HG - How To Hack Recruiting: Turning the Tables (Panel) - Steve Levy, Pete Radloff & Kris Rides

so good afternoon good evening thank you everyone for coming out for our last hour of content this is going to be an exciting hour we have had some phenomenal recruiters who have given up their time flown in from the east coast to give resume review and career mentoring but these are also friends of mine that I've worked with for 10 15 years other than the guy on the end I've only known him for two years but these guys really want to help you figure out what you need to know about hacking the hiring process really sort of breaking it down and saying screw it I'm frustrated what can I do next so I would like to introduce my dear friend

Pete Radloff take it away Thanks how's everybody doing oh that's a very good like response for 5:30 at night I appreciate that it's probably way better than like the 2:30 slot where everybody is comatose from lunch so we're gonna walk through a lot of things like Kathleen said today and some of that's going to start with some pointed questions for you guys as well because we really want to get a better sense of you know where the pain is from your end and they're really deal to partly that it's an insight from from RN so just to give some quick intros I'm Pete Radloff I'm the principal technical recruiter for comScore we're a consumer behavior

analytics firm based out of Reston Virginia I've been there probably eight out of the last twelve years or so Steve I don't work in comScore I'm Steve Levy I'm an engineer crossed over to the dark side the dark side being HR and recruiting you see these are my HR tattoos in case you weren't they are been recruiting for damn near 30 years now and I have my own consulting firm and one of my clients is actually Lockheed Martin so there's a shitload happening in the cyber hiring space there and by the way this session is sponsored by Red Bull cuz we're all freaking tired right yeah this on hi I'm Kirsten Renner I am the director of

recruiting at Nevada they are complex analytics firm in Northern Virginia and gosh I've been doing this recruiting thing for 20-something years so and she's only 29 and yeah I started when I was 9 years old obviously mommy daddy I want to recruit people yeah and so my favorite part of summer camp is the car hacking village that will be happening at DEFCON if you're going to DEFCON stop by and see me I'll be the one selling badges and or I'll be the wine the now we're into it saying sorry we got sold out of badges already and for giving away a truck hey there so I'm Chris rides I've got a company called tyro security we were an

information security staffing company and also a professional services company based out of Los Angeles started it five years ago and I've been in the business for 20 years and this third year speaking here so looking forward to it's always always interesting with getting some interesting questions so one of the things that we wanted to start off with initially is is to really get your perspective on something so and free form show of hands scream it out what frustrates you about working with recruiters okay great they don't understand technology great yep a number of seem to have a high sleaze factor snow to Eskimos the Flies okay so you doing your own recording okay and these are your in-house recruiters okay

do I think we we see a lot of that frustration from the candidate side of things right and I and I think we realize that there's a lot more that happens behind the scenes that I think what you realize the way and somebody clicks apply right now no way it means or shape justifying the resume black hole that a lot of things seem to go into you put it in there you never hear back you get an email other positions close but you've never heard anything you know one way or the other around the feedback of your interview why you didn't get the job what you could have done better etc and I think one of the things that

we believe in and please everybody correct me if I'm wrong here that that feedback is is important it's important for us to make sure that we're giving that feedback now because we live in an incredibly litigious society that becomes a little bit hairy sometimes but it is something that we feel has to really be part of the process in order to make it a higher right we want to make a good hire we're gonna make a strong hire we want you coming in the door feeling that you've been able to make the right decision for your career when you guys think about this and particularly looking at the InfoSec portion of things what's what do you

what is important to you all as recruiters people who are looking at these backgrounds is it certifications is it training is it a very nebulous to have a passion that you can't put to paper what are you guys what's important to all of you when you look at these backgrounds so the talk that happened a little bit ago to talks ago one of the pieces of advice that's very important was they were saying that the recruiter needs to make a connection and talk to the individual about themselves right so it goes it goes both ways so that the standout the connection should be there should be some one piece where where you connect where you relate I'm going to

tell you I haven't I haven't actually directly recruited in awhile but one of the things I was horrible at was looking at the applications isn't that awful was the last place I would look you would think there would be the first place I would look but truly so many of the applicants that applied for the positions weren't qualified so often so that that would be the last place I would look isn't that awful so the same way the recruiters are reaching out to you and your systems engineer and they're asking you if you want to be a Java program and that's Trading is hell right it happened 10 times today the connection isn't happening on both sides is part of the

problem so I think that one of the best things that they said earlier was do the Kevin Bacon thing right there's this is a really small community and everyone that you know there's only a few connections away from somebody else that you know start with talking to someone in your community that had a good recruiting experience that's going to be rare and when you reach out to that recruiter and say I got your name recruiter Jim from my colleague they're gonna pay more attention to you they're gonna remember you because it started through a genuine relationship does that make sense so you're not just another applicant anymore and they're not just another recruiter anymore and you just

