The Salesforce Career Show
The podcast dedicated to helping you HIRE, GET HIRED and SOAR HIGHER in the SALESFORCE ecosystem.
Enjoy these live recordings of The Salesforce Career Show from X Spaces and YouTube's JoshForce. A guest + AMA format hosted by Josh Matthews, founder of Salesforce Staffing, LLC, Joshforce and The Expand Exchange and Vanessa Grant, Dreamforce speaker, 9X certified BA, consultant and social media darling. Recordings are 3x per month.
The Salesforce Career Show
Remaining Indispensable in an AI Enhanced World - AMA On Stage at Florida Dreamin'
Ever wondered how the Salesforce community thrives against all odds? Promise yourself a journey into the heart of the Florida Dreamin' event, where resilience met opportunity amidst the challenges of Hurricane Helene. Join us as we share tales from our extensive journey within the Salesforce ecosystem since 1999, illustrating the power of uncovering true client needs through discovery questions. We also highlight the inspiring story of a summer placement that reveals how looking beyond resumes can lead to a perfect candidate fit.
Unlock the secrets to standing out in a competitive job market with stories of success and strategies for job search triumph. Hear about a transformative hire that defied initial expectations, emphasizing the importance of understanding both client and candidate perspectives. We'll explore the critical elements of a polished resume, a strong professional network, and the art of effectively communicating your value to hiring managers. The insights shared will empower you to navigate and master the ever-evolving landscape of Salesforce careers.
Prepare to embrace the future by mastering Salesforce skills and cultivating continuous growth. We delve into the impacts of AI on Salesforce roles and how to remain indispensable in an AI-enhanced environment. From exploring hands-on experience methods to identifying your ideal job strategy, this episode offers practical advice for staying agile and successful. Whether it's building a career in marketing, healthcare, or automation, discover how to align your ambitions with the rapid changes in technology and secure a position that truly fits your aspirations.
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.
Josh Matthews:All right, thank you, yvette. Traveled all the way from France just to do this. Can you believe that Incredible? Okay, Welcome everybody. A quick note about where we are and what we're doing.
Josh Matthews:If you're listening to this podcast right now, I'm standing in a room full of amazing people who are bright, smart. They came to a Dreamin' event. It's Florida Dreamin' and we're here in Clearwater, florida, and you know what? It almost didn't happen. It almost didn't happen because of Hurricane Helene, and the city and the state and the county have done an incredible job. Don't you think of getting this open, clearing the streets of the sand and a lot of folks. Just a little shout out to all the people who were impacted by this hurricane Absolutely devastating, absolutely devastating. We're so fortunate because this whole Dreamin' event almost got canceled and, in fact, the mayor came in two nights ago and shared with what I think it was with Mike, who is one of the key organizers of the event, and told him you know, this is the only hotel on the island that didn't get water inside of the event, and told them you know, this is the only hotel on the island that didn't get water inside of the building. So you know, we're all nice and dry, and that's thanks to a lot of the city officials, and then they're really good management of the hotel.
Josh Matthews:Now, before we get going, I want to thank our sponsors. These Dreamin' events. They're not free and they're not cheap, and we have some amazing sponsors, including Sumo, scheduler, cloud Files, airslate, campfire. We've got Match, my Email, peaklogic, blackthornio, and from the silver sponsors, I'm definitely going to mention my friend's company, breadwinner, that's Stoney's company. Breadwinner won the demo jam yesterday. Who here saw that they did a pretty good job. I thought so thank you to all of our amazing sponsors. Now let's get down to figuring out what's going on with people's careers. Who's got a question?
John Dionne:More of a personal question for you. Okay, and hi everyone. I'm John Dion of Cloud First Labs. We're Citrus Park, florida's Salesforce SI integrator of the year last year. That's just a joke, it's just a little small community in tampa in your so far doing all the the sales force recruiting and you found somebody for me who's awesome. So shout out to to josh for finding a great talent. Either you placing someone at a company or finding someone for a company. What's been your most soul rewarding placement of your career?
