[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hi, everybody, and welcome to another episode of Amy Adler's how I hire. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of how I hire. This is Amy Adler. I am an executive resume writer, and I am so glad to be here on this episode with a longtime friend and sometimes employer whose name is Ranjan Bhattacharya. He is the owner and recruiter extraordinaire of Kendall Staffing. And we have a fabulous story to tell and a lot to learn from Ranjan about the way he recruits and the way he thinks about job search in general. So please, sir, welcome, Ranjan. I am once again so glad to have you on the show and to interact in this way because we have a really interesting origin story. [00:00:59] Speaker B: Thank you, Amy. It's good to be here. Yeah, thanks for setting this up, and I'm glad to help however I can. [00:01:04] Speaker A: Thanks. So this origin story started. We were just talking a few minutes ago, trying to remember, was it 2017 or something, when Ranjan was looking for recruiters to join his tech recruiting firm, Kendall Staffing. And being a resume writer, I thought this would be a really cool thing to test out. So I applied, and anyway, we wound up getting through all of that, and I wound up doing a little bit of work for him for the better part of a year. Not quite a year, I think. And we used to get on calls all the time and talk about strategy and talk about work and inevitably talk about literally everything else. So we've been doing this kind of conversation for seven years, maybe, so I'm glad to be doing it this time in a way that we can capture some of the really fun things that we've talked about. I am glad that we are doing this because I am sure it's going to be loads of fun, and our listeners will learn so much from somebody who is on the front lines of this every single day. [00:02:06] Speaker B: Thanks, Amy. And that's super flattering. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Hopefully I can live up to what you're saying, I guess. [00:02:15] Speaker A: I love your story about how you got into recruiting because the story of sort of your progression through your career was so interesting to me, especially at the time. And even up until now, I basically. [00:02:25] Speaker B: Did ROTC to pay for college. So after college, I did four years in the navy. Didn't know what I wanted to do before or after. So got an MBA, and I did management consulting. After my MBA, I actually worked at Bain, which is one of the top three firms in the space. It's where Mitt Romney actually, that's like the firm that he built pretty much. And I really didn't like it. And it's funny because I'm like 31 years old living in Australia. That's where I got my masters from. And I'm like, wow. Like, I really. This is like the dream, you know, like NBA Bain. Wow, amazing. And I really didn't like it. So my girlfriend at the time, she's australian, she wanted to move to the US. This is like 2008 or, sorry, 2010 or eleven. She wanted to move to the US and live in Arizona to buy cheap houses because she's all about flipping houses. So I'm like, okay, you know, I lived in Australia at this time for a few years, so I moved with her to Australia, to Phoenix. Didn't know what I wanted to do. Randomly fell into recruiting. But I loved it. It was like a visceral reaction of recruiting at the time is really cool. It's very much an intense environment. There's a lot of activity, it's exciting, it's fun, it's fast paced. If you've ever seen, if you've ever been in a recruiting firm, basically, there's like a. There's like a big area in the middle called the pit, and everyone just sits next to each other with no space around them. And people at the time were always on the phones, talking. There was this low murmur of activity. And when somebody makes a placement, they're like, yes. And everyone starts cheering. It was like a fun. It felt like a fun college atmosphere. And part of that's the reason is because a lot of the recruiters are, like, just out of college, right? It's like a very young industry in terms of who works there. But anyway, so that's how I started recruiting. Absolutely loved it. I worked for a firm called Aerotech, and within, like, early. Within, like, six months, like, very, very. Amy, I don't know if I ever told you this. Within six months, there was some political stuff with the company and I was just like, what? I can just do this? Like, I know what to do. I was one of the better recruiters there, so why not just do it on my own, you know? And so then I did. And I got lucky. Like, I got really lucky. One of my first big clients was Harvard. I signed them within, like, two or three months, like, very early on. Um, and then I signed Tripadvisor soon after that. And all of a sudden, it's very different if you're a recruiter working with Harvard, just starting out, versus, like, hey, I'm just starting out. I'm working with, you know, random companies like that. So we. We were successful pretty early. Um, and then after maybe two or three years, I was like, okay, time to build the company. And that's its own story as well. But part of the reason that. The only reason, actually, Amy and I met was because I was like, well, let me do it. This is before zoom, before remote. Let me do this fully remote. Before even Uber was around, let me do it fully remote. Let me hire people across the country. Pay them commission only, but pay them a lot of commission, and I think we could maybe get some good people. And the idea sounds good. And it turns out, Amy, you and I talked about this before, but Amy was by far the best employee. Not even. No one else was even close by far. So we can talk about how I hired on Craigslist if you want to, or whatever you want to talk about. But that's how I tried to build my company, by hiring remote people. There was a problem with that, obviously, in that recruit, it does take time to spin up. It probably takes maybe, like anything else, it takes maybe three, four months just to get good at things. And if you're part time commission only, you might not invest the time. And so that's what I found was happening, is people I was hiring weren't putting in enough time to see the reward, so they were all quitting pretty early. That has nothing to do with what, podcast, though. But that's the origin story. And now I run a recruiting firm. Been doing this since 2013. Yeah, that's where we are. [00:06:16] Speaker A: And you've had some pretty amazing clients along the way, some of which I was part of back in the day. But I know that you have your hand in bringing people into some of the