Matt: 00:00

Hierarchy of recruiter attention is essentially six seconds. It only takes us six, seven seconds to vet initially to see if you'd be a good fit for something.

Intro: 00:08

Are you ready to know what you don't know about Privacy Pros? Then you're in the right place. Welcome to the Privacy Pros Academy podcast by Kazient Privacy Experts. The podcast to launch, progress and excel your career as a Privacy Pro. Hear about the latest news and developments. Discover fascinating insights from leading global privacy professionals. And hear real stories and top tips from the people who've been where you want to get to. We've trained people in over 137 countries and countries. So whether you're thinking about starting a career in data privacy. Or you're an experienced professional. This is the podcast for you.

Jamal: 01:02

Welcome to another episode of the Privacy Pros Podcast. If you're someone who's thinking about getting your first role in privacy, or you're thinking about going for a promotion, or even jumping up to a senior level, but you're tired of getting constantly rejected, or the market just isn't quite responding to you, if you're someone who's been looking for a role for more than four or five weeks, and you're getting a little bit tired and frustrated, you're Then this podcast is going to change all of that. It's time to level up and land your dream role. Today I'm joined by a top resume writing and career coaching expert with over 20 years of experience And we're going to dive deep into uncovering everything you need to know To get visible, to get noticed and to get hired fast.

We're going to tackle all the CV deal breakers and how to conquer your interview nerves. Plus, you learn how to figure out a company's real culture and how to avoid getting ghosted. This is your chance to land that dream job that you know you've been waiting for and that you actually deserve.

I'm your host, Jamal Ahmed, global privacy expert and founder of the Privacy Pros Academy. And we're building a community of world class privacy professionals that come together so that every woman, every man, and every child on the planet can enjoy freedom over their personal information. And I'm thrilled to have you listening to us today. This episode is brought to you by Privacy Pros Academy, where we are transforming What privacy looks like by creating world class privacy professionals that go on to empower businesses to adopt honest privacy practices. And if you want to learn more about the GDPR, then you can grab hold of my bestselling book, the easy peasy guide to the GDPR available everywhere you get books. In all the major bookstores, as well as Amazon.

Jamal: 02:40

Now, today I will be speaking to Matthew Warzel. He is a certified resume writing expert and a career coach with over 20 years experience in human resources and career advancement techniques. He manages MJW careers and provides assistance to companies in transition from downsizes to buyouts, as well as individual job seekers needing to advance their careers. He's got a long history of working in HR and human services and on recruitment staffing teams across a multiple across a variety of industries. He helps clients navigate their career journeys and fashions linkedin profiles and resumes allowing employers to review applicants assets while highlighting His or her accomplishments, showcasing impacts on the employer's bottom lines, using quantitative verbiage and maintaining brevity.

Jamal: 03:27

And I have to be honest with you, Matthew, I checked out your LinkedIn profile, and I went down to your recommendation section and I noticed that you had over 860 LinkedIn recommendations. I thought I was doing well with over 150, but I looked at you and I was like, Wowzers.

This guy is really delivering value and he's making so many people happy because we spend so much time at work and we spend so much time in our careers. And it's important to make sure that the time that we're spending, we're actually fulfilling and getting the reward that we deserve, and we're also going to work to do something that we enjoy and contribute and leave a legacy and so many people find themselves stuck and frustrated For whatever reason so i'm really glad that we're going to really jump into your mind today To see how you've managed to help those 868 plus people who are raving About how helpful you are and how you've transformed their lives.

Jamal: 04:17

So they now have that work life balance. They now have that reward.They now are out of that toxic environment and really in a role where they're valued and appreciated when they're able to contribute. The job market is really tough right now. It's quite competitive. There's lots of layoffs. With that in mind, what are some out of the box strategies that you can share with us so that we can get noticed by hiring managers that go beyond simply submitting an online application?

Matt: 04:43

Obviously the spray and pray which is the online submission portal, job boards, etc That kind of stuff. It is still necessary. Funny enough, there was a stat that said hiring managers are using job boards more now than they were during COVID or maybe even pre COVID. But it's still not gangbusters. It's still not as wise as Trying to do some backdoor ideas, which I'll share a few here. But yeah, spraying and praying is the laggard for job hunting. Two to nine months is the average time to find a job. And it's wide like that because there's a lot of variables that play into that. but two to nine months is the average job hunt. And if you're going to want to be on the two month side, you can't just sit there And apply to jobs that look good and then call it a day, right? So you got to do backdoor workarounds, which us career coaches say. So first thing, building a brand I would say is the most important thing.

Matt: 05:32

Let's just say, if you take your role real serious and your own succession plan and your own career, if you're in a business that you see as being impacted essentially by, technology. Not only should you start upskilling to keep the wherewithal and your value and values attached to how much you're going to make. That's just as important as keeping it up for yourself because, we're all numbers still with the company, right?

Everyone's like my company loves me, blah, blah, blah. That's great. But unless you're the owner, let's be real. At any point they can pull the rug from you and drop everything. So I'm still a firm believer of taking care of yourself. And so branding is the number one.

I mean I keep predicting that I don't know if resumes will be around in 20 years just because I think everyone will be like, I'm like a LinkedIn or like some sort of profile where we just use URLs now to share our digital work footprint. Hopefully not yet. Cause I'm still getting paid to write resumes, which we are way better at writing than ChatGPT.

