Debunking Recruiter Myths - AMA with Taylor Desseyn

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Follow @tdesseyn on Twitter, and join Taylor's text community at: 615-235-5650

Transcript

Glenn Stovall: [00:00:00] .Hey everyone. I'm here with, Taylor, Dustin. He's a developer recruiter advocate for Vaco technologies. What's going to be the very first AMA episode of production. Ready? How are you doing today? Taylor? 

Taylor Desseyn: [00:00:10] Pretty good, man. Hey, thanks for having me super stoked. Ready for some AMA what does that even mean?

I see that a lot. Does AMA meet again? 

Glenn Stovall: [00:00:17] Oh, it stands for ask me anything. 

Taylor Desseyn: [00:00:19] There it is. 

Glenn Stovall: [00:00:21] I'm old. Yeah. I guess it should be a Y a it's. Yeah, it was some Reddit. People would say, I love it. Hey, I'm so and so asked to be anything and it used to be something like what we're doing, where it's like, Hey, I'm a tech recruiter.

Ask me anything. 

Taylor Desseyn: [00:00:34] I love it. 

Glenn Stovall: [00:00:35] It was good marketing and it turned into Hey, I'm Woody Harrelson assistant, but 

Taylor Desseyn: [00:00:40] I'm Woody Harrelson. 

Glenn Stovall: [00:00:44] yeah. Taylor, could you tell us 

Taylor Desseyn: [00:00:45] just 

Glenn Stovall: [00:00:45] a little bit about your background and how you got into being a, a technical recruiter? 

Taylor Desseyn: [00:00:49] Yeah, absolutely. I moved up to Nashville for music like everyone else.

and I went to the university of South Carolina in Columbia, South Carolina. I'm a big Gamecock fan for those of your listening, reach out to me on Twitter. We can talk about college football all day. but moved up here to the music. Did the whole studio thing, honkytonks, just in touring, played, til 3:00 AM downtown.

I realized after going on one last tour, we broke down in the middle of South Carolina, one in the middle of August. And if there's one place where you do not want to break down in the middle of August, It is South Carolina. And it was on a Sunday. We had driven 12, 13 hours from New York city with no shower, no sleep and was sitting outside of advanced auto.

And I go, I am done. I'm finished. I'm not doing this anymore. And so I leveraged my network, which is obviously very indicative of what I do now and, was able to find Vaco through a friend of a friend. I've been there ever since I've been a Vaco for nine years, we are privately held, but we are pretty big.

Now we're six, $700 million to put in perspective. I think when I joined, we were only 200 million. so I've seen this thing almost go Forex, everywhere. I've been, I've grown teams, three exercise at Vaco. I started out national recruiting. So your typical recruiter that will cold call you and have no idea what I was talking about.

I still don't. I just lie better now. and I moved to Raleigh. It was in the research triangle area for a year. Got really more invested on the dev side of things. and then my mentor in Nashville called me back and goes, Hey, I'm moving into a new role. Do you want to come fill my spot? I go.

Absolutely. And so ever since then, I've been in Nashville for six years, recruiting engineers front to back, no matter what language I want to be your friends. and I've met, I've ran the numbers. I've met close to 4,000 engineers now at this point in my career, wow. Yeah, man. That's crazy. Yep. So that's a little bit about me at a very high level.

Glenn Stovall: [00:02:34] So music, what did you play? 

Taylor Desseyn: [00:02:37] So I am a drummer. I am was still am a drummer, yep. 

Glenn Stovall: [00:02:42] Very cool. 

Taylor Desseyn: [00:02:43] Yep. Alright. 

Glenn Stovall: [00:02:45] for this episode, I went on a dev.to, I went on Twitter. I went on my mailing list, which if you're listening, you should be on for things like this. But yeah. So I have questions from a lot of different people about.

Saying, what have you always wanted to ask your recruiters, but didn't feel like you could say, 

Taylor Desseyn: [00:03:00] yeah. Yeah. it's a welcome to the next 30 minutes or however long we go therapy session. So just go ahead and lay down on a couch and I will send you to sleep. 

Glenn Stovall: [00:03:11] Cool. first question I have comes from Natalie over death too, and she says what's a day to day workload look like for a recruiter?

What's a day in the life of a recruiter. 

