From WXXI news.

This is connections I'm Ksenia color.

Guest host in for Alvin Dawson.

If you are a young professional searching for a job right now, you've probably heard it all.

The job market is a great company to hiring.

You just need to network more.

Entry level jobs require 3 or 5 years of experience.

That's just how it is.

And yet many young people are struggling to learn jobs, even those with degrees.

Internship tips, and solid resumes.

Some applicants report applying to hundreds of positions, getting ghosted by recruiters, or making it to the final interview, only to lose out to someone with more experience.

Some are settling for lower paying jobs outside their field, while others are given up on their job search altogether.

If the economy is supposedly doing well, why are so many young professionals stuck?

The data set up according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

The unemployment rate for recent graduates increase to 5.3% in the third quarter of 2024, and nearly half of all Gen Z workers are considering leaving their jobs because they feel undervalued.

Employers say they're desperate for talent, but young jobseekers say they're just not being given a chance.

So what's really going on?

Our young people to picky to an experience are too impatient, or employers raising the bar too high, offering too little pay and ignoring fresh talent?

Today we're digging into the challenges young professionals face in today's job market what's broken, what can be fixed, and how jobseekers can actually learn opportunities.

Joining me today are three experts Kevin Rust, AC vice president and CEO of Boulder Industrial Contractors.

Thanks for coming in.

Thank you for having me.

Brian Carroll, owner at Land Recruiting.

Welcome, Brian.

Thanks for having me.

Justin Lewis at Tech are entrepreneur and MBA career consultant.

Thanks for joining Justin.

Happy to be here.

You can join the conversation this hour by calling (844) 295-8255.

Or if you're in Rochester, (585) 263-9994.

You can also email the program at connections@wxxi.org.

And you can watch us on the WXXI news YouTube channel.

Marie.

You can also leave comments in the chat.

Brian, I have the first question to you.

So what's happening behind the scenes of hiring?

Are companies really overwhelmed with applications or other fewer qualified candidates that we think?

yes, I think, well, I guess the landscape has changed quite a bit in the last couple of years.

So I do think that, you know, there are a lot of job seekers out there two years ago.

I think I would have called that more of what's called an employee market, meaning, there's a lot more jobs than employees or job seekers out there looking for a new position that has completely flipped.

in the last two years.

Right now, we are in the middle of what I would call an employer market, meaning there's more people on the market actively seeking a new position than there are jobs for them.

when that happens, I do think you'll tend to see employers shift to.

We can call it picky.

and I think that's a fair word to use, because they know that there are large applicant pools with a lot of talented individuals, that, that are out of work, let alone those that are working, but certainly open to hearing about new opportunities.

So that gives employers a bit of an advantage to be a little bit more picky.

Now, is that always the right approach?

I think it depends heavily on the position that they're recruiting for and the challenges that that, role needs to tackle.

but that's a very, you know, individual situation.

but overall, I think that's what what candidates right now are facing is a market packed with, people that are very talented and actively seeking new roles.

And most roles they come up against are going to be highly competitive.

And if they're doing the same things that the rest of that marketplace is doing, that talent pool is doing, they're going to blend in with everybody else that's applying and kind of going through the motions, hitting the easy apply button on LinkedIn and hoping for the best, as opposed to getting a bit more creative or a lot more creative.

and trying to find different ways to get directly in front of hiring managers and kind of show that the grit and passion and not just go through the motions.

when looking for a new role.

So I think it's a challenge for job seekers, but those that are tackling the challenge and not giving into it are the ones that are seeing more productivity from their job search.

Jason, you work with MBAs and young professionals.

What's the biggest frustration you hear from job seekers today?

Right?

Yeah, a lot of different things happening in this job market today.

But one of the things that is most frustrating, of course, to candidates, whether they're domestic students or international, is being able to again, get in front of people.

You know, of course, there's a typical way that you can reach out via LinkedIn.

sometimes those messages can be short or extremely lengthy.

or there's certain things that you can do, of course, when it comes to corporate receptions or conferences.

But, you know, overall the frustration comes in where it's not necessarily identifying the right person to connect with.

And then beyond that, making sure that once they have that all set up for that connection, and anticipating it, knowing exactly what it is that they want to talk about.

And so there's different things that I know I've, curated over the past, I would say six months to a year that's really based on my ten, 15 plus year career and really been able to put together a lot of best practice is related to networking, and then really being able to define different ways to have an extremely, intriguing and engaging conversation generating insights, which is basically what you're paid for in the job market for insights and then displaying your ability to execute at the end of the day.

So that frustration, again, it lies in the networking piece.