Matt: 06:25

Brand yourself. If you're someone who's an introvert and you're like, I'm not really on social, that's fine. And you don't have to go out there and be a subject matter expert where you're posting Canva pictures and having a blog. Get on your LinkedIn, right? Get it fine tuned, have someone like me so it's buzzing. And then just set a schedule, like, Maybe, Monday and Friday, you're going to go on there. Monday you're going to reach out to five hiring managers at five companies you really like in the locations you're willing to work and you're going to cold message them. And you're not going to ask them to look at your resume. You might not even do an ask. You're going to say, Hey, came across your profile when I was researching your company. I just really love, wherever they're, you know, Siemens always wanted to work there. And I saw your succession there. I would love to bend your ear for a few minutes, just to find out, what the experience is like working with them because maybe it'll help me be a better candidate down the road.

Matt: 07:15

Something where you are having them almost gift you a little bit of time, but people love talking about themselves and their company. So if you find the right hiring manager, that's like, yeah, I'll talk about myself at Siemens. That now that's a little bit again a pushy ask, right? Some of the basic ones where you could just offer some value without doing anything in return would be like Hey, mr Manager saw you at siemens always want to work there. Caught an article about your competitor or your industry or whatever Thought it might, be apropos for you. so nice to meet you. I'd love to keep in touch and then move on and then set your calendar where you're going to do that every three weeks ish, two, three weeks. You're going to share something that hiring manager, and then hope to start building some dialogue. And then eventually ask them to look at your resume right. But if you can get like, handful of hire managers and you start messaging them, you start commenting on their posts, you start sharing their posts. People see trends of people that are always favoring their posts and sharing them. So that will not get lost. Two to nine months is a job hunt.

I told you this, right? So do this work now because it only takes a few months to get this going. Rather than spraying and praying and then now all sudden it's six months later and you got no traction.

Jamal: 08:23

Okay. So that's what we do on Mondays. What about Fridays?

Matt: 08:25

Yeah, there you go. So you can make Friday recruiter day. If you're going through a job board and you see roles and they list out, who's the hiring manager and the recruiter, if they're the hiring manager, leave those people alone, apply to the job and move on.

Do not bother them about that job. If you want to get them into your funnel of like informational interviewing, that kind of thing we just talked about, that's fine. But just don't mention that job because. They do not want to have strangers going back door to them with resumes. Hire managers are busy enough.

If it's a recruiter that lists the open requisition, go for it. If they're recruiter like I was, we'll take any resume we can get our hands on because it only takes us six, seven seconds to vet initially to see if you'd be a good fit for something. So you could reach out to a recruiter, just be friendly and mindful of them.

Matt: 09:11

They're not someone who owes you anything and they're still complete stranger. So approach it like that. Less is more, keep it very short, sweet, and succinct and get to the point of what you're asking them to do. But yeah, you can make Friday recruiter day, going to scour recruiters, ones that are niched into your industry. Really niche down as much as you can your job hunting strategy. If it's something like general, like you're a sales person, well, that could be a hard job hunt because every keyword search is going to yield just all over the place? So use filters, try to control some of the madness when you're job hunting.

So you're only finding sales roles for a specific item you want to sell. So if you only want to do SAS sales, well then go and brand yourself as SAS sales and go and hunt down only hire managers and recruiters are in SAS and then start your communications.

But some of the other stuff too. Essentially if you see a job opening, you know, the hiring manager, you actually had contact with the hiring manager Okay, so we got to have that kind of a little bit of rapport already established and if you don't You got to hope that these people are going to be responsive.

Matt: 10:17

But I saw this once with one of my colleagues, they saw the job description and it discussed that the main function of this role was cleaning up their broken links. There was an SEO marketer role. And so this person, this colleague of mine, literally went through their website, this company, and pulled all the deadlinks and then put a spreadsheet of where the right ones are to replace those with.

And then he presented it to the hiring team in a nice little, PDF or chart type thing where it was really easy to digest. Person got the interview and got the job because they were so impressed that they went above and beyond to show off that they can handle this role. Right? So again, if you want to spend four hours on doing something like that, it's up to you, but in hindsight, Hey, it worked, right?

It was a little unique. So just getting outside the general job hunting strategies is going to be another big key for you. You can't just spray and pray. You got to do some other stuff and get creative.

Jamal: 11:16

Wow. That's, super insightful. Some of those things I'd never even thought of. So what I'm taking away from what you've said is there's no point just hitting one click apply and just doing that a hundred times a day, right? So spraying and praying isn't actually going to help anyone. What we need to do is find a way of actually going outside of that process and hacking your opportunity to get yourself in front of hiring managers. And what you said is, Before we even do any of that, the most important thing is actually building your personal brand. So having a LinkedIn profile that reflects the value that you can provide to an organization that shows that you're passionate about what you're doing. That shows that you actually know your stuff, that you're competent. So that's the first thing is making sure you actually focus on building your personal brand.

Jamal: 11:55

And that's important regardless of whether you're actually looking to apply for a job, looking for a promotion, or you're quite happy where you are. Because your brand is always going to precede you. And it's really interesting what you say. Just last week I was speaking to Swati, and she was a privacy engineer at Twitter. And she was great at her jobs. All her managers, everyone on her team knew that she was great at her job. But then that whole team got made redundant. So the only people that knew how great she was at her job was the people that are also redundant and clearly not hiring. But everyone else in the rest of the world, all the other hiring managers, had no idea about the value she brings.

