Wage Trends, + Strategies for Career Advancement and Authentic Hiring with Stacey Whitaker

Unlock the secrets of crafting a career within the Salesforce ecosystem with the wisdom of Stacey Whitaker, a Salesforce MVP Hall of Famer whose insights on authenticity could very well be the key to your next breakthrough. This episode is a treasure trove for professionals seeking to navigate the hiring process with integrity, from presenting your best self on paper to acing job interviews with genuine curiosity. We cover the vital need for genuine interactions, the post-pandemic market shifts that demand specialized roles, and the importance of aligning your strengths with future employers' visions.

We don't just stop at career tips; your well-being is on our agenda, too. Tap into strategies that marry work productivity with mental health, as we share stories that stress the importance of breaks, physical activity, and even the role of AI tools like Motion in transforming task management. Listen how Francisco Valdivieso reveals how mindfulness can prove beneficial not just for individuals, but also for business leadership and the bottom line. Let our conversation inspire you to create a work-life balance that doesn't just work for you, but works wonders.

For those ready to make their mark in the Salesforce realm, we've got your back with practical advice on tailoring your resume to echo your true experience and achievements. Understand the art of quantifying your impact to stand out as a valuable investment to potential employers. And if you are looking to connect with the community, we update you on the latest events where you can network and grow. So, get set to elevate your Salesforce career with a blend of authenticity, strategic insights, and a holistic approach to professional development in this episode of the Salesforce Career Show.

Chapters

• 0:06 Salesforce Career Show
• 11:50 Work Productivity and Mental Health
• 19:27 Productivity, Time Management, and Leadership
• 29:56 Authenticity in Hiring and Career Development
• 41:13 Business Authenticity and Growth Through Communication
• 45:00 Navigating Authenticity in Job Interviews
• 58:43 Authenticity on Job Resumes
• 1:02:32 Crafting Effective Resumes With Accomplishments
• 1:07:23 Salesforce Career Show Event Updates
• 1:16:55 Salesforce Staffing Opportunities and Support

Transcript

Josh Matthews: 0:06

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. Yes, welcome everybody. We appreciate you being here live or listening to the recorded version. We've got an exceptional show today. I'm actually very excited about it because we have Stacey Whitaker.

Josh Matthews: 0:32

Stacey is an accomplished Salesforce professional. She's got over 14 years of experience in the ecosystem. She's a thought leader. She's a creative problem solver. She's a Salesforce MVP Hall of Famer and a Salesforce military ambassador. She's very sought after as a speaker.

Josh Matthews: 0:48

She presents on topics including Salesforce trends and leadership, and today she's going to lead us through a discussion talking a little bit about authenticity in the hiring process and in the job acquisition or interview process as well. But first, before we do that, we've got a little mini discussion going on before hit and record on this, and so we're going to dive into that. We've got some interesting articles that an interesting article that came out about people feeling uninspired at work. We want to address that, and we also had some interesting communications this week on LinkedIn sort of an open discussion around what it means to be a passive candidate versus an active candidate and what some of the challenges might be in each position. So with that, I'm going to introduce Vanessa Grant, co-host. Extraordinaire Vanessa. Welcome to the show. Stacey. Welcome to the show Peter Ganza, welcome to the show Everybody Janine, stephen, casey, everybody, all our regulars great to see you, vanessa, go ahead and just chime right in. What was the discussion about right before we hit record here?

Vanessa Grant: 1:51

So I've been speaking with a number of folks this week.

Vanessa Grant: 1:56

You know I touch base with mentees that I've had for a while and also new folks that are new to the ecosystem folks that are new to the ecosystem and something that seems to have been coming up and would love to hear anybody else's perspectives.

Vanessa Grant: 2:10

They've been hearing this with their mentees or you, Josh, as a recruiter but where there was this kind of Salesforce boom post-pandemic as every organization was doing their digital transformation, there seemed to be one, salaries were higher and also there were more niche roles. Like you could just be a pure BA or a pure developer and still make a pretty kind of hefty salary. Where now, with all the layoffs that have been taking place across our industry, second and third jobs seem to be indicating to me that they're having challenges finding roles that are pure admin or pure BA or pure, even configuration person, where they're needing to either kind of be more of a unicorn, where they're client-facing but also having to be very technical, or that it's mostly for developer work and that the rates are a lot lower, like where solution architects are being offered like $50 an hour kind of contracts these days.

Vanessa Grant: 3:12

And so there's concern because the salaries are so low that people are going to have to take pay cuts. So wondering if maybe the market's trying to correct itself where they've laid off maybe folks that were overpaid or maybe paid more at a certain point but now they can hire talent that's maybe just a little bit less experienced for less money.

Josh Matthews: 3:35

Yeah, look, it's all real. Right, it's all real, but there are some caveats here. So I'll address the first thing. First of all, there was an absolute hiring boom post-pandemic, right. There was so much pent-up demand Let me fix my shade here. There was so much pent-up demand, projects were delayed. Then, all of a sudden, they needed a lot of people and there weren't enough of them.

Josh Matthews: 3:57

Okay, so what do you do? Well, you go into competition with other companies trying to acquire the talent that you need. How do you do that? You offer more money, more benefits, things like that.

Josh Matthews: 4:08

So, yeah, the market has had an adjustment in compensation and I'm guessing it's somewhere in the 15 to 30% range, kind of depending on the job. Right, for architects, I've seen it kind of roughly in that 10 to 15% reduction. A little bit more on admins and consultants, developers I haven't seen a lot of movement, but it really depends. It depends on how many people you're talking to, right? Oh, yeah, they want to pay me 50 bucks an hour for solution architect. It's like, okay, I really don't think that's happening a lot. I mean, I really just don't.

Josh Matthews: 4:41

Just because someone, a lot of times there are customers that come out like they don't know what stuff costs and they're like, does this work? Or they look at a Mason Frank guide, or they jump on salarycom and a lot of these, a lot of these aggregates. You know these sites that aggregate compensation data are influenced greatly by third party. You know H1B or even just like sponsored talent. There's nothing wrong with that, it's just that they will generally take a lot less right. So the companies that maybe you know want to spend 50, 60 bucks or can only spend 80 bucks on a solution architect, well, they can get one. They're in India or they might be here in the United States, but they're from India. And if they want someone who has just been steeped for the last 20 years in United States culture, even if they are from India, they're going to have to pay regular rates which are substantially more than that. So I think that's part of it. The other part of your question was around specialties, right?

Vanessa Grant: 5:41

Yes, right, yes, like somebody had mentioned to me earlier this week, based on all the year they're applying, they feel like they need to be a developer in order to get a job these days for the salary that they were making previously, as like a solution architect.

Josh Matthews: 5:53

Yeah, that's interesting. Look, I mean part of me wants to say like I don't know. And look, I think it depends. We all know that BAs are generally brought in full-time. With larger companies with larger long-term projects Joe Schmoe Realty Company with four offices and 50 employees they might have a full-time admin. They're not going to have a full-time BA, as the economy has had to make some adjustments over the last 15 months. Some of those large projects have not materialized. I think that they'll come back, but they haven't materialized yet.

Josh Matthews: 6:27

So the more specialty roles like Salesforce PM, salesforce BA, salesforce technical architect we are going to see a dip and all you have to do, guys, is jump on LinkedIn and do a job search and look at how many positions there are. Many positions there are. I wrote an article some time ago and it was 45,000 jobs. I think it was 45,000 jobs a month related to Salesforce that we were seeing on LinkedIn. I don't remember exactly what it is now, but it's about 25% of that. It's so far down. That doesn't mean the hiring's not happening, but what happens is when you lay a bunch of people off and then suddenly you come into some money, you usually go back to the people who are doing a pretty decent job for you, right? So there's going to be less advertising even if there is more hiring going on? Does that make sense?

Vanessa Grant: 7:13

Yeah. Well, here's a question then. Let's say that you were part of that hiring boom and you were used to a certain salary for the type of role that you had Like. Should people be considering taking a pay cut at this point? Yes, absolutely.

Josh Matthews: 7:26

Look, so many people were overpaid. Sorry, guys, you were Like you enjoyed it, but you were overpaid. Janine, I know what you're going to say. We're going to come to you in a little while. Okay, we're not going to do too much interaction yet, but we'll get to you, okay? But because I know your situation and I know it sucks, right.