started a valid relationship and I think it's gonna be it's gonna be a lot more fruitful for both of you nothing that will help this lady mentioned recruit is not knowing what they're talking about and there are plenty of those and the sleaze factor comes into that because they their way through what they're doing right and very quickly you get to tell that so if you want to find a good recruiter you need to go where you'd expect the real recruiters to be so you go to your Issa meetings go to your wife's meetings yeah go to cloud Security Alliance meetings because first off a majority of the ones going there are doing out their own time right

they're not getting paid to do it so they're passionate about what they're doing they're willing to spend their own time understanding and learning about what we do and it's surprising how much you can actually gain that's a great place to actually find the people that that kind of you know know what they're talking about and I will also say when I'm hiring for and I run an external agency so when I'm hiring for people I don't tend to look for people necessarily with technical experience in fact in my experience it's not been a great way to recruit people that's not to say they're on amazing people you know including up here that have been been excellent but sometimes

when people have a technical background they feel like they can question people that are coming into the level of somebody that you know you're talking something that's got eight years experience and you know you've studied cybersecurity and you think that you can have a level conversation in it you end up going too far down that road so I think having a knowledge about recruitment and gaining it from those sort of places will certainly help them have those conversations with you but you know don't expect them to know that as much as you guys do because they won't there are some fundamental problems with recruiting now every recruiting is not recruiting is not broken you know just like if the problem

is the we have this barrier to entry problem there's very little barrier to entry to become a recruiter you know in fact that's how you know many folks have started on the agency side you know their first jobs were here's a phonebook or here's a list it's on the on the computer when I started they were phone books in three by five cards and you know well well actually less than 1200 baud dial-up it's another story but the problem is that you know an empty to your point in the fact that you're better than your recruiters at recruiting people there is a point in my opinion where all this stuff could really get a heck of a lot better and it

would sit and and you folks are part of the solution we hire people to solve specific problems in your case you know you might have specific you know cyber challenges related to product related to customers you know you have you know you have you know some sort of architecture drawing and you know there are X's where the you know red X is where there are issues there we solve we hire people to solve problems we don't hire people to simply be task Wranglers you know in most every job description that you see every job description by companies that are exhibiting here they're not recruiting documents they don't give you any insight into what specific problems

keep the hiring manager awake at night now you know what you I don't know your name and I should clairvoyantly know that but they don't Jamison a very very good name for several reasons but Jamison you know when and and I'm gonna have a little conversation with him and it may help when you have an open job you know you you meet with a recruiter your recruiters and they say well what's really special what do they really need what are the must-haves things of that nature do they ever ask you what specific problems are not getting done by the existing staff and and what specific things would a what specific problem if they were solved by the new person would

allow you to sleep at night what they don't go to that and what you would typically they'll say you you may say well it's in the Job Description or out so many more resumes all know it when I see it it doesn't work like that I want to know specifically this is the current situation the current state this is the problem this is the desired outcome and this is how I think we're going to get there I think it behooves you as as folks looking for jobs to press the recruiter whoever reaches out to you you know if you see something posted don't just blindly apply to it knowing that it's a generic Job Description

again every company here most every company here if I take their name out of the jump owes to job description and they put in one of their competitors that JD job description will be just as valid for those companies you're trying to read minds of companies instead of directly applying maybe paying the right back you know find out you know Jameson's email you know because he's a popular fellow you can find his email and if he has a job listed ask him you know in the first 90 to 180 days what specific problems will I be specifically will I be asked to solve what are the deliverables you know be be more active in that and don't take from a crappy

recruiter well just SEM your resume we'll talk about it be you know an educated consumer and push back on just not really I think that's a good look that's actually if that's a great point and and and actually managers line managers and hiring managers are much more likely to do that when it's a contract position they're much more like to give you more information on the projects you're doing and stuff but then we need something they turn to permanent that goes out the window right yeah it's on your spec so you don't yeah you're spot-on I mean again it's it's about you know where your expertise is you know what specific problems you're really good at there's

nothing wrong with you when you see a posted job instead of applying you know try to you know instead of applying we reply back with these are the kind of problems I've solved these are kind of things I'm doing right now is I can't tell from your job description whether it's there or not can you tell me if these are the kind of things that you're working on it's a good segue to because I think when you look at that I think the table turns as well too right so a lot of times and I focused primarily on infrastructure development and develop DevOps so a lot of times what I find in that interview process and this is

