He’s Hired Thousands. He Says You’re Doing It All Wrong | Ben White

[00:00:00] Hello, hello. You're tuning into the Careering with Cameron Podcast, your safe place to ask all the dumb questions about finding a job. Hey, everybody. It's Kevin Cameron with Careering with Cameron. And I am thrilled today to be able to bring you Ben White, who, A, has absolutely exceptional taste in football teams, which if you are, if you're watching, you'll understand this.

[00:00:30] We not only have exceptional taste in beards, but also football teams. And so we've made good choices. So here we are. Ben is someone who does quite a bit of work with individuals who are preparing for the interview process. He's on the talent side. And so I wanted to get together with Ben and talk a little bit about what in the world is happening in terms of recruitment,

[00:00:57] not only on the AI side, but also in terms of like, how the heck do you get ready now for an interview? How do you make an impact? How do you make sure that the client remembers the company remembers you? So what I'm going to do essentially is we're going to go for a ride with Ben. So Ben, kind of jump in where you want. But thank you so much for being on the show with us. Where do we want to get started here?

[00:01:20] Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, thank you for having me. It is an interesting time to be a candidate. Right. And for so, so many reasons, you know, you mentioned AI, and I think that would be a great place to start the conversation. From my vantage point, I've been in recruitment for 16 years. I've sat on both the agency side and Fortune 500 company, corporate recruiting side, Fortune 500 company.

[00:01:49] And now I'm back to the agency side. So I've seen it through basically every lens through which you can see recruiting from different sides of the business, different types of, you know, different types of organizations. And now through different periods of time and right now is a very challenging time to be a candidate. And I think AI in some ways is helping and some ways is exacerbating the problem and making the candidate experience even more challenging.

[00:02:16] So I think that would be a good place for us to start is just talking about how it's impacting people on a day-to-day basis today as candidates. Yeah. Let's go. So, so let's start with, let's start with the positive, right? Yeah. What's the upside right now that you're seeing in terms of AI helping people to interview? Yeah, that's a great question. And that's a great way to start, right? Let's talk about the positive because I do think there are positives out there.

[00:02:41] So some of the lowest hanging fruit, I think, is that now it is easier than ever to use a tool like Claude to help update your resume. Like, you know, it's just it's an easy thing to do right now to, you know, copy the job description, drop that into Claude, copy your resume, drop that into Claude, and prompt it just a few times and come away with a better resume than you might have been able to do previously.

[00:03:10] For a very long time, that was a moat. You know, people who are working in careers, they're not always professional resume writers. So your choices were try to figure it out by yourself, hire someone. And now there's there's tools like Claude. Other things that immediately come to mind is there are AI auto apply tools, and they are not all perfect. But one of the most arduous parts of being a candidate is customizing your resume, which everybody says you should do customize your resume for the job you're applying for.

[00:03:38] I think it helps. But it's it takes a long time. And if you're going to go out and apply to like, let's just say five jobs, you have to do that five different times, you got to hit apply, you're going to go to their website, fill out all the information that's already in your resume. So you're doing it all over again.

[00:03:55] There are now tools that for a pretty low cost, can do a lot of that for you. So for me, that positive is right. Those are things that have made life as a candidate a bit easier. However, flip side of that is in some ways, they've also made it harder. Yeah, but that's where it started. If I want to start positive.

[00:04:17] Yeah, yeah. So those are great points. And so I do think that customization at this point is the name of the game, right? You have to be you have to I want to say that maybe in the pre thousand time frame, the the component of making an effort to get a job was going through the paper and finding the classified ad,

[00:04:46] which sounds absolutely insane to some of our watchers and listeners. But finding an ad, probably highlighting it, cutting it out, figuring out that the parts and maybe trying to find a phone number and then sending this thing in somehow or mailing it, which is unbelievable. Right. So so mailing it. But there's a whole lot of effort that went into just that piece and maybe or maybe not much customization of the resume.

[00:05:09] I can remember teaching classes on job search where we straight up said, like, you have one resume because God forbid you get somebody who has a different version and they want to know why you have multiple versions. And are you a liar? So, you know, what is your story? What are you covering up today? Different thing. Now the effort is spoon feed this thing to me. Make it as easy as possible. So totally agree on that.