Josh Matthews: 7:43

But the reality is is that our people are compensated based on the market. We're in a Darwinian meritocracy. When there are a lot of people who can do the job and not a lot of, you know opportunities for them to do the job, the cost goes down. When there's a lot of need and demand and there's not a lot of people who are capable of doing the work they're hard to find more competition the costs go up, right. So you know we're, we're in a situation where we're just adapting and people are taking less money now because they have to, and I'm sorry, cause it sucks, right.

Josh Matthews: 8:14

But when you join an ecosystem during its heyday and you're not experienced enough or you don't know enough that, like, all things that go up must come down, and they usually come back up at some point too, like you've got to get comfortable with that, you just trust me. I mean, I haven't had a non-commissioned role since I was about maybe ever, like literally maybe ever. I had a week at Stanley Steamer when I was having hard times like many, many years ago. I think that was non-commissioned, so I'm used to it, but most people aren't. So the reality is is you're just going to have to adapt and I'm sorry, but $200,000 for an architect while I think you know, yeah, fair enough if they're really awesome, but like those numbers for Salesforce architects in my research and again, it's been a little while, it's been at least 18 months since I've done it. Compared to other tech stacks in the market, like Salesforce boomed like crazy. People are like why am I coding NET? I can make way more coding Apex right, but it's going to fluctuate. It's tech. It's always changing.

Janeen Marquardt: 9:16

Well, and actually, Josh, I was going to say something kind of almost in support of what you're saying. It's not even just that you might have to take a lower rate for doing the same job. You might have to take a lower rate for doing the same job. You might have to take some steps back, Like I mean the roles that I typically look at. I'm looking at directors, senior director and even VP roles in an ideal world practice lead, practice director there's not a lot of those out there. I'm getting ready to pick up a role where I'm probably doing hands on CPQ support, like taking tickets, because, yeah, I still got to eat, I still got to pay the mortgage and look, I have the tech skills, I can do it, and that may be what's out there and I'll take that job because I can and it's there. It's not my ideal, but sometimes you just have to take that.

Josh Matthews: 9:58

I love that, yes, look put the pride away, yeah.

Josh Matthews: 10:02

I love that, Janine. It's an excellent point. Look, I've done all sorts of stuff that I've had to do when I've had to do it, and you should too. If you're a listener and you're struggling, you go get a job. I know people that are like I haven't worked in two years and all I do is try and get my first admin role. It's like, what are you doing other than getting into debt? I mean, that's a fool's errand. Work at a coffee shop, do something.

Josh Matthews: 10:26

And this kind of brings us to that next point, which is what's the difference between an active job seeker and a passive job seeker, right? And why is one more attractive in certain conditions than another? But you know, Vanessa and I, we preach all the time If you have a job, keep that job. Unless something amazing comes across your desk, it's okay to look. There's nothing wrong with that, you should.

Josh Matthews: 10:48

I mean, we place predominantly you know my company Salesforce Staffing. We predominantly place people who are currently working, not necessarily looking, but are very open to hearing about opportunities. If it is the right kind of fit, it's the right kind of opportunity, right. So that's what we do and we have a lot of reasons behind that. Maybe we can get into that in a little bit. If you are listening to this podcast right now on a recording, I wanted to tell you something that's kind of cool about the new live show, and that is that Twitter Spaces has added in video. So right now, I mean, unfortunately, we're not getting video from absolutely everybody, because that would be absolutely awesome. But if you want to see my little mug, you can do that on these live shows, and these live shows are every other week on Wednesdays at 530 Eastern. So something to consider.

Vanessa Grant: 11:41

So should we talk about the study?

Josh Matthews: 11:44

Yeah, do that. That's a really. That was a really interesting article. I like that.

Vanessa Grant: 11:49

I did so. Josh sent me a study a little earlier today to bring up during the show. But basically talking about how folks don't particularly feel inspired at work and I know speaking for myself, but I imagine for a lot of folks sometimes you sit there and want to be productive but have trouble finding the motivation. And the study was kind of talking about how sometimes physical activity, or being near opportunities to have some physical activity, would increase productivity. So I guess I'll throw it out to the folks that are here. Are there things that you do or ways that you have your work environment set up so that you can optimize your productivity?

Stacey Whitaker: 12:31

Yeah, that's a good observation, and Vanessa and I have been remote working since pre-pandemic, though almost as long as I've been in the Salesforce space. It seems like, and I like, that it affords me the opportunity to take a quick walk, even if it's just around the block, or I can take my laptop and move to the couch like I did for much of today actually just, or I'll sit on the patio when it's a nice day, and that change of venue sometimes will help my mindset. So I agree with what you're saying, that sometimes it's nice to take that pause, to have that physical activity, but sometimes even just changing the physical surroundings is helpful also, and so plus one for the benefits of working from home.

Vanessa Grant: 13:21

So I guess I've had some like I've always wanted to do that, Like the idea of like, yes, I will go to a cafe and do some of my work there, or take a take a walk midday, I don't know. It's almost like with the remote work and I've also been. I've been remote since, I think, like 2013, but I've still yet to to be able to, to find the I don't know. I guess, like the gaps in my day, I feel like remote work has come with so many more meetings than being in person that it's been not great. Do you actually block off time on your calendar so that you can go outside?

Stacey Whitaker: 13:58

So I use an app called Motion and it uses AI to help create my schedule and it takes a look at my actual calendar meetings, takes a look at the tasks that I tell that I'm working on and recurring things. So I set time for lunch, for snack, for breaks into my day, and then the AI tool helps to rearrange if something comes up or if I don't get to it. It's not the same as like calendar blocking, but it's the same general idea. It just has a little more flexibility to it and that has helped me to really be intentional to find time. Now there are days when things happen and I'll skip those breaks, but being really intentional to set those blockers in my calendar helps me to be more often accomplishing those breaks.

Stacey Whitaker: 14:51

The other thing I'll add to this Vanessa I'm sorry to cut you off is that I had a scare a couple of years ago where I was eating at risk and multitasking, like I've done a hundred times, and I actually started choking on my food and it was a really scary moment to like ambulance and everything Like it was a whole thing. But I'm fine now. But since then I've been incredibly intentional to dedicate time for lunch. So I set that aside, for me, and it's good for my mental health, it's good I find that I eat healthier and, and you know, nobody misses me for 30 minutes when I take time off work and if there's an emergency they can text or call my phone and it's not like I'm completely off the grid but but having that is has been a big first step in setting those boundaries for myself.

Vanessa Grant: 15:50

I was just going to say, while you were talking, I poked into the Motion website.

Stacey Whitaker: 15:51

I've never heard of this thing before. It sounds awesome, it is, it is. There's a subscription cost, but it's been really helpful for me to manage all my work tasks. I'm planning a conference, the Women in Tech conference, this August. I'm writing a book on Salesforce, so it really helps me to juggle all the different pieces of my life and anyway, I'm a fan.

Josh Matthews: 16:10

That's really cool. That's really cool, stacey, and I think a lot of this is just to kind of come back to what you had said. It's like it's hard to find that time, and the reality is is you don't find it, you make it Like you just do right, like this is the time I take the walk, and then you block it in and you block your calendar and no one can cover you, and then you have to get really good at understanding like look, this is the thing that allows you to work more efficiently, it allows you to live a little bit longer, to be more present for the meetings that you do have. This is just part of tuning up every day. Whether you start your walk like I don't do it every day, but sometimes I really do enjoy like get up, go for a little barefoot walk for about half a mile or a mile, just get the blood moving, little things like that. Or I'll do a little mini, you know, session on the drums which gets the blood moving. It's actually great aerobic activity and you just change your state.

Josh Matthews: 17:01

Tony Robbins talks about this a lot and you brought it up, stacey. It's like just change your surrounding right, get out of the doldrums. Do you know, we all need a balance between novel and and certain certainty. Right, novelty and certainty right. And so if you're stuck in novelty it's you know, you're probably some road road warrior and you're all over the place. But most of us don't get stuck in novelty, most of us get stuck in certainty. We get stuck in just doing the same thing over and over and over, again and again, to Einstein's point, like wondering why it's not a different result. Go ahead, peter.

Peter Ganza: 17:35

This is a very interesting topic because it hits home for me. I set aside time in my calendar, not every day, but I'm a handyman and I'm living in a 40-year-old townhouse, so there's always something to do. And just to give you an example this week I take an hour a day and I'm in the garage painting or filling holes and doing drywall and tape and sanding, because it's exactly that right. I'm away from the screen. It's not tech and it just it clears my mind and I away from the screen. It's not tech and it just it clears my mind and I'm getting stuff done, that's right.

