90% of Managers Think They're in the Top 10%. The Math Doesn't Work.

You know, there's a there's a saying that I hear pretty frequently and that's that people don't leave. organizations because of the organizations they leave because of their managers. ⁓ If you are in a situation where you do have a bad manager, what can you do there? I think sometimes managers are promoted maybe a little before their time and they don't have the skills yet and they're learning on the job as well. And so they're probably not doing the things they need to. But if you were in that situation, what would you

Absolutely.

to them that they do.

Yeah, again, this is going to sound like a broken record, but even if your manager sucks, people that know me have heard me say 90 % of managers think they're in the top 10%. Right? And the math doesn't work. It just doesn't work. Most companies promote great individual contributors to management, but there's not much management training.

Right. Right. Right? Agreed.

Maybe there's a little bit of interview training. Maybe there's some annual review or diversity training. But beyond that, back in the 90s and in the 80s, before all these recessions and economic downturns, training was a big deal. And if you were to become a manager in a Fortune 500 company, you could go to a four-month training program to be a manager and you would learn. how to interview, how to have a hard conversation, how to run a meeting. I mean, it's just, they really invested. Now, and especially I think in tech and in startups, there's none of that, right? So it's not really the manager's fault. I think employees need to recognize it's not necessarily the manager's fault. Yes, they could take the initiative to go get training, but if you don't know to be trained, we're basically making a bunch of people.

Yeah. Right.

that have only swum in the kiddie pool and thrown them in to the deep end with no swimming lessons. So first and foremost, as an employee who's having a tough time with their manager is recognized, hey, we both started this relationship when we were hired with great intentions. As an employee, I was excited about the opportunity. And trust me, that manager was excited to have you. And over time, there was probably a communication breakdown.

Yep. Yeah.

and just establishing that and recognizing that the manager is not here for me. I am here for the manager. it's, right, the manager, the company is paying me. I am the service provider. So I need to change, shift and recognize what does my manager need and have these conversations.

Interesting, interesting. Are there tips that you can give us on how to have those types of conversations? what I used to call it back in the DOD was managing up. Right, we had to do a lot of that. And it wouldn't be my specific manager per se, but it could be an executive for a different division. I have my own personal playbook of how to, how to manage up effectively. But are there things that you think are effective if you were that individual contributor trying to manage their manager to set those expectations?

Yeah, I think it becomes a mindset, ultimately thinking about one, my manager didn't get any training. their manager may or may not have received training. It's probably only the VPs because they've been working for 30 years or 20 years and above that got real training. Everybody thinks they're a great manager. Keep this in mind. Everybody thinks they've been trained because they went through whatever three or four classes their company offers. So with that in mind, you got to kind feed

Right?

this manager's ego a little bit. Hey, this manager thinks they're a great manager, but they don't know.

Yep.

Today marks the beginning of something new here on the show. We're starting a series of conversations with people who've spent their careers inside the systems that shape our professional lives. Experts, or as my guests would say, at least seasoned professionals who can help us see the working world from the inside out. My guest today is someone I've known and respected for years, my good friend Ringo Nishioka. Ringo spent decades in human resources leadership across both startups and large organizations. And in that time, he's seen it all, layoffs, promotions, performance plans, and the unseen dynamic between managers, employees, and executives. He's joining me today to not just talk about HR, but to share practical advice that applies to everyone, whether you're currently working, recently laid off, or somewhere in between. Ringo's got a list of lessons that go beyond the typical job search advice. Things like how to negotiate your exit package, how to stay out of that post-layoff funk, how to make sure your manager actually knows what you do, and how to avoid being the person quietly forgotten during a round of cuts. This conversation is full of behind the scenes insights most people never get to hear and I think it's going to help a lot of you listeners no matter where you are in your career. So here's my conversation with Ringo. Let's get it.

Welcome to Life Between Titles. I'm your host, Yvan, and today I've got my good friend Ringo. Ringo, you are the first guest in a new series of shows that we're gonna roll out here where we connect experts, or at least seasoned professionals. ⁓

Yeah, experts would be used very loosely, but I appreciate the moniker. Thank you.

And I feel like in the space that you were in, because you're retired now, you were probably one of the best and most seasoned. And that is the HR space, which is.

Well, thank you. Yes. Yes.

It's a space that a lot of people have maybe misconceptions about or don't really understand how to work with HR or things like that. But before we get started, I want to ask you, in your opinion, and we don't need to go into Wikipedia or anything, but in your opinion, how would you define the HR organization or a role? How would you define that?

Wow, OK. ⁓ Love this question. So. And I think I hope that I can bring a different perspective of what HR is. I think HR is.

Right?

is misunderstood for one. And as much as everybody thinks HR should be doing a very specific job, there are also other factors that affect it, specifically human, just human nature, human psychology and economics and a business platform. So ⁓ to answer your question, I've said it a couple of times. think I am I am there. Well, let me put it this way. Employees think I'm there for them.

Yeah.

I am not there for the employee. I am there for the company. And if I take care of the company from a people perspective, I will be taking care of the employee. But I am not there fighting for the employee. I'm fighting to keep consistency across the enterprise as far as how people are treated, to keep managers, executives acting consistently.

Mmm. Mmm. Right? Yeah.

based on whatever the mission, the values, and the goals of the company are. So ⁓ I'm trying to be the voice of reason. I'm trying to be a confidant. I'm trying to be maybe the sheriff at times. But ultimately, my job is to push back to the highest level, the executives, so that they are acting consistently. And then consequently, managers and individual contributors can act consistently.

Right. Right.

I don't know if that.

Yeah, no, that's a great distinction. I think, you know, more times than not, will go to HR for a wide variety of reasons. And it seems like, at least from my experience, the HR umbrella catches a lot of different things. And when you talk about that consistency, what does that typically entail? Is it cultural consistency? Is it performance? What does that entail, in your opinion?

Yeah, I think it's a lot of things, you know, whether it's, ⁓ how the company is going to act at potentially a layoff, right? Nobody needs HR when the company's doing great and everybody's getting a raise and the promotions and there's plenty of money. When the consistency needs to be ⁓ there, I think is when the company's facing hard times. So, you know, when there's a layoff, when through some of these social issues, whether it's COVID and working in the office or working remotely.

Right? Yeah. Yeah.

Those are the times where I think, I mean, the business becomes black and white, right? It's a numbers game and you're going to have a CFO that can look at, yeah, we'd like to offer better benefits, but we just can't. And my job is to what's best for the company to offer the best benefits we can under those circumstances. I think a lot of employees expect the company to do

Yeah.

a lot more than it should or can. And my job is to communicate why we're doing a specific thing. I think a lot of managers, executives and HR people just when I asked, hey, can we do this? They just say no. But really what an employee wants to hear is we're not able to do it at this point and here's why. But if we get to a point where we're doing this, this and this,

Yep. Yeah.

then we can consider it. And I think a lot of employees, they hear that, the, when, what are the possibilities versus just hearing no, can feel a lot better about who they're working for.

Yep. Yeah, it's interesting. Anytime you... bring up a topic of involving HR in the situation. think it gives people a sense of anxiety because historically what we've thought about is there's an issue like a performance issue, right? Or you need to be on under a certain plan to get back on track. If you were trying to position yourself to be successful at a company, how do you proactively work with HR so that you can be successful in your role instead of waiting for for that pip to happen or that performance plan to happen.

