So welcome back to the Career Hacking Village. One thing that's always interesting in our
community is that we tend to think that recruiters are evil and they're not human
and they don't know what they're talking about. So I decided to bring a few of my friends together
for some drinks and we're going to talk about finding jobs in this community and also just sort
of what is the human side of a recruiter. So I'm going to start off. You guys can't see the
gallery screen because I'm just going to keep the speaker view but pass it on over to everyone. I'm
going to have my friend Pete with his Iron Maiden shirt on to tell me about what he recruits for
and what he's drinking. Yeah, thanks. So I'm Pete. I am a senior recruiter at AWS.
Most of what I focus on there is primarily high-level architecture for distributed systems,
software as a service, anything that has to do with the cloud that's not the kind of pure
infrastructure side of the house. And I am drinking, as always, at about this time on Fridays,
a Manhattan with an extra splash of cherry juice, which is sort of my signature exclamation point
on my drink. Sounds great. And I'm going to invite our Southern Belle, Rachel Bozeman,
to share with us what she's doing and what she's drinking. Absolutely. So I get to help manage our
talent acquisition program. So we support at CenturyLink. We're hiring everything from finance
into the nitty-gritty. You name it, we're probably hiring for it. So I am drinking a red wine. One,
because they say it's good for your heart. And two, because I'm normally a redhead,
and I just feel like it's a good vibe. So cheers.
And next we have Matt Duran, who has been my B-Sides buddy for seven, eight years now. He was
the only person I knew at a B-Sides. It took me under his wing and made sure that no one accosted
me at my first B-Sides Las Vegas. We've been the bane of each other's existence and good friends
ever since. So Matt, what do you recruit for and what are you drinking? Well, not only that,
I just wanted to make sure you didn't get kicked out because they thought you were going to arrest
them because you were a cop. You look like an undercover cop. One of these things just doesn't
belong, right? No, I'm kidding. Everything belongs at B-Sides and in this community. So
thanks for having me. My name is Matt Duran. I'm a Senior Manager of Talent Acquisition at
Tenable. And I also handle a lot of our employment branding and recruitment marketing type stuff too.
But things that I recruit on or my team recruits for is everything from our platform software
engineers, so cloud-based stuff, but also on-prem, building on-prem devices. If you've ever heard of
Nessus, we build that security center and things like that. Also our researchers, our zero-day
stuff, our plug-in writers, things of that nature, back office IT, even our technical support team as
well, just to name a few things. And I am drinking out of my Star Wars glass there. It's a little
Death Star. I'm drinking an old Forrester 1910. It's a very good one. Why I chose that one is
it's affordable and it's not an everyday drinker, but it tastes good, neat, and that's how I take
my whiskey. So that's me. And that's one thing that I have yet to do is learn how to drink whiskey,
even though everyone around me drinks whiskey. So when I was at that first B-Sides Las Vegas,
first Hacker Summer Camp about seven, eight years ago, ten years ago, someone said earlier today
that was ten years ago, and I know that wasn't the case. I met this guy with this really cool accent
and I invited him to come and be on a panel along with Matt. So Chris Rides, thank you for being on
the journey with me throughout all of the B-Sides. What are you recruiting for and what are you
drinking? Thanks Kathleen. So I've got a cyber security staff in a professional services company,
Tyro Security. So we staff just cyber security. So I've got a team of people and they focus only in
that area. In terms of what I'm drinking, you guys were talking about whiskey. I was this close
to grabbing, I like Woodford Reserve is my go-to bourbon and I was this close to going for a nice
Woodford. But then it was so sunny out here and I thought I'd do this on my balcony that I went
down to the farmer's market this morning and got this amazing blood orange juice. Goes great with
some vodka. That sounds fancy. Goes with that whole decor in the background there, man. It does,
doesn't it, right? You're in a cabana somewhere in Hawaii, don't lie to us. I wish, I really wish.
You need an umbrella in there to really just set it off. Yeah, and a cherry on top or something.
Yeah, well, he's trying to still sort of do the bachelor thing, even though he's a new dad. So
I'm going to give him grief about trying to do all that. And me, I'm drinking my red wine. I'm
drinking it out of my crystal glasses from a little crystal blower up in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
I have a family run. They went out of business and then a woman came along and said, this needs to
be saved. So I am very proud to drink from her glasses. Anyways, so we're all drinking. We're
all having a good time. We're all human beings. I'm going to throw a question out that no one's
been prepared for. So Matt, how has recruiting changed since the pandemic came around?
Wow. So I think there's a few things. One, I think the pool got a little bit bigger, right?
