Transcript #164. How to be an outsider and job-hunt successfully: An interview with Joe Mullings.

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164

Joe M: your professional reputation has never been easier to develop online. Now, I'm not suggesting you currently have the expertise to. Because it does take a certain amount of knowledge craft, and somebody who understands how to take your skills and position them for the market in general, and then always keep in mind that demonstrating your subject matter expertise online while staying just on the healthy side of bragging.

But backing it up with references, recommendations, chiming in on conversations that are technical in nature, and again, LinkedIn. Think of LinkedIn as a learning platform, not as a job or career platform. Hi everybody.

Renata B: Today our guest for this final interview of 2022. For the Job Hunting podcast is career expert Joe Mullings, chairman and CEO of the Mullings Group. Joe provides hiring strategies for Fortune 100 companies, including Google Johnson and Johnson and Siemens. And he is also working with emerging startup companies that are bringing to market futuristic technologies like surgical robots, Teles, and AI.

And I will ask you many questions about all of that in a moment. You can find his bio in the episode show notes And in the podcast blog, I will write more extensively about this and possibly summarize some of the learnings.

Renata B: So if you are job hunting and you want to keep your finger on the pulse of what's happening in the job market, I send a newsletter every week, and you can subscribe to itAnd if you need and you can invest in your career, please check my website. It could be for you, or it could be a gift that you give to someone. I'm already organizing a couple of gifts services for Christmas gifts for some clients. And I know that this can be easily arranged. So get in touch with me and I'll help you out.

And finally during this time of the year, usually I'm contacted by organizations and private clients, in fact, that are going through restructures where they work. And if you are a business and you need to support your people, reach out to me. I've been there to, I've been there as an employee, made redundant and also as a manager dealing.

Restructure. So reach out to me and I will be able to come up with a plan to support you if that's what you need and want. Now, back to Joe. Joe, thanks for patiently waiting for me to do all that intro . It's pretty long, but it's nice to finally have you on the podcast. Thank you so much for joining us.

Joe M: Thanks for having me on. I I'm looking forward to having a conversation with you and your audience as. .

Renata B: Well, great. Well, I would love to start with you giving a bit of a background on your career and what led you to recruitment. I'm always fascinated to people that are drawn to recruitment.

Joe M: Yeah. I don't think anybody goes to university to become a head hunter or recruiter, even graduates from high school, but you never know.

It is a, for those that are good at it, it's a pretty fulfilling career from a professional perspective and, you know, lifestyle per perspective. Financial perspective. So I went and did my uh, undergrad in engineering, got an engineering degree from the University of Dayton, Ohio. I spent a couple years in engineering working for a military organization that built heads up displays for fighter jets.

And then I was also an entrepreneur on the side, so I had a side hustle back in the early, mid eighties before side hustles were cool. And that ended up taking me onto a pathway of leaving engineering. And starting up a number of health clubs around Long Island, New York where I grew up. I sold those and made a pretty good sort of, let's call it exit out of those, and then took some time off and realized my brain was turning to mush.

And I walked into a friend's office who was a headhunter, and after about two and a half hours, he asked me if I wanted to try that. I asked him how much the top salesperson made last year. He told me, I said, when can I start? And that was December 4th, 1989. And then about two years later, in four weeks to the day I opened up my own firm in Miami.

Wow.

Renata B: That's amazing. That's a great story. It's interesting that recruitment does require entrepreneurial skills and that business development and sales capability that you have and you know, having been an engineer as well, you understand the needs of the corporate sector. What a great combo.

Joe M: Yeah. And you know, engineering teaches you to be a process driven think. And a reasonable thinker while you sort of try to modulate the emotional side of making decisions. And yeah, I think as a head hunter and a search consultant, whether you own your own firm or run your own desk, you most definitely are, you know, you're head of business development, you're head of fulfillment, you're head of operations, and in these days you're head of marketing, media strategy, online presence, branding, et cetera.

So you really do have to be an entrepreneur.

Renata B: And Joe, are you focused slowly on med tech and health? and if so, what led you to focus on these sectors, these industries?

Joe M: Yeah. We are primarily focused to date on the health, tech life, science world. And we picked that, I picked that in gosh December, I would say in January, 1990.

Two. Wow. and the reason for that is we thought about it. Look, the population was getting older, obviously the average age. People will always want to be healthier. It's a, technology will always seek a higher ground. And I did want a marketplace that had steady growth, but also had a governor built into it because health tech grows at about seven to 8% per year.