biggest tech firms in the US, so. [00:06:30] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah, Amazon was our biggest client. Yep. Yeah, Amazon was our biggest client for a number of years after Covid. They sort of wound that stuff down. But, yeah, I mean, we've worked with all firms from. From small ten person startups to Amazon and everything in between. It's been a lot of fun. I mean, it's. It's one of those things I feel like if you. If you or anybody else, you know, if you. If you find something you really like to do, and it's not like it's some amazing thing. It's not like amazing all the time, but if you've worked somewhere else, you sort of know what a bad day feels like. And so if you've worked for me, you don't enjoy. Once you find something you do enjoy, and there's bad days in everything, of course. But, like, I would say, like, most of my days are at least eight out of ten. You get the bad day occasionally. But I found something I like to do, and that's, like, so important. So hopefully, depending who's listening to this, like, if you're still looking, like it is worth, it is worth the time spent to try to find an industry you really, really enjoy. [00:07:30] Speaker A: Well, and the part that recruiters play in as kind of the glue in making those marriages or arrangements happen, if you will, between job and companies, I think is so crucial. But if I could go back, I don't know if you remember telling me this story, because, again, to you out there listening, we have spent, I couldn't even count the number of hours of phone time we have just spent talking about, like, literally everything under the sun. It's been loads of fun. But anyway, Ranjan, you told me the story about how you figured out, like, kind of crack the code when you were at Aerotech and that you brought that model to Kendall staffing in terms of reaching out to people, strictly speaking, based on their LinkedIn profiles. And I know we're going to talk about other things, about sort of why interviewing is so crucial and how to interact with recruiters and that sort of thing. But if the first point of contact, just before we got on this call, because we were wondering, I looked the LinkedIn in mail messages are 1900 characters. My recollection is you were giving an entire story, an entire pitch about a job and why it was the greatest thing, you know, for somebody to consider out of the blue, based on profiles you found in 1900 characters, and that was somehow not the model, but you came up with this way that supported an entire business. [00:09:02] Speaker B: Yeah, I guess so. I haven't necessarily thought about that so much. Let me try to. That's true. What you're saying is true, and I guess so at the time. I mean, things have changed now, but at the time, nobody was using LinkedIn for recruiting, which is absurd, if you think about it, but every firm had their own proprietary networks. I'm sure the big ones still do. So, like, you know, the corn ferries and the, you know, hydrogen struggles will have their own proprietary databases, right? But LinkedIn is better. And because in those proprietary databases, someone has to update them. Somebody moves the job, their database won't get updated. So with LinkedIn, what's great about it is that every time somebody changes jobs, you update your own profile. You say, okay, I've changed jobs here. And you send a little message. Hey, thank you for my time, supervisor or whatever. And so anybody seeing your LinkedIn profile will see an accurate representation of what you've done. That is huge. That's so important. So I think everybody should have a free link in different. You can pay for stuff if you want. You know what? Most people don't have to pay for stuff. I mean, I do because I'm a recruiter, but most people should have a free LinkedIn and update it every time you change jobs, right? You don't have to put a post every week or anything like that, but somebody should be able to see your LinkedIn profile and then understand what you've done. And I think the other thing, too, is I feel like it's almost like a business card these days. That's how I think about it. And, Amy, we've never talked about it like this, but I think before my thought again, I'm born in 1980, but when I was starting out, everyone's like, oh, get the best business cards and make sure they're on fancy paper and all this stuff. But when I meet people and when I'm other people meet me at conferences. Again, it depends on how old you are. There is a generational gap in here. But you get your business card and I say, okay, cool. And then immediately, or at the end of the day, whenever I have time, I'll look at that LinkedIn profile, and then I'll get a sense of who they are and what they've done. So it is important to kind of make one. Make it pretty good. You don't have to spend that much time on it, but it should be accurately, uh, you know, it should accurately say what you've done. And Amy, to answer your question, that's a long winded way to do it. But basically what I, what I thought was, okay, I'm starting on my own. You know, I obviously, I don't know anybody, but everyone's on LinkedIn, so. Yeah, like, let me just send people cold messages on LinkedIn, and they're not that expensive, so if you're able to. Actually, I had one kind of point of contention with what you said. I don't, I actually don't try to make it sound like the job is the best job ever, if that makes sense. I tried to say, hey, here's what the job is. Here's what I understand from your LinkedIn profile. Here's why I think it might be a bit. Here are some problems, but if you want to learn more, just come talk to me. I spent a lot of time on those emails, somewhere between five and seven minutes. We can talk about this too, if you want to. Basically the idea is that if the person is interested in the job and I'll say who the company is, basic stuff about the job, then they're going to call me or not call me, but say, yeah, I'd like to talk. And then that becomes a much easier phone call to have instead of just calling somebody random out of the blue, like, hey, random person, I got this job for you. Like what? No, just like, hey, here's a job. If you're interested, write me back and then we'll set up a zoom. And that's how I do things. So I think everybody hires a little bit differently. But for me, I literally, like right now I'm looking for a couple people and I'm typing in keywords in the LinkedIn search and people are coming up and, you know, search might have, let's say, 150 people. I'll put in the parameters and I'll only reach out to maybe 40 or 50 because I think based on their profile, they