Recruitment, Continuous Learning, and Thinking Outside of the Box with Joel Lalgee

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Coffee with Convry. On today's podcast, my guest is the one and only Joel Laggy. Joel is known internationally as everyone's favorite recruiter on LinkedIn and an ex-face book user who's brand, advice, coaching, and approaching engagement on social media is all about talent, recruiting, recruitment, and recruiter life. Joel has spent his entire career in recruitment in the talent-based world where he focuses on strong marketing, culture, and branding practices personally and with his clients. Joel, welcome to the podcast. Hey, great to be here. I know we've talked about this for a while, so I'm glad we were able to make it happen and happy to be here and share it with the audience. I'm so excited and so excited. It's awesome to have you. So maybe just some rapid-fire questions, just so the audience can get to know a little bit more about Joel. What are your pronouns? He, him. What's your superpower? I would say, thinking outside of the box. Thinking outside of the box, yeah, I would say, favorite, favorite smell. Okay, all right, chocolate. Small of chocolate. Yeah. Yeah, that's, yeah, that's a distinct smell. I love chocolate. What is the best compliment you've ever received? Ooh, that is a good one. I would say it's from my four-year-old daughter and she will, she says a lot right now at least. You're the best daddy in the world, so that's the best compliment to me. Oh, that is sweet, awesome, love that. Do you have, well, now maybe I know what it is, do you have a go-to snack? Chocolate. I knew that was going to be the answer. I smell it, I need it, so. Smell it, I need to think of what's your favorite holiday? Ooh. Oh, that is a good one. I'd probably say like that whole period between Christmas and New Year's is probably my favorite time period. Yeah, it's a nice time just to like relax, hang out with family, kick back. Yeah. I would say that's a good time of the year. So we all started somewhere. Do you remember what your very first job was? I do, so we were discussing right before this call. I moved from the UK to the US when I was 12 and I didn't actually have a work visa, so my first job was working for a friend of mine, his dad in high school and it was cash only. And I was like a makeshift maintenance guy for him and I did like, I painted all of his rentals when people would move out and I would like clean up all of the mess in his rentals. So that was my first official job, you know, where I was working 30 to 40 hours a week in high school. Awesome. Catch it right into it, huh? Right into it. And it was like, it was it was an eye-opening experience for sure and a lot of, it was kind of sad in a lot of ways. It was actually a lot of like really kind of sad stuff that happened just with like the tenants that he had and at the game, like two to three hundred properties and wow, having to do a lot of like clean up and demolition. And yeah, it was it was kind of sad and I'm honest about it. Yeah, yeah, I, um, what, if you had to pick just maybe one word to describe yourself, what would, what would it be? Oh, I'd probably say, I hate it's a buzzword, but I'm not going to say, say just real. Real? Yeah. Okay, like real just like, yeah. Yeah. Well, you are the realist recruiter so I'm gonna say authentic and I was like, ah, such a buzzword, but I do feel like I'm just, you know, I'm just me, so I know real deal. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's awesome. And, you know, thanks again, I was, I'm so looking forward to this conversation and having you here today because as I was sharing earlier, a lot of the audience of this podcast are, you know, you know, different demographics, but, you know, queer seekers, young, young students looking at going to post-secondaries, starting their first job and everything in between and including recruiters as well, but, you know, we all really love to hear and, um, love to hear about people's, you know, journeys of how they got to where they are. So I know I talked a bit about your passions and where you've been, but maybe could you talk a little bit about your overall sort of journey to now and, you know, how you really ended up in the business of recruiting? Yeah. Absolutely. So, um, as I mentioned, I'm from the UK originally. So when I moved over to the US, uh, I, I couldn't work. And so when I graduated high school, uh, in 2005, I had the choice of going into university or obviously not going into university. And at that point, I, I graduated early, so I was like 17. And so I just wasn't clear on what I wanted to study or what I would study. And so I was then left with the choice of, um, basically staying in the US and not working or actually moving back to the UK. So when I was 18, I moved or sorry, when I was 17, I moved back to the UK and, um, and I just, I got a job in the UK for about two years while we did our green card paperwork. So I could officially work and, um, during that time, I just worked at, in retail and quickly found out that like retail wasn't for me. Like it kind of knocked a lot of patients for like customers and I didn't want to be a customer service in public facing. And so when I moved back to the US, I was like, all right, I'm determined to go to university. And at that time, I, again, not being from the US, like I was never really caught up in, like, oh, I need to be in like a big school or, or anything. So I just went to a local school and, um, local university. And again, I was off that mindset of, I need to pick something and I'm very decided, like I'm just a very decisive person. So I said, you know what? I'm going to, I'm going to study finance because I do want to make some money. And finance seems to be a logical way to make money. And I'm good at math. So it all added up and I, I got my degree in finance and it's like a general business with a focus in finance. The time period though that I graduated was very similar to the kind of time period we're in right now. I graduated in 2011. So it was kind of the back of the great recession. So it was interesting being in finance class, I like watching the banks collapse and, you know, basically getting a lesson on macro economics in real time and what's going on. And hearing what the professors had to say, how do we get into this situation? But when I graduated, it then made it extremely difficult to get a job. So if you're entry level right now and you just graduated and you're on the job market, you probably resonate with what I'm saying. It was extremely challenging. Wasn't a lot of jobs posted and if they were posted, they were extremely competitive. And I was competing against people who were just like, that's one step ahead, right? Like they had a year to three years experience. They were going for the entry level jobs as well. So in graduating and obviously being in finance, I was looking at a lot of finance jobs. That sector got hit really hard. So when I graduated, I had, luckily, I'd done an internship, a sales internship. And so through that internship, I was able to leverage a position at a bank, which I thought it was going to be a finance position, but it ended up being more of a sales role. It was like a personal banking role. So if you're familiar with personal banking, it's like meeting with clients, trying to increase the relationship that they have with the bank by offering mortgage loans, credit cards, investment services, and kind of being that go to person to increase the relationship with the client. And obviously I had a finance degree, so I was thinking, oh, this makes sense working at the bank, but it ended up being more of a sales role. And I ended