Join us on our latest podcast episode as we delve into the world of Salesforce with your hosts, Josh Matthews and Vanessa Grant. This time, we're thrilled to have Andy Pelc, an Air Force veteran turned tech director, sharing his invaluable insights.
Vanessa kicks off the episode by sharing her rewarding experience of launching a Salesforce business analyst community meeting. Then, Andy takes the spotlight, bringing a wealth of knowledge from his military background that's incredibly applicable to leadership roles in the tech sector. We dive into the crucial leadership skills, management techniques, and the art of transitioning from military to civilian roles within the dynamic Salesforce landscape.
A significant focus of our discussion centers on job interviews and hiring processes. We offer practical tactics to help you stand out as a candidate and strategies for recruiting top-tier talent. Drawing from personal stories and lessons learned, we shed light on the importance of seizing opportunities, the necessity of adaptability, and the impact of character on your career trajectory. We also delve into the delicate balance between micromanagement and autonomy and discuss how to gauge a candidate's true adaptability and likability—skills that are vital whether you're aiming to impress in an interview or striving to assemble your dream team.
An important aspect we cover is the need to de-risk your hiring process by putting job candidates under pressure without alienating them. This approach helps in identifying individuals who can thrive in challenging situations while maintaining a positive working relationship.
As we conclude the episode, we emphasize the importance of understanding a company's culture before making a commitment and share resources to refine your hiring strategy for success. We celebrate the collective achievements within our community—your success stories are what drive our passion for this podcast. So, subscribe, leave us a review, and take your Salesforce career to new heights with the insights from our engaging discussions. Andy's journey is a testament to the vast potential within the Salesforce ecosystem, and we're eager to see where your journey takes you.
Join us on our latest podcast episode as we delve into the world of Salesforce with your hosts, Josh Matthews and Vanessa Grant. This time, we're thrilled to have Andy Pelc, an Air Force veteran turned tech director, sharing his invaluable insights.
Vanessa kicks off the episode by sharing her rewarding experience of launching a Salesforce business analyst community meeting. Then, Andy takes the spotlight, bringing a wealth of knowledge from his military background that's incredibly applicable to leadership roles in the tech sector. We dive into the crucial leadership skills, management techniques, and the art of transitioning from military to civilian roles within the dynamic Salesforce landscape.
A significant focus of our discussion centers on job interviews and hiring processes. We offer practical tactics to help you stand out as a candidate and strategies for recruiting top-tier talent. Drawing from personal stories and lessons learned, we shed light on the importance of seizing opportunities, the necessity of adaptability, and the impact of character on your career trajectory. We also delve into the delicate balance between micromanagement and autonomy and discuss how to gauge a candidate's true adaptability and likability—skills that are vital whether you're aiming to impress in an interview or striving to assemble your dream team.
An important aspect we cover is the need to de-risk your hiring process by putting job candidates under pressure without alienating them. This approach helps in identifying individuals who can thrive in challenging situations while maintaining a positive working relationship.
As we conclude the episode, we emphasize the importance of understanding a company's culture before making a commitment and share resources to refine your hiring strategy for success. We celebrate the collective achievements within our community—your success stories are what drive our passion for this podcast. So, subscribe, leave us a review, and take your Salesforce career to new heights with the insights from our engaging discussions. Andy's journey is a testament to the vast potential within the Salesforce ecosystem, and we're eager to see where your journey takes you.
And now the number one audio program that helps you to hire, get hired and soar higher in the Salesforce ecosystem. It's the Salesforce Career Show with Josh Matthews and Vanessa Grant.
Speaker 2:And that's with me, josh Matthews and my co-host, vanessa Grant. Say, hi, vanessa, hi Vanessa. Okay, we've got a weird show coming up because it's like we've got a guest but there's some tech issues and so I'm not sure if I want to announce right now. We might have to have him back on on another day, but we've got some of the usual suspects here in the crowd and I think that we're going to have a nice and interesting, lively discussion. Let's start with how everyone's week was. Vanessa, it's my understanding that you kicked off your first BA community meeting this past week. Is that correct?
Speaker 3:I did. I did it yesterday, okay, yeah.
Speaker 2:Let's hear about the event. How did that go?
Speaker 3:Oh, the event was great. I actually ended up. I got a little bit emotional at the end of it. There's never been a Trailblazer community group that was specific to Salesforce business analysts before, and so it was truly an honor to be able to kick off the first one, and I had, of course, in the way things tend to go, I had 150 RSVPs and I think maybe 60 people showed up, but it was a great group and people that are passionate about Salesforce business analysis, and it was lovely to just talk about what my mission is going to be for the group and share my vision. I'm very excited about the future.
Speaker 2:That's all good stuff. How did you handle your nerves? Because I saw some of your posts going into that session.
Speaker 3:The nerves were not great due to a few reasons, but yeah, I mean, as far as handling them, you know what I will say the community really supported me. Like right before I went on, I received a text message from Brenda Glasser, who actually offered to help moderate the session with me, just kind of out of the blue, which I really appreciated, so I didn't have to keep an eye on the chat yeah.
Speaker 3:People. So that was super helpful and I felt supported. My friend Van showed up early like 15 minutes early and it was always nice to see her face on video, so I spoke to her a lot when I was speaking. Yeah, and overall I think it was a really engaging session and as it kept going, the nerves kind of melted away.
Speaker 2:As it does every single time out of the last 100 times that you've done this. Yeah, right, so that's good. I'm happy for you, vanessa. It looks like we've got Andy Pelt on the line. Andy, give us a sign of life. Go ahead and unmute and say hi, okay, does this work? Yeah, this does work, buddy. Yay, he has off.
Speaker 5:Okay, All these tech experts, and here we are right.
Speaker 2:Well, that's what you get when you're messing with X, right, that's just the deal. So, look, I'm going to do a quick intro on Andy Pelt. Andy is a technology director. He's an Air Force veteran. He's actually been on military hours with Dave Nava. David's got Nava before. I think he's got another session, a live session, that he's going to be on this summer or early summer, something like that. Little background on Andy's got 25 employees, five direct reports, works for an environmental consulting group and he's only been in the ecosystem for 42 months, which I find absolutely incredible. So today we're going to invite Andy to share with us a little bit about his accelerated experience in growing his career within the ecosystem. So welcome Andy. Tell us a little bit more about yourself and where you're based. Hey, everyone.
Speaker 5:My name's Andy Pelk I'm over here in Carmel, indiana and Josh, so not to toot my own horn, but I've been in the ecosystem, joined July 2022. So yeah, less than 24 months, oh my.
Speaker 2:God, that's half what I wrote down I thought it was two and a half years, it's not.
Speaker 5:No, no, a little bit less, but it's been an amazing journey. It's been an amazing journey. I'm really happy to be here with all of you.
Speaker 2:Well, great. Now your career launched, pun intended, with the United States Air Force, correct.
Speaker 5:Yep, Yep. So I joined back in October 2012, shipped out of California, was in Texas. I spent some time in Texas and then I was stationed over in Washington State and then I moved over to Arizona and spent about 10 years and I was kind of on the line of OK, do I want to continue on and make this career, or do I want to venture off and see what else is out there in the world? I mean something I've been told and Larry can attest this, being a fellow Air Force veteran too. So if everyone becomes a civilian, so it's just a matter of when. And I decided to make them move earlier. And here we are.
Speaker 2:Yeah, here we are, and so how did the military prepare you for your entry into the technology world of being a technical director and being deeply involved in the Salesforce ecosystem?
Speaker 5:Yeah, short answer from the technical side? Probably not at all. However, however, I was just making kind of a joke. But as far as the staff skills and this is what I always tell any veteran entering the ecosystem and just in general, like any type of job, the things that we learn is very basic and things that I think a lot of us veterans take for granted, which is just simply being able to organize, lead and execute anything.
Speaker 5:I mean, just because we go in for a specific job doesn't mean that that is the job that you will do in the service. You're going to do whatever job needs to get done, and for us, what we're good at is just being told hey, this is the direction you need to go and this is what needs to happen, and we just start doing it. And then there's also this thing where it's like all right, we can't fail, so we have to just make it happen. And I'll be honest with you, I have no idea how I made a lot of things happen. I just did it and I don't know if just because we can't fail, just pure diligence, but it just trained me to always find a way. And I think that ties in beautifully to technology, because with technology it's very easy to break things, but it's very easy to fix things too.
Speaker 2:And I think sometimes sometimes, man, I've seen two years of spaghetti code unraveling, you know, two years just to get the, get your arms around what's happening with the Java, and then you know, and then trying to rebuild it from there. So, yeah, sometimes Sometimes.
