HG - What Goes Bump in the Night? Recruiter Panel About Job Search and Other Scary Things

I am Kirsten rener known in the community as krener and I run Talent strategy at a company called Silver Edge yes we are hiring and I would like to introduce my esteemed panel to you one of whom you already met a moment ago so let's start over here with Mr Chris rides tell us about yourself bud I'm the other British recruiter um there's quite a lot of us I don't know what that is that's their running joke yeah there's a lot BR a lot of Brits in recruitment I actually live here in Las Vegas so it was 123 weeks ago this is a breeze I have to wrap up in in this sort of weather um I've been

in recruitment yeah I've been in recruitment for 25 years alog together started uh Tyro Security in 2012 cyber security Staffing and Professional Services firm with my best friend who's uh pentester and so we have a pentesting and risk assessment arm as well very involved in the community uh founded one of the founding directors of the cloud security Alliance uh SoCal chapter uh speak at a lot of conferences and have been involved with uh bsides for I think nine years now uh speaking pretty much every conference for the last nine years I think so lovely to be part of the community bsides are amazing uh Kathleen does an amazing job and you're doing an amazing job of course that's because

she's directing me from from far away um and the the beautiful and wonderful syvia tell us about yourself um so I have been recruiting on and off for about 10 years now started off as an operations manager went into sales and then kind of found my way into recruitment um speak four languages working on my fifth I definitely value communication I think that's like the most important thing to being able to find top talent and I think that digging deep is like truly the only way to do that um that's a little bit about myself I'm currently working for Toyota sushia systems if anyone's looking for opportunities I got like 40 open positions by all means let me come find

me later I would love to see if I could help anyone out that's looking and for anyone who wasn't just here for the talk tell us a little bit about yourself Ricky hi I'm Ricky um I speak just about one language um so I'm also a British recruiter um very fortunate just spoke at in this last session uh I been in this security space for nearly eight no nearly nine years and from Australia do a whole bunch of stuff in the industry that it' be too long to list um so very fortunate to be here and and hopefully help some people out and give some advice and give very honest advice or honest feedback anyway wonderful thank you I can say

cuss words in a couple other languages but that's yeah yeah me too mostly Italian all right so I wanted to ask one question uh before I know we you just got introduced to everybody so I think we all recruit a little bit different there's different types of recruiters so throughout this day and throughout a lot of talks and a lot of things that I that I hear and read you know recruiters get a bad rep uh probably for a good reason right uh so it's it's uh some of us try to rise above but you hear a lot of things about you know they're trying to trick you or the hiring managers are tricking you or here's the skills you

need to learn because they're trying to trip you up or whatever um I want you to talk to the audience a little bit about the different types of recruiters that we are and why I am uh myself and drco introduced you to earlier we're in the gobx space so we are recruiting for one company that is provide uh providing Services by fulfilling positions for multiple government agencies which is a little bit different than what you do Chris tell us about the type of recruiter that you are uh yeah sure so uh obviously I mentioned in the the intro uh we're a cyber security specialist so we covered cyber security in GRC uh we started off mainly

commercial um and focused on sort of engineering uh up to sort of ceso level roles and then probably more recently over the last 5 years we started developing more relationships in the cleared area uh and so we've got some relationships with companies that are hiring cleared people and then over the last couple of years we've moved into go to market uh for cyber security product companies so you know we now look at customer success uh bdrs um you know marketing those type of roles but specifically for cyber security companies so we cover a few different areas we're based in the US we do a little bit of work in in Europe um but but but a far majority is is here in

the US we're Las Vegas registered company so you hear about a direct recruiter and then would you do you call yourself Staffing or agency or firm what uh so you are you are hiring the people but you are providing services to your clients who will then actually hire them you find them you represent them did I say that rightly yeah no that's right yeah so third party so we work in a few different ways uh so we might be retained by a client to search for a certain role that can be generally a lot of the ceso and exec roles tend to be retained but we found over the last few years a lot of the really tough to find

engineering roles senior engineering roles will be retained for as well uh we'll do contract work so you if somebody wants to bring somebody in with a certain skill set for a project but again um we'll be the third party in that and we'll often work then with internal recruiters and hiring managers and and work on on the ways that we can make sure that we hit hit the things that they need uh in terms of the process he helps me they're awesome uh Sylvia tell me about the type of recruiter that you are so we can help people understand the different types of recruiters they might interact with yeah for sure um so Toyota sush system

specifically is a very interesting animal and I I say animal for a reason we are a subsidiary of Toyota so there's hundreds of different subsidiaries I was very naive into thinking there was only like two companies um but the one thing I'll say is that for for every Toyota client the need is going to be different there's different different initiatives going on at every single um Division if you will so I think that the most important thing for me because we have contractor positions contract to hire we have full-time opportunities all these other things and I think the the biggest aspect for me is trying to put my hands into like every Honeypot so to speak to

figure out what they're really looking for um which can be some sometimes very very tough cuz you know the client doesn't necess you know client Toyota client doesn't necessarily want to tell us everything there's a lot of and I and I know you know where I'm going with this but like there's things that I will never know because essentially it is the client it is you know essentially private information that I'm not even able to have and it's like okay so you want me to hire for this position but you don't really want to tell me what you really need because it could leak out something right so at the end of the day it's really trying to better

