KF #4. Attracts Top Talent Archives - How to be Awesome at Your Job

Pete Mockaitis
Jeremy, welcome to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Jeremy Schifeling
Oh, thanks for having me, Pete. So glad to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to talk LinkedIn with you, and you have a pretty special achievement when it comes to LinkedIn. Tell us, what’s the story here?

Jeremy Schifeling
Yes, so I actually used to work there. I was lucky enough to go to work for the company right after they IPO’ed about a decade ago. I got to lead education marketing there, so helping students and recent grads make the most of the site. And, actually, ever since I’ve left LinkedIn, I’ve still been on that same mission to unlock the potential of the site for thousands and thousands of professionals around the world, including lots of top universities as well, because I think there’s so much power there but it’s buried deep beneath the surface that someone has got to excavate it.

Pete Mockaitis
And so then, you, in fact, created the most watched video on LinkedIn. What’s the story? What’s the video? How many views? What are we talking here?

Jeremy Schifeling
Yeah, it’s a funny story because, basically, this was still in the wild west days of YouTube marketing and things like that, but we were trying to bring LinkedIn from the C-suite to college campuses. And students back in the day were like, “Wait a second. Isn’t LinkedIn like Facebook for old people before Facebook became Facebook for old people?” and they were kind of suspicious of why they would want another social network in their lives.

And so, we had to convince them, “Hey, it is relevant whether you want to find your tenth job or your first job, LinkedIn is there for you.” And so, we made this kind of irreverent video talking about how LinkedIn is not just for old guys with heavy briefcases, and it actually got us in trouble with our CEO because he was like, “Those old guys with heavy briefcases, they pay your salary.”

But we won out in the end because the video did get about five million views and was well liked by our audience and helped to get over that suspicious hump that was in our way. So, definitely still up on YouTube. People should check it out. It’s called Your Career Starts Here.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s cool. Well, congrats. And it’s so funny, like everyone wants to go viral, and I don’t know if anyone is really…isn’t there like a legendary business school contest for like, “Hey, make a viral video.” And it’s sort of like, “It’s out of your hands. It’s just some things kind of take off.” And so, do you know what made this such a hit or is it just another one of those mysteries of the viral video?

Jeremy Schifeling
Yeah, definitely a big joke in the marketing circles. Like, you’ll see these memes where it says, the boss comes into the marketer’s office, and says, “Hey, make me one of those viral videos, will you?” And I wish we had the ability to snap our fingers and make it happen. I do think, in our case, we’ve sort of hit on that surprised theme of, “Wait a second. LinkedIn is actually funny? LinkedIn is actually poking fun at itself and at corporate America?” And so, I think, at least for the time, it kind of spoke to that zeitgeist.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. All right.

Pete Mockaitis
We’re talking about your work Linked: Conquer LinkedIn. Get Your Dream Job. Own Your Future. Good stuff. I know there’s a whole lot to discuss, but could you name us one particularly surprising, mind-blowing LinkedIn feature or trick you share that’s like, underappreciated but so powerful?

Jeremy Schifeling
Oh, absolutely. I apologize in advance if I geek out about this stuff. I know I love LinkedIn more than the average person. But I think that LinkedIn is not just useful for finding jobs. It’s really useful for getting jobs. And one perfect example of that is just in the last year or so, LinkedIn has rolled out a new video interview tool.

So, you know we’re all interviewing on Zoom for the first time these days, there’s the Great Resignation going on with people quitting jobs and trying to find new ones, and if you suffer from Zoom stage fright, where you’ve got there on the camera and a little light on your webcam goes off and you freeze up, LinkedIn can help you prepare ahead of time by recording yourself giving answers, getting feedback from people in your network, and it’s all for free.

And so, for your listeners out there, if you just head over to LinkedIn, head into the video interview tool, you can get ready for primetime without paying a cent.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Okay. Cool. Well, there’s one great feature right there. And so, tell us, your book Linked what’s sort of the main idea, the big thesis here?

Jeremy Schifeling
Yeah, I think the number one thing is that even though LinkedIn can often seem like yet another boring social network in this constellation of too many social networks, it’s actually much more of a tool for savvy job seekers, people who want to sort of upgrade their careers. If you’ve got a hunger to get to wherever you want to be going, LinkedIn is the tool to get you there.

You can’t waste time the way you might waste time on other social networks just posting random stuff, consuming content. Instead, you’ve got to use it like a heat-seeking missile where you’re really focused on what’s most important to you in achieving your own goals. That’s what we talk about in the book, how to get exactly where you want to go.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so tell us then, when it comes to the goals, what would you say would be sort of like the main segmentation of goals people have when they go on LinkedIn? So, they’re not there for the cat videos, they’re not there for the sassy little dance video tidbits. What are sort of the top goals that people go to LinkedIn for?

Jeremy Schifeling
Yeah, absolutely. And I think it’s definitely a couple of things. So, obviously, job seekers whether, again, you’re looking for an entry-level job, a career change, LinkedIn has all the companies, all the recruiters, all the opportunities. But if you’re looking to maybe power up your career in a couple different ways as an entrepreneur, well, guess what, all your clients are all on LinkedIn.

If you’re looking to grow within your organization, all of your fellow colleagues and the people who are higher up than you are on there to network with. And so, whether you want to get a completely new job or just upgrade the one that you have today, LinkedIn is really powerful for all those use cases.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, let’s talk about those who are doing some job seeking. Do you have sort of like a step-by-step in terms of, “Okay, looking for a new opportunity, LinkedIn is apparently awesome says Jeremy”? What would be sort of like the step-by-step to making it work for you?

Jeremy Schifeling
Yeah, and I think there are really three steps to focus on. The first one, this is so important, even though a lot of job seekers skip over it, is you’ve got to know where you belong. LinkedIn, like anything out there in the internet, is driven by algorithms and keywords. And so, if you just say, “Hey, I want a new job. I’m looking for a job,” that’s not good enough because, on LinkedIn, the recruiters who are looking for you need to know whether you match their job descriptions.

So, you’ve got to have focus to the point where you’re like, “I’m a project manager, a product manager, a producer. Here’s what I can do for you.” And if you don’t know where you belong yet, no worries, you can actually go on LinkedIn, look up your school on the site, and, basically, find tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of alumni who have majored in the same thing you did, and are now doing all sorts of fascinating work, from government work, to nonprofits, to tech, to finance, everything in between.

And you can reach out and learn about their experiences to find the right path for you. So, that’s step one.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah. You know, that’s really cool. I hadn’t thought about that from a sort of like of like a first-job kind of perspective in terms of it’s like, “Ah, I’ll do anything. I don’t know. I studied this because I liked this but what do people from high school who studied finance or whatever end up doing?” You can sort of go that way.

I think what I’ve also found really fun is if I’ve met someone who’s doing a cool thing, I can look up that individual person, and then it says, “Oh, people have also looked for this,” or they can see where they worked, and then I see the other folks, other organizations in the industry, so I know it’s not addictive in the same way that maybe Facebook or Instagram can be for folks but, at times, for me, it has been, in terms of, “Oh, wow, that’s fascinating and that’s really cool, too, and that’s really cool too,” in terms of discovering sort of new people and organizations, and as it suggests another and another and another. So, again, start by your school and field of study if you’re in the earlier years of your career or discover all kinds of new stuff if you’re in the mid-game there.

Jeremy Schifeling
Yeah, I love that idea, Pete, because I do think that so often, job seekers have the scarcity mentality, “Oh, there are only so many jobs out there and so competitive to work at the top places. I’m never going to find the perfect opportunity.” But if you take that sort of surplus or bounty perspective that you talked about, kind of like a kid in a candy shop, what you’re going to discover is there are so many cool people doing so much cool stuff out there.

And if you just expose yourself to it, all of a sudden, you’re going to start to see, “Hey, I could be doing that, or that, or that.” And the question is sort of editing it down to find that north star that you can really hone in on.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, we first, step one, know where you belong, and in so doing, or in doing so, we’re going to check out a bunch of related people and organizations that come from our field of study or something else that we already know that we’re interested in. Okay, so what’s the next step?

Jeremy Schifeling
Okay. And so then, once you know where you belong, you’ve got to get it out of your mind and into the digital ether, into the LinkedIn platform. And the reason for that is within this massive sea chain in the last two decades where recruiters who were once placing classified ads or going on Monster.com, now just say, “Hey, I don’t want to waste any time with that. I’m going to go right to LinkedIn and search for the top talent there,” because LinkedIn has 700 million plus profiles so there’s no reason to go anywhere else.

