What has your experience been with recruiters when looking for a job? Many of our clients, who are executives and professionals, have a lot of questions about building relationships with recruiters. That’s because it is difficult to learn the best practices for working with a recruiter.
In this episode, you will learn more about recruiting and how you can stand out from other job candidates. Our host and CEO Porschia, alongside our guest, Matthew Sorensen, share their insight on recruiters and how to position yourself as a solution, instead of an applicant.
They also discuss secrets that you can use to ace your next job interview! The conversation includes more detail on the similarities between interviewing and dating, along with avoiding the mistakes most people make with recruiters.
Matthew Sorensen is a former Executive Recruiter, Search Firm Owner, and Director of Talent Acquisition. Today, as the host of The Job Interview Experience, Matthew shares his insight from the OTHER side of the interview table with job seekers from his 11 years of talent acquisition experience.
What you’ll learn:
- How you can stand out to a recruiter in the sea of other candidates
- The biggest mistakes executives and professionals make with recruiters
- Best practices for working with a recruiter and building a strong relationship with them during your job search
- Practical techniques you can use during brief phone screenings with a recruiter
- How you can position yourself as a solution, rather than an applicant
- Job interview secrets that you can use during your next interview
As a thank you for listening to this episode of the Career 101 Podcast, we are sharing our FREE master class – Career 911: Solving the Top 5 Challenges Executives and Professionals Have! It’s a training based on solving the common problems our clients have experienced to reach their goals. You can get access to the master class here!
Resources:
Episode Transcript
Porschia: [00:00:00] Today, we are talking about recruiting 101 best practices for working with a recruiter with Matthew Sorensen.
Porschia: Matthew Sorensen is a former executive recruiter, search firm owner, and director of talent acquisition. Today, as the host of the job interview experience, Matthew shares his insight from the other side of the interview table.
With job seekers from his 11 years of talent acquisition experience in his spare time. He enjoys roasting coffee, organic gardening, wine and collecting wool sweaters and vinyl records. I’m Matthew. How are
Matthew: you today? Hearing that description read out loud, I’m not a hipster, but it really sounds like it after going through that list.
Porschia: Yeah, you do sound a little bit like a hipster. I zeroed in, Matthew, on the organic gardening. When I was a kid, I had this dream of when I grew up, I was going to have this garden [00:02:00] outside my house and garden. So how is the world of organic
Matthew: gardening? I have found it to be so relaxing and rewarding. So I love being outside and I am a nut for fruits and vegetables, lettuce, things like that.
So I’ve had a garden for a while. I have a number of houseplants, but when it comes to organic gardening for me, that really just means not using pesticides, herbicides, and then using organic fertilizer. The fertilizer I use is super gross. It’s called like a fish emulsion fertilizer. So it’s actually like ground up fish.
But when you do these things, it’s like the one chance to have total control of the food you eat. And since we’re not talking about organic food today, I won’t go too deep into it. But Organic can mean different things to different companies and there can be some blurred lines in between so when I go pick a tomato or have a salad from the garden, anything like that, I know everything that’s happened around it and [00:03:00] not just working in the garden, which I find incredibly weird.
enjoyable, probably even more fun getting out in the sunshine, but consuming healthy food that I have seen, start from seed is just add so much to the flavor of the food that we cook.
Porschia: I love it. I love it, Matthew. And whenever I get around to starting my garden if I have questions, I might send you a message.
Please do. So today we’re not talking about gardening, but something Maybe equally as interesting, depending on if you’re into gardening like Matthew and I we are going to focus on best practices for working with a recruiter. And I’m thrilled to have Matthew on the show. I was talking to him before we started the recording and letting him know that this is really one of not only the most requested episodes, but one that we’ve That I’ve been thinking about a lot.
So we’re going to pick Matthew’s brain a bit. But before we, we do that on recruiting, we want to learn a [00:04:00] little bit more about you, Matthew. Tell us a little bit about seven year old Matthew. Seven
Matthew: year old Matthew is probably similar to current Matthew. I loved being outside. I was always outside.
And, thinking back, I remember one time I was inventive. I liked making things, whether it be digging a hole or for no reason, or trying to make something. I remember I was probably about seven years old and I found some spare lumber and some, door hinges. I decided I would make an airplane and that, the hinges would make the wings go up and down and all those things.
But in the midst of this, in current Matthew form, I was moving quickly and trying to obviously do everything quickly. And I was sawing and I saw skipped the teeth, skipped the wood. And Chopped into my thumb and I had a buddy over and he still reminds me I cried the rest of the day and he played my Nintendo 64 So that would probably be an average day for seven year old Matthew having a big idea [00:05:00] working really hard on it and then almost losing a thumb In the process.
Porschia: Wow. Wow. I can pick up on the imaginative part that you said, but also it sounds like you were risk taking and really wanting to get things done. Sounds fun to without the cutting the thumb open part.
Matthew: Yeah. I have to learn a lesson the hard way every once in a while. Yeah.
