Think Differently. Solve the Impossible.

 

Show Notes

Land Your Dream Job Now

A fool-proof system created from twenty years of experience and 25,000 hours of mastery:

https://josefstetter.com/get-your-dream-job/

The Celebrate Group

Hiring the right fit people and keeping them, while helping individuals land their dream job:

https://thecelebrategroup.com/

https://josefstetter.com/

ca.linkedin.com/in/josefstetter

Transcript

My guest today is Josef Stetter.

He calls himself the resume whisperer.

Josef's Land Your Dream Now program was created after his 20 years during which he switched careers nine times and jobs 18.

He understands the frustration job seekers go through in trying to show they have transferable skills or an excellent candidate for a job.

He's helped 12,000 people find a job they love, with a 90% success rate of finding any one employment in any field in under three months.

We're going to talk about how to stand out from the crowd, increase your chances of getting hired, gain the confidence you need to find and land the job you've been dreaming about.

He's also got some funny and interesting stories from his own experience and those from his clients.

welcome to my show, Josef.

Thank you for having me.

It's an honor and a pleasure, Daniel.

Thank you.

So tell me your own story real quick.

Nine times careers, nine times jobs, 18.

I grew up in a family where get a good education, get a good job was the mindset.

And so I did sciences in high school, finished high school and was like, I don't like sciences.

And so I started going to my advisor at university suggested I do economics.

I didn't know any better, so I studied economics.

And then along the lines, whether it was immaturity, whether it was just I wasn't passionate about the work, I kind of got to a plateau where I was the best in the company, I got bored and I either quit, got fired or both, depending on the job.

And it took me a while to figure out that I'm passionate about making a difference and helping people find their path kind of thing.

Nice.

And now you somehow became an expert at writing resumes.

So one service is your resume.

You're the resume whisperer.

And then it seems on the flip side, you have the back end covered.

You're also working with the...

Yeah.

So I basically help the individual job seeker when I don't necessarily have positions in my recruiting or headhunting firm.

Navigate, I call it the abyss of let's say job boards and the whole process or experience of finding a job.

And then I own a recruiting company that have now leveled up to call it myself a corporate culturist because I help organizations not only find the best people, but keep them by explaining to them how to embed corporate culture and embed intrinsic values, embed values such as what drives your life or your decision so that companies can customize, you know what, Daniel, you're somebody that loves to learn.

Instead of giving you a 2% generic raise, why didn't I pay for education, whether it's professional or personal development, but in a way that you're going to get more value out of it, and therefore you're going to be a better, more engaged employee, for example.

And you help companies find and recruit the right people as well as help people who are looking for jobs, both sides, nice.

So you say that most people use Indeed or something similar when looking for a job search, but yet these are probably the worst places to look for job.

Why is that?

So one job posting on Indeed gets between 350 and 5,000 applications.

Most companies look at the first 100.

So if you're 101 or 102, you're out of luck unless you know these three tricks.

So first trick is most of the big job boards, Indeed, Blastdoor, Monster, Career Builder, refresh their database between 11:45 PM Eastern Standard Time and 2:45 AM Eastern Standard Time.

So depending on what time zone you're in and when you go to bed, going to your resume, press space bar anywhere in the resume and press save.

The moment that you press space bar and save, you've made a change to your resume and you're more likely to be seen in the refresh with recruiters or employers.

So if you posted your resume in April and we're now in September, almost October, you're probably on page 8,000 of the database.

Nobody sees you.

Second thing is we've been taught for the past 100 years to write generic, fluffy information like I'm hard working, dedicated, committed, team player with excellent communication skills on our resume.

In 20 years of recruiting, I've never met anybody that said, listen, I'm late or I've met very few people say, I'm lazy, I'll show up late, none of my work will be any good and I really hate people, please hire me.

And we don't know how to measure hard working because your definition of hard working and my definition of hard working could be very different based on our industry, based on our background.

And most of them are probably AI generated, like make my resume sound good, right?

Right.

But there's also a level, like if I compare an accountant that's working during taxing mandatory 80 hours a week, what's hard working?

A hundred for them.

And then I compare that to a nurse during the height of the pandemic, which had to do three or four hours of overtime because there were such a shortage of nurses.

Does that mean that the nurse is less hard working than the accountant because the accountant works more hours?

No, because there's a different level of stress and there's a different level of responsibility for each profession.

So instead of filling your resume with what I call fluff, to fill your resume with technical words associated with the job that you are doing.

So for example, if you're an engineer, I think your background is aeronautical engineer, if I remember correctly, Daniel.

So to give me aeronautical engineering technical words on your resume, not I'm hard working, that I can commit team player.

And then the third part, which relates to the second part, is most of the applicant tracking system score how close to your name those technical words appear.

So if all those technical words are on page two, you're not scoring very well, because it means that your most recent experience is irrelevant to the work.

So you need to kind of put that information, whether it's so instead of saying skills, I like to call it areas of expertise.

And I put the technical skills that are associated, let's say, with being an aeronautical engineer, right at the top of the resume.

And then I have a section called Selected Highlights, which is your, let's say, top five, seven examples from your career of the results that you produced, so that a potential employer doesn't need to guess how good you are.