And that means you’ve got to signal to those recruiters, “Hey, I’m in the game. I’m interested.” And so, that starts with your headline. So, I know it may seem a little weird because it’s not necessarily an equivalent on a resume, but that little piece of text right beneath your name, so right where it says Pete, you need to put in, “I’m a project manager,” or an accountant, or a digital strategist, or whatever you’re focused on because that single piece of text is limited to just 160 characters, fewer even than a tweet.

And, therefore, it has been given the most weight in LinkedIn’s algorithm because it’s the least gameable. LinkedIn knows that people can stuff all sorts of keywords all over their profile except for the headline. That’s the truest, most authentic signal of who you are and what you can do, and that’s why you’ve got to start there by signaling your focus.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And can you give us some examples of great headlines? You mentioned accountant, project manager. Is that it? Just accountant, project manager, or would you expand upon that, and how so?

Jeremy Schifeling
Yeah, I do think this is where it goes back to that homework piece we’re just talking, of really doing your due diligence, understanding the career path. If you don’t want to be just an accountant, but you want to be an accountant focused on sustainability or cryptocurrency or whatever, then, absolutely, include that as well because, again, always put yourself in the recruiter’s shoes.

If you are looking for an accountant at Coinbase, say, and you want to hire someone with a passion for the space, yeah, you could hire a regular old accountant who knows nothing about it, or you could hire someone who really gets it and is already an insider. And so, you really want to signal, “Here’s my functional interests, and also here’s the industry, here’s the kind of company I want to work for.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Perfect. Okay, so step one, know where you belong. Step two, show that you’re in the game and we start with your headline. Any other key things you want to fill out?

Jeremy Schifeling
Yeah. So, again, if you imagine yourself as a recruiter, recruiters actually have the access to this behind-the-scenes called LinkedIn Recruiter. I know, not a very exciting name, but it’s actually the most powerful screen that controls careers around the globe that no one even knows exists except for the recruiters.

And, basically, the reason it’s so powerful is it allows any recruiter who has this license, and it’s about $10,000 per year per seat, so not cheap, but it allows them to go in and search through all those profiles and find the best talent right away. And so, one thing they’re going to search for beyond just, “Hey, I need an accountant,” is, “I need an accountant with specific skills, maybe with expertise in this technology or that platform.”

And so, it’s really critical that you figure out what those keywords are and get those into your profile. So, for example, if A/B testing were an important thing for your career path and you’ve noticed that in all of these job listings that you’re going after, you would want to have it in your About section, you’d want to have it in your skill section, your experience section, so that way LinkedIn Recruiter sees that skillset that you have and gives you as a recommended match to the recruiter.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so, even if you haven’t done A/B testing, you can just mention that you’re interested in A/B testing? We talked about gaming, I don’t know. So, I think, well, one, step one, or maybe step 2B maybe in our numbering here is we’ll just have a good sense for what are the opportunities that you want, what are those postings sound like, what are the words that show up again and again. So, it’s just like, “Okay, this is what you’re into, I’m going to see how I can incorporate them.”

But I’m curious, if you haven’t done A/B testing, but you want to show up for A/B testing, do you just mention, “Hey, I’m interested in A/B testing,” or, “I’ve learned several tools and I want to learn more, like A/B testing”?

Jeremy Schifeling
Yeah, I’m glad you brought that question. So, first of all, a little bonus hack for your listeners. If you want to quickly figure out what these most important keywords are, obviously, you can look manually one job description at a time, or you could go to a tool like Jobscan.co, which is also free for a limited number of uses, and basically say, “Hey, show me all the most important keywords for all my favorite job descriptions,” and it’ll immediately pull out, “These are the most critical keywords, and here’s the ones you’re missing.”

Now, for your ethical question. If you do not have that skill, should you list it? Probably not, and here’s why. Because even if a recruiter chooses you on LinkedIn, and says, “Hey, Pete looks awesome. Let me bring him in for an interview,” if they test you on that A/B testing skill on the interview…

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Oh, you saw I’ve done that, Jeremy.

Jeremy Schifeling
…that could ultimately be an unsatisfactory experience for both sides.

Pete Mockaitis
Indeed, that’s true. And, at the same time though, I don’t know why I’m so fixated on this poor person who has not yet done A/B testing. I think at the same time though, you could pick up some skills without necessarily having done it on the job in terms of you could take a LinkedIn Learning. This is a huge LinkedIn commercial, apparently.

Jeremy Schifeling
That’s right.

Pete Mockaitis
A LinkedIn Learning course about the matter, which actually does show up on your profile as having taken, you can get those badges, certifications, completions using LinkedIn Learning, or just really dork out. Back in the day, I think they might have taken down this website, it’s called WhichTestOne.com. You just look at all these A/B tests and sort of sharpen your skills and read about the comments. Anyway, this is not about A/B testing. This is about using…

Jeremy Schifeling
Well, let me just point out one thing there, Pete, because this is important, especially for career changers out there. So often there’s that Catch-22 where you say, “Hey, in order to get the new job, I have to have experience with it, but in order to get experience, I have to get the job, so how do I break through?”

Well, I want to be really clear, you don’t have to have formal big company experience doing something to list on your profile. If you’ve done A/B testing for your own pet project, for your volunteer work, even extracurricular as a student, all that counts because you can still talk about it in the context of an interview. So, absolutely, get credit for what you’ve done no matter the context.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. Okay. Well, so then anything else you want to talk about in step two, showing them that you’re in the game with regard to your headlines and your keywords? Anything else?

Jeremy Schifeling
Yeah, I think those are the most important ones. I think the next step, and this is really critical, is you got to get the recruiter to pick you because, so far, we’ve been talking mostly about the algorithm, “How does this algorithm that powers LinkedIn find you based on your headline, find you based on your keywords?”

But then imagine I’m that recruiter, and I’ve put in all my parameters and I still have 50,000 candidates. Well, one of the tricky things is that LinkedIn limits recruiters to a certain number of InMails a month, messages to new candidates.

Pete Mockaitis
Even with 10,000 bucks a year, heh?

Jeremy Schifeling
That’s right. It’s a pretty good time to be LinkedIn, right? Pretty good business.

Pete Mockaitis
So, we have…there’s a cap, which makes sense because that’s better for everybody. We don’t want to be spammed hundreds of times over. By having some forced scarcity, we have some control there. Okay. So, fair point. You’re showing up in the keywords and the searches, but so are thousands of others. So, now what?

Jeremy Schifeling
Yes. So, now how do you make yourself InMail worthy? In other words, if I’ve got 30 InMails or three InMails left for the rest of the month, how do I decide if you’re worth it, Pete? And so, obviously, it’s about having all the stuff we’ve talked about, the keywords, and the nice photo, and stuff like that, but LinkedIn also has extra bonus filters built into this Recruiter platform that allows recruiters to figure out, “Hey, are you a serious candidate? Are you worth my time and my energy?”

And so, those are things like you may have noticed on the profile, there’s now this thing called Open to Work. And, basically, what that is is a bat signal to recruiters, saying, “Hey, don’t waste that last InMail of the month on someone who’s not even going to respond to you because they’re so content on their current job. Instead, know that I’m in the game and specifically looking for roles at companies like yours.” And, by the way, I know you’re going to ask, you’re going to say, “Jeremy, that sounds great. What if my current boss finds out?”

Pete Mockaitis
Yup.

Jeremy Schifeling
That’s a problem, right? Well, the nice thing is that LinkedIn allows you to basically go into stealth mode with that where you can share your signal with only recruiters who are paying all this money for this product, and specifically only recruiters who don’t work in your current company so you don’t have to worry about the HR department gnarking you out to your boss.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. And so, you would have to have almost like a very motivated HR department to have a buddy working elsewhere, taking a look and then sharing. And I would hope they’ve got maybe better things to do with their time and life, than say, “Who’s thinking about leaving?” Maybe just make a more engaging, rewarding work environment. That’s my own editorial icing on the matter. Okay, cool. So, that’s nifty.

Okay. So then other than the Open to Work piece, what else can we do to stand out amongst the thousands?

Jeremy Schifeling
Yeah, great question. So, the next filter that’s available on LinkedIn Recruiter is called, “Do you have a company connection?” In other words, “Is there someone on the inside that you know that plugs you into the company?” And the reason that’s there is that LinkedIn’s own research has shown that recruiters are much more likely to select you as a candidate if you happen to know someone on the inside already.

If you’re thinking, like, “Hey, why does that matter at all?” But the reality is it’s for the recruiter, that human connection, that sort of connective tissue between you and the organization makes a huge difference. They’re able to reach out to get an introduction, they’re able to reach out and do a background check on you later in the process, and so you’re just a more desirable candidate, an easier candidate to manage, and that makes them more likely to use their InMails on you.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, then I suppose the implication then is have a bigger network so it’s more likely that you’re there.