And then the communication.

but you know, obviously in the in time in business school, being able to coach, mentor and teach a lot of students so that when they do have these conversations can move to really positive outcomes, whether that's short term referral, medium term, where they can, you know, be invited to reach back out or longer term mentorship that, they can that they can receive.

Brian, coming back to what what Justin just said, how much of hiring is actually about skills and experience versus connections and knowing the right people?

I think they're both part of, what I would include in a cohesive strategic plan when it comes to a job search.

the way I look at it is the the networking component is an absolutely, absolutely vital piece.

as you're looking for a new position, you got to have people out there that know what you're looking for, and can, you know, be extra eyes out there.

the other components that I look at, I think, you know, the job boards are kind of a necessary evil.

I think people are frustrated with those because there's a lot of time and effort spent in them with little return.

But I also think because people are stopping at the apply button and not doing anything proactive beyond that, and that's what 98% of people are doing, and 98% of people are probably getting about the same results.

so being creative and what I would call proactive and kind of a third step in, in that job seeking strategy.

So the networking, the job boards, knowing who's hiring, but there's also the proactive piece of, you know, really creating a target list of companies, regardless of if they have a job open right now or not.

But these are these are companies that have a need for your skill set.

they're a company you could see yourself working with and proactively getting yourself in front of those organizations.

I my talent acquisition friends aren't going to like to hear this, but I don't always recommend applying to a job as a first step.

And in fact, a lot of times I would say don't even bother.

I think a lot of candidates will say, you know, every job I see has 100 plus applicants on it or a thousand plus, what's the point, and I agree.

What is the point if you're going to be the 1,001st, you're probably not going to get seen.

So then why not try something different and more proactive?

And that's where I recommend Direct connections.

And Justin just talked about, you know, how do we find that right person.

It takes time.

It's not easy.

It's not simple as an easy apply button.

It's going to take some investment on the candidate's part to get better results on the back end.

So I recommend using LinkedIn as your best friend there.

Try to find the one, two, or three people who could be that direct hiring manager for a role and instead of being applicant 268, go directly to that hiring manager and even email them and say, look, I found this role.

I'm extremely interested.

My resume is attached.

Here's a little bit about me and why I think I'm a great fit and go directly.

and I don't say that to disrespect the talent acquisition processes.

There are a lot of companies that do a great job and actually do provide feedback, but there's a lot of companies who don't.

And if it's the difference of you getting a job or not, and maybe you get a little slap on the wrist for going around talent acquisition, there are times where that's the right move.

when people are desperately seeking their next role.

Thank you.

Kevin.

Have you noticed a shift in how young professionals approach jobs today compared to, let's say, ten years ago?

no.

because, I had a lot of same frustrations that I've heard, that you shared, like, entry level positions requiring 2 to 3 years.

experience.

I remember when I was coming out of college that that that quagmire of a situation was still the same, and I never could make sense of it.

Like it's an entry level job.

How do I get 2 to 3 years experience?

It seemed it seemed like it was a way to filter us out.

I guess.

so you can either let that be something that holds you back, right, and becomes a convenient excuse that you can use.

But I love the ideas that Justin and Brian have kind of set forth as how do you differentiate yourself within a crowded market?

and I think now more than ever, we see the importance of soft skills.

Soft skills are the things that you can't learn in school, right?

Like time management, showing up on time.

Right.

doing what you say you were going to do, have high integrity, take pride in the work that you're doing.

You're not going to learn that in a classroom.

So those are the things that as an employer that, we're traditionally looking for because those hard skills can be trained.

And thanks to the advancements of technology, right, we're all talking about AI.

And if you're not using ChatGPT now, you probably will be at some point.

but that's going to disrupt the job market even more.

So, some of the jobs that we've relied on and have had a focus on will be a thing of the past.

I think we've already seen some of those mass layoffs in some of those industries.

I mean, I was a consultant for a very long time.

And you see the big five starting to talk about, well, if they're just data aggregators and they're just taking quantitative and qualitative data down into simplistic, understandable, bite sized chunks, why do we need them anymore?

So and you're kind of seeing this within business.

Businesses are evolving trying to get their arms around human capital.

We saw them spending a lot of money.

to Brian's earlier point, during the pandemic.

So they would spend, spend, spend, to, to get talent in the door.

And then they realized very quickly, three years later, they overspent.

now we spent too much.

so I would say the the market will continuously evolve and continuously adapt and the skills that you'll need in order to be successful.

We'll also continuously change.

But if you're evolving, and adapting to the emerging needs of the market, while differentiating yourself, I think you're, you're, you're in for you're in for success in the long run.

So, I love Charles Darwin, because he taught us a lot of things, that evolution is the key to, to society.