Josh Matthews:Oh, my God, that's an incredible. That's an incredible question. You know there've been so many because I've been doing this since 1999 and there, you know it's a. It's a pretty incredible experience to be involved with people on a one-on-one basis, understanding them and then also, of course, understanding our clients' needs. And I think the biggest the times I'm not going to pick one, john, I wish I could, but my brain doesn't work that well at 9.30 in the morning, for some reason, I have to wait till like 9.30 at night, but basically it's when the client thinks they know what they need, but they don't and they say no, but I do, or someone on my team does, and through a series of discovery questions, because we really act like business analysts what's going on, what's getting impacted, what's this? I know you want this person with this title, but what's the problem you're actually trying to solve? And I know you know what that's all about because you're an SI, so you have to go into your clients and it's no different. It's no different for us. So when I go in and I talk to a client and I'm able to help them understand what they really need, and then I present a candidate and they say no to that candidate. And then I stick my neck out for that candidate and say you're wrong. I'm sorry, mr Customer. Mrs Customer, you're just flat out wrong.
Josh Matthews:And it happened this summer. It happened in fact in August. Longtime client of mine I'm not going to mention names, but a wonderful guy. He'd hired several people from me at a billion-dollar organization where he was vice president of all technology and business systems. And then he moved. He went to a different company. He needed to hire another architect and, for whatever reason, the organization and the way the talent acquisition team worked they talked to the manager and the manager said I don't want this, I don't want that and I don't want this other thing. So if you see that, just like skip it, okay. So then we found a candidate. He's amazing, he's incredible, he's dynamic, he's an interesting guy, like really interesting guy.
Josh Matthews:And we put them through. We didn't hear anything. I asked they said yeah, no, we're passing on him because he was a consultant and he's been for the most part of consultant. We want someone who worked at a company for years. Well, that was the wrong thing to say to me, because I know for a fact this guy's absolutely amazing. So I stick my neck out. I say listen, not only are you wrong, okay, but you're dead wrong. I'm gonna tell you why. So don't feel bad, it's okay if you don't get it right. I do this all day long and you don't. So let me tell you exactly why. This person's absolutely incredible and I texted the hiring manager and I just said look, whatever you do, like 30 minutes phone call doesn't even have to be a video, but you've got to talk to this guy, and if you don't talk to him, then I don't know.
Josh Matthews:I'll know that you don't trust me, and if you don't trust me, it's not a real partnership. But we've had a partnership for years. So let's keep this going. Talk to him, okay. Anyway, he started like last week and they love him and he's amazing. So those are the kinds of stories when I get to feel like I'm not just slinging resumes, right, oh, you need this. Yeah, I got one. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, right. It's really deeply understanding what the needs of the candidate is and what the needs of the client is. So great question, john, thank you and thanks for being a great friend and an awesome customer too. You rock all right. Who's got another question?
Larry Lee:so, as a candidate, what can you do to to stand out amongst the other candidates, aside from your resume certifications? How would you go about doing it?
Josh Matthews:Go about standing out in general, as a general candidate. We're going to ask you a couple of questions because I do this right. So as a general candidate or for a specific job.
Larry Lee:Probably as a general candidate, because if somebody doesn't know what they want to do yet, yeah, Okay, Fair question.
Josh Matthews:I could talk about this for a long time, but I'll try to keep it moderately short. When we want to stand out, we first must cover all of our bases. That means your resume you have to have one. Your LinkedIn profile you've got to have one, right. Your connections on LinkedIn. Your community that you're building around you. Your network right. That's all the basics.