really with me right now I'm not an engineer I'm not leaving went to the dark side but I've spent almost 20 years with engineers and sat there watching them code asking questions and what does that mean you know why are you doing this and why do we do it this way and that helps me to do my job a little bit better when we get to the interview stage and I find this more often with technical people that non-technical people they say tell me about your role tell me about the stack and I want to know what you do what I'm not looking for with that is to just regurgitate the bullet points what I want to know is

what did you work on that really changed the game where you are today why where what did you work on and have your fingerprints on there that if they lost you they wouldn't know what to do and what makes you attractive to another company and going into that detail and understanding and quantifying right so it go ahead and I do so when I talk to a Java developer and he says where she says yeah I went ahead and I patched up some scripts so we got everything running I'm like okay great what did that mean for you well it meant we went from three hours of data processing time to 86 seconds and that's what I want to

know that's what I want to know the tangible impact of where that is and I think a lot of times people get so worried that they need to spit out all their key words and all their skill sets in this 20 minute conversation that they're gonna have with the recruiter where that'll get fleshed out the next call I'm okay with that that'll get fleshed out in the next call what I want to know is if you could talk about business problems and you can tell me how you solve them what the impact is for your company or for your client while you're doing that the word the word apiece referring to its legacy you know what's your legacy and you know

at your current you know if you were to leave your current job now or your past job what do they remember you most from what did you what did he give to the you know to the to the group that they realize in hindsight was pretty damn good what about those interviews are there other fo PA's or mistakes that you see people making interviews that are that are pretty avoidable so good so by the way I would like to see the conversation shift and be less about the position and more about the candidate and have it be more about their experience the more you learn about the person you manned up because I'm guessing every company that every one of

you works for and that we all work for has more than one position available and more than one type of job that people are doing there so just because you're over here doing X Y widgets doesn't mean that you're not capable of doing a whole other thing right and in addition to what did you do and did you take it from three hours down to 86 seconds what did you what instead of just always mentioning to me the things that you did these tangible good measurable things that you did what did you what did you mess up that what did you break what did you fail at and what did you learn from it that conversation and by the way I

steal that from an interview I did a million years ago at RIT with some kid that was graduating and he was he was literally only 17 years old genius person but he said oh I all there was this robot and he built a robot and it's a really long story and it's amazing in this interesting and the robot blew up he was trying to get it across the street and then we talked about what did he learn from that so I'm guessing that a he always has a fire extinguisher handy now right and then none of his robots are blowing up anymore so he actually invited me into a whole different part of his problem-solving skills and and just a

whole level of humility from this this person that's always had like a five-point whatever right he because he failed he blew the robot up so so so talk to the individuals about their experiences about their work experiences about the things that they learned and how they learned them because you're gonna end up finding out you know what that person would work perfectly on bla bla bla team so so the recruiter shouldn't make it about the job never ever they should make it about the candidate and in some of the best recruiters and there's there's people in the room that have done this they're gonna go you know what candidate I'm listening to you I hear you

I want to hire you I can hire you but I also know this guy named Peter who has a who has an environment that sounds like it's going to be a lot better for you and then we just established another important relationship right and candidates gonna remember that that happened and I didn't feel my job I didn't do my job to that I didn't fill the position but I just did a good thing so I I want the conversation to be less about the job so you as the candidate switch it around if the recruiter stopped doing their job and making it about you there's a round thing for me Oh even better I got an upgrade so from the candidate

point of view to switch it around how can how can we ferret out the good recruiters from the bad and I actually recently had a very long and significant amount of time wasted by recruiter and an actual end company they were recruiting for so I think that's kind of my questions is how can we get through some of those key points that are deal-breakers and not offend the relationship and still hopefully keep it open for the next job they have and keep calling you know calling you back I think there's there's a couple things there right I'd never get off the phone with a candidate without asking them one question what's most important in your next role what is

it is it growth is it money is this stability so you're not going from contract to contract to contract what is that thing that you need most that you can absolutely not take this job without and I get a little pure into their psyche I get to understand what family life looks like for them I get to understand if they're an early bird or one of those people that's not going to be scheduling any meetings before 10:00 a.m. get to understand a lot a bunch of those things that I think are really important for that the second thing is test them if they say I'll give you an update on Tuesday and it's Thursday and

you haven't heard anything not your answer I know update I have no update for you is still an update you know that you're still top of my mind and you are still important to me and I'm working on it but I just need to tell you any other more time if you're not getting that level of concentrated commitment then I think you can kick that recruiter to the curb sure why not sure what yeah absolutely and I tell them look sometimes I get slammed her in the day and if you don't hear from me by Tuesday call me and I'll get back to you I'll double down on that one it's I'll give people my phone number I said look I