understand and having those conversations open conversations with the team as much as I can to basically get that understanding and I'll be honest it's it's not a um doesn't always work you always have different managers that you know don't have the time or just don't care to deal with recruitment in general so it makes it sometimes a little tough and sometimes trial by fire is the only way to succeed and and because you're gaining more and more information after every interview that happens it's not ideal but it is the way that it goes but again going into communication transpar transparency and honesty um that is like my Baseline for everything it doesn't necessarily mean that I may know everything but I'll be

very transparent with you like what I do know what I don't know how I can help you get to the next step if I can help you do that and I think that's literally my Baseline as far as so I really want to highlight what I just what I just heard you say because I think it's important it doesn't necessarily match some of the other messages that you have heard so it's great to have different perspectives nobody's right or wrong nothing's true or not true but a different perspective that you may have heard would be you know that the recruiters are tricking you or lying to you she just she just described the whole basis of the type of work that

she's doing trying to find out as much as she can to tell you and to be as transparent with you as possible right so I just want you to know that you're going to you're going to you're going to have to find those right recruiters you're going to do right by you um so I'm really glad that you describe it that way that wasn't planned can I add to that about so so you're describing a really consultative approach and that's what a good recruiter does um I got a couple of examples of that but what I will say is we went over uh all of our job descriptions from 2018 to 2023 went through all the placements that we made

and we looked at the job descriptions we had on file which is what we get sent and then I looked at the separate job description which is the one we take so we will not take a position on uh without speaking to the hiring manager without doing a consultative approach and going through the job description over 90% of the job descriptions that we took and that we placed were markably different from the actual one we were sent and so a lot of the issues that that are happening out there are because the job descriptions don't match the actual people they're after and often you know people like us good recruiters our job is to get that information out

it's not always that easy it's not always that they they don't often they don't even realize that they they they don't what they need right so it's it's a it's a it's a tough job and it can be Progressive um bit by bit absolutely that makes me want to just ask you a follow-up question Ricky before you answer that first question like bonus question uh we we we will review in this conversation the the expectations on the candidate side but uh Chris has peeled back a little layer and told us about you know doing intakes and understanding what your client wants which is exactly what you know Sylvia was talking about can you expand on that

a little bit as well yeah so the process I'd say for most decent recruiters is at least the way for us is a company will say hey we want to hire this person we need your help um so then you organize a conversation with the hiring manager to take a full brief that might take 30 to 45 minutes to understand their specific needs culturally technically the ins and outs of the job how to sell the job the culture of the team and and lots of Dynamics stuff that you don't always get from a job description is this is this recorded by the way I believe so yeah it's definitely live streaming right now so what you say that's what I'm trying

trying to be mindful of between the lines um okay I don't always read the job descriptions um because as Chris was attaining to there I prefer to take my own um often most organizations just basically regurgitate old job descriptions and go oh we're hiring for this role again let's get that um job out the folder and basically use the same thing for a brand new role that they've never hired for before so um a good recruiter does that there's some really I think good questions if you're applying for a job basically you should interview the recruits that you're talking to so you could ask them have you taken a brief from the manager or who did you take a brief from cuz maybe

they took it from T acquisition the thing is the closer you get to this like the source of Truth the more information you'll get um we've had it before where some companies don't allow us to talk to the hiring manager because they're too busy although it would save them time in interviewing if they're not interviewing people that are not right for their role if they interview the right people but essentially we have to like do it via T acquisition which is they're doing their best but they can only work with what you're given um so basically who did you get the who did you qualify the job with another question you can be asking the

recruiter is um how many agencies are working this role if it's like a third party recruitment company um is it do you have it exclusive um are you retained cuz every business is different we don't take on jobs that are not exclusive our time is valuable and if there's multiple agencies then we can't be bothered to basically do it because essentially we're going to invest in our time where we're most likely going to have success and if the hiring or the company hiring essentially is just farming out to number of agencies then for me the quality isn't there either so we'd rather have a good relationship with the company who we know how many people are in process we know what

they're looking for we've got interview questions from the company um we know what they're looking for as opposed to oh we've only got 20% chance of filling this role someone of us might might get lucky we'll spend our time where we've got a much likely um higher likelihood but there'll be there'll be agencies out there that just take on any job they feel less than 5% because basically they don't put the time into head hunt to qualify all they do is AD no offense but they'll just advertise a job basically take the best of who applied as opposed to the best of who's out there and that's that's a very different mindset so I think just

understanding is the agency if it's a third party agency how many agencies are on it have they actually qualified the role in the first place or did they literally just receive the job description via email and that's what they're working from so the more information you can get from them but it it helps you then tailor your application as well because again the job title could be X but let's say they've got a certain outcome or project that they're working towards that's the the next 3 6 12 months the certain deliverables the company's working against maybe you've done those things before so you can then essentially cherry-pick the information from your last 10 years and go that's the stuff