up doing that for about five years, worked at Wells Fargo in the US as this personal banker and kind of moved my way up a little bit to like a manager. And it was, you know, I was fine. I was grateful for having a job. And then I got a new banking job. And it was more responsibility. It was more in line with my finance background because I started underwriting and underwriting business loans and home mortgages managing the bank, but it was a lot of hours. It was like eight to, I was usually working in the office at eight or maybe seven, depending on the day, and then working to like eight or nine at night. And so it was just a lot of hours, pay was, the pay was great, which is why I was attracted to the company and I couldn't complain that way. But I got the sense that I wasn't necessarily the culture fit and kind of going back to that question about, you know, what's your superpower, and my superpower is all about being outside of the box. Anyone who's in banking knows that you have to be inside the box in banking, especially out of the, maybe before 2008, you could have been a little bit outside the box. But once, once the, that crash happened, banks really tightened up their regulations and so everything was extremely regulated. And so during this time, you know, I'm obviously, I've built relationships professionally and one of my professional relationships that I had and it was kind of like a personal professional relationship, one of my friends, he had started a recruitment agency and he'd been in recruitment for about 10 years himself and he got approached by an investor that said, "Hey, I want to invest into you and I want to help you build a recruitment agency." And he took that opportunity and and so he, you know, he called me and was like, Joel, you know, I feel like you're really good with people and, you know, we've just started this recruitment agency. I love for you to be a part of it and it's like, I've never done a recruitment. I don't know, you know, I've hired people but I haven't, I've never sat in a recruit to see it. Why, what do you think I'd be good? And it's like, don't worry about it, like, you know, if you're good with people and you not have conversations, you're curious, you like to learn things, you know, you're going to fit just, you know, fit right in. And so I ended up taking actually a pay cut, which I've talked about several times in the past, but took a pay cut for that for this recruitment job and what it was fully remote and this was in 2015. And so I was like, oh, this is great, like I don't have to go into the bank anymore for 12 to 14 hours a day, I can work from home. It I'll trade that for this pay cut, but what he said to me was, yes, you're going to take a pay cut initially, but you'll find as plenty of earning opportunity in recruitment. And I was at work in the recruitment agencies, anyone familiar with that will understand that as well. It's like uncapped commission, those types of things. And yeah, and so I, that's how I got into recruitment, took a risk, said, you know what, I think I'm going to try something new and never looked back. And from day one in that recruitment role, I was thrown into the mix dealing with clients, you know, sea level personas that the clients were working with, I've in a very heavily, kind of like a consulting role of building the relationships, understanding the market. I was I was seen as the expert from day one, so I had to learn a lot really, really quickly. And then I just really found like a natural fit, like I enjoy talking to people, I enjoy learning. I think I naturally ask a lot of questions, so that really helped. And then I just had more I learned about the industry, the more I just, I think I just fell in love with the fact that, you know, when you're dealing in recruitment and you're dealing with people's lives, like you're just making such an impact and it's just, you know, it's a big decision, right? It's like buying a house, starting a family, career, these are all big choices. And so having those conversations with people was extremely satisfying. And yeah, so that's how I got in a recruitment, so definitely not, I don't think it's dissimilar to a lot of people. You'll find that if you talk to people in recruitment, one of the common things I'll say is, I just fell into it. And I think that that was how I would describe it. I fell into it, took the chance and realized, yeah, this is actually a decent, you know, fit for me. That's very cool. And recently I know you made a transition to a bit of a newer role and I know you just had a workshop recently as well. Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, as I was in this recruitment journey, one of the things I noticed about the recruitment early on was it's a very kind of like an outbound function on what I mean by this is, as an agency recruited in particular, you're not as reliant on posting jobs and waiting for people to apply. Our clients would pay us to go out and essentially find their ideal candidate, which just to give context to, you know, everybody on a call traditionally, the ideal client or so the ideal candidate for most clients is somebody who's already doing the job at a competitor. So when we get to do an intake meeting, when we're meeting with the hiring manager and we say, who is your ideal candidate? Plus 90%. It's usually, well, if you could find me somebody doing the same role at this competitor, that would be, that'd be perfect. And there's two reasons for that. Number one, less training, less risk right because they're doing the same job at a competitor. And number two, you heard the competition. So it's a win-win for everybody except the competition. And so, but I noticed that a lot of the recruiting that we did was very much messaging people on LinkedIn, cold calling them, emailing them, and these are all outbound functions. And I had started to become aware of this whole idea of like content marketing, social media marketing, and this idea that if you are active on social media, you can reach a lot of people. And if you've got a message that resonates with the people you're trying to recruit, for example, you can build up to a point where people recognize you in the industry, and you become the go-to recruiter for them. And I started to notice in the agency that I was working with, like nobody was doing this. Nobody was active on social media, and creating a funnel for lack of a better word, which is like a marketing term for or creating inbound interest. So people are coming to you. Everything, again, was outbound. And so I noticed an opportunity and thought, you know what, I'm hearing about this idea of content and inbound. So I'm just going to try it out for myself. And so I was using LinkedIn. And LinkedIn was my primary method for reaching up to the candidates I was looking for. And so I started creating content on LinkedIn in 2019. And since then, I've grown a pretty decent size following on that platform. And it's expanded to other platforms like TikTok and Snapchat and Twitter and I've realized that you can scale your reputation and your one-on-one interactions with hundreds and thousands of people. And so after about four years of doing this and building up a following and I decided, you know what, I want to take everything that I've learned, all my expertise, all of my mistakes. And I want to teach other recruiters how to do this. Because I believe that if you're not active on social media, if you don't understand how to connect with people on social media, I think in the future you're going to be behind and I think more and more candidates, you know, even doesn't matter what age you are anymore, I don't think I think people are more interested in social proof