I love this question because the whole reason, you know, I started a little blog and the reason I started this was I wanted to give people the inside information, the information that no manager or company was going to share because they were a ferried of a liability suit. But a lot of this is based on, we all went to, whether we went to high school or went to college, we learned

All right.

various academic topics, but nobody taught us in college how to interview and how to be successful in the workplace. And then when we got to the workplace, we didn't get much training on how should I talk in a meeting? How do I push back to my manager? How do I interview? How do I get set up for a promotion? So in a nutshell, here's what I think employees should do. And it's going to sound super basic. Super easy, but I don't see it happen. I see it happen very, very rarely. So let's say I'm an individual contributor and I want to be a manager. I would speak with my manager and establish what do I need to do to become a manager? And more importantly, explain, here's what I think I need to do. I need to mentor some people. I need to lead a project. need to whatever that checklist is. because no manager wants to hear somebody just say, tell me what to do. A manager would know what to do. And so coming with that plan, getting agreement on that plan, and then getting a timeline in place. OK, I want to be able to accomplish this in six months. Here's my checklist of things I'm going to do over six months, and here are the five things. The manager hopefully will say, and this is going to sound

Yeah. Mm-hmm.

illogical, but hopefully the manager is going to push back because then we know they're invested. They're going to say, you know what, I don't think it's going to be six months. I think it's going to be 18 months. And I like four of the five things that you're going to work on. But let's switch out the last one. But get agreement on that, get agreement on the timeline so that so that you and your manager are both on the same page about what it takes to be qualified.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Then as those 18 months are going forward, whether it's every other week or every month, you give a status update to your manager on where you are on those accomplishments. And constantly be talking to your manager about what you're doing, what you're learning, what you would have done differently.

Mm-hmm.

personally, I would send my manager every single week and this is the CEO of the company. What I'm going to do over the next two weeks, what I accomplished over the past two weeks, what I learned so that they know what I'm doing. I think you'll find a lot of managers don't know what individual contributors do. And this is a way, frankly, a lot of people get laid off is.

Right. Right. Interesting.

The manager didn't know what they were doing. And then after the layoff, there's everybody scrambling and you always see a few people are hired back. A few job openings are there because the wrong people were let go. But to answer your question, you know, talking with your manager, getting on the same page, because there's nothing worse than an individual contributor saying, I did all these things. I should be a manager. And the manager thinking that's not what was needed. I had no idea you wanted to be a manager.

Right?

Does that make sense?

Yeah, and it seems like most organizations have reviews probably at least once a year where they go back and look at the body of work that you've done. ⁓ How often or how much time should somebody spend proactively letting their managers know what they're doing? Because it seems like this is the game behind the game, right? You're not just doing your job, but you're also proactively doing another set of things that helps people understand what you're doing, which I fully agree with. think that's like ⁓ a missing art form in the workplace right now. How much time should somebody invest in staying ahead? Because like writing a report every week is time-consuming, right? Like you've got to pull together things. ⁓ But what does that look like to you?

Yeah. Yeah, and I don't think it, I think maybe the first couple of updates will take a little while, but after a while, I think that update will be 10, 15 minutes max. You're just giving bullets and you're just keeping your manager updated. If they have questions, they'll come reach out to you directly. But I think, you know, 15, 20 minutes a week, I don't think that's...

Right.

too much to ask because at the end of the day, this is not my manager's career, this is my career. And if I want my career to go forward, I have to take control of it. We need to remember our manager has eight, 10, 15 people and their own career they need to worry about. And if we don't keep our career front facing and forward in front of the manager, who will? But it's not our manager's job to get us promoted. It's our job to be

Right. Yep. Yep. Yeah.

qualify and give our manager the ammunition, the bullet points, the sound bites so that they can give their executive, their director, their manager, keep them updated on my progress. Because at the end of the day, it's not going to be my manager's decision on whether I get the new opportunity, the big client, a raise, whatever it might be. It's probably going to be the person that the manager reports to is also going to have a big say. And ultimately what I want to do as an individual contributor is give my manager the ammunition to go to bat for me. So that I think is the big missing piece that most managers and employees miss out on that, that relationship and that dial.

All Right. Right. Yeah, that sounds great. And I definitely agree with you. I think that that piece is missing right now in the workplace because as a manager in previous roles, the employees that I thought were the best performing were the ones that I really didn't have to worry too much about. I knew exactly what they were doing. I didn't have to spend too much time with them in one on ones. They executed and delivered consistently all the time. I want to talk a little bit about maybe some of the employees or it might be you. where you're struggling like in a workplace and you're having a hard time hitting some of these goals or you're maybe under a performance improvement plan which in many ways like when you get that sort of delivered to you by HR and your manager it's a blow right it's it's very demoralizing how do you rebound from something like that

Good question. Okay. So I think a lot of people, a lot of employees get on a performance improvement plan because they didn't know what they needed to do to be successful. This is going to sound horrible to the managers out there. ⁓ But I don't think a lot of managers want to have those hard conversations. No, but it's human nature. It's not whether it's their job. They should be doing it.

Right? Yeah, I didn't.

A lot of employees don't know what success looks like. We're going back to that original conversation. And if you know what your job is, what success looks like in your manager's eyes, not in what our eyes, like our manager is our lifeline. you know, before, if I'm on if I'm on a PIP, performance improvement plan, I want to take a deep breath. relax for just a minute, it's not the end of the world, you can get off of these things. ⁓ And a lot of people, think you'd be, most of us only hear about the people who were on a PIP and were exited because there was a visible sign somebody left the building. But there are a lot of people, if you go to your HR department and say, how many, we don't hear about the people who were on a PIP and successfully got off of it because they don't leave.

Right.

⁓ But really what I would do is I would sit down with my manager and say, okay, what specifically do you want me to do? And again, I need to, as the employee on the PIP, I need to provide, here's what I think I need. Get it in writing, this is what I'm gonna accomplish by this specific time, whether it's gonna be, I'm gonna hit an ENPS score of this, I'm gonna have 80 % success rate on my calls, I'm gonna answer X amount of calls, I'm gonna. complete this project, getting those specifics and checking them off can go a long way. I once worked with a GC and he was an individual, he was a type A personality guy and I would not have thought he was detail oriented, but I see all the reviews. ⁓ He put a project plan together for his annual bonus. And that thing must have been eight pages long and super detailed. Right. But his bonus was huge. He had a lot at stake and he invested in this and he laid out everything he needed to accomplish, checked it off and we couldn't not pay this guy. Right. And, and so if you start this at the beginning of the time period and check through the timeline,

Wow. Wow.

What we don't want to do is come to our manager at the very last minute. I accomplished these things. No, we need to keep our manager updated so that our manager can continually update their manager. This is all about communication and just human nature. No surprises.

Ringo, want to, I want to pivot a little bit and talk about, situations where people should work with HR. You mentioned that HR, their sole responsibility is to sustain that consistency for the business itself. But if you were an employee and you were struggling with certain things, maybe office dynamics or performance or whatever, how should somebody like that engage with HR initially without the fear of retribution or getting into trouble?

Yeah, and I will say this, know, HR has a bad rap and a lot of people, regardless of what I say, are probably not going to go to HR. I get it. ⁓ But I don't think it's just HR. If I'm struggling... Yes, if you have an ally or have somebody that you can trust in HR, go to them. But if there are other senior managers, other executives, or other senior, senior individual contributors, go to them and ask for advice. But I think you're going to get the same advice. If you're struggling, at the end of the day, most people don't know what success looks like. They think they know what success looks like, but they haven't had an actual conversation. ⁓

Right.