might be interested. If their profile isn't updated, they're not interested. I'm not going to reach out to them, you know? Yeah. The whole business is around seeing a resume, reading a resume, and trying to find out if that person didn't have a job and then be accurate. Just be like, hey, you know, like, this is a job. If you want to do, if you want to talk about it, you can. And most people don't write back, but one out of every, let's say one out of every ten or 15 or so will write back. And then you have a strong connection and you could say, okay, you've built some trust. Cause they know you're not, like, you're not doing this for the wrong reasons. You know, you're in it for the right reasons. Does that make sense? That's a rambling answer. Sorry, Amy. [00:13:13] Speaker A: That's good. It's, you know, I'm having to sort of reach back into my, you know, memory to recall all of your teaching at the time. And this is definitely bringing up those lessons. But what I found interesting at the time and resume, so I think about resumes all the time. This is what I do literally every day. What I found fascinating about the process that you had instructed me in was that there largely were no resumes. And of course, we were talking about pretty elite, you know, tech experts. They were really specialized, you know, PhD levels sometimes and people who are doing just amazing things. And I think I was working on some startup company projects for you at the time that the resume never. I mean, I guess I saw them maybe eventually, but it was not the primary sort of decision making tool when we were sort of evaluating who to reach out to and who not to. And by the just footnote to everybody, I definitely got a lot of coaching. Didn't make a move in the very beginning without asking a thousand questions, probably much on tier dismay. But. But the LinkedIn profile became a substitute for people's resumes. And given the fact that the recruiter, I guess. I don't know if you have the full one. I think I was using recruiter lite at the time, which was really pool and has all these, you know, search functionalities and stuff. If the skills or the technologies or the expertise wasn't on LinkedIn, it frankly didn't exist, and there was no way to access it as a recruiter because resumes weren't even part of it. It wasn't like posting the job somewhere and having people apply. That just didn't happen. [00:15:11] Speaker B: Yes. And so I guess. Let me. Let me riff on this a little bit, because I think this might be what you were. People should know this. Okay. [00:15:19] Speaker A: This is my memory, so. [00:15:20] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, no, I mean, this is. We're doing this. We're doing this to help people. Right? So, like we said. Well, we were gonna talk anyway, so that's good. But, yeah, so I think. I think one thing that we didn't mention, because, again, just for context, like, Amy and I have known each other for years, right? So, like, that's hopefully. I mean, to me, it's not really feeling like a podcast, which is good. So thank you, Amy. But, yeah, I. The end company, until this January, I did almost all of my work in tech. And by tech, I mean very specifically software. And, like, one degree away from software. And there's some reasons I chose software that's not really relevant anymore. But in software specifically, at the time, and even now, still, no one really cares about the resume in software, right? Because in software, all that matters is, can you build code? So, in software, right, if you have a good resume or a bad resume, you see the person, hey, here's a coding challenge. Can you do it? Yes or no? And it's very obvious to see who can do it and who can't. So, in software specifically, the resume is not going to matter so much. And there's a couple issues like this. I'd say nursing is sort of the same, where there's such a shortage that you know, if you say, hey, I was the nurse at this hospital, every nurse pretty much has the same job. They know what you've done. You know, you probably want to put, you know, which hospital, how many patients you see, what the, you know, what the workflow is and this and that. But at a fundamental level, you know, if someone says, hey, I'm a nurse or a teacher, if I'm a teacher for a long time, everyone sort of has an idea of what you've done, you know? And so in that case, and, Amy, I know you do this for a living, so I'm sorry to say this, the LinkedIn can substitute for the resume and should. In most cases, it's the same thing, right? You're saying, what have I done? Instead of a resume, you have a LinkedIn profile. It should be very similar, especially in jobs where the competence can be evaluated in other ways. Now, here's the thing. If you have a different industry, like, say, project management or product management, then the resume will matter a little bit more. You're also going to have to have some sort of portfolio. But if you say, oh, I'm a project manager for a nonprofit, well, what did you actually do? No one knows. Right. It could have been a particular project regarding fundraising. It could have been some project related to, I don't know, like, if your nonprofit gives away free food, it could have been a project related to, like, talking to all the distributors and making sure all the. All the food's delivered in a certain place, that that particular job title has so much variation in it. So then, yeah, I'd say in that case, you definitely want to spend a lot of time on the resume. But I think for me, anyway, the. I guess the other thing, too, is at a very high level. Right. And this is something, Amy, I wanted to talk about this, but I'm not sure where. What will fit. Well, in the. As you. Yeah. As you can tell, like, we've done this many, many times before, but in the, um. In this case of recruiting. Right. And it's like the job stuff. Right. The whole idea is that as a recruiter, my job is to find the best person I can, given a time constraint. So usually they might have hired four or five recruiters. We're going head to head with other people. They probably have their own internal people looking. The company will have their own internal hr looking for people as well. So my job is to find the best person I can within a reasonable amount of time, if I see a LinkedIn profile or a resume or whatever, and it shows the skills I need that is so important. And I will send that person a message way faster than someone who I'm not sure about. So I think the LinkedIn profile, in a lot of ways, it definitely complements your resume. I would say, yeah, in some situations, it can replace