that I need to share with that company so you just heard that there's direct recruiters when they call you they're hiring for the company that they work for I work for ABC I'm hiring you to become an ABC company we have an someone that I describe as uh providing integrator Services maybe product maybe Services they're Hing for their clients you have I consider when when you think of an agency take away the bad connotation to agencies or firms right think of them as your agent that's the key word in agency if they're your agent they're like your Jerry McGuire right they will show you the money they're taking care of you they're finding out about you they're understanding what

their clients are looking for so there's there's pluses and minuses there's uh it's a different experience and I also want to remind everybody that we have a mic Runner you didn't get to ask Rick questions before so let's please interact raise your hand all throughout this whole thing if at any point something that you're hearing uh makes you think of a question just raise your hand and uh and we'll take your question okay so we want this to be to feel like a conversation any questions so far oh all right let's go come on let's get into him give you all the we'll give you all the Gory stories we'll pretend it's not really being live stream

um it's not that exciting of a question now I got to think of one but um going back to Ricky's presentation earlier one question I had that I've been kind of struggling with is when you're writing your resume and you want to highlight your metrics how do you come up with those numbers do you just throw a random number out there does it have to be divisible by five or zero or something or you know like you know the metrics it was achieved this by 45% blah blah blah blah like how do you come up what's a good way to come up with that number that is a really good question basically it's it's how to how to show the

measurable results right and so I want to start with you Ricky I'm I'm just giving the advice I'm not I'm joking so but but you're looking at my resume right now what what evidence did I provide this is the tricky thing you could just make stuff up um I don't recommend it um cuz essentially someone could then look at that and then ask you questions and then call on that so it's a really good question how how do you get then the percentages or whatever like essentially you need the data to start with so you need to understand well what was the before State and what was the after State and then when you can convert that into a

time frame or dollars that's how you do it but you need to understand what it looked like before to then your involvement and then the after State you need you need to be able to show the working out right that's the the thing with it because people will see that and certainly I would see that and oh how did you get to that so what it was what exactly was it before and and so you end up twisting and turning and and probably in the middle of a bunch of questions you didn't really want to be discussing I would always say like take the job description that you're applying for look what they're specifically asking

for and if you're going to put metrics in make sure they metrics that are the truth and that you can talk about and discuss and make sure they match the things they're looking for cuz you know random metrics aren't going to help you uh generally get a role right so Target get the exact things that they that they're looking for and then anything else hopefully will come out in the interview so remember one of the slides that we saw earlier um and then we'll do this question and then this question but remember one of the slides we saw earlier that said don't you don't you say um all these descriptive words about yourself you know I'm a I'm enthusiastic

I'm a go-getter I'm a blah blah blah think read through your own read through the story of your own resume and remember what you accomplished there might be there may be some jobs where you're going to skip it but did did you help solve a problem like that's not going to be a measurable thing that you can add a number to right but you can say that you participated in the solution design for the thing right think about all of the interactions and all the things you're doing in your daytoday and the end result of those of those you participated you were part of the solution so you can say that you helped solve this problem right people

want to see that you did something that resulted in something else there's um there's a thing called star method I'm not going to go through it now but if you just research star method then you'll get more advice um it's a really good thing to follow especially not just on a resume but when interviewing as well because there are managers that specifically look for that and in my career I've dealt with lots of people and my whole thought process changed a few years ago when I dealt with this one hireing manager who's to date the smartest most most impressive person I've ever dealt with and all he cares about is not years of experience but what impact did you make what

difference did you make and when you can demonstrate impact in an organization that's when you again you understand that you actually made a difference what contribution did you make CU you could be in a team of five PE five people but you you're still doing other things from your colleagues um but essentially if you just look review sty method you'll find some good info there and if I if I may add um so met doesn't always need to be just kpis slas numbers like again I think we've all kind of said it in a different way or another but essentially it's just showing instead of saying all these adjectives to describe yourself explain what you've actually done

explain you know this was supposed to be a six-month project I got it completed in two months or you know I led the this and this and that initiative and this is what my part was like you know like she was saying so again there's ways to show things about yourself and to sell yourself without being like I'm amazing just talk to me just talk to me you know what I'm saying so it doesn't have to be that like intense putting it in your work like putting your resume like in format to where this is what I've achieved this is what I've done these are the things that I've helped to you know create that impact that shows a lot

more yeah the other thing I'll say too is that if I see a lot of people that omit their side projects stop doing that like you're only shooting yourself in the foot like to be honest because if you're working and then having those those positions as well like or those uh projects as well add them in there so we can see that not only are you working full-time but you are doing those initiatives as well again the these are how those are like ways that I would do it without necessarily metrics and it helps you this the side projects massively yeah you know if you got your research blog or again T attending conferences or training and stuff

there's so people that um don't do themselves Justice because they're not adding that information to their profile so if you imagine two two people side by side same experience but then this other person has the side projects they can go on their get Hub you can see the things they're involved in you can see the events and the training they've done well suddenly this person's up here because look at all this extracurricular stuff that's really interesting as opposed to a nice profile but this one looks better and ultimately because you mentioned about you know the words and stuff you demonstrate your good by achievements that's it like you you you validate that through experience and if