Speaker 5:But I will say this though you have to just keep going at it until you figure it out. Yeah, and so for me, I mean, I feel like that's that is the biggest attribution for me transferring over to be a civilian and being in the ecosystem is just figuring it out and just being determined and just keep getting after it. And you know, it's something I didn't even realize until I entered the ecosystem and I'm so happy that I was able to build that trait and I think it's attributed to a lot of my success.
Speaker 2:Now that makes a lot of sense and we've heard that echo with veterans in the past. Right, you learn to solve problems, you learn to work with the team, you learn to say yes and get it done. I'm looking at your LinkedIn profile right now and you've got a number of titles up there. You know Air Force Vet and a couple of them that I thought were really interesting certainly Book Connoisseur. And I'm curious are you mostly a fiction or a nonfiction reader?
Speaker 2:I definitely, definitely like nonfiction, if you have a favorite book that has helped you in your journey over the last two years. What is?
Speaker 5:that. Yes, so that is called Legacy by James Kerr, and it is a book written about the all blacks rugby team. Oh yeah, sure, but it's not about the rugby team and rugby itself. It's just about how the team acts and how you develop leadership and teammanship and followership, and each chapter is dedicated on one of those.
Speaker 5:And you know there's a lot of beautiful quotes in it, such as, you know, be able to plant trees, you'll never see grow. Right, just being able. And this goes back to your issue earlier where you were saying unraveling the spaghetti, right, so if someone what before could have just thought about, hey, this repercussions of what's going to happen later, if they can just think about, no, we need to do the right thing now. And this goes back into when you're building things. We'll just say, inside of Salesforce, you should be taking those notes, descriptions, right, you should be writing them because, though you might not need it, someone else might need it, and so we have to. I think all of us need to do that, just in life in general, as being able to plant trees, you'll never see grow, and I love that saying. And there's another one where, you know, leaders create leaders, and I believe that too, you got to pass the ball. You got to know when it's okay to delegate and start grooming others and having them be accountable for decisions and developing them.
Speaker 2:So who did you follow? Who was your mentor through this very fast journey into leadership?
Speaker 5:You know I well, I like to think for me at least, I always have I always find people who are good at something that I want to be good at and they'll be my mentor for that aspect and so for me, I mean, I've had several and you know I would like to. I would like to do a shout out to my buddy, dan Pierce. He's a senior solution architect over at Booz Allen and you know I met him over at Coastal Cloud when I was an admin and he was really good through my journey and just you know, teaching me how to go through the system and he was really big on hey, make sure you document. I thought I thought he was a great mentor for me, at least within the ecosystem.
Speaker 2:That's good. Yeah, was he on the armycom project out there?
Speaker 5:Oh, I know he's working on the VA project. Yeah, that's what he's doing. Okay, yeah, they've got a number of different ones in their enormous yeah yeah.
Speaker 2:And talking about the tree thing, it reminds me of another quote that I happen to like a lot, and it's from what is it from? I want to say it's from Zorba, the Greek, nikos Kazanzakis. He wrote Last Temptation of Christ also, and there's a line in there and this old man is walking by this young man and he says to the no, sorry, there's an old man and he's planting a tree. Okay, and a young man walks by and he says hey, old man, why are you planting that tree? You'll never enjoy its shade or its fruit. And the old man says I live as though I'll never die. And the young man says and I live as though I'll die tomorrow. Which one of us is right? And I always liked that because clearly it's both Right. I mean, it's not a trick quote or a trick question, but it made me think. What you were sharing about planting trees made me think of that. Was there a leadership style that you adopted when you became a technical director or an executive director?
Speaker 5:So I like to believe in. This is just something I call. I call it chameleon leadership. That's what I call it, and what that means is being able to learn all the different types of leadership styles and traits, understanding the pros and cons of each one and then understanding when do you need to implement that type of style in your given situation. So for me, it's just very dependent on the situation and on the person you know. There might be someone that I need to really I don't want to say micromanage, but I really need to give them task by task and really help them get through it. And there's some who I just need to leave completely alone and that would be tied toward laissez faire, almost, where it's like, hey, this person has a bunch of experience, they just need to know what needs to happen and I just got to get out of their freaking way.
Speaker 2:Let me ask you something. What's up with micromanagement being such a horrible word? But there's some people who need it, especially early in their career. But it's like exhausting to me. It's like I don't want to because I hear it all the time. It's like I don't want to say micromanage, I don't want to be micromanaged. It's like, look at him Effort, you suck. You're going to need some attention on what you do and we've looked at your stats. The results aren't there. So now we have to micromanage. I don't think people generally micromanage just because it's fun for them. I think it's generally out of a need and certainly it can be applied to the wrong people and we've got to watch out for that. But how do you make that call?
Speaker 5:So you got to be careful when you ask me questions, because I like to give holistic answers I want short answers.
Speaker 2:Buddy, this is a long show, but we've got a lot to cover, so you'll figure it out. Power through buddy.
Speaker 5:So I'll tell you what. For at least this I believe in. If it's safety related right, you need to be more micromanaging.
Speaker 5:You need to take it step by step and then if it's someone who just needs attention, I think that communication just needs to be had, like hey, listen, look, I feel like this is where you're at and in order to get you where we need to be, I need to be on top of you a little bit more and if you can show me that you're improving, then I can let go of the reins a little bit more, because some people really, really don't want to be micromanaged, and I think just explaining to them hey, this is your given situation, this is why we're doing it I feel like it builds a little bit more communication in that aspect, and so I think it just goes back to being honest with the individual.
Speaker 5:This is why we're doing it and supporting them. Yeah, right, yeah.
Speaker 2:Like I look at micromanagement. I've implemented certain aspects of micromanagement on a specific thing for an employee, at a specific time, for a certain duration. Certainly not how I run my team. We hire smart people who are capable and experienced, so I don't have that issue right. But if someone's developing a new skill, right, if there's a habit that they're trying to break, if there's a habit that they're trying to adopt, you got to spend three, four weeks really looking at the numbers, first, to make sure it gets done. Second, so that they can themselves see. Oh my God, I am getting better and I'm not so afraid of this task or talking to people about this, or asking someone this question, or digging in with a stakeholder and pushing back when I know it's a terrible thing that he just said or she said I need to stand up for the benefit of everyone right now, like that kind of thing. So in those situations I think it's okay. Oh, I mean easily.
Speaker 5:I mean, I'll tell you what if someone doesn't want to micromanage you in a situation where they're trying to make you better, you should be concerned, because that means they've given up on you, they don't care and you're probably going to get out the door soon. So I'd look at it as a positive reinforcement of like okay, you know and I think that's the other thing too is just helping people see it from a different perspective too right, and not as like hey, we're trying to attack you more of hey, we're just trying to freaking, help you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I like that. Let me ask you real quick oh, so go ahead, Vanessa.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I was just going to say I mean, I feel like I'm kind of in the middle. On the micromanaging thing, I agree with you know, especially when you're giving somebody a new task, you just want to make sure that they get it. But of course you want to hire people that are willing to ask questions if they don't get it. So that's a big deal.
Speaker 3:I think the best advice I've ever gotten in my career I think possibly was when I back when I was an intern, I had a boss that said I'd rather you ask a thousand questions and do something right than not ask enough questions and do something wrong.
Speaker 3:So I always lean towards that. But at the same time, like I think let's say you have an employee that you've been managing for a while and something goes awry, I think as kind of maybe transparency for the business to spend some extra time, maybe being a little micromanagy to show as a manager that you are dealing with the situation and then pulling back as you know the dust settles a bit on whatever may have occurred is also important, but I don't think it should be an ongoing management style but more of a situational management style, exactly what I brought up earlier, with being a chameleon leader and knowing what trait to implement in your given scenario.
Speaker 5:So 100% agree.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that makes sense. I you know. I wonder too, like a lot of micromanagement happens utilizing Salesforce as a user. Right, did you put your stuff in? Did you log your calls? Did you log your activities? Did you log like in general? Right, you can't no data in, it's hard to analyze it, do anything with it. You need that. And of course, salesforce adoption varies anywhere from 0% to 100%. Right, pick a number through a dart, like it's going to be somewhere in the middle there in general. But now with products like Einstein Activity Capture I think I'm saying it right. I can't recall Things like that where you know the people who are actually using the products don't have to be so responsible for every little do-hickey in contact that they make. If it's automatically getting captured, then that you know they can't get busted for not logging their stuff. Most of their stuff's getting logged anyway, or a lot of it anyway. So I think there's sometimes it's like okay, if this is a real detriment to the staff or it's a time suck, how can we automate this? Right?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think it's automating. I think it's also user experience design. So, yes, we want to solve a business problem, but did we design it in such a way that the people will adopt it? Then how do we also position this feature so that it actually offers them value? So if we show them, hey, we're introducing this new thing that you have to enter, like, can we incorporate it into a business process? What are the reports that'll be useful to you if you keep doing this and showing them that vision of the future and selling them on the value to them in doing their jobs better, particularly if it's tied to their commissions? That's, I'm just going to throw in sorry, some Salesforce-y stuff in there.