I mean, the Canada pool and the ability to reach out to somebody and have them respond to that
fairly quickly. But I think a lot of the companies out there that, you know, like a LinkedIn or
something, they've allowed you to put that open to work on your profile. So it's not as hidden
as it once was. It's plain as day right there on the screen and allows folks to know who's really
looking. And a second thing, and hopefully I'm not taking somebody else's answer, is I think the
understanding of why somebody was let go and no longer working, it's kind of hard to argue these
days. In the past, it's always been a bit of a red mark on somebody. You were laid off, so you had
to have been on the lower echelon of the team. I think that's kind of been myth-busting.
So Rachel, for a big firm like CenturyLink, you know, obviously you were always ramping up for
projects and stuff. What's going on now for you? Are you slowing down or ramping up?
A little bit of both in there. And I would agree with what Matt shared. I mean, the pools have
gotten bigger, but I've definitely had to seek some guidance and some help. My feelings have
been a little hurt as of late. So while the pools are bigger, we're getting ghosted a lot as well.
So we've seen an uptick of folks that are applying with really no intent to follow through. So we've
been trying to make a lot of friends that really don't want to be friends. So it's added that
complexity of just trying to really find the ones that are genuinely looking for work and
not just applying just because it's the Vogue thing to do. So... And Pete, you've got, you know,
a lot of ramping up going on with AWS and Amazon and... Everybody needs the cloud.
Everyone needs the cloud. So, you know, how have you changed your strategies
and what are you seeing different in the field right now?
Yeah. So my search strategy has completely changed. There are no more city parameters
on my searches. It's wherever I can find a good engineer at that level, I'm going to continue to
do that. But I think that the most market thing I've seen is, and I've been banging the drum for
10 years on this, that it's an engineering gig. Have code, we'll travel. You do not need to sit
next to 10 people in an office to write fantastic code. And it's taken a global pandemic for people
to go, oh my gosh, this code's still good, even though this person wrote it in their basement
wearing their pajamas. We have finally started to come around to the fact this is going to be
a tipping point, I think, of companies saying, you know what? We actually can have remote workers.
Maybe you can be a little more competitive on pay when you're not spending it on
buildings to house all these people.
So Chris, what's going on for you? So you're a little different. You're
helping companies, you're supporting as a service. What's going on in the staffing firms these days?
Yeah, it's been interesting. I think initially there was, specifically within cybersecurity,
an assumption with some companies that the pool was going to get much bigger and that the skills
gap was almost going to be bridged. And I think what they've realized is the areas and the
industries that were really affected, like the airlines, the cruise lines, people that did make
big layoffs and had to lay off their cybersecurity people, they got snapped up really quickly and
they were in huge demand, multiple offers. And so we've actually built a lot more new clients. We've
had a lot of new clients come to us asking us to help them fill their positions. The thing we're
seeing is some companies are really struggling with... it's taking them time to get their interview
process down remotely. It's taking them time worrying about how are we going to... all of a
sudden we're going to have to onboard some of these people and how are we going to onboard them?
And so it's almost like slowing down a lot of the parts of the process. So it's been an
interesting change. The demand is still there and candidates are... I think Rachel talks about
ghosting, that the candidates are in this strange situation where they might see a few people leave
and they start getting worried. So they start talking and then they don't want to... they're
worried about moving and being the last person in, you know, and the first person out if something
changes. So it's a bit of an unknown. It's still a strange situation at the moment.
Great. So one of the things that we wanted to share is sort of the back-end irreverence, the
worst case scenarios that, you know, a lot of us have seen when we've been talking to job seekers.
And one of the panelists submitted this question. What is the worst email address you have ever
seen? Chris? Oh boy, I can't believe you came to me first. I was trying to think... I was trying
to think of a specific one. I've seen ones with political references in them and religious
references in them, neither of which I think is particularly good when you're applying to jobs
and using that email address. I don't think I've seen anything... I don't think I've got any funny
email stories. Of all the stories I've got, I don't think I've got any funny email ones, to be honest.
I don't think... I can't think of any in particular. Maybe talk to the others and I'll continue to
think a little bit about that. So the one that I've seen a lot is my spam folder.
I've seen those, yeah. I've seen that one. So Rachel, have you seen any funny...
I do work in the South, so if we do one thing well, it's let's screw up email addresses.
And so this particular one, and I remember it so clearly because I took pictures of it and sent it
to everybody I knew, thinking who in the Hades would send this out, but it was Igetdown69
at gmail.com. Super classy, and they're free, so please create a free one. You know, Yahoo,
Ymail, Gmail. I mean, go big, but don't... yeah, don't get down on your resume with an email.