But there are micro markets within it that grow at about 20 to 30. So we've all watched markets that have no governance on them, grow and then crash at even, even faster rate, you know, early internet bust, housing bust and you know, periodic bust of the energy business. So we picked that and we knew we wanted to specialize in one industry.

And, and in the late eighties, early nineties, no search firm really did that. Mm-hmm. . And we wanted to continue to compound the activities in the search. Where most search firms were. One desk would be financed, another would be computers, another would be healthcare. We wanted to compound and have that aggregate of data integration and collection to be able to move more quickly.

So that's what we did and it's paid off really well for us. Now we're opening in Canada. And we're opening up a general technology practice there, and also we're expanding that general technology practice out into the uk where we also have a footprint, existing footprint already. And the reason we're doing that candidly, is coming in and out of health tech and med tech right now are X external.

Expertise that have never existed before. Typically, health tech and life science have been an insular, very protected environment. If you didn't have life science or health tech experience, you couldn't get in. But now with ai, artificial intelligence, machine learning, imaging, navigation, all those skills that are external to the industry, they're starting to import those in.

And with that, we're starting to recruit outside, bringing that talent in. And we're noticing that you can move those scientists and those experts and those engineers in and out of that permeable barrier of technology. And we're taking advantage. . Yeah, I was

Renata B: about to ask you that. So thanks for leaning in.

When you think about transferable candidates, where are they coming from? Give me a few examples of candidates that can be transferred to life sciences in Med Tech.

Joe M: So we're starting to live, you know, you, you had mentioned. You hadn't done live streaming before, and certainly in the headhunting business, it used to be pick up the phone and speak to somebody, put down the phone, do it again, pick up the phone, put it down.

But you know, with the advent of technology, let's call it online presence data, business intelligence, data analytics business intelligence, software coding General technology development on the mechanical electrical software firmware side. So on the engineering sciences, that barrier that historically on the life sciences have had a pretty high wall up has now dropped dramatically.

And we're also seeing other technologies in other markets that are starting to become interconnected to med tech, meaning, Look, food science, you know, your listeners may be interested in the food science world, right? We're, we're starting to see chemists and engineers and supply chain and project management, program management all start to have that ability to move back and forth between technologies.

We've seen voice and vision. If you. Cars, the voice and vision technology in cars, the voice and vision technology in your tv, the voice and vision technology in your refrigerators. They're starting to cross over industries right now, and that's supply chain crossover professionals, the software, hardware, firmware professionals the field service professionals.

All of these are starting to become a community that if you can, architect Your brand to potential employers. You can find yourself in a much broader career opportunity than if you just locked and loaded on the industry you came from.

Renata B: Yeah, that's very well said. I remember being in the Silicon Valley a few years ago when I was working for a big university here in Australia and I can't disclose where I was, but it was a big high tech sort of manufacturing.

Company that had a hub at Stanford and they had just finished hiring master of Education students and lawyers. And they were looking at anthropologists, ethnograph, and I'm thinking, This is the AI and machine learning requires a holistic approach. And I came back to the university I was working for, and I told them that, are we incorporating these things, you know, bioethics into the arts faculty and you know, telling our students that are doing social sciences, that they have a space.

You know, future of AI and, and machine learning. And frankly, we hadn't yet looked into it. I don't know if, if Australia's behind in that sense or if it's kind of something that we are still getting to learn. But it's very interesting to see, and I always felt that as well, especially when we're looking at the new generation of cars, for example, and all the legal issues that they will have on the roads.

And the fact that United States, you know, each state is so different and here in Australia it's already, it's also a federated commonwealth. Gosh, you know, we have so much to work on holistically incorporating people from different sectors and different professional backgrounds into it, don't we?

Joe M: Yeah.

and you know, you hear the word diversity a lot in the employment. Sort of playing field and unfortunately, most people default to underrepresented people, whether it's gender, color, race, what have you. But that diversity of thought is just as important as we start to develop products and develop services.

Joe M: I, I will tell you in the med tech industry, you know, we've been toying with the idea of a podcast called The Conspicuous. And what happens in a lot of industries, it becomes an echo chamber after a while. It's the same playbook and it's the same people making the same decisions in an ever changing world.