[00:05:40] What's the downside in terms of AI for our applicants coming in? Yeah. You know, when you're able to apply to a handful of jobs immediately, as opposed to before, you might spend all day. You've applied to five jobs. You feel really good about it. Customize my resume. Apply. Found them. Great day. Let's, you know, let's take off the shoes. Let's open a beer and let's relax. What a hard day's work.

[00:06:05] AI now could apply to a hundred jobs for you in a day. Customize it. Send it all out. That sounds great. Except your competition can also do that. Yes. So if you're a candidate and let's just say you don't want to do that. Well, your competition, a lot of them are. So instead of going against, you know, two or three people who might have a similar qualification, you might see that a job posting is flooded with people using AI auto apply tools.

[00:06:34] And now the people who are supposed to screen through those resumes, they're now inundated with options. When previously there was only a handful. If you were qualified, you applied, you didn't have a misspelling in your resume. You might be getting a call from a hiring manager, an HR person, a recruiter. But now, you know, I can tell you talking to people who are in the corporate recruiting business, because I saw plenty of friends who still are on that side of the desk. They get tons of candidates. So it's a volume game.

[00:07:04] It can be hard. You might be boxed out because, you know, 10 years ago, if you applied to a job and it had been out for like a day or two, you were probably okay. But now, if you apply to a job on day three, it's entirely plausible that people using AI auto apply tools have hit that post immediately. And you might find yourself being the 79th applicant.

[00:07:27] And I can tell you, if companies have anything where they need to be compliant, what they're going to do is they're going to take the first 20 candidates, find five people who are qualified, and then they're not going to look at the rest of the pool because they don't want to, you know, be EEOC noncompliant. So I think the biggest downside to me, just when you're talking about competition, is it is much stiffer right now. And it's immediate. So I think there's another piece here, too.

[00:07:56] And correct me, please, if this is not accurate. There's a psychological component to it, to the applicant now of being able to see that this job posted 35 seconds ago and there are 300 applicants that are in the pocket for them. And I'm sorry, that's something that I get calls all the time that are like, hey, this job looks great for me, but there's already 300 applicants in the job. I don't even know it's worth my time.

[00:08:27] Like, is there, and this is beyond our scope in this podcast, probably. It's a pretty powerful podcast, so maybe, maybe not. But, you know, is there a way to fix, like, how do you fix that? Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's, so one, as an individual, there would be nothing you could probably do individually to fix it. However, like, from a company standpoint, if you were to play this thing out, like, you know, a few iterations of changes, it's possible that a company goes, you know what? We're getting a ton of candidates.

[00:08:58] When we reach out to a bunch of these candidates, they're not interested because they have tons of other applications out and they're already further in the process with other companies. We're also finding that we interview these candidates and some of the information on their resume isn't accurate because AI is trying to make them look like a more, like a more ideal fit than they are, aligning their experience in a way that might be a bit of a fabrication. We cannot have these AI auto-apply. So they come up with a tool so that it's like, no, you can't do this. We're going to go back to a way.

[00:09:27] We're going to find a way to filter out people who are using different tools to get them through the process. And maybe it's a more manual, quote unquote, old school process. I think that's a way, you know, a company would want to fix it. But they'd have to be very intentional about wanting to solve that problem. And I don't know if they're there yet. Yeah. And there would be a lot of pieces to work through with that, especially we haven't scratched the surface of what it looks like on the EEOC side.

[00:09:57] Oh, yeah. Because once you have contact, obviously, then you've got new questions to answer. And so, yeah. I mean, so one of the things that I think is, and I've heard this on the recruiting side from recruiters, is if everybody is using AI to submit their resume, at some point, every resume looks the same. Yeah.

[00:10:24] And at some point, then we're looking at resumes and going, well, who's real in this file? Yeah. Yeah. So to your point, the direction probably is somewhere in here. Like, how do you figure this out? Yeah. And how do you break it down to a level that says, okay, we're going to figure out like what's sore through, what's real and what's not. And ideally, as we know, AI is moving so quickly that that's probably not that far away.