Josh Matthews:Now you've got to make them incredibly awesome, Incredibly awesome, right? I always think about that story of it's like you don't have to outrun the bear, you just have to outrun the person next to you, right? And then the bear will get them. It's that idea, right? You don't have to be the most perfect person. Like. You can be a great football player and play in the NFL. It doesn't mean you have to be Tom Brady, Like. You don't have to. And guess what? No one gets to be Tom Brady, but Tom Brady, right. So you don't have to be absolutely like the most amazing thing. You just have to be able to be better than the other candidates, or at least communicate your value more effectively than the other candidates. Now, you're not going to get an at-bat, right. You're not going to get a phone call. You're not going to get an interview and you're definitely not going to get a job offer if you don't initially stand out with what I call just your materials, your LinkedIn profile, your assets right Now. There are a lot of videos on my website about that. You can go to Josh Force on YouTube and watch some videos on that. I am not the ultimate expert there are people who put together way better articles than I do but I still think I've got some good stuff up there right. So I would start with that, okay.
Josh Matthews:Next thing don't be a job hopper. Don't be a kangaroo. If you are job. Look, if you're jumping from job to job to job and you're in your 20s, that's cool. We expect that. If you're in your 30s and you haven't had a job for a single job for more than two years, now it starts to become a little bit of an issue. If you want to stand out, be a job hopper, but you won't get the job. You want to stand out for the right reasons. You want to demonstrate loyalty. Three years here, four years there that looks really good. It's healthy. It's a healthy time at a job. You can be somewhere for 20 years too. That's great.
Josh Matthews:But later in your career, that can pose some challenges too, because all you know is that company, All you know is Deloitte. In your career, that can pose some challenges too, because all you know is that company, All you know is Deloitte, or all you know is Staples or whatever. Okay, so you do that. The next thing that you want to do is be able to articulate your value really, really, really, really well, and so that means understanding. Well, what is the hiring manager looking for? Right, you know, read the job description. Take it with a grain of salt. Look at their posts. Look on LinkedIn. Call your friends over at the company, right, I mean pay. Did you ever do that? Before you joined higher echelon, Did you call anybody that you knew? Okay, she's saying yes, yeah, so you do a little bit of investigation.
Josh Matthews:The other thing that you can do is just honestly protect yourself from joining the wrong companies, because sometimes people are kangaroos or job hoppers because the companies didn't work out right, Whatever, they just didn't research them enough, and so they didn't see the red flags and they said yes when they shouldn't. They got wowed with an offer, they got wowed with a sign-on bonus. They didn't do their research. There is an article on Salesforce Ben called the career checklist, and I highly recommend you go check that out because it will teach you exactly how to research any company that you're interested in and that you are interviewing for.
Josh Matthews:There's also questions that you can use to de-risk your career when you're out there on the job hunt, such as hey, if I were to let's say you hired me, Yvette let's say you hired me and I started on Monday what am I going to find out in three months from now? What will I have wished I knew today that for certain, I'm going to find out three months on the job, right, Like I'm going to, I'm going to know. Just tell me now, what is that? Right? Oh, I'm actually leaving. My boss doesn't know I'm quitting, so I won't be your manager. They might say that and they do. Oh, weird, I can't tell you this, but you deserve to know.
Josh Matthews:We're actually getting bought by Aptis. It's like oh, do I want to work for Aptis? I thought I was going to work for Conga, what's this? So you want to be able to ask really good questions.
Josh Matthews:Asking great questions, by the way, in your conversations with recruiters, in your conversations with hiring managers, is very powerful. Very powerful, right, Because it's probably the number one thing that ability to ask good questions to get the insights that you need to do a successful job, either for your company that you're working for or, Larry, for the clients that you're supporting directly. Right, that's going to be the skill, because people are asking me all the time like how do I AI proof myself? You do this. You get good at being a BA, right, you be as human as possible, you do the things that a computer can't do, and that means knowing when to ask certain questions at the right time, so you'll stand out.
Josh Matthews:For all of these reasons and much more. I mean there's a lot of different ways to stand out. All of these reasons and much more. I mean there's a lot of different ways to stand out. Some ways that you don't want to stand out, though, are like by having a really bad background on your Zoom meeting when you're interviewing, right Wriggling in your chair and clicking your pen right, Having your face, you know, just like from your nose up on the video, things like that. Having dogs yapping during an interview. Those are all ways that you can stand out, but I promise you you don't want to stand out, for those Make sense, Okay.
