It’s not very often you hear Sourcers and Recruiters talk about their experience on the other side of the interview process. It was refreshing and relatable to have experienced a conversation in the breakout session, “The World Changed and So Did My Job.”
This past year, the world has gone through many changes and very few of us have come out unscathed. During this panel, we got to hear from a variety of Sourcing and Recruiting backgrounds about their stories on how this past year changed their professional lives and the trials and tribulations that landed them where they are today.
Jeremy Roberts, who works at SeekOut, moderated the conversation with Teresa Colquitt from SVT Robotics, Shannon Kelly from ThoughtWorks, and Mikey Weil from Cielo Talent. This panel of speakers brought a wealth of knowledge, helpful tips, and fresh perspectives to those searching for their next role.
A lot of us can relate to this, we all had big aspirations for 2020 when the new year hit. Many of us made plans for goals and listed out things we wanted to work on. “Find a new job in a turbulent job market” was most likely not on that list of ours. Little did we know a lot of us would find this new task at the top of our to-do lists. Shannon shared they had made it through 2020 but January 2021 rolled around and they were laid off.
Mikey, working for a boutique firm based out of New York, was furloughed in May and once the dust settled, he knew he needed to treat the job search like a full-time job. Teresa shared her story in the Sourcecon Facebook group, which gave her some uplifting motivation, and she too treated the search for a new role like a full-time job.
Something Jeremy mentioned about his experience entering the job hunt was that it was intimidating. This was relatable, honest, and absolutely a shared emotion for many. It was a vulnerable position to be in and having skilled and talented sourcing colleagues share the same sentiment was comforting.
The one commonality these four shared was how they treated the search for their new role as a full-time strategic job. Teresa talked about how she kept herself organized. She used Airtable, a cloud-based hybrid spreadsheet tool, to keep track of the different positions she was applying to.
Mikey shared a similar approach in his journey of tracking his every step to maintain organization. Instead of setting up LinkedIn and Indeed resume alerts, he was setting up LinkedIn/Indeed job alerts.
Jeremy made a great point that it was time to turn on all the advice he had given and put it into play. Along with staying organized, networking was key to their success. Their success in getting selected to interview was typically attributed to activating their network.
Through connections, they were informed of potential opportunities and market insights steering them in the right direction rather than just simply hitting ‘apply’ on a job posting.
As the interviews started happening and they were now moving through the candidate process themselves, they all agreed Talent Acquisition still has some work to do in the candidate experience department. For the most part, these four had the most success in landing an offer by using their networks.
Teresa mentioned she was more likely to receive an interview if she had a connection or used her network rather than just applying through the company’s career site.
Mikey also shared that LinkedIn’s “easy apply” also has its faults and recommended applying directly to the career site of the company to have more visibility and success.
Through the interview process, they also shared they felt like they were being strung along at times, with projects or tasks being a common part of the process.
The consensus was that there were typically five to six interviews before they landed an actual offer. While these pain points are real, each took a unique approach to stay true to their personal brand and persevered through the situation.
Jeremy, Shannon, Teresa, and Mikey all had great success stories of how they got to where they are now and I hope you too can remember to stay authentic, continue networking, and stay organized if you find yourself on the hunt for a new role.