And really what you want is oftentimes I think what people want is what are my first three opening lines to my manager? Once they get past those three opening lines, the conversation can flow, but they don't know what to say. And I think just being transparent and honest, honest, Hey manager, Johnny, I don't feel like I'm doing that. Well, I think I'm doing X, Y, and Z. Well, here's where I think I can improve. I want to check in.

Mm-hmm.

Can you give me some feedback? ⁓ And after I had that conversation, I would send an email to my manager and just say, thank you. This is all about CYA, but ⁓ it's going to be cloud, clouded and cloaked in a bit of professionalism. Hey, Johnny, manager, thank you so much for taking the time. I'm still excited to be at Acme Publishing.

Right.

And I'm hoping I can do well and make you look good, because that's ultimately our job as individual contributors is to make our managers look good. ⁓ Just to confirm, here's what I'm going to work on. Here's what I think I'm doing well. And over the next X amount of months, I hope you see progress here. And then start giving those progress updates, because it becomes very difficult for a manager psychologically. I'm not even thinking about the business perspective. if the manager has agreed to this list and the timeline and they're getting updates, it's hard to put somebody on the list just psychologically, right? In the back of their mind, if I put this person on the list and they have emails that, wow, we agreed to doing all these things, they're going to think twice. Does that make sense?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that makes a lot that makes a lot of sense. That makes a lot of sense. You know, there's a there's a saying that I hear pretty frequently and that's that people don't leave. organizations because of the organizations they leave because of their managers. ⁓ If you are in a situation where you do have a bad manager, like what can you do there? Because I agree with you. don't think that I think sometimes managers are promoted maybe a little before their time and they don't have the skills yet and they're learning on the job as well. And so they're probably not doing the things they need to. But if you were in that situation, what would you

Absolutely.

to them that they do.

Yeah, again, this is going to sound like a broken record, but even if your manager sucks, people that know me have heard me say 90 % of managers think they're in the top 10%. Right? And the math doesn't work. It just doesn't work. Most companies promote great individual contributors to management, but there's not much management training.

Right. Right. Right? Agreed.

Maybe there's a little bit of interview training. Maybe there's some annual review or diversity training. But beyond that, back in the 90s and in the 80s, before all these recessions and ⁓ economic downturns, training was a big deal. And if you were to become a manager in a Fortune 500 company, you could go to a four-month training program to be a manager and you would learn. how to interview, how to have a hard conversation, how to run a meeting. I mean, it's just, they really invested. ⁓ Now, and especially I think in tech and in startups, there's none of that, right? So it's not really the manager's fault. I think employees need to recognize it's not necessarily the manager's fault. Yes, they could take the initiative to go get training, but if you don't know to be trained, we're basically making a bunch of people.

Yeah. Right.

that have only swum in the kiddie pool and thrown them in to the deep end with no swimming lessons. So first and foremost, as an employee who's having a tough time with their manager is recognized, hey, we both started this relationship when we were hired with great intentions. As an employee, I was excited about the opportunity. And trust me, that manager was excited to have you. And over time, there was probably a communication breakdown. ⁓

Yep. Yeah.

and just establishing that and recognizing that the manager is not here for me. I am here for the manager. it's, right, the manager, the company is paying me. I am the service provider. So I need to change, shift and recognize what does my manager need and have these conversations.

Interesting, interesting. Are there tips that you can give us on how to have those types of conversations? You know, what I used to call it ⁓ back in the DOD was managing up. Right, we had to do a lot of that. And it wouldn't be my specific manager per se, but it could be an executive for a different division. you know, we, I have my own personal playbook of how to, how to manage up effectively. But are there things that you think are effective if you were that individual contributor trying to manage their manager to set those expectations?

Yeah, I think it becomes a mindset, ultimately ⁓ thinking about one, my manager didn't get any training. ⁓ their manager may or may not have received training. It's probably only the VPs because they've been working for 30 years or 20 years and above that got real training. Everybody thinks they're a great manager. Keep this in mind. Everybody thinks they've been trained because they went through whatever three or four classes their company offers. So with that in mind, you got to kind feed

Right?

this manager's ego a little bit. Hey, this manager thinks they're a great manager, but they don't know. you know, I would, if I'm looking to, let's just make it super easy. Let's say I'm making $50,000, I wanna make 55. That's a 10 % raise. And in today's economy, a 10 % raise is pretty huge, right? I think most companies are not giving raises or they're giving two or 3%.

Yep. Right, right.

I would go straight to my manager and say, hey, I'm currently making $50,000. I know this is far off, but my goal is to make $60,000. Because ultimately our goal is to probably make 100. But I don't want to shortchange myself and only make 50. I want to explain to my manager, hey, I want to be here for a long time. I ultimately want to be making at 60, $70,000. And here's what I think I need to do to get to 60. And again, list it out. Maybe what you can do is you can go to other job descriptions. And you don't have to even go to your company's job description. You can go to LinkedIn, job boards, because now a lot of the jobs show the salaries. And pull some of those bullet points. Hey, a $60,000 person can do this, this, and this.

Mm-hmm.

⁓ A $70,000 person can do this, this, and this, and list those for your manager. Because if you're looking for a raise, a 10 % raise, your manager needs to go to their exec. Hey, Johnny wants a 10 % raise. That first immediate reaction is going to be, what? Don't they know that all these companies are laying people off? But if your manager, it's a very different dynamic if your manager goes to the exec and says, hey. Johnny just came to me very diplomatically. They had a plan. And over the next 18 months, they want to get to $60,000. Here's the plan. Now it's a very different mindset of human nature. Both your manager and your exec can start budgeting for this ⁓ months before. it's because a lot of people come to their manager, come to HR, hey, I'm making $50,000.

Mm-hmm. Right? That's great.

and your reviews are in two weeks, and I want a 10 % raise. Well, the budget's already been set. You said it. It's not going to happen. That's the last and worst time to ask for a raise or opportunity. We need to set the stage. So.

Right. That's not gonna happen. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yeah, I love this. I love this no bullshit. behind the scenes look at HR because you're right, nobody really talks about these things. And I think it's so powerful in the knowledge that you're dropping on us, Ringo. I want to circle back a little bit to what you were talking about with HR and manager training. And I agree with you. I don't think startups and tech companies invest enough in it, especially as they're growing fast. You're just thinking about growing. You're thinking about, you know, the competition. and you're thinking about all these things, ⁓ do you think there's a correlation between the number of layoffs or the change, the change over at these tech companies with this lack of HR investment and training? Because I look at that, I just think if they had the skill sets and they were training their people, maybe they could be proactive, a little bit more proactive about these layoffs that happen so often, or it seems like it happens so often. What are your thoughts?

Yeah, I'm no economist and I'm, but I'm just, yeah, two guys talking. So I think it could make a small difference, but I think all the layoffs with, mean, these are gigantic companies, right? These are the fang companies. These are like fortune 50, fortune 10 companies. And these guys hire super, super smart people, right? They don't, they can hire anybody they want in the world.

Yeah, me neither. We're just two guys talking. Right?

They literally are world-class employers. And they don't want to lose these people because they know they're probably going to go to their competition. If I'm working at an Amazon, I'm not going to go to Acme Publishing. I'm going to go to Microsoft or Google. ⁓ I do think training would make a difference, but I think these are just wacky economic times. And if you're in a situation now where you're laid off, don't take it personally. It's a fricking wacky time.

Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Yeah.

and, and there's, there's a bit of a herd mentality as well, right? I think it's human nature. Hey, everybody else is laying people off. We can take this opportunity and we won't look bad if we have a layoff. Again, it's human nature. ⁓ you'll, know, you've been in these meetings where somebody says, Hey, we're not doing as well as financial as we were hoping to. We're still profitable, but we're not, we're not doing what we can or what we were planning on doing.