Jeremy Schifeling
Absolutely, yeah. You nailed it, Pete, because, really, mathematically, if you think about the way that networks are, like if you just have a larger more diverse network, you’re more likely to know someone on the inside at more companies around the globe. So, building a large network on LinkedIn isn’t just a vanity project to say, “Hey, I’m 500 plus.” It actually matters to your chances of success.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. Certainly. And any pro tips on how we can grow that number quickly?

Jeremy Schifeling
Yeah. Oh, this is an important one. So, the number one mistake that I see people making with LinkedIn networks is they go onto LinkedIn and they try to basically reinvent the wheel, go out there and build new connections one by one, and that’s great. It’s great to meet new people. But they haven’t gone and credited yet for all the people they already know in the real world. So, let me ask you this question, Pete. How many people would you say that you’ve met or corresponded with over the course of your entire lifetime?

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. Well, I don’t know precisely but it is more than 3,000.

Jeremy Schifeling
Okay. I have research that suggests you’re absolutely right, that the average person knows about 5,000 people over the course of a lifetime. So, you’re somewhere on that journey.

Pete Mockaitis
Alrighty.

Jeremy Schifeling
And so, what that means is when you see people on LinkedIn who have 10 connections or 20 connections, they are literally missing out on thousands of actual connections they’ve built out there in the real world. And because LinkedIn doesn’t know about them, they can’t give you credit for it at the algorithmic level, at the recruiter level. You’re not being plugged into all those opportunities that you deserve.

So, to catch up as quickly as possible, what I want all of your listeners to do is to go to the My Network tab at the top of the screen, and instead of just connecting with people one at a time, scroll down to the lower left hand side, and actually import your address books. I know what you’re thinking, you’re like, “Whoa, this is going against every social media training I’ve ever gotten. I’ve got keep that stuff locked down.” But the reality is that your address book, like your Gmail address book, is a digital archive of everyone you’ve corresponded with, all those relationships you’ve built.

And so, when LinkedIn matches those with the email addresses and the profiles, they can instantly give you credit for all the people you already know because, unlike a Facebook, unlike the TikTok or an Instagram, there’s not much of a dark side on LinkedIn because the nice thing about LinkedIn being the boring social network that we talked about is that you don’t have all this crazy stuff happening on there. It’s more about opportunity and accessing it.

Pete Mockaitis
And then nothing nefarious is happening in terms of people being hit with like marketing messages, like, “Hey, you joined LinkedIn,” because, one, they’re probably on LinkedIn, and then, two, that’s just not what happens when you’re adding contacts, right?

Jeremy Schifeling
That’s right. It’s basically saying, “Hey, you already know Pete. Why don’t you actually acknowledge that connection on LinkedIn?” And then it works out well for both of you for the reasons we talked about.

Pete Mockaitis
And you can choose them individually. And what I found is really fun is once you do that, and let’s say you get a couple hundred going through there in a jiffy, is that now LinkedIn’s algorithms have a lot more to work with. So, then you can just request to connect a whole bunch of people. And then, a week later, many of them have already said yes, and your network is much larger. And now, the recommended connections make a lot more of them are new and relevant, like, “Oh, yeah, that person, too. And, yeah, that person, too. And that person, too.”

And so then, there’s sort of a nice little virtuous cycle in terms of, “Add a bunch of connections. Come back a week. Better recommendations. Add a bunch of those connections. Come back a week. More good recommendations,” and then you just keep sort of scaling really quick in terms of, like, “Okay, I guess now I’ve got everybody I know connected on LinkedIn. Cool.”

Jeremy Schifeling
That’s absolutely right. And I think that one of the things your listeners will find if they embraced some of these strategies is that we often have been taught, “Oh, my goodness, I don’t want these algorithms processing me and my behavior.” But, again, the upside here is so massive. We’re getting exposed to companies you didn’t know about, jobs you didn’t know about, recruiters you didn’t know about who all are seeking your talent, and that’s all for the good.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Those are so great. Well, tell me, Jeremy, what are some other must-dos and must-don’ts associated with LinkedIn? Is that it? that’s the three steps? Is there more?

Jeremy Schifeling
I will mention one more thing, if you wouldn’t mind.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, then we’ll say, okay, so we got three steps. And what else?

Jeremy Schifeling
Yeah. And so, the last piece, and this really goes to that networking and relationship-building piece we just talked about, is if you do nothing else on LinkedIn, if you skipped the profile, you skipped all the career exploration, and if you invest in only a single step, it’s got to be reaching out and getting a referral for the jobs you want because, on this point, the data is so clear, which is that job seekers who are referred to jobs, so basically someone inside the company is saying, “Hey, I know Pete. He’s awesome. He should have a job here,” gives you a 10X advantage over candidates who only apply online.

Think about that. We spend probably more time working than we do with our families, for better or worse, and if we’re going to have so much time and so much of our personal meaning invested in work, shouldn’t it be the work that we love doing, with colleagues we like working with? So, give yourself the best shot at that, find someone on the inside who can go to bat for you to give you that referral, and use that to get the best chance of doing work you love.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And when we’re asking for that referral, any pro tips in terms of best/worst practices, like, “Hey, man, I want to work here. Make it happen”? What shall I say? What shall I not say?

Jeremy Schifeling
Definitely starts with finding the right people, this kind of this Venn diagram overlap that you’re looking for where it’s someone who wants to help you and someone who can help you. So, for example, if you searched for a company at LinkedIn, say, Google, for instance. And then you click on the Google company page, and you say, “Hey, there are 200,000 employees at Google, those are 200,000 potential referrers.” And if you click on that number, you’ll see all those people listed on LinkedIn as well as their backgrounds, where they went to school, etc.

So, you can take that list and you can filter it for “People I already know. People who are friends of friends. People who went to the same school.” And now they’ve got some incentive to want to help you. You can also search by title, to say, “Show me people on the product management team or on the marketing team,” and now you’re finding people who can help you because they’re plugged into the team you want to work for. And so, if you can find that perfect overlap, that person is going to be really well-placed to help you out.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, we find the right person. And then any do’s and don’ts with regard to what we say to that person?

Jeremy Schifeling
Yeah, and I think it all comes down to what’s the relationship so far. If it’s someone who’s been your best friend for 20 years, ask for the referral right away because, honestly, it’s a win-win. Sure, you’re going to get a great opportunity, but in exchange, Google is going to pay them a $1,000 or $5,000 or $10,000 in referral bonus once you’re hired. So, never doubt the power of the referral to help you as well as your friend.

But if you don’t know them that well already, no worries, you can always reach out and say, “Hey, I just want to pick your brain about this opportunity in this organization.” You can get their story, hear their journey, and then, after you’ve built a bit of a rapport with that person, then you could start to pivot, and say, “Hey, I would love nothing less but to follow in your footsteps and get to sort of go on this journey that you’ve gone on. I understand from this amazing podcast I was listening to that Google really values referrals. Any chance you’d be willing to put one in for me?” And now that you’ve broken the ice, you’ve established the rapport, it’s much more natural to make that ask than right off the top of the bat.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, certainly. And so, when you say referrals, this can happen…this is not a particular LinkedIn thing so much as just sort of humans doing humans have always done with regard to recommending in people.

Jeremy Schifeling
That’s right. But think about this, referrals have always happened but always through the old boys’ network, right, “Oh, ho, ho, ho, you went to Harvard Business School, I went to Harvard Business School, let’s help each other out.” But what if you didn’t go to Harvard Business School? What if you didn’t go to business school or even college?

Well, LinkedIn now enables you to find people who are at all these organizations who might have other things in common with you, and you could go on there and say, “Show me all the Google employees who volunteered for Habitat for Humanity because that’s my particular passion.” You could connect on that basis. And so, ultimately, this is democratizing access to referrals, not just the old boys’ network.

I want to hear, when it comes to getting endorsements, that seems like a good thing that would work for us. What’s your take there?

Jeremy Schifeling
Yeah, so let’s come back to the source of truth here. Ultimately, everything boils down to that LinkedIn Recruiter screen we were talking about where the recruiters around the world are finding top talent. And, ultimately, what you’ll see if you look at that, and you can look at screenshots online, is that LinkedIn, even almost 10 years after endorsements have launched, has never built that as a filter into LinkedIn Recruiter.

Pete Mockaitis
No kidding.

Jeremy Schifeling
And the reason for that is sort of simple data science, which is if you recall the heyday of LinkedIn endorsements, when they first launched, there was all this virality. People were going around endorsing each other for everything. My own mom endorsed me for astronomy and geology and all the stuff I knew nothing about.