John Dionne:Or not turning on your video. Oh yeah, People people do that.
Josh Matthews:People do oh, double stereo, there we go. Yeah, people actually do that.
Ivette Campos:Yeah, if, if I can add something like now we have AI and it's amazing.
Ivette Campos:I've been using also propensity, but before I knew that one, I reworked my storytelling because I jumped from Venezuela, then to Italy, then to France and I needed kind of to not to justify, but at least tell the values that I've got while moving into each country and from different job experiences, and it helped me a lot. So now we have these amazing tools, if you want to stand out, you can use them and it'll help a lot Like after I did that and also working on your confidence, because you need to be sure of your values and you need to express it and let them know that, even if you don't know something at the moment, you know where to find it. You know that you have the community and they'll always support you. That's why I fell in love with this Ohana. It's really incredible. They're always going to help you and even if you're already in the job, you have questions and they'll answer, and that's incredible. That's really nice. So, yeah, stand out, use the AI tools now. It's really nice.
Josh Matthews:Thanks, yvette. Yeah, oh wait, I don't need this mic. Yeah, thank you. Thank you, yvette. No, it's so true, right? I mean get comfortable with these tools. You can start with perplexity. It's just a Google search, but it's better and it shows you sources and this sort of thing. All right, who else has a question today?
Todd Knoblock:Hi, Josh Todd Malblock, I find myself looking for my next opportunity out there. I was recently laid off. Thank you, I am filling my time learning, training, looking for that next cert. I'm actually in the Clicked experience with your co-host, Vanessa, with the Data AI program, so I'm hoping to get Data Cloud at the end of that. But my question is with Clicked or any other training environment, how do you spin that during an interview and make it? Do you count that as experience? Or how do you come off to the hiring manager that you're using your downtime to progress further?
Josh Matthews:Yeah, that's a really good question, todd, and thanks for asking one today, and I'm glad that you get a chance to work with Vanessa through Clicked and, by the way, it was just announced last week that Clicked is in fact, closing down their Salesforce. I think they're going to be focusing on IBM moving forward. I actually got to meet the founder at Dreamforce and share a drink with him and Vanessa, so that program is coming down. Okay, great question. It's not experience, it's training, okay, and so training counts. Certifications are what? Certifications are just proof that you know the answers.
Josh Matthews:My first job and whoa, this is not quite the same environment that I learned in, right, but I think it demonstrates. I mean, you just tell them, you say, hey, just so you know, I'm so passionate about this ecosystem, I'm so passionate about the technology that I take my time, all of my downtime, or the vast majority of my downtime, is focused on upskilling myself so that I can bring more value to you. Right, and, by the way, I'm a lifelong learner, so this is the kind of thing that I'll do when I'm working, not just when I'm looking for a job hunt. Right, I do this because I care about it. I do this because I'm passionate about it, and I do this because when the proverbial, you know what hits the fan. I want to know how to help you navigate out of that and make your system function like, be used and generate most likely sales or high levels of customer service to your, to your clients, right, and to your customers.
Josh Matthews:So you can just say it like that. Does that make sense? Yeah, and, by the way, you can just go to the podcast and grab the translation. It's on the website, right, it's on our Buzzsprout website. But you can also go to SalesforceCareershowcom and you can find some of this as well, and then you just take that stuff and drop it right in. Okay, talia, it's nice to see you again. Welcome back to Florida, dreamin'.
Talia Johnson:Thank you so much. I used to be the Salesforce program lead at Clicked and of course, this was a common question, so it also comes up with Talent Stacker's experience project. So one of the things that has been recommended is that you screen record yourself walking yourself through whatever you've built within a clicked experience or any kind of training environment. You might have some kind of output at the end at in clicked experiences, many of them. They give a presentation at the end and you might want to separately record yourself in a very nice way mistakes right and share that wherever you can, whether it's a link to it within a page somewhere that you've shared or just even hey, I, by the way, I also have this up on YouTube.