Josh Matthews: 18:08

I mean, whether it's meditation or the endorphins that you get. Look, we can't talk enough about exercise and how good it is for you. Like we just can't do it right, like you do it or you don't, and you know it's your thing or it's not. I gotta be honest, it's not really my thing, but I do it, you know, because I know what it does. You know I sleep better, I can concentrate more, I'm happier, it's a mood balancer. In fact, there was a study done where they took people who are in therapy and they stopped therapy for half of the group. They kept half of them in therapy and then took the other half and these were inactive people, all of them inactive. So they took the half. That was, they took half of the ones that had stopped going to talk therapy and they just had them follow an exercise regimen and the results were equal or better, like for solving their problems and their emotional state. They did another one. I thought it was equally fascinating where, instead of talk therapy and I'm not saying no to talk therapy, like I do it, it's great, it's super helpful but they did another one where, instead of having talk therapy, you just sat in front of a mirror for a certain number of minutes a day and said nice things to yourself and it did wonders. Did wonders for people. So you know these little things, you know.

Josh Matthews: 19:27

I asked my friend Francisco I've got this buddy, francisco Valdivieso. We've been friends for over 20 years and maybe 25 years and we talk every Tuesday morning for about half an hour. He's my accountability partner. We're both in business and we catch up, do friend stuff and then we talk about work. And I asked him at our year end meeting. I asked him I said what is the number one thing that you did that had the greatest impact on your business? And he said without hesitation. He said meditation, just boom, just dropped it like that, ten minutes a day. But it's the challenges that we I mean the challenges that we have, and I'm included in this with consistency, right? Anyway, it's good stuff. Thanks for all your contributions.

Vanessa Grant: 20:13

Any other inputs on this? I feel like this has been the as the Salesforce career show. Folks know, I am not great at managing my time and also getting sleep and exercise, so I'm signing up for motion like right now. There you go.

Stacey Whitaker: 20:26

I like what Josh said, that you said exercise isn't your thing, but sometimes you just go for a walk and that's exercise, that's activity, that's movement.

Stacey Whitaker: 20:34

Sometimes you said that the drums right. It's not like when people say you need to have exercise. It doesn't mean that everybody needs to spend two hours running on their Peloton every day and, you know, sweating so much they'd look like they just got out of the shower. It's more about that activity and be the creative. That's another huge outlet. So taking care of your mind, taking care of your body, taking care of your spirit, you know all these things help to make you a better overall person, which then makes you a better employee, more productive at your work and more fulfilled in what you're doing.

Josh Matthews: 21:07

Absolutely.

Vanessa Grant: 21:08

You know. I'll also ask, though what should companies' expectations be as far as your productivity over the course of a day? I mean, if you have an eight-hour workday, I guess I found that eight hours generally doesn't include lunch, so that you're at your desk or having to kind of be around for approximately nine hours, but At least for places that I've worked, it's still been kind of that almost eight hours worth of work that you have to do between meetings and actually doing stuff.

Josh Matthews: 21:40

Yeah, are you asking me that?

Vanessa Grant: 21:41

question. I'm kind of throwing it out there. Okay, I feel like it's so. It's the maybe it's our employers' expectations where they need to be so that they can get the most productivity out of their folks.

Josh Matthews: 21:57

Yeah, look, it's all over the map, vanessa, like it really is. There was a study done with I want to say it was Post Cereal out in Midwest, where they had it was either Post or Kellogg's. They tried something. They decided like, look, we've got these factory workers, they're working all crazy shifts, right, because it runs 24 hours a day. We've got these factory workers, they're working all crazy shifts, right, because it runs 24 hours a day. We want to see what happens if we gave people, we switched them from a 40-hour work week. Let's switch them to a 30-hour work week. I think it was six days, you know whatever. Six hours a day instead of eight hours a day and productivity actually increased by 15, 20%, with people working less because they stopped mucking about, right, like I know what it's like if I work till really late 10 o'clock at night, something like that, 9, 10, 11 o'clock at night I know what's going to happen. I'm going to stay up really late because I need my downtime before I go to bed. I don't just like shut the laptop and close my eyes. That's never going to happen with this guy, so, and then I wind up going to work late. So it's not like a great cycle for me, right, but these guys, they, they tried this experiment. It worked. People were happier, there was less turnover, people knew their jobs better and, guess what? They could go pick up. They could go pick up. They could go to their kid's soccer game. They had time to hit the bank. They had time to go to the doctor's office, this kind of stuff. They gave them a raise, by the way, a 25% raise to compensate for the fewer hours. Then the company got bought and they got rid of it and production went down.

Josh Matthews: 23:29

I don't know what's up with people, man. Like people do the dumbest shit all the time, despite facts flying in their face, like they just do dumb stuff. As far as the eight hour workday and efficiency, everything depends on the individual. It depends on the tools that they have, it depends on their mood that day. It all, it all depends. You know, if you look at how they, you know, look at Chinese factories, what do they do? They start the day with calisthenics. Right, let's get the blood moving. Like there's some science behind that.

Josh Matthews: 23:56

As far as, like, eight hours of work, well, you know what? You could sit Jim and John next to each other and Jim's going to produce more than John in less time because he's just more efficient. Maybe they're a little smarter, maybe a little bit more experienced. Maybe he knows how to use the tools better, knows the prompts better, knows where everything else is, doesn't get distracted, doesn't have stuff going on at home where he's getting someone pinging his cell phone constantly about trouble with the kids or trouble with this, problems with his car, whatever. It is Right. So, like I don't really know, it's kind of that you can measure it, but it's better to measure it over the longterm versus inside of an eight hour, an eight hour window. I see nothing wrong with people saying, okay, this is my work break, I'm going to sit down, I'm going to do the crossword, I'm going to go for a walk, I'm going to call my friend, like whatever. Do that, take those breaks so that you stay fresh for the time that you are getting paid for work.

Stacey Whitaker: 24:42

And Vanessa, I'll come back to your question and just add that, for me, I look for a company that's going to treat me like a responsible adult. I know what my tasks are, I know what needs to be done, I'm going to hit my deadlines, and so am I really working eight hours a day? I'm actually working 12. Am I only working six? It really shouldn't matter.

Stacey Whitaker: 25:04

The point is the output that's coming, more so than the hours logged sitting in front of the screen, and so I think your question really hits on something that a deficit in business is management, and I say this as a manager myself that so many times people move into management because they've been doing their job well for so long, and so here let's just throw people under you for you to manage without, and a lot of companies don't give proper leadership or management training to go along with that change, and so you end up with a large amount of people who don't know how to manage well. So how do they know how to measure productivity? How do they know what to do, especially with people that are remote, right, if that's a new thing for them, and so I do feel like that is a deficit where you want to stand out and work on your leadership and management skills that's sort of this age old thing, especially nowadays.

Josh Matthews: 26:05

It's like if you get a new client, let's say you're an independent consultant, what do you do? Charge them by the hour? Do you charge them by the project? You better be pretty good at bidding and estimation. If you're not, you're going to probably lose right. So if you're, if you're good at that, you can do it. And there's a lot of information on YouTube about how to get really good at you know, estimating work and really good at estimating work and proving value in this kind of stuff.

Josh Matthews: 26:41

I'm seeing more and more companies take advantage of the sort of Alex Hormozy Look, he didn't invent it, but he does promote it. But the Alex Hormozy idea of let me do this work for you, give me a percentage of your business, give me a percentage of the revenue. If I do well, I want 1%, I want 5%, I want 10%, it doesn't cost you anything unless I succeed. And so we're seeing more and more of that and I think it's a really good way to go. I can tell you I've had vendors pitch me on that and then looked at you know what the actual amount that I would be giving to them and it's like no way, dude, you're not giving you 10% of my company just because you booked me some meetings. Get out of here.

Josh Matthews: 27:18

There's usually a lot of pushback, but you have to be able to figure it out and how to educate the people around you, whether it's leadership or the people below you or vendors or what have you. But I'm with you 100%. Stacey Leadership management, how to incentivize employees to do well, how to provide them with the appropriate tools, with the appropriate expectations. There's a real gap. I think there are a lot of companies out there and I've worked for them where they'll say this is the standard, this is where we need you to get to right, or this is how you'll know you're doing well when X okay. And then you look at everyone in the company and I had access to this information and 95% of people weren't meeting target.