Jamal: 12:29

And she found it really tough to get her next role because there was nothing making her stand out from the other candidates. Everyone has certifications. Everyone has knowledge. Everyone has some kind of experience. But there was nothing about her online presence. She says that was the biggest lesson that she took away. And since then she's actively been focusing on actually building up her brand. And she gives similar advice to what you're saying here is we really need to focus on building our brand. So once we've built our brand or once we've actually made some efforts towards building that brand, what you're saying is dedicate one, two or three days a week and try different things.

Go and approach hiring managers and see if you can have an informational interview with them, compliment them, build some rapport with them, ask them to come and talk to you about their stuff. tell you about how great they are, tell you about how great the company is. Maybe some of the challenges that they're facing right now, what they're currently working on, which would be driven by some kind of an article or something you've seen in the social media receiving and posting about.

Jamal: 13:16

So you've got something there to approach them with. The other thing you said is also great to do is to actually speak to recruiters and see if they would look at your CV. Recruiters are really experienced, so they would. not hesitate to spend six to seven seconds glancing over your CV to see if you could potentially be a good fit. But again, remember the recruiters don't owe you anything. They're actually just busy doing their jobs, trying to find the right candidate for their clients. And so don't be too pushy because you never know when you're going to come across this recruiter who is actually recruiting for the position in the company that you actually have your eyes set on. So always be polite. And then you said the other thing you could do is actually, be a little bit more bold, be a little bit more gutsy and start asking for people to actually talk to you about the opening that they have. And what you're saying is if there's a hiring manager on the board. Don't actually disturb them because a lot of people are going to get the same idea and you're just going to get annoyed.

They'll probably end up blocking you. But what you want to do is make sure that you're short, make sure that you're sweet and make sure that you keep it succinct. So the three S's. I love that. I'm going to take that.

Matt: 14:17

Yeah.

Jamal: 14:18

And what we really need to do when we are applying for those roles is think outside the box, right? So what you think outside the box is you've seen a role, you've seen some responsibilities. Is there something that you can do that would demonstrate you're competent in one of those responsibilities? So for example, one of our mentees at the Privacy Pros Academy, what she did is she went on to the website and she looked at the privacy notice when you apply for the role, right? She looked at the privacy notice, highlighted some key errors, including some outdated reference to legislation, and she actually put that in a document, highlighted them, commented on the changes that she would make. Submitted that to the hiring manager and she got an interview. She got an interview. Got an offer the same day and she started in a few weeks time. So people love it when you actually take initiative and you go beyond Just applying for a role and you actually put the effort in. And what they're really valuing there Hey, this person doesn't owe us anything This person has taken the initiative to actually go and look at some of these challenges. Fix the problem that we have.

And that's what we're looking for. Someone who's going to come and help us solve their problems. And they've done a great job. They've clearly got initiative. They're probably going to be a hard worker. And so that really makes them stand out heads and shoulders above anyone else. And so that is a really great strategy. So thank you for sharing both those things.

Matt: 15:31

And I had one more in community. Definitely I'm an advocate of Facebook groups, Reddit, Quora, jumping on forums, engaging, whether you want to share some Answers to some people's problems or just interact with others. Find your communities because nowadays there's something for every single niche.

So if you're a SaaS sales person focusing only on the health tech industry, you will find a group of that type of folks. So get in there and start sharing some insight and build a community with people. It doesn't have to be all day. I mean, people look at these things and they're daunted but if you can just sacrifice an hour of Netflix to get on and work towards your end goal of bettering yourself and your financial situation and your career succession plan, it's worth it. So community. That's a big one.

Jamal: 16:23

I love that one. And I'm going to come back to this at the end, but you've hit on two of the key pillars that I focus on at the Privacy Pros Academy, building a personal brand and community. Let's see how many of the other five we hit.

Now you mentioned earlier, an experienced recruiter like you, it takes you six to seven seconds to vet a CV. That is astonishing. That's scary. That means I've got or anyone who's applying for a job who's listening right now has Six to seven seconds to make an impression or they're rejected. So What is the absolute deal breaker? What are the red flags that immediately make a recruiter or a hiring manager say uh, uh, Reject that when you're looking at CV?

Matt: 17:04

I hate to keep saying hierarchy, but hierarchy of recruiter attention is essentially a six seconds. Look it over. Template choppy, misspellings, periods missing, just basic, like, Okay, this resume and job title because we are creature of job titles as recruiters. Good recruiters recruit to requisition, great recruiters recruit the candidate.

So if you're a great recruiter Every resume you're going to come into contact with, you're going to want to put that person in your pipeline if they pass this initial test, when you're looking at this resume, is this person a job hopper or do they have gaps? Do they look like they can handle the role I'm recruiting for or other roles I'm aware of in the office?

Matt: 17:44

And so essentially That's the first thing they're doing. They're glossing over basic stuff. Did you put some effort into it? And then if you do get past the six seconds, now they'll give you two minutes, because now that two minutes is I'm going to itemize and see, do they have the degree I need? Do they have the career trajectory that the hiring manager usually likes? Do they have the buzzwords of technologies or methodologies or just hard skills that are important in this role. And if so, after that two minutes, I'll call them or I'll email them and try to get them on the phone to then vet them. And the vetting is essentially me as the recruiter gatekeeper going, Hey, you know, don't let me down, but eventually I'm assuming you're going to let me down somewhere in this conversation, but I'm hoping that you won't, and you'll be a good candidate to pass on to my hiring manager.