Right. Mm-hmm.

financially for the year, a bunch of companies are laying people off. We're not gonna look as bad as if we were the first or the only in our industry. ⁓ So I do think training makes a difference, a huge difference. I was fortunate enough to work in HR back in the 90s and I was delivering these four month training programs and you know.

Yep. Yep. Right. Right.

the knowledge, well, for example, I'm just gonna give a super simple example. I came from a ⁓ fortune company where we were delivering a full day class on how to hold a meeting. I would say, hey, I deliver a class on how to hold a meeting. They're like, you get an hour, right? But the people in a startup, don't know what they don't know, I get it. ⁓ But a meeting is not just about having an agenda starting on time. It's also about, I've got five people that consistently never talk. How can I get those guys engaged? I have three people who are always talking, always putting ideas down. How, as a facilitator, can I get those people to shut the frick up, right? ⁓ So there's, you know, how can I use visual aids? How should I use PowerPoint? You know, everybody's heard four bullets, four words. ⁓ How can I get more interaction, getting people to...

Yeah. Yeah.

stand up and down, physically involved with sticky notes and blah, But if you don't know what these trainings can do. It's just not going to happen. it's, I think it can make a small difference. And I think you would retain your top. It would be a lot easier to retain your top talent if they're trained because they're going to perform. Training is just like anything else. You know, you're going to have your top performance and you're to have people who don't believe and don't pay attention and they're going to end up getting let go. But think it's, again, training employees on how to be successful in the company. That's non-existent. So do I think it'd be successful? Absolutely. But in these economic times, I don't know that it would move that.

Yeah. ⁓ Yeah, I mean, definitely the elephant in the room is the massive amounts of layoffs happening both in government and in private industry. ⁓ And there's a lot of conversations around the impact to these layoffs. But what I want to talk to you about is really what happens afterwards. Like once somebody gets laid off, what's the Ringo checklist of great things that they should be working on immediately to get them back on their feet because I think that's really the question that a lot of people have is they feel defeated, they don't know where to go, they don't know why they were laid off. Sometimes these are good performers and they were just laid off because the math doesn't add up on the budget, right? And so if that's the case, like what's your checklist of things that people should be doing?

Yeah, I love this question. Thank you so much. ⁓ And ⁓ I'll give this in kind of a two part thing. First part would be what to do in the first 24, 48 hours and then what to do moving forward. And maybe it's two and a half, but the common mistakes I see people make after they're laid off. And I have been laid off more than once. I think every successful person I know has been laid off. So especially in

Yeah. Yeah, most people will.

in these economic times, it's not first and foremost, relax. It's not, obviously we have rent to pay and braces to put on our kids, but it's not the black mark that it was, you know, from yesteryear. ⁓ I think recruiters know and understand there's going to be gaps in coverage. you know, both of us grew in the Pacific Northwest and we know, we know when the Microsoft layoffs happen. We know when the Amazon layoffs happened and it's not a black.

Right. yeah.

So first and foremost, relax. It's gonna be tough, your career's not over. Let's see here. So the first thing I would do that day, do not pass go or whatever they say, do not collect $200, sign up for unemployment. A lot of, when I...

yeah. Right. Okay.

have been in layoffs and had those conversations, I'd say, hey man, sign up for unemployment today. And they're like, I'm not signing up for charity. I'm not signing up for food stamps. ⁓ And you'd be surprised how many times I'm explaining, no, the company's been paying on your behalf into this fund in case this happened. So sign up for...

Right? Right?

It's super easy these days, you can do it online and ⁓ every state has their own website. ⁓ The reason I say sign up that day is because you don't want to put this off. You're not able to collect retroactively. So let's say you get a job in six months, but it took you three months to sign up. You don't get to collect those three months of unemployment because you didn't sign up, right?

⁓ Mmm. Interesting.

⁓ the second thing is once you sign up, it's going to take at least two weeks before you get your first check. think a lot of people are signing up and thinking, where's my check? But the, it's a slow process and, and I think people are going to be lucky if they get their first check in two weeks these days. So, ⁓ you know, it, it's, it's not going to pay you your, for some people and especially, I know your audience is, is high tech and. in seasoned vets, it's not gonna pay them their full salary. It's not designed ⁓ for that demographic per se, but it will extend your runway. It'll give you a lifeline and it's better than nothing, right? So ⁓ make sure you sign up for unemployment. If you're not signing up for unemployment, you don't need a job, simple as that.

Mm. Mm-hmm.

The other thing here I would say is you're gonna be handed a release the day that you are laid off and they're gonna ask you to sign it that day and I would say don't sign it that day. Read through it [severance]. It's not gonna expire that day and if you're over 40 you're gonna have extra time. They're gonna say this is a standard release, everybody's getting the same package and forgive, all the HR people are gonna hate me right now but.

Yeah. Is that the case? Hahaha

No, all the packages are not the same. And I would say the people who ask nicely often will get. If you don't ask, you don't get. And there are demographics. I don't I'm just going to say this because I want these demographics to speak up.

Interesting. Interesting. Mm-hmm.

minorities, women, they often will just sign. ⁓ But they're negotiable, right? It's a document, like all documents, they're negotiable. So first and foremost, figure out what is important to me? Do I need cash? Do I need benefits? Maybe you don't need benefits because you're significant other works and you can hop on their plan. ⁓ Do I need my...

Mm-hmm.

My laptop is the company laptop, my personal laptop. So kind of figure out what's important to you. And then just ask, just ask nicely. If you don't ask, maybe they will say no. But I think you'd be surprised if, well, let me put it this way. Oftentimes people are angry, rightfully so, that they were laid off and they take it out on the HR person, which this is the job I signed up for. I get it. But I don't want to negotiate with that person. Again, it's human nature, right? If I think it's going to be a long, drawn out, ugly, I'm going to get my ass kicked every single day by them and their significant other, it's just easier. It's human nature. It's not right, it's just human nature. It's easier for the HR person to just say, hey, sorry, everybody's getting the same package. But Savanna, I've known you. I mean, you interviewed with us and you freaking brought a bottle. Like, holy mackerel, right? So there are different approaches to this, right? And if you just come up and say, hey, I appreciate everything you've done for me, manager. You gave me this opportunity. I've had a

Yeah. Yeah?

Good time here. I've learned a lot. I'm going to be able to take what I learned to the next opportunity. I'll be honest with you. The company laptop is my only laptop. And it would really be helpful if I could have or purchase this laptop from the company. Now the company, they're laying people off. They don't need this used laptop. You'd be surprised how many times they'll throw that in.

Yeah, agreed. Yep, monitor, laptop, all those things. Yep.

Exactly. Maybe, Savan, you come from, you know, high end government and they might have to, they're going to wipe that machine and they might be a little more critical about it. But I think

Yeah, the government's a lot more stingy about things.

Yeah, but I think for the most part People want to help, and especially in a layoff, like I feel guilty as frick when I'm going through these things. And I want to do everything I absolutely can to help, as do any HR manager. Nobody wants to see this happen. asking, hey, two extra months of COBRA would really help me out. COBRA is cheap, relatively speaking, especially if you have a And it can be a very meaningful impact, especially if you have kids or family, et cetera, et cetera. So whether you're asking, let's say you get a four week package and you ask for an extra two weeks and maybe you get an extra week, it's a lifeline and you can still collect unemployment while that's going on. So.