[00:10:53] Yeah. But for now, it's miserable on the people who are searching. Makes sense. In terms of coaching, right? So now, the application process, we kind of know where that is. It's still a work in process. Yeah. AI does some wonderful things in terms of helping us to more closely align the resume to the job description.

[00:11:21] How do we use AI to prepare for the interview? Yeah. There's a few things that you can do. One of the things that I would definitely recommend doing, if you were interviewing for a larger company, and I say that because the larger a company is, the more likely there is to be data that exists online that an AI can pull from. So one of the things you could do is you can go to Claude, and you could prompt Claude.

[00:11:47] Could you go out there online and identify interview questions that have been asked by ABC company for ABC role? Make sure you are pulling from verified sites with strong authority and prioritize questions that you find on more than one of those sites. And what it will do is it'll go to Indeed. It'll go to Glassdoor.

[00:12:10] And almost immediately, within like probably 30 seconds, what you will get is you will get questions that have been asked. And multiple people have gone after their interview, put those questions in those websites, and it'll find them. It's like, yes, this question right here was reported on Indeed. It was reported on Glassdoor. We found it on Reddit.

[00:12:33] So in all three of these sites, when you're interviewing for Delta, they ask you, you know, and then insert interview question. And you can literally identify questions that are asked during the interview process. And from there, you can prepare. It would be equivalent to being a student and just getting the answers to the test or getting the questions at least prior to the test and then practicing so that you can deliver upon that. I think to me, that is one of the ways I would use it.

[00:13:02] If I was interviewing with a company that was a large company, I would already have questions that I'm pretty sure they're asking in the interview process. At what point would you have those questions? At what point would you pull those questions together, I would say? The second I was, like, they scheduled an interview for me. Okay. Like, if you apply to a company and you get an interview and it's next week, I would immediately go on the cloud and hit that prompt.

[00:13:26] I think with just two to three quick sentences and prompts, you could get a handful of questions that have been reported on verifiable sites that they've asked in the interview process. And you can literally prepare. And you could drop those questions into a OneNote or a Word document, type out your answer, and then practice answering them in front of a mirror in a way that hits everything you need to hit to answer the question effectively, but also sounds authentic. Just with a few practices.

[00:13:53] And, yeah, that's one of the ways I might use it for preparation. I love that. Yeah. Yeah. Would you encourage people? And I know this is a space that you work in heavily. Yeah. And you have a YouTube channel on this as well. Yeah. Would you encourage people to try to, like, drill farther by going into that operating unit of the business to ask what questions they're asking there? Yeah, you could. And it might not pull them. That's a beautiful thing is it costs you nothing to do the prompt. Sure. And, you know, Claude will just come.

[00:14:23] And I say Claude because Claude happens to be my favorite at the moment. I've used ChatGPT, you know, but I really like Claude for this type of work. And, you know, if the data is not there, it will just say I wasn't able to find that for you. So there's absolutely no harm in doing it. But before I dove deeper like that, I would do it high level because I wouldn't want to miss out on some of the ones that they're going to ask at a more basic level. Right.

[00:14:49] Like even if it's just tell me about yourself, if it shows that tons of people reporting, they ask that, then you know that question's coming. It's probably coming anyway. But you know it's coming for sure and you can prepare. But, yeah, I would absolutely drill down. You know, I think like it's easy enough to do and you're allowed to get insights that you would never get, you know, 10 years ago. It would be really hard to go to all those sites, filter through it, try to find the information where now it's immediate. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:15:19] It's a phenomenal tool for that. Yeah. Awesome. All right. So when you are helping people to prepare. Yeah. What would you say the speed round flashcards are on saying somebody, I come to you and I say, all right. Yeah. I've got an interview on Friday. I need help preparing for it. It's in a space I'm comfortable in. It's an HR. Yeah. The company I'm excited about. Yeah. Where do I start? Where do I begin?

[00:15:49] Yeah. Good question. So I, I always say about three things, three to four things are critical. One, familiarize yourself with a company. So take the time, even though you're aware of a company, like I'm aware of like a company that exists, but do I know their values? Do I know their products and services? Do I know recent current events? I would say about a third of my time I might spend just doing research on the organization and being prepared.