And I think that's what we're really seeing today is that those soft skills are probably most important.

so that's really what we look for as an employer at Boelter.

and that's where we see a lot of potential back into the skilled trades, because that's something that I simply cannot replace.

Just.

And there is a perception that Gen-Z and younger workers don't want to work as hard or don't have the same work ethic as generations.

Do you think that's fair?

Yeah, that's an interesting point.

I know that there's a lot of research articles that have been coming out to say a lot of employers have been quick to hire, then also quick to, quote unquote, fire, Gen Z workers.

The interesting point, just because there's, a shift in dynamics when it comes to the thought process, when it comes to the use of technology and how we would actually utilize it in order to be productive.

So I think that therein lies the shift tween, let's just say baby boomer generation.

Of course, Gen, millennials, of course, fall into that bucket.

And then the usage of technology, being akin to each of the is, industrial revolution is, of course, that we've seen over, you know, decades.

Of course, that same shift is inspiring this new generation to think much differently.

And I think that is where there's the, there's that's where the rubber meets the road, if you will.

So there's a lot of friction between how, older generations of workers are thinking about solving problems and also being productive in order to impact the bottom line versus the new generation.

Gen Z, thinking about how best to be as productive as possible, but also making sure that they keep in tune with what matters to them and feel shifts in those dynamics of, change significantly.

So what matters to Gen Z now?

Of course, doing a great job, but also protecting their piece, having, what they call, of course, work life balance or work life integration.

Those things are extremely important.

I think it is stemming from, our time frame that we endured throughout the pandemic.

So, I'm definitely witness to that because there's a lot of things that had to be done, of course, in that time frame.

And what was sacrificed on the back end was, you know, whether it was eating right, not working out, not being able to have a, a degree of a social life, and they want to make sure that they hold on dearly to those things which are which matter.

And so I think that's why there's a bit of a shift.

I think it's a bit of an unfair statement to call, to put the negative cast over Gen Z. but, you know, there's ultimately, a meeting of the minds and a basically an intersection that we need to get you to make sure we prioritize what's important for each of the generation of the folks that are in the workforce today.

I'm sitting in for Evan Dawson.

And today in connections, we're talking about finding jobs as young adults.

I'm joined in the studio by Kevin Ross to see vice president and CEO of Boulder Industrial Contractors, Brian Carroll, owner, Atlanta Recruiting.

And Justin it was and talking to Preneur and MBA career consultant.

We got an email from Nick who is wondering what sectors of the job market are saturated and which are struggling to find people.

Brian, is there a is there something that you could address?

Sure.

And I think again, this goes back to Kevin mentioned the evolution of the job market.

And I think that has evolved a lot in the past couple of years.

If you ask me this question, maybe two years ago, I would say that the hottest areas are anywhere around software engineering, software engineers themselves, cloud engineers, what else?

Product managers?

data engineering?

Not that those aren't still highly desirable skill sets.

There just aren't as many jobs open for those roles right now.

And I think what you're seeing is companies and I'll take software engineering is a great example.

I think what you're seeing is there's been a lot of layoffs in technology over the last two years, and I think many of of who you're seeing being laid off or what I would tend to call generalists.

So historically, you'd see software developers either focused front end or back end.

And now we have what's called full stack engineers, which is both both sides of that equation.

less specialization.

Okay.

I wouldn't actually that might be a bad way to put it.

but they're not as specialized in front end or back end and very deep in one specific area.

And I think those, those are the people that companies have tended to hang on to are the deeply specialized talent that they have in the more generalist folks that they hired them for.

Those roles have now said, okay, we don't really have that need.

Let's scale back there.

And those are a lot of who I see on the market right now.

so as far as watch saturated, I don't think there's necessarily I mean, a lot of fields are saturated right now because there's a lot of quality candidates, on the open market right now.

So I think there isn't 1 or 2 I can name.

There's a lot of fields.

Software engineering is certainly one of them, where it's highly, highly saturated.

areas that are not highly saturated get more specialized.

So within.

So I'll dig in further.

In software engineering, if we're talking up a software architect somewhere that's very high level, very specialized, those are fewer and far between.

so I think the higher up you go and the more specialized you go, you're obviously going to fare a little bit better than, than, say, a generalist right now, because there are a lot of them on the open market.

Thank you.

Brian.

Kevin, you touch base a little bit on soft skills, which I agree are super important.

what do you think?

what are some common soft skills, that younger candidates seem to be missing?

Who?

I guess it kind of touches on, I think, the belief that this immediacy economy.

Right.

so if I can order something and it comes to my house within minutes or days, right.

So I think the idea that I can take information and it immediately makes it knowledge, which then I can sell to somebody else is wisdom.

