Ask me anything! Reader Edition

INTRO

This week’s newsletter is dedicated to answer your questions. Every few weeks I’ll commit to doing this as answering these benefit everyone. Most questions are the same or very related, so by helping one person, I’m likely to be helping many.

Let’s get into it…

Question One: I’ve been landing tons of interviews. I’ve had over 10 final rounds in the last two months. I can’t seem to land an offer if my life depended on it. What gives?

On one end, it’s a good sign you’re able to land interviews. Many people are struggling to gain any traction, and you’re able to make it almost to the finish line it seems.

That tells me your resume is well written, your LinkedIn looks good, and you know what to say to recruiters once you get them on the phone.

On the other end, it’s not a good sign that you can’t close. I was able to find the root cause with this specific candidate, but when this happens, generally speaking here are a few reasons why:

• It’s a different market than the past few years. There are simply more & better candidates out there these days.

• You haven’t prepared adequately for interviews. Interviewing for tech roles was never easy, but it hasn’t been any harder. You need to prepare more. More coding exercises, rehearsing your questions/answers, get your STAR stories down, etc.

• Advice & Expectations: Unfortunately with this candidate, he was taking IMO bad advice he saw from social media. He agreed to a certain salary/rto expectation, and tried negotiating better terms upon offer. If you’ve been out of work, you have less leverage whether you agree with it or not, meaning you do not have the negotiating power. If you have the cash savings to stay out of work longer, have multiple offers in hand, or you’re still employed, more power to you. But if not, you should probably stick to whatever terms you agreed to up front.

Question Two: Are you worried that AI might take our jobs? What about the growing use of direct sites (Fiverr, Upwork?)

This is a good question. Honestly, I’m not sure. I think the use of AI in recruiting will play out in 2 ways.

I think it will primarily help in some shape of form (sourcing, automating tedious tasks) just like excel did to finance & accounting. I do think many jobs will be eliminated long term to outsourcing & AI, but the exact % I’m not sure.

In terms of Fiverr & Upwork - not worried about that. Those projects are great for freelancing gigs. But at the end of the day, managers at large F500 orgs don’t want to go through the BS recruiters have to go through recruiting candidates. It’s one thing to get someone’s resume, but to lead them all the way to an offer and have them start is where most of the work is done. I can’t see them wanting do take that responsibility on themselves on top of the work they already have to do. Plus, everyone loves a scapegoat. If they take on the responsibilities themselves - and things go south - it’s no one’s fault but their other, whereas it could’ve been the recruiter’s fault.

Question Three: How long do you think this tech downturn will last?

I get asked this question almost every day in some shape or form. Honestly, I don’t know. I’ve recruited only during bull markets (started in 2014). Asking someone whose recruited through 2000 or 2008/2009 is probably a better idea.

Two of my managers have. They both said ~18-24 months things were flat before they picked up and we ensued an amazing candidate market for 10+ years. They think it will be the same case here, the question is, when does that true tech recession start?

Technically, within the past ~year, we’ve experienced a technical recession (2 negative quarters in a row of GDP), and we technically just hit a bull market (20% increase from year lows). So many layoffs, but these tech companies are soaring now.

So honestly, I don’t know, and I don’t think anyone really does.

Question Four: I’ve been out of work for over 5 months. I’m applying to 100s jobs. Nothing is working. I’m not getting calls back from recruiters. Please help.

Unfortunately I’ve been getting this message at least 1x/week also. It’s a similar case to the first question here.

Part of it has to do with the market that we’re in. But if you’re applying to hundreds of jobs without landing any recruiting screens (not even real interviews), something is wrong with your process.

1. Your resume is likely written poorly. Are you regurgitating generic roles & responsibilities or are you also highlighting your direct impact, quantifiable metrics, and key highlights?

2. What about your LinkedIn? Is it filled out properly? Does your experience match your resume? This can be a red flag if not.

3. Are you applying to random jobs? Spam applying? Sure you should shoot your shot, but there are limits to that. If you’re applying to roles you’re a 10% fit for, of course you’re never going to get a call back. The aim should be about 2/3 or ~70% fit, then apply.

4. Have you tried building your network? Instead of applying to jobs endlessly hours upon hours a day, take some of that time to genuinely network with people. That network can help refer you into jobs & introduce you to people.

Question Five: With all the layoffs & reduction of VC funding, is the tech (talent) market shrinking?