Taylor Desseyn: [00:03:19] Yeah. Natalie, great question. I think this is one of the, this is one of the biggest kind of myths. not many people know what a recruiter does. Most people, even my mom doesn't know what a recruiter would I do. My mom just sees me at lunches and she's do you ever work?

And we do work. We work a lot. and so the typical day life a recruiter is to meet people. developers have, release dates and. Sprint cycles. And you need to push this feature by this time, like recruiters, we have to meet anywhere between 10 to 15 new people a week.

So new people, we not to mention maintaining the existing, relationships you have. So that's why I've met 4,000 people. So I basically. Have to figure out some way to maintain 4,000, relationships. And so that's why I've rolled out a lot of different things with text messaging platform and email newsletters and all that.

But all that being said, we meet people and then really gets overlooked is after you, we meet people. We have, there's a lot of right initiative work you have to do. Glen, let's say you and I hang out. I get to know about you for about 1530 minutes. I go back to my computer. I plug in all this information about you, to our CRM.

What I have to do is I have to send you all the jobs that could be a fit. Then I have to submit you to those jobs. Then I have to line up interviews for those jobs. And then I have to rely on secretary interviews for those jobs. But not only am I doing that for you, Glen, I am doing that for up to 10 other people at one time.

So it is just an, it is a massive amount of project management, communication ministrative assistance and just overall networking, which is why I am very loud on social media that I really think you need to follow up with a recruiter. If you are actively working with he or she, you need to follow up with recruiters almost every single day, because we can give very rundown.

Yeah. 

Glenn Stovall: [00:05:06] So I'm curious to say you're meeting 10 to 15 

Taylor Desseyn: [00:05:08] new people a week.

Glenn Stovall: [00:05:09] So where are you finding these people or what are some of the strategies you've found to continually meet new people like that? 

Taylor Desseyn: [00:05:15] Yeah. And that's, and again, that's, I've been starting to be really loud on social media about where we should put your resume and what are people seeing?

I think the market's really shifted. So since I got into recruiting your main sites where like career builder and dice and monster. So if you don't know about dice, a lot of people don't know what dice.com is. Glen, do you know what dice.com is? 

Glenn Stovall: [00:05:35] I do remember this from a Y a, yeah, it was like a job board.

It was 

Taylor Desseyn: [00:05:40] it's tech specific, right? So not many people realize that like dice.com is tech specific. So when I started, those are the big three. Now the big three are indeed LinkedIn and dice, With dice, really being the third biggest. So LinkedIn indeed, a really taken. the, hold on the job search process.

And so every single day recruiters, every single morning log on to all these job sites, blindly email people. Blindly email you Glenn in and hopefully Glenn, you get back to us because we have metrics we have to hit, which is why so many people get emails from recruiters because we have to essentially spray and pray because we have to hit these metrics.

Fortunately at Vaco, we don't hold those people. We don't hold at least. So my team, I manage a team of nine recruiters. I don't hold my team and non recursive metrics. we do have metrics in place, but yeah. It's more afford organic conversation on the back end of things. but yeah, that's where we find our people.

Indeed. dice.com and LinkedIn. 

Glenn Stovall: [00:06:36] Yeah. That is really interesting. Cause I've always wondered that too. Or I occasionally get, I would get the recruiter, emails where, we were talking a bit before the episode. You say you work with a lot of.net people and I've never done any.network. And I get, Hey, do you want to [email protected] C sharp application?

I'm like, yeah. There have to be people who have less than zero of this. Yeah. But, but I guess that's good to know. I guess in this case it was just like, Hey, no, I don't have that, but I do have these skills. 

Taylor Desseyn: [00:07:04] Yeah. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. and I think too, I think this kind of goes into another thing about how to write a resume, how to write a LinkedIn.

To me, you don't want to put skillsets on your resume and your LinkedIn that you haven't used. And you want to use, because that can be misinterpreted. I think a lot of recruiters who are very young in their career have a very like narrow mindset, right? So they see angular on your resume. They're like, Oh my gosh, this person it's got a ton of angular.

But they didn't look at the fact that Anglo, it was listed in like side projects. You know what I'm saying? Or wants to learn. And so you have to be careful on how to notate your resume and your LinkedIn to where it's well written. You can still. Communicate what you want to get into, but that recruiters are not misled on what skills you have or don't have.