hope to call you with an update by so-and-so but just like Pete I am swamped every which way to Sunday and if you don't hear from me by a certain time call me or text me if you know what your deal-breakers are there's nothing wrong with presenting those right up front to your recruiter and saying you know that this this is this is what my situation is right now it does not necessarily mean that all of these things will be deal-breakers for me in the future but right now this is where we're at and you know if that's not going to fit their role you're not wasting their time you're not wasting yours you know you said that you

hold a well there's your answer yeah I mean if it doesn't fit what you're looking for right now you know if the other thing you mentioned you said the the recruiter in the ultimate end client say were you dealing with an agency yeah tell me if you guys agree with this but leverage Glassdoor to your advantage if you're having a really shitty experience with a recruiter let that company know I respond personally to all of the Glassdoor reviews for my company and it crushes my soul some days but hell if I don't have a dummy email that we set up for the company that somebody need to get more specific information from somebody about a crappy experience they had here's an

email address you can reach me at directly really quickly if you only remember one thing I ever said remember that the recruiter that you're talking to they want it to work right they want this to be successful right so they're already on your side they are your advocate so so make them your best advocate because you're the champion of you because nobody knows what you want better than you do if you're not telling me the right story I'm not selling you the way you need to be sold so said this some somebody earlier so you've done this and you've done this and you've done this and you've done this so if I take away the

wrong story from either what you told me because you think I wanted you to hear and that's what you think that's what I wanted to hear or don't do that just be the true you because if you pretend to be whoever the recruiter wants you to be and I and I'm sorry I apologize on behalf of every recruiter that sucks that you have to get through to get to whoever else the next person is but if you sell the wrong thing that then you are gonna get fit into the right to the wrong spot right so you're not doing you're doing yourself an injustice beat be who you truly are say the types of environments you enjoy

working in and recruit the recruiter a little bit right interview them talk to them ask them to tell you stories actual stories recruiters like to talk have you ever noticed we like to talk make them tell you a story about the environment about the problems about the tell to make them tell you good things and bad things let me go back one more thing cuz we talked earlier this is how you know the fakers the pretenders from the real recruiters the real recruiters know what you what the job truly entails if they go back to the JD the job descriptions are saying this is the real job they either don't know what the real job is

or they're just making up as they go on real good recruiters will know what the deliverables are for this position within a reasonable timeframe and if they don't then they're merely assessing you for the presence of buzzwords cuz how about you from the agency side you see a whole different perspective of this and much to your point it's different working with an agency recruiter that it can be with corporate sometimes yeah it definitely is because we we looking at a broad range of clients a broad range of jobs and but actually there's a lot you know the similarities are the same if you're never honest with them about what you're looking for the in yet matched up with

things that you're not interested in and there's nothing more frustrating for you and getting phone calls about jobs that you're not interested in right so absolutely been completely honest and open and I know you know you'll read a lot of articles about not telling your recruiter about this holding it back until the end we're there to try and get you the job if you hold anything back to the end there the surprise is that that don't get solved right then you get the job offer you're not looking for or expecting so I would definitely say that keeping open and honest and and answering all of the questions honestly it's going to get you much nearer to the

job that you're looking for I think from an agency other than that we're looking at multiple clients so we're trying to assess from the business site what they're looking for and getting them to sell each of that companies sort of big points and actually one of the most frustrating things for us is not getting to speak to the person that put the jobs back together and getting to ask those questions which are really the questions that we need to know if we're going to fill that position and I will say that often by the time we get the role we can get positions that have been open for six months we filled one we filled one

three weeks ago that was open for almost nine months before they came to us and we filled it in three weeks and we just spoke to the line manager and the line manager had a similar story to Jameson in that internally they hadn't had the conversation and the questions that I asked weren't the same questions that they're internally what we're asking and we found candidates a completely different pool of candidates when they haven't seen any resumes of about two months by the way don't be afraid people are scared of agency right and they say it's real quick so there's a difference between insert name of giant agency that you've all heard of and working with

someone like this that actually is going to understand what the customer needs and care about you and they become your agent so then I am coming to pay some loose agent well you know that's you know notice a wait wait yeah show me the money absolutely there we go yeah in the interest of keeping us on time for six o'clock questions for us things we can go ahead [Music] so for my past life I was a hiring manager at a large corporate and I spent a lot of my time going around recruiting whenever I possibly could and I'm just wondering you know and though how how could it you know that I could never find a way to work effectively with