The problem with most people when they run a resume, and you shared with me a couple of resumes that I will kind of critique, and they fall into this category very quickly, is that they write, they write, I know how to do this, and I have experience in that.

So I love to give these two examples.

If you're applying to be a receptionist somewhere, and someone says to you, I know how to answer the phone, I hope you look at them in shock and go, really, a receptionist doesn't know how to answer their phone.

The fax machine too?

The lights?

Because unless you live in an igloo, a cave or practice the faith of Mennonite, my two-year-old son can press the green button and go, hello.

But if someone says to you, I know how to answer 60 calls a day with 12 different lines.

I can measure 60 calls a day with 12 different lines.

I cannot measure I know how to answer the phone.

That's the first thing.

Now, if I use an example from my own career, if I say to you, Daniel, I'm an excellent salesperson.

I know how to do B2B, B2C, account management, relationship building, lead generation.

I've worked in retail, I've done door-to-door sales, I've done car sales, I've worked in private education, I've worked in recruitment, I know how to do sales.

All the words I just said are very important for the algorithms of LinkedIn and Indeed and all of the applicant tracking system.

But just because I said a lot of words, doesn't mean I know how to sell.

So if I say to you, I worked for a private college that before I came in, generated $530,000 for the entire year.

In one month, I was able to generate $860,000 for that college.

Which one would convince you that I'm a good salesperson?

All of the keywords or the actual-

You still need the keywords to get into the database and get-

Correct.

Okay.

You do both.

The keywords with what is the end result that you produce?

No company is hiring you because there's an empty chair in the office and it looks weird that there's an empty chair in the office.

So if you're an aeronautical engineer, you solve specific problems.

You made things faster, you made them more efficient, or you figured out ways to make more money because you can kind of do over that.

So if your information on your resume is not telling me how you made money, save money, increased efficiency, you're not telling me any information.

And in this day and age with AI and with what's going on, if you have a generic resume and I have to guess how good you are, I'm probably going to guess a lot less than what you really are.

Do you want to jump into the resumes I sent you?

Sure.

We'll start with Mr.

Smith, who is currently in, looks like the banking world.

So he falls into extremely generic cookie cutter, like solely managed and maintained branch ATM to ensure seamless function at all time.

Okay.

What does that mean?

Grant, I'll give the listener some background on him.

So this person is in finance, looks like he's banking right now.

A bank teller.

Bank teller.

So here's the thing.

He's said that, again-

He wants to get into wealth management behind the scenes.

Right.

So even in getting wealth management, number one, the financial industry is extremely regulated, so you need to start doing the designations, whether it's your Series 7 designations in the US, or whether it's some of the kind of derivatives, options, whatever you want.

Now, wealth management usually is insurance and mutual funds, so you need to get your LLQP license, which is standard in North America.

But here's the thing.

If I read, let's say, learns product services and procedures quickly and accurately, and delivers solutions that make products work together.

Can you tell me what specifically is great about that person from that statement?

Not specifically to what you previously mentioned.

Here, if he said, for example, I learned 40 different products and services that allowed me to better understand how to service clients and increase their portfolio or their assets by an average of 15%, now you're speaking financial advisor lingo.

Now you're speaking lingo that quantifies results.

Just because you learned how to be a financial advisor, if all your clients are losing money, you might not be the most successful financial advisor unless you follow the model of, there's a, I think in New Hampshire, a financial advisor that kind of says, I bet against the market and you have to invest a minimum of $1.2 million with me and you're gonna lose money for 11 months because we're betting that the market will crash.

But the one month that it crashes, you're gonna make more money than the $100,000 you lose every month.

But you have to have a mindset that you're ready to lose money for 11 months of the year kind of thing.

But most financial advisors will say, I can help you save for your retirement, I can help you understand what are your options.

So especially with insurance, when you go past mainstream in terms of life insurance, car insurance, harm insurance, you start looking at critical or living in benefits, critical illness, insurance, start looking at...

What do you do if, for this example, I think the reason he's doing that is, and a lot of people do it is, they don't actually have the solid certificates you just mentioned.

But it's not about the certificate.

Look, it's about conversation like partner with private client bankers and financial advisors to help better understand clients need.

Okay, so can you quantify that in a way that allows me to see that, even if you're not in the industry yet, you understand how the industry works from a perspective of producing.

You know what's so great about what you're suggesting that they can take home?

They know this stuff.

They live it, they breathe it.

Whoever you are, whatever you do, you know you have jargon that Joseph's asking for.

And you're not giving it to us, right?

But you're giving me generic, like I know this.

So here's the thing, like the generic jargon, like I know how to speak to customers.

Okay.

You spoke to two customers.

Exciting.

Whoop-de-doo.

But if you say I've spoken to 50 customers, I've spoken to 100 customers, even if you're not a financial advisor, there's a level of quantifiable for the fact that you're more proactive.

You know, so you could estimate, say I worked there for two years, 40 hours a week.

I saw 100 people a day, which is...

Whatever the number is, yeah.

Yeah, that's thousands, tens and hundred thousand people.

But even if it's a thousand, it's still a thousand, right?

Because where most financial advisors and wealth managers, like people that are trying to get into the higher end of wealth and the back end of it, is to understand the volume of transactions, right?

So I'm going to use an extreme example right now.

I'm assuming that you know who BlackRock is, right?