[00:16:16] Go to Google, type the company name, go to news articles, sort by most recent, and just look at things that are happening so you can be aware of the, you know, the business. Um, the next thing I would do is I would just, you know, you can use that, that prompt with Claude and find interview questions that they're asking, look them up and practice, um, answering some of those.

[00:16:38] And the next thing that I always recommend doing is, um, taking a look at your own resume and taking a look at every stop you've been at. And think about one or two stories, um, in each one of those, those spots, I call them hero stories. And they're just stories that you're just hoping somebody in the interview asks you a question where that answer applies. You know, what did you do? You know, what did you lead a project? What was the outcome? How long did it take? Who was involved? What did you learn? What was the financial impact?

[00:17:08] If you can quantify it and write down literal stories from each one. So if you've had four jobs, I would go in there with eight stories. Ideally, they vary a little bit and just familiarize yourself because odds are you're going to be asked a behavioral interview question or two in the interview. And oftentimes those hero stories would apply. And you can say, ah, you know, thank God I familiarize myself for when I led this implementation for ABC company. It's a perfect answer to this interview question.

[00:17:37] Um, because sometimes I feel like people have a hard time, um, articulating their value and the things they've done. Especially on the spot. Because a lot of times we have great stories, but we just don't prepare prior so that we can share these stories. And then the last quick thing I would do is I'd probably take a look at the job description and just really familiarize yourself where there's alignment and where there's misalignment and how you can address that misalignment. Right? If you look at the must haves and there's five, you got the first four. What's the fifth?

[00:18:06] Speak to why that isn't an impediment to you taking the job. What have you done in the past that would lead them to believe that you can come up to speed and whatever that fifth thing is. So those are the things that I always tell people, you know, preparation is the advantage you give yourself. If you do those things, you will most of the time be in great position to be great. Also bring questions. I guess that's another one. Bring questions to the interview. I've been a group for 16 years and I still like to recruit.

[00:18:33] I lead a large team of recruiters now, but I still like to recruit on one project just to keep myself sharp, stay in the game. And you'd be surprised how many people I say, do you have any questions for me? And they just say no. That's unbelievable. And I'm still like. It's unbelievable to me. It's like, no one's going to believe me. No one is going to believe this story. I could go tell a whole bunch of people. Exactly. I'm not going to believe you. They asked you a question. I promise you, they did not. Yeah.

[00:18:58] So those are the things that I think they just pay such dividends if you could do those things consistently. Yeah. Yeah. It's. So I used to get the question a lot of. Yeah. Can I bring questions with me? Yeah. And take notes. Or do I need to ask. Do I need to ask permission to take notes? Yeah. And. I've always answered that question, regardless of what side of the desk I was on. What they look like, I should say. Yeah. Of like.

[00:19:28] Wouldn't you be flattered if you were having a conversation with somebody and they were taking notes? Yeah. But that to me says, I value your opinion. Yes. I value what you're saying. Absolutely take notes. Yeah. Why would you not? So it's just. It's very interesting. But even more interesting that people would not have questions. Yeah.

[00:19:49] When you think about how hard of a battle it is for an applicant today to get in front of somebody to then not have something to throw out. Yeah. And you know. Sometimes I think people do that because they're like, no, I have already prepared. I don't have any questions. And it's showing you how prepared of a candidate I am. And I'm like. Nope. Nope. Yeah. No is right. Right? Like that is definitely not how it's being interpreted. Yes. Like you can feel that way. Nope.

[00:20:19] No hiring manager receives it that way. And to your point, it shows that you prepared and you value their time. And there is not a single recruiter, HR person, or hiring manager out there who doesn't love a prepared candidate who put effort into it. So yeah. It's a small one, but it happens. Right. And I'll add to that because on the flip side, the person who's interviewing you put time and effort into you. Yeah. Return volume.