recruiters because what I would do is you know they've come to me and want a job description and so what you do is you throw white you know a little bit of everything in IT in there because that's essentially what the position entails and somehow lost in the translation the nice-to-haves get turned into hard requirements and then you end up with a whole bunch of resumes from people who are either lying about having every certificate Under the Sun which I don't even care about anyway or you end up with you know no resumes at all so I usually end up just kind of working my network and you know the best way to get to me as a hiring manager was a

direct referral by either another manager at the company or by somebody who you know who is in my professional network but I feel like I was doing it wrong you know I think that probably I could have done better at this if you're a hiring manager how do you not suck at working with recruiters oh boy you know it's you know exactly where to go with this you know first and foremost I sort of have to ask it this way anyone here who here is married okay okay so no specially we'll talk to the hiring manager there is Mary Jameson but you know when you were first dating you sort of you kind of felt you

got to know each other and you found better ways to know each other get along with each other then you get married and then it starts all over again yes the toilet seat problems and things like that you will learn how to get along with recruiters by being calexis collectively committed to the same goal so the part of the problem with the hiring managers don't have these conversations with recruiters and recruiters don't have these conversations with hiring managers generally speaking like I would come up to you say how do you like to be how would you like us to work with you a simple conversation like that recruiter should say the same thing well then III I'm not gonna apologize

the entire profession because he's not working with the partner RT if you know asking that question then you know the ones to work yeah you have that's if you're not getting what you want you know how you like to be how you like people to work with you that's on you yeah it's completely on you to say this is what I need how you to help me get there you know and it's up to them to ask those questions right rather regardless of whether or not I filled one position with this manager or a hundred and one positions I need 30 minutes of your time so we could talk about it because whatever you guys were

doing in that group six months ago you sure as different now so let's go back and if everything else is the same but the projects you're working on and what's coming up in the next 6 to 18 months is different let's talk about that because that's different things I can sell those are the different things that I could pitch is to somebody who okay great we're gonna be moving in the cloud awesome you want to get involved with AWS you can come into this project here I now know that that's where we're headed and we don't need that skill set necessarily but boy if we had it that would be great and that's not on a job description and

you need to spend 30 minutes with me just give me the information I need and then we can switch things on the fly later on if we need to we could pivot because inside in that through in that 30-minute intake session which I mean I even call it a strategy session because it implies an ongoing discussion with the hiring manager this is the stuff that happens behind the scenes like I'll share with is I met you were hiring management if anybody here is a hiring manager Niro was one I'll share with you my strategy session form so you can see the questions that I ask of the hiring manager so you can see how they're very

focused on performance on future strategies on deliverables not just tasks and in the presence or absence of skills you know being you know I want someone who's detail-oriented that's not a deliverable that's a subjective assessment of somebody so it's income this the system isn't broken it's it's it you all need like marriage counseling so I think we're almost out of time but it goes both ways and two things that are really helpful if you let the recruiter sit in one of your technical interviews they're gonna listen to you ask questions they're gonna listen to the answers and they're gonna learn and then if you will give them two or three knockout questions to include in their pre-screen

when they first talk to say they've never even they don't even have a spell job all right that's how technical your recruiter is but they're gonna get on the phone call and they're and they're gonna say they're gonna ask twenty people today with what it's encapsulation and what is polymorphism and Liuba at the end of the day your recruiter is gonna know how to pass a java interview because they're gonna understand because you're gonna include them a little bit more in the technical and they're gonna learn so you know I'd like to see what why this is important when you go on interviews when you actually get to get fit on-site face to face ask people for a white ask the

managers the inner door the recruiters for a white board and white board your environment white board you know the you know and put X's where you were and and draw out this was the problem this was a solution stand up don't just use your words be an active participant in that right Tim yeah you just remember code is way more fun than sales quotas substantially so let's thank my dear friend Steve Pete Kirsten and Chris for giving us their advice back incidentally if you want to find out more how to work better with recruiters there's nothing wrong wrong with reading the articles that recruiters right there are there are two of them some of them are pretty

good man some of the not all over ship some of us really illiterate you know we can spell cat sometimes but they're there they're there they're there there's there's a er me er II Mediacom uh probably tweeted out into the thing go to EP Mediacom there are blogs that that recruiters write articles for and there's another one called recruiting daily.com where Pete and I write crap there it's not crap it's good stuff but we tell you how stuff really works we tell you what we like we tell you what we dislike it's it's it's going to help you and by the way nothing wrong with for example on Facebook getting into groups where recruiters hang out

and just saying hi I'm here help me and we will promise you we really will so let's thank Steve and Chris and Pete and Kirsten