I see a lot of that with the younger generation.

Right.

just because I can read it online doesn't mean I know it, and doesn't mean at all how I know how to apply it.

So I think problem solving is one of the challenges that that some people face.

So if it's not an ideal situation with perfect, elements, that they get confused, you know, if it's like this utopian state that I was promised, you know, it's it's dealing with adversity, I think time management not to keep bringing that up, but who can't work on time management?

We're trying to do everything all at once.

And we're now where busy as this, valor of honor.

if anybody that's not busy, you start looking at them a little weird, like, why do you got so much time?

so I think a lot of those things are some of the economics that we see within society that bleed over into our professional lives.

curiosity, is one of those other things that I think asking our elders questions instead of believing that we can find everything online, is a great way to gain wisdom.

I just don't see those types of open ended questions being asked enough.

I think it's where you go in with, I know it all.

Or I can figure it out.

attitude.

And I don't really need somebody else.

we have people even at, boelter, for example, we do rigging, and, it's a, it's a very specialized field.

You know, it takes two years to gain that skill to be proficient in it.

and they would tell somebody that's been doing this for 30 years how to do it or that that's not right, you know, and that's, that creates a lot of friction unnecessarily and resentment, you know, and resentment builds.

And then you're not really bestowing that wisdom on the younger generation.

And and I loved your question earlier.

Right.

Is are they are they lazier.

And they just I think that's a total lack of understanding.

Right.

how they're motivated is totally different.

How the previous generations have been motivated.

And we're we're leaning more in our culture on love rather than fear.

You know, fear used to be the way to motivate intrinsically, more, than in the past.

And extrinsic motivation is, is short term, you know, it's short lived.

I'll do what you want me to do for a very short period of time.

And I remember your bonus only for about less than 30 days.

So, absolutely.

I think the some of the soft skills that need to be accentuated within that hiring process, we want to sell our technical skills, and I get that.

but selling your understanding of how you learn is probably more valuable.

because if you have a good idea, and understanding as to how you learn, then an organization can, stop with their, one way fits all or one size fits all approach to development.

and then you give them a better idea as to how they can teach you new skills, because that's going to be continuously needed in preparation for this program.

I scroll through a lot of jobs and all, and most of them have a requirement of ability to utilize ChatGPT and Gemini, which I think is very weird way to phrase it for like a job that requires a year or two of experience of like, how do you think this people are getting degrees if they're not able to utilize it?

But just saying.

I was wondering, how do you see AI and automation changing what skills young professionals need to focus on outside of just being able to utilize AI tools?

Well, I'm glad you asked me this questions because the the startup that I'm building right now is primarily focused on AI, automation.

The forward looking vision for quantum computing.

So these are game changing advanced technologies that are sweeping.

They have been around for quite some time.

You know, if we think back to the days of, the 1950s, I'm not mistaken, Alan Turing, one of two individuals that were at the very center of developing the advanced technology that we're seeing come alive today, being thoroughly utilized is something that people have to get comfortable with.

And I know there are stats, statistics, figures that have been coming out to say AI is taking jobs away the tune of tens of millions, hundreds of millions of jobs, which to some degree, there's a little bit of truth there.

But in the same way, when we think about when there were horse and carriage individuals that actually led those horses, worked on those carriages and whatnot, when, of course, Henry Ford came along, those individuals, probably you could think of them as changing toward auto mechanics as opposed to a mechanic for a, a carriage or a horse carriage.

So the same thing is happening right before our eyes.

So to be able to take hold of this, this landscape that is actively evolving every two months, six months, every year, most definitely people have to become comfortable with the tools and resources that are out there.

if it's leaning into, simple resources, YouTube.

like the miss, an AI degree at University of Rochester or other great programs that are out there, great.

But the biggest thing that, is also important is the experiential learning component.

There's no use me just reading about AI automation, how it can simplify optimize workflows, enhance productivity is no use me reading about it and not being able to execute on it.

Building certain projects.

Maybe even, for example, work.

the use I'm in business school that has what's known as fun and vision consulting where they are able to serve local area nonprofits and commercial businesses and helping them move, their businesses forward.

And then, of course, they can put these things on the resume.

So same concept via, utilizing AI and automation and being able to execute, and building experiential learning projects.

So by the time you see that job requirement responsibility, say, for what?

Gotcha.

GPT or Gemini, leveraging these types of resources and tools, you can have certain star stories, of course, visualization, task, action, result and then go beyond to make sure that you can communicate how what you've done is relevant for the organization, both now and in the future.

So that's that's just my opinion on on what's happening now in the AI automation space.