And we are seeing individuals, I, I mean there's a company that is one of the leading diabetic providers of, you know, an artificial pancreas. And they brought in an executive from PepsiCo who had. And he went into that organization and he had reimagined what their supply chain should look like and how that supply chain should roll in.

That's a single example, and it has dramatically, publicly traded company has dramatically increased the profitability in the way they do their business. Mm-hmm. . So these conspicuous outsiders that need to be introduced into legacy businesses. Legacy industries can do nothing but improve a wider sampling of how to solve a problem where generationally it's the way we've always done it.

And you're seeing that even with Tesla, with somebody like Elon Musk who's pressing the boundaries of how do you make an automobile, whether it's electric or. He has impact manufacturing in the automobile industry for years. And you know, you have back in the quality days of outta the Crisis where there was an American who wasn't accepted into America, he went over to Japan.

Deming is his name, and he introduced quality function into the automotive industry that changed Toyota. That then changed the entire quality and the way cars were manufactured, which then creeped over to the us. So, you know, there's all kinds of history of outsiders coming in with new thoughts and approaches into sort of stale industries that had then creates a chasm and a jump in technology and.

Renata B: that's actually fascinating. and it's good to know it's not something new. Thank you for bringing up the, so many great examples. the other challenge that I, feel that you face as a recruiter is hiring for startups. I can see from my clients. For example, if they have a, a strong long experience in the corporate sector in a more bricks and mortar traditional organization, making that transition into startup may be part of their career goal, but it's, they often booming back to corporate because, you know, you have to learn to be scrappy.

and also, you know, it's a different culture and a different environment. Can you give me some insight as a recruiter, what it takes for a candidate to transfer their skills into a more startup

Joe M: world? Yeah, absolutely can. So I think the first thing we need to do is define what the word startup means.

Right? and when you think about startup, you can see resource constrained, right? So let's, let's go there. First. Resource constrain from financial, from headcount, from support. Budgets, right? So it's typically a resource constraint, either pre-revenue or just initial revenue company.

And so I think what has to happen is both parties have to be quite candid with each other. You know, there's the present day dream that you have and have you extrapolated that? Far enough down range to really understand what you're about to face if you're the individual. I don't like to use the word candidate.

So in my dialogue with you, I will use the word individual. Cause candidate to me is an object and individual is a person and a, and sort of a soul. And so as the individual is thinking about going to the startup, you may very well be have the temperament for startup. Which means you gotta be agile and agility.

The darker side of agility is instability. You have to be a lateral thinker. You can't be locked and loaded in the processes that you've lived to date. And you have to be prepared for an enormous amount of deferred gratification down range. And your status of hierarchy on an org chart doesn't matter as much as it did in a large corporate.

setting So you've gotta have a very real conversation about that with yourself, with your family, with your recruiter to make sure that those are really temperament driven behaviors and who you are, that you're gonna be able to make that transition. And on the corporate side, don't hold it against somebody if they came from two or three long stints at a corporate environment.

I have seen successes. They're the except. But they are there. And successes have been orders of magnitude that added to the success of an organization. And so you need to look for, again, those, you know, the openness, the conscientiousness, the extroversion, the agreeableness or disagreeableness. and those are the temperaments of people, both on the positive and liability side of them.

So it would be really well served to think through. Romantically what you want today, but then take it out four years from now. Cause if you're in a startup, you're probably gonna live in that environment from four to seven years before some outcome occurs. If it does ever. But there'll be also skills in that area that you'll be able to add on to your career.

And then we'll give you broader I'd say broader qualifications rather than just going back to a corporate entity.

that's interesting. When, the decisions are being made of bringing people into startups, are they made by founders or investors, Joe, or is it a mix of, of both. Cause that's the other thing as well that some of my candidates usually fall under that trap of talking to the founder and then realizing nothing's gonna happen until the investor step in and vice versa.

Renata B: And that can be very confusing. Take months for the selection process to

Joe M: end. Yep. So it's important to understand that when you use the word startup, there's different levels of startup. So for today's conversation, let's stay founder and, you know, first five employees, and then the medium stage, which is maybe 20 to 40 employees.

And then the later stage when you're starting to put in supply chain, manufacturing, distribution, go to market, you know, sales. So that's the down. The up range is the idea in a napkin in a cafe with three people sitting around, and then in between. So typically in the early days when there's not investors, it's the founder.

And typically founders are terrible at talent selection. Typically, founders are terrible at discipline and infrastructure, but they're great dreamers. they have the ability to see the vision of something on what it may look like at the end game, but you need the yin to the yang on that.

