Talenticians

There's nothing worse than having two really strong candidates and only one job opening... but it can be great if you keep track of them! Got to start my morning by making an offer to a "Silver Medalist" candidate who interviewed for a Staff SDET role a few months ago. Engineering manager: "I need to hire for ______ role, before you post it, let's see if this candidate is still on the market." They are. Made an offer the next day. $1,000's of dollars and dozens of hours saved, and a happy engineer joining the team. Hires like this aren't possible at most publicly traded companies due to red tape. New interviews required, goofy policies requiring "cool off periods" from the last interview. All nonsense. Get out of the way and trust your teams to hire the right people! #Recruiting #Hiring #Talent #Engineering

The recruiting market (and by extension, engineering) actually seems to be bouncing back big time?! After two years of nothing, I've received cold outreach four times in the last month for talent roles (three this week). Two locally for Tesla/PENA re-expansion, and two remote roles in tech/VC. While this is happening, I see multiple folks who were laid off at Tesla getting their jobs back this week. I'm happy at Bill so I'm politely declining, but I'm making as many intros as I can for folks who are qualified that I've worked with before. If that's you, let me know if you're on the market! While I have your attention, send me all your 5+ year Java engineers too. If they're solid, I can get them from 0 to offer by the end of next week. #Hiring #Recruiting #Talent #Java

The biggest career hack we don't talk about enough: WRITING! It's more important than having a degree: I see plenty of people with Master's degrees who are struggling to get a job because they can't write. It's more important than having a "prestigious" resume: There is a huge cohort of ex-FAANG engineers who have struggled to land a job for 2+ years because communicating clearly wasn't a requirement during the early 2020's boom. Grinding Leetcode will not get you a job if you can't explain your reasoning. LLMs were supposed to be a lifeline for folks struggling with this, but it turns out ChatGPT is pretty useless if you can't write a proper prompt. If you can, it will change your life. Before you spend money on a resume makeover, another certificate, or going back to school for another degree, it might be worth considering mastering communication on your own terms instead. No high-interest loans required. #Hiring #Recruiting #Talent #Careers

I think a lot of this is coming from people who genuinely mean well, but the toxic positivity directed towards job seekers in tech right now is out of control. It’s going to bankrupt families. The market is not improving. Any improvement we thought happened was corrected recently when the DOL admitted 818k US jobs actually *didn’t* get created in a 12 month rolling period. There is no “September Surge”. Most companies have paused hiring until after the election. Even then, holiday season is slow, you won’t see many new roles until mid-January. Best case scenario. 74% of employers have raised their hiring bar this year while leaving pay stagnant, or cutting it. US wage growth is coming from other industries. With few exceptions, transitioning careers is almost impossible, those people are unemployed too. Every remote role is receiving 500-2,000 applicants. Hiring managers are receiving so many LinkedIn messages that they don’t read any of them. Networking in person is great, but spamming strangers or begging publicly is not “networking”. The best you can do is target in-person jobs, focus on volume, and get open to the idea of freelancing or working a job that’s “beneath you” for a while. Open up a few 0% interest credit cards if you still have the credit score to do so. You will get through this, but it’s going to suck. If you think a free resume review could help you, shoot me a DM 🙂 #Hiring #Recruiting #Talent #Data

I always search Spotify before meeting with a startup founder for the first time - there's usually a few podcast episodes attached to their name. The other day I was served up their personal Spotify profile instead, with lots of public playlists they had built. None of them had been touched since college. Knowing this founder was OBSESSED with Kanye in 2018 was 1,000x more helpful than anything a generic business podcast could have told me 😅 #Hiring #Recruiting #Talent #Ye

One of my clients (Data Science Lead) is interviewing for a role tomorrow... at a company that "rejected" them a few weeks ago! A recruiter made that decision. Meanwhile, the actual hiring manager, who was messaged separately, responded and was happy to set up time to talk. This hiring manager likely has no idea my client was rejected, let alone applied. All she knows is some one qualified + competant reached out on LinkedIn and wants to talk. Going to be an awkward conversation between her and the recruiter tomorrow afternoon after my client crushes it… If you’re job searching and feel stuck in a rut - keep pushing and leave no stone unturned! #Recruiting #Hiring #Data #Startup

Job titles in tech are extremely inconsistent - don’t let a title that's "out of your league" scare you off! I just ran across a mid-level recruiter role I’m under-qualified for, per the job description. Right below it at a different company was a Head of Talent role that I was very overqualified for. Both paid well and were the same industry. Side note - just learned that overqualified is one word, but under-qualified is hyphenated. Why is the English language like this... #Recruiting #Hiring #Talent

Latest post! Really wish something like this existed when I was a junior recruiter. As always, any feedback is welcome. #Startups #Equity #Hiring

My second Substack post just went live! Shoot me a note if I missed anything important 🙂 #Negotiation #Startups #Salary #Hiring #Recruiting

Job seeker tip: Sorting by “posted in last 24 hours” will result in you missing a lot of new job postings! Tal Flanchraych broke down the “why” for me the other day: Both Google and LinkedIn track job postings by URL. If a recruiter has a role they know they’ll be hiring for regularly, they often don’t write a whole new job description each time. They have a template in their ATS they used previously, tweak some details, and open the role that was previously closed. As far as LinkedIn or Google are concerned, they’re “re-opening” an old role despite the role being a completely new headcount, because the URL will be the same when posted. It could have a new title, department, and seniority. Doesn’t matter. So your favorite company could post a brand new role, and you’ll miss it because when you sort by “24 hours” Google and LinkedIn will have the role indexed to the original date the URL existed, which could be months or even YEARS ago! Sorting by 24 hours is still useful, but you still need to look at “everything” if you want to ensure you see every new job available. #Hiring #Recruiting #Jobs #Talent