It still lives in infamy. I'm gonna borrow your story. Your story's not my story.
Yeah, absolutely. But I get a lot of big mamas, hot mamas, sexy lady, you know, a lot of those
where I'm like, again, they're free. You can just do firstname.lastname at Gmail. It's free,
it's free all day, every day. And in that case, you don't have to be, you know,
whatever that was, 69-1 or 69-2. So if I see it, I know you've attended and we'll talk.
I get down 69.job search.
You said it was okay to share that story, right?
Yeah. That'll probably be the tamest story that conference sees.
I didn't want to break the ice too bad.
So Pete, you got one?
Oh, yeah. I will never forget one of the last agency resumes I got when I was still on the
agency side of the house was captainbrowneyeatyahoo.com. I will never, for as many
days as I'm left on this planet, I will never forget that email address.
I'm a little jealous that I can't steal it for my own personal use,
but it was pretty great to see on a resume.
So Chris, I'm going to say, I don't think you can pass these up. Can you?
No chance. These are my stories. I'm taking these now. I'm sorry.
You're going to become like, I'm going to be on one of these and they're going to say,
have you got an email address? And I'll say, actually somebody I know. And that'll be you guys.
Yep.
Let me write that down. Captainbrowneyeatyahoo.com.
It may have been an excite.com domain, so it's probably available again.
Juno.
Juno. Myspace. Maybe that's still around. I don't know. So another great question that we had was,
what is the weirdest LinkedIn request for connections that you've ever got? So Pete.
That's a good question. I don't know that the message itself was weird, but I was a little
taken aback to get a message where the profile picture was like on a beach in a bikini. It
wasn't a complaint, but it just was a little shocking that that was the LinkedIn. I expect
that on Twitter. I expect it on Instagram. I expect it on Facebook or whatever, but LinkedIn
was a little bit of a unique place to get it. I mean, it turned out to be an extraordinarily
qualified candidate who just really chose poorly for their picture.
Chris, do you have any interesting ones?
This literally happened a month and a half ago. I actually had somebody try to connect with me,
and when I looked at their profile, they were working for my company.
My company is pretty small. So they'd set up a fake profile and were working for
Tyro Security. And so I sent them a message saying, congratulations on getting a job.
I hadn't even realized that normally I'm involved in that process.
And the person actually replied back. They replied back saying like laughing and basically
just telling me that worth a try or something like that. And then I bet you can't guess who I am.
So then now I'm thinking it's one of my friends or somebody sort of having a joke,
but that was probably the weirdest one. They changed their profile. I tried to report them
and I reported them and they just changed their profile to say that they were working for Amazon
after that. I guess it's easier to hide at least, right? When you've got that many employees.
Yeah. The fake employees is great. We have three janitors in India. So that's always interesting.
And I think we've got a window washer in the Ukraine and we've filed the complaints for a
long time, but hey. Wow. You have the cleanest offices ever.
Yeah. Especially since we've been remote for 20 years. That's very interesting. They obviously
haven't done their OSINT enough. With that kind of staff though, you could be cleanjobs.net.
Oh, I see what you did there.
7.30 is different from the 9.30. Try the veal tippy waitress.
So Matt, what is the weirdest one you've gotten?
Can I change the question a little bit? And the weirdest one I've sent?
Oh, sure.
I sent one to myself one time.
I'm not sure if I feel sad for you or if I want to know about the story.
I found my picture on a profile. And so I sent through. It wasn't my name. It was just my picture,
which I thought was weird.
It's an impressive beard though. I mean, let's be honest.
It was before that. This was like six months ago. No, I'm kidding.
No, this was a long time ago. And I wasn't even working at Tenenbaum at the time.
And I found my own picture on a profile and I just sent a connection request to it.
I said, you're a good looking guy.
Brilliant.
I don't think they ever responded, but I just thought it was funny.
It'd be great if you could send that request now with your beard to you without your beard.
Yes.
There's like a weird Back to the Future reference there somewhere.
Well, considering that, that I've known you since your beard was this long.
That was back when you worked with the, what was it? That little crocodile thing?
It was the gecko.
That was when my hair was this long. It didn't happen here. It was this long here.
And I hadn't had the beard yet.
Yep. Yep. Yep. You had that. Anyway.
So Rachel, this was your question. What was the weirdest LinkedIn request you got?