[00:20:49] Absolutely. Just return volume. Totally. Yeah. That's a great point. I'm glad you brought that up because it's such a great point. And it's so important to be ready for that meeting. And frankly, it happens. I think I want to say it happens to everybody at some point in their career. Yeah. They go into an interview. They get asked a question and they're not ready. Yeah. And whether it's what do you think of our values or what's your favorite product that we sell? Yeah. I mean, good luck if you're not ready for that. There's no side door.

[00:21:19] You are done. You're right in the house. Yeah. You can go get up and walk out. Yeah. And just leave. Like, you know what? I'm not ready for this job. Sorry about your time. Yeah. Yeah. Here's a gift card for some coffee. I owe you. My bad. Yeah. So, yeah. That's a big challenge. All right. So, we've gotten to the AI piece. Yeah. Let's talk about the people side of things. Right? Yeah. And we're kind of getting into that now with the questions.

[00:21:42] But what are the things in terms of how do you separate as a person as you're going through this process? Yeah. Yeah. We've got all kinds of technological tools to get in front of people. How do you separate yourself as a person to be a person that they are going to see? Yeah. They're going to be interested in? And I'm going to stack a whole bunch of questions up here. Yeah. So, good luck with this. Good luck with this, Ben.

[00:22:08] But then also, there's a whole lot of conversation now about talent pipelining. Yeah. And for those who are maybe in career transition right now, for those who are not, who at some point hopefully are never because you answered this question. How do people get identified in a talent pipeline perspective so that they're getting phone calls for jobs? Yeah. Yeah. This is a great topic.

[00:22:36] And I think it so organically lends from where we started to where we're going. Because if you hear us, like on this podcast, talk about how being an applicant can be a nightmare. That doesn't mean don't apply. But what it means is instead of 80% of your time being an applicant, shift that down, find a way to do that more efficiently.

[00:22:56] Maybe it's an AI auto-apply tool that you yourself use and spend more time attacking the hidden job market, which is essentially jobs that are never posted, but they do make up a large portion of the jobs people end up taking. So, what can a person do? I think I would be spending 60% of my time not applying to jobs, but trying to access jobs that aren't there. The first thing I would do is I would try to make my LinkedIn profile attractive and keyword rich.

[00:23:25] So, there are recruiters out there like my company. We don't post jobs online. We don't have a database of candidates. 100% of the candidates we end up placing are people we go and we find online. And for a lot of companies, that is LinkedIn. That's where they start. So, making yourself have a great LinkedIn profile is immediately like a bat signal to recruiters to reach out to you. You know, looking for what we call passive candidates. People who aren't necessarily looking, but they are a fit for the job. So, and again, I'll say this.

[00:23:53] You can use Claude to help you prompt and make your LinkedIn profile more attractive. But one, I'd make my LinkedIn profile more attractive. Two, I would be reaching out to people that I've worked through in the past and just connecting with them. Now, ideally, you're networking all the time because it's kind of like a seatbelt. Like when you're getting in a car crash, you can't go, oh, let me put on my seatbelt. Right. Like ideally, you're doing that beforehand. And networking is the same way.

[00:24:23] Ideally, you're always networking so that if you need your network, you're able to call upon those people then. So, I'd spend time networking, connecting with people, reaching out to people. Hey, you know, we work together at ABC Company. I really enjoyed, you know, working with you. I'd love to connect and then connect with them. Get a coffee, jump on a Zoom, phone call, talk to them and, you know, say, hey, how are you liking this new company you're working at? You know, I've always admired them, you know.

[00:24:48] And then you could start talking about maybe getting introduced because the easiest way to get a new job is already working at the company. But the second easiest way is being a referral candidate and being somebody who people say, hey, you should talk to A, B, and C. I've worked with him before here and he was great, you know. So, I would spend time networking with people that I've already known. And then I would spend time networking with people that I don't know. I'd make a list of 15 to 20 target companies.

[00:25:10] I'd pull up on LinkedIn the people who work for those companies and I'd reach out and send connections to some people who are hiring managers who might be for a role I'd be interested in. But then also people who are peers. I'd connect with them. I'd engage with them. If they post online, I'd connect and I'd comment and like their postings. And I just work on networking that way. You want to be in the rooms where their hiring is happening. So, if there's a chance to go to a networking event for your industry, certainly if you're in the market or you'd like to be making a move, it pays to be there.