Porschia: Yeah. What was your first job,
Matthew: Matthew?
So along that line, I started mowing lawns and shoveling snow for neighbors as soon as I was able to use a lawnmower. And that was a good way to make tax free money. I don’t know if the IRS is listening to this, but when you’re 11 years old and you get paid 15 or 20, I really went headfirst into that.
And I think part of that was my entrepreneurial spirit. And you also couldn’t get a job, when you’re 12 years old, my first real job, I worked at a car dealership, washing cars and the location I was at got down to, negative five, [00:06:00] negative 10 degrees in the winter and not thinking things through.
I would just wear sneakers. And I remember my sneakers being, you go out in the lot, pull out a car, fill it with gas, drive it around. I remember my sneakers being frozen towards the end of the shifts that I’d worked till, into the evening. And so to fast forward, my first job out of college, I, in the meantime, I worked as a, all through high school and college, I worked as a server at a Chinese restaurant and learned a lot about customer service, getting nervous.
Situations I stumbled through. And hopefully today I’ve learned how to navigate in a better way. But my first job out of college, I sold a newspaper ads for a business journal. And that was very challenging. I didn’t do a very good job at it. To be fair, selling newspaper ads was hard because I think print was Going away at the time, but learn the hard way to sell and also, walk into businesses and meet with people as a, a young kid meeting with 45, 50 year old business owners, things like that, explaining the [00:07:00] benefits of doing this type of, advertisement in a business journal really puts you in the spot.
And I think that helped build up some resilience for nerfs and things like that for working with people throughout my entire career, having to interface with people that were a lot older and. Successful and whose time was incredibly valuable compared to mine as a young salesperson, having all the time in the world to try and make deals that was formative for me.
And I, I learned a lot and work with some really great people there. Yeah.
Porschia: Your background is very interesting. And I think sales roles, can be really helpful, especially for. Early career professionals. Tell us about how you got into recruiting.
Matthew: So through that sales role I had for that business journal, as any good salesperson would do in that business journal also hosted a lot of networking events.
And part of my role was to go to all of them. And it was [00:08:00] A lot of networking events and anyone who’s had a role like that knows you learn a lot about a lot of times it’s mostly salespeople in the same room hoping to sell to each other. But I also learned a lot of great leaders along the way and one of them owned a boutique search firm and chatted with her through the years and eventually she invited me to join.
It was a one person firm and my presence there made it a two person firm. And. I had pretty good insight into people and I would just say, at that point, a good gut instinct when talking to people and was able to maybe read into conversations, understand what people are looking for, whether it be in their career or with their current company.
And so it was a good fit and I learned a lot about recruiting and I would say a lot of it, LinkedIn and things like that were becoming more prevalent, but it wasn’t the recruiting tool it is today. So I learned a lot of the, what you might call the old ways of recruiting, like making phone calls into [00:09:00] companies to even discover the talent that’s there.
So old school recruiting, say in the seventies or eighties or nineties, you might not know everyone that works at a company, but if you want to recruit, say a great, CIO or, chief financial officer, CFO. You would assume if this company has a great reputation, their CFO must be great. So I’m going to call and see if I can get on the phone with them, learn about them and try, and if they are polite open to talk and open to the conversation, you try and recruit them out.
So that’s the hard way and recruiting has changed since then, but I learned a lot of, I think, really good fundamentals of recruiting through that experience and learning as the old way in the internet merged together, how to make use of both tools, especially the like things like the phone call that I talked about a lot of recruiters I think today are afraid executive recruiters who are looking to pull talent as opposed to talk to job applicants.
They’re afraid to make that phone call to get on the phone, try and connect with people, [00:10:00] As I’m sure you know as well sometimes just picking up the phone gets you to places you never would have gotten through 10 emails in a row or whatever else the options what other options are available. Yeah
Porschia: You make me think about something Matthew that a recruiter told me years ago.
I want your Insight on it. They basically compared recruiting to sales and said, Hey, I think they told me I’m selling people. So to your point about, old school making the phone calls, they thought of it as like cold calling people that, similarly for sales, but you’re trying to, have the person be the product.
What are your thoughts on that?
Matthew: Yeah, I’ve never used those words to describe it, but there are a ton of sales and selling involved in recruiting. So I wouldn’t use the term selling people. I would say selling ideas and opportunities and companies. So I moved on to [00:11:00] start my own search firm after working at that one that I mentioned.
And that was challenging because I had to create a book of business from zero. So those aren’t candidates. Those are companies. So I put together marking materials, mailers, handwritten notes, phone calls, emails. So I had to sell these companies to even use me as an executive recruiter. And I was still in my mid twenties at this point.
A little new, right? A little young for a lot of these mostly small business owners as reaching out to or midsize companies and selling them on using me was hard. And so then not only do they use you, you have to build trust with them. Tell me about this position. Tell me about what you’re looking for, but let’s dig a little bit deeper.