Speaker 2:No, it's great. I think this is great. I mean, look, we're just having a discussion here and we're bouncing stuff around the room a little bit. I want to get back to you for a second here, Mr Pelt. So you went out and acquired eight certifications fairly rapidly. It looks like you accomplished all of those in about a four or five-month time period, right, oh, maybe.
Speaker 5:I haven't written down their wrong, I only have my administrative certification. Oh, the other ones, those are all the super badges and things in my hands. Got it. Yeah, someone was like hey, I think you have this wrong, and I was like oh, but I'll fix it. I'm like, no, yeah, no, I just have my admin cert. I wanted to get more, but I don't know. As I was just cruising along through, I don't know my journey, I'm like, ok, I think I'm doing pretty good.
Speaker 2:I don't know if I need anything else, and so let me ask you this then Was there one of the super badges more useful for you in your daily career that you have now, you know, was doing the BA specialist versus the security specialist or process automation Like was one of those in there. Like you know what I really lean into this like a lot more than I thought I would.
Speaker 5:You know, I'll be honest, I like, I really did like the app. It's like the app automation one I can't remember the exact.
Speaker 5:Customization specialist, yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't know. I just I personally enjoyed that only because now, whenever we want to like change something you know within within our org, it's like, oh, we can do it and have it do this or look like this. So I I would say I enjoyed that one the most. As far as did any of them really benefit? I mean my Salesforce team I'm really big on like hey, you should go do super badges, only because I find them more interactive and I know Salesforce has just they just keep pumping them out, which I think is great. But yeah, I mean, as far as the ones I did, I really liked them, but that one, that one's probably my favorite, just because I think I use it the most OK, cool, it's most interactive and you know, let me throw in for folks that do want to represent their super badges on LinkedIn.
Speaker 3:Super badges are actually considered Salesforce credentials. They aren't quite at the level of certifications but I think that they are important to showcase on LinkedIn and actually Salesforce Trailhead Super Badges is the institution. So when you're trying to add your super badges onto your LinkedIn, that's what you want to look for. It wouldn't be Salesforce. You would pick Salesforce if you're trying to represent a certification, but you would look at the super badges. For if you're adding a super badge, Look at that, vanessa coming in with a knowledge.
Speaker 2:Big shock, big shock there. So so, mr Andy, let's get back into a couple, couple of things. We're not going to stick around too long on careers, on your specific career, but I've got to tell you like I'm so impressed. I don't know how you go from managing no one or just managing projects, and I say just, I know it's the whole thing. Okay, so I'm not minimizing it. There's a lot of wonderful PMs out there, but it's not the same thing to have direct reports and have hiring, firing responsibility and P and L responsibility for the entire company's tech department, right? So what the hell happened? Like, how did that go down? Like, where you're an admin, you PM in the Air Force one day, then you're an admin at a company the next day and two years later you're running a team of 25. Now, not everybody is potentially as ambitious or even as capable as you, right, that's okay. But for those who are, I'm sure they're going to be curious how in the world did you do that?
Speaker 5:Yeah. So when I was, when I was doing my gig as a Salesforce admin, you know, I just I'm really big on calling things out right, and and what I like to think is, the difference between me and the majority of our people and this is something I ran into at this current company is that a lot of people have a lot of great ideas, a lot of people like to talk, but nobody likes to take action Right, and so, for me, I just take action. So if I see something, I'm like, hey, this looks messed up, I find out who to talk to. I say, hey, I think we should do X, y and Z. And they're like, oh really. And I'm like, yep, this is how we do it, I think we should do it. And then they say, okay, I like that idea.
Speaker 5:And me being an admin, I was just noticing like a gap within our PMs, and so I kind of just put myself out there and I'm like, hey, I think I'm more useful as a PM than an admin. They're like you know what? I think you are too. And so I got moved to be a PM, but that was my first civilian role and I was like well, let's see what else the world has to offer.
Speaker 5:And so I saw this senior project manager role at the countdown at now and I applied for it and you know, I told I mean I told the COO, so the COO is my boss and I told them during the interview like, hey, I'm not going to be your most technical individual, but I'm never going to give up, right, I'm going to know how to lead and execute and manage and just drive things.
Speaker 5:I'm going to make it happen. And so I think I just convinced them from that aspect. And he was like okay, he brought me on, evaluated how I can push our Salesforce org and our Salesforce projects internally. And so he was just like you know, I think that you can do a lot more for us if you can oversee all of our technology. And I was like you know what? I think I can too, and all I did was just put myself in the right positions, talk to the right people and just take action on the things that I saw. I mean all of us see things every day, like I'm the type of guy if I'm walking down the street, I see trash on the ground, I'm picking up the trash.
Speaker 2:I'm running away. I was just going to bring that up, like that's the best example, right? Yeah, I mean, who walks by the garbage versus who bends down and picks it up. There's actually a pretty funny curb your enthusiasm episode about that. Yeah, that's good stuff. You know, I'm going to jump in real quick because I want to summarize with a Jordan Peterson quote. But I want to summarize what you just described and it's something that we've said probably three or four times over the last three years on this show which is notice that opportunity lurks where responsibility has been abdicated. That's where your success is right. Yeah, yeah. So it's just noticing this shit ain't getting done. No one's doing it. Life would be better for me and everyone else if I did. It won't take too long. I'm going to go do it and you just do that, and you do that multiple times. You'll get noticed and you'll get promoted. Period, period. That's straightforward, yep.
Speaker 5:I agree. I agree, I mean literally. Yeah, I mean I had a great military career too. I made every rank first time. I have a lot of great accolades, and it's just keeping the same personality, just doing what needs to get done. And people recognize that and then they talk and they're like, yeah, that's just an individual who just gets things done. Yeah, that's what I want to be remembered as is just someone who just gets things done Well, it's working so far, my friend.
Speaker 2:Let's talk about hiring for a little bit and then, I think, for the next part of the show we've got a couple of questions that we can uncover and some updates from Vanessa too, about just events and things that are going on. So do you have a go-to question in your interviews? Is there something that and if it's maybe, or sometimes, then that's a no right, but is there one that you lean into every single time?
Speaker 5:Yeah, I always just love asking people what's the most uncomfortable situation you've been in and what did you do to resolve it, because I feel like that's going to show me a lot of character about an individual, because a lot of people would back away from those very uncomfortable situations. So I really want to understand a person's character on how they handle those, and so sometimes I can really gauge how you're going to be as a person on a team, depending on what situation you've encountered. Because this goes back to stress. Everyone has different levels of stress and so if you haven't been exposed to a lot of stress, your stress levels are different than someone else's.
Speaker 5:And so I want to know what is the shittiest situation you've been in? Yeah, and I want to understand okay, this person's probably had a tough life. Okay, so I can gauge them on that aspect. But then I can gauge you on how did you react to that situation. Yeah, what did you do? And so I feel like I can really understand a person from that question at least just for me, that's a great question.
Speaker 2:And when you went yeah, I really like that question a lot. I mean it's a tricky one because there are certainly uncomfortable. You're more likely to face uncomfortable situations, I think, in our personal life than in our business life, just because that's where we spend most of our time, even if it's sleeping. So it might be more difficult for people to wrap their head around a business situation where that occurred, but it's still a great question. What about qualities that you look for? We talked a little bit earlier about this you and I did about the kinds of qualities, or the top quality, that you're looking for in an individual. What's the characteristic?
Speaker 5:Yeah. So from a technology perspective, what I'm looking for is someone who's just going to be highly adaptable. And what does that mean Essentially? If you're the type that says, oh, that's not my job, I don't want you working with me, I'm sorry. Technology evolves so rapidly every single day that we have to evolve with it, and so just because today we got hired to do this job doesn't mean tomorrow it can't change. And I really need someone who's able to just show that they're adaptable and willing to learn and be willing to say, hey, I don't know, but I'll go learn it and figure it out. Those are qualities of someone who's going to show me that they're going to be able to just get it done, even if it takes them a little bit longer. That's okay, because I know that they're dependable, because they're going to get it done. So that's what I'm looking for.
Speaker 2:Yeah, good quality it's an excellent quality adaptability, but how do you actually screen someone for it?
Speaker 5:Yeah. So I mean, I just simply ask them hey, how would you feel if you got hired for this role, but we have you doing something else, so instead of and I'll just use something very vague here like, instead of building maps, I need you to build out dashboards, so I need you to work in Tableau now. So how would you feel about that? And they might say well, they might ask questions about pay, which that's totally acceptable. I understand. If you're going to do more work, then you should get paid more, but that's great.