BlackRock is a company that owns 40% of major companies right now.

They're the most powerful company in the world right now.

So anybody that has BlackRock on their resume, it's kind of like going to Harvard and Yale.

You're by default kind of getting hired in the industry because they understand who BlackRock is and what they do.

But if you worked in, let's say, a bank, again, you have what's known as key performance measures, key performance indicators that you have to maintain.

You need to upsell this many people to get a savings account.

You need to upsell this many people to get a whatever promo.

Especially Wells Fargo.

I know that that's all they do is give bonuses to their executives for meeting these goals.

Right.

So the point is that even if you're not an executive, you're entry level, you can quantify work.

So I used to work as a stock trader.

So I answered, for example, 151 trading calls in one shift, right?

I won seven out of 10 contests or came in the top three for contests.

But notice that it's not big quantifiables, but it's quantifiables that reassures that I can handle volume or I can handle transaction.

I worked for Fidelity Investments.

I was able to process, let's say, when there was NSF fees because there wasn't money in the account, I was able to process 1500 transactions in one day.

For example, the first step.

But it's not how big the number is, it's that there is a number.

Because it's like somebody saying, I want to be wealthy, and you walk by and there's a penny in front of you.

You're like, yeah, that's a penny, I don't care.

You didn't specify how much money you want the universe to provide you.

The universe goes, here you go, here's a nickel, here's 10 cents and whatever you want to call it.

Or someone says, I need to lose weight.

I'm an example of that.

Now, there's a difference between I need to lose weight or in order for me to be at my optimal health, I'm going to use the word release rather than lose about 70 pounds.

We put this in the opening.

It's throughout the resume.

It's not just the opening.

It's the resume, okay.

It's throughout the resume because you have to understand.

I look at your profile.

If you're a mountain climber, for example, or you do rock climbing, I want to know how good you are without seeing your videos.

If you say I've done a 5'11 or 5'12 difficulty, as someone who's a hobbyist and doesn't want to, I know how complicated that the 5'12 can be or so forth.

If you've done specific mountains where you've free climbed and so forth, then the angle of the mountain, I can tell how advanced you are basically just looking at the mountain without seeing you climbing to know.

But there's always a related because if you're speaking to people in the industry, they'll know the lingo.

They'll know the-

All right.

They'll know 5'11 and V12 and A5 and whatever.

Right.

And they'll know the quantifiers that go.

So if I use, for example, someone who's a software developer, I interviewed somebody who quoted Amazon Prime.

Okay.

So in Amazon Prime, they're talking in milliseconds.

Like when you put in AR, it already knows what you're going to buy because of machine learning and neural linguistic programming that has existed for 80 years in that.

So if Amazon finds results in less than half a second, and someone says to me, I improved things at Amazon by 30%, I'm going to be like, hold up.

We're talking less than a half a second, so you made it even faster than a half a second?

That seems a little extreme.

But if someone says, I work at a bank and I improved things by 30% because they use a lot of old legacy software, it makes sense that it's 30%.

Now I'm speaking to them because that's the demographic that I'm going after if I'm trying to get to a financial advisor or wealth advisor and so forth.

But in saying that you know a variety of products, tell me what those products are.

Do you know insurance products?

Do you know mutual fund products?

Do you know stocks?

Do you know options?

Do you know derivatives?

Do you know futures?

Do you know exchange?

This Mr.

Smith that tells me, I researched and I explained different products, what products?

He probably knows a bunch of them that you and I, or at least I have no idea what they are.

Correct.

As long as he's not quantifying them, I need to guess now how much he knows or doesn't know.

So based on his resume, I'm going to go, okay, you know about credit cards because you work as a teller, for example.

You know about government bonds because you work at a bank.

You might know about the bank's mutual funds because they're internal and so there's information.

But unless you can tell me why this is a better investment than this one, this is a higher risk investment than this one, right?

I have to guess how much knowledge you have.

Without the designations, at first glance, there's nothing that says, oh wow, it's not like there's a-

Let me give you an example from this resume.

It says, they are being a little clear, helps clients with deposits, withdraws, credit cards.

What you're saying is we need to quantify that?

Yeah.

So I helped 50 clients a day.

I helped clients better understand their, let's say, the banking options that they have, that they might not have.

Like I helped 50 clients a day deposit approximately $2 million in 30 accounts.

Well, right.

Now, what do you think if all of a sudden you say 50 accounts and $2 million?

I get excited.

I get much more excited than just reading off words out of a dictionary.

Deposits withdrawal payments sounds kind of boring.

Right.

So you have to understand if you're, if you've handled a few million dollar withdrawal, that's very significant.

And it makes me wonder if I had this guy for a month, how much money?

Right.

And it was fine.

So there's a old kind of jokes plus adage, if I may share quickly, that there's a very wealthy man that comes into Manhattan, New York and says, I'd like to borrow $5,000.

Now, Teller looks at him and goes, okay, and what are you going to pledge as collateral?

And the guy says, how about my Lamborghini?

Teller is like, okay, Lamborghini is worth more than $5,000.

No problem.

Two weeks later, the guy comes back, comes to Teller, goes, how much do I owe?

Teller says, $5,000 for the initial loan and $27 in interest.

Teller pulls out a wallet.