Glenn Stovall: [00:07:47] Makes sense. yeah, you're talking about the developer's skills and how you represent yourself. That leads in pretty well to the next question I have also from 

Taylor Desseyn: [00:07:54] Ghana. Good. I claim that I'm just kidding. 

Glenn Stovall: [00:07:57] yes. That's from Anik on dev.to Says, should a developer apply to jobs where they don't meet all the requirements on the job posting?

Taylor Desseyn: [00:08:05] yes. So that is a really good question. I think right now, especially too, I think you need to submit your resume. let me rephrase that, Glenn. So I did a post about two and a half weeks ago on LinkedIn about Not submitting in your resume, two job postings, and it blew up and I'm gonna answer this question in a way, but I think right now, I think everybody's submitting their resume everywhere and you're not going to stand out.

And so for me, what I did, what I said in my video, and you can check it off, you connect to me on link them is I think you should. When you see a job posting that looks interesting. Look at that job posting and then take the search, that company name on LinkedIn, connect with those individuals on LinkedIn message, the individuals within your obviously kind of areas.

So like I'm not saying go message a bunch of admin assistants to go talk to developers for our developer job, but message LPARs person on the dev team and say, Hey, listen, I see this posting, who do I need to speak to? Can you get me connected? Absolutely. Here's my senior lead. The connections made there.

You have an organic conversation. I think that's the way you should navigate the job search right now because the amount of job seekers right now that are on the market have five X right on. I tell people at any given point, I was working with 10 developers at one time pre COVID. Now I'm up to 50 developers at one time that I'm working with.

And so it's just a massive amount of people in the markets. You have to try to differentiate yourself. And the only way, the best way I know how is to network with people over LinkedIn. So that is my 2 cents on applying to job postings. But if you do want to apply to job postings that you aren't a fit for yes.

Do it. As long as it's. Now, if you're a junior developer applying for a principal architect, don't do that. But ultimately, you obviously want to keep it within the range that you're in, but I would absolutely submit your resume. 

Glenn Stovall: [00:09:53] Yeah, no, that totally tracks I've. anytime I've been job hunting, I've ever, I liked the strategy of reaching out to them.

I've done it with people already in my network, but I've. Always just felt like a most jobs aren't posted online. M B like everyone goes directly to the application form, so it doesn't actually do that. Good. And you'll see people online on Reddit and deputy they'll say, Hey, I filled out like 200 applications and I've gotten two or three interviews and it's 

Taylor Desseyn: [00:10:20] Yeah.

it's a lot, right? I see on Twitter, all these devotees, like I submitted your resume. I submit, Oh my gosh, the job search is so exhausting and listen to the job. Search is absolutely exhausting. I'm not going to diminish that whatsoever, but it's man, I submitted my resume to 700 app 700 applications.

why the heck do you think it's exhausted? Why do you think you're not getting where you're doing the same dang thing. 700 times. Stop it. yeah, I think you really need to reverse engineer, the job search process. 

Glenn Stovall: [00:10:48] Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. so had a couple of questions to some people are wondering about how much, technical expertise our recruiters have.

one of the questions, 

Taylor Desseyn: [00:10:57] David 

Glenn Stovall: [00:10:57] KPN on Twitter wanted me to ask, Taylor, what's the difference between Java and JavaScript. 

Taylor Desseyn: [00:11:02] I love that, I saw that. I do know that there are different. I do know one is a little bit more of a, the backend language, I guess you'd say JavaScripts, the backend language too.

at the end of the day, one is job. One is JavaScript. They're very different. That's about all I know now. That being said, I do you try to take pride in my and training my team of nine recruiters to make sure we do not sounding competent at what we do. I think a lot of times, recruiters are, recruiters couldn't even tell you.

You know the difference between .net, Core .net, MVC. And I think the biggest thing is I don't even know the major differences, but I don't, I know they're different. And I think recruiters need to be, what is it, a mile wide and inch deep to be very successful. But unfortunately, most recruiters aren't even an inch wide, an inch deep.

and we're just like, Oh, I don't see any angular. I don't see angular. I don't see angular nine on your resume. most developers aren't going to write. They have angler non-experience we're just going to write angular. Most recruiters don't know the difference in angular JS, right?