Maybe what went wrong. I’ve learned through my research that, there was someone in this role until a couple months ago. Can you tell me what went wrong there? What didn’t work? So you have all that. That’s the first sale. Then you have to go do the hard work of finding people. And then once you actually get in contact, [00:12:00] you sell the job candidate on the opportunity and good recruiters.
Go out and find people who are at the best point in their career That best point in their career could be a 20 year window, right? It’s not like this month is the best point in their career, but you want to bring companies people who are Showing success doing great work for their company. So you have to Sell them on the idea to consider something else, which when people are at that point in their career, that’s usually when they’re least likely to consider making a change because they know this work I’m doing is probably setting me up for the next promotion, or I know because what I’m doing now, I’m going to get a 30 percent pay raise next quarter or next year, so you’re selling them on the idea to even Explore a change, which opens up risk.
They don’t know who I might share our conversation with. Of course, I would never share it with anyone without their permission. So you’re having to sell them on the conversation. Then you have to sell them on the role. Typically you’re pitching the [00:13:00] owner or president of the company. Who they will be working with closely or at a lower level, just the company, the growth of that company.
But why move from a job that pays X amount is secure. Things are going well. You’ve made good impressions. You’ve made relationships. Why make the jump? Obviously there’s the opportunity and that has to make sense. The numbers have to make sense. People typically 99 percent of the time don’t want to take a pay cut.
So there has to be, increase in pay, maybe job title opportunity. So you have, you’ve made the sale, you’ve gotten your client, you’ve made the sale of finding this person, this candidate, and convincing them to go down this road with you. Then you have to pitch each party to each other. You have to make this arrangement, this marriage of talent, that company and talent, and that sale is sometimes the hardest part.
The company’s bought in working with you. The candidates bought in. Talking to you and going down this road with you, but you have to very carefully match up what the company wants, exactly what they’re looking [00:14:00] for. When they hire an executive recruiter, they are very specific because if they want anyone, they’ll probably put up a job posting or go a different route.
They want someone very specific skills. They know their job posting a lot of the time has failed at getting them. So you have to convince the candidate and the client that they are the right fit for each other. You’re not lying to them. You’re not trying to trick them, but you have to find the alignment.
That’s where you talk to so many people to find the right one. Obviously, hopefully the client will choose select one, maybe one out of three of the people you’ve sent their way. And then that’s when you start thinking about getting paid for. What could be months and months of work, sometimes six months to a year now that seems slow and it is slow sometimes for higher level roles, things do move a little bit slower and there’s not the rush to fix this problem immediately.
There’s the we need to find the right person to guide this company for the next decade and we’re willing to wait and have these conversations until we [00:15:00] do.
I think
Porschia: you shared a lot of great information with us there. And thank you for walking us through the matchmaking kind of component to what a recruiter is doing. I want to dig in a little deeper on some of what you were just saying there, Matthew. So our audience can learn some best practices of working with recruiters.
From your perspective, how can someone stand out to a recruiter? amongst the sea of other candidates out there.
Matthew: Would you prefer I start talking about an in house recruiter, so a recruiter that might see your application once you’ve applied, or an executive recruiter?
Porschia: I say let’s start with in house and then executive
Matthew: recruiters.
Yeah, so let’s say that your application has been noticed, it’s been seen, and you have a phone call, Zoom call, or maybe in person interview to start with, but typically it’s going to be a phone call, or maybe a virtual [00:16:00] call. My advice to make a strong first impression, first of all, First off is just start with simplicity, plan your small talk and then be quiet from there.
So if you’re a job seeker, you’re going to be, you’re going to be excited and nervous. Everyone’s different, but for me personally, that kind of opens the floodgates. I’ll talk a lot. I’ll be relieved by having some conversation. You might think that making them laugh, making them like you is a great way to start things off.
None of those ideas are wrong, but I’ve seen, I’ve interviewed. Thousands and thousands of people, and I’ve seen this happen in person on the phone, people just start rambling. They start talking quickly, they go off topic. Let the recruiter guide the conversation. That’s their job, and that should take pressure off of you.
As far as planning your small talk, avoid the, how are you? Oh, I’m good. How are you? Oh, I’m good. Find something relevant, but that [00:17:00] doesn’t go too deep. So you don’t want to ask a hard question right away. At the beginning of the interview, you don’t want to ask anything too personal about that.
You’re like, where are you calling from? What, just keep it really simple. Don’t say, Hey, what’s going on at the company? How I saw, you’re relocating new office. How I just start with something like great to meet you. I spent some time on your website and I’m so excited about this one initiative that I saw that you have, something like that.
And then just shut up and let them really carry the conversation. They might say, what did you like about it? Or they might say, Oh, thank you so much. And then they want to gear up based on their rhythm, their preferred style of the conversation, whether this is in person or on the phone or anywhere else.
Recruiters typically have a rhythm they like to get into, and they’re waiting to ask you that first question. Whether they’re on a time crunch, or they really like to keep things consistent, the best way to make a great first impression is saying a little bit less. Planning out your small talk, having the thing that one thing you’re gonna bring [00:18:00] up and they say, Hey, how are you?