Josh Matthews: 28:03

So what's wrong? The management or the target go on, pipe up anyway. So you know it's it's like it's tricky stuff, it's it's complicated stuff. So we are at just a little bit past the top of the hour. You're listening to the Salesforce Career Show and we're really excited to have Stacey Whitaker, a multiple MVP Hall of Famer, with us today and I think we're going to switch gears and dive right into a topic that is near and dear to Stacey's heart. I've given a little intro at the beginning, but maybe, Stacey, if you can just kind of reiterate some of the things that you're most passionate about, Is it too easy just to say I'm passionate about Salesforce?

Josh Matthews: 28:44

Yeah, that's fine, you can say that. You can say that.

Stacey Whitaker: 28:47

Yeah, I've been working with Salesforce for about a decade and a half. I kind of stumbled into it accidentally and then intentionally shifted my career to focus on that. So my background is in staffing and recruiting before my Salesforce work, and I've worn a lot of hats I started as an admin, became a consultant, now like a freelance independent consultant, and now I'm in management and I'm a hiring manager. So I fund the world of career seeking all the seats, and so my big passion is helping people to find their passion, especially if it happens to be in Salesforce. So I'd spend a lot of time helping to mentor and coach folks. I lead our local user group here in Louisville, kentucky, and I am coordinating the Women in Tech Conference that will also be in Louisville this year the first weekend in August. And yeah, and then I think you mentioned also, I'm a Salesforce military ambassador because of what the Salesforce military program can do for military vets and military spouses to help them have fulfilling and sustainable careers.

Josh Matthews: 29:54

So cool man. Tell us where people who may want to attend the event, the WITI event in Louisville. How would they go about finding more information on that?

Stacey Whitaker: 30:05

My DMs are open so anybody can message me here on Twitter tweets by Stacey. But our website is Witness Success. That's like women in tech, but also like hair flip witness my success. So witnessesuccesscom has all the information. This is our sixth annual event in person and the first time in Louisville, so we're really excited to be bringing this to the local community here.

Josh Matthews: 30:31

That's terrific Good for you, and I think when we were talking a little bit earlier, you were excited because you've figured out the keynote speaker. What's one of the sessions that you might be most excited about?

Stacey Whitaker: 30:58

speed mentor mentee connection at witness last year. That'll be revisited this year but in addition to our keynote that we're announcing next week I'm super excited for this. We've got a great powerhouse that'll be really bringing a lot of inspiration and call to action to to the group. But the unique thing about witness success versus other other Salesforce conferences is, while we do focus a little bit on technology and how to build better flows, vanessa did a session, kind of an impromptu session, when a speaker didn't show on some BA techniques and skill sets but the vast majority of what our breakout sessions are about are professional development and personal development.

Stacey Whitaker: 31:39

So right up your alley, josh, with finding your executive presence, negotiating that salary, how to stand out in the interview process. Also, how do you face work when you're going through trauma at home? And so these are just real things on how to be a better person trauma at home, and so these are just real things on how to be a better person. And overall we we live by the shine theory, which says that I don't shine if you don't shine, and so it's. It's not not a not a women rule and men drool kind of event. This is a. Everyone is welcome and we're all here to build each other up together.

Josh Matthews: 32:16

Yeah, that's great. What an important topic. Because who hasn't gone through hell At home personal life things going on, ill parents partners, their own health challenges with their children as simple as daycare, mental illness, health issues, financial challenges, needing to move Like how do you maintain a nine to five job or an eight to five job while you're moving across the country, like things like that. It's very difficult to do. And helping people to understand one, to set some fair expectations, you know, make sure that they're not walking into absolute fog, right. Give them some clarity about how they can help adjust their expectations during those times and then where they can find the support to help them get through those challenging times. I think that's terrific.

Josh Matthews: 33:10

Well, excellent, excellent summary. So when we spoke earlier, this is the great thing about having you on the show is you can talk about all sorts of stuff, right. So I love, I like, I love that, and when we, when we spoke, you know there were a few things that we could talk about how to hire, how to get hired right, how to soar higher, and that you guys just as our tagline here on the show. But you brought up something that I thought was really interesting, which was around the concept of authenticity in the hiring process, both from the hiring managers and the companies, and then also as individuals who are trying to advance their career by acquiring a new opportunity, a new position, and that there does seem to be some aspects of authenticity missing. Sometimes that's because of robots reading your resumes, and sometimes it's because you're lying, because you're desperate. Sometimes it's because managers are beholden to an NDA and they can't tell you that their company is effed Like don't join here, but they need you. Come to us, but it's going to be hell, and they can't tell you that. There's so many issues with that.

Josh Matthews: 34:11

And Stephen, you're not added as a speaker. We should definitely get you up here. I'm not sure if you're in a position to talk, but Stephen's been by my side for many years and he can certainly speak on this, so let's talk about authenticity. Stacey, you've got the floor.

Stacey Whitaker: 34:26

We'll start with from the company perspective. So something that I've been hearing as occurring a lot lately is this idea of not all people, but a lot of people want to continue working remote, and companies are seem to increasingly want the hybrid or their return to office, and so I've been hearing of companies either listing a job as remote and then in the in the final stages of the job, actually saying, well, no, really, we want you to be in the office a few days a week, or they'll say it's hybrid, but their version of hybrid is you can have every other Friday working from home.

Josh Matthews: 35:05

We call that the old bait and switch. Yeah.

Stacey Whitaker: 35:08

Yeah, and. And so you know, from a from an authenticity perspective it's it's so important to be authentic in what is it that you want. If you want somebody that's going to be there, then say I need somebody that's going to be here, right, and likewise for the applicant that if you need remote, then don't apply for hybrid jobs. You know it's not fair to anyone's time to go after something that isn't right for you and you know that from the beginning.

Josh Matthews: 35:40

Absolutely. Look, sometimes this stuff is nefarious. It's by design, I think. A lot of times it just changes during the process, and I know this because we're authentic in how we communicate opportunities publicly, in LinkedIn or on our website, or whether we're talking about them or not. But clients get fickle and they can change their minds. I took one job order last month and the day after I got it the manager left. It was like, oh no, she's not here, she just retired. It's like, oh okay, thanks. And then things change and it's like no, it has Like thanks.

Janeen Marquardt: 36:16

And then and then things change and it's like no, it has to be remote.

Josh Matthews: 36:18

No, it has to be this, or you know, you know it has to be these two locations across the country, whatever it is. So if it happens to you, just word of warning, like, take it with a grain of salt. It doesn't necessarily mean these people are trying to swindle you, although that does happen. Just be conscientious of it and understand that sometimes things will change through the process. People are just like gosh. I've been thinking about that. Managers don't think about the role that they need to hire very much until they absolutely have to. And then they're so held over a barrel. They're like yeah, whatever, what? Okay, yeah, remote, oh, there's more, I can get a better person for less money. If it's remote, yeah, okay, let's do that. And then a week goes by and they sleep on it and they're like yeah, you know what? I'm just remembering these three horrible experiences that I had because apparently that person is not very good at managing remote employees and they're like, yeah, it's out of my skillset, I need them here. So things change yeah.

Stacey Whitaker: 37:08

Or or you'll see that people like hiring managers don't typically write the actual job description. I'm sure you live that right, oh my.

Josh Matthews: 37:15

God, Stacey, it's so, it's so, it is so fricking bad. Steven will tell you we had a job order with a client out of Boston. I like these people, Okay, but same thing, new manager. She came in and I was like, yeah, like look, we're, we're going to need a good 25 minutes going over this job description. She's like, yeah, I haven't even read it. I was like you haven't read it. She's like, no, I didn't even write it, I haven't read it. I was like, okay, it's fine if you didn't write it, but you sent it to me and you never even read it. That's bad. And so what am I thinking? I'm thinking you're a flipping idiot. Sorry, if you're listening, you're an most basic thing. Just write down everything that you need them to do, everything that you wish they could do, all the behaviors that successful people in your company already exhibit that are doing well in similar roles. Put it together, make it pretty and stick it out there. It's not that hard.

Stacey Whitaker: 38:06

And don't make everything a requirement. There is a difference between have to have and would like to have.

Josh Matthews: 38:12

Yes, absolutely Required, must have a degree in computer science. It's an admin role. What are you talking about? There's no computer science going on here degree.

Stacey Whitaker: 38:24

And yet every job that I apply for, every job that I see out there, that's one of the very first requirements that they list and I mean I get the benefit of it, I get why that would be a preferred, but clearly it's not a requirement. I'm working, I haven't accepted hired to jobs without a degree.