So it started out, we'll take you through the journey. It started out genuine request about a
job turned into, can I meet you at the bar at 7pm? And it just, it got creepy real quick, real fast.
Needless to say, didn't get a job. Didn't get a date.
That never happens to me.
No?
Nope. I know it's shocking.
Use Matt's profile picture. I think it's working out for everybody.
Clearly.
I thought I'd got lucky when I got a, I got a request from, it looked like it was Baby Spice.
I was like, no way. She looked just like she did when she was there.
And it turned out it was, and this, Pete, you're going to find this amusing.
I put a post on LinkedIn about it because it was Baby Spice's picture.
It was a male name and they were working at Amazon. Sorry, no, they were working at Microsoft on AWS.
Amazing.
Which is really, I mean, it's a good gig if you can get it.
Yep.
That's probably a little harder to explain than like developing in Java and .NET at the same time.
I imagine mixing clouds is, I don't know.
Yeah. I can't imagine. I mean, I'm sure that they're probably
messing around with AWS as much as they can, but I don't think officially they've got a department,
but you know, maybe they do.
Well, the weirdest, the weirdest requests I get, and it's just, it's just really sad,
but people drop their entire resume in a LinkedIn request to me.
And I'm seeing some head noddings, you know, like here, here's my resume.
I'm like, sorry, not the best approach.
You definitely need to look at someone's profile and find out what they are.
99.9% of the community thinks that I'm a recruiter.
I'm not.
I will tell you how bad your resume is, but please don't drop your resume in, you know, in there.
So I really like this question that, again, Rachel put together,
because I didn't think people gave gifts after an interview.
So it must be something in the South.
So Rachel, tell us about your weird gifts.
Southern hospitality. Come on, friends.
So this, again, maybe it's just me.
I don't know what I'm doing wrong in life, but the one that I remember so clearly,
I had everyone, you know, I had just left my office and come back in.
And everyone's like, have you seen it yet?
Have you seen it yet?
And I couldn't imagine what I hadn't seen yet.
Only to find out I had a whip put on my desk with a note that said, hope you call me daddy.
Wow.
Yeah.
Yep.
And it was an internal employee who then I had to fire for this afterwards,
who had interviewed for a job.
So it's still... and I kept the whip for years in my office.
And then it became kind of a weird thing in HR, like with a whip.
But it was just always a reminder of things not to do and things not to give.
So thank you notes, super great.
Whips, not so cool.
So just, you know, not a great thing to leave a recruiter.
It's just, it didn't work out for anybody.
New rule on this panel.
Rachel goes last.
Don't invite Rachel.
No, no, no, no, no.
She goes last every time.
Yeah, she has to clean up for us.
The rest of us sound like shit after that.
Oh, too funny.
I'm sorry.
I'm finishing that question right now, because no one is going to be able to beat that one.
No one, no one.
I am disappointed.
I thought somebody else was going to have it.
Maybe I'm doing something completely wrong.
All very right.
Sounds like you're doing something very right to me.
Okay, so new question.
Yeah, well, at least they didn't give you a poll or something, you know.
Well, you didn't, you haven't got to that question yet.
Just kidding.
Move on.
We're only halfway through.
Hey, I know Meg is going to miss the fact that she was not part of this.
So one of our panelists have put in a question.
What is the worst recruiter pickup line you've seen a recruiter use?
I'm going to you, Chris.
Oh my goodness.
Let's come to me first.
Yeah.
Well, I feel like...
And when you say recruiter pickup line, what do you mean, Pete?
Sorry for clarification.
Yeah, like, I guess the, like, what's their initial outreach email
and potentially subject line, yeah, their hook line.
Well, I guess being an external agency, like, I mean,
we're normally going out to them most of the time, right?
We do get them to come in to us.
I don't think we really get, we don't get really that many, you know,
because we're the agency, right?
They're always wanting to, for us, we're going out to them.
So they're usually just replying.
So I haven't got, oh my goodness, a lot of terrible questions.
I'm going to say to you, Catherine, you have to stop coming to me first.
Maybe I take inspiration from everybody else's amazing stories.
Well, at least we're starting to flesh out the order of who should answer the questions, right?
Rachel's going to go last.
Rachel last.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah.
I need more vodka.
Chris, you know, so many other agencies.
Come on, you've got to have seen a really bad subject line out there.
Um, I'll tell you, okay.
I'll tell you a subject line, an outgoing one.
So I'm going to slightly change the story.
And it's a completely true story.
It's the company I worked for before this.
And it was somebody in their London office.
And they used to get a good candidate in and mail them out.
And they had a candidate.