[00:25:40] So, that's another thing that I do. And then I would actually reach out and connect with recruiters. There are plenty of headhunters out there and recruiters who you can reach out to. I try to find ones who are industry specific if they exist for the industry you're in because they're going to have more connections and their work is going to be more siloed. So, it might be a more direct path to opportunities. And I'd look for ones who seem to have been successful. They've been with their companies for a while. They've got over 500 connections. It's a pretty low bar for recruiters if you're a serious recruiter. Do you have recommendations?

[00:26:10] You know, clearly they are in the space. Are they in groups? Like if you're in plastic injection molding, are they in plastic injection molding groups? You know, like things like that. And I network with those people. So, just in terms of getting noticed and not applying, but having opportunities find their way to you. Those are some of the things I would do to start. Yeah. It's also really an interesting thing to think through.

[00:26:37] And a lot of times when I say it, people are like, oh yeah, that makes sense. If you think about the people who are overwhelmed with an applicant process. Yeah. Right? They've got people coming at them from all directions. Yeah. Resumes everywhere. Yeah. Somebody's family members, whatever. Internal hires. When you're talking to somebody who does not have a job posted, they've got all kinds of time. True. All kinds of time. They're not doing three jobs at once. Yeah.

[00:27:07] They're also not worrying about answering back 500 people. Yeah. There's not a compliance factor that they're worried about. Now, truth be told, they probably will have to post a job at some point before they can make that hire. But you're going to be way farther along in the process before that ever happens. Absolutely. So, yeah. I mean, don't be shy about reaching out and saying, hey, I love what your company's doing. I'd love to hear more about it. Yeah. Nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with that. Totally.

[00:27:34] And it's always funny that on the recruiting side, when I was on the corporate side, you would see how fast people would move in and out of roles. Yeah. And people always say, how do they always find these jobs so quickly? Yeah. Because they're at everything. That's out. Yeah. So, they know they're already in the room and everybody knows who they are. And when they have a need, they're constantly going, hey, do you know when to be at this job? Which, hey, that's me. My hand's up. I'll go. I'm ready. Yep.

[00:28:03] So, really a very kind of interesting wrinkle to that as well. So, yes. Great point. I love the seatbelt analogy. Yeah. I'm stealing that. I'll tell you right now. Do it. Do it. Do it. So, that's a great one. All right. So, what's the next step? What are we missing here in terms of having people turn this podcast off and going, I'm ready. I can be successful in my job search. Yeah.

[00:28:29] One thing that we haven't really touched on, but I think is really important is like, if you do all these things, you're probably going to get interviews. Right? Like, if you, let's just say you get an AI auto-apply tool that applies to a bunch of jobs. And you're like, okay, I've taken what is historically the thing that took the most time about being a candidate and I've shrunk it down to the thing that takes almost no time. Okay. What else can I do? Well, let me update my LinkedIn profile. Okay. My LinkedIn profile is awesome. And recruiters are probably going to start reaching out to me.

[00:28:59] And then you start networking. Okay. And you're doing good. And then you start preparing. You do the things that we talked about, like preparing. So, you're ready to go in there and nail your interview. The one thing that we haven't, and there's probably more things we haven't talked about, but one of the things we haven't talked about that I think is important is besides being prepared, you have to go in there and nail that interview from a human perspective. Okay. So, at the end of the day, it is not always, in fact, frequently, it's not the most qualified person who gets hired.

[00:29:28] The most qualified candidates sometimes are actually terrible candidates because they don't interview as much. They don't have a great resume. They're not well practiced for interviewing. So, you want to make sure that you're connecting with people. Okay. So, when you're talking to the recruiter, you're talking to the hiring manager, you're talking to an HR person. One of the things that I'm always really cognizant of is how can you ingratiate yourself to that person?

[00:29:55] Besides having great answers and great experience and telling great stories about yourself, how can you look and be like, oh, well, I noticed there's an elephant behind you on that dresser. You have to tell me about that. And you're like, oh, well, I took a trip to India when I was 22 and I went to an elephant sanctuary and it was really, it really changed who I am. And then you go, oh, really? That looks so cool and I've always wanted to do that. One of the things that I did when I was, and that little thing will make you so much more memorable than so many candidates.

