity in this interview. That is perfectly okay to say because I think another thing that's going to be telling, they might be like, oh, I'm so sorry, it's just that that's just the way I talk, I'm really sorry. Sorry, and like, they're dead, that's it. But others are like, what the hell, like, why? This is just who I am. And the way that they respond to that is one of those soft skills that you can learn a whole lot about a person.

Yeah, 100%, 100%. Um, this kind of goes with the how can you effectively market yourself, uh, with if you have extensive experience in multiple languages, frameworks, instead of just one. My biggest thing, I actually tweeted this the other day, you need to have a sizzle. Um, and a sizzle is different than your elevator pitch, your cover letter. A sizzle is how does your background specifically relate to the role you're interviewing for? Yes, yes, targeted, targeted, targeted.

Absolutely, yeah, the more you, uh, I, you know, I encourage people to tweak their resumes based on the role that they're applying to because I might, you might have, you know, certain experience that I'm not looking for, but you may have that real— that breadth and depth of experience. Perhaps you have a whole lot of interests that you just bounce around, but you've been doing it for a while. Highlight what is going to be most important for this particular role.

How can you avoid burnout or giving up during a long job search process?

That's your question.

It is tough. I don't have an answer for that. I don't. It's hard.

There's actually an interesting story you can tell about the tree What was your experience being job searching like your full-time job and the realization you came to?

Oh yeah, yeah, this is good. This is why we're doing this panel together. So I was out here, obviously as you can tell I'm very brash.

What?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'm super passionate about this stuff. And for me, I was preaching for a long time that the job search is an 8 to 5 job, right? 8 to 5, yada yada. And then I went through the job search and I was like, hell my God, God, this is exhausting. I can't do this 8 to 5, right? And I'd sprint it up a little bit. For me, I think the biggest thing I'll tell you is you have to have— keep your personal life, right? What do I mean by that, right? If you go to church on Sundays, keep going to church on Sundays through your job search. If you go to the gym 3 days a week, keep going to the gym 3 days a week, right? If you have dinner with your families on Wednesdays, keep having dinner with your families on Wednesdays. I think a lot of times we get so stressed out. I had a senior engineer message me I can't even go on a walk with my dog because I'm so stressed out about the job search, right? So I understand, but I think as long as you can keep, in my opinion, your normal life going and not get so entrenched in the job search, and the moment that you kind of pull back a little bit, right, if you find yourself pressing, the moment you pull back and breathe for a second, I'm not pressing. Good things usually happen.

I would add to that, rejection sucks.

But it's hard. It's hard.

Especially when you're going through multiple rounds of interviews and you're just getting rejection after rejection after rejection. I think one thing that's important to remember, and it's easier said than done, is not to take it personally, first and foremost. But you never really know the reason why you're being rejected for a role. The reason why I say that is sometimes you might be applying to a role that is still open But they're already in final interview conversations, but they're going to talk to you at the beginning anyway and then reject you and not tell you why. There might be— I would say a lot of the reasons why a lot of these kind of like unknown rejections happen is because of changing company priorities. I've had— I know individuals who have received a job offer, accepted a job offer, and then 2 days later they had that job rescinded and had nothing to do with them. Over the weekend, the budget got cut for this So you never— you are unfortunately, like, as a candidate, you are not in control of these other companies where you're interviewing, and that is a really, really important thing to remember. This is my little soapbox. I'm actually a trained therapist, so it's going to come out for a second. Keep in mind what you can control and focus on that. You cannot control every single third-party factor that's happening when you're interviewing. What can you control? Keep your focus on that.

Real quick, lightning round. Kelly, I'm just gonna ask you questions. Let's just, let's just bounce back and forth, one answer each. What's the best platform to publish content on? Where's the best visibility?

I mean, I'm down for LinkedIn.

I'm down for LinkedIn. I think to get started, LinkedIn. Twitter is its own animal. We can talk about that later.

Please don't— when you're paying for Twitter Premium, please don't like do the really, really, really long tweets. Don't deal on tweets.

That's a whole other talk in and of itself. Uh, let's see here. It says, how much weight do you give economic factors when forecasting the market? The Fed is dangling the possibility of a rate hike. Uncertainty will likely continue. That's why I started the conversation out with what we're seeing, because that's been the most consistent question I've gotten, is where's the market heading? All I can tell you is what I'm seeing.

Speaking of things you can't control.

Yeah, seriously, you just gotta keep moving. Keep looking forward. Is it worth posting to a role, a job post that's been open for more than 2 weeks?

Yes.

Really? What?

Has it been open for more than 2 weeks?

Yeah.

Yeah, you know how many companies are really, really slow at even starting the hiring process?

Yeah, I was gonna say no.

No, I was saying absolutely yes. Okay, there you go.

See, I'm wrong sometimes. How do you get past the ATS? And how do you think it's— and do you think its overuse is a moral issue?

Oh, applicant tracking systems. A lot of— there are applicant tracking systems that use keywords to automatically reject resumes if they don't hit on a certain number of keywords you're providing in the job descriptions. Terrible, terrible system. This is one of the reasons why I say it's really important to cater a resume directly to the job that you're, you're applying for. There are tools out there that will actually scan the job description and your resume And look for that overlap. Look for those matches. But this is the one way I would say to try to get around that: reach out to the hiring manager, the recruiter.

Yeah, absolutely. All right, y'all. That was everything.

We appreciate it. Thank you so much. And don't forget happy hour.

Yeah.