And again, diversity wise, you know, it was a tech IT.
We don't get many women in IT.
And we used to have like really, really high ratios.
If you had a good female candidate, you knew you were going to place them.
And so everybody was really pushed to get their resume and get them out the door.
Now, you'd hope people would do that respectfully.
One of the consultants sent out an email.
And it was, the lady's name was Debbie.
And she was a desktop support candidate.
And the entitled the email outgoing, Debbie does desktop.
Yeah.
Final written warning for that one.
That may be a dated reference.
I don't know.
I don't know how many people under the age of, I don't know, maybe 30 or...
Yeah, watch it, Matt.
Watch it.
Yeah.
Matt, I'm going to go to you.
Any, any good sort of pickup lines, subject headers?
I'm going to disappoint you on this one.
I don't, I don't have one.
I haven't, I haven't heard of one.
I know there's, there's a bunch out there.
And I couldn't think of anything before we got on here.
But I would, I would say anything in all caps is probably the worst thing ever.
If we're going to get real about advice, if that's what we're here for,
all caps, something is, is, is just bad.
I've gotten a couple of those and it's, I don't know.
It's odd.
I don't like it.
So I wish I had a better story for you, but I don't.
Going to go to Pete.
Get me a job now.
Yeah, I, I get a lot of those.
I am job.
So that's the worst.
So Pete, and then we're going to have Rachel wrap it up with what is the best pickup line.
So Pete.
So the best one that I can think of is one that I got from an agency when I was working,
one of my old companies when I had first gone to the corporate side of things.
It was from an agency and it was, I want to be inside you,
was the subject line, dot, dot, dot.
And then I opened the email because of course it couldn't open the email and it said,
dot, dot, dot.
It had an R, headquarters, walking my employee in for their first day.
So what the message really was, I want to be in your headquarters, walking in my employee
for their first day.
And I was like, oh, but the subject line was just, I want to be inside you.
I was a little disappointed when I opened it up.
I was really hoping for something a little bit better.
But again, I clearly, I don't get all these really good ones that some of you guys get.
Okay, Rachel.
Well, first I'm judging.
So let me get off my judgment seat that Pete opened that email.
And second...
You obviously don't know Pete that well.
I was behind the safety and solitude of a VPN at the time.
There you go.
Okay, you were safe.
Well, then my judgment is, I will postpone my judgment for later.
No, I don't really have, I'm kind of with Matt.
I don't have anything fantastic.
You know, do you come here often?
I mean, I don't really hear too many of that.
I mean, I haven't seen any just other ones that just convince you,
oh, I'm so sorry about your loss.
You open it up and it's how can we help you fill it, you know, or things like that.
But nothing just fantastic.
So I'm sorry.
I am probably going to be demoted to like third in line now.
No, that whip story is going to carry you all the way through.
I wish I still had it.
Well, that's another story.
Okay, next question.
What is the worst excuse you've heard for missing an interview?
Who wants to go first?
I mean, that was my question.
So it'd be really easy for me.
It's one of the few ones I can go first on.
I've got an answer.
I've got an answer.
I should have really.
Probably two of them.
One person we rang and rang.
They just didn't turn up for their interview.
Rung them to confirm before, like in the morning.
Didn't answer us.
Rung them again.
Warned the client we haven't managed to get hold of them.
They might not be able to.
They might not be turning up, but we spoke to them yesterday.
Fine.
Got a phone call in from the candidate's brother saying,
unfortunately, he'd passed away.
Then a week and a half later, that candidate's resume was applying for another job.
And somebody spoke to them and it was the same candidate.
He'd resurrected.
His name wasn't Jesus, but he's resurrected himself in a week and a half
and was denying all knowledge of having an interview.
It was such a weird conversation.
We had the resurrected candidate and then also did have a candidate who didn't miss the interview.
And I will say these date back quite a bit.
So I feel like I'm dealing with more professional people nowadays.
He celebrated his last day as a company.
He had an interview the next day.
Couldn't get hold of him in the morning.
And then he rang us back an hour before his interview and said,
Oh, I'm really sorry.
I had too much to drink last night.
I'm running a bit late, but I am going to make it.
And I will make it on time.
Is there any way you could tell the client I'm a bit disheveled because I'm in last night's suit?
So he said it was my last day.
And I was like, no, honestly, we can delay it.
We can delay it.
We can do something about it.
No, no, I don't want to miss out now.
I really want to go.
And I said, is there anything else we need to tell them?
And he said, yeah.
So I've got a little bit of claret, as we call it.
It isn't wine in England.