Yeah, yeah.

be thinking about not just signing, just as.

Yeah, love that too. I love that too and I don't think people push back enough once they get that letter. know, there's this feeling of... The world is over and distraught and you don't really it's very jarring especially if the layoffs happen in a way where you don't foresee it You're like we just had a great meeting and all of a sudden, you know, we're letting 10 % of the people go ⁓ And it's hard to get your bearings. How how long? Can you typically take because I've I've heard that you should you could get an attorney to help you look at the letter sometimes ⁓ But how much can somebody expect to get if they're pushing back? Is there a general sense of what that looks like? Because I would imagine if you ask for, say, two years of severance, that's probably not going to happen, right? But something reasonable, how reasonable should people be looking at these asks from the businesses, especially if they're big companies like a Microsoft or an Amazon, where it feels very much more structured? Right? Like it's a machine that's working. What can they expect and how much should they push back for?

Yeah, so, ⁓ I will answer that question. But let me just say this. Companies have been paying us every two weeks for the service rendered. They really don't, this sounds horrible, but a company doesn't need to give severance. It's not a requirement by law. Does it look good? Does it reflect well on the company? Absolutely not. But the company is not your family anymore. Those days are gone. And so to expect, you know,

Mm-hmm. Right. it.

oftentimes, especially the people that have worked for 20 years for a single company will come to me, what happened to one week or two weeks for every year worth? You guys owe me 40 weeks. I've worked here for 20 years. That's a huge salary. We're doing this because we're laying people off because we don't have the money. So I think, you

Yeah, right.

This is just a starting baseline, but one week for every year worked is a starting point. But if you've been working at a company for 30 years, I would not expect 30 weeks of severance. That's six months. That's a lot. ⁓ And again, just keeping in mind, nobody... the company is not financially is not doing well financially and that's why they're doing this. So they don't have endless amounts of money. ⁓ And I would say even the Microsoft's and the Amazon's, they still need to be reasonable, right? Reasonable requests. yeah, one, I think the starting point one week for every year is a good starting point. ⁓ And asking. nicely because remember also the person you're going to be asking is your manager and your HR person and when they need to hire people back and after every layoff they do you don't want to be the guy or gal that was arguing and saying this company screwed me this company owed me and you guys suck like so yeah ⁓ yeah for sure be gracious let's see the one one thing

Yeah, leave him on a good foot is I think what you're saying. Got it.

This is, in the first couple of days after you're laid off, what I would do is, and I've done this, is I get a big piece of paper and I make a list of what I'm gonna do to keep busy. I wanna keep my mind active. I do not wanna get into such a funk that I can't even get out of bed and I've seen this happen. But if I say, hey, I like to work out, I like to go for a, take the dog for a walk, ⁓ I've got these projects I wanna work on, whether it's fixing up the garden or,

Yeah.

Like get a long list of projects so that as you get, because you want to avoid getting into the funk. If you get into the funk, your family suffers and trust me, recruiters and hiring managers can see the funk in an interview like sharks smell blood, right? The person doesn't realize that they are coming in with a bad attitude, but nobody wants to hire a bad attitude, especially a bitter one.

Yeah. Yeah.

Keep your mind active, keep things that you can look forward to, and they don't have to be big expensive things. My big thing often is just, fix up the garden, and then I'll list, okay, the front yard, the backyard, I wanna build a patio, and blah, blah, blah, get those things done. ⁓ And let the company know, hey, if the company needs help, I'm available. I still believe in the company. ⁓

Mm-hmm. Yeah,

If you guys need a time-crafter,

that's great.

if you want to hire somebody back, I'm available. Whether you are or you're not, you're just buying time. You don't have to stay there forever. ⁓ But I think people would be surprised how often there's hiring after a layoff.

Yeah, interesting.

after a restructure especially. Here's what I would hold off on or the mistakes I see. On day one on LinkedIn, on the Facebook, I just got laid off after 20 years of ⁓ solid cert, like those do not go well. The first place I look on when I see a resume is LinkedIn. And if that's the post I see, they're not ready for the next step yet. They might be in three months, but they're not now. ⁓ Nobody wants to hire bidder.

Right, right.

⁓ I think if anything that you could post on LinkedIn is, hey, you know, I'm parting ways with Acme Publishing after 10 great years. I've learned this, this and this, and I've worked with some great managers and a great CEO and you drop their names. ⁓ People will know now that you're unemployed and if they have an opening, they'll think of you. But to go down that ugly path does not help anybody.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Okay, so then, you know, a week later, this is not the first 24, 48 hours, but within the first couple of days, I think it's very easy for people to say, I got to find a job, I need to find any job. take that, take that, just take a little bit of time. What are your primary needs? What are your secondary needs? My primary need is X amount of salary, X amount of title, X industry, and I'm not saying it's going to be all three, but figure out what you absolutely is important to you. And then your second secondary, hey, is it? It's not a must have, but I'd like to work remotely. I'd like to have parking paid because here in Bellevue parking $30 a day, right? And everybody's got a long commute and it's another 20 bucks in gas. So, but you know, nobody's going to deny not take a job because of those secondary things, but have those written out while it's fresh in your mind versus

It's expensive. Yeah.

when you're, know, some people oftentimes it's harder to make these kinds of rational decisions three months into the process. ⁓ I would practice my, the top 10 job interview questions. You've got the time. We know what the top 10 interview questions are. Google top 10 interview questions for government product designer or whatever your title is. And

Right. Right. Okay. Mm-hmm.

You'll get those questions. They'll oftentimes have answers. It's obvious to me as an interviewer when somebody comes in and they know the first two sentences of the answer and then they're stumbling and didn't practice the whole answer out completely out loud. Those are the things that come immediately to mind. But be nice to the manager, CEO in the HR department. Go ahead.

Yeah. Help, help. How much time do you think people should be spending? Looking for that next job in my previous interview with Katie Specter She had mentioned something that resonated with me and she said that it's not natural for somebody to get declined or ghosted as consistently as when you're looking for a job for let's just say a couple months and you're just constantly getting No's or you're constantly getting to this state of this negative mentality and knowing that that's the case like what's a good balance of looking for work and actively practicing the interview questions because you can't do it every day you're gonna burn out versus you know working on your hobby or being with your family like what does that typically look like?

Right, yep. Yeah, for sure. think it's very easy for people to say, okay, I'm going to go home and I'm going to work on my resume and then blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And there for the first three or four days are going three, four, five, six hours a day. And I would say, don't, don't do that. This is a journey. It's a process. If you've been working for the past two, three, four years, you haven't thought about this looking for a job or assembling a resume in X amount of years, and it's not going to come overnight. So, you know, it's maybe you put in an hour a day on

Right.

on resumes, maybe you put in, you know, a little bit of time, couple of times a week looking for jobs. Where I would put my focus, my energy though is networking. would, you know, the people in your network and in your significant others network, who they don't have to be in your industry, but who know people. So I'll often say, hey, is your significant other helping you?

Mmm. All

no, she's a teacher. She doesn't know what I do. I'm in tech. But she knows people. She knows the parents of her students. ⁓ If you have a real estate person, they know a ton of people. If you have even a dentist that you have a better than every six months, that's all I'd like. These people know a lot of people. But letting them know, letting them know, hey, I was recently laid off. had a great time at this company. appreciated saying good things and then saying, but if you hear of anything... ⁓ Well, I'm going to do this in two parts. If you hear of any openings in this industry with this title, I'd appreciate a heads up. Just saying I need a job is nobody, I couldn't help you if you just said, I need a job. I need something a little more specific where I'll be apt to become engaged. But more specifically, if you can go through your colleagues, your networks, LinkedIn profiles, and find people who are working in the industries that you're interested in,

Right.