Essentially angler JS is one dot X and Angular is two plus. And so all that being said, most recruiters are not technical. There is not really a training program for recruiters. A lot of recruiting firms only care about, volume and cash money in the door quickly. And unfortunately, as a recruiter, you can be pretty bad at your job instill like.

Do okay. In regards to a living perspective. but it's, I try to take pride. My team tries to take pride in knowing a lot, I go to conferences, I speak at conferences. I listen to what's on the podcast. I interview developers to learn about, different things and the latest features.

And. but I will tell you, most recruiters are not educated and the ones that are educated and you can tell they're educated, stay really close to them because those are the ones that's going to make you a lot of money down the long run. Yeah, that's 

Glenn Stovall: [00:12:50] good to know. And something else I've seen in my experience is that sometimes I've had experience with recruiters, understand that two things could be closely related skills are transferable.

Like it's, I feel like one example where I had done. Some work with a view, a JavaScript framework. Yep. And they were looking for someone who was doing react, which was a JavaScript framework. And they are very similar frameworks. 

Taylor Desseyn: [00:13:15] . Or 

Glenn Stovall: [00:13:17] someone's I've been writing Java suit for 10 years and they're like, I don't see node on your resume.

It's that's just Java script on the backend. 

what was the old joke?  Hey, I see you've painted a lot of blue houses before, but can you 

Taylor Desseyn: [00:13:30] paint a greenhouse? Yeah. In house experience 

Glenn Stovall: [00:13:33] on your resume. And 

Taylor Desseyn: [00:13:34] they're like, I think I can figure it out and listen, man, I'm going to be honest with you.

I, it's not sometimes the recruiters like clients just don't get it, man. like we have, I'm not kidding you. I'll never forget this. I think it was when I first moved back to Nashville, I had a really good data engineer and the client goes, Hey, she has 85% of the skills, but we're not hiring her.

And I'm like, what is that? Now looking back on it, I'm like, what is that say about your organization that you're not willing to train the last 15%. And so it makes us look bad. It makes recruiters look bad because we're like, Oh, the client said you don't have 15%, but we're still having to deliver the news.

And so I think a lot of times while yes, most recruiters don't understand that Node a JavaScript framework. But the client could be saying, no, we need five years of Node experience. And so it makes the recruiters look dumb because we're like, Oh, it's not on your resume. And so it's just this push pull thing.

I listen to recruiters are pretty terrible what they do, but also companies are pretty terrible at hiring as well. 

Glenn Stovall: [00:14:37] Especially when, like the number of technologies it's just grown and grown over the years. So if you're looking at experience with nine very different things, what are the odds that I've happened to work with?

Like those exact nine 

Taylor Desseyn: [00:14:47] shows. Yeah. And it came companies hire for that, man. They're like, yeah, we need these six things. And it's do you need these six things? Or do you need two of the six? And the other four would be great. And so that's where you really need to dig in from a recruiting perspective.

And our sales team does a really good job at Vaco where it's okay, listen, You say you want all of these skills? Give me a percentage breakdown of the specific skills you're using the majority of the day. They're like, Oh, they're actually using the react 75%. No, 25%. Okay. then that means to me, you really need a react guy.

Or girl. And but again, most recruiting firms don't take the time to train their people. And in my mind, if recruiting firms would just slow the heck down, train your people the way they need to be trained. Oh my gosh, you would make 10 X the money, but like everything else, people just want cash in the door quickly and don't care about training  

Glenn Stovall: [00:15:38] yeah.

Speaking of cash in the door, that was another question I've had, how. what did the economics of recruiting look like? my understanding is most recruiters are paid some percentage of the salary offer that the developers that you recruit end up getting by the 

Taylor Desseyn: [00:15:52] company. Yeah. Yeah. it's, we work out a fee, so it depends.

So if it's direct hire full time we pay. So we work out, we negotiate a fee for the, year salary, right? So let's say you're at a hundred K. We typically get 20, 20%. Let's just say that. but if it's contract to hire, we're given a bill rates, we make sure our candidates are happy.

So they get paid what they want to get paid. I walk through the process with the candidate to make sure they understand where the benefits are coming from. why the margin is the way it is and have that organic conversation. I think the natural. argument is that recruiters try to Jack down your hourly rate.