Speaker 5:Because I want to hear those things, because I want to know how you're going to operate, because if I do give you more responsibility, if you're going to want more pay, that's fine. I just want to make sure that we're on the same page. And so I feel like, by throwing out those questions on, hey, your job might change, or who you might report to you might change, or how flexible are you with what you're currently doing and what we might need you to do, and I feel like that can. Asking those types of questions can help me understand. Okay, how flexible and adaptable is this individual?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a good line of questioning. You've got to be very careful because you must be able to. For anyone who's listening right now, who's like that's great, I'm going to do that, moving forward, do it, but just understand that if you can't read their face, if you can't read their tone, if you can't tell that they're full of shit, if you can't tell that they're lying, like if you don't have and I saw you had like this EQ thing, you know, like this emotional quotient thing on your LinkedIn also. So I'm assuming you're pretty good at reading people. So, but if you're not and unfortunately people who aren't good at reading people think that they're good at reading people to their own detriment. So you've got to just really know like, yeah, I can pick up on that stuff.
Speaker 2:If you can't, don't ask it, right, because it's just asked and answered and it does nothing for you. But have someone in the room that you trust. You know, everyone knows someone who's more empathic, right, and can pick up when someone's like oh, cheryl was having a hard day. I didn't know, I couldn't tell that at all. It's like you didn't see her face, you didn't see how miserable she looked, you didn't see that hint of sadness, you know, coming through the smile, like if you're not that person, then you need to grab someone from your office who does have those qualities and have them involved in the interview process so that you can actually get like there's asking good questions and then there's interpreting the answers, and they're not the same thing. Anyone can ask anything. Interpreting it requires a certain level of just. It's a skill set, right, got to be able to read people.
Speaker 3:Can I ask that? Because I actually have historically had this problem where I kind of get as a former hiring manager. I've gotten charmed by people before where, wow, they're so charming and they seem so enthusiastic in the interview and I don't know that that's necessarily been the reality once they've been hired, as far as being that go-getter, even though they said all the right things in the interview. So for somebody who's more like me, I mean, I like to think that I'm fairly empathic, but I'm not good at cutting through bullshit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So I'll tell you what to do there. Big shock. But first of all, it's a normal thing, vanessa, and it's happened to me. I've had the wool pulled over my eyes, you know, by someone who's friendly and outgoing. And oh, you like the same football team. Great, now we're friends. Okay, doesn't mean they're going to do a good job, right. And some people just crush it in interviews. It's like, oh my God, where's this person been my whole life? And then, by noon on their first day, you're like how did I not see this Right? And that's happened. I've talked about this before. That's happened to me more than once in the past and it's, you know, it's certainly disruptive. So here's what you do. You have to understand that you have confirmation bias, right. In other words, you will only take in the information that confirms the decision that you've already made. Oh, this person just complimented me on my shirt and my new haircut and whatever my watch, my bracelet, my mustache, like whatever it is. You know, now you like them because that stuff works right.
Speaker 2:Anyone who's ever read how to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie probably the best, oldest book on, you know, creating rapport with strangers knows this. So there is some basic things that people use, including mirroring and matching right, most of us have some exposure to that. They're talking, you're from Alabama and you're talking to someone from New York and all of a sudden you start sounding like you're from New York. You know, like that's matching, that's matching accents. But we do it physically, we do it, you know, on dates. We do it with our partners, we do it with our friends and it comes naturally. But other people can pretend and create a sense of rapport where there isn't any. I actually can do that, sorry, like I can do that, right, it doesn't mean I do it, but it doesn't mean I can't do it, because I do know how it works and I have practiced it as early as age 18, which is a long time ago and I think I've talked about in the past one of my shows, like one of our shows, like I woke up three, four months later surrounded by all these people I didn't like, and why? Well, I'd been practicing rapport and NLP and stuff on them and it's like, okay, that's, that's dangerous, right.
Speaker 2:So what you do is first recognize you can be sold, to recognize that your first impression must be then thrown away and now all of your energy, 100% of your energy, is trying to uncover reasons why you don't like them. All right, so the person who's charming and sweet and nice now you have to put them up against the wall with some hard questions. Right, talk faster, speed it up, see how fast they can think. And so I'll do this with people. It's like you know we're getting along great. You know you always have to sell someone on a job before you can screen them for the job. But once you get to that point, like okay, this person's got the right background, they got the right knowledge, they seem friendly. We've talked on the phone. Now we're going to have a face-to-face interview, maybe in person, maybe it's on Zoom, right, and I really like this person. So now my job is to make sure that I'm not now. I personally trust my intuition pretty well, but I've also interviewed thousands and thousands, thousands of people. And for the people who haven't, without that kind of background, you know it's going to be a little bit, it's going to be a little bit more challenging.
Speaker 2:So what you do is you then put them up against the wall, come up with a difficult tech question or find the smallest problem on their resume and look disappointed. You know, like, give them something that shows that you're not friends, not yet right. You have to create that separation, like I'm a gatekeeper, I'm the hiring manager, I'm the person who's protecting my client, like, so this next part might not be so fun, my friend, but why in the world have you had three jobs in three years? Yeah, yeah, yeah, covid, but what's the real reason? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it, okay, but what's the real reason? Is it your boss or you didn't like your boss? Why didn't you like your boss?
Speaker 2:So we micromanaged you. Well, why was he micromanaging you? What weren't you accomplishing to begin with that needed that level of scrutiny from someone who's got other shit that they could be doing other than looking at your stuff that's not getting done right. Like you come at them, and not everyone's fun or fine doing that, I certainly don't have a problem, but that's why I run a staffing firm, right. So is this all making sense, vanessa? You just have to throw them against the wall and push them and pretend that you don't like them, and the good news is when you're done and this is you have to do this right.
Speaker 2:So, like that thing, I just went through like three years and three jobs. What happened? Yeah, but what's the real reason? No, I don't believe that. Come on, you can tell me what's the real reason. Tell me like oh, okay, whatever you know, whatever you your, your, your mom was sick, you had to move away, you lost focus, you became depressed, you weren't accomplishing everything you needed to do in the day. Like that's fine, but that's not the truth, right?
Speaker 2:There are good reasons for failing at work or for not performing at your best. It's called life. It happens to all of us health issues, relationship issues, location issues, logistics, internet, like there's a lot of reasons. But then, when you're done beating them up a little bit, it's totally okay to beat someone up a little bit in an interview, to then just say, okay, just so you know, like you did great. I have to put you up against the wall a little bit because I need to see how you respond to pressure. Not all our stakeholders are going to be super friendly bullshit with you about you know music and football or like whatever it is that you're into, right? So, but you did great, we're still friends, everything's good. Fist bump. Okay, let's move on. Does that make sense?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think I maybe need to write some of those questions down before I go to the interview.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah and hit me up, vanessa, I mean anything like that I'll help you out with you know that. Cool yeah, but it is, it is really important. I mean, imagine this right, like I've got a one of my sons just started dating this girl. They've been dating for like two weeks, which in adult land is might as well be six months.
Speaker 2:You know when you're a teenager and you, just you see how kids are, how they connect with one another. You can go all the way back to when they're four years old, five years old, and it's like you know, hi, do you want to be my best friend? Okay, mom, dad, we're best friends now. Hey, good job guys. All right, you know. And then it takes more and more scrutiny. The older we get, we build up walls. We're a little bit more protective of ourselves. We recognize that in relationships we can get hurt.
Speaker 2:But for some reason, when someone's so desperate for help to bring someone onto their company because it's like, well, I'm working 70 hours a week, I need to get this person in here so I can get back to 40 or 50 hours a week, but we can actually accomplish all of our goals. So you stop digging because, god forbid, you find out a problem with this person and you've only got one good candidate. So your boss is saying, hey, make it work. Right, like if you don't fill this rack, I'm going to have someone else fill it in a different division. They can, sacramento can pick it up, we'll get that person placed there. Make it happen. Now. You've just had all your power taken away from you Not really, but you think that it has, because your job is to fill someone with a really good person who can be a high performer and accomplish everything that you need to do, not just get someone some paperwork on board and throw them a bunch of crap that they might or might not be able to accomplish. You must protect your company, you must protect your time and you can only do that if you understand how someone's going to behave in other scenarios.
Speaker 2:So if you ask someone you know like hey, tell me about a time when Blake, honest to God, I'll tell you and Andy, some of your questions, like tell me about a time that you were, what was it specifically? It was like tell me about a time that you were most uncomfortable. I don't know if I could answer that off the cuff, I don't know. I mean, maybe I could, but I don't know. That would be like I find that difficult. I find it easy to ask, but I find it difficult.