They're working with the titles that you are interested in and just saying, hey, I'm going to be exploring the next phase of my career, professional career journey here. And I'm just looking to meet people. I'm not looking for a job yet. It's very important you say I'm not looking for a job yet. Could you introduce, I see you're connected to John Doe on LinkedIn. Could you make an introduction? I just want to pick their brain for 30 minutes and say specifically, I'll buy the car.

you

If you want to make it as easy as possible, the reason we want to say we're not looking for a job right now is nobody wants to, it's human nature. Yes, I want to help, but nobody wants to talk to somebody whose only focus is, you got to get me a job. Am I happy to share anything about HR? Absolutely. And if I, in talking to you, if I feel like, I'll get to know this person and

Right. Right, right.

And if I hear of something and I think there's going to be a good fit, I'm going to help. But there's a lot of pressure when the opening line is, can you help me get a job? Like nobody wants to

Mm-hmm. Right, right. It feels very, feels very transactional versus an actual conversation. ⁓

Mercy me. Yeah. And that's where I would spend my time. As you know, executives don't answer LinkedIn postings. They're going through their networks, right? And that is the way I think a lot of people are saying, my God, there's so many people getting laid off. I'm never going to find a job. Well, yeah, the majority of the people are posting and praying. They're posting their resume to the job opening. They're praying they get a call back. But if you can network,

No, not like that. Do not. Yep. Yep. Yeah. Right.

and get an introduction, that percentage of meetings and conversations will go up dramatically, I'm sure as you know.

Yeah, no, for sure. Ringo, how real is... this hidden job market that people keep talking about. And you've got these boards like Indeed and Monster, actually I don't even know if Monster still exists, but ⁓ LinkedIn, like all these boards and people spend a crazy amount of time simply clicking that button, applying, and then praying that they get some response back. From what I've been hearing, the most effective way to land your next job is through this hidden job market, through a network of people. How real is that? And if it is a very real thing, how do people break into that hidden job market?

Yeah, I would say it is. I think we were just both talking about how do executives find their job. They don't go to LinkedIn. There's plenty of executive roles posted on LinkedIn, but usually that executive will find somebody who knows somebody working in that company or knows somebody who knows somebody and ask for an introduction. They'll say, hey, can I solve?

Yep. Yep.

that there was an opening, I just want to learn more about the company, not I want to apply. ⁓ Looking for a great next opportunity and these are the things that are important to me. Can I just pick your brain for 30 minutes? I don't think people are going to say no, I don't want to talk to you for 30 minutes to learn about my company. Nobody's going to say that to a customer and every candidate is a potential customer. ⁓

Right. Right. Right. Right. Right.

But I think it's not what we say, it's how we say it. And just going about, this is not a transactional thing. This is, I want to get to know you, I want to get caught up, and I would really like to learn about the company, or I saw that this new product came out, or this new service came out, or like that. It's not, I think a lot of people have conversations and interviews. They go into that one conversation or go into that one interview, and they're thinking, I'm going to get a job offer at the end of this conversation. That networking is the first step to hopefully getting a conversation with the hiring manager or a job recruiter. And then you still have six or seven interviews after that. So thinking, playing this as a long game, not treating every single one of these conversations as, I'm going to get a job offer.

Right. Mm-hmm.

It's not going to happen. But the hidden job market, absolutely. I would say whether you're, how many of us got our first job at a high school or while we were in high school or in college through a friend who was working at a restaurant or who had a newspaper route. That's how I got my first job. And how did, how have you and I gotten our last job as executives through that network? And I think there's a lot of folks in that middle ground who just are used to the

Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, I got to answer the ad. I will say this. A few years back, I was talking to an individual contributor right out of school and I said, hey, look at Craigslist. And the father heard me say, look at Craigslist and said, you're not looking, my son is not looking for a job on Craigslist because he thought it was a, right? And I said, well, let me explain it to you this way. If I want to post a job on LinkedIn, it's $400. If I want to post.

Mm-hmm. Yep.

Job on Indeed, it's $400. If I want to post a job on Craigslist, I think at the time it was $35. So obviously, I don't think a person with 10 years of a master's degree is going to find their role on Craigslist. But if I'm spending $800 to $1,200 on job postings, what's another $35? And that I would also consider the hidden job market. ⁓

Yep. Yeah, yeah. Yep. Right. I mean, that's actually how I got my first job at Redfin was the founder, David. This is before he did Redfin. He had posted a job for just a designer. And I was just coming off of my internship at Microsoft and I replied back to him. And we've been friends, clearly, ever since. But yeah, Craigslist, it's a gem. Absolutely.

Yeah. And I think, you know, don't think about whether the site has a good reputation or maybe, I don't know, a specific site isn't necessarily known for having postings on program managers and whatnot. What do you have to lose? It doesn't cost anything to look. It doesn't cost anything to update your resume and tailor it to the job description and sell it in.

Right?

So, but

Right?

yeah, the networking thing, I just could not, you know, when I was looking for a job, I literally let my close friends know, hey, if you get me the intro that lands me the job, I'll buy you a bottle of Dom. it's 150 bucks at Costco, but everyone's like, what, a bottle of Dom? Like something memorable, right? Or maybe it's a, you know, I'm being racist here, but my-

Yeah, I wish I got you the job. Yeah! Right.

might need to buy a new blue walkie. Yeah, yeah. So, and what do I care $200 if they lend me a job like and it's and you got to see the bottle of Jaeger after you declined us you freaking been and I don't want people to think when was cheap Jaeger that Jaeger was key to the culture of the company that we were currently working.

Right, oh, the blue, yeah, blue label? Oh, I love the blue label. I love the blue label. Yeah. Yep. Yeah, I love it.

So ⁓ those are memorable things and the person that got you this job is probably gonna help you find the next job. So ⁓ yeah, for sure. It talked to people and please don't think I'm in tech and my significant others in a completely different industry and they don't know people. They know people.

That's hilarious. Agreed. Agreed. Yeah, for sure. I want to ask you something that's been bouncing around in my head for a while and I've gotten mixed feedback on this but the thing that I've been thinking about a lot recently is who would be the more effective use of time if you were looking at a company and there was an opening at the company. So the question is, should you focus on trying to break into HR organization and talk to the talent managers or should you just go straight to if it's a product role, the senior product manager who's hiring for that, like which would be a more effective your time.

Yeah, so I'm going to answer the question, but I have a caveat. I would definitely say it's the HR. I mean, I would definitely say it's the manager. They ultimately have the final decision, right? The HR person is just kind of the gatekeeper. And they can be an ally for you within the company. But if the manager likes your background, accomplishments, personality, and HR doesn't, the manager has the final decision nine times out of 10. I would say the manager. But I wouldn't, if I want a job at Acme Publishing and I don't know specifically the recruiter, HR or the hiring manager, I would focus on who in my network knows somebody at Acme, anybody. It could be a first year college grad.

Great. Great.

or a 10-year person, but the college grad went through, the person that has only worked for one year went through the interview process. So they'll be able to give you insight. If you can connect with them, have a coffee at the end of that conversation, say, hey, I noticed you're connected with Susan who also works at Acme. Could you make an introduction? Use that any introduction, any connection that you have to that company to get to the... introductions you want. I think HR and recruiters are going to be hesitant to just meet with people. ⁓ But if you can get to the manager and they send that resume to the recruiter, things will go pretty quickly. That's a huge endorsement.

