Rate the Recruiter

okay everyone we're gonna get started with our afternoon presentations I am Matt Dern if you guys haven't met me yet come on back to the tenable table I'm doing double duty with higher ground and and tenable back there in higher ground I'm pleased to introduce I sort of pleased quasi somebody left me for another job that I hired and another person is just better than me at his job than I am at my job so a little little bitter Brian the Sheridan and Ashley bush rooms talk to us today about reading the recruiter I'll let them kind of give you the the precursor but I want them to give a little bit of background on themselves on the same boat way too

much drinking right but how about reading the recruiter a great resource to know who it is that's sending you emails and calling you on your work line and maybe they found your mobile number to try to find out who the right person is to talk to to help you out with your career so I'm gonna turn over to Ashley and Brian good afternoon everyone um so we'll do a quick introduction and then we'll get into things um so my name is Ashley Bush and I am a university and employment brand recruiter with tenable so I focused on our internship program as well as our employer branding but before coming to tenable I have a bit of

a mix of a background so I did agency recruitment for a while where I worked as a third-party recruiter for companies doing technical recruitment and then I moved into in-house corporate recruitment and we'll get into the difference some of you may know what the difference is some of you may not but I now do in-house recruitment for tenable so that's kind of the background we're going to talk about the mix and and how to identify recruiters in your network but I'll let Brian introduce himself before we get started hello I'm Brian Sheridan recruited with tenable as well I've been there for a little bit over two years I've done agency recruiting before that as well I handle a number of different

roles from some of your back office stuff in accounting finance operations but also sales engineering you know actually some international roles as well so kind of a mix of things well we're really hoping to take you through today is identifying a recruiter that you can work with whether it's in-house whether it's agency basically finding a resource for you to use and how to find out if that person is actually a valuable resource and worth your time because you're the ones with the skill sets you're the ones with the good qualities that people are looking for and searching for a job isn't usually fun so you can kind of leverage some of these people and these are some

red flags to kind of look out for actually I guess green flags and some scenarios of who might be worth your time so I guess just kind of starting out who has worked with I mean like an agency recruiter before who has had a great experience all right that's a lot better than I expected that's a whole all right we're off to a good start I was gonna say so with this I mean if it had been all great for everybody all the time might not be the most valuable presentation for us to share but we'll go through some of these things that you'll see the interactions you'll have so that was kind of what we

just did was a little bit of why us but again taking you through some of the things that we see some of the things that we try to do because we know there is a bad rap out there for recruiters there's a lot more people saying bad things then you're getting glowing reviews so we wanted to go through this sure so a show of hands is there anyone that doesn't know the difference between an agency recruiter and a corporate recruiter okay so a couple so there are a couple different types of recruiters out there and the reason that you know we're up here today is because Brian and I have been both of those recruiters so

the agency recruiter works as a third party so essentially they work with companies and the companies are their customers so if they don't have necessarily the first direct contact or the first connection with a hiring manager so they work as a customer and that agency gets a requirement or an open position from say tenable we say we have an opening that we'd like to fill we're having a hard time filling it can you help us which doesn't help happen with us because we're great but so basically that person will get the requirement and they have team of recruiters that work on that position so when you get contacted and someone says I have an opportunity

that's a great fit for you but they don't really tell you too much about it more than likely they are a third party recruiter and agency recruiter however an in-house recruiters someone who works directly for the company which is what we do at tenable so they are in-house they work for tenable and Franken can elaborate a little bit yeah I mean we're dedicated to the company specifically I think one of the things you'll see that hopefully this is useful for you especially when looking at the agency side of things it can be a volume business at times so you want to find the person that can actually cut through that knows what they're talking about

when I started on the agency side I was doing accounting and Finance I do not have a degree neither I did not work in that area I got better at it and I learned it but what made me good at what I was doing that's kind of some of the things we want to take you through from that perspective so you can rate that recruiter and again make sure that the job search process is worth your time and can be valuable to you in the future it's it's a relationship that might not have immediate returns but your career is gonna be long you're gonna have a couple different moves throughout your career these are the type of people that