Talia Johnson:If you'd like to take a look at it, maybe just make it short. And on LinkedIn, et cetera, maybe just make it short and on LinkedIn, et cetera. You can. You can put it in your highlighted posts. You know, make sure that people see it and you people don't forget that you actually have had your hands on these tools. Okay, Excellent.
Josh Matthews:Thank you, Todd. I appreciate that input. I'll take a comment.
John Dionne:It's sort of to add on to what the question that Todd had had. If you can demonstrate that you know the core principles of salesforce, you know something simple is a difference between a role and a permission, set stuff, our profile, like that sort of stuff. The learning, because we all know right, salesforce, three releases a year, cloud, new, new cloud, new industries, ai, data, cloud, agent force, you know buzzword du jour kind of a thing. So that being able, knowing the foundation is important. And then it's what? Can you? Are you a learner and can you learn it, because the landscape is always changing and can you adapt right? Can you be agile? Can you fail fast and move forward after that? Or you know you may have a project here, or you have a customer that wants you to learn a cloud because you're in there and you have their trust. So that's important. So just to add to that point yeah, I appreciate that, john.
Josh Matthews:It's really good. It's good information. While you guys are thinking of your next question, we did receive a couple from the Uva app and I'm going to pull those up real quick and we'll read them aloud and hopefully get some good answers and, of course, I value your input on this as well. So the first one that we got was what do you feel are the most in-demand skills in clouds at this time? What do you think the most in-demand skills will be in four to five years from now? Now, I'm not sure if someone in this audience wrote that, but that's a fair question. Okay, a very fair question. So, starting with, you know the first one, which is what do you feel are the most in-demand skills and clouds at this time? Omni studio, data cloud, right, getting comfortable with agent force. You have to be at a company of a certain size to have access to some of these. Jim's gym, with three locations, is probably not going to have a data cloud set up and therefore they're not going to have Atlas and agent force and this kind of thing. It kind of depends on where you are. As far as the most in-demand skills, I think it's your ability to communicate. I kind of highlighted that a little bit earlier. There are so many admins right now. First time or never have been an admin admins in the world, in the United States and really across the world, because the massive push and lift that we had with Trailhead really going from, I mean, the demand was huge. It spiked over 300% in 2021, I think it was 300% demand for new employees, right, but that's because of the COVID backlog. That's all that was. That's all it was right. So now, most in-demand skills, you know.
Josh Matthews:As far as certifications, I try not to answer this because I just say like, hey, look like, do what you love. You know what you know. If, if you're not into CPQ, for God's sake, that's some complex stuff Don't do CPQ. Don't do anything. That's going to make you miserable. If you like doing mass communications, if you are interested and fascinated by the way marketing works, then get involved on the marketing side. If you like the way the automations operate in a CP2 setup, you know, in those kinds of organizations like a Home Depot or something like that then go for it. If you are interested in health care, right, it doesn't matter what you pick. You don't necessarily need to use health cloud, right, to work at a healthcare organization that's also selling stuff, and then you're using sales cloud there as well, right, it's not all like electronic medical records. So pick the lane that is your fit, do the thing that you're comfortable with.
Josh Matthews:And then there's another question in here about the five years. What about in five years? I promise you it's not going to be. I can't answer that. I don't even know. Do you guys remember five years ago, there were 250,000 people at Dreamforce. They had to pull in a cruise ship to fit everybody in. It was nuts. It was nuts. No one had ever even heard of chat GPT it didn't exist. Data cloud it didn't exist. Agent force it didn't exist. Okay, we didn't know COVID was coming. So planning for five years, I mean you can.
Josh Matthews:The number one thing that you can work on is yourself. Right, nevermind the certs for a minute. Folks, it's nice, it's not the most important thing. If you are going to go out and get certs, because that's important to you and it's something you're passionate about, I'd be looking at getting your scrum master and I'd be looking at getting your BA cert right and I would start practicing. I would really work on your communication skills. I would also and this might sound a little bit strange I would work on your own mental health and how you interact with people, because some of the folks listening to this show you know on the podcast and you could have up to 500 people in 79 countries listening to this episode. Ok, and I know for a fact, some of those folks will have all the technical abilities, they'll be smart, they'll be proactive, but, god forbid, someone looks at them the wrong way, right, or their boss doesn't communicate exactly how they want their boss to communicate. They may have really thin skin. They got to get to the bottom of that and thicken it up because in business, particularly with the direction that we're going here with AI, your ability to interact, take feedback, navigate complex personalities.