Interesting. Yeah, that's awesome. I love that tip. I Want to throw out a series of quick Yes, or no questions for you Ringo and you can pass on these questions if you want First question is do cover letters still matter?

Okay. ⁓ dude, thank you so much. Thank you. I love this question. I know I'm sounding like a broken record. Absolutely. Yes, they do. Okay. I'm sorry. Okay. So here, I could talk for 20 minutes on this, but I'll try to show you. So oftentimes people will

Do people read them? Do people read them? Do people read them? Yes, I love it.

include a cover letter and they will put down all their accomplishments and all, I'm a hard worker, I show up on time. Those are opinions about yourself. And these are.

Yep. Right. I'm sure as hell have a lot of opinions about myself. For sure.

And ultimately, I'm going to explain how to write the cover letter much easier and scalable. and you got to remember a recruiter is human nature. A recruiter is not just looking for the job you're applying for. They probably have 10, 15 other roles that they're sifting through. So when I see the full page cover letter, I'm not going to read that.

Yeah, let's do it. Okay.

It's too much. don't have time to, you if I'm getting, if I have 15 jobs I'm searching for as a recruiter and I get 10 applications a day, that's 150, just, just, that's my day job. ⁓ And I don't want to hear the opinions about yourself. Everybody says they work hard, show up on time, but...

Okay.

But here's what I will read. ⁓ And I have a format for this on the little blog. ⁓ So basically, just super simple. Name, address, salutation, blah, blah. I saw your posting on LinkedIn for customer service wrap four. I think from my qualifications listed below, you'll see that I'm a strong candidate. Indent and bullet. No, so your third sentence is literally, your job description is looking for, colon, indent and bullet the top three or four.

Yeah.

bullets, plagiarize the three bullets from the job description that you fill. Plagiarize them and I'll get to why. And then go back to the left-hand side. I bring these qualifications, indent, and then you answer those three bullets that you listed above, how you've done those three. We don't say anything about us hardworking. We don't say anything about how I'm passionate about Acme Publishing. I look forward to hearing from you. I will follow up in a week. This makes it super easy to digest within five seconds. I know as a recruiter what is on that job description and I recognize my three bullets. I see this person answered those top three bullets below.

Hmm, okay.

Now I'm excited to turn the page. It's a very different mentality of this human nature again. If I see a full page of fine print cover letter, I'm, because I've got a hundred of these. And when I flip that page over, I'm in a very blah mood. But if I see these are my three bullets plagiarized and they're answering them, it's a very different mentality when I flip that page.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. It reminds me so much, you know, after spinning. Eight years in the DOD, one of the skills I picked up was writing bluffs, which is ⁓ bottom line up front, right? Like in the military, whenever you're doing correspondence, that's what they look for. And so it's literally what you just said. Like the reason sort of why you're actually writing the things you're going to do and then how you're going to follow up. And it's like four sentences max. And then you can put all the other stuff at the end of that. But I love taking that same mentality and applying it to the cover letter. I've never thought of doing it that way, but it makes a lot of sense to me.

Let me just say this one last thing. I think again, I mentioned earlier, everybody thinks their cover letter is going to get them a job offer or their resume is going to get them a job offer. No, the cover letter is just setting the tone. It's the appetizer for the main event, which is the resume. And the resume is not going to get us a job offer. It's just going to get a phone call for the first interview. So we just want to give them what they're looking for at each step. And at this step,

Right. Mm-hmm.

They don't care who you are. They just care, do you qualify for what I am specific, the employer specifically looking for? Sorry to interrupt, go ahead, please.

No, I love that analogy of a meal. And I don't know how many courses this meal is. ⁓

It's going to be a long, it's going to be many courses, right? The job is not going to happen after one interview.

Right, right, it never does, it never does. ⁓ Okay, second yes or no question. ⁓ Does formatting for resumes matter still?

I hope, yes, yes. And let me just elaborate on that really quickly. I see a lot of ⁓ candidates send in resumes and they're obviously using a tool and they have graphics and colors and margins and dividers. And I would just say, don't use those. Don't use those for a couple of reasons. They look pretty to us. to myself as I'm an HR person, I'm not a designer like you are. But if you as a designer looked at that, you'd be like, this was a half ass attempt. I know what real design looks like. And I don't think you can get as much information in there as you need. There's so much white space on those types of resumes. If you're a designer, you know how to design and that's a whole different conversation. But I think... format does matter. Also remember the hiring, the decision maker for this hiring is a couple of generations older or a generation older than the person that's applying generally. And they're not ready, they're not used to these newfangled formats. They don't wanna see that. They didn't grow up with that for the past 30 years. ⁓ Now, if you're a designer, that's a whole different, you know.

Mm-hmm.

the designer making decisions, they will appreciate what the designer is doing. But for the Tom, Dicks and Susies of the world, no, just give them the information they want and nothing more.

Interesting. Yeah, one of the things that in government we are notorious and it's even taught that you put every single achievement you've done in your life and these resumes can be up to five, six, seven pages. And that's just sort of the format of and the expectation of government workers, right? And going from industry where historically, I don't know what it is now, but historically you're taught that it shouldn't be more than one page, Unless you've been there for 50 years, you probably don't have more than one page that's specific to that role that you're looking for ⁓ and so don't don't do it and so there's this like clash of cultures now of people that are going from one to the next in your opinion how should you approach if you had to if you were just laid off and had to update your resume how should you philosophically approach updating resume to be the most effective

Okay, thank you. Frickin' man, you should be, ⁓ okay, so I have so much to say I don't even know where to start. Okay, let me address the one page resume first. ⁓ I think most of us received what little resume writing instruction that we received when we first got out of school.

Running a podcast? Yes. ⁓ Right. Yep. Yep.

And when we first got out of school, that's what we read, one page. And that made sense when we were right out of school because we had no experience. We don't have any more than one page, so keep it to one page. And that's the only real resume writing experience most people have heard.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

But let's say, I know your executive level, you've been working for 20, 30 years. I'm not hiring you for what you did in the first five, 10, even 15 years of your career. I'm hiring you for what you've done in the last eight at your last job, maybe a little bit before that. So the way I like to show on a resume career progression that I as a candidate have been growing, and this is

Mm-hmm.

almost a subconscious unconscious thing is the first job out of school, I might only have one or two bullets. The next job, you know, five years into it, I might have two or three bullets. But my most recent job, I'm going to have the most bullets and the most detail because ultimately that's what I'm going to be hired for. And so what this can do is it can show progression. The example I use for

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

one page is, and this is for people with experience, is if Leonardo da Vinci or Bill Gates were to give me their resume, well, maybe Bill Gates isn't the right example because he just needs a business card that says Bill Gates. But if Leonardo da Vinci were to give me his resume, it's going to be 10 pages long, and it's going to be interesting and fascinating. But the vast majority of us, my career, the first 10 years of my career is probably not going to be that interesting to

Yeah, right. Yep. Mm.

a CEO who's looking for an executive. So I think it's industry, you you want to follow the norms of your industry, but I think you can cut back and quit resume fatigue by minimizing, not minimizing, but by limiting the number of bullets you put early in your Go ahead.

How much time and effort should people be trying to optimize their resume for these? ⁓ hiring systems. There's a ton of hiring systems that process resumes and I know there's conversations around formatting it a certain way so that it can parse the information so that it can get through these systems. But how much should you be worried about that versus doing what you're talking about Ringo, which makes a lot of sense to me, which is like highlighting the things that are salient for that role that you're applying for.