You’re gonna say great. I went on a excellent hike this weekend. Maybe don’t say excellent because that sounds dorky. But I went on this awesome hike this weekend and the fresh air was exactly what I needed. I’m so glad to be here today. So just be, if that makes sense, be really careful of the going back and forth.
How are you? Good. How are you? Good. How are you? Just share a quick message about Either yourself, something healthy you did recently, or something you like about the company that’s very kind of surface level. But if you’re at their office, you can say, I love that artwork or that sculpture out front.
Something like, how are you? Great. I love that sculpture. I saw up front. That’s a really cool design. And just stop talking. Love it.
Porschia: So for an executive how might that be different in terms of them standing out to an executive recruiter or an executive
Matthew: search consultant? Yeah. Totally different.
So an executive recruiter needs you to help them connect the dots between the requisition, the job [00:19:00] opening that they’re working on for their client and for them as well. So I would avoid being Koi with an executive recruiter, a good executive recruiter with a reputation experience. You should be able to trust them.
You can confirm that at the beginning of your call. You can say, Hey, just to be sure, I want to make sure that none of the information I share with you today, we’ll leave our conversation now and moving forward. Say it nicely, but they’ll totally understand. From there. Obviously you’re nice. You can small talk.
You don’t have to worry too much about the conversation. They’ll guide that conversation. But what you need to do is help build a case for yourself. For that executive recruiter so that they can make a case for you to their client And that should take a little bit of work on your part, that’s, and you might not know about the opportunity yet, right?
They might be calling you out of the blue, they might be mysterious and say, Hey, I have this opportunity I want to talk to you about. So you might not know ahead of [00:20:00] time, but make it clear to them that you want to partner with them to give them the information they need and make a case for your candidacy.
It’s that simple. So on your call, you just say, Hey, Matthew, I’m so excited to talk to you today. Really excited to learn about this opportunity. I know that this is in my wheelhouse. This aligns with my skills. Otherwise we wouldn’t be here. I just want to let you know that I’m here to share information about myself, my background, my salary, but also the ways that I can help your client succeed in a way that other candidates can’t.
And I’m really excited to share with you and support you because I think a win for me is a win for you and also your client. We’ll have more success through all of us coordinating together and getting the right information to the right people, something really simple like that. I love
Porschia: that. And Matthew, I can tell already that I’m going to recommend some of our clients go back and listen to this episode at least twice, [00:21:00] because you are sharing some amazing information.
You’ve said in the past that people should stop being an applicant and start being a solution. What do you mean by that?
Matthew: job candidates after, you apply for job after job, and it’s incredibly discouraging. And you think of yourself as a candidate that you need to earn this job, make impressions.
And that’s all true. But I’ve interviewed a lot of people, like I said I guess I haven’t even mentioned yet, I was a director of town acquisition at a conglomerate of four very quickly growing companies as director of town acquisition at a California startup. I’ve. I’ve led teams to interview people, but I’ve also personally interviewed a lot of people as a in house recruiter, director of talent acquisition, not just as an executive recruiter.
And there’s a very small group of people that always stood out to me and stood out to our team. And we’ll put this in terms, we’ll [00:22:00] say either, we’ll say a group virtual interview or like an in person interview, or maybe a couple people are there. And the people that stood out. I remember still like myself, maybe the department head that was in that interview, maybe a company owner, we glanced at each other and we know like we have to figure out how to hire these people and we started selling them on the role and these people weren’t the best looking, they didn’t You’re Beak without saying, they weren’t none of these little things that job seekers worry about.
They probably stumbled and said plenty of times. And they didn’t even have the best, smoothest polished answers. What they did in verbalize was. They understood the role and they had a solution to our problem. They knew what we needed to do. And from their experience and expertise, just casually shared [00:23:00] how to get the best outcome for their company.
So if it was a sales role, maybe a biz dev VP, whatever it is, just a sales person, they knew they told us how to connect our product with their customers. They’ve done it before. They have the Rolodex. They say, Hey I’ve sold to this group before. I know the right people to call. You don’t want to call the chief marketing officer.
Actually in this business, you in this industry, you actually want to call this and this person. If it was marketing, they explained exactly what marketing strategy they would set up to get you the best ROI. You don’t have to be the, I think the very best news is you don’t have to be a seasoned expert to do this.
I think this is even more helpful if you’re earlier in your career. You just have to invest the time to understand the role. And the why is this company hiring, right? There’s always a reason it could be turnover. It could be the person in [00:24:00] this role got a promotion. So they’re, filling with someone else, but there’s a reason that this role exists.
It’s not to make the person in it happy. It’s not because they want to have 101 employees instead of 100. Typically it’s going to, some broad reasons. Bring in revenue, reduce errors, delight customers, make things safer, make things faster, right? There’s so many different reasons companies hire, but once you understand what this role does, and it might take some hours of research.