Josh Matthews:Look, I'm a business leader. My MBTI profile is an ENTJ. It's just sort of like classic leader kind of profile, and I have not been always the easiest guy to work for. I would not have wanted to work for myself. When I was a manager in my 30s, I just wasn't actually that good at it. I pissed people off. I still piss people off, but I help them so much they forget, so it doesn't matter, right? But you've got to work on yourself and figure out, kind of like, what are your triggers and what are the things that are making you job hop, what are the things that are keeping you or preventing you from being direct in your communications when you have to be direct?
Josh Matthews:Todd, I understand that you absolutely want that feature. I get it. It sounds like it would make a lot of sense and like it would make your life and the life of your team a lot easier, right, okay, but the challenge with that is we're going to have to code it, because that's complex, and if we code it, we're going to have to maintain it. And if we maintain it, we're going to have to spend more money maintaining it, and that's going to slow down every other iteration of this product. Right, because now we have to three times a year. Every time we do a new set, feature set or something, we might have to go in and tweak everything so that your special codes, so that you and your three friends on your team, make it easy for you. You know, once a day it might take you 10 extra seconds, but it's going to save many, many hours of headaches and problems for the product owner and for the team that's managing the instance. Do you see what I mean? But you have to be able to confront people in a diplomatic way and kind of lead them to the light, be consultative, understand what the business problem is.
Josh Matthews:I was just over at Andy's session and they were talking about will AI replace admins? Anyone know what the answer is on that? I got a no. Do I have Raise of hands? How many people here think AI is going to replace Salesforce admins? I do, absolutely, of course. Of course it's gonna go away at some point. That doesn't mean you're gonna go away, right. It doesn't mean that your job won't change, that your capabilities won't change and morph, right? Admins do a lot of things that are repetitive, don't they? Not all of them, but some of them do a lot. You just add a new user clear ticket, right. So a lot of admins do a lot of these kinds of things and that's going to get automated. And if the company is not going to do it now, they're going to do it within four or five years.
Josh Matthews:So that means that you have to stand apart and someone asked I think it was you, larry like how do you stand out from all of this? Well, you've got to be able to do all the things that AI can't do Like, smile, like, ask great questions, be diplomatic and then, probably most importantly, deeply, deeply, deeply understand the business, because businesses don't like AI to know everything about their business, because if AI does, then anyone can go out and replicate their business that they built from scratch. Someone could come in, swoop in, right, create some software that has lie detection in it and be able to interpret responses, and I can record my voice and it could still be me, right, and it would be using the Turing test and all this stuff. It would be pretty accurate, right, I'm a lie detector, but I can do that. Now my job may go away, except that it won't, because I can, you know, effectively understand an organization's business challenges and then lead them to a really good solution. Now, I might use AI to help fulfill some of that, but it's still got to be personal. So you're prepped for the next five years, for the next year, the next two years.
Josh Matthews:One embrace the AI. It's not going away, it's only going to grow, and it's going to grow exponentially. Right, who here remembers 2008? It doesn't seem like it was that long ago. Right? That's when, like Facebook and Google, like, went crazy. That's when we had the global financial crisis. That's when we got the feedback loop going on.
Josh Matthews:You know the division and ideology here in America, because every time you click or search for something, it's just telling you what it thinks you want to see. Because it time you click or search for something, it's just telling you what it thinks you want to see because it wants you to click on it. This is why I like perplexity instead of Google more authentic responses. Does that make sense? Who would have known that in 2007? None of us. So we really don't know what's coming. But we know something's coming because it's already here. We just don't know how big it is right. So that's where we've got to prepare, and I think that we had one other question here. Let me take a peek, okay. What are some outside-of-the-box ways to find your ideal sales force opportunity? I think that's a great question. First of all, what are some of the in-the-box ways to find, to find your next opportunity?