I mean, the customer pulls out his wallet, starts paying.

Teller looks at the guy and says, listen, I did a little bit of research.

You're a very, very, very wealthy man.

Why would you borrow $5,000 for two weeks?

And the customer looks at the teller and goes, where else in Manhattan, New York, can I park my Lamborghini for two weeks?

I think it's going to happen to it and only pay $27.

Right?

So here's the thing.

You know, I give that joke because a $5,000 loan is not that significant.

But if you're processing $100, $5,000 loans, and every other teller is processing $35,000 loans, you're now also showing that you're better than every other teller.

Got it.

So with respect to time, Josef, do you want, should we go look at the other resume real quick?

Sure.

So again, for Mr.

Jones here, first of all, BA in Neuroscience and Cognitive Science.

You know, clearly very young because he's got retail experience, but there's a level of, have you done any co-op from your schooling, like in your BA?

Did you do any volunteer co-op in your field to get into Neurosciences?

Can you tell me if you did a thesis for your BA and what was your thesis about?

Can you describe some of the projects that you worked in in Neuroscience?

Oh, you mean, so I get it.

So it versus it says pharmacy technician, which sounds nice because it's Neuroscience to me, but you're saying be really more pacific in terms of?

Pharmacy technician making the medications and then the pharmacist has to sign off on it.

But if they're trying to get into a pharmacy manufacturer, or they're trying to get into Neuroscience research, or they're trying to get into more of medically directed, then this experience is not exciting me about you there.

And for example, their education is at the bottom of page two.

And so, I would put their education first because they don't have any relevant experience.

And I would emphasize from the education, the key things like, you know, I got an A plus in these five subjects, or I got the 37 GPA.

So what I'm gonna guess that this person used a typical resume template that typically has education at the bottom, because typically they're four people with a lot of work experience.

You know what, that's my strength.

I need to put it at the top.

Right.

So like he studied brain rehabilitation disorders.

Now here's the thing, I'm scrolling because I'm trying to get feedback and give you a good value.

But an employer is spending 60, 30 seconds reading a resume, which means they're reading the top third to the top half of the first page.

So the most important information is not being read or being seen.

And because he doesn't have direct experience, if he had research projects as part of his undergraduate degree or BA, if he had co-op or internship as part of his undergraduate, even though it's not paid, those should be at the front of.

Can you get creative when you say research project, I think internship, which it doesn't appear the person has.

Are you implying just in school, clearly, as an aeronautical engineer, I did a project class, a semester of a project class for two different professors.

I was their guinea pig.

I did their work for them.

Correct.

Is that what you're putting up there even though it's not paid?

Because the resume doesn't mean paid, it's just experience, right?

Correct.

But here's the thing, if you did those projects, I can speak to you about those projects as it relates to or not in the profession.

In this case, I'm not going to speak about Walgreens or being a pharmacy technician because you're following the rule of the formula, I'll call it that.

You're following the concept of I need to do it this way and this way.

So when you're mixing the medication, you go on the computer and the computer says, mix this much with this much.

There you go, you have the medication that somebody needs, for example.

But let's go over on the right side, there's a skills and awards I just noticed.

Is that along the lines we're speaking of earlier too, general or not specific, is that?

Again, the award should be higher up, like the skills are, none of the skills relate to brain, neurosciences or cognitive skills.

If the skills are based on what he learned in school, then I would be more excited about those because those are nor science and cognitive science skills.

These awards, for example.

They're academic ones.

Right, they're academic, but give me more specific, tell me what you won them for, because you won them for being a good charismatic student.

Not really applicable to the neuroscience.

It's applicable for the sake that you're a better candidate, tentatively, right?

But here's the thing, for example, as limited as my knowledge is in neurosciences, you can talk about childhood trauma, you can talk about generational trauma, you can talk about proteins in the brain that-

A project you did, the project.

Correct.

So it doesn't have to be like a class where it was a research class, but just you did really well.

It's my experience.

Didn't say paid experience, it says experience.

Right.

And so if you did, you got 95 in three classes where you researched the effects of, let's say, aspartame on the brain, right?

Tell me that because that is a conversation I want to have with you versus-

Oh yeah, it opens the door for conversation.

Oh, you worked at Chick-fil-A, like, I don't want to talk about Walgreens, really, right?

You don't want me to talk about Walgreens, do you?

That's not your future.

Right.

So that's where you want to tie it into something that's related or you want to say why you chose the profession.

Even if you have like, here's why I chose to study-

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Almost like in the cover letter, where you would express your passion.

Because the thing, neuroscience is not necessarily the mainstream first choice for most high school to university when they're doing their bachelor's degree.

Engineering is very common.

In which engineering, that's a whole other conversation.

But neuroscience is very specific and there's bigger plans and bigger aspirations with that.

Because no one studies neuroscience as a bachelor's degree and then has no intention of doing a master's or a doctorate with it kind of thing.

But even then, it's like, what was the focus of your research?

What was the focus of your interest in this?

Was it to address things like Down syndrome?

Was it things to address people that are-

It's a problem solution kind of thing.

That's what I like.

I'm an engineer.

What's the problem and how do we solve it?

And how great did we do?

Like you're saying metrics, numbers, speak the language.

But even if it's just insights, like this is why I'm excited about it.