Speaker 2:So you've just got to be really mindful. Like, how do I make? I need to prove to myself that I'm right by first uncovering everything I can about this person, and the best way to make someone reveal more about themselves first is to one get them to like you, right. And if you're likable, you don't have to get them to do anything. You're just already likable, right? So that's not a big big deal, right? If people don't like you, you've got bigger problems than how to interview, right. So you start there and then it's like okay, how do I put myself in a power position to get this person to feel uncomfortable? What's a question I could ask Where's a hole and where's the chink in their armor?
Speaker 2:Why did you post this two years ago on LinkedIn or on Facebook? Why did you get put? Why did you begin politicizing stuff? When you're this is a professional thing, well, why did you do that? You know you can look at the stuff. Just takes a little bit of research but find something to poke them with. And then you get to like, confirm, like, oh no, they had a good reason for that.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, Like they completely own that that maybe wasn't a good idea and shared what they did to correct it. Now you know you've got someone who is actually accountable for their actions, which is a huge thing.
Speaker 3:Well, well then, damn Josh, all right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what do you really think, josh? No, it's great stuff though, vanessa, I love. I mean, clearly I love this stuff Like I freaking chew it up. I love it. I love it every day.
Speaker 3:No, I love that, you love it. I mean honestly and this is me being a little vulnerable I mean, I haven't been a hiring manager in a number of years and that was always one of my week spots as a manager. I'm a great manager once you're on the job. But, man, I've made some bad decisions and this is all super useful for me. So thank you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you got it and we'll connect after. So Vanessa is hiring a new person for her team, which is fantastic, and so did you want to talk about that at all real quick?
Speaker 3:Sure, Okay, Sure, I mean it's not, we're still kind of putting it together. But yeah, I'm, I would love to, you know, pick your brain. I'm not sure how much you want to talk about as part of the show, but kind of being a hiring manager. Again, I'm trying to think of what's changed even in the last decade. I haven't hired anybody since COVID, certainly. But you know, it's more of a of not an entry level, but also not particularly experienced, like one plus years of experience, but I don't know, is that even the right number? Is that? You know? Do people do panel interviews on Zoom now? Do people still do one-on-ones?
Speaker 2:Yeah, how many interviews? Yeah, all of that stuff, yeah, they do. There's a million ways to skin this cat right, like I mean, you can go into Salesforce, spend 24 hours, you know, squeezing a power bar in between each meeting trying to like get through to get on board there, so you can. There's a lot of different ways. You can do the panel interviews. You can do you know, a series of one-on-ones two-on-one and then one-on-one. You know, like there's a ton of different ways to do and we can figure out what the best process is for you.
Speaker 2:But the first thing that you want to do when you're going to bring someone on board number one is have a real job description, Not an invitation. I'm not saying post it, but have an understanding. We just went through this with my company, felicia our CEO. She did an amazing job of putting all of this together, like what's everyone's role? What are the KPIs? What are the metrics? How do we know when you're successful? Right, this is not what you stick on LinkedIn to post an ad, or on CareerBuilder or like whatever, indeed, or whatever. Okay, so a job advertisement, that's not the same thing Job description. You show up here. This is what you're going to do. This is what you need to do. These are the tools you're going to use. These are the metrics that we're going to measure your success by. That's a real job description.
Speaker 2:Job invitation should be low on bullets, you know, not more than seven per section, preferably not more than five. It should be exciting. You need to have an EVP. That's your employee value proposition. Like what are people going to benefit from by working for your company, right? So, like I know, with where you are like Mosaic, it's like okay, well, you're saving the earth, right? Like that's the short version, you guys help, or you guys help facilitate financing of, you know, low environmental impact sources of energy. Did I get that right? I'm winging it here.
Speaker 3:Yeah, okay, no, you're doing great Cool All right, thanks, all right.
Speaker 2:So the idea first thing is like okay, well, what do you do Like? What problem are they solving, right? What problem are they Like? What's the whole company doing for the in the world? That's step one. What are they going to be doing in the department, in the division, right? That's part two.
Speaker 2:To find that, what's it going to be like? What's your management style? Understand what it is. If you don't know, write it down, figure it out. Maybe chat GPT knows what your management style is.
Speaker 2:I don't know, but figure it out and be able to articulate how you lead, how you manage, right. So I can say well, I have weekly one-on-ones with my staff, you know, at the end of the week. We have team meetings on Mondays and Wednesdays and then I'm communicating daily in Slack around. You know whether it's giving people high fives for successes, sharing insights on what needs to happen, answering questions, sort of an open door policy, right. But I'm, at the end of the day, a player coach because I recruit still. Mostly I do sales and marketing, but I still recruit from time to time, mostly executive things. So, like I have a player coach style right. There you go. So figure out what your style is be able to articulate it. That will calm any interviewer interviewee down right. Just if you can actually talk about your job and how, what they can expect when they show up, right. So there's that. The other thing that you can do is just here's some hints for every anyone listening around how to conduct an interview.
Speaker 2:Number one read the whole resume. Like, actually read it. Don't read it in the interview. I do that sometimes. Read the whole resume, right. Get a real sense of who they are. And then, when they sit down or on Zoom or whatever, the first thing is like look, we've got a bunch of things we're going to talk about. Today. I'm imagining you're probably walking in the door with a number of questions. We're going to do this a little bit differently. You're just going to ask all your questions now, right, instead of having to wait and try and remember them or hope that they get resolved. So let's just answer all your questions and then I'll tell you all about the job, what it's like to work with me and what we're looking for, and then I'm going to screen you, right. So you do that. That lowers the.
Speaker 2:Sometimes you can find out very quickly oh, this isn't going to work Like they're like. You know, well, I need to know like, do I have to come into the? Do I have to work on Thursdays and Fridays? Because I take my dog to the park on Thursday from 12 to four every Thursday, and then on Fridays, you know, I have a book club. It's a four hour long book club.
Speaker 2:Like people say crazy crap, like that. And then you know like I don't think this person's got the energy or time for this job, so it's not a bad way to start, but it calms them down, right. Then you do all the normal stuff, right, you know, tell me about yourself like what's interesting about the job, all that basic stuff. But then when you start really drilling down, you're focusing on accomplishments. And the way you do it is you start with the oldest viable job, like if it's not within the last 15 years, I probably wouldn't focus on it, maybe 10 years.
Speaker 2:But you say, okay, let's look at, this person's got 20 years of work history. I'm going to start 10 years ago that's when they started in Salesforce and then I'm going to have them walk me through each job, their key accomplishments in that role, why they transitioned to the next job, and now it's going to flow like a biography. It's going to flow like a real story. It's not going to look like Memento the movie. It's not some simple story that's been chopped up and reconfigured on the editing floor by the genius Christopher Nolan. Right, it's not going to make sense. I'm not Nolan, I can't do that.
Speaker 2:It's very difficult for people to start with your most recent job. Why are you looking for this job? And let's go backwards five years. Okay, let's go back from years five to three, and then we're going to go years seven to five. Like it's too weird. So start at the bottom of the resume, work your way forward. It's just going to flow way better. So that's not clearly all of my tricks, but those are a couple of things that you can start with interviewing to begin with, and also check out the number one question to ask every potential employee on my website.
Speaker 2:Go to the salesforcerecreatercom insights, click on insights and there's a blog there. The number one question.
Speaker 3:So I have a. Can I ask my number two question?
Speaker 2:Yeah, go for it.
Speaker 3:So the job market is challenging. Right now. It's probably a good time to have a job opening, but I get concerned when I see on LinkedIn that there's thousands of applications for positions and the time it would take to whittle things down. Certainly, I think, if it doesn't meet my minimum requirements, that's easy, but I think where it's like if we say one plus years and you just mentioned somebody with 10 years of experience if they're so desperate to like look for my type of job, like what do you recommend, even considering folks that are like way overqualified?
Speaker 3:feel about overqualification.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't believe in it. I mean, you've got to protect yourself, right? Like you can't have someone show up and know that in three months from now okay, look, november, we've got an election coming up. Guess what's going to happen after the election. You know it's, it's going to. Things are going to get better. It happens every time, every four years. It's sort of weird up in an election year and then everybody kind of goes oh okay, like I don't have to take all my chips, I can take some of my chips off the table now, right, like there's some more security once we know who's going to be president. It doesn't even matter who it is, it's just how it goes every four years, right. So understand that it's kind of a weird year. And, yeah, if someone was making, here's where you need to be worried. One, are they going to be challenged enough? Two, are you paying them enough? And if the market broke loose a little bit and became just, it's not a bad market, by the way, we are rolling a job average report. Three month rolling average is really good. We're like hovering around 4%. That's completely viable. That's a good market, right. So, but if things got better, if we got back down to 3% or something like that, would this person stay? And if the answer is no, well then you probably shouldn't hire, right?