you just keep that in mind honestly you you'll Stand Out above most people because most people don't have it they again it just looks like a job description um and it's boring as opposed to how you made a difference I had one client sorry I had one client that um that actually told me we were talking through the job description and he's the head of security at Big public company and we've uh splited a couple of people to him and we were talking through how he hires and he actually said to me he said like if there was one thing I know I can't ask this but said if there's one thing for me I I want to

see that passion for what we do for a living I want to see that they're excited to be in security and and and so the sort of stuff that's on the resume about going to conferences going regularly to your local you know Issa or Cloud security Alliance meetup those sort of things really do make a difference he actually said to me if I could get away with it I would be like look can I have your phone um let me look through your news feed and and obviously he knows he can't if he's watching this now you'll know exactly I'm talking about him but he he was like if I could see through their news feed I

know because I know the people in my team our news feeds are full of security related news because that's what we're passionate about and I think those are the kind of things he's not alone in a hiring manager in looking for those sort of things so if you can demonstrate it with giving your phone across um because you're never going to do that right if you can demonstrate that in your resume it's really important to do that you know you're all here now today because I'm assuming you're very passionate about what we do um for a living right so put that on your resume and it does stand out these guys are making my job

easier by answering all the questions that I before I get to them which is amazing it actually is amazing um because it means the questions made sense uh but we'll get more a little bit more extra reg later but Devcon hat hang sorry did you turn off so recently we had a reduction of force at our company um and they pretty much chopped our uh cyber security and compliance team from 7 to two um they pretty much left the two most Junior to do all the work that we used to do now that sounds horrible right bad we work so well together think of Voltron we're bigger together right we work really well together what is the

Precedence or what has happened before when I'm trying to lead them like Moses and go somewhere else and take the entire team right so we're looking for a company which we can go ahead and use our awesome skills to help their cyber security and compliance needs um have you seen a company ever say we need a team like that and pretty much be able to start up very quickly so as far as on my side I mean again working with Toyota susho systems we're working with all the other Toyota subsidiaries so I have definitely seen instances where it's like hey we're building out this brand new you know iot you know iot team or or uh you know OT

team or Etc we're doing a a manufacturing uplift project or you know vulnerability project or something so in occasion I will get those types of you know requests but it's very it's it's very I don't want to say rare but um it's not common it's very not yeah thank you it's it's just not common um I've had people sometimes that will be like look I'm a package deal with this other person because I know how we work and if you hire me you have to hire them and I love that that's that you know that delivery however I can't I'm not the I'm not the hiring manager at the end of the day I don't make that decision while I

appreciate it it's great but I I think that the best way to go about uh something like that I think and I I know this might be hard to to hear as well it's like I know that you guys have that gel and that group and everything and it works out really well but if you're looking at if you're saying seven of you or five of you essentially that wow I mean I got 40 jobs open do you mind if you're on different [Laughter] teams I mean by all means come talk to me later I mean here's my thing I I I don't think any recruiter could really guarantee like you would all be on the

same team or whatever or things like that and the other thing I'll say though too is that there's no guarantee that we can put you all to work together as a same team as much as I would like to you know give you that you know light of shining hope it just I I can't commit to that obviously could I help you find jobs absolutely can we can we help you find jobs absolutely but there's I'm it's not common yeah unfortunately you're relying on a very specific situation of a company having open headcount for x amount of people right essentially you need a like the timing of you need a business that basically wants to build a team and they're ready

to basically for that amount of budget for that amount of heads so it's unfortunately it's it's not it's unlikely not impossible so if I were you I depending on where you live I would be connecting with Recruiters in your area obviously you'd research to check they're actually good and know what they're doing but depending on where you live there might be opportunities where people on the ground or in the in the vicinity know who's doing what out there so basically just expand the network to lots of recruiters to figure out is anyone doing this thing right now cuzz there might be but unless unless you're talking to people out there that you weren't know yeah it's not a common

thing we we've what I would say is the way it would I would I would imagine it will probably work if if I look at the stuff we don't we we did a we had a company that was five people pre IPO they IPO they got a big influx of cash and in three months we helped them go from five to I think 48 in that instance there was a lot of people that were hired from the same company but really what happened is the person would come come in they'd get interview they hired them and immediately like obviously we were already asking them who else do you know who else has come out of that

company and so they ended up with a quite a big group of people that had worked together but that is a a rare situation the other one we will get the other teams with with Bill um tend to have been like okay we'll come in we're we're getting rid of our third party sock and we're going to have our own sock right so that in that instance they would love people that have worked together but again it's not very common I wish it was cuz it is great business for us but yeah solution so we come from a specialized solution in the industry think of sdw right if I think of competitors maybe zscaler or uh paloalto or foret or how

about if we a trit and go to the competition that will literally give them that Leading Edge that is the marker that says you know what we just took away from our competitor and now we have the crackshot team that'll lead us to success you need to figure out who who in those organizations basically has who would benefit the most from that so what type of person what type of seniority and either get find a way again using LinkedIn to basically research who that could be connect with them or try and find a Mutual contact who can introduce you to that person but essentially you need to know who who' benefit the most from that and then