People have to be comfortable, have to build in experiences, and of course have to be able to communicate the value that.

Thank you so much, Justin.

And we are going to take a short break.

And when we come back, we'll have more with our guests.

Kevin Ross, DC Vice President and CEO of Boulder Industrial Contractors, and Brian Carroll, owner at Lee and recruiting.

And Justin, that was a tech into to you were an MBA career consultant.

I'm Megan mack Monday on the next connections February 24th marks the third year of Russia's war on Ukraine.

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We explore the latest with those talks, what's going on in the news, and we'll answer your questions.

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This is connections I'm Ksenia color sitting in for Evan Dawson and we talking about getting jobs as written grads.

You can join the conversation in this hour by calling (844) 295-8255.

Or if you're in Rochester, (585) 263-9994.

You can also email the program at connections@wxxi.org, and you can watch us on the WXXI news YouTube channel, where you can also leave comments in the chat.

So the next segment, which I'm very excited about is, actually what's wrong with with hiring process?

So, Brian, a question to you.

I hear a lot of stories from my classmates about job seekers going through five rounds of interviews and then getting ghosted, our companies overdoing it with hiring processes.

Yeah, you certainly can be.

Yes.

I think that's again, company to company.

and overdoing it, I think, depends on, probably the person's perspective.

some people are upset that I talked to and they have to go to a third and final interview, which I don't think is crazy.

If we're getting out to 5 or 6 interviews, there's there's some problems here, particularly for entry level talent.

It it should coincide with the type of role you're hiring for.

the more advanced role, if you're hiring a chief level officer, you probably need to have an in-depth hiring process with, you know, 4 or 5 stages where they're meeting a good chunk of people that they're going to have enterprise wide impact.

and it's important that they're thoroughly vetted for more entry level roles.

That's absolutely overkill.

I also think the problems come with what companies are vetting and how they go about vetting talent.

I think that's a very many companies really, really struggle with that.

And I believe that's because many of the people involved in those vetting processes and the talent assessment processes really shouldn't be a part of it.

that they're hey, let's get this person's opinion on on so-and-so candidate.

And, you know, when I was hiring for my teams, everybody that was a part of the hiring process was there for a specific person, purpose.

They were in those interviews to, elicit responses or to assess certain parts of what we were looking for.

and an individual, if somebody didn't have a purpose, they weren't involved in the conversation.

It wasn't let's get every single person's approval and try to get consensus.

Consensus is a killer when it comes to hiring.

that's basically when I see that it's because nobody really wants their ball in the hand at the end of the game, so to speak, and have it be their fault if the person didn't work out.

Hiring is very, very difficult.

it's it's an art, not a science.

But at the end of the day, somebody has to make that decision and consensus, in my opinion, is not the way to go about that.

And I often see that also, we talked about this before, companies that only want to discuss skills and that those are hard skills.

It's easy to talk about Java programing.

You either have that or you don't.

Or if you want to get into, any specific skill, it's easy to ascertain that and to what level you have that it's very difficult.

On the other hand, to, to ascertain, you know, Kevin earlier was talking about adaptability, somebody that's adaptable to changing environments.

Those are harder questions to ask, and it's harder to design questions to get the responses that you need.

So most interviewers will just stay away from even trying to get an, an idea of how adaptable is this person?

How much of a positive attitude do they have?

you know, some of those soft skills that we just talked about.

It's much harder to analyze that from, the talent acquisition side of the table.

So I think companies need to do a much better job of realizing that at the end of the day, we hire human beings, not resumes.

And that skill sets, you know, Kevin mentioned earlier, you know, if you're you're 80% of the way there technically from a technical skill standpoint, but you're a dead on match from a human skills standpoint.

Those are the people that I aggressively want to go after.

And candidates need to realize two, this is a key piece that go in knowing that the person across the table from you might be pretty bad at interviewing, so you might have to take a little bit of control and make sure some of your your great personality traits, your adaptability, your positive attitude, your passionate learning that that comes across, whether or not it's directly asked or not.

And that's something that a really well prepared candidate, is able to do, whereas somebody who who's not prepared and hopes they get out, ask the right questions is probably not going to do as well.

So do you think the traditional hiring process is outdated and the companies should be rethinking how they evaluate candidates?

I think we are.

I think that's been going on for quite a while.

I don't know that we've necessarily hit the mark again.

That's a it's a very general topic.

So to loop our companies into, you know, we're all struggling with this.

There are certainly companies that do a much, much better job, evaluating talent and efficient process than others.

and that's because of some of the things that that we just talked about.

I think when, when companies treat it as a transaction, you know, treating interview and talent acquisition as a transaction, like, we got a person, we hire them, we move on.