John Dionne:Salesforce events.
Josh Matthews:Salesforce events. Linkedin, linkedin Very good, okay. Job site what do you call it? Job sites Indeed, okay, casey, okay, all right. What's a way that people are in the box trying to find jobs? Right, maybe, networking, networking, yeah, very good. So these are all really good answers and, by the way, those are your best answers. So these are all really good answers and, by the way, those are your best answers. Those that's you know we're operating inside of the box really makes the most sense. But they used a word in there. They said your ideal job, your ideal job.
Josh Matthews:Well, if you want an ideal job, you better put your research hat on Right. That's not going to happen overnight. You can just go ahead and like spray your resume all over the place and then whoever picks you, you know, for an interview, and then you run your search. Then you're doing all of your deep dive on them. Or you can be super, super, duper proactive about it, which I strongly recommend, and I would go out and invest 140 bucks for a month of sales navigator. Do deep research on the kinds of companies that you want, the size of the companies, the industries that they're in. You'll be able to identify who are the decision makers that you need to connect with right, that you want to make friends with and network that way.
Josh Matthews:Coming here is great. How many hiring managers has anyone here met since you've been here? One, talia. One recruiter, okay. Anyone else, okay. So Salesforce events sometimes are just a little bit self-congratulatory pats on the backs from a networking standpoint. You're going to meet other Salesforce admins. How many Salesforce admins are going to help you get a job? Well, none, if they're looking to right. So you've got to pick the right events. You've got to pick the right user groups. You've got to pick the right place to network.
Josh Matthews:I have so many connections in India, right, like you know, I'm not placing anyone in India. They're not hiring people for me. Yeah, it's not working. I guess we're connected, but is it a useful connection? You know it might be if they like some of my posts and it might be if I like some of their posts. And that's where it ends. There's no exchange of money, there's no loyalty, there's no demonstration of like career opportunity happening with within these connections. No demonstration of like career opportunity happening within these connections.
Josh Matthews:So this is one of those things like we can feel like really busy. I'm networking, I talk to everybody. I printed these cool cards and I gave them out to everybody. And look at my followers and you know Larry liked my post. That's cool, I'm growing, I'm getting out there, all right, but who's looking at it?
Josh Matthews:I mean, we see this a lot with the talent stacker community. Talent stackers are like oh, I got like a thousand connections now. It's like that's great, but you're connected to other people who are job hunting. Right, they're not going to help your career necessarily. That doesn't mean that town stacker is not a good program. It is Right. But if that's where you're getting all of your clicks and likes and connections, probably not putting your eggs in the correct basket at all.
Josh Matthews:So you've got to get involved in the industry that you're choosing and go to industry events and start talking to hiring managers. You've got to be proactive and don't be afraid. Don't be afraid to reach out, right. A lot of people are like oh, but they're a manager. You know, michelle Hansen did a very good program yesterday on okay, I got an interview. Now what I thought she did an incredibly good job.
Josh Matthews:And one of the things that she said which resonated with me was you know, we all put our pants on one leg at a time, and so do these hiring managers. Right, they have children. They've got dogs that pee on their carpet, like they've got, like they've got a sick mom, like they're just like you you know, I'm just like you, like all of you have dogs that pee on the carpet or something like that I'm just kidding so like they're just regular, normal people and they really want you to be the one right, and even when they're not looking, they'll appreciate someone who's proactive in connecting with them. Guess what that's going to do? It's going to make their life a lot easier. And I preach this to my clients like network, network, network, and then when you can't find someone, then you call me, right, and then you pay me and I'll find people for you.
Josh Matthews:I do the networking for them. They pay for the service. You've got no one doing the service for you. I mean, recruiters can a little bit, right, but recruiters work for the companies that pay them. You guys don't pay the recruiters anything. In fact, that would be unethical. They stopped that in the 80s, right?