[00:30:24] So, I call it Ford. It stands for Family, Occupation, Recreation, Dreams. Are you able to find a way to have a connection with the hiring manager, with the recruiter, with HR? Find a way to connect with them outside of the job so that they look at you as a person who can do the job, but they also like. Like, people want to hire people they want to have on their teams and work with. And it's important to keep that in mind when you're interviewing.

[00:30:49] Another thing that I would recommend is ask them questions that they get to answer that they're excited about. Okay, so when you're asking questions at the end of the interview, be like, you know, what made you choose to pursue a role with this company in the first place? And it's just psychology. People tend to remember interactions more fondly when they're able to talk about things more, specifically when things are passionate about.

[00:31:12] So, can you be memorable and engaging, have them talk about things they're passionate about, because they're going to remember you more. And two, if you're going to write a thank you email, that is the stuff that makes a thank you email hit. I was interested in before when you mentioned why you pursued this company in the first place and you talked about their mission and how it connected with you. It really stood out to me and it made me more passionate about pursuing your role.

[00:31:36] These little tiny people dynamic things actually can make a huge difference if you're intentional about them. And you're specific. Yeah. Because let's face it, if they're interviewing 10 people, chances are they're not going to remember every detail of every session. And they may not even have your name correct with the interview. Yeah.

[00:31:57] So, make sure you find something using a board to be specific so that you can reconnect them back to that moment. And they got your face, your name, and your resume in one fell swoop. Yeah. The magic is in the specificity, right? Because that is what stands out. You know, if you can get them talking about something unique that they're passionate about and they have like, you know, they have a core memory around it or something.

[00:32:22] Maybe they're family or something that they personally like hold dear in terms of a cause or something like that. They're going to remember you. And like part of getting hired, in my opinion, is just the people component. And it always behooves you to be memorable if it's a positive thing. Like not if you walked in there and punched them in the face. Like you don't want to be memorable that way. But like a positive thing and memorable is good.

[00:32:45] Like perhaps we should organize a podcast with recruiters to share bad experiences that we've had with candidates, which I'm sure we could go on for quite some time. But typically they don't get hired, i.e. the punch in the face. Right. Right. But, you know, but that is a great point.

[00:33:04] And, you know, making sure you're doing the follow-ups and making sure that you're reaching out and continuing to be considerate and classy and also professional. But making sure that you're giving them enough space to get the job done. So, you know, those are all important things. What about, you know, going through that process of being specific? Like the question where I think people come out of the interview and you say, like, how did it go?

[00:33:34] Yeah. I think it went really well. They had this one thing. I don't know how I answered that. Yeah. Recommendations on how do you disarm that thing when you're already out the door? Yeah. It was over. You're in your car on the way home. You got one more shot, right? That's a thank you note. Yeah. What do you do with this thing? Yeah. It is tough, right? Like, because you have to weigh in your mind, is it worth addressing or not? Right. So the first thing I'd say is like, really take some time to consider.

[00:34:03] Was it a big deal to them? Or is it just a big deal to you? Now, if you feel like you absolutely missed on something, you're like, oh man, I left this out. I know the hiring manager asked me this. I think she was looking for this. I should have said this. Then it could be worth addressing in a professional way, you know, in the thank you email, right? Like if you're like, look, this is going to keep me from getting this job. So I can either take the shot or not. Then I would absolutely throw it in there. Hey, thank you so much for your time.

[00:34:33] It was great getting a chance to meet you. I appreciate all the time you took answering my questions. I specifically valued how you mentioned this. Additionally, while I was driving home, I realized when you asked me about this, I left out a few important details. In addition to blank, I also, and then maybe you can address it there. If you have any further questions, please feel free to reach out at any time. I would certainly be open to, you know, sharing the story in greater depth or connecting on anything else you need. I might do it like that.