their resume, but it's so important to have a good LinkedIn profile. I would say that, yeah, without a doubt. [00:19:09] Speaker A: Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead. [00:19:11] Speaker B: No, I was just saying that that's a long winded answer. [00:19:15] Speaker A: Oh, well, no, it's a good answer. Because if the purpose of, well, all of these episodes for how Ihir is to kind of get inside the process, I've often said that I'm a resume writer, so my job is to sort of interpret what hiring execs and what recruiters are hoping to see. But the best way to find out what people think who are doing those actual functions, is to ask them. So, you know, to get the insider's view. And the diversity of opinions that happen even within the industry, I think, is so crucial because we're all saying, and the moment, at this moment, and we're talking about May and 2024, the tech market has turned around, and job, job seekers are finding out in all sorts of weird ways that their roles are no longer, you know, no longer with the company and recruiters these days. I mean, there's been a whole downturn in all of these things. So knowing how to work the system and all the sort of the subplots, if you will, of all the different stories within the system is so important. So I appreciate that you're saying, here's how you do it. This is the way that you think about it. And it's very different from the way, say, an executive recruiter might be. Might be doing their role, as you say, because they might have internal networks or internal databases or whatever it is. And you're saying, my work has been such on the cutting edge in tech that there has been time to build up that kind of critical mass. So let's go to the source. [00:21:02] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. To that point, I think it's funny. Cause I think in a couple of ways, in some way, you wanna hear all the different opinions, and if someone has some crazy thing that they do that's successful, you wanna hear about that. But in most cases, I think if you hear something that everybody agrees with, that's probably right, because otherwise, like, nobody, like, we don't know each other that well, obviously. I mean, you and I know each other, but it's not like I know, all the other recruiters that well, but a lot of people will say the same thing. So I think, I think in terms of, you know, beating the system, it's your job seeking. Right now, the best way to beat the system is to kind of go, go outside of it. So, you know, and the economy will depend on which sector you're in. Like Amy, you said tech, tech has turned around. That's probably a good way to put it. It's not a disaster by any means, but I feel like software specifically, that's what I do. Most of my work in the. It has now become just any other industry. There's enough people working there. There's not as many jobs as there used to be. Everybody's worried about AI taking software developer jobs, and they should be, I think, I think maybe three, four years, the number of jobs available will decrease because you can have AI essentially do the work for you. So instead of having five software developers building something, you might have two software developers and a good AI and they can build something equally good. So I think the number of developers slots will go down. Obviously, more people are studying coding. So all that together. Tech is becoming just like any other industry. And it has never been this way as far as I've been working in the field since 2013, like in ten years. I mean, there was, there was that downturn for Covid, obviously, but it came back pretty much right after Covid, and now pretty much, I guess when the Microsoft and the Google start having layoffs as a consistent thing, which it seems like they might be, then you say, okay, and it's not that it's time to move on, but it's time to get smarter about how you have to look for jobs because you never had to look for a job before. But anyway, all that said, if you're looking for a job in whatever industry, I think everybody will agree. Everybody will agree that you have to know some or not you have to, but it helps to know someone in the organization. So what that means is, you know, if you're, if you're looking depending, you know, depending how old you are, you're looking for a role and you've done these sorts of things. If you have a friend in a hiring position somewhere, they can essentially get you into an interview, skipping kind of the HR, like gates, as it were. I don't know if that's the right word, but if you apply online to a job posting, a lot of other people are going to apply online too. It's being run through by an HR person who has so much to do that this is, like, so far down their priority list that maybe they miss your resume. Maybe they don't know how to read a resume. Maybe they pick someone else. Maybe they're scanning for keywords, all this sort of stuff. But if you know someone in the organization, you can be like, hey, hey, John. Like, you know, and even. It doesn't even necessarily matter how you know them, right? If you. Even if your kids play basketball on the same basketball team, something like this. Hey, I'm looking for a job. You work in. You work in Cisco. Are you guys hiring? That is how to get. That is how to beat the system, essentially. But how do you do that? It takes time, and it's mostly around building relationships. So there's two ways to do that, I think. One is to go out and get new relationships. So doing things like joining a tennis team or going to events and things like this, just getting out there, networking events or volunteering, nonprofit, these sorts of things. And then you meet people in those events, you go to the other way, and a lot of people have trouble with that. But if you just do it, it's actually kind of fun. Like joining a rotary club, for instance. That's not a bad way to spend a Saturday afternoon. And, like, you meet some good people, and who knows who might help you whenever, you know? But the other way that I think everybody can do that, not enough people do. And I personally have more fun doing it this way, is you call up your old friend that you're actually friends with, and you say, hey, I haven't talked to you in forever. What's up? And they're, hey, I haven't talked to you forever either. What's up? And then you start talking, like, for Amy. I mean, you and I, like, if you ever need anything, you can call me and I'll pick up your phone. You know? Like, that's how it works. So I think if anyone here is looking for a job, well, I mean, it's a multi step process, but if you're