Josh Matthews: 38:53

So yeah, it's just the authentic and you definitely don't need. You know like it's just less important now it really is. But companies do still do the college thing because it's an easy way to narrow down the field.

Stacey Whitaker: 39:06

If they put out a job and they get a hundred applications and then they switch and say you have to have a college degree and now they get 75, it's like, okay, well, they just made it easier for them you know Well and I know I do a lot of contracting for the federal government and they will set their rates, the labor categories, based off of years of experience plus years of education, and so we can put people at higher rates when they have that degree. So I totally get why it would be a preferred thing. Just you know. If it's not a requirement, why is it listed under the requirements?

Josh Matthews: 39:37

Yeah, it's like. I mean, I remember applying to Robert Half. I didn't have a degree at the time, didn't get the job, and then I finally finished my degree. I got the job. So great. An art major, an art, you know, I paint and draw, like I make sculptures, like okay, now I'm qualified to be a recruiter. Come on, it's a little bit silly, isn't it? It can be yeah, so what are other ways that employers may not be as authentic, and what can they do about it?

Stacey Whitaker: 40:11

I think it really comes from kind of what we were just saying about the job descriptions that oftentimes within companies the hiring process is worked on by so many different departments. You have HR, you have the actual hiring manager, you have legal right. There's oftentimes like an internal operations that does some of the onboarding and such, and so there's so many different departments that touch the process, from the job postings to the reviews, to the actual hiring and onboarding, that you can have those discrepancies and, like you said earlier, it's not always an intentional, nefarious thing. But this is definitely an area where, while companies are having some downtime right now, take a look at your internal processes and are they efficient, are they consistent? Are they a good experience for those that are working them?

Josh Matthews: 41:05

Yeah, You're sort of talking like too many cooks in the kitchen, right Like that shit doesn't taste good right, like it doesn't?

Josh Matthews: 41:13

I mean, if you haven't read it, go read Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, right? It's a perfect, like little microcosm of what happens when there's, you know, when you're trying to be all things to everyone, right, or you're creating a system by committee instead of you know, you know one person who has a clear thought and has the experience to be able to say, like no, this, this and this and this and this, I mean we can see it in architecture, right, you can look at a Frank Lloyd Wright house and you know it's a Frank Lloyd Wright house. And then you look at what I call Home Depot houses, and no offense if this is your house like and I really mean it, but there are. There's a whole style of house that's trying to appeal to the people who like shingles, the people who like bricks and the people who like clappard, and they stick it all on you know, and so it's like got something for everyone.

Josh Matthews: 41:58

She's gonna like the clappard and he's gonna like the shingles, and so now they'll hopefully buy our house in our 200 person subdivision kind of thing.

Josh Matthews: 42:05

So you see, that a lot right, and that's fine right, but is it piece of art? Well, no, it's not right. And if you want your business to be a piece of art and you should want that If it's your company, you should want it to have a level of beauty to the way the systems work, the way things are put out there. I guess maybe here's where my art degree is coming in there can be something artful about the way your systems are set up and the way that you bring people on board and protect your company and invite the right people on board. I'll tell you this One of the things that I found to be difficult from a standpoint of authenticity is when things aren't going well for the company, like, how would you let's imagine, stacey, that where you're working right now is let's just imagine you're not working where you are, you're working somewhere else and things aren't good right.

Josh Matthews: 42:57

Like, you like your job, you're paid well, you're not going to leave, but you're finding it very difficult to say nice things about the company, and one of the reasons why you can't talk nicely about it right now is you don't have the help to get the work done. So is it disingenuous for you to describe in detail, with pure authenticity, to a potential candidate who's going to come in and quote unquote save the day for you. You know how genuine do you need to be in that situation versus how authentic.

Stacey Whitaker: 43:30

I think there's a line right you don't want to be just as in an interview.

Stacey Whitaker: 43:35

If somebody asks you why you left your previous company, you're not going to sit there and tell them every dirty little thing that ever irritated you.

Stacey Whitaker: 43:44

But you can be honest about, to a degree, about why you left, without getting into the negativity. And I'll turn this around, josh, and actually I'll give you an example of when I was interviewing someone I think it was last summer or so and one of the questions that they asked me were to list a couple of the challenges that my team was going through, and I was a little surprised pleasantly surprised by the question. It opened the door and allowed me to share openly a handful of things that we knew were things that could use some work and that we wanted to work on. And then the candidate actually then turned that around and told me how their strengths aligned with our areas of potential growth, and that interaction just completely wowed me as an interviewer to say you're interested in our weaknesses and you want to help us grow and you're a good fit to help us get there right, you're not running away from the growing pains that we have coming.

Stacey Whitaker: 44:54

It was a tremendous interview technique.

Josh Matthews: 44:58

I love that. Say it again, Because sometimes people are listening, they're not paying attention and then they're like, oh yeah, what did she say? Can you just say it again? What was the question this person asked?

Stacey Whitaker: 45:09

And this is not verbatim she said it in her own way, but she asked basically what were some of the challenges that our team were currently facing, and then she repeated it back to me by and emphasize how her strengths could help us overcome those.

Josh Matthews: 45:26

See, I love that. Now let me ask you this, going a little bit deeper on that. So people do ask that, particularly when you're sort of it's not a socioeconomic marker on this, but people who have got more experience, they've been around the block a little bit more, they're more careful about where they join. They'll tend to ask these kinds of questions. But some of these folks have experience asking that question, seeing that there's an alignment showing up at the company and then they get handcuffed. Peter, I think you know what I'm talking about, right? Nope, so like you show, you know.

Stacey Whitaker: 46:04

That didn't sound authentic.

Josh Matthews: 46:07

So you, you know you're like, okay, you hired me to do this and now you're not letting me do the thing that I'm really good at, right. I mean, we've seen on sports teams it's like, you know, they spend $40 million on a running back and then he's sidelined because there's attitude, maybe right, or because whatever politics, nevermind football for a second, but back to work. So you know, what's a way that they can authenticate not just that the fit is there, but that, but that the how do I put this? That they're going to have enough, there's going to be a looseness in the reins to let them run fast and do their thing. Autonomy.

Stacey Whitaker: 46:43

Well, you can't ever know, right. I mean, you're being hired for your job and the job description, and so would the company allow you some reins to go beyond that? Maybe, maybe not. But I feel like you can read into how, if you ask that question, what are your challenges, and then you respond with, I can help you through these techniques or strategies. And if the person is receptive, maybe ask some follow-up questions, maybe gets excited and says, oh, that would fit in really well with this initiative that we were planning right, then that's a pretty good indicator that you're going to have a space to be able to get to do that. But if they just go, oh, okay, that's nice, then well, yeah, not so much.

Josh Matthews: 47:25

Yeah, that's, yeah, no, that makes sense, I will. I will offer one follow up question, which is who other than yourself would be involved in determining whether or not I would be, you know, in a position to actually be hands on and help you with this issue. You know, because then you're not saying am I allowed to, just saying, like, well, who else is involved? It's like, oh well, the CFO, and they're really tough. It's like, okay, like, so there's no money to do this project. Is that what you're saying? It's like, well, he can be difficult, you know, like, and you'll start to get a sense of whether or not the resources are actually going to be available.

Vanessa Grant: 48:00

Yeah.

Josh Matthews: 48:00

Who other than the hiring manager that you're talking to is going to? Because, let's face it, it's usually not the person that's doing the. Unless you're the owner, you know, unless you're the president of the division, someone else has a say in what you get to do and not do. Usually, yeah, it's good stuff. Okay, what about authenticity, stacey on the part of candidates? And this is going to kind of circle back into this idea of, like active candidates, passive candidates? You know who? You know people will take more liberties with their communications and with their successes when they're desperate for work.

Stacey Whitaker: 48:42

So talk about that, if you can, please so the the first, just going along the lines of the questions like we were talking about is. I think it's a great idea. I think everyone would agree that it's good to be prepared going into an interview with some questions like what challenges are your team, is your team facing? But even the questions themselves need to be authentic. If you've already heard about some of the challenges, don't re-ask the question. You know what I mean. Right Another real life example I was interviewing somebody and after they told me about their Salesforce experience and why they were interested in our Salesforce opening, they asked me if I had any knowledge of the Salesforce space. And look y'all, I don't expect that every person knows who I am. There's a lot of people in the Salesforce ecosystem, but Google is free and it's pretty easy to do.

Josh Matthews: 49:35

And so is LinkedIn.