[00:35:02] It can be really hard once you've left to like fix something. Yeah. But again, I'd weigh, is it worth addressing or not? Like, is it something they didn't even think about? You know, like you're like, oh man, I'm so worried about this. But they didn't even think twice. Like might not be worth it. But if you feel like it's something that was disqualifying because you left out something that's so critical to job performance that you're like, man, if they even take a second to think through my answer, I'm not going to get hired. You know, in that moment, why not? I think it could be worth it. But I think that ends up being a judgment call.

[00:35:32] Yeah. No, I agree. All right. Excellent. Excellent. I think at this point. Yeah. We've got an audience that's relatively well prepared for interviews. Sure. The question I always like to ask guests on the show, and I cannot wait to hear your answer on this. Yeah. Because I think that you're clearly very passionate about what you do. Yeah. What's your why, Ben? Yeah.

[00:36:01] I love the job of being a recruiter. If you've ever talked to a recruiter, they will tell you nobody goes to school to being a recruiter. They fell into being a recruiter. Totally true. I was a college athlete and a business major. And somebody who owned a headhunting firm called me upon graduating and told me about a job I didn't even know existed. But I loved it. I loved learning about different industries.

[00:36:28] One of the coolest things about being a headhunter is that you can all of a sudden find yourself learning about an industry you didn't even know existed, like crystal growth science, and recruiting people from all over the East Coast to go work for Northrop Grumman. And you learn about this entire world that you didn't exist. And I happen to be an endlessly curious person. I'm always curious about things. So getting to learn about these different pockets of professions was always really cool to me. I think over time, my why has shifted.

[00:36:57] I loved getting into it. Now, as a people leader, I love teaching. I love building teams. I love the strategy of my role now. And I just find that to be – I'm a very competitive person. And it's just like a forever changing chess board that you get to compete on. I'm also a very competitive chess player, by the way. So it's okay for me to use that metaphor. I'm a 1600. It's okay for me to say that.

[00:37:27] And then why I made my YouTube is just being a candidate's hard. So it's confusing. It's challenging. The best candidate doesn't always get the job. It is always frustrating. It can be filled with double standards. So being able to help people understand what's going on in the interview process and prepare and succeed and help themselves get a job or career they are passionate about is incredibly rewarding.

[00:37:55] So for all of those, those are like all of my different ways. That's awesome. I love that. All right. Ben, you mentioned you – obviously, you're putting YouTube videos out to help people who are in the search process. Yeah. How do we find those? How do we find you? Yeah. So Ben Talks Talent on YouTube. If you go there, I've got like a thousand free videos. I make three videos a week. And they're all the help people.

[00:38:23] You know, I am – my YouTube channel exists to help you. If you are someone who has a career, you have your job searching, that's how you find me. Ben Talks Talent on YouTube. That's awesome. Yeah. Awesome. And public speaking as well, right? Yeah. Yeah. If you want someone like me who's loud to talk on one of these subjects, feel free to reach out. Happy to do that too. I love it. Awesome. Ben, this is fun. Yeah.

[00:38:51] I'm sure we are going to do one of these again because there's a lot we haven't even gotten into. And so we will definitely get something set up to have you back on the show in the future. Probably maybe after like the Super Bowl when we can talk about the victory at that point. Yeah. Yeah. We'll have a lot to talk about. You know, will Caleb Williams repeat as, you know, MVP? Probably. Most likely. Most likely. Most likely. Where's the stadium going to be? All that stuff. Yeah. Yeah. So we'll cover that. But this was really fun. I appreciate being on, Ben.

[00:39:21] And we'll hopefully see you soon. But folks, please do go ahead and go and find his YouTube channel. Go ahead and follow. Subscribe. All that good stuff. Report back, please. And if you enjoyed the show today, please go ahead and give us five stars. Make sure you're subscribing to Career With Cameron. And there's a chance you may know somebody who is having a hard time with that application process, having a hard time as an applicant. Please share this with them. Please make sure you're passing this along to them.

[00:39:51] If you've got students coming home for Thanksgiving and you're planning on asking them how the job search is going, don't do that. Just share this with them and let them know you're there to support them. That's all they need. That's all they need. But go ahead and do that. This was fun once again. Hopefully we'll see you again soon. Thanks, everybody, for tuning in. We'll see you next time. Thanks. Thanks.