ready to interview now, one of the things that you probably want to do is call the people that you're actually friends with, not somebody who has to. If you're talking to somebody and then you have to say, oh, hey, it's Ron John. We met at this event two weeks ago. Hope you remember me. That's not actually a friend. Actually, think about who your friends are. Call them up, and just catch up, and one of them might have something. And after you do that for everyone that you're actually friends with a. It's good because it's good to talk to a friend you haven't talked to in however many years. But if they have something, they're going to help you out. Cause they know you, you know. So that's the first thing I would say about getting around the system. If you do want to apply online, something that you should know, and I think people in the industry know, but it's not really that much that talked. It's not talked about that much is that a lot of times companies will put dummy posts. So, Amy, do you know this? Actually, I don't know if you do. So if I see a job post on a company board and it's not specific enough, in most cases that job posting is just so that they can collect resumes, so that when a job opens up, they have a pipeline of people they may want to interview because it's so easy to be like, hey, I work for, I don't know, I work for Microsoft. At some point we're going to need engineers. Hey, here's a generalist posting for a Microsoft engineer, too. It'll say basic things like auditory and programming. Are you good with teams? Do you like to build great code? It'll be very basic things that are not specific. If they get, Microsoft is going to get 150 applicants, but there's no job. If the job actually opens up, when it opens up three or four months down the road, then they have people they can call, hey, you applied to Microsoft four months ago. Are you shouldn't interviewing? And I hope people haven't gotten that treatment, but I'm sure people have. And I think it's kind of dumb. But that is what I would say. I don't know. I'd say maybe like 20 or 30% of job postings are like that. They're not actual jobs. They're just trying, they're excusing for the company to get good people to apply so they can do less work when the job actually opens up, which is crazy. So the way to do it, if you can, is to kind of know somebody in the company and they'll kind of tell you who's hiring and when they're hiring and that sort of thing. [00:27:45] Speaker A: So I have heard that kind of scenario and thought it was, I don't know, like an old wives tale or a yemenite know, urban legend or I don't know what. But apparently you heard it here, folks. [00:28:02] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, most, most companies do that. Or, sorry, most big companies do that at some point. So I would say like, yeah, I think. I think even the jobs on the company websites, I think maybe 20% to 30% are just trying to say, hey, we might be hiring now. Let's put up a job board, see who applies, and then when the job is live, then they'll go back out to you. So if anybody, if any of the listeners have had that situation where you applied for a job and then, you know, you got a different job, and five months later they say, hey, we've reviewed your application. That's what that company did. And it's terrible. Like, you shouldn't treat people like that. But that's what happens, you know, what are you going to do? [00:28:40] Speaker A: Well, I think there's so much in the way of bad practice, I don't want to necessarily take the conversation this direction, but just if you read anything on LinkedIn, job seekers ghosting recruiters, recruiters ghosting job seekers, hiring managers not knowing what they really want, making recruiters crazy, which slows the whole process down, or making them go back to the drawing board. I think there's a lot of elements of the system that are broken, and I think resume writers are. I'm not going to leave them out. I think, well, that's a whole other, probably a whole other podcast for somebody else about why resume writers, how to evaluate a resume writer so you don't get sort of taken for a ride, but everybody should be coming together and understanding what the purpose of recruiting is and understand the role, if I can be really specific, understand the role of the recruiter in this entire process, because that's something people get wrong all the time. [00:29:36] Speaker B: You have other recruiters in there to kind of essentially, you know, grease the wheels a little bit, try to. Try to get things moved at an appropriate pace, that sort of thing. But your question is like, this is a misconception, actually, that I didn't know until I started recruiting for Aerotech in 2013, is when I was there, is that our job as a recruiter is to find the best person for our client who is the company. So this is like something that everybody should know. And I don't think. Probably not even five or 10% of the population knows this. It's like I'm paid, my bills are paid by the company. So when I find somebody, hopefully it's nobody good. And the reason that I. That I actually look at LinkedIn profiles and proactively send messages out instead of using job boards, I'd never use the job board, is because if I put up a job, a job out of the job board. I get so many applicants, and maybe some of them are good, maybe some of them are not good. Maybe if there's a good person, maybe if I miss them, then they're mad at me because they applied for the job. They never heard anything, you know, and so for me, I look for the best people and then I send them emails, and then when they write back, then I introduce them, and I've already seen their LinkedIn, I've already seen the resume, so I know that they're good on paper, at least, and I usually have a Zoom call with them, too. But my job as a recruiter is to find the best people for the job. It is not to find you, the job seeker, a good job, because it's actually very hard to do that, which you wouldn't think it would be. But if somebody say, you know, say somebody in finance who has a good background and works with very specific sorts of deals, which is pretty much everyone who's worked for any length of time, you have a specific skill set that narrows as you get older that is very valuable to a very small percentage of employers. So some employer out there will say, wow, we're doing the same thing. Like, great, please come on board. But it's hard to find that employer. It is so much easier from my side anyway, if the employer comes to, hey, look, we need this person. If you find this person, we're going to pay you