Right? So you had Steve Jobs, right? Who was the visionary, right? And then you had the anchor on the other side, right? Wosniak, who was the developer. And you typically will have that in these massive, successful. Historical startups of Disney. Walt was the visionary. His brother was the structure, in the, the financial guy, the operation guy.

So when you're getting involved in an early stage founder startup, you need to have a real understanding that that founder highly likely is creative, visionary, and is terrible at infrastructure, operation and discipline. And so know that going in, and that's usually who they will romantically hire people and have a very abbreviated diligence process, which exposes you to a great amount of opportunity and a great amount of risk.

once you start to get investors involved, whether it's angel investors, friends and family, or even professional investors like venture people, you're gonna have a little bit more, well, not a little bit more, a lot more structure because the investors are gonna wanna make sure their money's being managed and their risk is being at least modulated as much as possible.

So they typically will be involved in the executive hiring process, usually at that VP level and above, and certainly C level and above that will be vetted by the executives. I'm sorry, the investors? Yes. So that's good for everybody involved. I'm not saying that they're also very good at hiring.

Or talent selection, but they're certainly better than the N of one of the founder. And then as you get later downstage, you're gonna have the executives inside the organization as part of the vetting process. And if it's the C-suite or C level, it's highly likely the investors once again. So as you go through that, that's what you're looking at in the startup world and you're right.

And the founder startup, that decision will be made too fast. It will be lack of diligence, and it's a bit of a crap. On the medium side, there'll be a little more diligence and that could run anywhere from 30 days to three months, and that might not be the indecision to bring you on as a person. It may be waiting for an event to occur, a liquidity event or a manufacturing event, or a client acquisition event that they're waiting and it's important if you're interviewing for that asking.

If I'm the right person, what potentially would hold up me coming on board and I understand that it might be a financial issue or a supply chain issue or a customer issue. I'm open to that, but I just wanna let you know I'm tuned into that. And the more information I have, the better. Now if you're not interested me, please let me know that as well, cuz I've got some other things.

Renata B: That's such a great thing to bring up and I think of at least two clients that need to hear this, so I might have to send them the live stream recording later because they are at that stage where it seems like they're good fit, everybody is interested in them and wants them in, but it's taking a bit longer than it should and.

You know, I don't want them to feel that it's something that they did. I think it might be something internally that could be just delay the whole recruitment process. So thanks for bringing that up. I want to pivot a little bit to talk about something else. So we spoke about getting into health and sciences and med.

How to do that if you're in a different sector, how to get into startup and you know, the things that you can look out for if you are interested in transferring your skills to to startups. Now I want to go back to mid 2020 when you wrote a very interesting article for CNBC about entering.

We talk a lot about entering work on the job hunting podcast, Joe, because our listeners are, and my clients are older. They're usually in their forties, fifties. I have a client in his seventies, and I have clients in their sixties as well. So that idea of building a portfolio career, of contracting your services out for a period of time and having more flexibilities is.

Interesting as you sort of move towards the tail end of your career. Right. And you predicted some interesting things that I want to ask you if they came to fruition, cuz it's been two years now. You said employees could transition to independent contractors that was happening before the pandemic.

And you say that in your article, but I think during the pandemic you were expecting to see more of. Sought after employees across many industries will have agents representing their careers. You also said contract workers with similar backgrounds will form trade organizations, and I thought that was really interesting.

And home will become a mini metropolis for each worker. I agree. Absolutely in my case. And professional branding will make resumes obsolete. How are we faring with those predictions in 2020, at the end of 2022? Well,

Joe M: I think we've moved in the direction of all of them in the last two years, two and a half years.

So look, let's start out with probably the most important one is the professional branding.

Renata B: Because absolutely a hundred percent agree. I'm so glad we agree on that.

Joe M: Yeah, and for those, in their forties, fifties and sixties, that sort of cringe when I use the word brand as it applies to them, just replace the word brand with reputation.

It'll make it easy for you to swallow. And so your professional reputation has never been easier to develop online. Now, I'm not suggesting you currently have the expertise to. Because it does take a certain amount of knowledge craft, and somebody who understands how to take your skills and position them for the market in general, and then always keep in mind that demonstrating your subject matter expertise online while staying just on the healthy side of bragging.