It's not really what it is.

It's a it's a process that's never ending.

You know, consistently learning more about where things went well, where they didn't.

And we just talked about adaptability, adapting, and improving so that the next time you're a little bit better at it.

so I don't know that we're ever going to, you know, fix hiring, so to speak.

It's very difficult.

I've been doing it for 20 years and I struggle with it.

and I practice this stuff.

I do think I'm an adaptable individual, and I get it wrong, too.

But I think people need to stop looking at it through the lens of right and wrong, and looking at it more through the lens of, are we getting better or are we evolve and are, you know, is each interaction better than the last?

Justin, what do you think?

is is there something that should be, should be like it in the hiring process?

I am most definitely in favor of making sure that, you know, there's reevaluation checks and balances along the way.

Of course, when there's something that's been done repeatedly over the last five years, ten years, we're just doing it because that's always the way that it's been done.

And of course, we inherently run into issues.

I can think back to two experiences.

One, is through my, basically recruiting journey, as an intern, when I was, well, for internship, when I was an MBA at, summer business school.

And so, I, you know, basically deployed, a guerrilla tactic, method, strategy to make sure that I could network with the right person and then, of course, maintain contact with that person.

And when I went to MBA Veterans Conference Chicago, make sure to show up, ask the right questions, be attentive.

Of course, engaging.

Really find, deploy the ways that I already practiced in order to stand out early.

And guess what?

I was invited to a first round the very next day.

And this was without having consulting human capital, HR, sizing background anywhere on my resume.

And now we're talking to a big four organization that, at a roll base in New York City or toughest office to get into ultimately went toward, offer stage and was successful and whatnot.

And when I think about that recruiting journey, communication all along the way, the individuals that are connected with, similar to the ones that, you know, my colleagues on the call today have mentioned.

So it's more of a process that is less transactional and learning deeply about who this person is, how they show up, how they lead, even without title.

The second experience I can think about is, colleague of mine.

He's, extremely successful lawyer, you know, coming out of the Philadelphia area, working out in New York, and, and also Washington, DC and a lot of high profile cases he's done in what he described to assist for recruiting.

It was mind boggling because the process that I'm very familiar with, the 3 to 4 rounds presentations, case interviews, recruiting events, conferences, all these things, I would assume around at least eight and let's just say 6 to 10 touch points with one particular company.

It pales in comparison to what his process was when he was going for one of the major, but basically be one of the most successful, law firms in the world.

He had mentioned it was no more than three rounds.

And the in the long hours of doing presentations and what he didn't have to do any of that.

Right.

So talking about Harvard Law grad going into the top law firm in the world didn't have to do a lot of the things that, I was very familiar with and even trained an MBA in present day to, to be successful, that which requires 6 to 10 pointlessly farms, depending on who the firm is.

So definitely, a point at which all of this needs to change just because the volume of people that our currently in the job market, especially the landscape of things that are happening, in DC, especially a lot of, federal contractors and workers being laid off, there's a point at which there's going to be a overwhelming amount of frustration in the job market.

And then, of course, there's a lot of work that will ultimately need to be done, get done on the on the corporate side.

Right.

So there's this has there has to be change.

This is my opinion.

Thank you.

Justin.

Kevin, what's the most frustrating part of trying to fill a position right now?

I think we touched on it.

I think we're talking about hiring practices.

That's an outdated science that was never scientific to begin with.

I think that resumes have always been able to be gamed.

Right.

And now you have AI that, can take a job description and write the perfect resume to match that job description.

So you get a lot of, untested skills.

if you have an overreliance on a resume, a resume, just like, any outfit, that you can dress.

What is it?

You can paint a pig, right.

so in, for lack of a better phrase, it's it's it's just that you can be whatever you want to be on a piece of paper.

So if you have this overreliance of judging somebody by a piece of paper, you miss out on all those abilities to actually understand who that individual is.

until to to Brian's point, you know, until you can ask some of these questions, I've always, I've been in sales a long, long time.

I think, sales has taught me a lot of things, but it tells you to understand what's in it for the other person other than yourself.

it allows you to take this bidirectional approach where you also understand what's in it for you and what's in it for them.

so what's most frustrating is, somebody coming in and not really knowing themself, you know, where you're, you're they're answering yes or no questions, you know, or you're asking an open ended question and they can't really share too much.

I think, back to what you guys were discussing earlier.

One of the things that I just wanted to mention is that, ATS systems and resumes, again, the whole idea was that I had so many people that I needed ways to win them out, just like a lot of the college rates.

Right.

for jobs, that probably don't need college experience would require college experience.

Just reading people out.

so we've seen this evolution in this adaptation within the job market too, is that do we actually need those pre requirements like was that really scientific.