I've got some claret down my suit, is what he said.
He would actually spend the night in the jail for drunken disorderly.
And he'd cut himself and he had blood all over his suit.
And he was trying to convince us he still wanted to go to the interview.
We needlessly didn't go ahead.
We pulled that one back and changed it.
We gotta admire his determination, though.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, he wasn't going to drop out.
I mean, he really wanted the job.
Yeah.
So Pete, worst excuse?
So I want to curveball a little here.
Like, this person didn't miss the interview.
They made it to the interview.
It was during college recruiting season.
And they had come in late the night before and had gotten there.
And so they didn't get a chance to eat and came in in the morning.
And they sat down for the interview and was clearly having some discomfort partway through
the interview and visibly squirming in the seat, not really able to maintain their composure.
Started to sweat a bit and realized that, like, there was going to be an incident relatively
soon if we didn't do something.
So that poor person, it turns out, picked up some Taco Bell for breakfast on the way in that day.
And on the way making it to the Fortress of Solitude, if you will, where they would have
been safe to do their business, unfortunately didn't quite make it to the room where you do
that first and had a little bit of an accident all the way down the hallway leading up to the
bathroom.
Wow.
Was so disheveled in there and the clothes were so ruined that they couldn't leave the bathroom.
And what ended up happening is that he had to call out for help so that somebody could hear
him in the bathroom, which ended up, long story short, because this could go on for hours. You
could actually find it on Reddit. You called out, wound up, long story short, our CTO
had to go and go to the Gap and buy him new pants so that he could come out of the bathroom.
He came out of the bathroom and out of sheer nicety, they said,
do you want to finish the interview? And he's like, no, I'm pretty sure I'm not getting this job.
Or would ever take it if you got it.
Even if you get offered, are you going to take it?
Yeah, but you can find it on Reddit. It was an amazing story.
Okay. Does anyone want to top that or at least equal that?
No, but there's one I want to share. I want to share one that we had and it's in the same guys.
It was not because they missed the interview.
They didn't even get... where I used to work, we used to do a recruiter, just a pre-interview
discussion, you know, 20 minutes just to get them prepped, get them ready for who they're going to
meet. And this didn't happen to me, it happened to a coworker. Again, college recruiting. So
young folks, please, please know what you're doing and how to accept bad news.
Um, she showed up with, yeah, this was kind of early 2000s, but it looked like she came right
out of like a grunge band concert, right? Just the red flannel shirt tied up around, you know, and
it's like, all right, that's, we'll talk to you a little bit. But we did, she ended up,
we ended up not letting her go any further, right? We were like, look, you're not ready for this.
I think you've, you need to learn a little bit about interviewing and being ready for interviews.
This is not the job at, you know, Walmart or whatever. She said, okay, well, I appreciate that.
Can I drop off some flyers for my band? We're playing up the street in a couple of weeks. I'm
like, and she left the whole stack of flyers with us for her band. Like, it's the weirdest thing we
ever saw. It's not, it's not poop down the hall. Sorry, Pete, but... I don't have crap either,
but I do have blood. I mean, I had, I have blood. Does that count? Okay, good. You gotta share that, Rachel.
She beat her ex-husband with a golf club because found him with another woman, ended up in jail
and called from jail her one phone call to let me know she was going to be late,
but she would be bailed out. Wow. So the moral of the stories here is that if you go to jail,
you clearly want the job. Absolutely. And you make sure you have your recruiter's number
as your only phone call. Just saying. Yeah. That is the number one, like, moral of that story.
And she didn't, she didn't get the job. Oh, come on! Wasted phone call. You know, in my head, I'm like,
oh, please, Lord, don't make her get out of jail. She forgot. She only had one phone call. She was
supposed to be calling to get her bail. Thank you. And then she was stuck. Thank you. It was,
it was a precious moment. Needless to say, this is another candidate that I followed
in the news and continued to beat her husband. So great story. Welcome to Louisiana.
Got to have a passport.
I knew Rachel would be a great addition to this team. Yes. So, okay, I'm going to move on to our
next question, which is what is the worst interview faux pas you have ever seen? Rachel, I'm going to
kick it off with you so that you set the standard for everyone else. Well, I am afraid I am going to
set this bar low, but I'm going to try real hard. Probably the one that sticks out so much in my
mind was an interview that I was participating in, and the gentleman was angry at life. He was angry
that he woke up in the morning. He was angry that he drove his car to the interview. He was angry
about everything to the point where he was coming across the table at us with anger about everything.