And that, ultimately, watered down the signal and created all this noise so much so that just because I had 99 plus endorsements for something didn’t actually make me an expert at it, wouldn’t stand up in the interview room. And because it wasn’t a strong enough signal that they could actually hang their hat on, they’ve never baked it into their flagship product. LinkedIn Recruiter is what makes LinkedIn its most money. If you look at their last 10K and then, ultimately, if it’s not going to be successful for recruiters and effective for that key audience, they’re not going to put it into their flagship.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, that’s not a filter that appears in that piece of software that recruiters are using. I guess you may argue, it may or may not be interesting or compelling when you look at something. Well, I guess there’s…I got to go in my LinkedIn. So, there’s endorsements and then recommendations, there’s one where it’s, “Hey, Pete is good at leadership,” so there’s that. And then there’s also a kind of like a letter of endorsement, like, “I worked with Jeremy, and I thought he was super brilliant.” So, am I using my words correctly, which is which?

Jeremy Schifeling
Yeah, absolutely. And so, this is a really important distinction, and I’m glad you brought it up. So, endorsements are kind of like the fast food of social proof.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, okay, endorsements.

Jeremy Schifeling
It’s like, “Yeah, Pete is great,” I click the button. No big deal. And, obviously, that’s watered down for all the reasons we’ve talked about. Recommendations, however, are like digital gold because, think about your typical resume. Your resume is, “All Pete is saying that Pete is awesome, and Pete might be a little bit biased on that topic,” versus this is a rare chance for a recruiter to get some third-party validation that you are who you claim to be.

And so, what you’ll see in the recruiter product is that, very quickly, upon choosing a profile, the recruiter will be shown those recommendations as a way of confirming that, “Hey, this actually is a rockstar candidate.” So, those definitely do matter much more than endorsements.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Endorsements, 99 people saying I’m great at leadership development doesn’t so much matter. Recommendations, human beings saying, “Whoa, worked with this guy, and they were so great,” matter a lot.

Jeremy Schifeling
Absolutely. And don’t stress out about it. You don’t need to have 99 of those but one or two well-placed ones from people who are either a client or a boss and can objectively speak to your skillset, that definitely matters.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Very cool. Well, so then, tell me, anything else we need to know to do or not do with our LinkedIn?

Jeremy Schifeling
Yeah. Honestly, those are the big ones. We can talk all day about other bells and whistles and new features and stuff like that, but I think if people are going to say, “Hey, I only have 10 minutes realistically to spend on my job search this week or think about career exploration,” that’s where I’d spend my time. That’s where you’re going to get the biggest Pareto principle kind of bang for your buck by focusing on, “Hey, what do I want to do? How do I signal that to the world? And how do I get recruiters to pick me?”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, now could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Jeremy Schifeling
Yeah, absolutely. So, one of my favorite quotes of all time has to be from Yogi Bear, of course, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” And the reason I love that one so much is that I think it kind of speaks to where we are right now in our world of career discovery, which is so often we get this message as kids that we have to choose a path, “What are you going to be when you grow up?” when, in fact, we discovered during this Great Resignation that you can be lots of different things.

You can run your own business. You can work for someone else’s business. You can try different career paths. And I hope that Yogi is in there, gives people the sense that many possibilities are available to them, especially at this moment.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And could you share a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Jeremy Schifeling
Yeah. So, this is one that actually goes beyond LinkedIn but is still in the world of job searching. So, a company called ResumeGo, basically, tested one of the key axioms of the entire job seeker’s handbook, which is, “You’ve got to have a one-page resume.” And we’ve all heard that ever since we applied for our first jobs.

Well, it turned out, when ResumeGo actually tested this out in the real world, and showed two different versions of resumes to actual recruiters, a one-page version and a two-page version, the actual real-world recruiters were 2.3 times more likely to choose the two-page version over the one-page version. So, as a job seeker, we always have to be questioning dogma, “Is this actually the way the world works or just the conventional wisdom?” because if it’s not working for us, we got to skip it.

Pete Mockaitis
Wow, that is fascinating and I have told many people to have a one-page resume myself. And so, well, yeah, I want to dig into that study in terms of…and so, they didn’t know it’s the same person or there’s sort of they had a pile?

Jeremy Schifeling
Exactly, that’s right. So, all randomized. And I think what they actually hypothesized in terms of why that was happening, what was driving this phenomenon, was that, yeah, recruiters actually say the same thing, “Oh, I’ve got too many resumes. Keep it short.” But when actually given more information, and probably a little more white spaces as well, the recruiter was like, “Ah, I can actually look at this person, get a sense of what they really can do,” versus eight-point font with everything crammed in, trying to make it work in this 8.5×11 space.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that does make sense in terms of we say that’s what we want because it’s like, “No, too much work. Too many pages. Keep it down,” and yet when you really sit down, it’s like, “Oh, well, this is lovely to look at with my eyes. Hmm, I enjoy having multiple segments that make a lot of sense as opposed to things shoved in all the more.”

Jeremy Schifeling
That’s right. So, we talked about A/B testing before, and here it comes again. It matters.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Jeremy Schifeling
Yes, so my favorite book, and, again, specifically in the job-searching space, has to be from my own personal job search guru, Steve Dalton. Have you actually interviewed Steve?

Pete Mockaitis
Twice. He’s so good.

Jeremy Schifeling
Oh, yeah. So, Steve, for those who don’t know already, has written a book called The 2-Hour Job Search. And the reason I love it, as an introvert myself, is I often thought of networking and LinkedIn as only a space for extroverts, super type A MBAs. When, in fact, as you’ve probably gotten a sense from our conversation so far, even if you’re super introverted and maybe networking doesn’t come naturally to you at all, you absolutely have access to this incredible opportunity to find the right people, build the right relationships, get access to the best opportunities. And Steve really breaks down how to do that in his book The 2-Hour Job Search.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool?

Jeremy Schifeling
Favorite tool, I would say, is actually something that I use quite a bit when I do my own job searches, which is a site called FollowUpThen.com. Have you heard of it?

Pete Mockaitis
I think so. Keep talking.

Jeremy Schifeling
Okay. So, basically, what FollowUpThen is a second brain. So, one thing that I’ve learned that humans are not good at all about is remembering to stay engaged with people. We’ve talked a lot about networking, reaching out. Well, the reality is that when you’re building relationships with a new person, most likely it’s going to take multiple conversations or multiple correspondences over time before you really win them over to your side.

The problem is there are so many wannabe networkers dropped the ball because they have a great first contact and then never bothered to follow up. Whereas, if I send a message to you, Pete, thanking you for our first conversation, and then I BCC every one month at FollowUpThen.com it will bounce it back to my inbox on a monthly basis. So, even though my brain has been distracted by boba tea and the things I see on my window and everything else happening on my screen, FollowUpThen.com forgets nothing and always reminds me to keep that relationship healthy and alive and helps it build towards success. And, by the way, it’s actually all free at FollowUpThen.com.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. And then I imagine, it bounces it to your email such that I can just push reply to…

Jeremy Schifeling
That’s right, exactly. It keeps the thread intact, so you can say, “Hey, Pete, remember that great advice you gave me last month? I actually acted upon it. Here’s what I learned. Any chance I could get an introduction to this person who might be able to unlock the next opportunity?”

Pete Mockaitis
That’s so cool. As opposed to, I mean, I love me some OmniFocus Task Management Software, but this is just easier in terms of, “Hey, we’re talking about an email, it’s going to come back as an email. When that email comes back, I just have to push R, reply, and then, bam, away we go.” Cool.

Jeremy Schifeling
That’s right. Not to geek out too much but it’s all in your workflow and that’s where it stays.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Jeremy Schifeling
Yeah, you know, this is an interesting one because I was just talking about this with some colleagues who were geeking out with me about the best way to learn. And one of the things that I’ve done way too much over the pandemic, and I hate to say this thing on a podcast, is I’ve indulged in podcasts during almost every waking hour, during my walks, during my almost practically before I go to bed.

And what I’ve realized is I’ve kind of crowded out all the silence, all the white noise in my life with actual noise, with actual content. And when I think that the human brain was designed to do originally, if you think about evolution and how we’ve come about as a species, is we had all this free time, all the space to think about things. And that’s why our brain is so good at being creative in a shower or while we’re sleeping. That insolvable challenge that is daunting us today gets solved while we’re asleep.

And so, I think carving out more space to have that time to process and to think, even if it’s subconscious, has actually been really powerful.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate and gets retweeted a lot?