So having said that. Some stuff that sticks out, right? So first poor formatting, you don't need infographics. If you're a graphic designer, save the infographic for an addendum and add it to your applications and your emails and your messages as such. you don't start off with that as your lead resume. You need a professional resume that's minimalistic, but still has some visual aesthetics to it and content's still King.

Matt: 18:55

So first and foremost template, keep it clean, easy. One little hack is to Go on your word document or pdf edit select all copy Go open a text document and make it plain text. Don't make it rich plain text it edit paste if it pastes fine And it looks singular and there's no jumbled mess of content Then yours will be ats compliant. If there's some jumbled mess to that content then most likely you're not going to get past these robots or at least you're kind of taking a shot in the dark.

So you never know what's going to happen with the rules behind the scenes. So first and foremost, get the template. Second, messaging. Job hopping is bigger pet peeve than a gap. A gap, there's sometimes a lot of explanations. Job hopping drives me crazy.

Now, if you're someone who just had a poor ring of luck and you just get laid off all the time. You're going to want to make that known on the resume because if it's every two years, you're leaving a job, I'm already concerned. So parentheses, you know, after the title or whatever, laid off, laid off, laid off, right.

Matt: 19:56

Mask downsizing, mask downsizing, mask down. So make that known But otherwise, if you're just a bad worker and you hate your managers, you can blame others all the time. It's probably you. you're not going to get the recruiter to favour you as much as someone who's been loyal, works every, five, 10 years at a company, and has an actual succession plan. It's something that I say, you just really got to wrangle in your messaging and who you are in the resume. Capitalizing everything drives me nuts because I got to go and uncapitalize everything. When they don't put hyphens between phone numbers, it drives us nuts because when we got to copy and paste it, use a little bit more work on the recruiter's end.

Misspellings again, don't. I never cared because I corrected it before I sent to my hiring manager because I was like, I like this person. But don't because not all recruiters are cool. A lot of them will be good cop, bad cop. So if you get a bad cop. Could have been your livelihood, right? Using ambiguous language. I don't want to hear championed or like this words that are just like, what the hell is this? You led, okay? It's fine. You don't have to get crazy with action verbs. Try not to repeat a lot of them, in the same resume, but do not try to outsmart the reader. Don't be funny, quirky, fancy, ambiguous. Everything you do is judged.

Matt: 21:07

And if you're already making it hard on them to understand what the hell they're reading, you're going to lose some of the audience. So even if you're a CEO, my CEO resumes are written the same as my accountants. They all have business minded language. I tell my english teachers you're not in teaching for the next two months of your job hunt you're in sales. And you're selling yourself. So let's get a business mindset these next two months. Then you can go back to the curriculum stuff. So when you're job hunting you're in sales, I don't care what your nurse coming in the job now you're in sales nurse Let's go. So keep that in mind that these things should be sales sheets these resumes.

They should be short and sweet. My content buckets essentially goes in three buckets my content. One what's relatable, two what's bottom line impact, profits, productivity, efficiency And then three anything unique. High profile clients speeches awards .You were on the olympics, you were in the news, whatever put all that together, right? You get these three buckets and you start building this lego set that is that person's resume.

Matt: 22:01

I'm going to do it with the least amount of legos as possible. My goal is to give the hire managers the meal that is the resume and then have them bring over the chef For the interview to talk about the ingredients, because as a recruiter, I don't have time to go through the ingredients. And not only that, half the time I don't understand what the hell they are, because I'm not an aerospace engineer. I just recruit for aerospace engineers, but I don't know what the hell they are. So what I'm going to do is essentially rely on this person telling me that they can do the job. With me checking off some of the boxes I do understand, and then hoping the hire manager will kind of sort it out, right?

When they get in that technical interview. Well, to get to the technical interview, you got to go past me, the marketing major, you got to go past the robots, you got to go past sorcerers. And so you want to make sure it's business minded so everyone can understand the language and then worry about all the heavy kind of tech project stuff for the interview room.

Matt: 22:48

Don't lose those buzzwords though. Some of that heavy tech jargon can go on the resume. Just don't fill it up in the experience section. I got to be able to get through that. And you don't want to do that also, because what if there's some cool stuff that's buried below some BS lines that you kept in there, right?

Make it relevant. It better be relatable, bottom line impact or unique, or else get it off the resume. Short and sweet sales sheets. And finally mine are built off the problem action results formula. I do a lot of that action result type stuff to keep it succinct and quick.

And then use as a springboard for the interview because you can say, yeah, Mr. Mrs. Manager, I can handle these five tasks that are really important for this job. In fact, top five lines show you how I did it. And each of them have a little proof point. So you reversed engineer the job description in the resume and you put a little spin on it.

So now we can talk about this stuff in the interview room. Yeah. Let's talk about this. Let me tell you how I got from A to Z on this job and I'll tell you all this filler stuff I left off. So that's kind of the idea of a good resume, right? But the bad ones are just little careless things, right?

Matt: 23:49

Just don't be careless. Take it serious. Cause it's a living, breathing thing, but it's not meant to be updated every day. So update it every, three months and take the hour to do that for those every three months. And then you're done. Then you can just keep tailoring it as you go, depending upon how much you want to really land that job you're applying to.

Cause I'm not going to lie. Tailoring it works. Riches are in the niches. And if I can see someone who's only tailored the resume to my job versus showing everything, but the kitchen sink, I'm probably going to pick the person who tailored it.