a big chunk of cash and I can say, okay, cool, let me look for that specific person and then I can go to work. So think about it. If you're looking for a job, too, talk to recruiters. You're not going to lose anything. But I think for my job, I've been in the role for 2013. I've been doing this on my own. I think one time I was able to do that. I'm trying to think. I remember one person who I sort of did that for. He was looking, and I happen to have, and it was a five year journalist person. So he was a software engineer again during the, during the boom times, and good software engineer, been working for five years. So at that point, you don't have to be that specific. So he was looking, and so I was able to get him a couple interviews, but it's not a normal thing. So if you say, oh, I'm looking for a job, let me talk to every recruiter I know. Yeah, I mean, you can do that. But again, I would definitely, first, I would call all of your friends, because your friends will know the job that are that because they know you, right? They'll know the job that you will like. And maybe, you know, if it's in their company, they can really put in the good word. If your interview ends up being kind of mediocre, you might get the job anyway. [00:32:49] Speaker A: Well, having a sense of the etiquette overall is obviously so crucial. So friends out there listening, take this to heart that he's telling the truth. And, you know, recruiters will tell you this, resume writers will tell you this. Hopefully your friends who are in other roles will tell you the same. And it doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with your skillset. It just means that their skill set is a particular skill set that isn't necessarily attached to any individual job seekers capabilities until that person becomes a viable candidate. So making yourself that viable. I mean, now we're talking in circles, right? Because now we're back to LinkedIn and doing a really good job at your job. So you have these successes to report, to put on LinkedIn to talk about, to attract recruiters who then want to do exactly what he was just describing, what you were just describing around John, to bring the best talent to companies so that circle can be complete. [00:33:55] Speaker B: So one of the people, one of the firms I'm working with right now is a law firm. And, you know, they're one of the big law firms. And, you know, obviously, if it's a big law firm, they're looking for the best and the brightest and so on. And so they're looking for a very, I wouldn't say it's a specific skill set, but it's a very, it's a good skill set. They're looking for someone with a PhD in certain fields. Um, and so if this person, if you have a PhD and you haven't updated, your point, Amy, if you, if you have a, if you have a PhD with these certain skills and you haven't updated your LinkedIn profile, a real life example is maybe I saw your profile and I didn't reach out to you because I wasn't sure if you had the skills that they need. So it's extremely important, I think, especially for job seekers, to keep that thing updated. [00:34:44] Speaker A: For sure. And it's a never ending process because people engaged in whatever they do every day will continue to evolve. And so it's easy, I would think, to pull from, here's a big win that happened last week, that kind of a thing. And we encourage that all the time, keep track of those things, but to put those new skill sets both in the body of your LinkedIn profile. And in the skills section, just because of the way the LinkedIn algorithm works, make sure you're findable, that you are, in the best possible way, low hanging fruit. Not because you're mundane or boring or you do things that everybody else does, but be findable if you are in the. Even in a covert job search, you know, sort of on, in your non working hours, thinking about moving to another, another opportunity. Give the search algorithm all the stuff it's looking for so Randan and recruiters like him can find you. But, of course, him first, because my loyalties are unique in this case. But make sure that he can find you. Make sure that he can find you and that you're not hiding. You know, Barrett, what does it say? Burying the lead? You're not hiding what's most important for him to know about your skillset. [00:36:06] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's too like, I'm looking for you. It's kind of funny because it's such a crazy thing to think. It's such a weird job, if you think about it. Companies are trying to hire people, are trying to get jobs, and so why are there recruiters? It's because there's a lot of mismatch. It's almost like online dating, if anyone has done that recently. It's like you're looking for something, the other person is looking for something. And so in corporations, anyway, a lot of times will hire recruiters. But the thing is, like, I'm really looking for the best people. So put stuff on your resume and your LinkedIn profile to make me able to find it. And, yes, in the skill section for the algorithm, but also, it also has to be read by a person, too. But the reason it's so important. The reason it's so important is because I make my living by doing this. And so if I can consistently find good people for good companies, they're going to give me more work, you know, and they're going to be happy to do it because I'm finding them good people. So I'm very. As a recruiter, I'm very much incentivized, as a person who owns my own firm, I'm very much incentivized by that client relationship, which is only going to be good if I can find good people. And the only way I can find good people is if you out there, who are a good person, make it very obvious that you have the skills that I'm looking for, for the job. Does that make sense? I feel like that's an important thing that people should know. [00:37:25] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. The ecosystem, when it's in balance and everybody is doing well, the outcomes are universally good. So everybody, literally, it is the tide that raises all the boats. Everybody comes out of the, well, I don't want to call it transaction. The relationship, the experience elevated. Everybody comes out better. You have this great reputation that you continue to build. The job seeker has a new job, the hiring manager who doesn't want to be hiring, they just want to be doing the work. They get the person in there and heck, I get to cheer from the sidelines. So I just cheerleader all the way through. But it means that the system will perpetuate because it works with the people involved. And the individual job seeker changes or