And I think we were the gentleman was just Justin was just saying before is is this hiring process even effective at what it's actually trying to do.

And how often do we look at it like a transaction, like Brian said, but never review our credit card statement.

Right.

we never go back to say, hey, was that question actually helpful or hurtful, or did we hire the right person when we looked at these ten or these 20 or these 30?

and I think a lot of that analysis can help you to improve upon your hiring process.

But, I think Brian also made a critical point, too, is that we're shopping for, right now, consensus instead of confrontation.

You know, having disagreement is okay as long as we can talk through it.

but nobody wanting to hold the ball or take the ball at the end of the game and take that last shot, you're not really always going to find the best people.

So, a long winded answer.

way to to answer your question, but I think that the way that we interview has not changed to how fast the interviewers are adapting to the environment.

I am very glad all of you brought up this transactional nature of hiring process, because it's transactional, not only on the side of the company or person who is hiring, but also of the applicant as well.

That was one of the questions my, friends from school asked me to address.

so when we started our program at Simon Business School, we were taught like two different ways of approaching, like find a new job which is applying for thousands of them, or having a list and target and specific companies and most of my classmates are utilizing both of these approaches because, a lot of them want to work for anthropic or open AI.

But all of that, while all of them understand that not all of them are going to get those jobs, and for a very, very high chance that none of them will.

But at the same time, they see this gigantic applications with submitting their resume cover letter.

Then retype in your resume and cover letter, then re typing all your educational experience, then answering like ten more questions about the company, how to find time, being like a full time student, or a full time employee, or both, and how to find motivation to be able to dedicate like a big amount of your time and your character to a certain company.

so I'll jump in there.

I think one, I'll just say that that LinkedIn with the easy apply button has created more of a problem than they have a solution.

It's it's entirely too easy to just carpet bomb employers for roles that candidates are wholly unqualified to apply for.

And that's that's a tough part on the on my side of the table, because I've got to sift through all that, and it can tend to make to make you jaded over the entire candidate pool.

When 99% of 500 applicants had no business applying for the role, and it can even hurt the qualified candidates in the pool.

So that's a that's a tough part there that that is truly transactional in nature, that that the applicants are not doing any homework to understand.

Is this even the right position for me?

and I think it kind of comes back to the difference of being busy and being productive.

I see a lot of posts on LinkedIn saying, you know, 4000 applications and, you know, only two interviews.

If you put in those 4000 applications a total of 4000 seconds into actually applying to those, then you shouldn't get interviews from a lot of those.

You're probably unqualified and you're really aren't even really trying.

You're being busy, but you're not being productive, productive.

And a job search, to me means you're taking it upon yourself to do some of the homework and some of the legwork so that when you're applying that person seeing your resume, they should know exactly why you are in their inbox.

It should be immediately clear why you've applied for that role.

and I'll go back to, to some of the things that I mentioned earlier.

Application is is only one way to go after securing a new position.

and in my opinion, it's not even the best.

I again, I don't want to tick off my, my talent acquisition friends by saying go around their processes, but many of those processes are broken.

I definitely recommend people respect respect talent acquisition processes, but if you're waiting, you know, 5 or 7 days and you've given a realistic time frame for that company to get back and you're not hearing anything, take control.

you already have very little control in the process to begin with.

Take control, do some homework, go directly to a hiring manager, but do some homework on the organization.

First, find out what their core values are.

Find out what type of person fits in that organization and when you reach out directly, make sure that your message touches on those.

You can weave in, parts of your own values that, coincide with that company going to that level.

It's much more time consuming, but it's much more productive.

It's not just busywork of smashing, an easy apply button.

It's productive.

It's going to take more time, but the results are going to be much, much greater.

So when I see people posting those huge numbers, I want to have sympathy for them.

But having seen so many bad applicants come through, I have a hard time.

Justin, what do you think about it?

Yeah, I'm happy to add here.

I think it's a really great point.

I will just mention, just because we're having these conversations again, like when we're thinking about ways, of course, to have an advantage in this current nature of the day, job market ways to, of course, advance and move forward and, and also ways to make sure that you can rise to the top of the chart that as a top job applicant.

And so the one I want to think about all the different ways that I've experienced recruiting, and also some of the workshops that I've hosted all these last few months at Simon, there's typically about four, to five different components of networking that I talk about.

What's the overall a winning mindset.

So having that power versus pressure dynamic, oh, I need to get a job.

I need to do well in this versus I've been invited to this interview.

I've also accepted that I've also enabled them to hear what it is that I have to add, when it comes to this, this particular job, opportunity with this, this particular role, there's a bit of a switch in mindset, right?