Stacey Whitaker: 49:36

Right, and so it's pretty obviously all over every one of my social profiles that I have some awareness of Salesforce. And so the question just felt canned and inauthentic. So, yeah, have questions ready, but don't just recite them, please. Yeah, and you know.

Vanessa Grant: 49:59

I think that's one of those things that you know when I've been helping folks prepare for interviews, for sure you want to, besides Googling that name, like put that name into YouTube. There's so many people that have that have spoken, you know or have a YouTube channel or have done an interview in their industry, and just getting a feel for their personality before you go into that interview can help alleviate so much of the nerves going in when you kind of have a sense of who they are and what's important to them. Yeah, that's a great point I love that.

Janeen Marquardt: 50:29

Yeah, I would say you have to do your research. I absolutely look for their LinkedIn profile. I try to understand their technical abilities, like are they more management? Are they more technical? Who am I talking to? I especially am not good at this, right, so I try to know my audience, even though it rarely helps me, but I try to know my audience and try to understand, like, is this going to be someone who's going to be like explaining to me like I'm five, or can I have a technical conversation? I actually had a great conversation with somebody the other day and we just started like solving problems in the interview and we just had a great talk. So it's really helpful to try to understand and I think, like if I was in Stacey's position and they said, oh, have you ever done Salesforce before, I'd be like you're out, I'd like cross them off my list.

Josh Matthews: 51:20

Yeah, have a nice day, you know, have a nice day. Here's a podcast you should listen to. We'll talk later.

Janeen Marquardt: 51:27

Yeah, exactly, I mean it's silly yeah.

Josh Matthews: 51:31

Yeah, look, I've been caught. I've been caught in those situations. It was one of my very first recruiting jobs. I didn't know anything. And I interviewed this gal and I'm looking at her resume and I, you know, back then everything was by rogues. I didn't know what I was doing. So I'm, you know, going through the interview and it's like, okay, you worked here and what do they do? And you know, blah, blah, blah. And then I got to Accenture. I was like, okay, so three years at Accenture, and what do they do? And she just looks at me, she goes it's Accenture dude. I was like, okay, I'm like, can I please have a different recruiter? I was like, well, what, what? She gets up out of the room, she goes out into the hall, or not the hall, into like the main room. It's like 20 of us and she just says to the whole team this guy doesn't know who Accenture is. Can I please have a real recruiter? Ouch, yeah, yeah, lesson learned no-transcript, but aggregating knowledge. I just love it. What's that?

Vanessa Grant: 53:04

So what's perplexity Like I guess what's the use case for it versus?

Josh Matthews: 53:08

Google? Yeah, it's a good question. Perplexity is an aggregate of a number of different large language models. So it's got GPT-4 in it, claude. It's got a number of maybe three or four different image creators in it, so it sort of just kind of pulls them all together.

Josh Matthews: 53:23

But what I love about it is when you do a search, you know you do it. First of all, it's real time, so it does have access to the actual internet. I can, I can say I own the salesforcerecruitercom and I'm trying to blank, blank, blank, you know, tell me how to blah, blah, blah and it'll be like boom and it's just like it. Can, you know, read a website in a nanosecond and give you some, some ideas and some thoughts and things like that? It's absolutely fantastic. But what's special about the app is it actually has links to all of the sites that it's pulling its source material from. When you run a search in GPT, for instance, let's say you're using GPT for Turbo and you ask it a question and it kicks out an answer. You don't know where it got that data. Perplexity will tell you. It's like here's four main links, here's seven other links, and then you can do a deep dive just on the actual sites and verify more information or get more information.

Josh Matthews: 54:20

It's great for your personal life, just managing your household and your cars and whatever. I need some repairs done on one of my vehicles. I'm like, okay, I need a front axle on an 08 ML350. This is where I live. I'm looking for the best value because it's of my vehicles. I'm like, okay, I need a front axle on an 08 ML 350. This is where I live. I'm looking for the best value because it's an old car. I'm not going to keep it a long time. You know what is the best shop for best value for this kind of thing and how much is it going to cost me within 10 miles of me? And boom, it's like Mike's auto. I'm like, okay, good enough, so it's really, really helpful and lets you cut through a lot of the data on the Internet very fast and aggregate it for you.

Vanessa Grant: 54:53

Very cool. I'm learning all sorts of new productivity tools. Thanks guys.

Josh Matthews: 54:58

Yeah, For anyone who's really interested in productivity, I definitely recommend checking out the Productivity Show podcast produced by the folks over at Asian Efficiency, which is a really interesting, very helpful site that will help you become more efficient. It's very practical. Some of it is just like sort of the way you think, but a lot of it is very you know, just like cool tools, cool software you can get right, Like how to manage your inbox better, and try these tools and try this system and try that system and it'll teach you in a very fun, interactive way. I signed, I'm a lifetime member. I don't know I got into it like five years ago. It was like 800 bucks for lifetime and it's very, very cool. They've always got new stuff coming out, but the show's a lot of fun. It's a, it's good format and you'll get a lot of a lot of insight into cool tools. Like Stacey shared. What was it Something? Motion.

Stacey Whitaker: 55:53

Yeah, motion.

Josh Matthews: 55:54

Motion, just motion. Okay, so motion perplexity. You'll have very quick access to that if you follow that program, so it's one of my favorites.

Stacey Whitaker: 56:01

This is a cool perplexity. I just did a search for my name and the word Salesforce and it pulled up right who I am and all kinds of links to witness success, to LinkedIn, to my company. Yeah, this is very cool.

Josh Matthews: 56:15

It's very cool. I'll tell you, I did one of those things. It's like do you Google yourself? Well, if you're in the public eye, I think that you should do it once in a while. So I ran a search. I just wanted to see how these engines were working. So I did, like I need to hire a Salesforce recruiter. Who should I, you know, get in touch with? And I think it came up different on a couple of times, but we were number one. I was like all right, sweet, like we're actually in the chatbots now. So or not the chatbots, but the, you know, the, the, the large language models. It's really great that they've caught up from a year ago, when everything was back in 2001 and earlier, like it didn't have access to anything. So now it's a different world.

Josh Matthews: 56:50

My friends, let's get back. We're not going to go for too much longer, but I just want to cover one more thing, and it's about authenticity of the candidates. We talked a little bit about it. So, on resumes right on resumes, on LinkedIn profiles people lie, and they lie all the time. They lie all the time. In fact, most resumes have at least one or two lies on them. Okay, if you're a salesperson, you can expect double that amount. Usually three to six lies on sales sales peoples. That doesn't mean that they're inherently liars, it just means that they're generally very gifted and skilled at communicating communicating data. That won't make them look like shit.

Josh Matthews: 57:34

But what is your recommendation for candidates? Maybe they've been job hoppers, maybe they've been, maybe they were fired for performance and maybe they're not quite as good as their resume is saying. Right, we see all the time like manager okay, 20 million dollar project, that's great, that got the, got you, you know. Now I'm giving you the phone call. But then when I'm digging in, it's like, okay, well, what, how many years was that project? It was? You know, four years. How many years did you work on it? Six months, okay. How many other pms are on it? 20, okay, right. What part was yours?

Josh Matthews: 58:09

What was the budget for your project? Well, I'm not sure, but you were the pm. Was yours? What was the budget for your project? Well, I'm not sure, but you were the PM and you don't know the budget. No, okay, now I know something about this person and I'm not just believing the thing that's on there. Unfortunately, most hiring managers don't know to do that. It takes four or five questions down the rabbit hole till you actually get to the truth. So what would you recommend, stacey, for those people that maybe they have some level of? They have something in their background and they're kind of trying to hide it, or they're trying to fluff themselves up to make them look better? How does that affect them down the road? Can it hurt them? Is it not a bad idea? How authentic should people be on their resumes?

Stacey Whitaker: 58:46

Well, first I'm going to say that it sounds like more hiring managers need to follow Vanessa Grant and as a BA she is very equipped to dig into question after question after question, going down four, five, six deep. So we need some more of that analysis in the hiring process. But as far as authenticity on the resume, I don't encourage people to fudge the details. I will say that the one thing that I do encourage is to simplify your job title to be the role that you actually a. If there's a whatever Salesforce admin, associate, level five. I don't need to know all that, I just need to know that you're a Salesforce admin right so you know these are not legally binding documents.