It might take. 10 minutes, depending on your understanding of the industry, you can tell them what you would do to make it better. Now, if you have someone very early in their career, say, or say that you’re trying to get a job at a factory and running machines, you don’t have to be an expert on machines.
You don’t have to be someone that’s worked in this area for 10 years. You can simply come in and say, Hey, I’ve done. [00:25:00] Research on what you do. And I read these two articles about improving safety. And one of the things I’d be excited to learn more about and talk about is these two methods for safer fabric production that if you’re not always already using, I actually think can help your company save 8% per 8 percent per year, per quarter, per product, per piece, whatever it is, and also reduce injuries on the floor.
That’s really easy to say. And you can, you could be 16 years old and say that you don’t want to pretend to be a better expert than you are, but say at 16 or 18 or 25, if you’re coming in with some solutions, some ways to do things better, some new ideas, you’re already serving them. You’re already helping them do something.
If they already know about this new article, this new machine, they’re going to say, wow, so and so is really up to date. Like we love this idea. And they’re just told us. What we’re, what we’ve been talking about in our board meetings recently. So I’d say if this, to help this maybe make more sense for [00:26:00] listeners, imagine a job candidate that came to an interview with a two page outline of what they would do to make the company successful through their role.
A game plan that candidate goes to the top of the list. Even if they don’t have the best skills, if they come in understanding exactly what the problem is, and at least an idea, not even the best idea, but just an idea on how to get there skills are great, but plans are what get things done. And that’s how you’re a solution instead of just an applicant, whether they hire you or not, you’ve brought something to the table that helps them.
Once you’re in that position, you’re seen as someone who’s going to continue to do
Porschia: [00:27:00] I love what you said about understanding the role, why it exists and having that solution. Sometimes, Matthew, recruiters ask to have a brief call or meeting with someone before a more formal interview. I generally refer to them as phone screenings with our clients.
What is a recruiter’s goal in those brief meetings?
Matthew: Sometimes resumes don’t line up with the present day facts. People can relocate. They can have a couple of jobs in between. It can be a lot of different things. So that initial phone screen is really mostly to confirm they like what they’ve seen on your resume.
They think you have potential in their role. They want to [00:28:00] make sure that First off, you’ll be nice and polite and not, have a horror movie playing in the background with people screaming, because all those things it’s going to say a lot about you. So they just want to make sure you can get through a phone interview, right?
Just tell about yourself. They will likely want to confirm who you are, where you are, and that you have these skills. So have you say that out loud? And then they’re going to want to go a little bit deeper. So your resume, might say that maybe it’s. A little vague. So they might want to make sure, do you actually, have you actually run this software program?
That’s, it’s on your resume that you have this skill with the software program, that it’s hard to find that’s great that you know how to use it. How many years of experience do you have? Have you ever taught a team how to use this? So going a little deeper into whatever it is that they care most about, but overall, the, that initial, what we call screening, you nailed it, that’s just to make sure that I’d say you’re [00:29:00] polite, you’re professional, that your goals align with the company’s.
Sometimes they’ll ask you about salary and that scares people for a first interview, but it’s also good for both parties because if you’re making 75, 000 a year and this role pays 45, that helps both parties not waste time and energy. And you’ll be glad to have moved forward and you never know what might happen in between.
Maybe you say, Hey, look, I’m at 75. I’m on track to, to make 85 next year, that recruiter, a good recruiter will say, look, that makes a ton of sense. And I can see that we don’t have that salary range for this current position, but we might be working on something in about. Two months from now that might even align with your skills better than this job does.
And I think this might be a good match as far as compensation and everything else. Is it okay if I make a plan to follow up with you or could we schedule a conversation two weeks from now to dig into that a little bit [00:30:00] more, but they might ask you about salary. And I know it, it almost sounds rude to ask that so soon.
Recruiters are starting to do that because it does save time. And. I think as a job seeker, you’re not going to want to have, a panel interview with eight people and maybe drive 30 minutes each way to do all these things just to learn that the pay is way outside of what you would accept. And for the company, if you’re a little bit under what they say, maybe the role pays 75 a year and you tell them you’re at 55, don’t think that instantly disqualifies you from moving forward.
They’re going to focus again, if you can present You have solutions to their problem. You are a solution. They’re going to want to talk to you and do everything they can to align with your requirements. So maybe they’ll pay you more than you expected. Skills are really important. Cultural alignment is really important.
But knowing exactly what’s going on and being able to do that at a [00:31:00] higher level than maybe the other people they’re looking at, that’s going to get you more conversations. Even if you are a little bit above what they’re looking for, or if you’re way below. Companies, they love to hire someone who can do the job, obviously do it well, but if they can spend a little bit less and mentor them into a role, it’s a good opportunity for you to grow and for them to not go, Over budget on something that maybe they, as we’re seeing with companies right now, they’re going out of growth mode and more into sustainability mode.