So that, at that stage, once you have that winning mindset, you can take a step towards making sure you can understand what language that firm speaks.

So similar to what was just mentioned.

When your research, if it requires you to go to through proxy statements, of course, 10-K, SEC, annual reports or different webcasts, podcast, whitepapers, publications, by all means do that research that at that point you can generate key takeaways that are are stated and defined.

Then you can generate your own key takeaways that lead to very distinct types of questions, especially if you're talking to a hiring manager, a subject matter expert.

That type of conversation goes beyond what the what's the culture like here, or what's the typical day like?

What types of projects that you worked on?

Unless six months.

Or you can have a very engaging conversation that goes far beyond those questions, and especially if you're thinking about a manager director, vice president conversation, these individuals are, you know, most often times setting the leadership vision and strategy and direction of the firm or at least the business unit.

So if you're coming in with a collective insights, you really are, enabling them to move their teams forward and be productive and it goes without saying what's going to come to their mind is this is the type of person I need on my team right now.

So let's get them an interview.

And then, of course, the last thing, we don't want it to be super transactional.

but the last thing I'll say is building tours and then building toward what I call compliance, or at least, you know, the ability to move forward in the process.

Right?

So now enabling the ability to, to build trust in a small amount of time, maybe 15, 20 minutes on a conversation and then in the back half of that call, maybe last like 2 to 3 minutes, both positive outcomes.

If we've done all those things right, we've done our research, done our homework, we have a running mindset we came with is there's no way that the person on the other end of that phone isn't going to want to see you when beyond that conversation, even if it's five years from now, you can still which also the individual and see, are you all going to work together?

Or who knows, maybe there's an opportunity to add value to their journey as well.

And you can that's that's a bit of a flip on this dynamic.

How can you add value to a vice president in a firm that you want to work at?

And that's the type of thinking, the type of question you should be asking yourself when going into these conversations.

Because at the end of the day, those are individual words that rise to the top and are ultimately successful.

I appreciate all of your insights, and I also see a bunch of those folks in LinkedIn.

If I applied for 4000 jobs and got two interviews, I also often see, not as often, but still I see the messages from recruiters or HR people saying that I got 4000 applications and all of them are terrible, which happens as well.

And I was wondering, Kevin, what do you think companies need to do differently in the next few years to attract and retain young talent and not just easy applicants a lot?

but, I think we talked about it earlier.

I think you it follows the same supply and demand economics that we've seen, in, in a capitalist society for quite some time.

Right.

So if it's a buyer's market, like it was a few years ago, employers had to really start to look at their benefits, you know, and what do we do as a culture and how do we attract these individuals?

But I think we overcomplicate when we keep saying, oh, there's multiple generations and they all want different things.

I think at the end of the day, when we look at what what's our common thread and we're human first, right?

So most humans agree that they always want to be listened to, valued and heard, appreciated, understood.

they want to know that their basic needs are being met.

and, and that starts to intrinsically motivated individuals to want to be a part of a team something greater than themselves.

without that, I think then you get the individual, contributors, right?

You get, the people on their own islands, you know, acting what's in their own best interests rather than others.

And I think the businesses that are able to build the collaboration around love, and some of these emotions that we're so afraid to discuss in business, is the real, real way to build an effective team.

And that's where I think the younger generation is asking for.

It's it's more than work, you know, they've heard their parents come home and complain that they hate their job, over and over again.

So it's like, why would I want to subject myself to that, mad science?

You know, that sounds like insanity, which it was.

but how do we build these environments that celebrate our individuality, while also celebrating that where we have a life outside of work, while intrinsically motivating people to bring their best selves to work every single day.

So I think that's the level of complexity that employers are facing today and the ones that can do it the best will rise to the top and get the best talent that the market has to offer.

The rest will kind of have to fight it out at, at the bottom.

Yeah.

So it's all kind of mutual, right?

the companies need to put their effort into attracting, proper young talent.

And at the same time, the applicants need to put their effort in order to, like, show them, have the best perspective to their potential company.

thank you very much for this very insightful conversation about finding jobs.

I hope it was useful to someone and people will now actually stop, click and easy apply and go into some networking.

so today at the studio, I had Kevin Ross to see Vice President CEO of Boulder Industrial Contractors.

Thank you so much for joining, Kevin.

Thank you.

This was a ton of fun.

Brian Carroll, owner at Lane Recruiting.

Thank you so much for the insights.

Thanks for having me.

And Justin Lewis.

I think it's a friend.

You are an NBA career consultant.

Thank you.

Justin, thank you so much.

Take care.

I'm Sanya Keller sitting in for Evan Dawson.

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