and who is this person and we're all consuming content. So as a recruiter, if you understand this, you can kind of leverage this idea of inbound. So you have candidates coming to you and it also makes any of the outbound you do more effective because when you reach out to people, if you've done it right, they already know who you are. So now I'm coaching recruitment teams. And like you said, I just had my first kind of workshop with a global company. Yesterday we trained about 200 recruiters on this very thing. Like how do you, how do you begin to scale your 101 conversations you have with candidates to a broader market and how do you extend the company and employer brand to the marketplace to make recruitment easier? So that is what I'm doing now. That's awesome. And I know, man, the six to seven million impressions a month, 350,000 followers. I mean, that is like super impressive. And I can say like watching you in action and I don't even know if I can use the word fanboy at my age, but it's like watching what you're doing is so incredible. And I think for recruiters, like what you just shared is so, so important to be thinking about that content and thinking about meaningful and personal content that emphasizes, you know, what you're trying to do to attract the talent to your organization. So I love what you're doing and congratulations on, I'm getting that going and doing your thing. It's, it's pretty cool. Yeah. Thank you so much. And yeah, I mean, something obviously too, like if you're, if you're a student, if you're early on in your career, if you are established in your career, we're seeing a big trend now. It's not just with recruiters, it's with salespeople, it's with engineers, it's with data scientists. You're seeing a lot more people get on this personal branding as well and understanding that yes, you can have your resume and that's great. But a lot more people are looking at LinkedIn in particular as a platform to be able to demonstrate and stand out in the marketplace. So if you're creating content, even if you're early on in your career and you don't have a ton of experience, even if you're building up, you can still, you can still create content. You can still add value into that ecosystem. And you know, it's not just for attracting candidates. I've landed four jobs, my last four positions were all landed, zero applications. It was people reaching out to me, presenting their opportunity and saying, hey, I've seen your content. I like what you talk about. I like the expertise you've demonstrated. I would love for you to come and work for your team. And so I believe in the future, those that have strong personal brands, they can offer a lot to the companies they're working with in a variety of fashions, but it gives you that opportunity to demonstrate your expertise, the projects you're working on. And it also opens up your network. So for example, we connected, if I hadn't created content, I would not be on this podcast. And I can say that for a lot of the professional connections I've made, with CEOs, founders, people who are doing cool things in the recruitment space, a lot of relationships have been opened up because of my online personal grant. And if I hadn't done that, if I hadn't invested, my career would look a lot different. And I wouldn't be where I'm at right now, where I'm owning a business and building a business. So there's a lot more value than just attracting candidates. Yeah, no, 100%. And you made me think of a different question, too, with us because so many of individuals, you know, it's almost like writer's block, right? You sit down and you say, okay, I'm going to start building that brand and, oh, I have nothing to say. Who cares what I have to say? No one's like, yeah, do you have a moment like that when you were starting? I think, look, one thing I'll say is obviously at the beginning, you ask me like, what's my super power? It's thinking outside of the box, right? And I will say that I think there is a natural inclination in how I work where I have a lot of a lot of ideas. And so there was this moment of realizing, wow, I now have an outlet for a lot of my ideas. So if you follow me on Twitter, that's a lot of my conscious stream and the things I'm thinking about. I might tweet eight to 11 times a day, so I have a lot of ideas and I'm comfortable sharing those ideas. But I also shifted my mindset on what creating content is. And I think you have to shift your mindset, too. It's not necessarily all about creating something. A lot of it is documenting things. And I think if you can switch your mindset from, okay, I want to be a content creator to I want to actually be just documenting my thoughts, my ideas, the work that I'm doing, my life, certain parts of my life. I want to document that. It helps release that pressure of writers block and having to create something. Because what you're starting to do is you're starting to just literally document what you're doing professionally, potentially what you're doing personally. And so I think about like with Facebook, right? People don't struggle with this idea when it comes to their personal life. People are happy to post about their family, their vacations, their, their paths, okay. Now flip that to professionally. Maybe it's a project that you're working on. Maybe it's something that's going on in your industry that you're interested in. And so it's that same mindset that people naturally fall into on Facebook where they're happy to document their personal life. You just think about that professionally. What are the things that I'm working on? What are the things that I'm interested in? What are the things that are going to impact myself and other professionals that are similar to me? I'm documenting that and I'm sharing that as opposed to we'll have to create this thought leadership brand that you know, it's highly polished and it's going to make people revere me, right? That's not the goal. I think the goal should be documenting and giving value and just showing showing the things that you're working on. And if you switch that mindset, you don't run into a writers block as much. Yeah, that's some really solid advice and some really great thoughts there. Thank you for sharing that. So I was talking, you know, as we get started for the podcast thinking about this idea of personal brand and, you know, you know, a lot of obviously you've interviewed a lot of people in your day and you've seen people come to the table well prepared and do really well in the interview and you've probably seen some that, you know, weren't so great and, you know, thinking about that here. I'm trying to see if you had some advice about how could a listener here think about maybe incorporating their personal brand and sort of storytelling into their own recruitment interviewing process with perspective employers. Look, I think when it comes to interviewing, it's all about understanding who it is, who it is, you're actually looking to, yeah, I don't want to say impressed, but you don't think like what, it's hiring manager, for example, you've got to put yourself in the mind of the hiring manager and understand like what, what they're looking for and you can gauge that a little bit from the job description. But I think most hiring managers that I've run into most recruiters, they, they, they want people that are going to bring value to their organization. So when you're talking about storytelling and selling yourself, what you're trying to do is you're trying to demonstrate that you are going to bring value to the organization and that value is going to be more than what they're paying you. Okay, so somebody wise once told me this is why sales is a great profession to be in because