the hiring manager changes, the recruiter changes. Heck, I'm not going anywhere. I might be in this job for the next 40 years of my life. But if, even if the players change a little bit, the system continues to work because it's imbalanced for a reason. [00:38:29] Speaker B: Yeah. You know, we should, we should talk. We should talk about the interview process too, because I think that's so important as well. Let's talk from here. Yeah. Okay. So so far we've really been talking about, you know, how to, how to make your profile or not even how to make your profile, but it's like so important to make your profile good. Amy, obviously you do that for a living and I can vouch for your integrity. She's awesome. Amazing. You know, this is not a sales pitch, but like, she's pretty good. So if you're thinking about it, hire her anyway. So we're talking about the importance of making really good profile good. But I think the other thing that trips people up is interviews. Because interviews are a little bit artificial. No, they're extremely artificial. It's like this weird thing that it's a dance that you sort of have to go through to get hired, but basically. So once you look good on paper, and that's an entire competition too. But we should talk about interviews. I would say depending on the company, depending on the role. In my experience, about one out of three people ish, who is a really good fit on paper from both sides, really good fit on paper, nice person, whatever. And the company likes them and they need exactly what this person brings. I'd say somewhere around one out of three to 50% of the time they're hired to and the rest of the time they're not. That's just reality, which is so dumb. Cause like maybe someone has a bad interview one day or, you know, I had a situation where one of my, one of the people interviewing just talked nonstop about something totally random. And then the person coming back said, yeah, I don't know what they were talking about. I don't think they understand what they're doing. And like, they, they clearly did, but for whatever reason, the hiring manager didn't think they did. So things can go wrong in the interview process. But in terms of numbers, if you're able to find, like, let's say, I don't know, let's say like three or four jobs that you like and you haven't in with the company, someone knows you there, you start interviewing and this and that probably with three or four really, really, really good fits. You're not going to get hired at every single place. You might get hired at half of them if you're very lucky. And most people don't have that strong connection. So there is a lot of noise going involved. And so I think, but for the interview process, the thing to keep in mind is a couple of things. One is that the company actually does want to hire you. People forget it's a lot like auditioning for a play if you're an actor, but the director or the company wants to hire you. They want to see, okay, they want to see you succeed. And so they're going to try to do at a company level anyway. They're going to try to do the best they can to help you succeed. And maybe you do and maybe you don't, but they are on your side. That's thing number one. Thing number two is something around, you know, what does that mean? What does it mean to be a good employee? And a lot of people forget this as well. There's something around the skills you need, and a lot of people focus just on the skills. It's like, okay, I need a front end engineer. That means I need to be good at either view or react. I have to build in my skills of coding and like, yeah, that's important. It's a deal breaker if you don't have them. But even if you have them, you also have to get along with the team in most cases, not every case, but like 80, 90% of the time the team has to, you know, you don't have to be best friends or anything like that, but you have to get along with them to the degree that they say, yeah, you know, he or she, you the job applicant you'd be good to work with. Right. I don't see any red flags, like, you know, in terms of. I'm not sure if I want to work with this person pretty much in the tech space anyway. Every single person that you meet has to say, yeah, you know, he can do the job, and I think I'd like to work together. If you do that, those two things, you're going to get hired in most times, but it's really hard to do that. And a lot of it's out of your control. Like if somebody, for instance, if one of the people you're interviewing with maybe had a bad day or something and it wasn't really there that day. I mean, we've all had those things happen. Maybe. Maybe it's not as. Maybe something goes wrong and it's not really your fault. So it's not that it's totally your, you know, it's not totally up to you is what I'm saying. But if you're able to show every single person that you have the skills to do the job and also they would like to work together with you, then you win that. That's the, that's the formula. And so many times people forget about that second part. And for me, what I find is the people I introduce most of the time, if they're not, if they're a little bit awkward or you could sort of tell like, they're not somebody that, I'm not sure I trust this person. Those people are the ones that don't get in, whereas regardless of their skills. But if you have skills and you're a nice person, then you're much more likely to get hired. [00:43:10] Speaker A: Well, I think the interpersonal skills play very powerfully into, well, really all human interactions, even for remote roles where it might be, you know, you might not think you're interacting with people, but it might even be more important because you have to do this virtually and regardless of where you fit and you feel like you fit in terms of sociability or whatever the term might be, kindness always wins. And, you know, I always say the interview starts the moment you pull up in the driveway or at the bus stop in front of the building. Every person you talk to is evaluating you. And we all know of whether they're, again, the urban legends or it was so real that people kept repeating the story that the person at the front desk who is answering the phone and pouring coffee and doing all those other things might be the person who has the CEO's ear. And that's never a person you want to dismiss. I mean, you never want to dismiss anybody. But don't think that just because you're not interviewing specifically with a person that they're not part of any kind of decision making process. So if you, I mean, to your point, Ranjan, that they want to hire you, they don't want to be hiring