And any way that they can maybe pay you a little bit more than they expected, but also pay a little bit less than they thought they needed to for the role, that’s always a great fit. And that opens a lot more room for growth for you and your career. I don’t know how I got there from your question, but hopefully that answers it.
Porschia: Yeah, it does. That’s a lot of great information. So Matthew, I’ve seen many of our clients who are executives and professionals get frustrated when communicating with recruiters because they think the recruiter just [00:32:00] disappears on them, and maybe they reappear months later to discuss a different job opportunity.
How can someone build a strong relationship with the recruiter?
Matthew: Keep in mind, recruiters are just people. They’re just humans. There’s no, I’m sure there’s certifications for recruiters. There’s no college degree. There’s no big thing you have to go through. Just like me, you can start being a recruiter.
That means there’s a lot of room for error. There’s a lot of recruiters that are just focused on the money. And if you’re not leading them to the money, then they might not follow up. The term we often see is ghosting. The other side of that is companies might not have the right tools to even follow up.
Most people that have applied for a job have gotten that automated message, thank you for applying. We look at all of our candidates and, we’ll follow up if your skills align with this role. That’s obviously an automated message. Those are rarely sent out by a human, sent out [00:33:00] by the applicant tracking system.
When recruiters ghost people, usually they’re an interview or two into the process. And that recruiter failed. It’s holding to their end of the bargain. So their job obviously is to find talent and hire them. But a recruiter’s job also is to represent the company. If it wasn’t, then they could have anybody do that job.
You would just have a robot, you would just record your questions and everything would be sent to a company. They’re there to interface and learn about you, but they exist to also represent the company well. They failed to do so that could be one bad recruiter in a good department That could be one really new recruiter at a great company That just hasn’t learned the right skills to follow up if you are ghosted first of all, I’m sorry I know that I know personally it’s really frustrating you hold on a week goes by Two weeks go by, you’re still holding onto some hope, three weeks go by, [00:34:00] you don’t know if they’re ever going to get back to you.
And by the fourth week, you feel like you’ve wasted a lot of your time and emotional energy. And the other person on the other side didn’t care about that at all. If you are ghosted by a recruiter there’s a couple of tricks you can use depending on what you know about the conversation. You can always go check out their LinkedIn profile that will show them who’s viewed it recently.
So if you go click on their LinkedIn profile, look at it, maybe Four business days later, do it again. That’s a really subtle way to nudge them on your existence. I don’t think it, I don’t think it’s weird or creepy at all. I think of it as going to a networking event and crossing paths with them.
It’s Oh yeah, Matthew, I should have emailed him, one way or nothing, sometimes recruiters, and I’ve seen this a bunch, They’ll have a job they’re really focused in on and then a different department head says, Hey, we got to hire this new position and you have to do it ASAP ASAP, put all of your attention on this.
The recruiter just might not have the time to properly follow that position. They still want to [00:35:00] hire for it. It’s just in limbo for the next. Month or whatever. That recruiter has been directed to go focus 110 percent on this. So there’s some things that might not be their fault that have happened.
The other thing you can do, if you’ve received an automated email, then there’s not a lot you can do to follow up and digging through the company, trying to find the right email, depending on the company size, probably isn’t going to get you very far, especially if it’s a larger company, if you have happened to get a Email from that recruiter from their work email address, maybe to schedule your first interview or second interview.
There’s nothing wrong with following up with them and saying, really enjoyed the conversation, reiterating why you’re a good fit for the role. And then you can take a page from good salespeople. If you haven’t heard back from that. Maybe a week later, no matter, and maybe it’s been longer than that.
You can follow up, give them some information. So instead of just saying, Hey, what’s my status, please update me. Cause this is driving me crazy, which is the truth. [00:36:00] You could give them a stat on the industry, maybe where the industry is going, where things are going, who’s growing. Maybe you could even send them something about their competitor in a nice way.
You could say, Hey, recruiter, Hey, recruiter name. Hey, John Doe. I just saw this article that I think you and the department hiring for this role, whatever that would be, right? The marketing department might be interested in, did you know that this new Adobe tool is creating content or this new AI is writing things that is Changing customer follow up or customer purchases to increasing it by nine and a half percent.
And it’s currently free. I thought this was really intriguing. And here’s two ways I think this could help your department retain customers or get more business or whatever it is. So it’s going back to that being a solution idea. Instead of just following up and saying, Hey, I’m a candidate.
Hey, I’m a candidate. Hey, what’s my status? Help them out. Now you’re not, obviously you’re not working for them [00:37:00] for free, but you are showing I’m a person that’s valuable, who’s on top of this information, and if you send a good email with just some good relevant information, it could be an article, it could be an idea, it could be a follow up on something you talked on, going deeper into that, make it so good that they think to themselves, if we don’t hire this person, based on what they’re talking about, where I see they’re going.
They’re going to do really good work for a company. If we don’t hire them, our competition is going to, and if it does, that’s going to hurt what that message says. We don’t have time to go into every different example today. If you’re an accountant, it’s going to be very different than marketing.