it's easy to measure. Okay, if you're, if you're getting paid $60,000 and you're bringing in a million dollars worth of business, right, and that, and, and the profit is let's say 300,000, and you are, you're bringing in more than they're paying you, right? So they're going to keep you around. And so, you know, it kind of, it's harder in other fields, sales is the easiest example. But the way that you're able to bring value is by knowing about the industry, knowing about the company and really understanding what their strategic goals are and how your role is going to fit in to help them get there. And I think a lot of times when people go into interviews, they're going in there with the mindset of sharing all about themselves, but what I see is a lack of understanding of what is, what are they, what are they actually looking for? And so I think when you go into interviews or you go into screening calls, one of the things that I see people not thinking about a lot is what are the questions are they asking? So during that screening call with a recruiter, when they say, do you have any questions? Okay. You need to start asking questions to really understand what the higher manager that you're going to be interviewing in that next step is looking for. And so a lot of times people, they're not going into those interviews, trying to even ask the right questions to figure out exactly what the company is looking for. Instead of the lot more emphasis on, like, looking at your own experience and you're kind of, you're trying to like sell them on your own experience and what you know. I think you've got to switch it and go, okay, what are you guys looking for? And if you can understand what they're looking for, then you can storytell and you can talk about your knowledge. You can talk about your experiences and bring value in a way that they care about. And so I don't see enough people doing that. And I think it, you know, it takes practice, right? And interviewing is all about storytelling and sales. But when you think about sales, you can only sell to people if you understand what their problems are. If you don't know what someone's problem is, you're not going to be able to sell them anything. So you got to think about that in your interview, you know, so it's a screening call recruiter. Tell me about, with this role specifically, you know, like, what's going on? Like, what are you looking for this person who accomplished? You start asking questions like that. You'll quickly understand what the higher manager is looking for. And then you can go into the interview with the higher manager, more prepared and more than understanding of what relevant information they're going to need from you. That's great. Great advice. Yeah. I think that it's super important to think about that in and asking those questions. You just pointed out are super helpful to people to really get some insights into what it is beyond just the posting, right? So yeah. No, thank you for that. Let's talk about your recruiting is no joke podcast. It's fantastic. What inspired you to start it? And was there any specific guest or moments that surprised you? Yeah, I think with the podcast, you know, I had a podcast before as well that was called the head center hideout and that one was all around agency recruitment. And I made a shift in my career where I started recruiting recruiters and HR people. And so I wanted to, I wanted to start a podcast to really understand from a talent leader's point of view. The people who are running internal talent organizations for companies. I wanted to start to understand how they build their talent teams and how they view the market and just really understand like what are the things that they're seeing in a marketplace. And so, you know, for me, it's always twofold. Like I wanted to build more relationships with HR and talent leaders. And then I also just wanted to have an opportunity to learn from them as well. I think probably the most probably one of the episodes that I remember most vividly where I got the most value was I interviewed a woman that was pretty high up as a talent leader for a private equity firm and this private equity company, they would just, you know, buy companies which were struggling and build them up. And I think this episode, that episode really stuck out to me because she was just so data-driven and she's just a true consultant to the organization. And for anyone who's in recruitment, you'll relate to this like one of the biggest challenges we have in talent acquisition and recruitment is getting a seat at the leadership table. And a lot of this is because when you think of recruitment and you think of the talent function, there's not always a lot of, even understanding of what we, what we do. A lot of people think recruitment is just posting a job and then waiting for people to apply. But there's so many other things that go in. And so getting that insight from her and understanding how she has, has like a data-driven approach. I don't know, I don't know whether it's, it's surprised me. But it was definitely the, it was definitely the episode where I learned the most and just got a really understanding and a really big understanding. And I just understood that, you know, even within talent leadership, there's just different levels. Right? And so I think just learning and understanding that at the end of the day, kind of what we're talking about before, like what value are you going to bring to the organization? I think there's a big need within the recruitment function to understand the value that they're bringing and be able to demonstrate that more. And I think it's an area which I think it's getting more kind of press and people are thinking about more and more. But I think it's the biggest area of growth just for that function in general. Yeah, no, that's, yeah, that's a great, great piece of ice. And I think the data side of things, it's getting better and better. I mean, there's been days where we all struggle trying to get data in the very early days of talent. But I think as we start to get more information, you can work with that data, it's, you know, it gives you directionally what you should be doing from a talent strategy. It's all about that and having that access to just be smarter, like you said, and to learn recruitment, talent acquisition, hiring people. It's really a tough gig. How does one survive it as a career and what's your thoughts about having the upscale for the future? Yeah. I look, I think, I think every career is hard at the beginning. So I think if you go into sales, sales is extremely hard. I think if you go into accounting, it's going to have its challenge, right? Every single career, I think for that first one to two years, there's always a lot of challenges that surround us, like marketing, same thing. And so I think not just in recruitment and HR, I think across the board, with how fast technology is moving. Even if you're just graduated, you need to understand that you're going to have to keep learning. And so I think in every single function, I don't think you can just look at your own function and go, yeah, I'm a master at accounting, or a master at talent acquisition, or I know everything about HR. I think collectively we needed to understand how is my function actually impacting the business on what are the business goals? And then with that too, just learning, you have to constantly be learning. And for me, for me, the biggest learning that I came into is this whole idea of social media and content that's impacted my career. So I started learning this, started learning how to do it, and I'm started to add value to an organization in a different way that other people weren't within my