can be a resource for you whether it's in-house with a place like tenable or on the agency side all right so a show of hands how many people have received whether it's an email or LinkedIn in mail that says I have an opportunity that would be a great fit for you Wow that's a um how many how many people got four messages within an hour after a presentation earlier like it's okay okay you know how for people that want to work for you how are we gonna identify whether or not you should work with any of them or all of them and if it's a valuable resource so I mean it all starts with an end meal right or an

email rather so I think the first red flag ultimately to weed out the good recruiters and that bad ones is are they telling you what the job is do you know what operat opportunity is did they tell you why it's going to be a great fit for you um phrase I like to use this buzzword bingo are they just pulling keywords from your LinkedIn profile or pulling keywords from your resume yeah I see a lot of head out there you know I I'm constantly see males oh we have an opportunity I see that you you have experience with JavaScript maybe you listed it one time in a project that used in college huge red flag there so that's one way to kind of

start off with identifying maybe not the best in male they should be focused on you it should be customized yeah you want to see one of the things that I always I've seen is like if you use your middle initial on LinkedIn and the message goes like dear Brian P like that is a mass mail that is not go like if you have you know like if your name is yeah if your name is like William and it says like bill parentheses William and the message comes out to that person like that that person's just sending out as many messages as possible especially with some of the careers that you're in and the paths you're taking there's

going to be specific things that you're qualified for and you want to do you want to try to avoid just these mass messages that's like a red flag to start out with not the end of the world you may want to do a little bit of research if it's somewhat relates to you but you want to see someone that's taking the time that will go through and find out especially why are they reaching out to you what is the point are they mentioning skills that you have are they offering something that you even want to discuss you know I've started conversations with people where I may have made a mistake and put something a little bit different when

they what they were looking for but it was obviously a thought out message where we were like well no I'm actually looking for this not what you mentioned oh I have that type of opportunity let's discuss it a little bit further so you want to make sure that the person is specifically targeting you and actually has an opportunity for you if that opportunity is not real might not be worth your time yet if that person has been in the industry for 15 years and has a lot of connections might be good to talk to them anyway even if it's not a specific opportunity that stuff we'll get into a little bit more as we go

through but definitely look for more substance rather than fluff in some of these messages where it's I have an exciting opportunity with a high-growth dynamic cutting edge company I have no idea what they do like I have no idea what they do but if someone can add a little bit more to that go for it does the recruiter know what they're talking about I have a perfect example of this and there's actually a huge fail in my part so when I started recruiting I was doing technical recruitment and I was looking for a Java developer I did not know that there was a difference between a JavaScript developer and a Java developer and so I reached out for the

wrong one and this person was this candidate completely chewed me apart but it was I respected it and he explained to me that I didn't know the difference but the point is the recruiter should know what they're talking about the recruiter should have somewhat of an understanding of the role of the industry that they're trying to recruit you for so they should be knowledgeable enough to at least know the difference know the technologies you're working with if it looks like they just again copied and pasted some technologies from your resume or your profile it's a huge red flag yeah absolutely I mean I don't think you should have the expectation in all scenarios that a recruiter is gonna

know you do like you do the role I do not know as much about say like the sales profession as a sales professional that's in it but I know what the company needs and I can discuss that a little bit further and then we have other professionals that have been in those roles that can further evaluate that person down the line so it's a matter of knowing what skills are needed to be successful in the role and even am I wasting your time by bringing these things up so again you want to make sure that the person has a general idea I think there was a picture going around that I thought was absolutely hysterical

if it was the pokemons programmer has anyone seen it recently it's a person that he rates recruiters he's got about 20 different languages in his profile several of them are different pokemons and he asked the recruiter to pick out which one I guess pokeyman pokeyman take them out and if the person can't then obviously they don't know what the different languages are so I don't know if we need to test everybody like that but if the person is telling you that yeah you have a great background I see that you have skills within fit and they're talking about PHP they probably don't know what they're talking about so yeah making sure that they have a grasp

of what they're actually looking for so you can determine whether or not you want to invest your time