And that's true because we cause a lot of recruiters try to make that margin up on the contract side of things, but Vaco, we position ourselves more as a consulting company. So the more you get, the more I get because the bill rate goes up. but again, it is a sticky slope. I think you really need to, this is where, I put a post out the other day on LinkedIn.

I was like, you can know it was like a poll. And I said, okay, how do you have a phone call or video call with a recruiter? The first time you meet with them right now, 97% of the people that voted said they do a phone call. It's like, why in the heck, would you not do a video call with a recruiter who could potentially be responsible for the next step in your career?

Like to me that just that's mind blowing. And so that's where you really need to like, meet the recruiter face to face, continue to do face to face with them. We're all doing video now. I think COVID, everybody's comfortable doing video calls now before coven was like, Oh, I'll do a Skype call. I barely even knew how to do zoom pre COVID now that's all I do.

And so it's you need to make sure you build a relationship with a recruiter because when it comes to money, man, you need to make sure they have your back. 

Glenn Stovall: [00:17:40] Yeah, it's always wild to me. I remember watching the Jetsons cartoon growing up video call sounded like this amazing thing. You true thing.

And now we're all doing it. No, it's an annoyance. Like I made with a crude or I have to put a button down shirt on over my pajamas. 

Taylor Desseyn: [00:17:55] Exactly. Seriously, 

Glenn Stovall: [00:17:58] this is a bit of a tangent. I don't know if you've seen the, That this new app. It's not, 

Taylor Desseyn: [00:18:03] no, I haven't. What is that? So it's from 

Glenn Stovall: [00:18:06] the founder of Evernote and they're trying to come up with just a better way to do video calls.

Cause we're still in the stone age of this Jetsons technology, but I'm 

Taylor Desseyn: [00:18:13] sure if you, 

Glenn Stovall: [00:18:15] have you ever watched the John Oliver show where 

Taylor Desseyn: [00:18:17] he has I have not, man. I have not. And so I apologize. It's probably stolen. It won't go as well as you wanted it to, but 

Glenn Stovall: [00:18:23] Oh, it's fine. But this the same way you can basically have a screen behind you.

That you can change and give presentations and I don't know. 

Taylor Desseyn: [00:18:32] That's what I'm supposed to be. 

Glenn Stovall: [00:18:34] Yes. Nice. 

Taylor Desseyn: [00:18:35] Nice. Nice. I need to check it out. Let me check it out. 

Glenn Stovall: [00:18:39] Yeah. So I guess if companies are, are paying you, if you said somewhere in the rate of 20% for a year salary, which seems pretty high to me, like why don't.

Why not just do it in house or conversely, if I'm a developer, could I just go talk to a company directly and maybe negotiate a higher salary because I'd be cheaper at home? 

Taylor Desseyn: [00:19:00] Sure. Yeah. and I've seen this as well. so first off, so I'll try to answer this in many of ways and if I don't answer all of it, please let me know.

But so first offer, most developers have enough on their plates. They don't want to go out and actively sell themselves and let's face it. You're a developer for a reason, you probably don't want to be out in front of people selling. and so sure if you want to go out and get networked and get in with companies, yeah.

You're probably gonna make a higher rate because essentially you don't, you wouldn't have to work within our rates. They would essentially pay you what our bill rate would be. And but that takes a lot of work on your end. So if you like networking, cleaning, cold calling into companies and doing all that.

Yeah, absolutely. I know a lot of developers that just make bank because they're good enough and they're networked and enough where they don't need to use a recruiter. However, most developers, 90, 95% of developers don't want to do that. So that's why you work with us. Cause then we just send, you leads all around town.

I'm working with two or three senior engineers right now. and I just literally, they don't even let me, they don't even. I don't even have to send them job descriptions. They trust me enough where they're like, listen, just line up interviews, just line up interviews. Here's where I want to be paid in the range and let's just do it.

And so that's the way it needs to be. I would say why don't companies just do it themselves because recruiting is very hard. and if you are tied to companies within their agency, listen, I've never been a corporate recruiter before because I've been very blessed. My entire career has been with Vaco, but.

From what I've been told and what I've pieced together, there is more to corporate recruiting than just finding people. You have to work about onboarding and you have to make sure paperwork's done. And I nines and W2's yeah. Other internal process that, at the end of the day, we don't have to deal with like my job, my S my job single handily is to meet as many developers as humanly possible, and then try to match those individuals with people.