space. And so what's that done? It's elevated me. It's opened up different doors. And so I think, you know, if you just graduated, the thought of learning some more might be daunting, but it's across the board. If you graduated a year ago, or yesterday, or 10 years ago, if you want to progress in your career, if you want to separate yourself from other people, continuous learning is just a non-negotiable. And I think the biggest area of learning right now is obviously AI and automation. And I think if you're not seriously considering how, how something like chat GPT, for example, how that's impacting your function, you're in a dangerous place because a lot of functions are going to change. I think we're going to see a massive change like we've never experienced before over the next three to five years. And so if you're not looking at, okay, how is this actually impacting my role? How am I getting better? You will likely be replaced by somebody else who's thinking that way. So it's a continuous learning. And again, understanding what is the value that I'm actually bringing to the business and how am I impacting the business? It's one of the biggest things I see when I meet with career, you know, people who are, I was going to say career seekers, but job seekers. When I meet with job seekers who are on the market, the question I ask is, how is what you do impacting the business? And more often than not, people who are on a long job search, they struggle to answer this question and say, well, if you don't know the value that you're bringing to an organization, how are you going to sell yourself as a candidate? So I think learning new things and being able to upskill, if you're upskilling consistently, and it's a process, right, it's not something that just you do one day and then you never do it again. It's a continuous upskilling. That's how you continue to provide value and separate yourself from other people. Yeah. No. 100%. And thank you for that. I think, you know, if you're not doing it, then you're just going to be left in the dust, right? I mean, things change. You got to be looking for what's next and how you can be a better person at your job and share that, like you just said, with candidates, how they can do it, too. Networking. We know networking is such a big, big part of finding jobs these days. And, you know, you probably heard this too. And I've heard it, you know, I applied to a job, I never heard from anyone. You know, there's a lot of applicants out there and there's a difference between an applicant and a candidate, but what's your take on and thoughts around great networking experiences and how candidates could think about leveraging that as part of their job search? Absolutely. I think with networking, there's different approaches. I would say earlier on in your career, networking is going to be more of that approach of, I want to learn from somebody else. So obviously there's different relationships that you have professionally. You have peers. So there's people at the same level, you have mentors, those are people who are further ahead of you, but in the same field that you want to learn from. So I think if you're networking, you know, again, if you're earlier on in your career, I think a lot of the networking you should be doing is trying to get with mentors and trying to get with people who you can learn from. And so when you're reaching out to people, it's positioning it as, hey, you know, I'm really interested in your background, I'd love to learn more about what you do. And is everybody going to be open for a conversation? Obviously not. People are really busy. We know this. Everybody's really busy with their lives. We live in a day and age where everybody's busy. So you have to respect and understand that there's certain people that will not have time. But there are people that are willing to share and build those relationships. So I think if you're early on in your career, you are approaching networking is, all right, I want to learn. I want to learn from you and you're the expert. Can I learn from you? And if you're further along in your career, this is where you start to view networking is, what can I give to other people? Like what value can I bring to other people? And I see, when I, the biggest mistake I see with networking is people approach it as like a, I want to, I want to kind of get something from you. So that could be, I want to get a new job. I want to, I want to, you know, I want to get the sale or whatever it is. And I think the approach to networking, it has to come from, what can I give to this of the person, how, you know, how can I add value to what they bring? So when I approach networking conversations, like, for example, right now I'm running a year-long experiment. I'm trying to meet with 500 people in my LinkedIn network with zero agenda. It's very interesting to see how different people approach networking. Some people approach it and they're asking lots of questions. Other people are like going into these networking goals and they're just looking for some advice for me. They want to pick my brain. And then other people are approaching it and they're saying, hey, you know what, I'm a big fan of what you do on LinkedIn. How can I help you? And so it's really interesting to see a different approach for networking and what I'll say is, the people that I've had the best conversations with have shown interest and asked a lot of questions or they've been asking questions and then they've added value to me and those have been some of the best conversations. The conversations that have been the hardest are the ones who, you know, they kind of like brain picking and just like kind of like taking and taking and taking. And so I think you need to keep that in mind when you're networking as much as you can. Like, how can I add value? Like, is there somebody I could introduce this person to? Is there somebody that I know in my network that might be valuable to connect? So it's almost like, approach the conversation with, what can I give? And again, this is why earlier on in your career, maybe you approach it more from that like student mindset of like really impressed with your career, Joel, I'd love to learn more about it. I'd love to network and have a conversation. That's how I kind of position, that's how I used to position networking calls with people and it did build. And I think also just leveraging people, like, especially if you're early on in your career, it's a little bit more challenging, but leveraging all of the relationships that you have with friends and people you know, a great place to start this networking. Like, hey, can we go grab a cup of coffee? I'd love to know what your company's doing, what you're about. It's a lot easier to do that with people you know. So if you're unsure and it seems very daunting, focus on your internal network. Those are people who know you and then build out from there and like learn, learn how to build those relationships. It's key. Yeah, no, and I think the way you've explained it is really helpful because the way that you've experienced it yourself with different avenues and to a point of take, take, take, I mean, it's really a given take and those are the lasting networking opportunities that turn into mentorship and other things where probably those ones that just pick your brain, it's an over and done situation after that because there's really not much that you got out of it. And that's the whole thing. It's a two way street. But let's talk a little bit about LinkedIn messaging. It's a big topic with candidates, with recruiters, you know, having that dialogue there. But what about you? Do you like it? Love it or hate it? What does LinkedIn messaging mean