essentially find a way of speaking with them yeah so listen I I think that um I think the big takeaway across the board is it is possible right and that networking which is exactly what you're doing is the way to get it done right and it's going to be a scenario maybe like what Chris was describing maybe you know Drake's company wins a contract and he has to fill 50 people today boom he needs all seven people right so the scenarios are out there it is possible it it's going to come down to networking right and and talking to people and you know doing that the human element piece there being strategic yeah yeah you're

really kind of pulling your own recruiter card honestly in reality because you're having I mean and the other thing I'll say too that you can keep you know a breast on also is like look at the companies that are massively hiring look at the ones that are very focused in that cyber security framework or look at the ones that are brand new companies that are like when you go on LinkedIn I'm sure you see the jobs underneath each and every company right if you see like 30 positions they're massively hiring get in touch with the recruiter find out what they're actually looking for explain your situation see if that would be of interest because you

never when they're ramping up like that that's a time to strike the iron's hot or they're trying to win new contract collecting letters of content and con and offers things like that I'm going to I'm going to give you just one piece of advice for for you personally right you're probably not going to get a recruiter that's taking that project on because we're always looking for those clients right we're constantly looking I wish we could find them very easy it would be a lot of time to put in just for one particular scenario but what you will be able to do yourself is you'll be able to do this sort of thing and go out

look at the competitors I would personally if I'm in your shoes I'd be looking at the the zscaler new startups yeah i' be looking at the ones that are checking out right who's getting funding because that will be something that will push them to hire I would look at whose early stages that could just hire in a team right as soon as they get that first level of funding they can come straight and bring you bring you in those are the things I would look for absolutely thank you all right I know we had one more question but go ahead um how much do you guys rely on atfs in your resumés and do you see

organizations for senior level positions C so director levels using ATS and basically if you don't pass that they your resum goes in the trash so let let that leads that's a perfect lead in to the to the next question uh because we're going to talk about process right and and ATS is part of the process um his question was how much do you rely on the applicant tracking system and I think the answers are going to differ greatly so let's go across the board I was going to ask how long from application to offer can people expect the process to take so feel free to in to uh Enlighten everyone on what that process looks like they may not realize

you know they're like I applied what happens next why haven't I got an offer what what you know we all have different stages whether it's doing a background investigation I I won't answer it for you but let's start with how long what is the expectation and what can they expect from a steps process to include answering his ATS question so I mentioned earlier about um qualifying the job with the hire manager so we've done that part that's the first start of the process next step is advertising the job if this this will differ you know there's different strategies for agencies and obviously intern will be different as well personally I'm not a fan of job adverts um because it means I

have to go through the applicants and 90 odd per of them don't match the needs of what we're looking for so unfortunately um it's a bit of a waste of time um you know when you've got a security guard applying for a application security engineer role I can't do anything with that when you've got someone applying from overseas that has no working rights to a job that is in Australia requires Australian citizenship I can't do anything with that so if I'm honest with you I'm gearing more and more towards not advertising jobs and utilizing my own network on LinkedIn so my preference or my go-to is actually head hunting so I prefer just to basically companies

paying us for a service let's give them the best service and go and find the best people in the market that match our needs so that's why keywords stuff on LinkedIn really helps when we do advertise jobs um we don't have the same process that you would have so um we don't have like this applicant tracking system that has all this bunch of stuff essentially if if we just look at LinkedIn you know people applying LinkedIn we just look at every applicant it's as simple as that um but again it's a it's a Time versus volume thing as well because if you've got 400 people applying to a job It's Tricky um so let's pretend either we've head hunted

we've advertised whatever we've got someone who's right for the role we send them forward um every every company has a different recruitment process so every customer work with is different we'll try and influence as much as we can to basically speed because time is money because the bigger the window the more opportunity is for us to lose that person to someone else um but essentially if I send someone today let's pretend most recruitment process processes are two or three rounds it might be efficiently could be two weeks so if you say two to three weeks from App submission to offer is the ideal um and then essentially we're trying to get things closed off the back of that um so

internally we've we've got our own guidelines but obviously again Chris will be different and Sil will be different as well because again they'll run different processes and and I feel sorry for you because when you're running you know 40 positions or whatever it is there's only so much you can do and you've got to rely on job adverts as well because you're a human and then you got to rely on the ATS I used to have 149 positions at a time so it really is not okay it's a it's a sweet spot now for me's back thinking he has 300 he does and I've got like 200 but so so I want to just uh add a little

bit of color uh that that answers your question the see the difference uh because we talked about being different types of Recruiters in different scenarios providing different Services if you're the at some point whether you're talking to Chris first or Ricky first or Sylvia um at some point you do have to apply that's going to be that that is part of the process everywhere to get hired if they're following the law so you have to apply so then the applicant track system is part of the process at that point because you're applying to the company that's going to employ you to the company who's going to hand you your paycheck uh how much does in my opinion a recruiter look at the

applications and search through whether it's workday or too or Greenhouse or isims they all are they're all very different most are cumbersome most are not userfriendly and easy to to get around in and so your resume gets lost at that point the recruiter isn't isn't able to easily search through all of the applications and and like Ricky was like if you uh deliver newspapers for a living and I'm looking for a full scope poly AIML person then I I'm never going to get through them all because there are hundreds and hundreds of applications so I think what you were asking is how much is the applic tracking system part of the process a a a big part of that answer is the quality

of the system yeah right and most of them are bad today you keep hearing about terrible resumés terrible job descriptions and terrible applicant tracking systems that's pretty consistent right this is where the recruiters come in and the networking comes in in in my opinion you've not even touched on interviewing next oh I know about interviewing yeah we haven't even touched on interviewing yet we'll get there agree with what you said but I I in your opinion do you see companies for ceso type positions or senior director director positions using recruiters less and using ATS and AI more to find their candidates because you go on LinkedIn within 20 minutes for a ceso position there's 100 applicants