Jeremy Schifeling
Yeah, I think I’ll come back to that piece about referrals. I think we’ve shared a lot about process today in terms of, “Hey, here are the steps that a recruiter goes through. Here are all the tools that they use.” But, at the end of the day, results matter, getting that ROI. And so, if people want to focus on, “Hey, how do I actually cut to the chase and get that dream job, that 10X advantage that referrals provide?” That’s gold.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Jeremy Schifeling
Yes, so we actually built a website sort of a companion to the book called LinkedInGuys.com. And it basically is an insider’s guide to LinkedIn from LinkedIn insiders, conveniently enough. So, if people want to learn all these tips and tricks, they’re all for free at LinkedInGuys.com.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Jeremy Schifeling
Yeah, absolutely. I think this one is especially topical given where we are in our society, in our economy.

Okay. So, the thing that I think is really incumbent upon job seekers today is to embrace this unique moment in our economy. With this Great Resignation going on all around us, it can often seem like things are chaotic, things are a little bit crazy, but think about what the Great Resignation really represents.

Every single time someone walks off the job, walks out that door, that door is opening up for you, in turn. So, if you’ve ever wanted to change careers, or find a new path, or do that thing that you really love to do but thought it was closed off to you, now is the time, now is your moment. And I hope folks embrace that.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Jeremy, this has been a treat. I wish you much conquering and fun on LinkedIn and elsewhere.

Jeremy Schifeling
Thank you so much, Pete, and good luck to all your listeners out there.

Pete Mockaitis
Lou, thanks for joining us here on the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Lou Adler
Hey, happy to be here, Pete, and thank you for inviting me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m so excited to get your wisdom on both sides of the hiring table, the hiring and the getting hired. And I have a feeling that in your work over the years, you’ve probably encountered some interesting stories. Anything particularly memorable or fun or touching or hilarious that leaps to mind as you reflect on your career here?

Lou Adler
Well, I don’t know if it would be fun or hilarious, but important is probably a dozen, but since you’ve only asked me that question 15 seconds ago, I have to scramble pretty quickly. But I do remember one and it was 30 years ago or maybe even longer. I was talking to a candidate, and I was a recruiter at the time, my background has been diverse, but certainly when I was a recruiter in the early days, I thought I was going to place this one candidate who’s a remarkable person as a plant manager.

And at the time I was a contingency recruiter, and I would get full fee, and the compensation today would’ve been 100,000. So, if you multiply 30% by that, that was the fee I would’ve gotten, so not insignificant fee. So I just listened to him, and say, “John, I was devastated literally.” You lose that money, I didn’t have it, but I lost it anyway because I already, in my mind, spent it.

I said, “Why are you taking the other offer?” and he listed his whole list of five or six, seven reasons why. And then, this is the important part, as I listened to it and I regained my composure, I said, “John, you’ve just made a long-term career decision using short-term information.” He said, “What are you talking about?” I said, “John, everything you just said, the compensation, the title, the location, has to do with what you get on the start date. Not one thing did you say is what you’re going to be doing and becoming as a result of taking that job. We’re talking about a 15-minute drive each way, so we’re talking about a half hour.”

“You’re talking about a slightly better title, you’re talking about slightly more money but the big thing you’re missing is you’re working in a company that’s going downhill, that’s in an old state electronics versus new state-of-the-art making displays. So, what you do in the next two to three years will affect the rest of your life. And if you take that offer, admittedly it’s a little bit more money, slightly better title, VP manufacturing instead of plant manager, but you’re putting yourself on a career deathtrap.” I might not have used those specific terms.

Then I said, “John, did you already accept the offer?” And he said, “No, but I want to call you first because I told you I was going to do it and I feel badly that I’m not going to take the offer.” I said, “Well, why don’t you think about it before you call the other company up?” And I thought, at that time, that I might’ve convinced him to at least think about it, but I didn’t think I was going to get the offer so I was pretty devastated.

He calls me up the next morning, he says, “Lou, I’m going to take your offer.”

Pete Mockaitis
There you go.

Lou Adler
He said, “Everything you said is 100% true. Working in old line manufacturing means two to three years from now, I’ll never get any better than this.” He took the offer, and nine months later he called, and said, “Lou, I’ve just been promoted to VP operations for six plants both in the United States, and we’re now building in China,” which was when the big Chinese movement took place, “and everything was absolutely the right decision.” And I still remember those words today, this is nine months later when I said, “You’re making a long-term decision using short-term.”

And, to me, that’s an important lesson that I tell all candidates, it’s in all the books I write, is too many candidates hire for what they get on the start date, or accept jobs what they’re getting on the start date, not the work they’re going to be doing and what they could become if they’re successful. So, to me, that’s the epitome of everything I train, I advocate, and I listen for, and I actually ask candidates, “Why did you take job A and go to job B? Why did you go from job B to job C?” And they always say, “Well, they promised me this, they promised me that.”

I said, “No, they don’t promise you. You have to do the due diligence yourself to get that information. And if you don’t get it, you’re making a long-term decision using superficial information.”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, I love it and that’s very easy to overlook in terms of you see what’s right in front of you, and it feels pretty close, pretty visceral, pretty emotional, it’s like, “This is my livelihood, this is my experience of work, this is what’s going to happen when I get in the car on Monday morning. This is what I’m going to see on my business card. This is what I’m going to see in the cheques or direct deposits that appear in my bank.” So, yes, that makes a lot of sense that we can naturally fall into some short-term right-in-front-of-you myopic thinking and we need someone like Lou to point us into the long term. Very cool.

Lou Adler
As part of my most recent book, which is called Hire With Your Head, the theme of the book is called win-win hiring. And it’s the idea that hiring managers, recruiters, and candidates alike should think about success measured on the first-year anniversary date not the start date. Hiring success means, hey, the candidate on the anniversary date says, “Well, I’m glad I took this job and I’m still glad I have it.” And the hiring managers says, “I’m glad I hired that person.”

Achieving that win-win hiring outcome is hard to do but critical to do regardless of whether you’re a recruiter, a hiring manager, or the candidate accepting that offer or not. And very few people do it. But that’s the essence of what I’ve been advocating and what I’ve been teaching, that’s called win-win hiring, achieving those kinds of outcomes.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, that’s a great perspective, win-win hiring, one year. So, tell us, Lou, what are some of the core principles that make that the case, that one year later, folks say, “Yeah, I really am glad I hired that person and/or…”

Lou Adler
Now, I’ll give you another story. Now, my history is I didn’t start thinking I’m a recruiter but I became a recruiter before just about 99% of the people listening to your podcast were born. It was 1978.

And I remember my first search assignment was, again, a lot of the work I had done was in manufacturing. It was for a company in the automotive industry and I knew the president, and I knew that when I became a recruiter, this was going to be my first assignment, so I met him the second or third day as a recruiter. And Mike was the president of this company in southern California, and he said, “I’m looking for someone with ten years experience, has a degree in engineering, probably would be great if that person had an MBA, and results-oriented and good communicator,” and all the stuff that you always see on job descriptions.

And I looked at that job description, and I said, “Mike, this is not a job description. This is a person description. A job doesn’t have skills, experience, and competencies. A person has that. Let’s talk about the job before we’re about the person doing the job.” And I said, “Let’s put the job description or the person description in a parking lot. What do you want this person to do? What would this person need to do to be successful in the first year?” And he said, “Turn around the plant.” I said, “Fine. Let’s walk through the plant and figure out what that person needs to do.”

We spent an hour walking through the plant – labor performance issues, scrap issues, processing issues, layout issues, inventory, management. It was a crummy plant. I said, “We’ll find somebody who can turn this plant around.” I have never used a job description that defines skills, experience, and competencies. It always defines the work as a series of performance objectives – build a team to put together an international reporting process within six months; make quota; design a new circuit that can accomplish A, B, and C and would fit in this kind of parameters and meets these kinds of criteria. It’s always outcomes with the idea being if a person can accomplish that work, he or she is perfectly qualified.

What changes it is the mix of skills and experiences, and I tell my client, “They obviously have to do the work. That’s not compromising but give us some relief on the skills and experiences. Having the skills and experiences means the person can do the work or motivate to do it, but if you can find someone who’s competent and motivated to do that work, you’ve got the right person. You just opened a talent pool to everybody who can do the work. Black, white, old or young, green or yellow, physically-challenged or not, it doesn’t matter.” And I’ve talked to numbers of labor attorneys but the number one labor attorney in the world contends that’s the most accurate way to hire. That’s objective criteria.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, and I was thinking that if in the unfortunate world that it doesn’t work out a year later, that feels pretty bulletproof in a courtroom – I’m no lawyer – but in terms of, “Hey, this is what they were hired to do. It didn’t happen so we’re looking for someone else who can do it,” as opposed to, “If they were people…”

Lou Adler
Conversely, if you find that’s what you’re looking for, you just dig deep, and to, “Hey, Pete, we need someone who can turn around the plant. Tell me about the biggest turnaround operation you’ve ever been involved with,” and spend 20 minutes digging in and understanding that. Or, “Hey, we’re going to build a team of accountants to put an international reporting system,” “Hey, we’re going to develop a new interface that accomplishes A, B, C using this skill. Walk me through anything you’ve done that’s related to that.”