to you? I think any type of messaging, whether it's email, you know, DMs, there's a lot of templates out there, right? I mentioned, you know, I'm pretty active on TikTok and, and so I'm very in the know and like very involved in this whole career advice and job see career advice and one of the things that I'm seeing right now is a lot of people that are offering up templates as like, use this template and you know, instantly get the attention of a recruiter, you instantly get the attention of a hiring manager and it's just not true, okay? We going back to that point just a moment ago, like people are extremely busy, okay? We live in a society where busyness, it's almost like an epidemic, right? Most people I talk to are very time poor and there's a lot of reasons for that. But if we look at our inboxes as well, we'll see a very similar thing. There are a lot of people reaching out, you have sales people, you have recruiters, you have, you know, just all of these companies that you're in the mailing list. So people get a lot of messages. So I think anytime I approach messaging, short, okay, short messages are key, okay? I get some messages and they're like four paragraphs long, I'm like, you're asking a lot for me. It's probably going to take me five minutes to read this, okay? I don't have five minutes, okay? I have five seconds. So, short messages to the point and then personalized, okay? That's a secret. And I think one of the things that people overestimate is how even high level people process information and what I mean by this is the most effective sales emails are second grade levels. People readability, okay? So there's an app called Hemingway, so if you go download this app Hemingway and what you can do is you can put your message, you can copy and paste it, put it into this app and it will tell you what reading level your message is. And if you're reading level is like 12th grade, it's too complicated, okay? So you've got to really keep things as simple as possible. And what you want to avoid, you want to avoid templated messages because templated messages to most people automatically, they put you in spam, okay? So it's why when I see people giving this advice, I'm like, just try this templated message, okay? Templated message, they do not work. Being personal, speaking and writing, sorry, writing how you speak and keeping it simple and to the point, those types of messages work. So I think if you're DMing people, do that. And then the second thing is I get people reach out to me and they will say, I really need to talk to you. I really need urgent. You check my resume, okay? I have a simple test. I will reply to people who follow up. And I made this rule a while ago. I was like, you know, I'm not going to respond to people's first message because if they're really urgently want to speak to me, surely they'll follow up. And that little simple thing, and keeping mine like I get thousands of messages. I'm not just talking about one or two messages, I get thousands of messages a week. I would say 1% of people follow up. So keep the first message simple. And then, you know, three, four days later, a bump to the top of the inbox like, hey, Joel, know you're super busy, totally get it, but would still love to me, simple, okay? The amount of people that follow up is zero. And so I think you have to, you have to understand that too, like follow up is a key part to this as well. And again, most of people who reach out to me, it's like they seem really urgent, but then they never follow up. So is there, are you really that urgent? Does that make sense? Yeah. No, 100% and I'm sure you've gotten also the other ones where someone will send me a message attached to their resume and say, can you read my resume and see if there's any jobs for me? No, right? Like you got to take the initiative and the action yourself and I love what you said about being personal, you know, make that connection of why and typically, you know, those are the ones that I really pay attention to. But to your point, those templated ones, you can pick them out like a, like a sore thumb. And I don't want to go too hard in candidates here because you know what recruiters, you're the blame as well, okay? Yeah. Yeah. The amount of poor messages I even received from recruiters is unbelievable. And you know, sending a message like, you know, hey, Joel, I've got a junior recruiter role. I think you'd be a great fit for it if you're interested. Book of meeting on my calendar type thing, like recruiter that just is guilty at this and so sales people, right? And I believe that like what's happened is is, you know, five years ago, let's say, like, you know, automation and these email sequences, those were like all of all the rage and people took advantage of them and it was successful. The problem is, is any time there's an innovation, everybody jumps on board, which means within six months, whatever innovation there was is not an innovation anymore. It's just common practice. And so now we're in a day and age where you have chat GPT, for example, an AI. So as a job seeker, you can leverage AI and you can make things like a cover letter, really easy to write. You can make a resume a lot easier to write, it's a lot less time consuming. But the danger is everybody is doing this. So if everybody's doing it, then if you want to stand out, you've got to do what everyone is not doing. What I see most people not doing is taking the time and making it personal and being like being specific, right? So in your example, that message would have worked if they had said, Hey, Brian, I saw you posted this job. That's right. Based on my experience, I think I'd be a great fit. Why don't you take a look at my resume and see if it's worth a chat. So then you made it specific. So that's so you know why they're reaching out to you because they saw this job that you posted. That's right. They're then saying, Hey, you know, based on my background, I think I'd be a fit. And then here's my resume. And there's a difference between the two because you just, you made it easier than you know you have a context, you know, and does that work 100% of the time? No, because again, knowing back to everything, like everybody's time poor and there's a lot of messages being flung around. So I think any way that you can differentiate yourself is with taking the time because everybody's in a rush. Like the easy apply, you know, easy apply makes it so easy that you could apply to a thousand jobs in a day. But if everybody's applying to a thousand jobs in a day, then applying to a thousand jobs isn't as effective. So I think we're coming into an age where recruiters, salespeople, marketers, anybody. If you're trying to reach somebody, the best way to do it is to be personalized and human. Because, you know, it's, it's noisy and it's only going to get noisier. I mean, like I'm in these conversations with recruitment teams and AI, you know, can quote, quote, quote, personalized things, you know, but that personalization is literally just pulling something out of a profile. So it means you have to, I think you have to do a little bit more research and make it relevant, right? And you've got to give people, you have to give people a reason to know that you're specifically reaching out to them, and you're not one of a hundred, you're one of one. And it literally, it's just spending that extra five minutes on something can be the, can be the difference maker. So which is tough and I get it, I get it because it's, it's also like, it's sort of a numbers game as well. But, you know, the numbers game alone isn't enough now. It's like, you've got to balance numbers with quality of reach out as well if you really want to get people's