So we started this conversation with, I switched careers nine times because I did it.

I started in finance because I wanted to please my parents so that my parents can say, he's got a good job.

But after being a stock trader, I'm like, I don't want to look at the screen going up and down like this for eight hours.

As much as I talked to people and executed trades, it wasn't conversation, it was, I'm losing money, I'm stressed.

I don't get excited by the stock market.

I understand the potential of making a lot of money.

And I worked when I had one company that went from $5 a share to $150 a share in one hour because they reported great results.

And then I had the same company seven months later, tell me that they can't that, or everybody found out that they were lying about their numbers.

And they went from $150, $5 a share to $5 a share in an hour.

So people lost $300,000 one way and $300,000 the other way.

Sorry, for Mr.

Jones, right, that has a Bachelor in Neurosciences and Cognitive Sciences.

It's like, tell me a little bit of your story in your resume of why you chose that field.

What area do you want to focus on?

What are some of the class assignments that you did that you got, you know, 90s in that helped me see your ability as a neuroscientist, or as someone that heals, right?

I'm reminded of the saying my boss, when I was in engineering, he used to tell me, because I always just do my job, do a perfect job.

Come up with great ideas.

He's like, you have to toot your own horn.

You have to, it's up to you to say good stuff about yourself, right?

Right.

So that's where part of the equation is that, again, it's like dating, right?

I'm happily married.

I have two beautiful kids, but I'm not for everybody.

My sense of humor is not for everybody.

So there's a level where, there's a level and unfortunately, engineers are not always known for their bubbly personality.

If you're approaching something, I'm high, I'm high, I'm high, I'm high, I'm high, I'm high, I'm high, I'm high, I'm high, I'm high, I'm high, I'm high, and I get your number, your chances are slim and none.

The reason I say slim is somebody might be physically attracted to you.

If you do that for a job and say, I'm high, I'm high, please, please, please, can I get a job?

I'm really hard working.

One of two things happens.

One, you're not getting a job because you don't have confidence in yourself, or worse, you are getting the job, but you're not getting paid anything because the company knows you're desperate.

And so they'll take advantage of you, pay you nothing.

Right?

So understand that in this particular case for Mr.

Jones, if he's trying to get into neuroscience, like his skills need to be neuroscience related.

His awards, he needs to expand on them to kind of reflect why, let's say, with a 3.7 GPA average in neuroscience, that says a lot about the individuals, their ability to study.

And then also the fact that he went to college and did biology and studied the concepts of death and dying.

So again, if he wants to relate that to become a psychologist, he wants to relate it to help people deal with overcoming trauma or grief or anything like that, paint that picture for me, give me that conversation.

It doesn't have to be quantifiable in terms of here's the job experience.

It could be quantifiable in school experience.

It could be quantifiable in research experience where you've researched this aspect of the topic so much.

I've invested 30,000 hours to master everything there should know about job finding.

Not 10, but 30,000.

So with the exception of a few weird Google interview questions, there isn't an interview questions.

I don't know how to answer or coach someone to answer because I spend the time to master my craft.

And well, speaking of throwing in quantifiables, when you mentioned that you had nine careers and 18 jobs, that clearly is a good tag lead.

But in saying, I've worked a lot of different jobs and a lot of different careers.

Right.

And this is where part of it, look, I'm not the only career coach out there, but there's so many career coaches or career resume gurus or whatever, like they all use the same brand.

Sadly, right now in North America, there's 60 million people that aren't employed.

There's 50 million people that are severely underemployed, such as Mr.

Jones, that have a university degree, but work at McDonald's or work at Walgreens.

And then you have 40 to 50 million people going through some sort of educational retraining.

That's a target market of 150 million people just in North America.

Now, as much as I've helped 12,000, if you prefer someone that is of the same culture or ethnic background as you, more power to you.

If you prefer someone that's been a specialist in your industry, so Daniel, you're an aeronautical engineer by trade or profession.

If you want to work with someone who has focused on aeronautical engineering and speaks aeronautical engineering, more power.

I'm not expecting that every single human, don't get me wrong, I'm not going to say no if everybody in North America hires me to help them.

But I'm also realistic that of the 160 million, I'm playing a personal game of helping 1.8 million people.

You're doing great service and you're really good at it too.

I appreciate you being on my show.

So what about LinkedIn?

So for example, maybe we'll use the same neuroscience as an example because for LinkedIn, where you're supposed to have a really sequential history of jobs and this one doesn't, it's a younger person.

How would it work for LinkedIn in terms of their profile?

Make it look like the resume because you don't have a lot of job experience?

The different resume, the new one, this person's going to make after they listen to the show and your tips in terms of put my school at the top.

Well, let me give you something that I actually just dealt with on LinkedIn.

So I have a client that's out of Sweden that specialize in regulatory and compliance in the banking industry.

They needed me to find someone who does regulatory compliance and banking that also knows how to do sales.

Which in itself is a needle in the haystack.

And then a relationship manager.

I looked at a thousand LinkedIn profiles.

700 of them had their job title, VP of compliance and regulatory effect, the date of work and the name of the bank that they worked for.

That's it.

No technical information, no description of what they actually do in the job.

If you think I have the time to message 700 people and say, hey, do you have these skill sets in compliance and regulatory?

Have you done any sales?