So, your question was, “How do you create a win-win opportunity?” Well, first, you got to define the work that person has to do over the course of the year that would result, at least from the hiring manager’s perspective, a win-win hire. Then you got to find candidates who are motivated and competent to do that work and find it the best career move up competing alternatives.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, I love it. Lou, you just break it down, the step-by-step. So, let’s hear about that next step in terms of how does one go about finding those folks once we’ve clearly defined what a win-win situation looks like?

Lou Adler
Well, that’s a great question. You must read the book. No, seriously, the next step in, first, define the job, a series of key performance objectives. Then find candidates, or I call them semifinalists. You don’t need a lot of people to hire a great person. You just need the right people. So, our high-touch process is spend more time with fewer people as long as they’re prequalified.

And I was with a hiring manager last week, and he was looking for a software developer to do some backend stuff. It was pretty complicated. And I just said, “What do you want this person to do, Harry? What do you want accomplished?” And he told me, “Well, a couple of tasks that were big.” So, I said to him, “If I can find someone who’s done comparable work, it won’t compromise on that ability to be performance qualified,” that’s one step, “and the candidate has been recognized for doing that work and in that top half or top quartile or top third of a peer group, or top 10%, would you at least talk to the person on the phone?” He said, “Absolutely.”

So, part of sourcing is you look for, “Who would a hiring manager want to talk with if they could do that work and they were recognized for being exceptional at it?” I said, “Even if the person had a different mix of skills and experience.” Hiring manager said, “I don’t care. If they could only do the work and motivated to do it, I’d want to see him.” Then I said, “But, now, we’ve got the other side, is we’re going to look for a discriminating candidate who would see that job as a career move.”

So, then we look for, as we find candidates, we look for candidates who see that job as a move, maybe going from a big company to a small company, working at better projects, someone whose growth has slowed down, go to a place where the growth is accelerating. So, there’s a lot of things you can do and there’s a lot of technology to get you to find candidates but you have to be kind of clever at it, but we look for performance qualifying, meaning they can do the work, some super skills; achiever terms, meaning they’re in the top half, top third, top quartile in a peer group; and, from the candidate-facing-decision, hey, the job is a clear career move.

Then you engage in a conversation, “Hey, Pete, would you be open to talk about a situation superior to what you’re doing today?” I tell recruiters, “Don’t sell the job. Sell the conversation. But if you’re dealing with the right person, they’ll engage in the conversation. You take the time pressure off and you discuss this is a career move so the candidates get the…” And I tell candidates, “We’re going to have a conversation to see if we can achieve a win-win hiring outcome. It’s going to take a little more time but let’s just engage in a conversation.” And most candidates are, “Of course. It makes logical sense.”

But you have to know the job to have credibility with the candidate. So, that’s where, taking the intake meeting, and I say, “Here’s the job, Pete. We’re looking for someone who can do A, B, and C and here’s the situation. Here’s the resource.” You really know what you’re talking about. So, recruiters who don’t know the job and just source active candidates who they find either through a job posting or an email, it’s just pure transactional and pure blind luck if they hire a good person. And in pure blind luck, if the person is going to be there a year from now.

Pete Mockaitis
So, I get what you’re saying with regard to, “Hey, find those semifinalists. It is going to take a little bit of more work up front, but the good news is we don’t need to look at hundreds of resumes. We can look at a handful.” Are we thinking five, ten? Is that what we’re talking about here roughly?

Lou Adler
Absolutely. Maybe 12 to 15 but you got to be persistent to talk to everybody because most candidates don’t think you’re different so you got to kind of prove that through the process of pestering, engaging.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. That feels a lot better as a candidate in terms of, “Oh, cool. So, at worse, I’ve got 14 contenders clamoring for this opportunity as opposed to hundreds. Okay. Well, yeah, Lou, that’s worth 10 minutes for me to just see what you’re thinking but maybe a lot more.”

Lou Adler
Sure, maybe just 10 minutes.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, okay. And so then, can we hear about how do you, on the recruiting side, go about finding these people and confirming that they’ve got the performance qualification, that they can do it, and that they’re in the top half, third, or fourth?

Lou Adler
Well, first off, there’s a lot of ways to do it. A lot of my books and interviewing, we train hiring managers on the whole process – defining the work, finding candidates, interviewing candidates, and closing the deal, and even the onboarding process. But from an interviewing standpoint, so if I was going to call you up, and say, “Hey, Pete, let’s just have a conversation.”

And I said, “Pete, part of this assessment is to make sure this job represents a career move. And to be a career move, it has to give you at least a 30% increase.” “Thirty percent, did you say?” “Well, yeah, but it’s not money. Thirty percent is a combination of job stretch, meaning a bigger job; faster growth, a job with more impact; and more satisfying work. And that’s a complicated decision to make but that’s what I want to go through. So, let me just review your background in general, see if there’s a fit, and if so, we can get serious.”

So, during that process, I dig deep into the candidate’s accomplishments to see if they’re comparable and see if the 30% opportunity exists, and I say, “Pete, this looks like it could be there with bigger team, faster growth. This is the kind of work you like to do. Let me get the hiring manager engaged in this process and we’ll move forward.” But I also say this from a closing standpoint, I say, “Pete, if you’re really the candidate, and you’re going to get an offer two or three weeks from now, it’s high probability you’ll get one, 20%-30% possible, I’m going to ask you a question.”

“I’m going to say forget the money. Forget all the day-one stuff. Do you really want this job? And if you do, tell me why. And if you can’t describe that 30% in your own words, because that’s the information you have to get over the interviewing process, I’m going to suggest you don’t take the offer even if it pays the most because that will not drive your satisfaction growth and lead to a win-win hiring outcome.” So, it’s incumbent upon you, the candidate, to get that information, and is incumbent upon the hiring manager and the hiring company, to give you that information. And if there’s a clash there, fine. Don’t move forward. That kind of has the whole pieces tied together.

Pete Mockaitis
As we have this conversation, Lou, it’s just I keep myself in the candidate shoes, and thinking, “Yes, I like that. Okay, that’s distinctive.” And 30%, that just feels right in the gut in terms of, “Hey, if it’s an 8% bump, is it really worth all the time and effort and hassle and change and disruption to your life and routines to go chasing after it? I don’t know. But 30% is like, well, yeah, that is…”

Lou Adler
But, again, it’s not in monetary. Money won’t be on top of that. But the idea is that if you really get 30% of the compensation will increase at the same rate year after year. So, if you look at, “Hey, what’s your compensation a year or two from now?” it’s going to blow if you really get the non-monetary increase. Your compensation will be there a year or two from now just like this fellow John. He called me up and said his compensation was far greater, title was far greater because we put him on a better career path.

Pete Mockaitis
And then how do you go about confirming whether, in fact, a candidate is in that top half, third, or fourth?

Lou Adler
Well, there’s a lot of ways to do it, basically. And I’m doing a training session so I had to do some recording, doing some recording on some online training on a Friday, no, excuse me, Thursday. So, I said one thing that I look for is a dozen techniques. One of them is, “What kind of recognition did you get for that project?” Well, one thing from a technical standpoint, which is pretty interesting, I call it the Sherlock Holmes deductive technique, is good candidates are always assigned stretch projects early in their career, “Hey, Pete, when you took on that job, what kind of projects did you get assigned?”

Now, if you were assigned, after three months, menial work or average work, consistent with your peer group, then you’re probably an okay person. But if you’re probably starting to get stretch assignments, assigned to more important teams, those teams started recognizing you and asked you to be on other teams, there’s a lot of evidence that you can use to determine if someone is a high achiever. The point is too many interviewers, or hiring managers in particular, judge a person and that person’s raw technical insight, and using a lot of subjective material, “A smart person should do this.” But that’s not…

I’m not technically competent in any of the jobs but I’m a great technical interviewer because I look at what other people thought of that candidate. If you’re a good person, if you’re a sales rep, you get assigned tougher clients. If you’re an accountant at a big accounting firm, the partners in your job don’t give you menial accounts. They give you important accounts and they expose you to important people. If you’re a marketing person, you get assigned bigger projects.