That's it. 

Glenn Stovall: [00:21:00] So it sounds like corporate recruiting. It's almost like the difference between sales and enterprise sales. 

Taylor Desseyn: [00:21:04] sure. With Peter. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. the volume I have to deal with is it absurd? compared to corporate recruiting and also too, like a lot of corporate recruiting Nellis, if you're in corporate recruiting and I am I, and I'm wrong, please find me on Twitter and DME.

but like I corporate recruiting doesn't get commissioned. Based off of the people they play. So there's no incentive, For us, there is a low base high commission for what I do. So literally I am. I am, I think I read the numbers. I think I'm like 60% commissioned. most of my salary, 60, 60% is commission.

Wow. And so You know where they were talking about, Dan coven times. it's, it's a lot. And that's so that's why companies don't just go within, that's why they hire us because that's just all we do. so hopefully I answered those, all those layers of questions.

Yeah. 

Glenn Stovall: [00:21:55] Yeah. I think so. and you mentioned like recruiting during COVID-19, how has that changed? both for you as a recruiter and in your experience with the developers that 

Taylor Desseyn: [00:22:03] you're working with. It's changed and also Glenn, great questions, man. I really appreciate it. but it's changed because I now see the importance of digital content and strategy.

I think there is, I think now, and I think now, and quite frankly, probably for the next three to five years, let's face it, right? Like we're not like, did like this isn't going away in a year. This whole working from home thing. And quite frankly, there's, there's murmurs with companies in town.

we've had one client shut down their entire office and it was a big office and they are fully remote now and Vaco and we don't have policy at about coming back into the office after COVID, but that's the thing, when does covert end. And so right now it's completely changed the recruiting game for me, because the only way I'm able to get my name out there is by marketing and content strategy.

I've really doubled down. I've hired up. A marketing guy that I went to college with, actually he was a music major and switched to content marketing. He owns a small marketing agency up in Lexington, Kentucky, and he does all my content strategy. so I'm doing that, doing a lot more videos on me and a lot more cooler people.

let's be honest, Glenn, I don't know if we would have necessarily met. maybe we would have met, I think I'm meeting a lot of cool people like yourself. too, During this timing because everything's remote, right? I'm talking to two software development shops in Knoxville, Tennessee who wants to work with me to staff up their teams, that would have never happened pretty COVID.

I think from a development perspective, I think it's finally allowing developers to work remote. And it's, and I think that's been, pretty cool. and it's really leveled the playing field with talent as well. You have San Francisco individuals looking out here now.

and so that's a pretty cool trend. And I think that trend is here to stay for a bit, at least. 

Glenn Stovall: [00:23:49] Yeah. it's been really interesting where I've, I know a lot of people have a lot of anxiety and justifiably, so just, look at yeah. Everything, but it does seem that there are some benefits to that.

Like you said, like there are more remote opportunities. It's a bigger playing field. There's also more people on the markets. 

Taylor Desseyn: [00:24:05] Yeah. that's another thing, right? more opportunity work remote, but more people in the market. I think salaries are raising a little bit because I know companies are not like great.

Now we have to compete. Against the region now. So Nashville's got to compete with Atlanta pricing. And so that's, so I'm seeing the rates go up a little bit. which is good for us, we are salary negotiations, but, yeah. I think a lot of goods come out of this. I overheard.

I'm sure you've listened to him, Gary Vaynerchuk. he's, I listened to him a ton and, he was doing his marketing for the now where he brings on some CMOs and stuff. And one of the CMOs is I feel like pandemics and natural disasters either take time back 20 years or fast forward 20 years.

and th they all agreed that COVID has fast forward the workplace 20 years, in regards to fully remote. More flex schedule, and that side of things. And so I know it's been good for me. I have a newborn and so it's been great to be home and near her and watching her for the first six weeks of her life grow up.

So 

Glenn Stovall: [00:25:02] congratulations by the 

Taylor Desseyn: [00:25:03] way. Thanks, man. Appreciate it. 

Glenn Stovall: [00:25:06] yeah. So you're talking about digital marketing and stuff in that. 

Taylor Desseyn: [00:25:08] yeah, so I had some notes here. 