At the end of the interview, he wanted to talk a lot about how much the job was going to pay
and everything else. We were like, we were fearing for our lives at this moment because there was a
threat against us if we didn't hire him, a threat against the company if we didn't hire him, and
everything else. But then he wanted to make sure that we were very clear on what his salary
expectations were and when could he start. So, that was probably the one that sticks out the
most was just the sheer anger talking about the things he wanted to do to his former employer and
how he was going to execute these things. I mean, very vivid conversations about
how that should have ended. So, we did have to call the police afterwards because there were
very visible threats against his previous employer, and I didn't want to walk out to my car by myself
that night. So, it was not a great time, and again, moral of the story, he didn't get the job.
So, Chris, any good ones to tell?
A couple of times we've had managers actually
interview people for the completely wrong job. So, we get this feedback and it doesn't
make any sense, and then we speak to them, and it has happened more than once, and then the
managers are like, oh, I interviewed them for this job, I got them mixed up with this other candidate,
so, I mean, dealing with that, the fallout of that, is absolutely no fun. I mean, it must be
the worst. Can you imagine, you're getting asked all these questions, and it's not even for your
job, you can't answer any of them, you're an expert in your field, and you're like, why are they even
asking me this? So, that's probably the biggest faux pas, and it hasn't happened just
once, unfortunately. Yeah, that's probably the most awkward one to deal with.
Pete? I think the weirdest thing I've seen happen in an interview that I sort of
shook my head at is, I was interviewing somebody, this is an experienced person, I mean,
a good solid 15, 20 years of experience, and he, I mean, I had noticed that he didn't have
any socks on with his suit, which is fine, man, like, Don Johnson did it, you do your thing, but
it, he took his shoes off in the middle of the interview, and like, put his, you know, leg up,
you know, crossed his legs, and I mean, I might have been okay with it if you'd had like a mani
pedi that day, but that was not the case, and it was not pleasant, and I actually had to stop
things, I'm all for your comfort, and your, you know, how you want to live, but you got to put
shoes back on, because we were in a, you know, nine by nine room, and it was, it was getting a
little raunchy in there. I'm just going to say, I was in the same boat, but the person was picking
their toenails. Yes, I had one of those. That was going to be one of my stories, I was going to ask,
I was going to ask if they picked their toenails while they did it. Yeah, go for it, Matt. No,
I won't go there, because he told the story, just changed the, crossed their legs to, to pick their
toenails the whole time, but so I'll, I'll, I'll do another one, and this is on a hiring manager side.
You know, I love it when hiring managers are real quick on, on getting that feedback back to us,
and, and, and when you got a hiring manager who knows how to use the applicant tracking system,
and, and knows what the buttons are, and what they do. I, I love that, all right, just, just for
all you hiring managers out there. I really appreciate when you, when you know how to use
the system. I just wish that you would wait more than 15 minutes after the interview,
and maybe even after the person's driven away from the building to reject them, and to know
that you can actually send the rejection yourself, because we had that happen, and the person
got the rejection letter. It was just a stupid, templated rejection letter, right? I'm like,
why would you do that? The person came back, because he hadn't even left the parking lot yet,
hadn't left the parking lot yet, and came back upstairs and asked to talk to me. I'm like,
um, yeah, it's like, uh, I just got this email from, from, you know, your system, and it says
I was rejected, but it was just, I had to sit there, and I hadn't even had a chance to debrief
with the person yet. I didn't even know what, I thought the guy came back, because he was,
you know, he forgot something, or, or, you know, whatever it was, and yeah, he wanted to know right
then and there why he was rejected, and I had to actually go find the manager, and find out
what the reasons were, and they weren't really good reasons either, so I had to kind of
figure out what it was that I could say to this person, and it really put me in a bad spot that
day. Nothing like tap dancing for somebody else's mistake. Yep. So we, we've talked a lot about
what candidates have done wrong. We've talked a little bit about sort of our, you know, processes
that might not go well. Just wanted to go around the room and sort of talk about, you know, the
other, as Matt was kicking off there, that the hiring managers, who are the people that sort of
do the final interviewing, what are some of the mistakes that you have seen them make?
Matt had a really good one. Rachel, Chris, Pete, who wants to kick off next?
You guys, you internal guys must have some good ones.
I mean, there's really good stuff to choose from.
Yeah, mine interviewing, yeah, I think just interviewing the people for the wrong jobs is
always like, that's always the worst, and the worst one I've had to deal with. Yeah, you got,
you internal guys must have some good ones, surely.