there we go so another red flag that's in you know you might get from an email or an email and initial contact from a recruiter immediately asking for referrals that goes back to being a customizable message to you if a recruiter is saying hey you know I have a great fit for you but if you're not interested can you let me know three other people that you think might be a good fit for the role how interested were they really in you specifically so it's a red flag and you know sometimes recruiters do build relationships with their candidates and they get to the point where you know they get to know you and they realize

maybe you're overqualified maybe you're under-qualified but they build the relationship and then they end up maybe saying hey do you know anyone that maybe might be a fit for this role totally different but asking for referrals off the bat is normally a red flag something that we know coming from an agency background is often when people ask for referrals they're asking for leads for new business so they may not necessarily be asking for someone for the role they're asking so they can get new business from another company yeah I had a previous employer that used to ask for nine references if you wanted to be represented by them three subordinates three peers three managers it was to

find nine more people that they could represent like that was the purpose of it so that's something for down the line obviously it builds your credibility and can make you a marketable candidate but not something immediately off the bat but he generally want to get into I know my wife actually rather than the same scenario where someone tried to recruit her and she's like I seem really overqualified for this I was like I didn't under qualified for this I was like take take the interview if they ask for references by the end of it is your manager qualified for it she's like yeah this would be perfect for my managers that's why they're talking to you they

now have your manager's name so just something to keep in mind if that's the first thing that's something that should come up in the process but if it's I have this opportunity and you know if you're not interested tell me who could be like probably not someone that's really interested in representing you and your specific skillset

absolutely yeah it shouldn't be there should be a couple things you look out you shouldn't just be like oh this happened like done you know if you go and one of the slides we'll get into is if you go and look into the message and it's like someone has been doing this for 15 years and is connected with all of the people at the companies you want to be at you're probably gonna let's you know that's a green flag you should talk to that person even if they aren't sending out you know mass mail we're recruiting part of its volume I mean it's something that has to happen but how much technique is going into that

volume is something that you want to pay attention to is that someone that's really trying to represent their craft well the same way that you want to represent your craft in your skill as well it's someone that's taking the time to invest in that alright so getting into reading the end meal we kind of already talked about this but again subject line I think is a huge start I mean you know did they take the time to mention something other than this is a great opportunity or did they mention something other than great company with flexible work hours and work-life balance what about it do you what what about it is interesting to you why this

company yeah you know I took one of Ryan's and meals as an example he talks about what the role is he talks about people they'd be working with you know not to to Brian sworn but just an example of taking the time to craft a message that is catered to one person specifically so you should feel like when you perceive a message from that person that it is for you specifically yeah I mean I think that's some of the things that you need to look for just in general within your career too is the person trying to buy provide something more than the line items on a job description you know what else is in it

for you to make you want to do this job at XYZ company or ABC company that's something that you want to look towards but this is a little bit edited so we didn't totally blow up someone's spotted us anything that suggest to but you want to see here what are the skills that make us worth your time I'm sure you're all highly qualified of what you do there's got to be a really good reason for you want to make that jump to another organization and these are some of the things that we're trying to find yeah I mean I always want to get into that with people upfront like what do you it's it's you know I look at it as in the way

I kind of pinch it with my company is you know these are the things that you may have to do but this isn't what will you're doing those things and doing them well could make you successful but here's how success is defined it should be tasks that you need to do what's the first thing that you're gonna come in and do like how am I reviewed on this Rawley I'll use I mean sales one of the things you have to do you have to talk to customers well I could talk to customers all day if I don't sell them anything I'm not successful in my job but telling that person you know here's the here's the

the quota that you're gonna have to hit for the role that's how you're successful I mean if you're someone that's you know a security security analyst you know if you're able to lower the number of vulnerabilities or reduce the time to remediate those vulnerabilities like those are the things that I want to share with you so you know like okay that's what I'm getting into it also gives you perspective if I'm like yeah it's a hot mess in here like do I want to keep having that conversation like is it worth my move here it could be it could be exactly what you want to get into absolutely absolutely absent olya Gris but it's you got to make sure that