You could talk about, if you’re an accountant, you could talk about their current software and how you’ve noticed a bug in that causes more headaches or more. Bad numbers, whatever that is, think of something that you can provide beyond just your resume in the last conversation.
And it’s just a really good excuse to follow up. The last thing I’ll say is [00:38:00] the company. I wouldn’t judge a company too harshly by its recruiter. I’m not a recruiter advocate. I’ve worked with a lot of great recruiters. Obviously I’ve been with myself, but I make fun of them more than anything else, including myself.
The recruiters are. Probably the most emotional part of any person’s career is either getting hired, the excitement or being let go, the disappointment. The recruiter’s on that hiring side, but it can feel like you’re being fired or, let go or forgotten of if they ghost you. So if you have a lot of experiences with a lot of people throughout your interview process and they’re all negative, Think about that company.
And if that’s a reflection of where you want to work, if the recruiter gives you a bad experience, you don’t know, first of all, maybe they’re just having a bad day, but you don’t know where that person goes from there in the company. Maybe they hired someone who they thought would do a great job and didn’t.
So be mindful of the company as a whole and try and get the best impression you [00:39:00] can from your interactions there. But unfortunately. With recruiting just like sales, there’s great sales people who help companies get products that make their lives better, just like recruiters. There’s great recruiters to hire amazing people that help companies succeed.
And in between there’s recruiters who just focus on what’s at present, which is the job they need to fill and don’t serve really who they’re meant to serve, who’s the job seeker by providing good follow up updates. And if things don’t go right, it can be hard to send those emails. I know, marking someone to receive the application rejection email, but that is part of their job whether they like it or whether you like it or not.
Porschia: Those were some great tips about, I think really a creative follow up strategy to. Really focus on relationship building. So thank you, Matthew. What are some of the biggest mistakes you’ve seen professionals and executives make when it comes to working with
Matthew: recruiters?
Probably the biggest thing I see, and I see this across [00:40:00] all job categories, but especially I think people who are at higher level roles is they make it about themselves and they don’t know how to align their skills with a company’s role. So I talked about being a solution earlier, but more than that, you’ll, once people have had some success, they there’s entitlement that I’ve seen, and some of that maybe creeps up throughout someone’s career.
You and I, we’ve probably both met people very early in their career who feel like they’re in God’s gift to their industry, but companies, good companies, good leaders are humble. They look how they can serve their people that work for them, help them grow, help the company grow. And I’ve worked with people.
I’ve called people who. They have this at it, you call them and say, Hey, there’s this opportunity. Not that I’d say it this way, but there’s an opportunity. I’m pretty confident this will increase your pay. This is a really good company. Maybe this is a good location, whatever it is.
And they, they answer, maybe you’ve [00:41:00] arranged a time to talk to them again. They say they have this attitude of Hey, you called me about this, so I’m going to be a little standoffish cause I don’t need you. That’s true. They’re. Typically executives are happy in their role.
They’ve accomplished a lot. Whether you’re an executive recruiter or an internal recruiter, when you can read into a level of overconfidence or someone who feels like, I think a lot of times executives are sometimes embarrassed to even have to interview. So they’re a little standoffish because they think they’re beyond that.
They just get to meet, they want to go play golf with the company. CEO or, they think they get to go straight up the elevator to the top floor for this opportunity. So the mistake I see to sum this up and to avoid another long ramble is Always approach this with humility. It, it should be humbling, the opportunity to work at a great company, make a better salary even to be considered, especially by an executive recruiter, not that our [00:42:00] calls are so important, but to be considered to be place in something like that, I would still be incredibly excited and humbled by an opportunity to rise in my career.
Some people act as if they’re bothered or annoyed, or they’re going to have to call with the in house recruiter, executive recruiter. Hey I’m eating lunch right now, but go ahead. Tell me what you got. I’ve seen that. I’ve experienced that. Avoid that because, You might feel more empowered by behaving that way, but you will lose opportunities, probably short term and long term with that type of attitude.
Great
Porschia: advice. Great advice. So tell us more about the job interview experience.
Matthew: I started a podcast on a whim in 2021. I have done a lot in my career so far. I’ve I’ve had a lot of ups and downs. So like that job selling ads, I was let go from because I didn’t perform up to snuff. So [00:43:00] I’ve been a job seeker.
I’ve lost jobs. I’ve applied for, I’ve applied for tons of jobs, but I’ve also Been lucky to be in pretty unique places like startup companies that have been acquired, companies that have run out of money. I’ve hired C suite, I’ve hired construction workers, I’ve hired everything in between.
And my idea was just to share what I’ve learned, but also share it from a point of someone who, maybe hasn’t been in HR for the past decade after decade. And Hasn’t had a whole lot of touch points with the job seeker. I’ve sat across the table with so many job seekers, even the last five, 10 years.