I definitely had a, yeah, I worked for, well, I work for a company, if I give too much details,
but it's not my current company, but I worked for a company where I had a candidate,
fairly senior level candidate, call me after the interview, like two hours after it was over,
and I said, okay, well, I don't have the feedback. And he's like, I don't care about the feedback.
He's like, I just have to ask you a question. So, okay, he's like, is it possible that,
insert hiring manager's name here, was drunk during my interview? I said, I'm not sure how
you mean, like, I, my mentality went, I'm not sure how you mean, it was 10 o'clock AM interview,
like, what do you mean? He's like, no, no, no, I come from a long line of alcoholics,
and I'm pretty sure I know what somebody who's been drinking looks like. And I'm like,
I said, well, yeah, me too, but like, it's 10 AM. And he said, no, about four weeks later,
we did let that hiring manager go, because apparently for weeks on end was showing up to
work drunk, and just masquerading through the day on that. So note to self, like, don't interview
people when you're drunk. We did not. Like, we won't be interviewing anybody right now,
is what you're saying? Yeah, hopefully not. No interviewing.
Got it. So Rachel, any good hiring manager?
You know, I love the ones that really want to pull back the layers and better understand the
candidate by asking questions about, so when are you due? And the person's not pregnant,
that was a super fun one. Or, you know, tell me more about why you can't work because of your
children, or all of the things that were like, you said what? You know, those are the ones that
stick out the most in my mind. And even sitting in with hiring managers on interviews, I'm always
taken back at the liberties, sometimes of just, well, I just, you know, I have it in my gut. And
I'm like, no, it's actually written down, you just need to read it. That's what we need your gut to
be. And so I think that's the piece that's always the most interesting for me is the gut
questions that come out. That completely puts you in a litigious spot in the spot where you're like,
we're just not making good decisions right now, friends. And so I think those are the ones that
stick out the most. But the one that was clearly not pregnant, and asked when she was due,
I had to deescalate that one. And that was not fun. So don't ever ask, even if you think don't,
don't ask. It's sound advice to make sure hiring managers know, like, don't type anything out that
you don't want to repeat in court. Thank you. But it does not stop at the hiring manager.
That's your entire interview team, because some of those people are staff level, you know,
software engineer, whatever level you are, because we... I say we, but this is before
tenable. Somebody was was diagnosing somebody, like mentally in their feedback evaluation form.
And it was in the record. In writing. Yeah.
What were you doing during that session?
Help me understand. That's the question that always comes up.
Help me understand what you were thinking when you wrote this down.
But can they code?
Right?
It's like crazy all day. Just gotta code.
So guys...
Bless their hearts.
Bless their souls. Bless their heart. I actually have the Garden and Gun,
Bless Your Heart trivia. So Rachel, we might have to play that.
Yeah, we're both drinking red wine. We're good kindred spirits here.
We're good there. So...
Guys, ladies, lady, we're done. You know, we've gotten to the end.
So I'm going to say I'm going to go around Robin. I'm going to have the lady go last.
But I want each one of you to give a top tip to the job seekers in the community
on what they need to do in their job search. So Chris, you're first.
Be honest.
Stand by the line. That's it.
Matt?
Just be honest.
Know what you're applying to. You know, there's a lot of CR applicants out there
that apply to every single job that a particular company wants.
I understand you want a job and you need a job.
Or you're trying to find something so you're not the last person in a sinking ship.
But apply to something that you know you can do most of the job with.
You have most of the skills to do the job.
And just be interested in it.
Pete?
Just have somebody... get a second set of eyeballs on your resume.
None of us are published writers to my knowledge.
So get a second, you know, set of eyes on your resume just to get it looked at
to make sure everything looks the way that it should.
It's hard to write a document like that and stare at it after a while
it all starts to look the same.
So, yeah, just, you know, once over I think is helpful.
And Rachel?
It's simple. We're going to spend a little bit of time looking at each resume.
When you put your pictures and there's colors and there's too many cutesy-tootsies on there,
we get lost.
So just keep it simple. Tell us what you can do and what we're applying for
and or what you're applying for and everyone's life is much simpler.
Well, I want to thank all of my friends, Pete, Rachel, Matt, and Chris for coming together on a
Friday night to have a few drinks and share that recruiters are humans too.
They want to be your best friends, want to be your advocates.
So take the time, reach out to a recruiter, make sure you have recruiters in your network
because they are the people that are going to advocate for you to find the next best job.
And remember that we have recruiters in resume review,
and we have people who are in career coaching that can help you.
So thank you everyone for coming to Career Hacking Village and have a great evening.
Cheers.
Thank you.