95 of them probably shouldn't even have have um of them are security guards basically 95 of them probably shouldn't even have applied for the job like you were saying so I just see more companies using ATS and using AI to try and find their candidates and saving money on the back end from using uh a recruiter I don't think that's really happening at ceso level so I so I've got um I got a really big seeso Network I'm actually about to launch a podcast called root to sees so um so plug for that but but um CL he does the route to ciso talk right here in this room straight afterwards yeah um but basically

most of we do we do a fair amount of retained work but the truth is most cesos I the root seeso podcast it's about me talking to cesos interviewing them about their in their their route to getting that title most of the people that I know almost all the ones I interviewed didn't get it through a recruiter right at ceso level it I can tell you I know companies that only do ceso positions and they're doing less than 50 placements a year significantly less than 50 placements a year and they're two or three person companies right um same with the the the the big head hunting companies most of your positions a seeso you will get through

your network right you'll get through you you either somebody that you work with before will take you in somebody that's a ciso will recommend you those positions often get filled before they get to us I don't think AI is having a huge impact in that um uh but it's definitely all about Network even more so at that level I think there's something like somebody was telling me that 70% of the people with seeso titles are out of work at the moment I had a dinner last night and they were talking about that there's a lot of cesos out there the ones that tend to use recruitment companies um have often tried their Network and and at that

point they're not really getting the people or they want us to head hunt very specific types of seeso um for them so I don't know if that's useful but that's why I see sorry so I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna let you touch on that because you're dying too but let's get back to the add to the answer to the question of the process I'll take 20 seconds on this so really quick so again I'm in a very different like setup as the guys are I am in a corporate setting however we use an ATS we use we also use vendor staffing agencies on top of that because we have contractor positions that we require somebody to put them on contract

don't ask me why that's above my pay grade however with that being said the ATS system is what I basically live in every single day um the one thing I'll also say is that when it comes to that I'm very much much like him like I love doing my own head hunting I came from startup I came from Staffing and then I went into corporate so I rely on my own knowledge more so than uh you know a stock JD or or whatever have you so I think for me it's it's kind of finding that balance and understanding like what's going to be the best solution for whatever that position is but again just to give you that that yeah most of our

clients are using ats's we we have to work very closely with the internal recruiters is the best relationships if you've got a really good relationship with the internal recruit it's so much more of a smoother process and a lot of that ATS stuff is kind of I would say bypassed because it still goes through but they're like okay well we bought in a specialist company for a reason right these people we don't need to then put them through some sort of AI tool to them filter even more so Sylvia from uh how long what for when you think of your process from Outreach to pre-screen text screen panel interview client interview customer facing interview there's think

of your process and and help them understand what their expectation should be which I'm sure you tell them the first time you talk to them oh yeah um I have no problem being as transparent with you guys as I am with everybody else I mean I it's kind of my staple here's the thing every position is different I cannot I've closed a position in as little as four days from start to finish with all those steps that she just said I've also taken 12 2 3 days to fill a position because you know we don't get the right GD we don't get that intake sometimes so again trial by fire really is the name of the game

on occasion and uh being corporate recruiter doesn't mean that I have access to the managers I'm just going to let you know that right now he doesn't um especially when we're dealing with clients as well because there's a lot of other things that go in between that so when we're talking from start to finish the best thing that I could tell you is ask the recruiter what is a timeline to fill for this position if it's ASAP then you already know like it is top priority if they're like oh well we're hoping to have this person start in October November it's GNA be a slow process and that way you know like if you're out of

work you're like I can't wait till November for y'all to make a decision like I need to keep looking you know have it in your back pocket don't burn Bridges but at the end of the day just understand and you know ask that question early on because I have no problem telling you like hey I needed this person like yesterday like if I could hire you on spot and I thought that you were great for it I wish I could but I'm not the decision maker at the end of the day there's a lot of other stakeholders in place and I don't make that decision as much as I can advocate for you and I do advocate for

both sides because there are occasions obviously where the manager like they look at the resume and it's like okay I've spent 30 minutes screening this candidate I know that this is exactly what you're looking for after you and I have had X number of interviews and you're telling me all these extra things so the next time when I a manager's like uh I'm like oh no no no no come back here we're gonna talk and then go ahead there's a lot of elements uh that play into days to fill they call it yeah hate that statistic but there's also organizations like clear jobs that that are publishing a lot of really good information for you the candidates they