that's what's gonna be offered you might come in and go yeah we're really secure you know it's kind of a slow pace I mean you may banging your head against the wall for having nothing to do so yeah I mean I think that a recruiter should really go into that because it gives you more than a couple bullets on a job description it's the big picture like you could read a job description all day long if I'm not sharing this information like why even talked to me if I'm just regurgitating what's on paper that's kind of another red flag where it's like oh well I even have the job description open and if I just start repeating the

things it's like thanks but no thanks

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absolutely actually I don't even like I mean shamelessly plug tenable a little bit I talk about everybody of doing work that matters it's a slogan we have do work that matters it has nothing to do with the boat well it has somewhat to do with the boats on a job description but it's how are you contributing to the company success what is the environment like that's something that someone's got to be able to address for you absolutely absolutely absolutely and that's gonna be different for every job and you know I should be able to address that because then how am i able to actually determine if you're worth the next conversation the next conversation is if you can

address those things if you had past success doing it if you can explain it to me even absolutely like that's definitely something that you want to find out and we should be able to address in our jobs absolutely all right so recruiters should be able to to be a little bit creative when it comes to their craft recruiting is just like any other role you should be able to do it efficiently and effectively are they speaking your language do they try to get into your world especially for recruitment or technical roles are they going to meetups are they getting involved with your industry have they reached out to you on other outlets besides LinkedIn how many of you are

active on LinkedIn okay so good amount how many of you are active on other outlets besides LinkedIn much more often I'm sure okay so I mean a lot of times recruits will take the approach going to github maybe looking for a developer going on reddit if they're active on reddit so they should be able to think outside of the box and not just go directly to an end mail while most recruiters are active on LinkedIn they should be taking the time to learn a little bit more about your world as opposed to just inviting you into there so to speak so getting into the LinkedIn profile I really like my memes as you can tell

so reading the LinkedIn profile say you find somebody that they took the time to write you a really great in mail you're like okay I'm interested let's learn more about the recruiter some things to set a recruiter apart most recruiters are active on LinkedIn so they should have a really strong LinkedIn profile I think if they have a bear profile they're probably not the best recruiter but one thing to look for is tenure have they been with our company for a long time do they have experience with that company that means that they know the company culture they understand what the environment is like when it comes to being an agency recruiter have they been

with that company for a long time if they've job hopped from agency to agency maybe their performance wasn't that great so there are a couple things to look for when it comes to tenure Brian talked about specializations yeah I mean you want to look at people that can understand what what you're doing I think a really good example of the specialization is we worked with a third-party recruiter who was one of the more productive ones that we worked with person had only been in recruiting for a short period of time but they were held the jobs that they were recruiting for for their career they knew exactly what they were looking for they were a hiring

manager of their company so that was a really valuable resource didn't necessarily have the recruiting tenure for me to be like oh this is an industry Pro the guy got results and his team got results because they knew exactly what they were looking for they had held those positions now in some of the roles that you hold now might not be the most natural transition to go with a recruiting route you might hate it but if you have somebody that you know spent some time got a degree with in information technology is you know getting different certifications within certain security fields you know those are things that go a long way and the person starts to understand better what

they're looking for that's the person that can go and have intelligent conversations with a hiring manager and go look I have a guy or I have a woman who can do X Y & Z that I'm working with and that person is actively looking for jobs for you and finding those positions that might be a real thing for your skill set because they actually know your skill set so again opposite is when I started with in accounting and Finance recruiting I didn't have a degree in it I wasn't a specialist but I did the high volume and was able to get results out of it you want to look at what their skill sets are and how it

relates to what you need you know years of experience can definitely be an indicator but not the end of it again if it's somebody just got into it we have a person without one year of experience and recruiting but 25 years of recruiting 25 years of sales experience that became a really good resource for us so you can take that with a little bit of a grain of salt but you want to know I saw the opposite company claiming to be experts the person had worked there for one month they don't recruiting for one month and we're like out of school they weren't an expert you know you want to take a look at those things it might