Speaker 2:But there are people, particularly those of us, on the back half of our career. We're like look man, I did the 60 hour week thing. I ground it out in my 30s and a lot of my 40s. I'm ready to just. I just want to come in, knock my shit out, get it done, collect the paycheck, go home to my family. You know, I got 10 more years. Then I'm going to retire.
Speaker 2:Like there's nothing wrong with hiring someone like that, right, if they own it, if it's not a big deal. Now someone applies and they've got 10 years of experience, but they've been making 100 grand and not 200 grand after 10 years of work. It's like, well, why? Like what have you been? You've either? Like I'm assuming that person found their level Right. Okay, if someone isn't getting big pay raises and big job promotions over 10 years, who cares that they have 10 years of experience? They might have one year of experience 10 times in a row, which we've talked about. It doesn't mean they're 10 years of progressive experience. That's not the same thing. It's sort of like yeah, I ran a marathon. A marathon isn't the same as running 26 miles. If it took you a year to run 26 miles, do you see what I mean?
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, again, kind of building that story based on the resume and really seeing where they're at.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, you just asked the question, vanessa. I appreciate you saw the ad. We're looking for someone with minimum couple years of experience. I see you've got 10 years of experience. What's driving you to apply for this role, where you may experience a feeling of being undervalued for your skill set?
Speaker 2:Oh, one of the difficult questions, yeah Well, yeah, but that's not putting them up against the wall, that's just trying to know the truth. You should ask that anyway, even if you like them. You can ask it in a nice way, but you must de-risk the hire. The whole point of interviewing is either A to attract someone that you know is going to kick ass or to protect yourself from a bad employee. Let's face it half of employees are in the bottom half of all employees. Fair enough, yeah, don't hire one of those if you can help it.
Speaker 3:Thanks, josh. I appreciate the. It's nerve-wracking but I get nervous about everything. But I appreciate your point of view, even on this show. That is, I think, oftentimes catered to folks looking to get hired. As a hiring manager, it's always good to have that point of view as well on what we can do to make sure that we're not making mistakes.
Speaker 2:Yeah it is. Look, we'll talk offline. I'll hook you up with some good questions and things like that. There's also a really good article I know because I wrote it called Winning the War for Talent. You can also find it at thesalesforcerecruitercom. I go over four key points about what you can do. Whether it's a good market, a great market, a horrible market, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 2:Top people are not always, but almost always working. Not always, but almost always working. Top performers tend not to go without a job for too long. When I say top performers, I don't mean the top 50%, I mean the top 10%. Those people are hard to get them to say yes to join your company, just as they cost more money or you can't even find them. That's why people hire me and Steven and everyone else on my team is because they've been looking and they look in their inbox and they've got 500 applications and everyone's an H1B applicant or just finished talent stacker and doesn't have a year of experience or two years or three years or whatever is required. They're like, yeah, I'm getting lots of applications, but I haven't found the person. What's wrong? It's like because the people you want are happy in their job and you need someone who can access those people. Well, who are you going to get to access them? Go try and go get some 25-year-old off Mason Frank trying to do it. Okay, I'm sure they can do it some of them, but not all of them.
Speaker 2:Not all recruiters are made equal. I know that. I've trained tons of them. You show up with what you got and you crush it, or you don't. Steven crushes it. He knows his job. He knows how to do it. He can figure it out. He's got this incredible record no one in his place has ever been fired. It's incredible stuff. That's where you lean into hiring someone. Is it worth 20, 30, $40,000 to make sure that this employee is one-time cost, to make sure that this employee is going to be amazing and you will never want to fire them? In fact, you'll cry the day they leave down the road. Our clients think so. They have a happier life because the people are good. If you really get stuck, you just get a professional recruiter.
Speaker 3:Definitely Having made those mistakes. Those mistakes are expensive If you can't afford to make the mistake absolutely.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oftentimes recruiters can save you money. You don't need an architect, no, you just need a senior consultant. I'm going to hook you up. You're technical, you're smart. You're sales force smart. Not everybody is. They just make boneheaded decisions. We want an architect developer who's actually going to do 80% of their work. It's going to be admin work. Good luck with that, friends. Let's see how long they stay on the job. Sometimes people just make bad decisions. What do you think about all this, andy, our guest of the day? What do you think about what we've been chatting about?
Speaker 5:I think that it is very interesting when you're trying to bring on someone. The only reason why I say that is because a lot of us always look at the technical skills of what we're looking at. The thing I always like to look at, too, is okay, who is the person they're going to be reporting to, and does their personality mesh with this individual, as well as our culture, as well as what needs to get done? It's very difficult and interesting. I feel like anytime you bring on someone new, regardless of how much you vet them, how many interviews you do, how many people you have them talk to, it's always like a risk or a gamble. You don't know what they're going to do. Until they actually do it, you're taking their resume at face value. I find it very interesting and I always find it just very like okay, did I bring on the right individual? I think it's something that's overlooked too. I think it's worth when you're in a pinch and you need to bring on someone quickly. I think the quality just drives down.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's low hanging fruit. Low hanging fruit is readily available. You always have access to it. There's a reason why they're available. Now, I got to say this because I talked to a couple of really smart people today. All right, three really smart people, because you were in there too, andy, but I talked to two other folks.
Speaker 2:These people are making $300,000 to $500,000 a year. They know what they're doing. They've worked at big four companies. They've run massive sales force divisions. These are smart, as you know what people they're looking for jobs. Are they top 10% people? Yeah, of course they are. Absolutely the demand. When the economy gets a little bit of a cough, the highly paid positions, those ones suffer first because they can let someone go and now they can go hire five other people for $500,000 a year.
Speaker 2:You've always got to be able to deliver your value, articulate your value and be able to prove to your company or your boss or whoever, or your partner like, who knows right, what your value is and it's usually there's some metric around it. So track your numbers and know what value you bring and save your company money. Pick up the garbage on the way into the office, if it's all that stuff, and do it inside the office too with actual projects. It's good stuff, vanessa, let me just say. Let me just say this we're not wrapping up the show just yet, but, andy, I do want to thank you for being on the show, because that was a terrific segment learning about your history. Thank you again for your service.
Speaker 2:Stay on, we're going to keep talking here for a little while, vanessa. Are there any other questions that we've got or people that would like to pipe up? We've got Peter on the line. We've got Janine. Mark Hart is here today. We've got Steven Greger. Any of you who'd like to share your two cents? All you got to do is pipe up, vanessa. If you've got more questions from audience members or yourself, let's go. Let's do it.
Speaker 3:I don't have any questions on the line but I know I'm sure Peter and Janine have some experience in hiring. If you guys want to throw anything in.
Speaker 2:Ladies. First Janine. Janine's being extra quiet right now, that's okay. I was just going to say sorry.
Speaker 4:Josh. A couple of quick things. Andy, of course, thank you for your service. I actually got some really good foundations and information for all of the. I was just going to recommend a book. It's called Team of Teams. It's by a former general out of the US. It is a great book when it comes to leadership style, hiring and all of these types of things. I got a lot of inspiration from it.
Speaker 2:Terrific. Yeah, Thanks for that recommendation. Team of Teams by Stanley McChrystal is that correct? Yes, Okay, those are two good recommendations. We had Team of Teams and then we had the legacy by James Kerr with the K K-E-R-R. Those both look like really interesting reads. Good recommendation, Peter. Thank you, Janine. I understand you're in the garden. If you'd like to pipe up and share, go for it.
Speaker 6:Sure Wow, I can't hear Peter at all. Can you hear me?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we hear you just fine.
Speaker 6:Wow, okay, yeah, no, I think it's been a really interesting conversation. I appreciate the chat. Thank you all. I've definitely been on both sides of this conversation, as you know. I think there's a lot of different perspectives here. I can appreciate Andy's experience, but I also feel like there's a whole other world out there that some people won't know about. You can't ask a woman the most uncomfortable experience you've had at work, because you might actually hear about it. Some of those I don't think we can talk about. I mean, honest to God, I don't think you can say that in an interview.
Speaker 2:You can say whatever you want in an interview you might not like what you have to answer yeah, you might make someone uncomfortable, but that's what you engage in when you're having a discourse to determine your career.
Speaker 6:Yeah, At the same time, I'm not sure I want to talk about my sexual harassment experience at my next job, because what I've been told about going to an interview is keep it positive, keep it upbeat. It doesn't really matter how bad or how toxic your last job was or your last boss was. You've got to find the positive spin to put on that last job. You can ask me that question, but I'm probably going to lie. I don't know that that's really the best way to go in. Yeah, it might be. It might be.
Speaker 5:I think it's more specific to job related, and that's why Josh-.
Speaker 6:I am talking about a job.