are advocating for you and they're going to tell you they're doing surveys they're asking questions from you and then they're putting that into uh digestible information for you they're saying you know what we're seeing we're seeing in this discipline or this industry or this clearance level or this geographical location days to fill I've seen some crazy numbers I've seen 30 I've never seen that I know you talked about I've never seen that I've been doing this for 30 years it could be 45 days it could be 70 days it's going to depend on customers clients whether or not it's direct right so ask your recruiter from the first conversation that you have what you should expect so

that while you're talking and then let them know other things that you're doing right yes um I sorry I turned this into an advice session but get that information up front if you can yeah please be as transparent on the other side of things too yes thank you very much uh everyone uh I had a question following up on what Ricky presented last hour but I want to like answer for from every one it's two questions the first one is you said to be careful on LinkedIn and I just got on LinkedIn I've never been because I've had a job now kind of looking but I was you said to be careful not to connect

with the wrong people I wanted to know what what you meant by that and the second question is regarding use of AI for resumé customization I've been trying a few uh platforms out there and I was curious if you guys had any recommendations to help us out when we're trying to tailor our resume to a specific specific position thank you um yeah just con the wrong people I mean just most people are fine there's just weirdos from from time to time um unfortunately women get it a lot worse than guys um the the you there's creeps out there um so I guess what I was trying to say is be careful who you connect with and who you may meet um and

how you do it I guess was just the thing I mean connecting with anyone doesn't really make it difference like it connection or a follow it's the same sort of thing um so I wouldn't stress too much about that um it's just what you then do if someone messages you and what you reply back with and what you share just be a good security professional and be cautious do you feel like the flip side of that which also ties nicely into your talk um is to be not careful but cognizant of what you're posting in what you're sharing right um if every day on I still call it Twitter every day on Twitter you're like I hate

my job I hate my boss I hate my job I hate my boss I hate my job yeah you're just gonna good we're just going to associate it's just negative right like so um maybe talk about something you learned or something you look forward to learning or something you know so just just know that kind of we we're like is it your profile is it your brand what is it whatever it is um it's your footprint is what it is right that's that's not the right word to you make a really good point cuz and it goes back to what I was saying before about essentially you're basically trying to add value to other people you're sharing insights

showing opinions obviously that I guess is an opinion I hate my job Hate My Boss whatever that's that's just stupid but there are I remember um there was there was a guy who a few years ago uh when Trump first got elected he posted on Facebook about basically someone should shoot Trump and then this this guy was either like MD or CEO of a business and basically he got um you know his business it blew up on social media his business picked up on it he got sacked you know so what we say online has real repercussions um so you've got to tread a you know a fine line between being negative being just stupidly crazy and

just insights and if like even um know LinkedIn getting more and more social is getting more acceptable to sort of I see people posting all sorts of like even family stuff whatever like I personally I've posted I think two pictures of my family but we've I don't know been away or something and there's a work conference or whatever it is but I'm always I'll block out their faces um but essentially it's just being mindful of who's reading your stuff and it again goes to the same thing of LinkedIn or so your your resume basically tailor your LinkedIn or your resume for the person you want to be reading it so if you imagine your resume the person reviewing it is

hopefully going to be the higher manager for the job that you want so you need to be saying things for that audience and linkedin's the same thing as well can I jump in on that as well the other thing I want to say is and and I know that a lot of people are like I don't want to do a resume for every new position and this and that and I don't need to tailor it and blah blah blah blah blah and it gets I get it it gets exhausting I was out of work for eight months last year I did over a thousand rums within that time I get it it's not great but at the

end of the day I think the biggest thing that you want to have on paper is when it comes to a resume again you know talking about accolades achievements projects also again just saying who you are without saying like I'm an enthusiastic person I love my job I love what I do without saying it that way and just showing it that way and showing what type of person you are on paper and showing those different initiatives that's going to go a long way and at the end of the day if you're not happy with that look at certifications look at taking workshops you know lunch and learns do something if you're not impressed with it yourself

that's that should be your wakeup call because it was mine and I'm I will say that for myself too no I don't recommend a i here's my thing with AI I can always tell when a when a resume was done by AI especially when they only do it for the last position because then it's like everything is Sub sub sectioned and I'm like why you know and then it's also very repetitive so you also got to really be mindful I feel like a lot of people are like oh AI will just write it for me and then you don't proof it that's like the worst thing you could do I have managers that literally are like

this was written by AI I'm not even looking at it they didn't even take the time to sell themselves to me okay the room just filled up we have a a big activity happening at 3:00 and uh so and we're gonna have to rearrange the chairs for that activity so here's what we're going to do we're going to uh there was a special answer I wanted you to give to that and then if you could if you could lead that into a close of parting advice uh and then we're going to break out into our breakout group so we're going to do your answer to the pro to the social question parting advice parting advice parting advice we will all be

here until 4 and after um so and I love that you are Interactive love it so much but take it away Chris thank you I think Ricky Ricky went a little bit into it we talked I think certainly on his his talk he he talked about recommendations for LinkedIn um I have something and and I guess K's talking about because it sticks it's easy to remember 321 rule uh generally what I try and do is um I I Look to connect with three people every single day that are relevant to what I'm trying to achieve uh I try to comment and make valuable comments on two two other people people's posts so not just yeah I like that but actual things that