No.

These people, if they lose their job, will have a very hard time because their resume or their LinkedIn profile is so generic.

Of the 300 that were remaining, I looked at the 100 that I really invested in their LinkedIn, and I really liked what was written there.

I called the interview 20, I sent my client eight.

My client called me and said, I wish I had the money, I would hire all eight of them.

I forgot for listeners, this is when Joseph, he's also a recruiter.

You're acting as the recruiter now.

Correct.

Here's the thing.

Again, on LinkedIn, if you, let's say, in similar to Indeed, if you have technical skills, let's say Daniel, I'm going to use you as a career professional, an aeronautical engineer, and there is, let's say, 100 aeronautical engineering words that you might have been exposed to in your career or in your education.

Add all 100.

If you've been exposed to 70, add all 70.

But if you only give me three words, I really don't care about it.

And this is in my LinkedIn profile.

Correct, right?

Same thing in your LinkedIn profile.

Understand that I do more of what's called old school headhunting.

I don't post jobs as much as I can.

I try to reach out to candidates.

So...

You're doing keyword searchers.

Or yes, or combination like old Boolean searches of things that I'm looking for.

But don't assume I've got your resume, I've read your resume.

So the more you can spoof me and feed me information, like if you give me your highlight reel on your LinkedIn profile and says for this company, I worked for Honeywell and I was able to decrease costs by 30 percent.

I was able to increase whatever streamline or aerodynamics of this airplane's model by this.

I can go, okay, you've got some results.

Even if I'm a recruiter that doesn't know anything about engineering, and aeronautical engineering in particular, I have numbers that give me a starting point to ask you a question and see if it relates to my clients.

So don't be lazy on your LinkedIn where you kind of just give me your job title and how long you've worked there.

Give me details.

And again, don't just give me, I know how to do this.

Yes, I need the I know how to do this in terms of the technical skills, but give me the specific.

Here's the result I can produce because again, if I have to guess how good you are, chances are I'm going to get significantly less than what you've actually done.

And keep in mind that most people that are looking on LinkedIn are HR professionals and HR professionals don't necessarily know or understand aeronautical engineering.

But they don't know the jargon.

They don't know the jargon they have from the NOC codes.

Here's the jargon that should go with aeronautical engineering.

Or let's say a director or VP that says, I need aeronautical engineer that knows how to do these stakes.

Oh, and then you're like an attorney because I've mentioned some Pacific.

Now you latch on to that.

You can ask me questions, even though an attorney doesn't know anything about the subject matter, he's interviewing the expert on.

The expert's given him some to start with.

But again, the level of, if you've quantified this is what you've done, then I can-

Quantified, okay.

So what's the etiquette, the professional way to work with and communicate with the recruiter?

Say one reaches out to you.

So there's two scenarios here.

First of all, one recruit reaches out to you.

So listen, ask some questions on the opportunity.

So right now, I'm recruiting for Atlanta, Georgia, for example.

Now, I posted because it's in the medical field and it's harder.

I posted all throughout the US.

Even though there's a questionnaire there that says, are you willing to relocate to Atlanta?

I've had people click yes, but not actually realize is that the position says, in Atlanta, Georgia and relocate to Atlanta, Georgia.

It didn't connect for them because it's auto, I need a job, I need a job.

I'll do it if I get the job, I'll do it, but I'm really not going to want to.

Right.

So when I call them, I'm like, you sent me your resume for this, here's the role.

Are you still interested?

Yes or no?

If the answer is no, okay, thank you, there.

But don't ghost recruiters, that's a small world and we're all very connected.

And I'm shocked that it is now common practice in the professional world to ghost.

Never ghost anybody unless it's a cold call, a sales call.

But even then, but you have to understand, it's a small world.

So you're ghosting me today, like today, you'll call me three months from now.

And I'm like, ghosting me, I'm not going to, like if you ghosted me three months ago, why would I work with you now?

Because you've already left a bad impression on me, kind of thing.

Second thing is, when you go register with a recruiter, don't call them and say, where's my job?

Where's my job?

Where's my job?

You have to understand that they're-

What's a register?

This is where you reach out to a recruiter?

Yeah.

So like someone is seeking a job and you registered with, let's say, Robert Half or Randstad, which are two of the biggest companies in the world, and they have divisions of every category.

So they have like an engineering division because you need a job in engineering.

So call them.

And first thing you want to ask is, can I change my resume in any way that will make it easier for you to market me?

Because if you ask five recruiters, what's a good resume, you'll probably get 20 different opinions.

Right?

Because some recruiters want it to be cookie cutter, buy the book, black and white, just like the two resumes that we have here, the circle bullet points and everything.

Some will want more results, some might want a little bit of color or personality.

So it's not a right or wrong, it's just a matter of the industry and who's working in or looking at it, right?

So first thing is, can I change anything about my resume to make it easier for you to represent me to your clients?

Second thing is, do you want me to give you the names of my references now?

Do you want me to give you reference letters that will make it easier for you to convince the client that I'm a great candidate, right?

Thirdly-

Really making it easy for them.

Right.

Thirdly, like I said, because if you get away from the cookie cutter generic, I know how to do this, I have experience with this, and you get into here's the results that I produced, here's the significance I made or the impact I made as part of whatever your job description is, then it's much easier to present you from it.