Speaker 2:Well, we're talking. There's a difference between a job and employment. A job is the work that you're doing, but you do bring up a very important point, janine. Let's just unpack it for a second because I think it definitely warrants. I tend not to think about these things because I'm not at risk of these things. It's important to understand it and to know it. We're certainly careful about who we work with and want to protect. No one's ever had to deal with that in any client I've placed in over 20 years. I haven't seen that or heard about that post placement, but it does happen. There are different ways that we can phrase things.
Speaker 2:If someone asks you point blank, janine, tell me about the most uncomfortable situation that you were in at work. What was the situation? What did you learn from it? How did you get out of it? If your answer is it was sexual harassment, there's one or two ways you can go here. You can just say, yeah, I was sexually harassed and it really sucked. The way I overcame it was. I addressed it with HR, I brought it to the attention. The person was exposed, I got an apology. They were removed from their power position like whatever it was, and you can describe it. That's bold. I like that. If someone did that, I would never give anyone demerits for being upfront and honest about it. It's really important to remember that when you're tapping a question that might bring up strong emotions and this is not everybody I'm going to be vulnerable for a second because what I'm going to say might sound sexist and it's not. I promise you it's not, but it might sound it to some of our listeners.
Speaker 2:The reality is the way the brains work. They operate differently for women and men most of the time not always most of the time. It's always going to be exceptions, and even large exceptions. But when a woman is recalling a negative experience in her life, she accesses those memories by feeling the same way she felt in that moment. Men tend to do that much less. We tend to remove ourselves and go into that left brain mode of yeah, this thing happened. The ability to suppress those emotions, keep them from ever even entering your system. It's stronger. I'm not saying it's a strength or a weakness, because it's both strength and weakness, depending on the situation. If you're asking a woman about something that is potentially very emotional, especially if it's devastating, you can expect to be putting them through some emotional feelings that aren't going to feel very good. You have to ask yourself do I want to at all risk making this person feel so uncomfortable that they're having to remember something that might be traumatic for them? You also protect them.
Speaker 4:I was just going to say that there's also a difference when it comes to speak. Men only use the left side of our brains when we speak. When do you?
Speaker 6:use both sides. That's a fair perspective and I think that that's where we have to be a little bit careful. I think that the place where you're coming from in asking the question is similar to tell me about a challenging situation you've had at work where I think you've got to temper the most challenging situation you've ever been in with. Tell me about a challenging project you've been on. There's a middle ground in there, somewhere where some of us might take. Tell me about that most challenging situation a little bit too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you can just say one of the more challenging situations, more challenging instead of most.
Speaker 6:Yeah, you could say that Right, Because it's fraught, and I think that maybe there's a difference in how a man's brain works or a woman's brain works, or based on the difference in a range of experiences that a man might experience at work versus a woman. Jen the release speaking, I realize that there's a lot of nuance to this, but because it happens to a lot of people, but the range of things can be very, very different and there's a lot of challenges that happen at work toxic work environments that I hear a lot about from a lot of people that may or may not be gender-based or anything having to do with that, but it happens all of the time.
Speaker 3:And you know what? I'll throw in another nuance to this. As, josh, you were talking about, describe your management style in the job descriptions. I think there are certain managers that only want to see their employees as their employees and I think there are managers that are more like me, where I like to see people as whole people, that you are your whole self at work and that involves your personal stuff and I want you to feel comfortable telling me that stuff. So maybe I think maybe even having that management style up front, like you were talking about, will kind of guide how you answer those types of questions, depending on your interviewer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and there is a difference. I think you bring up a good point for that. So there's a difference, though, between being a whole person at work and open and sharing of yourself, talking about your weekend, or if you're having trouble at home or elsewhere or your health or something, you can bring it up and it feels safe to talk about it, but managers should not really be friends with people that they might have to hire. That's a line that I had to learn a long time ago, and it wasn't a fun thing to learn, and it's also one of the challenges that we have. We're more likely to face that challenge when we're a player coach, right? So back in the day, I was sitting there with the team. We're all sitting together, I'm the boss, we're all sitting there, we're all working, I'm doing the same job as them. I'm just happy to be the boss, right. So you want to have colleagues and you want to feel like you're just part of the team, but you've got to remember, no, these people are going to have to lean on you and you're going to have to have some sort of division in your relationship, some sort of distinction.
Speaker 2:I always think of Captain Miller, the role played by Tom Hanks in Save and Private Ryan, and I want to say there was a I think it was Save and Private Ryan, it could be another war movie, but it was something along the lines of like, hey, how come you don't you want to play cards with us, captain? And he's like no, and I said, well, why not? It's like because I never wanted these guys have so little. The last thing I want to do is be their boss, tell them to go pick up a gun, jump out of the bunker, charge the enemy. Oh and, by the way, I took them for 20 bucks last night. I'm paraphrasing, but like you never want to put yourself in that position where you can harm them more by being their friend and their boss. So it's okay to be friendly, it's okay to be friends with peers, right. But if someone is an employee because of you and would leave because of your decision, then you must draw that line, right.
Speaker 3:That I totally agree with.
Speaker 2:Like.
Speaker 3:I mean, we're not talking about, you know, doing sleepovers with you know, team sleepovers or anything like that, what? But I think more in terms of I want people to feel comfortable telling me about time they may need to take off because of kid issues or taking care of sick relatives. If they're having some, maybe they just had a massive breakup and they need some mental space, or they don't feel like they're capable of doing their job at 100% and might need X amount of time or extra support. Those are the kinds of relationships that I like to develop with my team, so that you know it's not a surprise if something goes wrong. I want to be able to support them up front and that means that I'm hoping that when they are at, you know 100% that they're giving me 100% and when they're not at 100%, that they feel comfortable telling me so that I can support them, so that I can get that work to 100%.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that makes perfect sense, Absolutely, yeah. Yeah, I think more management style is like that, but it's also often culture-based, right? So, like we've got a very large Indian population in the United States and abroad that focuses on Salesforce Dare, I say half of Salesforce professionals are probably of Indian heritage and India has a different culture than the United States, and then even within that culture, there are different cultures based on, you know, your cast, which still exists not everywhere, but it still exists, you know. And so, getting a sense of that, you know you go work for an Indian company, you might have the best job of your life, might be amazing, or you might be shocked that your boss is like, looking at you like you're just, you know, like just nothing, just a piece of crap. Do this for me, you know, slave, because that happens too right. And so we've got to be really conscientious of, well, what's the predominant culture of a company. That's not to say that you can't work for an American company and have that same experience. You know it just doesn't matter. But you just got to understand, like, what's your personality, what do you need from a manager, what do you need from a company? Make sure you're asking the right questions.
Speaker 2:Like this whole interview thing. I hate that it always gets skewed Like did I do enough to get the job? Did I say the right things to get the job? Like I just need my break, right, but you've got to protect yourself from joining the wrong company. That'll screw you over for years.
Speaker 2:You know it can wreck your mental health. It can absolutely destroy your mental health. It can destroy your confidence. It can destroy your income. You can get stuck in some, you know, held over barrel and some dead-end job and never make the decision to do something about it, which requires risk. It requires risking income. It requires, you know, maybe taking out a credit card if you really hate where you are and living off that for a month or two, like whatever it is. It's not comfortable, but you've got to take ownership and it can start if you're the candidate. If you're a candidate, going into interview with Vanessa by the way, just because she's a nice person doesn't mean she's a pushover. She's not. She's not. She's had some of the most difficult, challenging, tough conversations with leadership that you could possibly imagine. Am I correct here, vanessa For?
Speaker 3:sure, 100%, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So just because someone's friendly that you're interviewing with doesn't mean they're a pushover. You know, you've got to align yourself, like look, I tend to think that we kind of travel through this world in tribes. You know we attract certain types of people to ourselves and you know, you know you can't just go through. You know things work out, you know they just do they work out. We're like bees or ants different personalities, certain quantities of each working in a certain combination to get certain things done, and it just sort of works that way. All I do is sort of help some of the bees get to certain jobs you know what I mean. Like that's my bee job or my ant job, right so, but you've got to protect yourself. And to protect yourself there's a really great question. You can come this is the third blog I'm citing on this episode but there's a really good article and it's called the number one question to ask your future employer or something like that. It's also on the salesforcerecretercom forward slash insights and that is a straightforward question. You know, if you were to hire me, I'll just say it. If, let's say, this worked out great, you gave me an offer and I started on Monday. I'm just doing fantasy land here for a second. I'm not expecting that from you. I know this is an interview and, by the way, this should probably be your second interview, that you're having this conversation at your first one. But the question goes like this let's say you hired me. Let's say I started on Monday.
Speaker 2:In three months from now, what will I have learned about working for you or this company or this job that I'll really wish I'd knew today? What am I going to find out that can't be hidden In three months from now? Tell me what that is. You'll be shocked at what you hear. Sometimes it's like, honestly, I wear my heart on my sleeve and what you see is what you get and what I represent is what you're going to find. And that's a great answer.