Yeah, okay. So I had mentioned earlier for the cover letter, you take the top three bullets and ⁓ respond to those. I want everybody to picture a job description. A job description is gonna have probably 20 bullets of what they're looking for. And if you think about the bottom 10, maybe the bottom 12, they must be able to carry 50 pounds.

Right. Right. Yeah. Yep.

works well with others, they're super generic and you're gonna see those bottom 12 bullets on 90 % of the other job descriptions. We don't care about those. The first three or four are gonna be what that hiring manager is really looking for. And here's the example I give. ⁓ If I'm with a significant other and I like, I love football and I'm watching football every Monday night or I don't watch football but. ⁓

Mmm.

I'm watching football all the time, right? And my significant other is complaining to me like, you always watch football. You don't ever spend any time with me. You spend more time with your fantasy football and your football buddies than you do with me. The next significant other is gonna be fricking somebody who already is wearing football jerseys to bed, right? Like your pajamas, right? So whatever was missing from the last candidate or the last

Sunday, it's on Sunday. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

person filling that job is usually in the first three or four months.

Interesting, I never thought about that, but that makes a lot of sense.

It's human nature, right? When you are looking for somebody to fill a role, the recruiter says, what are you looking for? What are the top three things you're looking for? Those, they might be worded a little differently, but that's what they're looking for. So what our resume needs to do is not hint that we've done that. It needs to say, we have five years of purchasing experience, or we have ⁓ worked on

Right?

Interior design projects beyond 10,000, 12,000 feet. The more numbers you can put in there makes it sound much more real versus the opinion of I can do this or I have done this. But putting in numbers, timelines, dates will quantify it versus qualify. So to answer your question, I recommend to the people I work with, Every single time you turn in a resume, you update it to mimic that job description. When you hear of people saying, I turned in 300 resumes and I didn't hear a thing. Well, it's because we were hoping that our one resume matched what that other person, what that employer was looking for. And the odds are just astronomical. If we go in and update it, we would be qualified.

Yeah, interesting. Last yes or no question, and that's a great segue to this one, but should people use services, AI services like Sonara, which scouts for, you upload your resume and it scouts for job openings and it applies for it automatically. And it saves you supposedly a bunch of time because it's doing that matching and the application on the backend. Should people use those types of services?

So kind of along the lines, yes, it's a great segue. I think those services are looking for keywords and titles. But unless our resume bullet points of the accomplishments on our resume are exactly fitting or very, very close to fitting what that job description is looking for, it's the same thing. You're turning in. We really need to. Customize and tailor that resume to the job description. I mean think of when we go when you talk to a matchmaker They ask you a hundred questions. Well, what are you looking for from? Race height sports Interests blah blah blah and they're you're trying to match they're prioritizing and trying to make a match ⁓ They're not going off Yes at some level they're going off your keywords, but the final match is gonna be very specific

Yeah. Yeah. Ringo, we've only got a few more minutes, but I want to ask you to cap off this awesome conversation. I want to ask you maybe a more personal reflection. You've been in this business for a very, very long time and you've seen a lot of things, but as you look back at your own career, what's one time that you face uncertainty and you turn that uncertainty into an advantage for you.

Man, standard interview question and I'm not ready. ⁓ You forget a lot in four months.

⁓ You've been retired for too long, my friend.

You know, I don't know if I'm going to answer this question, but I think whenever I've been uncertain, I've been super, super transparent with the person I'm reporting to. And so there literally was a time when I was working for a fast growing company and I was in HR group and we were making Inc 500, whatever fastest growing company list. Like it was, we were growing fast. And I went to the CEO and I literally said, I think you need to let me go and ⁓ hire somebody who can keep up, who has this experience because I don't have this experience. And I don't want to be the guy, the exec who craters this thing. You're on a rocket ship. And he said, and you know, I keep in touch with this guy to this day and it's kind of framed how. this experience framed how I approached life is trying to get the glare out of here. ⁓ He said, I think you're good. I think what you need is you need a coach and you need some more bandwidth, but you can keep up. So go out and hire a coach, you pick them. And if after three or four months, you feel like,

Mmm. Yeah. Yep.

and they feel like, and I feel like you're not keeping up, they'll be your boss. And I thought, wow, that's super gracious, but I didn't think that much of it. And so sure enough, I hire a consultant and two months later they get me caught up and it turns out I just needed a little bit of help and a little bit of coaching and then they leave. But, you know, I don't know, time passes and I go back and I say, I go back to the CEO and I asked, why did you offer that to me? Like I gave you the out, you could have just.

Yeah. Yeah.

swap me out for somebody bigger, better, stronger, faster. He said, it's because you came to me is I knew you were ready.

Right?

And I get it, but that's just, I think being transparent and honest is the way I'm gonna get the most help. ⁓

There's a certain amount of humility there too and you know the... As you get more senior in roles and jobs and expectations, you know, every role that you get promoted to are greater and greater in terms of the expectations of output. It's becomes harder to have that humility and to say, raise your hand and say, Hey, I need help. Like, don't, I don't know if I could do this. how did you, how did you prepare yourself for that conversation? Cause I would imagine you're probably thinking about it for a while, right? This wasn't like over lunch and you're going there you're like, I can't fucking do this go and hire somebody else

No, I can see the end is coming and I think it's more I'm afraid of being humiliated because we're going to fail or the HR department is going to fail. ⁓ But I've always, I think again, this goes back to having a conversation with your managers like, I say, I'm going to get this job done in three months and I'm going to keep you updated along the way. And along the way, if after a month and a half or two months, I realize, this is going to take a lot longer than three months,

Yeah.

I'm trying to give them a heads up as early as I possibly can, hey, this is not going to be a three month project. It's going to be five. Because nobody wants to hear at the end of three months, you know what? It's not a three month project. It's five. And so I think just being able to keep your manager updated and believing and trusting that your manager is good, no manager gets up in the morning and says, you know what? can't wait to screw up seven's day. Like we were hired with excitement. We were hired hopes of ⁓ greatness. Literally your manager, when they make a hire, they can't fricking wait for you to start. And somewhere along the lines to your point, we quit our manager, not our jobs.

You alright? You alright? Right. Yep. Yeah, awesome. Well, there we go. That's the end of our segment, my friend. You have opened the door to the hidden kimono or whatever that phrase is of all these HR things you should do. And I appreciate that. I'm sure the listeners appreciate it as well. ⁓ And if there's any information that you want the viewers to know, I'll link that in the comments. You mentioned you had a blog. So we'll pop that in there. But if there's anything else that you want them to know, we'll reference that. ⁓

⁓ yeah.

in the comments section, but I appreciate you, man. I appreciate you coming in and telling us all these top secrets, HR top secrets.

No, dude, you've been gracious over what, 20 of the last 15, 20 years, we've always kept in touch and it all started when we couldn't, you know, we were a small startup and you went to a big company and, but it was immediately, I think we both knew it was, or I hope you got from me, it was immediate. I want to hire this guy, fricking, we got to get this guy in. And then you capped it off by coming in after, you know, you had declined us very graciously with a bottle.

Thank you. Yeah. you Yeah. ⁓

And I'll just never forget that. Like that was like that. It was that gesture that's like, I told you this guy was amazing. Like we should have, you know, but you you're you got all this great experience and we're a small startup and we couldn't afford you. And I totally get it. But I'm glad we finally got to do something to get it. So thank you for the opportunity.

Me too, my friend. Thank you, Ringo. Have a good one. Be safe and move out, my friend. All right, see ya.

All right, man. Thank you. Thank you. Bye-bye.