Josh Matthews:So that means you've got to go connect with hiring managers and then demonstrate what your value is. Follow them. Start by liking their posts, right? Hey, we're both in the same ecosystem. I thought it'd be great to connect. Hey, thank you so much for connecting with me. If there's anything I can do, you know, let me know. By the way, I see that you're connected to Jim and I know Jim. Jim's a great guy. I hope you're having an awesome week, right. And then you hit them up two months later and then two months after that, hey, happy birthday. You know. Hey, by the way, I wanted to let you know three months down the line. So that means network now, three months down the line. Then you give them the ask hey, I'm wrapping up a contract and I'm reaching out to my connections on here. Thank you for being one of them. If you could please point me in the right direction.
Josh Matthews:If you're aware of anyone in your organization or one of your friends is hiring, every hiring manager is friends with other hiring managers. Okay, like, literally all my friends are business owners or hiring managers. Like, it's just how it is. They know other people who hire, right, so got to get up in that crowd. Take the ladder up one notch, does that make sense? Okay, all right, let's take. I don't even know what time it is. What do we got there, larry 1020. Okay, so that's when we're about to wrap up. I would love to do one more authentic question.
Talia Johnson:I'm struggling with where to focus my attention and I hear this a lot with many people who are looking for their first role. I'm sort of not in my first role and I'm still kind of going. You know, I did that thing, but I'm super interested in this and this and maybe even this If I tried. It Spoils for choice.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, chinese menu yeah, okay.
Talia Johnson:How do I know which path to go on, what things to focus on. Do you have any advice for me? I?
Josh Matthews:do. Okay, this is a fun exercise that anybody can do and it'll only take you about 15, 20 minutes to do it. You can do it tonight. What you do, just open up your computer right, or grab a pen, and then I want you to write down your worst job description. This is a backdoor into the way you think I want you to write down the worst job description.
Josh Matthews:I did this when I I mean 30 years ago. I did this. I read it in a cool book and I did it and it was pretty awesome. I was climbing up high towers in the cold and in the rain. I just wrote everything that was crappy. You know, I had a boss that didn't listen to me. There was zero advancement, like all these kinds of things.
Josh Matthews:Be really crystal clear and specific. Write down your nightmare of a job, your nightmare of a career, your nightmare of a manager. What are you doing every day? I don't get vacations or I'm on call 24 seven. Write that down and then go to bed, okay. And then the next day I want you to take it and, by the way, you could just drop it into AI and do this.
Josh Matthews:I recommend you do it yourself. You just take it and then you write the opposite of that I'm working indoors, my boss listens to me, right, this kind of thing. Or like, oh, I'm doing indoors, my boss listens to me, right, this kind of thing. Or like, oh, I'm doing, you know, the bad thing might be, I'm stuck on a military CPQ project or something. I don't even know if that exists, but, like, I'm stuck on some you know government project where you know bureaucracy reigns king and it's a nightmare. Like I don't want that. So, okay, what do we want? Well, okay, now I know that I want to work with non. You know I want to work with, you know, publicly traded companies or privately held organizations, but not the government, right, not government contracts. So you can find that out through this exercise, right? Does that make sense? Yeah, and then you can take that and just stick it in perplexity or chat CPT and say this is my ideal job. What types of jobs are out there? What kinds of companies within my field or within my city or my state fit this description? And it will tell you. And then you say tell me more, because it'll give you like three or five.
Josh Matthews:I want the full list Now. I want you to rank them based on my criteria, and now you go and do all that networking stuff that we were just talking about. Would that be helpful, talia? She said absolutely All right. You guys, thank you for coming to my little show. I really appreciate it. You're so good and nice for coming down here. I think you all deserve a round of applause for participation and for spending your time here today, of applause for participation and for spending your time here today. I want to wish every single one of you the best success, the best career. Okay, if you're struggling, hang on, don't quit. If it's not working, do something different, right, change, figure it out, but don't quit.