Speaker 2:Others will be like, okay, I'm not really allowed to say this, but we're getting bought. I don't know if I'm going to be here in six months Like, oh, we're going to get bought by who I can't tell you. Okay, so what's that do? As far as like, how awesome is this job? Right now, you're basically interviewing for a job that you're not going to interview for because you're going to have a different boss and a different owner of the company and they never interviewed you and you never checked them out. So warning right, but that's the thing that, as a candidate, you can use to protect yourself in the future for sure.
Speaker 3:And actually I use that in my last job interview. So thank you, Joe. Good, I'm glad.
Speaker 2:Yay, yay. I'll tell you. If I could just push a button and help everyone's careers today, like and just like great, I'm retired. I helped everybody out. I would love that there's so much unnecessary bad hiring going on, and I would dare say at least 50% of hires are bad hires. I've got the stats to back it up. It's not good Like. The only reason why, when we place someone, we have a 6% attrition rate and a zero firing rate is because of the process that we go through the interviews and where we find people right Like I can teach this to people and then they can use it. If they get good enough at it, they can use it. They'll never have a bad hire for the rest of their life.
Speaker 2:This stuff is not hidden. This isn't buried a mile deep on the moon. We've got knowledge. We know how to do this, but the shameful part is the number of people who don't take it seriously enough. Yeah, I worked for John for four years. I sat in all of John's interviews. I know how to interview.
Speaker 2:Well, john was a terrible interviewer. You just learned how to do everything the wrong way. How many people have been replaced in that four years? Was there a revolving door on your team. Because if there was and you're interviewing the way you were taught, the way you got interviewed when you joined then, brother, you got a problem Serious or sister, you got a serious problem because now you don't have a mentor on how to do the thing that's most important for all managers, which is build a team that is successful. That's your job. Yeah, you got to click on stuff and write some code or whatever, talk to stakeholders, blah, blah, blah. Okay, that's the day-to-day stuff, but the important thing, the Super Bowl stuff, that's the hiring, because you're going to make or break your life right there.
Speaker 2:Take it seriously, investigate. There's some great books. There's a book called the who no, it's called who by Street and Smart. That's a really good book. Jeff Hyman's book, recruit Rockstars that's a really good book. I shared a couple of tips from that book that I learned from that book today, earlier today. Okay, so figure it out. If you want to be a real leader, you better know how to hire. If you're not going to use a recruiter, you better read a book.
Speaker 3:I'm hopping into my Amazon cart right now.
Speaker 2:There you go. There you go. Well, guys, this has been a wonderful 90-minute session. I can't thank you enough. Some of you guys have really stuck along for the long term. We've got basic cool guy Big Demo. Thanks for joining us today. Big Demo, it's great to have you on the show. We've got Steve, and joined us Casey, joined us Cheesecake Larry. We've got Peter Gonson. We had Janine Markhart. Janine, I got to tell you, you always share an interesting insight in a way that I don't think about frequently enough. It's always at the tip of your tongue and it really helps me. I want to thank you for your insights. It's very helpful. I want to thank you, too, and a special thanks to Andy Plack. Andy, we struggled getting you on X today, but it worked, man, and you did fantastic. So thank you so much. You're welcome back anytime. Just jump on in. I think that you've got terrific insights. So come on to the panel anytime you like my friend.
Speaker 5:Thank you so much for having me. Thank you all, I appreciate it.
Speaker 2:You got it, buddy, Vanessa. Upcoming events are things that we should be paying attention to.
Speaker 3:Well, one of the things that I talked about in my Salesforce BA community yesterday was all the calls for speakers that are open and I think if you're looking to be seen as an expert in our industry, this is a really great place to start, and especially if you're looking to talk about business analysis topics, I'd be also happy to have you in my community to maybe present on some of these. But I just wanted to bring up for calls for speakers In the order of how soon they close. We've got Forcelandia that closes March 17th. So if you're interested in speaking in Portland, london's calling. Tahoe closes tomorrow. What? Tahoe closes tomorrow? Yeah, tahoe closes tomorrow. If you're interested in speaking a Tahoe dream in that close on February 29th.
Speaker 3:Forcelandia sorry, london's calling is next. If you're interested in speaking in London, that call for speakers closes on March 19th. If we're talking about vets, you don't have to be a vet to speak, but if you're available virtually May 7th or 8th, that call for speakers for the Merivis Virtual Military Summit closes March 20th. Buckeye Dreamin if you can speak in Columbus, ohio, in July, closes March 31st. Portugal Dreamin if you want to take a trip to Europe in July, that call for speakers closes in April.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that sounds really. I think I might have my next speaking engagement. Let's see if I can write a compelling pitch.
Speaker 3:There you go. Yeah, no, we're actively recruiting speakers right now for the Portugal Dreamin team. They actually reached out to me, but I can't make it.
Speaker 2:When is that? It's in July.
Speaker 3:Yeah, July 13th in.
Speaker 2:Lisbon, you know, being on the East Coast now, it's not that far.
Speaker 3:Hey, might be worth a shot. That could be cool.
Speaker 2:I'd love to hear a report back on that.
Speaker 3:Witness Success, which is a more women in tech focused Salesforce conference, is going to be in Louisville, kentucky, in August 2nd or 3rd. That call for speakers ends on April 19th. Then Florida Dreamin, which I'm sure you'll be able to meet Josh Matthews there in October 2nd to 4th in Clearwater Beach, florida. That call for speakers closes on July 15th.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm definitely going to be there. I'll probably do some session, I would hope. I think we're going to do a live podcast from Florida Dreamin this year also. That's at least what Ben was querying about. That might be a lot of fun. Thanks for the updates. I never think to look at all of this stuff. I'm glad that there's a single source of truth. It's not Salesforce, it's Vanessa Grant. That's awesome.
Speaker 3:I'm trying here.
Speaker 2:You're doing great, let's get people up in their careers.
Speaker 3:That's what we do, Josh.
Speaker 2:That's right. That's right. I love it. Guys, thanks so much for joining us today. We do have some interesting speakers coming up. We have a specialist who's going to be on, I think, in a couple of weeks, I can't remember. We've got someone coming up to talk about flows. If you don't have experience with it, how can you get your hands on it? How can you get better at it? How do you articulate it in interviews? That's going to be with Christina Nava. We've got a session booked with Anna Poppus and our own Fred Cadena. Fred Cadena ran FinServe for Silverline. Anna Poppus ran FinServe Salesforce, finserve for Cognizant both clients of mine. They're going to get together. We're going to talk about AI. We're going to talk about the financial services ecosystem and how it works with Salesforce. I'm looking forward to that as well. Let's see what we had, andy, today. That was terrific. We've got one coming up late April with Janine. I think we've got. Who else is in there, vanessa?
Speaker 6:We have Eric Druschville.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the Drusch.
Speaker 6:And Melissa Hildes and Makeda Keaton.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm looking forward to that. You guys are going to crush it. Thanks everybody for joining us today. Stay tuned for some more awesome episodes and fantastic guests, just like our visitor Andy today. Andy, if someone wants to connect with you, how could they go about doing that?
Speaker 5:I believe the best way of doing it is on LinkedIn. I got almost 10,000 followers, so I'm trying to grow my LinkedIn every day yeah buddy, Way to go. I'm doing it, but yeah, linkedin, you can find me, andrew Peltk, and that's where I'll be.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's P-E-L-C folks. Full name Andrew. Last name Peltk, and I'm not sure if you've got it. Yeah, it's Andy. You can also type in Andy H Peltk, so linkedincom forward slash, i-n forward slash, which is the standard domain thing, and then you just type in Andy H-P-E-L-C. You'll be able to find him. He's not much of a Twitter rotty, but he is on Twitter as of today, so you can follow him also from. He's got the two hands given a double high five up here if you're on the live show. So that's all I got to say this week.
Speaker 2:Vanessa, thanks for all the insights and Andy, again thank you and thanks for all of our listeners, looking forward to more wonderful podcasts coming up. If you like this show, if it's been helpful for you, we want to hear success stories. Okay, we want to talk about your success story. It's something that you learned from this show that has been absolutely intrinsic in helping you land that job, hire the right person or accelerate your career, improve your relationship with your boss. Whatever it is, we want to hear about it. You can always DM me here on LinkedIn or on Twitter, where it's just typing Josh Matthews, he'll be right there. Or it's forward slash, joshua Matthews, I think is what it is, or you can message Vanessa on that.
Speaker 2:Also, if you like the show, make sure that you subscribe, hit the like button and if you're on Apple, you actually get to write a little review. So most people who listen to on Apple. If you can write a little review for us, that would be great. We're getting about 500 downloads a show. We'd love to get it up to a thousand by the end of the year. Help us by sharing this program with the people that you care about, your life.