Jamal: 24:17

Thank you. That was a lot of information there, a lot of valuable tips. And I think if anyone just listens and just pays close attention, just to a few of those, they will see completely different results from what they're getting right now.

So a few things that stood out for me there, Matt, number one is don't try and be clever with your cv. Just keep it simple. The most important thing is making sure that it is clear and it is concise and you are actually focusing on three things. Number one is is it relevant number two is the bottom line impact Is it relatable? And number three is, is it actually relevant to what it is that you're trying to do? And is there anything unique about you that stands out? And that uniqueness could also come from your personal branding, the stuff that you've seen on the LinkedIn profile. when you've had a look at their CV to see what does this person actually look like on their online profile and who do they know in the industry and what are they up to?

So it's really important. And what you've really highlighted there, which is something that I've never thought about, is you're not just writing the CV for the recruiter, you're also writing it for the applicant tracking system, because you have to get past both of those to even stand a chance to get in front of the hiring manager.

Matt: 25:19

Yep, exactly right. ATS, nothing to be scared about. They like simple formatting so they can parse the data and then they like words that they're seeing on the job description that they're vetting for, but it's not meant to scare you. It's just so we can organize some of the chaos of having easy applications. When you can just click two buttons, you're going to have a thousand candidates when you used to have long applications, you probably weed out, three quarters of those people. but when you easy apply it, yeah, you're going to have a thousand people for a job.

Jamal: 25:47

Great. And also what you mentioned was couple of red flags is job hopping, big gaps, not being able to demonstrate on the CV that they can actually handle the job, or the fact that they are actually competent to do what's required in the role that you're actually looking to recruit for, and that they've actually put some effort into it.

So don't be sloppy, don't be lazy, do a spelling and grammar check, make sure you've checked all the dates actually, marry up. Make sure you've been as clear as possible as you can With the information, and it's also important to use industry keywords, especially if it's specific to the role that you're applying for to show that you actually know your stuff and you're familiar with the technicality that the role actually requires.

So really valuable tips there. And my next question is, let's say you get through all that. And you get to the job interviews. A lot of people get really nervous before job interviews. It can be really nerve wracking. What are some mindset shifts or practical techniques that you suggest for anyone who finds themselves in that position so they can feel confident feel prepared And they're really ready to present the best version of themselves at that interview.

Matt: 26:48

That's great. So you've got the golden ticket. Everyone's already on the same kind of wavelength. We all understand what we're here for to do is vet this person. When you get the interview, remember. You're halfway there. They think you can be the one. They're not gifting you an hour for the hell of it. They're saying give her an hour of our hiring manager's time because we really think she's the one. So have some confidence already.

Hey, they like me. Now we just want to make sure your personality can jive with the team and that you're someone cool to work with. You're gonna make our life easier. And how can you, convey that in an interview that you make their life easier by answering thought out responses. So prep like hell, hire me, hire my colleagues.

Matt: 27:28

You need interview prep. If you've got a really good interview coming, unless you're someone that's just savvy and has done tons of interviews or is just sales based and they're just very good at selling themselves. Fine. But if you're someone that maybe introverted or doesn't really have an idea of what the hell they're good at for this type of role, and they're Kind of guessing. Clear it up. Because improvisation. Yeah. We improv in life every day, just as humans, it should not be improvised during an interview.

There should be very minimalistic improvisation. So first thing I'd say is, figure out the research of what you need to get done for this particular role. So do you know the industry, the company and the job, the products, right?

Matt: 28:06

The service offerings, their vision or their mission, whatever they want to call it, leadership principles, culture, that kind of stuff, which is also on their website. these are the types of things you want to start reading, right? Go type in Google news, type in the company and type in last 60 days and see what's going on.

And then jot down notes. So it's not overwhelming. I got some stuff off the website, got some stuff off the news. Here's some social media of the latest stuff they were talking about. Here is the general industry. Here's some general stuff about the company. I'm going to put it all together to start formulating some answers by sprinkling in some of this stuff I'm researching.

It's not meant to be the face of the interview. You, these answers. These are meant to be sprinkled in while you're actively selling yourself or removing a red flag, because that's what interviews do. They're either removing a red flag in their mind or their ability to sell you towards the role.

Matt: 28:55

And so weave them into the stories. Like I mentioned earlier, if you can use a resume as a jumping off point and you have, call it, 10 accomplishments that you know would excite these people. So you have like a little reminder at the interview, right?

So it's in front of you, you've got your resume, maybe you have like 10 different buzzwords that trigger each of these projects. So now you're going to match them to each. Right. Okay. This question, I'm going to go and I'm going to do this project. Cause this kind of relates to that question and then cross it off.

I mean, if you can just cross off an interview, have a pen there, whatever, but cross it off. Cause now we talked about accomplishment. We don't want to keep talking about it. Don't beat up a dead horse, but this is the first thing. Now you're going to relate one of your projects to that question. And then you're going to sprinkle in any of the extra stuff that you've researched.

Matt: 29:38

Cause those are the gems they like. Hey, yeah, this project, I did handle vendor selection. And in fact, I was able to identify a vendor that saved us a hundred million dollars a year. We signed on a long term contract. So we secured that high quality budget friendly type of vendor.

And I actually did it because like your company was talking about in the news recently about these contracts. that were coming around for vendors, et cetera. You know, I had the same situation at my company. Whatever, I mean, again, it's a little bit stretched, but I'm just trying to shotgun here, but if there's a new piece, right, you're going to incorporate it.