Stacey Whitaker: 59:40

It's okay if your job title is not 100% match with HR, but I would say the biggest thing is that you need to be able to back up whatever's on your resume. So what if it is something that you did? What if it is a project that you led but you got pulled off for whatever reason? Maybe you had to go out on leave and so it only lasted. Your role only lasted a few months. Is it worth putting on there if you're going to have to face those types of questions and then maybe even look bad? Or maybe it was so long ago you don't remember the details. It was before you knew to jot everything down and keep track of those types of metrics. So if you can't back it up, then why put it on there? The resume is an entry way to get in and showcase what you can or will do for this company.

Josh Matthews: 1:00:27

It's an advertisement, right Like? That's all it is, guys. I think these are great points, stacey. And there are folks I mean look, I don't know how many. I mean, steven, how many resumes do you think you've read in the last year? Just take a wild guess.

Steven Greger: 1:00:43

Oh, geez In the last year, hundreds at least it's stuff.

Josh Matthews: 1:00:49

Yeah, it'd be. Yeah, I mean it's. Even if you're just looking at five resumes a day and you're working 200 days a year, it's a thousand, that's a thousand. But sometimes you're looking at 50 in a day, right, so it's a lot more than that. So, yeah, look, there's inauthenticity through omission, but a lot of that stuff, it's a lot more than that. So, yeah, look, there's inauthenticity through omission, but a lot of that stuff. It's like who cares If it's to your point, you're trying to get your foot in the door, you're trying to get a conversation.

Vanessa Grant: 1:01:20

Oh sorry, I thought you were done Josh. No, no go ahead.

Vanessa Grant: 1:01:25

Just going to say I mean, while there's the part of maybe inflating your actual role, I think there's also and I'd be curious to hear from you and Stacey on how you would approach which I think happens a lot in this ecosystem in general where maybe you are an associate but there wasn't somebody to fill that PM hat you ended up acting in the role as a PM. How do you manage that on a resume or on your LinkedIn, where maybe you didn't have the title but you did have the responsibility, sure?

Stacey Whitaker: 1:01:58

Sure, I listed. I listed, as a matter of fact, my first ever Salesforce role. I mentioned earlier I'm an accidental admin, so my technical role was staffing specialist, and yet 50% of my job became evolved over time. It became Salesforce admin. So to this day, what's listed on my LinkedIn is Salesforce admin, because that's the role that I performed. Those are the job duties that I had, and when I left that company, I pursued no longer staffing roles, I pursued Salesforce admin roles, and so I adjusted my resume at the time, and still do.

Josh Matthews: 1:02:32

I love that. Look, resumes should be your accomplishments, like for the most part. Give them some context, give them some logistics and then list what you accomplished. Don't give a job description, don't tell them everything that you think that they want to hear, right. And when I hear people like, oh, I adjust my resume for every job, I'm just sort of like I know that that's a thing and there are situations where that makes sense. Generally, if you are some sort of Swiss army knife dilettante, jack of all trades and you've been knocking this stuff out for 25 plus years, like, yeah, you may want to adjust it. Right. If you're 28 years old, come on, don't adjust anything. This is you right, this is you, this is you, this is what you've done, these are your accomplishments. And it all fits in one or two pages so you don't have to overthink it.

Stacey Whitaker: 1:03:18

You really don't. The most adjustment I might do from role to role is I might change some of the keywords to better align, because I do mine in all my job descriptions are all in bullets, right, so it's really easy to see, and I can rearrange them in the order that they are If I want to move one up higher to catch someone's attention, or if I want to add in a specific word. You know, is it a business analyst or is it requirements gathering? You know there's a lot of sometimes a lot of different names for the same thing list or is it requirements gathering? You know there's a lot of sometimes a lot of different names for the same thing, and so I might match the phrasing that's used in the job description to help with those AIs that might be reading the resume. Even if it's not AIs, even if it's real human eyes, you know nobody's reading it, they're skimming at best. So you want them to be able to pick up the keywords.

Josh Matthews: 1:04:07

Sure, like your resume says you know whatever quote, quote to cash, but their job said CPQ, right. So then you used to say CPQ instead, right, like that. That kind of thing. Yeah, that makes sense. Look, guys, I mean resumes. They should be accomplishments, they should be verifiable accomplishments. Um, you should be able to back it up and it should include numbers and successes.

Josh Matthews: 1:04:31

And you know, that kind of thing we talk about it on the show sometimes. It's definitely in one of my videos on Josh Forrest on YouTube, which is ask your bosses, like maybe from the job before this one, like what was I good at? Where did I succeed? What should I work on? Sort of request your own mini 360 review from past managers and then you'll know, right, because these same folks, like they're the people who talk too much about themselves and it's inauthentic and it's not real. And then, on the flip side of that, we have our imposter syndrome folks and I know there are a lot in the ecosystem that have done amazing things. I mean, steven, tell me how many times have you talked to someone in like the last year and they've told you some amazing stuff that they've done? And you're like, well, why isn't that on the resume?

Steven Greger: 1:05:19

Oh, right, Jesus, like I'd say a quarter of the people I talked to, if not more. Josh, it's like well, that's great. Like, why isn't this on your resume? Like, tell, tell a story here. This is what you're going to want to hear. We were talking about earlier, josh, how I say I see hundreds of resumes and you're like no, it's thousands, and it really is thousands. It's because I don't even really look at those. You go past them so fast. But once I have actual accomplishments numbers, percentages, dollar amounts, time reduced from the work they do, that stuff grabs my attention immediately. Those are the ones I remember thinking about, let alone the ones I don't.

Steven Greger: 1:05:52

So that's what I always tell people Make sure you have these specifics on there, not a job description, but you're being hired for a Salesforce entity, right? Or at least an entity within an entity, and the whole point of that is to increase the amount of money that that company is going to be making, or at least a major part of it.

Josh Matthews: 1:06:09

Yeah, solve the increase, the amount of money that that company is going to be making, or at least a major part of it. Why wouldn't you highlight that?

Steven Greger: 1:06:13

Raise money, increase revenue, yeah, all that stuff You're an investment, right?

Josh Matthews: 1:06:15

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I don't know how many times a year I say well, why isn't that on your resume? That's the good stuff. What I'm reading is a terrible job description, which we talked about at the beginning of the show how bad they can be. And then resumes are bad because of the bad job description. They're like I don't know what to write and they copy and paste it in Up to and including, but not limited to. It's like please, no, that is not a success story, not at all. All right, no-transcript. And Vanessa, look, it was a great show.

Josh Matthews: 1:07:23

So that is now live on the podcast. So if you're listening to this live and you didn't listen to the last one live, you can now, which is awesome. There's also now a YouTube video of my conversation with Alex where we talk about how to adopt the digital nomad lifestyle. That was really fun to do and the cool thing was, a week later I ran into him at New York City World Tour where he was giving a presentation. So you can find that also at Josh Force on YouTube.

Josh Matthews: 1:07:52

By the way, we might be changing that to the Salesforce Career Show YouTube channel. I don't know. We're working with marketing. We're going to figure it out. We will be releasing pretty soon a new logo for the Salesforce Career Show, a new artwork for our program too. So if it looks a little bit different, it's still us, it's still the great, still great content, still great conversations with exceptional people in the ecosystem. Vanessa, what's coming up as far as you know? Events that you might be attending, or Peter or Janine or Stacey, anyone like? Let's do some announcements here. What can people expect from conferences and events?

Vanessa Grant: 1:08:30

Well, I would say the big news is that Dreamforce opened up its call for speakers and you know, I just want to stress, as somebody who, for the first decade of my career, never thought that I would be speaking at Dreamforce.

Vanessa Grant: 1:08:45

I want to reiterate and it's something that I talked about Actually, the Merivis Summit if we're talking about military trailblazers is taking place right now. I imagine those recordings will be available, but I did a session yesterday and one of the big things and since we're talking about authenticity as well is being authentic in your speaking session submissions. There are a number of Dreamforce sessions and you don't necessarily have to be an expert on everything in order to speak at Dreamforce. You have to be an expert for where you are at authentically in your career and speak to that. And there are sessions on careers, there are sessions on job roles, there are sessions on if you did a cool thing and just want to show it off and do a demo of that, there's space for that at Dreamforce, and so I encourage everybody who's in the Salesforce ecosystem that might have something cool to share about their particular journey or something that they've done to submit for Dreamforce. There's always room for folks.

Stacey Whitaker: 1:09:43

And Vanessa, if I can come along beside you and just say that don't feel like you need to submit and speak alone. Anyone that I know Vanessa, I know myself, I know others that have spoken to go to your community leaders and your mentors and those that you respect in the community and ask them to help you with your abstract. If you'd like bounce ideas, do brainstorming, maybe co-present, submit to co-present together, submit to do a panel right, it's not just a single person up on a stage doing this alone with their knees knocking and their mouth dry and nervous. Right, you can do this with others.