And as a result of being successful, you get assigned even bigger projects, more important product lines that are involved in the company. So, you look for those kinds of things that, “What would likely happen if this person was really good doing that work in that company?” And you start picking up the evidence. They got a president’s award, they got a nice letter, they got a bonus, they got a promotion more rapidly.

So, it’s those kinds of obvious things when you think about it, say, “Of course, that’s what would happen.” You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to do that. You just got to think logically of, Pete, you make a personal judgment. Other people have made a judgment about that person, and that person has made a judgment about him or herself. So, look for that kind of evidence that would be indicative of what a high achiever does.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Lou, I’m just going to put you on the spot and make it a little challenging. I think that it’s funny that what you say that sounds like, “But, of course, we should all do that,” and yet we don’t. And what’s common sense is often not common practice. I’m curious about if you’re hiring someone from an organization whose kind of processes and meritocracy is just kind of broken, and these deductive clues we’d like to lean on as Sherlock Holmes are not giving us the indicators we’d like, what are some other sources you’d use?

Lou Adler
Well, it depends. Maybe the candidate is not any good.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s one possibility. I guess I was just looking for what are some extra indicators or clever approaches that we can get that validation, that check mark.

Lou Adler
Yeah, I don’t know that there’s a clever approach. I think I’m pretty deductive. And I don’t want to say deductive in any kind of intellectual sense. I just look for evidence. If I don’t find the evidence, I pass. I can’t afford the risk.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Fair enough.

Lou Adler
When I ask a person, “Why do you change jobs?” and if they always change jobs for short-term reasons, that, to me, is the indicator the person is not really focused on career-oriented, a career-oriented focused person. So, there are things you can look at that would get you some insight and validate that the person is really an okay person but not a high achiever. High achievers want to progress. They self-develop. They work hard and they do get assigned projects. And even if once or twice, it was a screwup, so be it. That’s fine. So, there is evidence that you can look for.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Sure thing. Well, so let’s say we got our semifinalists, and then here we are in the interview phase, can you help us think through on both sides, what are some do’s and don’ts?

Lou Adler
Well, the thing to me, over the years I developed what I call the hiring formula for success. And the hiring formula for success says, so it’s how you actually evaluate candidates. It’s ability to do the work in relationship to fit, drives motivation, and because motivation is so important, it’s squared. So, the do’s and don’t are, “Hey, if you want to achieve a win-win hiring outcome and hire someone in the top half, they better be motivated to do the work you want in the context of your job, the fit factors.”

Of that formula, ability to do the work, which is a combination of hard skills and soft skills, but most people only measure the technical skills, they ignore the soft skills – organization, planning, team collaboration, understanding. They just focus on the hard skills. But if you get at the hard and soft skills, the next one is the fit factors. Fit with the job. Does the candidate really want to do that work? Fit with the hiring manager style. In my mind, I was pretty independent and I had a hiring manager, the group president whom I worked for, was a micromanager, I said, “Fire me if I don’t do the work. Just leave me alone.”

There are other people who want a manager and subordinate who align better on what they need. So, one fit factor is the managerial fit. Another fit factor is the culture of the company. Another one is the pace of the organization. Another one is the sophistication of the organization. But those context issues are critical. There are a lot of confident people but if they don’t fit the fit factors and they’re not motivated to do the work, they’ll underperform.

So, that’s getting pretty complicated but the way we do that, we break the interview down in different pieces, we dig into the candidate’s accomplishments, and then we group around a formula around that hiring formula to make sure that we have all the components measured accurately. So, that’s the secret sauce of how you find candidates who are going to excel in that circumstance. Ignoring the fit factors, it’s, again, problematic if you want to achieve a win-win hiring outcome.

Pete Mockaitis
And you said motivation was squared?

Lou Adler
Yeah, ability to do the work in relation to fit times motivation squared. If you just kind of go through the basics of it, you’ll get some done. But if you’re motivated to do the work, you’ll get a lot more done.

Pete Mockaitis
And in the course of the interview, how do we assess whether one is, in fact, motivated, or, on the flipside, as a candidate, to reveal that you are motivated?

Lou Adler
Motivation to do the work, not get to work, and that’s a critical step here in this process.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, how do I assess whether, one, a candidate has motivation, or convey that I am a motivated as a candidate? You know, it’s funny, I remember I had a friend who was really into a consulting opportunity, and then he got some feedback from his interviewer, he’s like, “You know, you just didn’t really seem into it.” He’s like, “I’m very into it. This is my number one company that I really want to work for.” But, somehow, it didn’t get conveyed. So, how do we convey it? And how do we check for it?

Lou Adler
Well, see, that’s the issue. The fact that someone is quiet and low key has nothing to do with motivation to do the work. Unfortunately, candidates, or hiring managers and interviewers judge you by how motivated you are there during the interview and how extroverted you are. Totally inappropriate. The way I do it is I dig deep in the candidate’s accomplishments and ask many questions, “Hey, what did you do in this accomplishment? Where did you take the initiative? Where did you go the extra mile?”

And I ask that constantly as part of different accomplishments so I start seeing a pattern on the types of work that naturally motivates the person to excel. That’s how I get at it. And I see the pattern of, “Hey, this person always goes out of his or her way to build the team, always takes these architectural design issues, always does this without prompting.” Very few people do everything without prompting all the time. But I start seeing this pattern of activity.

Now, how does a candidate do that? And I don’t want candidates, and I tell candidates, me as a recruiter, unfortunately, my technique is not universal, I tell candidates, “I don’t care if you’re a good interview. I care if you’re a good performer. I’ll try to clean you up to make you the best interview possible. But I’m going to represent you if I think you’re good.” Then we have a course, and you can look on WinWinHiring.com. It’s how to prep for an interview where I tell candidates how to do the best job they can of presenting themselves for a specific job.

And the way to do that is if you feel you’re being superficially assessed, I say to candidates, time out very quickly, and say, “Would you mind telling me some of the major accomplishments related to this job because I’d like to give you examples of work that I’ve done that are most comparable?”

Pete Mockaitis
“Let me do your job for you, interviewer.” That’s funny and I’m laughing because it’s kind of sad but sometimes necessary. Like, as candidates, it’s like, “Let me do your job for you, interviewer. I think what you want to know is the following.”

Lou Adler
Yeah, but most of the time it is. But at least the fact that you just asked that question, indicates that you’re proactive, even if you ask in a low-key way, “Oh, that’s a pretty good question. What are the resources for that job? What’s the timeframe for that job?” And you start asking these questions that say, “Wow, this person…” Even the quality of your questions and proactively asking them, brand you as, “Hey, this person is pretty aggressive.” Your answers the other part, “No, I did some work that’s comparable. And what did you say the biggest problem was in that? You said that design issue to build the tool to do A, B, and C? Let me give you some examples of work that I’ve done related to that.”

So, the idea is, find out what the work is and proactively ask about it. Even if you ask in a low-key manner, it’ll, “Wow, this person is really competent. He really knows what he or she is talking about.” So, I think those are the issues. If you just wait, assume that you’re going to be assessed accurately, the chance of that is five-to-one against you’ll be judged on personality traits and your depth of hard skills.

Pete Mockaitis
And I like that question for getting after motivation. It’s like, “Where have you gone the extra mile here? Where have you gone the extra mile there?” because you’ll surface, I imagine, some patterns. And, hopefully, the answer is not, “Oh, uh, no, I don’t know.” And that can really get you thinking. As I reflect, as I’ve asked myself that question in different endeavors, it’s like, “Where have I gone the extra mile?” it really does reveal, “Oh, yeah, that’s where I was motivated.” And where have I not gone the extra mile is like, “Oh, that’s where I didn’t care and I did the minimum I had to do to comply with the law,” or whatever needs compliance rather than my proactive vigor.

Lou Adler
Right.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, tell us, Lou, any other top tips you would suggest? I think let’s give the candidates a little bit more love in terms of if we want to stand out to become found, to dazzle our prospective employers, what are your top tips on that side?

Lou Adler
Well, first off, my big tip is do not, do not, do not apply for a job directly. Chances are 3% you’ll get interviewed; 1% you’ll get hired, so it’s just a waste of time. On the other hand, if you see a job that you like, I would find out, “Hey, is there any way I can get a referral into that specific job?” That would be great. And it could be a second- or third-degree connection, but you try to see if you can do it, “Okay, what’s this company doing? Do I know anybody? Do I know anybody in my school?” You start looking on LinkedIn.

And the beauty of LinkedIn, it’s a network of 700 million people, not a database of 700 million people. And I don’t think recruiters or candidates take advantage of that. So, now, let’s assume that’s probably going to happen that you’ll know somebody for that job 10%-20%. It’s not going to be high, but you never know. If you get a professional background with an accounting firm, or bigger company, you might be able to get some connection.