To what the damn achievement is. That's even better. Cause now they're like, wow, this person's talking about current events too. While they're storytelling their background. So just things to tie together. You research with your background. Confidence. The only way you're going to get it is knowing yourself and knowing how you relate to that job.

Matt: 30:31

And the only way you're going to do that is by dissecting the hell out of that job and putting it to matching it to what you've done in the background. And if you've gotten the interview. And you see the job description, you've got the interview and you've got your resume with already filled up with some nice wins.

If there's a couple other ones on the job description you don't have on the resume, you don't necessarily have to jam them in there. Cause you've already got the interview. But you want to get them again, in your little project notes. So during the interview, you touch up on those other two things that they may have not seen already in the resume.

So that's the biggest thing. Research, research, research. Second, I would say for confidence is try to formulize every single answer as a story from like beginning, middle end.

Matt: 31:10

I use the STAR method for my clients situation, task, action, result, same idea, you know, it's just something happened. You did something and here's what the outcome was, right? It's the Socrates and Aristotle, you know, human condition story formula of the monkey goes up the tree, throws bananas, gets bananas thrown at him. Okay. He wins and comes back down the tree and this is kind of how we tell stories since whatever bc. That's all you need to do is keep that in mind too with your answers. Don't just ramble. Keep it succinct. A b and c. Did this happen?

This is what I did. Here's the outcome and do that for each answer as you're progressing through the interview. Keep it formulaic to the point. Don't ramble to ramble. Under two minutes each answer keep moving on.

Jamal: 31:56

Great tips. Great tips for the interviewer. Thank you so much. That preparation is really important. And now, unless you're somebody who is naturally really gifted, at convincing and persuading and influencing people into buying into whatever it is that you're selling, then what you need to remember is it isn't always easy, especially if you have an interview for like two, three, four, five years and you suddenly find yourself out of a job or suddenly you're in a toxic environment and you really know you need to move. What you really need to do is get some professional help, and that professional knows exactly what the interviewer is looking for, knows exactly how to help you craft your answers based on your experience so you have the best chance of winning. So this is where we'd reach out to someone like yourself, Matthew, and say, Hey, I'm coming on the market, or I'm on the market and I need your help to prep for this kind of an interview in this kind of role. And you will spend some time with them figuring out what they've done in the past, figuring out what are the key requirements of a specific role or maybe the generic role type and help them to craft their stories.

Jamal: 32:53

So they're equipped with the projects, with the stories to demonstrate their competence in delivering to the role they're applying for next. So those are the two most important things that I think we need to take away from that section.

For me what I teach my mentees is when you get the interview, there's three things that you have to prove to the hiring manager.

Number one is that you are motivated to work for that company and in that specific role. And all of the things that you said there supports that. Number two is that you are competent to do the role. You need to demonstrate that you have the technical abilities to be able to perform well in that role. And number three is you need to show that you'd be a great cultural fit. And one of the things that we focus on is developing the attitude of a world class professional, developing the attitude of a leading professional when it comes to mindset. And so there is assumptions of empowered leadership and anyone that goes in and demonstrates and exhibits those behaviours is always going to be a great cultural fit to any forward thinking organization.

I have two more questions for you, Matthew. One of them is a bit of a bone to pick with you, and it might be a little bit unfair to take this out on you, but recruiters have earned reputation for ghosting candidates. It's very frustrating. And it's very demoralizing for lots of people. How can job seekers follow up in a way that's professional, whether they've been ghosted, without coming across as needy or desperate.

Matt: 34:15

Absolutely. So a couple of things there. First, if the recruiter is in house, meaning they work at Microsoft as a Microsoft employee, and they're in HR, you most likely will not move much further outside of an initial follow up. There's a big difference between recruiting for a company inside them and then recruiting as a third party agent. I did both of them. The third party agencies like Aerotech, Robert half, manpower, aegis group these companies you can still build a relationship with the recruiter. In fact, they most likely aren't the ones ghosting you because you're a collaboration with them.

They get paid if you go to work. They like you enough to put you already in their funnel. So with them just every six weeks, tickle them. Hey Bill, thanks again for the interview last week at Microsoft. I'm so sorry. It didn't work out. I really thought I gave it my all at the interview.

I really appreciate you going to bat though and get me that job interview. Would love to stay on top of mind and on your radar. Let me know if anything else comes around for the technical PM roles. Six weeks later. Hey Bill. Just checking in saying hi. I'm still here. I haven't really found much traction on the job hunt. Still not giving up the fight. Keep that relationship open because bill's always working in the background for free for you. Now that's bill at aerotech.

Matt: 35:35

Jane at Microsoft is inundated with thousands and thousands of people. And probably weekly. And she's going to ghost you because she probably forgot to give you that little automated. You're not good for this company thing. And which is a, you know shame on her.

Cause they want the candidate experience to go really well these days. But again, they don't owe you anything. So if they ghost you at Microsoft, do the initial follow up. You should always follow up. And every follow up should have three selling points, quick and concise.

Thanks for the time. Really appreciate you allowing me to be vetted for the role. Just want to reiterate these are the three things I'm really good at. As mentioned during the interview, were really a big priority for this role and mentioned those three things. Keep me posted if you need anything else, short, sweet, friendly But sells you. Every time you engage with a recruiter, a higher manager, whatever, always be selling, always be closing ABC.