So a lot of times if you have the results and someone says change the formatting, formatting takes five, 10 minutes, copy and paste.

But results speak volume because again, and since you're an engineer, I'm gonna use an example of how I test how good I am.

So my brother studied mechanical engineering, applied for an internship.

By the time one of the companies responded to him, it was going to be more of a paper pressure job, and he already registered for his fourth year classes.

So he asked me to cancel the interview.

I decided to go in as my brother.

The only thing I know about mechanical engineering is what I wrote for him on his resume.

I studied economics and business.

My first interview, there was a hundred students from four major universities.

Within 45 minutes, human resource called me back and said, we love you, we need to come back for a second interview.

I was like, all right, let's see how far I could take this.

My second interview was with the manager of the department that I would potentially work with.

Now, I spoke the truth about my brother's resume.

My brother was on a team that designed a wheelchair for Third World Nations that use a tank chain so it can go on any terrain.

That sounds interesting.

Fascinating.

Second, came second in Ontario, Canada for the best mechanical engineering project of the year.

Now, it's sounding great.

Two cents ago, it sounded like just another engineer.

Right.

Told the manager that I won an award from Major Bank.

Told the manager I study thermal dynamics and quantum physics.

To this day, I have no idea what those are.

Didn't even leave the parking lot.

Matt, you're coming back, said, I adore you.

I need to come back for a third and final interview.

I'm like, okay.

Out of 100 candidates, I made it to the final three.

I was the first one in at 8.30 in the morning.

Manager walked over to me and goes, here's your offer letter.

The jobs you're, all you have to do is pass this mechanical engineering test.

I looked at him, I looked at him, I looked at him, I'm like, I can't do this test.

Manager looked at me and goes, I know you're very nervous.

Let me help you.

He solved the first two questions for me.

I looked at him, I said, listen, I am wasting your time.

I guess I'm a lot more comfortable with the design than I am with the calculations.

I am not the right candidate for this job.

Thank you for the opportunity.

Manager followed me to the car and begged me to take the job because I didn't do that much better than every other engineer.

Now, here's the thing.

Again, I'm not telling you thermal dynamics, quantum physics.

I'm saying to you, I was on a team that designed a wheelchair for Third World Nations that use a tank chain so it can go in the sand and it can go in water.

And I gave specific.

My team came second for the best engineering project of the year.

So those quantifiable is what the manager heard that they're getting.

Now, again, these are all my brother's example, and they're all real examples.

But this recruiter, I think the person painted a picture in their head just like I did.

I pictured a wheelchair.

I pictured the Third World Country.

I don't have the word mechanical engineer in my head at all.

I see people.

I see a wheelchair.

I hear a word.

I think you're helping people.

And of course, that brings back money somehow, way, shape or form to my company.

Like you said, there's not a word thermodynamics in there.

I want to mention thermodynamics.

That's icing on the cake.

Right.

But that's where, again, it's not just the lingo.

Like as a recruiter that's been a generalist in recruiting for 20 years, I work with companies like Deloitte, Tata, Apotex Pharmaceuticals, big construction companies.

So I've done the gamut of and I've worked with engineers.

There's a level where I learned the lingo very quickly.

So you're speaking to me lingo, I can get away with it.

I can ask you intelligent question.

If you ask me a very technical engineering question, that's where my knowledge is limited.

As an aeronautical engineer, you'll catch it very quickly because if you ask me, for example, what formula do I use to calculate velocity of something, I have no idea and I won't be able to answer that for you.

But in the two resumes that we're speaking about, Mr.

Jones studied neural science.

So tell me about what you learned about the brain.

Tell me about what you know, whether it's even if it's an undergraduate research level of the level of engagement that you have.

For the individual Mr.

Smith that is part of banking world, again, quantify why you matter in the banking world.

Even as a teller, if you can do it better than other tellers, I'm interested in you.

If you can do it faster, more efficiently, or you have more knowledge than other tellers, that's what's going to change.

It's not necessarily how much money you've made or saved, it's just the quantifiable needs to be correct.

Look, I circle back, but Eminem used to rap, I am who you say I'm.

If you say I'm smart, I'm smart.

If you say I'm funny, I'm funny.

If I tell you 10 jokes and you're not laughing at any of my jokes, I'm not funny to you.

I could tell the same exact same jokes to a room of people, and they're in tears laughing, and to them I'm hilarious.

And when you're having conversations with them about me, they're going to go, what do you mean he's not funny?

He's hilarious.

I was peeing my pants laughing.

You're like, no.

I've gone to stand up comedies a lot, and some of the comedies, it's not my personality, it's not my style.

The slapstick humor, the overly sexual kind of thing, that's not who I am.

You also help people, and this is in recruiting role, I take it, with salary negotiations, and a strategy on how to get what they were worth, like you were saying earlier, don't beg and not feel like you're desperate to take a job.

Is there one quick tip you could give listeners on that salary negotiations?

People are afraid of salary because they didn't sell themselves correctly.

If you've done a great job of showing, here's my highlight reel, here's how I can do it better for your company, salary becomes mute.

Now, I always recommend never answer the salary question directly.

So, a lot of jobs don't say the salary, so ask the employer.

When I applied for this job, there was no mention of salary.