Glenn Stovall: [00:25:09] I was wondering that about developers and creating content and how that helps. I had a list of a few different things. And I was wondering, we can do this a lightening round.

 how do these things help you in your job hunt, if at all? 

Taylor Desseyn: [00:25:20] So if you were developing, yeah. I was a developer, so sure. 

Glenn Stovall: [00:25:24] First one I'd say is having a portfolio site, 

Taylor Desseyn: [00:25:27] right? so lightning round, so portfolio site needs to be LinkedIn.

I think the feature section within LinkedIn is incredibly overrated. I did a live session with Danny Thompson, I think is it's DK or Danny Thompson. Yeah. He's in Memphis, has a huge following, but, that, I think, I know developers love blog sites. They love to have their own portfolio sites.

I think you need to, I'm fine if you want to have, I have that up somewhere in the interweb, but I think you need to drive everything towards LinkedIn right now. LinkedIn is having its Renaissance age at the moment. I gave a presentation at Nashville software school to code school grads, last week.

And I just got literally right before this, podcast session, I got asked to speak in two weeks there about networking over LinkedIn. I think. I think you need to have in the featured section, your get hub and some other links to portfolio sites, because employers are all over LinkedIn right now. 

Glenn Stovall: [00:26:25] cool.

I think you just answered three or 

Taylor Desseyn: [00:26:27] four of them right there. 

Glenn Stovall: [00:26:28] Sorry. No, it's fine. Oh yeah. So you're saying like have a really good LinkedIn there's the LinkedIn feature section. Cause I was also gonna ask about writing and blog articles. 

Taylor Desseyn: [00:26:37] Yeah. I think if you're, I think you need to be live doc, not live documented.

I think you need to be documented every single day, one post a day on a challenge you have faced within your workplace. So it's man, couldn't get this to deploy to AWS today, but I have a lot of problems. Anybody else have any thoughts on deploying to S3? I, my legal name, our player that played music with he is now in Buffalo, New York.

he's a data scientist and he has started to really dive into posts on LinkedIn. And he finally had a post that went crazy and he's been at it for about six months and he's been messaging me a lot on what to do and. Posting and why he should post as a developer. And he legitimately messaged me the other day and he goes, Hey, you won't believe this.

I got a job interview because of my thoughtful content on Lincoln. Yeah. He goes,  a hiring manager, reached out to me and wanted me to interview. Now. I don't know if that went anywhere, but the thing is though, is that everyone is at home. Everyone can't go to meetups. Everyone can't do it. Any of that.

Where's everybody at right now, everybody's on social media and I think LinkedIn's really CA is being hot right now. And so if you're posting one thoughtful piece of content a day on LinkedIn, you are going to turn some heads in and get some people noticing you. 

Glenn Stovall: [00:27:57] Yeah. What about, what's your take on other social media websites?

Taylor Desseyn: [00:28:00] Twitter is pretty crazy. the deaf community on Twitter, I did. Did we meet on Twitter or was it, I think it was national dev. You messaged me. 

Glenn Stovall: [00:28:07] Yeah, it was the, yeah, the local selection, 

Taylor Desseyn: [00:28:09] the local Slack channel for nationals, which is again another, tool, right? I don't, I'm not on NashDev as much as I should be because there's a whole jobs community section that I see tons and tons of good conversations going on, but you have to pick and choose your battles.

I think. And here's the deal. I want to preface this too. You don't need to be on all these social media sites to build a brand, right? You don't have to have a brand. My brother is an incredible product manager and owner manager. I don't know if they're interchangeable. And he has zero brands when it comes to LinkedIn.

And when I say zero brain, doesn't post on LinkedIn and he's not really on Twitter, but legitimate dude has landed an interview like with that Apple recently. And it's he did that on his own by doing the things that I just said. I said earlier about not so many resume about finding, the posting and then connect with people on LinkedIn.

But it's like he has no brand and he ended up at Ticketmaster on his own. So you don't have to have it. But I think right now you also don't want to be fired from a job and be like, Holy crap, I don't have a network. And so the way to network right now is to have a brand. If you're passionate about knitting, talk about knitting.

I love floral shirts, right? Big floral shirt guy. I'm passionate about helping people on their job search. My data scientist guy talks about theories of, I don't know, data things. I don't even know what it means. just post something, make it thoughtful, make it sincere. And you're going to be shocked with how it takes off.