Matt: 36:24

And so joint time you communicate with these people, right? So. Always reiterate why you're pretty good. But anyway, initial follow up, right? They don't get back to you. Give it two weeks. Give 'em one more follow up email. Again, same exact thing. Don't sell 'em on the same three points.

Get three more points in there. If they still don't, you can try a phone call. Because if you have the phone number to the recruiter at Microsoft or any recruiter, really. I mean, again, AeroTech shouldn't be ghosting you. Shame on them if they are, but a phone call next would be apropos. After you leave a message, if you don't get ahold of them, move on, you maintain professionalism, but you've tried two emails and a call and now it's done.

In my real estate business, my partner, we only do two top followups and then we dead lead them. Well, I'll give you three for a candidate for the interview. Two email follow ups and a call. If you want to go above and beyond, you can mail them a physical letter follow up, which does have some impact because people love opening mail and no one's getting it anymore. So, um, keep that in mind too if you want to like send them a physical mail too. That would be a fourth though. I would do two emails, One call, bare minimum. And if you want to throw in a snail mail to stand out a little bit more, you might lose 50 cents for the stamp.

Jamal: 37:36

Great. So essentially what you're saying is the ghosting kind of comes with the industry, comes with the territory. But what's more important is actually maintaining that relationship. So you're top of mind when similar roles come up and they think it'd be a good fit.

So always say thanks for whatever it is that they've done for you. Number two is always remind them of three points about what makes you great and always have a call to action. so they know what to do or they know how to get in touch with you. And what you're saying is after an interview, the rule of thumb is really three follow ups.

Don't do any more than that. My rule is rule of three as well. I'll give you three chances and then after that, let's forget about it. And

Matt: 38:10

Three, three chances. And you know what, six months, you want to say hi again, it would not be out of the realm of impossibility. Because again, you still have Jane at Microsoft.com email, feel free to, maybe even the holidays. Happy holiday season. Just want to say hi again. You may catch them on a day where they have a role coming up.

Jamal: 38:30

Yeah, yeah. You never know. And this is what I say. Winners create their own luck is because they're doing the things that taking action, they're showing up and success begins by showing up. So if you're not doing some of those basic things to actually improve your chances, then you're just leaving it up to luck or you're leaving it to someone who is actually putting in the effort. And what you need to remember is you are constantly competing with hundreds and thousands of people sometimes. There was one role one of my clients opened up in the Middle East for a data privacy role. within two hours, they had 2000 applicants.

Matt: 39:00

Wow.

Jamal: 39:02

Exactly. Within two hours, they had 2, 000 applicants and they said all the quality of those resumes and CVs was actually poor. So they canned it and they outsourced it to a recruitment agency. And now we're helping them to find the right candidate because their agency doesn't know what they're recruiting for either.

Matthew. So my final question. There's a problem that a lot of people complain about on LinkedIn, it's, they can't get hired because they don't have the experience and because they don't get hired, they can't get the experience. So for someone who's looking to pivot their career or someone who's looking to grow and take on the next challenge, who can't demonstrate on their CV that they have that job title, but they're confident that they have the skills, the qualities, everything you could need to do a great job at that. What advice do you have for them to overcome this challenge?

Jamal: 39:47

And before I let you answer that, I want you to give me some feedback on the approach that I take with this. So here's what I believe. And this is what we follow at the Privacy Pros Academy. And this is how we're really successful in helping people pivot is I don't believe that when someone says you don't have the experience of demonstrated experience, we're not going to hire you. I believe what they're saying is, I don't believe you're competent in the role because I haven't seen that you've demonstrated anywhere that you have the competencies required. And that's very different from saying you don't have the experience and I think a lot of people kind of Fail to see that what they're saying is we can't see anywhere That you'd be competent for this role and the way most people typically understand competence to be is if you've done something before then you Can do it again. Now the challenge becomes if your cv doesn't say you've done something before then it becomes more difficult and challenging to prove that. But that's where all of your personal branding comes in. That's where actually talking about those key competencies and being able to deliver that and showing that you know your stuff You have subject matter expertise.

Jamal: 40:46

You have the practical skills. You have the network. You are familiar with the resources and you have the personal branding and the community to back all that up. For me, that is overwhelming. And that is always better than someone who can demonstrate they have been doing this thing in the past before and nothing else stands out about them. What's your take on that, Matthew?

Matt: 41:05

I think it's all about how you frame your transferability. Because like you said, you can only preach so much about, how much wherewithal you have in this new career, we'll call it like a career transitioner, which I deal with a lot, especially since COVID, a lot of people were reinventing themselves, right?

So I'd never had as many career transitioners, pre COVID than I ever did. Once COVID hit, I was like, wow, everyone's just changing it up. Think of it like this. What's the hiring manager looking at you? What's their perception of you? Okay, they're looking at this person that's not doing the exact role at a competitor, which is the ideal candidate, right? So we start off with the A plus candidate is someone we can poach from the competitor doing the same work, and they can roll right in. We call it the purple squirrel, and from there we kind of digress and go down.

Matt: 41:52

So we have these check boxes on this job description. In the hire manager's minds they got, let's call it five boxes, they got to check. Some of them are mandates that you ain't gonna get around. You need a degree in computer engineering for this job and you went to school for fine arts. Okay. It's mandate. It's not preferred. They're mandating computer engineering degree. So you're never going to get a shake at that kind of stuff. And that's fine. Move on. Go. There's other people that are willing to not worry about what degree you have. Um, so find the boxes that you can control and then how can you control those? So if it says five years of QA experience, and you've got one year or less than that, but you've got the knowledge and wherewithal, well, now it becomes how you frame it.