Vanessa Grant: 1:10:20

Yeah, and actually the first speaking session that I ever did in person was with Tracy Green and Tracy just reached out to me over LinkedIn DM. We had never even met in person, just kind of had run into each other at a virtual user group and they asked me if I'd be interested in submitting a session together. It was kind of like being asked to prom. I was like wow, okay, Like even just that somebody would ask. So it never hurts to ask, and a lot of times, especially if you already have a good idea and just want somebody to be on that stage with you that also might have a point of view on that particular topic go ahead and ask. It's a great first way to get yourself out there.

Josh Matthews: 1:10:57

It really is and you know we have a. We had a pretty good recording of talking about doing public speaking and I'm just scrolling through the podcast right now.

Vanessa Grant: 1:11:07

I can't remember when it was Janet Elliott.

Josh Matthews: 1:11:10

There you go.

Vanessa Grant: 1:11:11

Yeah, janet Elliott.

Josh Matthews: 1:11:12

Okay, there you go, janet. Yeah, it was Janet Elliott, I think that was last summer. So, yeah, scroll through on. You can go to buzzsproutcom or just the Salesforce career. I think you just go to the Salesforce career show on your favorite app, whatever that is we're on like 40 up, 30 or 40 of them and scroll down to like last summer I think, and there's some really great advice from her on how to land your first presentation. Well, what else folks? Other events We've got the WITI in Louisville coming up. Vanessa, are you speaking at any engagements soon?

Vanessa Grant: 1:11:44

I will be speaking next month at Dreamin' in Color in New Orleans. Okay, so I'm doing two sessions there and doing a workshop on user stories and also doing a session on authenticity for the Latinas in Tech track for Dreamin' in Color. That's awesome, it's the hot topic.

Stacey Whitaker: 1:12:03

I like it.

Vanessa Grant: 1:12:04

Right.

Stacey Whitaker: 1:12:05

Dreamin' in Color will be my next conference. Also, I'm going as an attendee and supporter, not actually speaking, but then I'm actually doing my very first keynote at Tahoe Dreamin' this July. That's awesome Yay. Good for you.

Vanessa Grant: 1:12:21

Definitely Would love to see folks in Tahoe. I will also be there and also speaking.

Josh Matthews: 1:12:26

Yeah, that's great. I can't make it this year. I wish I could, but it's a great event. I've gone twice and Bill and the team they know how to run a great event and it's always wonderful people up there and it'll be warm.

Vanessa Grant: 1:12:39

Yeah, and. I think, what's also great about Tahoe which people don't realize. Tahoe is so close to San Francisco that you get a lot of really heavy hitters in the Salesforce ecosystem that actually even work for Salesforce. That will go to Tahoe Dreamin and it is one of the smaller conferences, so it's an intimate setting to really connect with folks that are heavy hitters in the Salesforce ecosystem, like the product managers for some of the things that you use every day.

Josh Matthews: 1:13:05

Definitely, and you can join the Tahoe Dreamin Slack channel right. So look that up and join. You can stay up to date on everything that's going on. Go ahead, Janine.

Janeen Marquardt: 1:13:15

Yeah, I was just going to throw out. Like Stacey, I'm going to be lending my allineness to Dreamin in Color again this year and I will be speaking at Tahoe and I will hopefully be speaking. As Stacey said, I'll be doing my mentorship at Witness Success but also hopefully speaking and waiting to hear back from a number of places that have yet to announce what their speaking sessions look like. But we'll see. There's a whole handful of things.

Janeen Marquardt: 1:13:42

One of the things we're trying to do actually actually was going to mention a couple of things. One thing we're going to try and do is we're going to try and do a click live at a mile high and if that goes well, we're also going to submit that to Dreamforce. I'm doing it with Rachel Shumway and we might. If we're going to do that at a place like Dreamforce, we might be pulling in folks like Vanessa and other clicked coaches to help us out, because that will indeed be complex. And also we are launching a brand new conference later this year in St Louis called Dreaming in Data. Eric Dreshfield is one of the Never heard of him.

Janeen Marquardt: 1:14:18

No, I know no one's ever heard of him. The bacon, the Kevin Bacon of the Salesforce.

Josh Matthews: 1:14:23

He is the Kevin Bacon of Salesforce. Yeah, that's awesome.

Janeen Marquardt: 1:14:26

And we'll be launching that and we've got quite the group in the leadership team. Really, it's going to be very exciting and so we're. The website is, it's kind of up. We've got a basic splash page. I'm sitting here working on this.

Josh Matthews: 1:14:40

Yeah, just fill us in. Fill us in when that's all ready to go on the next show. Okay.

Janeen Marquardt: 1:14:45

Sure, you can take a look anytime, but it's November 4th through 6th. We're still hoping to get that third day going Perfect. If you're in the data, it's going to be the conference for you.

Josh Matthews: 1:14:57

All right, thank you, janine. Guys, I think this has been a really fun show. Look if anyone's got. I can see some familiar faces. Hey, ja'khan, I'm glad you could show up today. It's really nice to see you. Marianne, thank you for coming with us on this little fun hour and a half journey of ours.

Josh Matthews: 1:15:11

We'll be back in two weeks and stay tuned for some new podcasts coming up. I've got actually an interesting one. It's going to be a video one. It's going to be just a one-on-one with a fellow who wrote a book on how to hire and really, really excited about that one. So that'll be launched in about two weeks. But we'll be back two weeks. Same bat time, same bat channel, and I'm pretty sure that I've got a calendar that tells me who's gonna be on there. Oh boy, all over the place today. Let's see who have we got. Oh, we've got Austin Sherman. Austin is gonna be joining us. He is head of talent acquisition for Cloud for Good. So he's going to be joining us in two weeks from today.

Josh Matthews: 1:15:53

And can't thank Stacey enough. You've done incredible things for the community. You've done incredible things for this show today. Keep up the great work. You're welcome on all the time. Thanks too for our regular contributors Janine, peter and Stephen, and of course to my wonderful co-host, vanessa, who somehow is probably going to wind up with 50 million air miles by the end of this year. So thanks everybody. Any last final words or otherwise, we'll just go ahead and sign off.

Vanessa Grant: 1:16:21

I guess I'll throw it off. Stacey's also one of my heroes in this ecosystem and certainly when I was coming up, stacey, I think, found me on Clubhouse back in the day, just where I found you, josh, and has been a big supporter for me in my career. So thank you, stacey, for also supporting me and all of us.

Stacey Whitaker: 1:16:38

Oh, I'm blushing now. Thank you.

Janeen Marquardt: 1:16:42

Stacey's definitely one of my heroes as well, of course it's all for the community.

Josh Matthews: 1:16:47

All for the community. Respect my community. All right guys, have a killer one. We'll see you in a couple of weeks. Bye for now.

Josh Matthews: 1:16:55

Oh, by the way, this show is brought to you by Salesforce Staffing. You can find us at the salesforcerecruitercom. We've got some interesting opportunities right now and some new ones that are coming up, so make sure you check that out. Check out all the content, blogs and videos that you can find that will help your career, including the Expand Exchange, which is available at expandexchangecom. It's also just there on the website. If you're interested in applying for opportunities or you just want us to track you through our database, you can just go to the salesforcerecruitercom forward, slash J-O-B, share your information, what kind of work you're interested in, what kind of certifications you have. Not that that's the end, all be all. But there is an opportunity for you to input that data and we'll hopefully do our best to try and stay in touch with you and help support you throughout your career. We're not going anywhere. We hope you aren't either.

Josh Matthews: 1:17:42

So all those that are feeling the pain right now, feeling the struggle, the election's going to be over. I think the doors are going to open up economically a little bit after that, regardless of what happens. So just hang in through the summer and do your very best to keep food on the table and keep reaching for those big, giant goals that everybody tends to have when they enter this ecosystem. All is not lost. This is a great place to be. It's a great ecosystem to work in, so don't give up folks, but if you're not working, go get a job. Okay, and let us know too. I'm kind of curious what did you get? We're going to wrap up, and I know this is a really long goodbye, but what did you guys think about this? This whole, this whole thing having a little video on the spaces show Is it helpful? Is it sort of distracting or annoying? Let me know, I got one thumbs up.

Vanessa Grant: 1:18:34

I liked it.

Josh Matthews: 1:18:35

You liked it. Okay, that's one person.