On the other hand, 50%-70% of the time, you’ll be able to find out who the vice president is for that department, or director for that department, even if it’s not over that specific job. And I remember talking to this fellow, this has to be five or six years ago now, or maybe ten years, but he was Italian, he had his MBA from some school in Milan, he wanted to work for a telecommunications company in Europe, and he named the top three or four, “I want to work a job here. How would I get it?”

And I said, “Well, it’s easy enough to find a VP of marketing in any of those jobs. Why don’t you do a little MBA-like case study, putting each of their telecommunication systems, if that’s the area you want, and some kind of little competitive matrix, company A, company B, company C, company D, and some of the key features by product line?” So, this person wants to be a product marketing person.

I said, “Then just do a little summary with one or two pages, and then send that off to the VP, and say, ‘I’d like to work in product marketing, and this is what I’ve done. And I’ve found some key weaknesses in some of your products. I’d like to have a chance to chat with you about them.’” He said, “That’s a good idea.” And he called me up once or twice over the next two weeks, and said, “I’m just starting to send out emails, and I think I’ve got one interview already.” I hadn’t heard from him again for like six months, said, “Lou, I got that job with that one company.”

So, there are ways you can find the names of people, do a mini-consulting project, and just arrange to have a conversation, and say, “Hey, I’d like to do this.” And on LinkedIn. There’s an article I call 15 Ways to Hack a Job. So, if you look up Lou Adler, Hack a Job on LinkedIn, you’ll see an article, and it talks about using the backdoor to get the interview, to get to the top of the resume heap. And if you want to apply, unless you’re a world-class person with exactly the skills, it’s a low probability event. I would rather spend more time with fewer postings rather than applying to hundreds of postings.

Same thing with candidates. Don’t spend a lot of times with hundreds of candidates. Get to the right candidates and spend more time with them per candidate. Spend time on jobs you want. And if you put some effort into it, you will get a conversation.

Pete Mockaitis
Do you think that most people spend too much time fine tuning their resumes and LinkedIn profiles, and they can spend that time better elsewhere? Or, what’s your take there?

Lou Adler
That’s a good question. I would say the thing is, and I do look at resumes, so I guess here would be the advice. And this was like 30 years ago, I had a training for candidates. I don’t know how I did it, I figured I just wanted to train candidates on how to get a job, so this was pre-internet, pre-job boards too, so it had to be 1990-ish.

And I said, “Take your resume,” I had everyone bring a resume, and I said, “Give it somebody whom you don’t know.” And I said, “Turn it over and give it somebody whom you don’t know.” Then I said, “I’m going to give everybody 30 seconds to look at that resume.” Maybe it was 15 or 20 seconds. I said, “When I turn the clock on, I want to say turn the resume over and just circle the things that stand out,” maybe it was 10 or 15 seconds. “And then turn it back over and give it back to the person you got it from.”

So, I then said, look at the candidates, and said, “Now, look at what’s circled. Is that enough to get someone to read your resume because you only got five or 10 seconds or 15 seconds where somebody sees your resume and decides to read it?” So, now, I take that same advice, and a lot of people had their name in big bold letters, their address in big bold letters, the title of summary in big bold letters. I said, “Is that going to get someone to read your resume?”

So, now, you take that same advice, so, “Hey, you’ve got 10 or 15 seconds,” recruiters only get 10 or 15 seconds per name, maybe five or six, they got a whole list. Some machine is going to score it in priority order, but assume you get to the top of the list. Well, what’s going to stand out? It’s that first line, which is usually that description. So, if that description turns out, so that’s what I do. I don’t even look at the person’s name.

I just look at the title they give themselves, “Expert in a job of developing something or other.” If it’s kind of cool and interesting, “Oh, that’s kind of interesting, pretty clever.” I highlight something. “Coaching thousands of people on how to do A, B, and C.” “Oh, that’s pretty cool. I got to look at that.” So, I would say that’s probably the most important thing is the first line below your name on LinkedIn. I don’t exactly know how it turns out to look at but I just don’t remember how it does.

But I guess I don’t know if anybody can just look at LinkedIn and look what it looks like, but, to me, that would be the thing. And then I highlight one or two major accomplishments and probably the academics or the track record that somehow show the promotions very quickly, say, “Hey, this is an achiever.” So, some of those achiever terms quickly and some of the projects the person has worked on.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, how about a favorite quote?

Lou Adler
Stephen Covey who wrote The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, is my favorite author of all time. He came up, and this was 30 years ago, seven habits that a team, like exceptional people, all have. One of them was “Begin with the end in mind,” “Think win-win.” And “Seek first to understand before you’re understood.” So, I’d say those three are critical, “Think win-win,” “Seek first to understand to be understood,” and then “Begin with the end in mind.”

But if you think about the comment I made, Pete, about, “How do you control the interview if you’re a candidate?” it’s to start asking questions, “Begin with the end in mind,” “Hey, Pete, what do you want done in this job? What will success look like? And I’d like to give you some examples of work that I’ve done.” That is proactive enough to force the interviewer to tell you, and they’ll be impressed by the fact you asked that kind of question. You have to give a decent answer, too, but, nonetheless, you’re in the game if you ask the question.

So, you’re beginning with the end. Why answer questions that aren’t relevant? Why not answer questions that are related to the real job. So, force the person to do it. But I use those quotes a lot and refer to Stephen Covey a lot, so maybe that is my favorite quote.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a study or experiment or bit of research?

Lou Adler
I went to a number of companies that process resumes, they’re called applicant-tracking systems, and I validated the number. And one company had all their users there, and they said, “Over the last five years, since we’ve been in business, we’ve processed 75 million resumes. And of that, 750,000 people got jobs.” And everybody clapped.

And I said to myself, “That’s 1%.” So, they’re spending 99% of all the people applied did not get a job. I then ultimately asked, and that’s what I got. The likelihood of applying is random chance. And then I validated that with two other applicant-tracking system companies. They weren’t as big as that one. But in 30 or 40 resumes, it was about 1% of people who applied get a job. Three to four percent get interviewed.

Then you say, “Where do these other 96% of the jobs get filled?” And most of it is referrals, or internal promotions, or through a trusted recruiter, or from a second-degree connection. So, then that’s a lot of that stuff evolves on, you just look at the statistics, it says, “Hey, the way to get a job is to do your own due diligence. Don’t assume that a posting on Indeed or a posting on ZipRecruiter is going to get it, get you that great opportunity, and applying to hundreds and hundreds of jobs a week. That’s not work. That’s a waste of time.”

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Lou Adler
Oh, that would be Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Lou Adler
For me, a tool is LinkedIn. When I was a recruiter, I could find anybody on LinkedIn in 24 hours. It was easy. No, it’s another tool that I would actually say. I don’t know if you know this. It’s called a phone. You have to talk to people. And I think too many people try to make it impersonal, whether you’re on the company side or the candidate side.

Hiring is a serious personal business. It’s an important decision. And if you try to make it a technical role, you’re going to be unsuccessful. You try and make it a personal relationship; you’ll be very successful. That’s why I say spend, combine high tech with high touch. Don’t just rely exclusively on high tech to make important hiring decisions.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a particular nugget that you share that people quote back to you often, or that you’re known for?

Lou Adler
Define the job. Or, “It’s what people do with what they have, not what they have that makes them successful.” It’s what people with what they have, not what they have that makes them successful. So, during the course of the interview, I understand, “What do you have in terms of skills and experiences and opportunities, and what have you accomplished with those?” And I’m looking for people who have accomplished more with less.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Lou Adler
And that really reveals a lot about that person’s capability.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Lou Adler
I would go to WinWinHiring.com. WinWinHiring.com is a training course, an online training course. But I’d also go to Amazon and search “Hire With Your Head.” The book just came out, fourth edition from Wiley. Whether you’re a candidate or a hiring manager or a recruiter, you’ll find it invaluable in terms of planning your life and your career.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Lou Adler
Well, to be awesome, yeah, I say don’t make excuses. Get it done. It doesn’t matter if you’re committed to do it. Don’t blame others. Just do it. And I see that all the time. And one thing I hate is people who make excuses. I like people who get the job done. And getting it done on time, even if it’s not perfect, is more important than saying or making excuses on why you didn’t make it perfect. Get it done in some level so people can use it. Meet your deadlines. Don’t make excuses. Get it done. That would be my motto for being awesome at your job.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Lou, this has been a treat. I wish you lots of luck and fun in all the ways you’re getting it done.

Lou Adler
Great. Thank you, Pete. Nice chatting with you.