Matt: 42:33

And so how are we going to frame it? Well, in the resume, we're going to get it on there because the resume is your first, again, until branding does take over or LinkedIn's resume is how they're going to perceive you and start putting you into a box of perception. So we got to control that, right? We can't have it on the hiring manager to control our perception.

We control it based off of the words we're using. It's one of the things I preach to my clients. You have the power. It's not a history exam, where you got to You know, be right. Can it's proof. This stuff is tell them as much as they need to know. And that's it. Choose the words carefully. So when doing that, I frame it up like acquired knowledge of quality management, wherever acquired knowledge of quality management, including. You know, regulatory this and that and inspection that and QC, you know, so go through the line items essentially and of what you can do that relates to that job that you like and then have that transferability written as such.

Matt: 43:28

But you don't want to fib, you know, you can't just say I did it and then not have it. But if you've got knowledge of it and you don't have experience, Then just mention it as such acquired knowledge of gained. Insight into. These are the little tips I do for my resume so I can still get the content into the resume, but we're just not fibbing, right?

We're framing it. So the higher managers understand that you may be early career for this type of function. So that's kind of where I think of it is that everyone has a fair shot at any job. I mean, unless you want to go be PGA tour, a golfer, which require you getting on the course, 10, 000 hours and hiring a swing coach and going through all that stuff, that's a different kind of thing.

Matt: 44:03

But the regular Joe Schmoes, like us in the world, um, accountants and lawyers and resume writers, we can find paths to changing it up. If I want to go be an aerospace engineer, I can go and use the internet to research like hell and figure out a pathway to being an aerospace engineer.

And then I can go and sign up on Monday for some aeronautical, university and start figuring this stuff out. That's the action we can take as humans. There's no closed doors in trying to find a new job, right? So if you really want to work in an industry that you like, doing a role you want, You best get to some LinkedIn profiles of people doing it already and start dissecting it and figuring out what skills, what education, what certification, what groups are they in, and even figure out how they got into it.

Maybe they parlayed it from coming from, a laboratory and then they got into the quality engineering at a production facility, you know, because they had some quality and CMM experience back in the day, whatever, you can figure out how they got into it. It's out there. It's advertised. You can figure out how people are succeeding in the world by just going to LinkedIn pages and their websites and stuff.

So use that and figure out what your plan of attack is to get into there. And I stay start from the back reverse engineer all the way down to what your actionable items are on Monday. And if you need help, this is what I do in my program. I build this kind of stuff for my clients.

Jamal: 45:17

Amazing. Thank you for sharing that. So if you're someone who's thinking of pivoting their career and you're looking to get into privacy, data protection, cybersecurity, or whatever it is that you're looking to get into, then those tips there should give you the confidence and should give you the know how of exactly what you need to do. But the most important thing for me that stood out when you were speaking, Matthew, is you've got to identify the path and you've got to start taking action towards making yourself worthy of that role, even though you don't have the direct experience right now, which means you need to go and look at what is the knowledge I need to get?

Jamal: 45:47

What are the skills I need to get? What are the resources I need to gather? What's the networks I need to be in and what do I need to do to push all of that out using my personal brand? So you have to focus on all five of those things.

Matthew, thank you so much for your time. So folks, we've had an amazing action packed hour packed with value on how you can really land that next role that you've been dreaming about. And Matthew has come and given up his time and shared exactly how you can do that. Now, if you enjoyed what Matthew had to say, if you can see how all of that makes sense and you actually want a chance to work with him, he's worked with over 868 successful people who want to rave about him so I would recommend that you get in touch with Matthew and say, Hey, Matthew, what does it look like working with you? This is what I'm interested in. And Matthew, if somebody does want to get in touch with you, what's the best way to reach out to you?

Matt: 46:32

I really appreciate that. Yeah. They can go to jobstickers. com. It's like pot stickers, our favourite appetizer, but job stickers. And that's my link tree. So that'll have access to my blog and services and deals and all sorts of good stuff.

Jamal: 46:47

Okay, and we'll link that into the show notes as well. So just click on the show notes and that will take you straight there and you can see all of the great stuff that Matthew has to offer. You can watch his amazing videos, you can read his blogs, and then if you want to get in touch with him, then click on that link and start changing your life, because once you change your career, you change your life. And if you're not getting the reward and recognition that you need and deserve in your life right now, it's time to do something about it. And if you want help with all of the other technical stuff, the practical skills, the community, the resources, then get in touch with me at the privacy pros Academy. So just to sum up, we looked at what you need to do if you are actually putting your CV together, we will focus on how and why it's important to build a personal brand and to find your tribe and get yourself in the right community. Matthew shared some of the top tips for actually making sure that your CV gets past the recruiter and gets past the actual applicant tracking system and earns you an interview with the hiring manager.

Jamal: 47:42

And he shared his top tips for how you can really excel and delight the hiring manager to make them see the value that you bring to the table. And also what we should do post interview how to follow up and making sure that you're always top of mind for the hiring manager and recruiter by doing three things, being polite and thanking them, making sure you're reminding them of three things that you're great at and always leaving them a call to action.

So you always stay top of mind. Until next time, peace be with you.

Outro: 48:07

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