anymore. That's not why they're in this job. And apart from folks like you and me who have, you know, entered this career space because, well, I don't know why we did it, but we did it. Most people are in the business of doing whatever they do and they don't want to be hiring and they want you to be the right one. So make it easy for them. Give them, give them what they want. Give them the interpersonal skills that make you great. Give them the knowledge that brings you to where you are in your career and be kind. Be kind and be helpful. And I don't know if that story lately that's been going around about cleaning up your own coffee cup is an indicator as to whether you are the right person for the job or not, but do the things that are right. I heard somebody call here, you're going to like this, called it the grandma test. Would you do this, your grandma, would you dress this way? Would you speak this way? Would you tell that story if it was your grandma in the room? And, you know, maybe I'm a gen xer par excellence. Maybe that's just me listening to my parents generation and saying, wear a suit to the interview no matter what. Maybe that's not the thing anymore, but kindness is still the thing. [00:45:52] Speaker B: Yeah, kind of the thing. I, the grandma just, I don't know, like my grandma, the way she dressed, I would not want to dress like her. [00:45:59] Speaker A: No, it's a matter of an appropriateness of dress in front of the grandma. You wouldn't, you know, show up in. Yeah, that's what I'm trying to say. [00:46:09] Speaker B: But, but it depends on the company. Right. I think, I think a better way to put it is like, you know, do you? Yeah, because like your company, you know, if it's like, if it's a young kind of spec startups, tech culture is what I was, what I just said. But if it's a young startup, that's tech culture. If you show up in a suit, it's going to be a bit strange. [00:46:26] Speaker A: But you wouldn't have a bathing suit either. So I mean, just level it out wherever, you know. [00:46:31] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. But I think that the thing is, though, like in Bain, we had a thing called the airport test, which I think is really helpful. It's like, and they were very explicit about this. They're like, look, we're stuck at airports all the time because bain people fly all over the place. But, you know, if, if you're stuck at this, in the airport with this person for two or 3 hours, well, how's that going to look? How's it going to be? And so basically everybody in Bain anyway would have veto power with like, yeah, if they don't, if they're not good to work with or if you don't think for whatever reason you don't think you'd be okay sitting by the, with them and only them for multiple hours, like there's, there might be an issue there. And I think that idea, it's not going to be as strict for other companies. But, yeah, I mean, you want to be well liked by your interviewers. Definitely. And, yeah, it definitely helps to have everyone else in the company kind of pull up for you. Yeah, I mean, that's definitely true. Yeah. [00:47:23] Speaker A: So if somebody wants to be introducing themselves to you about companies that might have roles that you are sourcing and recruiting for, how should our listeners find you? [00:47:37] Speaker B: I think the easiest way is, so my company is called Kendall staffing. K e n G a l l staffing. So kendallstaffing.com dot. And I guess, Amy, you're probably going to put a link somewhere in there. We'll put a link in or whatever. Yeah. Okay. And then my name is Ron John R one. J one. So my email is ronjohnellsaffing.com dot. And to be fair, like, I'm happy to help everybody, but just based on what we've said before, my job is not to, it's so bad to say, but it needs to be said. Like, I will try to help, but my job is not to find job seekers a job. My job is to find jobs for clients. So if you're looking to hire, that's exactly what I do for a living. Right. If you're looking for a job, I'll help you as much as I can. But again, I think it'll be more of like a, hey, here's what I think is the best way to do it. Rather than, oh, I have five jobs you should apply for. That's not how I run my business. Anyway, I'm a very small shop, so I'm at any one time I'll be working on maybe two or three jobs total, you know. But anyway, yeah, my email is ronjohnathry.com and yeah, if you have any questions or anything, I'm definitely happy to help. Navigate a job search. But if you are a job seeker, most likely, most likely I will not have a job ready for you. I do want to put that out there. [00:48:53] Speaker A: Yeah, totally fair. [00:48:54] Speaker B: Sorry if that sounds bad. [00:48:55] Speaker A: Yes, no, no, I think that's completely fair. But I just want to make it easy for people to make connections if they are interested in making a connection, knowing the parameters of the relationship. And of course, as always, if I can help anybody, please find me. Find me on my website, fivestrengths.com. give me a ring 801-810-5627 again, the job search community is bigger than I thought, but still pretty small. So one of us somewhere is going to find a way to help you or put you on the right path. And we're really glad to do it. Also, I mean, to kind of wrap it up, I could not have been more excited when Ranjan agreed to basically play out the Amy and Ranjan Roadshow that has been literally, this is the nth discussion in a series of, I don't know, Capital N, I don't know how many more in the future. I'm sure it will be plenty because we've just done this so many times and it's a always such a pleasure to talk to you. I always come away feeling so uplifted, having laughed a lot and learned a lot. And I want to thank you for the time spent today and literally everything that has preceded this because this obviously didn't come in a vacuum and we've known each other for so long and I'm just tremendously grateful. [00:50:23] Speaker B: No worries, no worries. And Amy, thank you. And everyone else, we are actually really good friends. Yeah, of course. It's like, no worries, I can help. [00:50:32] Speaker A: I have no reason to make this up. So my friends out there in podcast land, thank you for listening to us go on about the things we love here at how I hire. I hope that you also have learned as much as I have today. If you have thoughts or questions, reach out to me and we'll see what we can do about getting answers to you to support you in your own endeavors. So thank you, my friend Rantan, and thank you out there, listeners. And until the next time, my name is Amy Adler and we'll speak again soon.