I wanted to share everything I’ve seen. Best practices miss a lot of mistakes. I see people make and share that with listeners, break it down. I don’t consider myself a great educator, but I spend so much time making these concepts, something that can be understood by a job seeker. And I say it that way [00:44:00] because.
If you’re listening to our conversation right now, your job isn’t being a good interviewer. I don’t know anyone whose job is to professionally answer interview questions. Your job is being a great accountant, great marketing person, a great designer, whatever it is. So I want to take the jargon, the language from my world and connect the dots for listeners in a way that makes sense to people who my hope is are in this very brief part of life where they are a job seeker.
My goal is to help. People get better jobs faster. And sometimes that just takes knowledge like mine from being on the other side of the table on how to put your best foot forward. I also share stuff like the secret meaning behind interview questions. Why is the question really asked an example? That would be, what can you tell us about our company?
The recruiter asking you that they know about their company. They work there, they don’t need to be educated on the company that company, that question there, they’re testing out. Do you care enough to do research? If you did do research, what kind of information stuck with you? What kind of information do you relay about [00:45:00] us?
Have you taken the time to understand more than what’s on the first page of our website? So a very small thing like that can build up to a much bigger picture. And then as well, I try and have some fun. I, one of my favorite topics is comparing job interviews to dating. And some of the topics are so relevant and maybe strange, but I’ve had listeners write into me and say your episode comparing a job interview to a first date in this way.
I’ve made that mistake over and over. And it wasn’t until I heard this kind of funny episode that it clicked for me. And now. Because I’ve experienced this on dates and I’ve done this in job interviews. Now I know why I shouldn’t do that and the better way to handle this situation. Yeah.
Porschia: One thing I will not agree with you on Matthew, I think you’re a great educator.
I’ve listened to your podcast and I really like the way that you [00:46:00] break it down into the tactical advice and in a way to where people who aren’t recruiters can understand it and really take away. The main goal and the big point of, topics. So I love that. And I’m sure everyone’s going to check out your show.
We’ll be providing a link to your website and your other social channels and our show notes. So people can find you online, but I want to ask you a very last question, Matthew, which is how do you think executives or professionals can get a positive edge in their career?
Matthew: Depending on how long you’ve been in a role and where you see the role that you’re in going, I would think really carefully about what you can do to provide expertise in that area. And I’ll circle back to being a solution. If you keep doing the same thing every day for five years, you’re probably not bringing new things to the table for a company.
Other applicants are. [00:47:00] So when you can find Ways that companies are evolving what their needs are you’re the expert on this not me You can present that to a company whether you’re internal and you want to be promoted Doing exactly what I said about the solution aspect bringing during your conversations with your boss’s boss, your review, if you can bring a couple ideas to the table on how to make your department better, how to save money, how to bring in more money, how to be safer, how to be nicer, whatever it is, that is what those types of people who are bringing new things to the table, bringing new, not just ideas, but plans on how to do it, They thrive.
Those are the people who are getting promoted. The same thing for job interviews. I’ll circle back to the solution aspect. Listeners probably heard me say that and say, that’s great if you get a job interview, but I’m not getting job interviews. I’m applying to these places and not even getting that first step.
The good news is you can apply that solution aspect. That’s now your cover letter. [00:48:00] So I see so many cover letters that It’s about me. I want to work here because I love this city and I love your office. And my friend works here. And by the way, I used to work for this organization and skip all of that and say something as simple as I saw this word it better than this, but I saw this rule be posted online and I couldn’t help but apply because.
I see a match between my skills and your needs that I believe are so strong. I put together three different plans to help your department move forward through this role. And then on your cover letter have bullet points, bullet point one using more of this software program to triple the amount of people we can touch per day.
Point two do this follow up circle roundabout campaign. Point three do this and that thing. And then say there’s, More to my plan for this role in this department that I look forward to sharing with you. But in the meantime, I hope that [00:49:00] you’ve found this helpful and I look forward to speaking something like that.
And there’s probably a better way to word that. That’s how you bringing information like that, whether you’re currently employed and looking to grow in your role, or you’re contacting another company, that eagerness to give the company more, to help it move forward. Even if your ideas aren’t perfect, they don’t have to be.
That’s what companies are hungry for. Those are the change makers that companies are looking for. And just like I compared accounting or marketing, it doesn’t have to be wild. If you can save one cent per unit on something or you can fix a decimal point on a spreadsheet and you can share how to do that a new way that you’ve learned a new skill that you have, that’s going to get attention a lot more than just a simple resume saying some facts about where you were and when and a cover letter talking about the things you want to do with your life.
So flip the scripts. Even if it’s for a short amount of time, make it about what you can do for a company, how you’re the solution for them. And if you put that in [00:50:00] your cover letter I would challenge any listener to do that and see what the results are. Once you start speaking their language and showing them that you understand their needs.
Wow.
Porschia: Matthew, you’ve shared a lot of tips with us today and I’m sure our listeners can use it to be more confident in their careers. We appreciate you being
Matthew: with us. I was so excited to be here. Thank you so much for having me. [00:51:00]