What is the salary rate right now for this position?

To say, listen, I'm so certain that my work is going to be so great that you'll want to pay me more money because you won't want me to leave.

So if you want to pay me lower as a front-end incentive in terms of salary and a higher backend incentive in terms of bonus or performance and so forth, I'm okay with that because my work will speak for itself.

But every given number, if you've done your due diligence where you've gone to payscale.com or on Indeed, Salary Grid or LinkedIn, Salary Grid, and you know what the industry pays, you can say, I understand that somebody in this state, in this profession is supposed to get paid between this figure and this figure.

Given my experiences and the results that I've already produced, I would hope that you recognize my value to pay me in the higher end of that range, right?

But one of the ways that I answer is, salary question is a trick question, Daniel.

If I give you a figure that's too high, I'm shooting myself in the foot because you're going to dismiss me because I'm too high.

If I give you a figure that's too low-

Well, that's a good one.

Tell me about that because I have heard that.

Some people think, I'm just going to demand more.

It sounds like what you're saying is, you know what?

No, you just killed yourself because they do have a limit.

Again, so you have to understand if let's say you're an engineer with five years of experience, the market generally in North America would dictate that you're making let's say $120,000 to $200,000.

That's a very broad range, right?

So if you work for companies that recognize your aeronautical skills like Honeywell, and they paid you $160,000 to go to $180,000, $190,000, $200,000 is reasonable when you're making a forward career progression.

But if you come in and go, I want $250,000, unless you are the best engineer in the history of aeronautical engineering, and the results that you produced are so ridiculous that every airline company is desperate for you.

You're not going to get a call back.

In part, so you have to know within reason where you can't.

Nothing wrong with expecting a potentially $40,000 raise to make a move, for example, especially if you're happy where you're at.

But you also need to know what your numbers are.

You need to know the level of...

Be realistic, but don't take too low a number because you're desperate, but don't.

Don't offer too low a number.

Again, if you know what the range is, say give the higher range of it, like give a $10,000, $15,000.

Yeah, look, one of my craziest stories, I got somebody a $450,000 raise in four and a half hours.

Nice.

Never happened.

I don't think you charged him $400,000, I don't think.

No, no.

But again, it's one of those where basically I had a candidate that was making $65,000 a year and $20,000 bonus working as a controller for a company that makes DVDs and CDs.

I sent him to one of my clients that does custom surround sounds for houses that are over $2,000,000.

And this is going back to 2006 where everything was wireless, everything was in the wall, like very, very high-end stuff.

My client loved him, offered him $85,000 base and a bonus $25,000 to come work for him.

Can it resign?

His boss came to him and was like, You're not allowed to quit.

You're too important for this company.

Now, the ironic thing is for five years, they refused to give him a raise because they didn't.

The company been there.

Yeah.

Right.

So they asked him, what did the other company offer you?

And the candidate told them, 85 and 25.

They're like, okay, we'll give you a base of 120 and $30,000 bonus to stay here.

Right.

Candidate called me, like I know everybody here.

I've been here for 10 years.

I know the routine.

Called my client, told them the bad news.

My client's like, there's something really special about this guy.

I'll offer him $160,000, $40,000 bonus to come work for me.

Candidate quit again.

The entire leadership team came in and was like, we're not allowing you to leave.

You're way too important to this company.

You're the only one that knows the finances here.

What they offer you.

He told them, they came back and said, fine, we'll give you a base of $200,000, 2% ownership in the company.

You'll make about 250.

He called my client.

My client was like, okay, this is my final offer to him.

If he doesn't take this, he's an idiot.

I'm going to offer him a base of $265,000 and 9% ownership in my company in his worst year.

I'm going to make him my right hand man.

In his worst year, he'll clear half a million dollars.

And then I kind of went and said, look, this guy just came back three times.

You haven't even worked a day for him.

The company you're working for hasn't given you a raise in five years.

Now they're all of a sudden throwing money at you.

And obviously he took it.

But that negotiation took four and a half hours.

When you've done a good job showing how much you know, how much you care, how much you will do more than the average person, salary is mute.

Because a set like companies will pay for you, like my client in Atlanta right now knows that there's a shortage of therapists of all forms in Atlanta.

So she's willing to pay for people to relocate across the United States to Atlanta.

Whatever they're paying you, they're making more and they have more.

That's what they do.

These companies.

Of course.

And you know, when Grant Cardone talks about the 10x factor, you're an engineer, you make $150,000, you're going to produce $1.5 million for the company that hires you.

That's the simple math, right?

So you've done a good job communicating how much value you have from a perspective of results that you produce.

Salary is very easy to negotiate.

So I've been speaking with Josef Stetter.

His website is josefstetter.com.

It will be on the show notes.

His program is Land Your Dream Job Now.

And of course, as if you've been listening, he's also in recruitment as a recruiter.

And he does consulting with corporations who just want to make their company culture better, hire the right people or just improve what it's like to work for the company.

Well, turnover in North America costs $1.4 trillion right now.

Not billion, trillion, $1.4 trillion.

Last year alone, 64 million people quit their job in North America.

Sounds like a mess that needs sorting out.

Big time.

Thanks for being on my show, Josef.

This has been awesome.

I really appreciate it.

I'm sure my listeners are too.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Have a great day.