I can answer this question in a few ways

• A lot of these companies have never existed in a high-interest rate & choppy economic environment before. They’re still figuring it out. So they will continue to tighten budgets as the priority becomes profitability vs. increasing revenue & reach at all costs.

• Technically short term, yes. Technically the tech unemployment rate has increased and the amount of roles have decreased. But at the same time, the tech unemployment rate is even still lower than the general unemployment rate believe it or not.

• Non-tech companies are still hiring tech workers. If you’re in need of work, check out these jobs in banking, healthcare, telco, government, etc. It doesn’t have to be a forever home, but it can serve as a solid bridge job if needed.

• There was tons of overhiring across the board during the c19 era. People increasing tech headcount 50%. That was never going to last. IMO this is just a correction and things will get back to normal (as in pre c19, hiring trends from 2014-2019) not too long from now.

Question Six: What’s the hardest role you’ve ever filled? That you never did?

Hardest role by far: OneShield Dragon Developer. Yea…I know how it sounds. This was with a new client, and I honestly started laughing during the qualification call because I thought they were messing with us. But turns out, it’s in fact real. It’s a super specific insurance product. If you’ve heard of Guidewire, it’s something similar to that.

Never did: SalesForce Developers. These roles are the bain of my existence. I refuse to work these roles anymore. I’ll tell you what, if you want to make a ton of money as a candidate & always have a job, become one of these. There are very few of them in the US that true & genuine experience.

Question Seven: Do you guys deal with fake candidates also? Fraudulent experience? Or am I the only one?

This question is amazing. Honestly, this is not talked about enough. I just marked this one down for a future thread & newsletter.

I’d shout this person out but they wanted to remain anon.

Yes, “fake” candidates exist. I can go on and on about them, but I’ll try to keep this short. These candidates mostly exist in the contracting world, you won’t have to worry too much about them in the FTE side.

Essentially, you’ll just get people that literally lie about their experience. They say they worked at X company as Y skillset. But they never did. They’ll prepare hard as hell for an interview, and since (at least before all these layoffs) the supply was so far out from the demand, they could still pass interviews.

Here are some brief scenarios of “fake” candidates:

• Someone that only has 1-2 years of experience, but lists out 5-6 years. The years 3-6 is fraudulent/made up completely.

• They have multiple skillset resumes on job boards. It’s one thing to list yourself as a backend developer vs full stack. It’s another thing to list yourself as a java developer on one end, then a release train engineer on another.

• They get “proxys” to interview for them. Imagine you’re the candidate, you land an interview request based off your resume. These days, everything is virtual. You show up for the call online, but I login via remote desktop and try to answer the questions for you.

• Bait & switches: as silly as it sounds, people actually try to do this. You take the interview, but I show up for the job

Question 8: Why did you start this account? Why are you anonymous?

I started this account for a few reasons. I wanted to become a better writer & organize my thoughts. While I’m a strong individual producer, within the next 10 years I’m looking to make my way into management. Becoming a better writer with less words is a game changer in recruiting. Being able to communicate clearly & concisely to candidates, managers, and coworkers gives you an edge. Plus, I wanted to journal my thoughts and organize them to see how they sound, and I use this as advice to give back to candidates at my day job and with my coworkers.

I originally did this on a word document internally, but then realized, why not make a twitter account doing it? This way I can reach more people and help those jobseekers that I’m not directly using during my day job.

In terms of staying anon, I’m an introvert at heart. Didn’t really want the true attention to my real-life account. Plus, as a anon account, I can give more candid info to you guys IMO.

Question 9: If a client asked you to find them a software engineer, how specific do they get with the job title? And in that case, would you hop on LinkedIn Recruiter to search for that particular job type or just the skills?

Titles aren’t as important as skills, roles & responsibilities when qualifying a role and running a search.

Let’s take a Java Developer for example. You simply call it a Java Developer (what I prefer). But depending on the client, they can be called Software Engineer, Software Developer, Application Engineer, Systems Engineer, Application Architect, Technical Advisor, Technical Officer, and on and on.

Yes, some of these titles have nothing to do with development in them, yet I’ve received titles like these before and it is a java developer at the end of the day.

So after I qualify the role, then I run the search mostly based off skills. But if the client for example calls it a Application Engineer, I’m not running a search based off that title. I’d run a title search based off Java Developer if that makes sense.

When it comes to finding a candidate & pitching a role, in my message to them I’d call it a java developer, but when I speak to them on the phone I’d let them know they’re calling it X title and refer to it in my confirmation emails to them.