attention. Yeah. No, and I'd love how you took that example and added the specificity to the fact that it's for this job, right? That that that would be something I would look for, right? But no, thank you for that. I think it's a really good advice there on messaging and how to make, make it work for you. This is a part of the podcast. I love to chat and talked about people's challenges, things they've overcome and kind of the lessons they've learned because a lot of times something that we've been dealing with, you know, by ourselves or trying to figure out someone else has already dealt with or you can learn from that, is there any, any kind of challenge or opportunity that you have achieved that you would like to talk about with the listeners and maybe what you learned? Yeah. Look, I think for me, my biggest challenge throughout my whole career has, has kind of gone back to what we talked about at the beginning with like, what's your super power, right? Thinking outside of the box is definitely what I would consider my super power, but it's also been the most challenging thing for me to work through in my career because when you have a lot of ideas and you're someone who's kind of creative and you're always thinking of how can we make something better, how can we do something new? A lot of times in organizations that isn't always received. So I think I've had to really learn over the years where I fit into organizations and ultimately I came to this moment where I just realized, you know, I'm actually, I don't actually think I should be a part of an organization. Like I kind of, I need to actually be independent because of how I work and I've taken as a predictive index survey, which I'm not sure if it's big in Canada, but in the U.S. it's one of those surveys that it's, you know, it's popular within recruitment teams and kind of measures how you interact with other people essentially and how you work in a team and I took that survey maybe five years ago and I'm a type of profile like called Maverick and so Maverick is you kind of like, I have a lot of ideas, I like to talk, I like to collaborate, I'm not right detail oriented, I like to just go and make things happen, but I don't always like follow through with things as well. And so again, in an organization, that is, that actually kind of means that I'm a terrible employee because it's like, even the fact that my detail, my detailed orientedness is so poor, you know, a lot of organizations, you've got to have high attention to detail. So I think for me, like just understanding that and kind of coming to grips with that and being okay with that, it's probably been the biggest challenge I've faced over the last five years because I've worked at different organizations and I've just consistently noticed like they know that I'm bringing value, they know that like the way that I think is valuable, but it's not always, it's not always been helpful like within the constructs of a company if that makes sense. So I've looked at it and gone, you know what, okay, I can, I have a lot of value to bring, but I think the way that I bring the most value is as like an outside consultant. And then also it matches my personality in the way that I work as well. And so I think understanding that and understanding, you know, if you're entering into the workforce, part of what you're trying to figure out is how you work with other people and how best you're able to add value. And for some people, it's going to be like how I am where, you know, maybe, maybe you're solo for other people it could be like, you know, I actually work best in the startup environments where there's a lot of ambiguity in the role. Okay, for some people, it may be, I really thrive in mid-sized companies because I could still have an impact with the whole organization, but we're building something bigger and we're looking to get to this next point. And if other people are like, you know, I thrive best at these mega organizations, like an Amazon or a meta, but not everybody fits in into those. So what you're trying to learn, and this is something which you, it's almost impossible to learn in school because it's all based on like life experience and how you relate to other people. And so when I think of like the first five years of your career, the goal isn't to, you know, reach this like pinnacle in your career in the first five years, a lot of it is learning about how you interact with other people and what types of environments you're going to thrive in, and where you actually work best. And so I think too many people are putting pressure on themselves to make things happen in the first two to three years in your career. Like reality, you're probably going to work until you're 60, 65, 70, maybe even older because of how technology is evolving. So you've got a long time to figure things out. And so you need to actually realign that perspective and go, you know what, the goal of this job, yeah, I want to do well, I want to perform well, of course, but I also want to learn about myself and I want to learn like, where do I best fit? And I think the quicker you're able to change that perspective and realize like your first job, your second job, it's unlikely given the average tenure that that's going to be the job you work for ever, right? So understanding and learning that for me has been, it's been big. And it's, it's also then a realization of like, Oh, wow, that's probably why I didn't get promoted, right? Because I never followed the process because I always think outside the box. But it doesn't mean there's anything wrong with me. No, I wasn't sitting in the right seat, right? And maybe other people who didn't bring the same value, but knew how to follow process, they got promoted. Does it mean is that better than me? No, it means that they're able to follow the process and they were in the right seat. And if you're in the wrong seat, it's very hard to accomplish everything that you're supposed to accomplish, if that makes sense. Oh, it makes a lot of sense. And I think it's great insights for the listeners because, yeah, I mean, if you're in the wrong seat, you're just going to get frustrated, right? And just realize that you can't, you can't seem to get out of it. But I think the way you outlined it and the whole Maverick, there used to be an expression at IBM when I was there, they used to call them wild ducks. And it was a big thing about like, you got to have some wild ducks in your organization to drive innovation and create a flood and things like that. And the minute you clip their wings and tame them, they're done. So that's exactly what happened. I found myself very frustrated at times. And the problem is, is when you're in an organization and you're frustrated, then becomes very hard to be a part of the culture as well. And for sure, you know, when you look at what companies are looking for and what you should be looking for, the mission of the company and the culture of the company is extremely important. And then getting deeper at the culture of the team you're on and how you work with your manager, Dick takes probably 99% of what your work experience is like, which is why that's that expression. You know, people don't leave jobs, they leave managers, right? And so that relationship is key. And I don't know how much people think about that when they're interviewing either. Like I kind of understand how are we going to work together? Like can we work together? And but I think if you understand it earlier, you save a lot of what I just described and you save that frustration route as well. So that's probably the wild duck. So I'm going to maybe I put that on my LinkedIn profile. Well, yeah, even if you Google it, it came from like