are conversation starters and then I try and put one post out a day that's what I recommend to people so it's really easy to to to to remember and and hopefully that can be something you can schedule into your day so I know um Ricky covered some of that stuff already in terms of closing points the reason why LinkedIn is so important and these events are so important is because truly majority of your people majority of you are going to make the connections that are going to get your next few jobs right at places like like this or even on LinkedIn um not through job adverts we currently don't have a a job ad adverts page on

our website at all we rarely advertise um and what I will say about that is if a client we've if we're retained by a client and they want us to advertise the role we'll do that I want to give one example uh this was a few weeks ago 274 replies um very very clear we have very like clear these are the essentials you must have out of the 274 we found one candidate uh we had 30 that we had to actually speak to and those 30 I think 29 27 of them had lied in the questions to filter out like whe you know were they a US citizen could they work on site the real basic stuff um and so just

be very wary if you're going to apply for job it's not the ideal way to get it you can still go ahead and do that um be very honest don't press the easy apply button for everything cuz that's why why you're not hearing about that's why things are going into a black hole so just be very careful you're going to be networking to get your next job y I just want to say one thing I wasn't listening to his answer because I was talking to somebody else but he answered that question two years ago and it was one of my it makes me LOL every time he says don't reach out to the recruiter and

just say I'm interested oh yes yeah the comments on posts that just say I'm interested and then they expect they're going to all of a sudden get a like an invite for an interview or something so it could be 7even seconds it could be 3 seconds but you just have to compel the recruiter like I said who in many cases may be they the layer you have to get through to get to the next layer to get in front of a manager buing advice I just yeah no

sorry yeah sometimes I think it's the same thing about a resume right I'm a systems engineer I want to be a Solutions architect I just told you what's going on and how I want this to end I'm interested in what and I want to do what right I'm interested in job XYZ and I will be sending you a direct message that that's I think that's what I mean yeah yeah be specific absolutely be yeah and um I kind of gave kind of my parting like notes on this a little bit you know again don't sell your short don't sell yourself short I feel like we always do this we're our own worst critic stop putting yourself in the back

seat the other thing I'm going to tell you as well is that when it comes to a company interview them just as much as we interview you at the end of the day this is your life this is your livelihood I take that very seriously even though it is not my livelihood it is yours and it matters to me so I need to know from a candidates perspective what I need to know from you not only your goals but what are you okay with what is your management style what do you prefer to see in in a team what what values do do you actually value within a company what motivates you to actually go to work every day and be like I

actually love my job because that's exactly what I'm fighting for and again your passion your drive those are things that again I will take the time as a recruiter to meet with you if the require if the skill set is there right even if it's like iffy I will still it's warranting a conversation and then we will deep dive into how we can better represent you that's what a good recruiter should do not like and I and I don't want to you know but at the end of the day you definitely have to start putting yourself in the driver's seat and understanding exactly who you are and what you want and putting that on paper

and also relaying that in person and interviews I can't tell you how many times the resume does not match the person or or the person does not match the resume make it as cohesive as possible as as much as you can that would be my my parting gift for that or my closing statement I guess um we need to remember that like companies are hiring humans yeah now what and you have things that help you stand out over other people you just need to identify what they are so they could be technical non-technical they could be different things it could be interest in a certain technology or industry or whatever it may but you need to identify what makes

you stand out and we spoke about messaging on LinkedIn and I'm just going to read out a message that I received at uh 310 a.m. today hi Ricky is there a is there any specific reason why you didn't respond to my message so that person messaged me on Sunday at 7:58 so that was Tuesday morning it just I don't know let's call it 30 hours or something I've traveled from Australia and yesterday was my first day here in the US and I've got two presentations plus this plus two other sessions to prepare for so I've got a very valid reason why I haven't responded to them because I I was traveling most of the time don't be that

person um please don't because like I don't care how good they are I'm not I don't want to work with someone like that cuz it shows a pretty poor attitude cuz you don't know what's going on in someone's life so no one owes you anything you can you can ask for help you can offer advice you can reach out to people but no one knows you anything um be respectful because you don't know what's going on in people's lives I could I could have had a loss in my family and that person sent that message so I've got zero interest in helping that person if I'm honest with you I will actually correct them in my opinion

of how to engage with another human um but ultimately you're dealing with humans you're dealing with companies that are hiring people to solve problems work out what those problems are work out what problems you've solded for companies and the better you can communicate that the more effective you'll be in essentially getting more jobs as well honesty transparency communication that needs to be the Baseline for everything all right you can see over here in this corner manisha's back this is going to be his Round Table T his round Tess table Chris is going to be right over here the camera and then we're going to set you up right here so what that means is we're going

to hack the room real quick everybody's sitting down needs to stand up we're going to move a third of the chairs over there a third of the chairs over there and a third of the chairs over there the discussions are well done root to ciso I was getting nervous Ricky talking a little bit more about job search and manisha's talking about culture in your job search pleasure to meet you by so and these will be interactive discussions