Glenn Stovall: [00:29:29] Fascinating. Wow. Yeah, no, that's really good. I did see a joke online where someone talked about how LinkedIn's are you go to get jobs in Twitter's where you go to lose 

Taylor Desseyn: [00:29:38] them? Yeah. listen, I, Twitter can get kinda crazy. I didn't finish your question by the way. Yeah. Twitter is really good.

Twitter is dev community pretty solid. Twitter is Twitter and LinkedIn are the only places. So if you're still listening to this, like what are we, 35 minutes through? Yeah. If you're still listening to this podcast still. Okay. Twitter and LinkedIn are the only two social media platforms right now, aside from tick tock is wild.

Cause tick talks even more crazy organic reached and Twitter and LinkedIn, but I'm not even attempting to get on that right now. At least it's just too much, but for my sanity rather. but Twitter and LinkedIn are the only places where Glenn, if I like your LinkedIn post, my 5,000 LinkedIn followers, see it, same thing for Twitter.

Those are the only two places. if I like Glen's post all of my 2,500 Twitter followers, see it. And it's wow, like that's huge. And so for me, that's where, if you're a software engineer, developer want to get into development and software and you're listening to this right now, that's where I'd be posting every single day.

LinkedIn Twitter. And people are like, do I have to do I need it? I don't have any thoughtful things to say, just document. People are like, I got to come up with some clever, I just retweet a bunch of developers get involved in conversations, slide into people's DMS. Like it's not hard. just engage with people, but you have to be consistent and it takes time.

Glenn Stovall: [00:31:03] Yeah. And, yeah. And if you're listening to this, I'd also recommend it, the list there, if they haven't already go back a few episodes where I talked to Phillip Morgan, he talked about maintaining his daily blog for four years. 

Taylor Desseyn: [00:31:13] Yeah, we got that. That was interesting conversation. 

Glenn Stovall: [00:31:16] Oh yeah. And everything has done for his, he runs his own small consulting business, but yeah, it gets a lot into how.

Yeah, it's intimidating at first, but it's also like a muscle. You start doing it every day. It starts getting easier. 

Taylor Desseyn: [00:31:27] I've had to completely transform my morning to content strategy, which is completely different from the norm of what I've been taught recruiting for the last eight years. and I've only really dove into LinkedIn and Twitter for the last year.

And my engagement after a year is pretty wild. Like I'm excited to do this for five years to see where it's at. 

Glenn Stovall: [00:31:44] Oh yeah, of course. And I'm a big believer in that writing is a form of thinking like it's. So having to think, to say you have to like, you have to get out there and write and say things and try to it's you do that.

And the work will show you where to go from there. 

Taylor Desseyn: [00:31:57] 100%. I agree. But, yeah, we 

Glenn Stovall: [00:32:00] are coming up on about a half hour so we can start wrapping it up. 

Taylor Desseyn: [00:32:02] Taylor, 

Glenn Stovall: [00:32:03] where could people find more about what you're doing and see. Where should they reach out to you on social media and see what? 

Taylor Desseyn: [00:32:08] Yeah, I was yeah, able to get on the, texting community, or the app called community.

and, it's the one Gary Vaynerchuk uses and a bunch of other people. but basically shoot me a text, six one five, two, three, five. Five six, five zero again, that's six one five two three five five six, five zero. I send out daily job tips, general career advice, I think right now everything's moving to concierge thing.

So concierge doctors, concierge, I don't know. I don't know, dentist or workout. People come to your home and help you work out. I can because COVID is everything is a little bit more. Making people in less big rooms and whatnot. I don't know how I'm trying to communicate right now.

Oh, I'm trying to say shoot me a text. and I try to be your guidance counselor on call. Connect me on LinkedIn. Connect me on Twitter at T S and T D E S E Y N. Then I have a bunch of other things, but just connect with me there and then you'll follow the paper trail. All 

Glenn Stovall: [00:33:01] right. Cool. Hey, this has been great, man.

I really appreciate you taking the time to share all this with us. 

Taylor Desseyn: [00:33:05] Yeah, dude. I appreciate Glen. Thanks for having me, man. 

Glenn Stovall: [00:33:07] All right. Have a haven't even.