the president at one point, way back when and there was a video on it. There's a wild duck video on the IBM website. I identified a lot with the wild duck myself. It was something in listening to you. I think that's really helpful because I think people can it's they need to assess the place they're interviewing to in the culture. Like you said, of the team because that's that's the opportunity to ask questions about that in the interview and see, you know, that, you know, not all the answers are going to come out right there. But at least you get some insights, right? If that's good, just a quick second on that too. Like when you when you're asking about the culture, the worst question you can ask is, tell me about the culture. Because in my experience, when you ask that question, nobody is going to say, yeah, actually, we've got terrible culture. Everybody's really toxic. Everybody talks behind everyone else's back. All right, that's a bad question. As you want to ask a question like a situ, you know, you've heard of the situational behavioral questions, you need to ask those same type of questions to interview. So an example of this would be, hey, can you tell me about a time when you had an employee that wasn't meeting goals? Like how do you handle that? All right. Can you tell me about how you run meetings and what the meetings are, how, how the meeting structures are? Can you tell me about the type of off-site team building events that you do? Those are the questions you want to ask, right? Because you're making them think themselves, okay, yeah, actually, how do we handle this? How do we work together? Rather than just saying a blanket, oh, tell me about your culture. Because if you just say, tell me about your culture, they go, oh, culture's great. We play hard. We work hard. We really like to promote from within. Yeah, we have a few people like a family. It's like, okay, great. That really didn't help, right? Because no one's going to say that. Instead, if you ask those behavioral questions, and then suddenly they're like, oh, wait, how do we handle people who are performing? Yeah, we fight the last guy, right? Or you say, saying those kind of questions, that will help paint a better picture. And then you can listen to those answers. And if that caught off guard, or they're like, oh, I actually don't know, or you might actually be able to uncover a potential red flag as well. And so, you know, if they're going to ask you those types of questions around behavior, like tell me a time when you had this situation. Tell me about a time when you took a customer that was unhappy and you made them happy, you need to think about that as well. Like, you know, how do you, how have you, when was the last time you handled an employee that wasn't performing? And how did you get them back on track? And if they're really struggling with that, then that might be a red flag, right? Yeah, no, some great, great questions are to ask. Wow, I can't believe we're getting close to you in here. I have to thank you. Like, this is, I've been wanting to chat with you for a while and to have you on the podcast, because I, you're just such a wealth of information and knowledge, but also from a real perspective that I think really helps people to get their head around it. I was wondering if you had any, maybe last minute thoughts to reflect on for today, or just thinking about it. Was there anything that you wish we touched upon that we didn't that you want to share? No, I love the structure of a podcast. I love how you started off with just like these kind of questions that made me think, like, I don't think I've ever been asked on a profile on a podcast. What's your favorite smell? Never been asked that before. And, and I think, you know, I think if you're, you're a student, if you're graduating, if you're a recruiter, because right now it's a really tough market for recruiters. I know at least in the US, but I also know a lot of people in Canada as well, they're having, you know, similarly kind of struggles. I think for me, the best piece of advice that anybody ever gave me, it was actually two pieces of advice from the same person. The first one was, you know, when it comes to career, when it comes to success, when it comes to all of these things that we want, it is a marathon, right? And we see these stories, these outliers of people that do incredible things in a short amount of time. It's just not accurate. And it's not, it's not what happens to most people, right? Most people are not founding a billion dollar company before they're 20, okay? But social media will kind of have those messages. And so we used to seeing that. And then that then that becomes the bar. And if you don't measure up to that. And what I found is that most people I talk to have career paths that aren't linear and aren't perfect. And if they are perfect, most people I know reach a point where they, they almost deviate from that, like everybody kind of reaches a point where they realize they sit down and go, is this actually the path that I want to take? And that really means then like each career path, each entrepreneurial path, each path, each individual path is different. And that is totally fine. And it's actually normal. And it's a good thing. I think we need to talk about it more. And then the second piece of advice is just that networking piece that we touched upon. I started networking heavily in 2019. On LinkedIn, using social media, connecting with people having conversations. And I've kept it up. You know, I have probably five to ten conversations as networking conversations each week. And I include podcasts like this in that equation. But building those relationships with people in your industry, people who are further along than you, it's the biggest missed opportunity that people have. And it's how you end up on a job search, not knowing anybody and having anybody to reach out to. It's usually because you've let networking slip by because you haven't valued and understood that anything that happens, anything that anybody does that's great is usually, you know, due to people they know in relationships. There's very few people that do amazing and great things, just 100% alone. It's very few. It's all great organizations have strong teams of people. And so networking, building those relationships, it's a non-negotiable. You just need to be doing that. And you don't want to wait. You don't need to wait five years in your career to start networking and building those relationships. You could start now. And if you're feeling like, oh man, I've missed the boat with networking. You haven't. You can start. Starts with reaching out to people, reach out to people you know, fostering those relationships. And I think it's a critical part of how you can find success as well. Super. That Joel, thank you again so much for spending the time today with me and with the audience and sharing such a plethora of information and insights and ideas. And I can see why you are the real recruiter. And for anyone who wants to check out Joel's sites, his podcasts, other things I encourage you to do. So there's a lot of great information and content coming out from Joel all the time on the platforms he mentioned. But I really want to thank you so much for being a part of this, Joel. Thanks for having me on and love what you're doing. And guys definitely keep listening to the podcast because obviously there's a lot of a lot of value being given and love that, love that you're doing this. Thank you so much for the listeners. If you liked what you heard today, share this podcast on Spotify with your network. You can also follow coffee with Convery on Instagram. And until next time, please stay well. See you guys.