be a red flag another thing to look for is quality connections take a couple minutes to look at the bottom of their LinkedIn profile who they're connected to are they more connected to people within their industry are they connected to other recruiters are they more likely to be connected to other people in InfoSec or security that's also something to look for if their connections are you know more in the industry that they're recruiting for they might be a little bit more qualified they might have a better idea of what they're looking for when it comes to recruiting for that role what types of content are they sharing are they sharing pictures of their dog and

how is the dog's birthday last week are they sharing content that's related to your industry are they sharing content that's related to career advice or resume tips those are all also things to look for again if they take passion in the craft and what they do they're probably a good recruiter so yeah those are some of the things we kind of went through within that that portion of it as well you know how are they expanding on their skills I mean you know what you can find is their resume and their credibility so all right so we'll quickly go over you know you have a good in male or an email from somebody you think hey I'd like to chop this

recruiter about a role how do they handle that initial call with you the first thing it should be all or mostly about you so while a recruiter does want to fill a position and find the great person for the role they should want to get to know you they should want to get to know your skillset what are you looking for I know in my initial calls with candidates I don't want to just fill a position I want to make sure that they're going to be happy in the position or I'm not doing my job because that person should get into the role they should know what they're doing and it should be what they want to do if not

I'm doing an injustice by just trying to fill a position this is one of those scenarios - with that first conversation where it may be a little bit different from the in-house recruiter versus the agency recruiter agency recruiters going to actively market your background and try and get it out there they will learn a lot about you and try and put you in targeted roles that make sense for your skill set so it's going to be a lot of information gathering off the bat from that but that good person they may not actually have a company to discuss some of those details with so it will be focused on you whereas if it's an in-house recruiter I have a specific

opportunity that I'm trying to fill I should be able to elaborate a lot more on what we're doing as well so just a little difference that you might see so it might not be a red flag depending on who you're talking to or how that conversation goes and that also ties in to them staying connected even when you aren't interested this is more for agency recruiters so maybe they speak to you and the role isn't it necessarily fit for you they should keep in contact a good recruiter will keep you in mind and reach out to you if maybe you're looking for something that's more hands-on and they initially called you for a management position maybe they

should call you back they should call you back and say hey maybe I have a position that's not a management role they should have done keep in touch if they're they're really interested in you and they're doing their job well they're going to reach out to you about other opportunities that might be a fit for you so yeah I figured at this point we're not all the way through but would rather answer any questions that you may have about this process again it's something we go through every day something that hopefully you want to go through by choice would really be the goal so is there anything kind of within this that we can help with

so with the two types of recruiters what drives a recruiter to make the investment and represent us versus were just the commodity volume item I mean there's gonna be a number of things about I think the person that does invest and doesn't treat you like a commodity is the person that you want to work with so like that's a scenario that you shouldn't really run into if you're working with the right people because I mean it's what they do for a living they help people find jobs they make companies grow you know that's that's something that you want to look for that someone's gonna identify when you get the person that's just kind of churning

and burning and volume you know again they might not be the best resource for someone that's kind of more sophisticated within their career you know when you gotta throw as much of it at the wall as you can and it's got a stick that might be the type of person that you do want to work because you just need that volume but when you're strategically looking for jobs I mean it's it's it's someone that takes their craft seriously is is really the biggest thing that's gonna differentiate it doing some of this research is what helps you identify that it's not something that's just gonna be like you know on my profile Brian treats people really well like no I have to earn that

and that's part of the follow up staying in touch am I actually reading what's in your profile and making sense of why I'm talking to you and one other thing on that is a lot of times if they're in the space you're in and they're recruiting in the space you're in they're gonna know some of the same people that you may know coming here so how many people do they know that you know or at least that you I've heard of so that's just legitimacy validation of their doing what they're doing they're talking to the right people they probably know somewhat what they're talking about so check that out too yeah easy ways if you share a connection just reach out to

them you know this guy just connect with every person out there or well you know what do you think of Matt you know your likes gummy bears where's profile so he wrote that in code anything else all right couple last-minute takeaways anything you want to say anything else thanks for listening all right these guys appreciated [Applause]