But backing it up with references, recommendations chiming in on conversations that are technical in nature, and again, LinkedIn. Think of LinkedIn as a learning platform, not as a job or career platform. If you can adjust your thinking to LinkedIn as a learning, inspiring, educating platform, and you then enter that as a contractor, Demonstrating the work that you've done, speaking about the problems that you're solving going to SIGs special interest groups and chiming in on that.

Putting together your own portfolio and reaching out to the targets within the organizations that you think you can ma solve a major problem for them. Many organizations are looking to bring in $300,000 a year people, but only need them for 10 hours. A. . And so cause there are specialty ninja or sniper type problems that can be solved and they would love to outsource, but they can't afford a $300,000 a year person.

So they want to outsource it. So they only need you when they need you. Mm-hmm. . So that's one of them. The agent is already occurring. I will tell you, the contract world or the interim world when somebody is free there is likely, no, not likely. There is definitely somebody who runs a contract business or an interim business as a search firm, or a head hunting or an interim business that specializes in what you do and what you need to do is find out who they are.

This is your livelihood now, right? They can become your external marketing and your external sales team. As you are either trying to enter the market or coming to the end of a gig or have the ability to layer on another opportunity in your contracting business, they can take you out to, I can guarantee you that there's a need, a gap with one of their customers in their portfolio of 50 to 300 customers that they can say, listen, I've got Sally.

She's becoming available on January. 2023, she's wrapping up a gig. I'm taking her to seven different companies that all need her skill set. You let me know if you want her so you can have people doing that legwork for you, because those who are in their fifties and sixties, and I know you, it used to be the contract interim world was for those people who couldn't stay steadily.

And it was feast or famine. A lot of times you'd get to your end of your gig and you'd run out of it, and then you'd beat without a gig for another three to four weeks, and that would scare the heck outta you. There are organizations out there now that they make their money off of you, which you're happy about, but it doesn't come outta your pocket.

It just gets added onto your hourly rate to the. That person or those four or five or six contract recruiting firms would be ecstatic if they could get you in their Rolodex and you could let them know that one, you're available for another gig, cuz you're not already working 50 or 60 hours a week or 20 hours a week, whatever your choice is, or when your contract is up.

Yeah. And those people will do that marketing and will bring the opportunities.

Renata B: And it's important to note for listeners that this is happening at every level. It's not just senior . So if you, whatever level you are in the corporate sector, there are opportunities for contracting out and that flexibility I.

Also know clients of mine have been on freelancing platforms and doing, you know, gigs between roles or as they seek opportunities or figure out what they want to do long term. And they've been well as well. And I think that what the forties and fifties and, early sixties individuals lack is that, That thing that is happening with the younger generations of understanding their agency and advocating for themselves with, I mean, I'm 50, so we've been educated to have long term jobs and to seek out stability, but that may not be your career driver, especially post pandemic.

We have an assessment. Called Talent Predicts that we use. It's a service I have called Give My Talents. I'll put a link below for those who are interested in looking into it. Stability is usually ranked quite low for most people when we do that assessment for them. We look at their top talents, their top career drivers and their top personal values, and build a, a career DNA with those three sort of fundamentals.

Not everybody wants career stability anymore. So another misunderstanding is the idea that if you have income coming in every month, it's less risky. It's less risky, up until a point where you're restructured out of the organization then. And then if you haven't really nurtured your network, like you said, be in touch with the recruiters for.

Joe M: Well, you use the word risky there. I just want to, I want to, I want to make a comment there. Sure. Risky. Risky for what? Risky for becoming irrelevant because you're sitting in a job that you're not learning skills that are relevant to the future job market that's emerging. That's a bigger risk than potentially sitting in a job that you think you have a locked in wage.

And if we look at Amazon, we look at Airbnb. We look at Google, we look at Meta, which was Facebook, and we're looking at tens of thousands of reduction in force. So corporate and I'm looking across nearly every industry right now has got a compression going on of it's hiring. So when you define risky, you have to say risk of salary, risk of relevance in the future, market, risk of mental health, risk of job fulfillment.

So you have to stratify of which area of risk are you talking about? Mm.

Renata B: Now that, that's absolutely right. Does the Mullins group have an entering group or branch?

Joe M: Is that part of we 2023? Oh, of Equip? We have a commitment to developing our contract, interim business. Absolutely because I do think it is a rapidly emerging.

Marketplace and as a growth rate, the percentage growth in contract or interim is growing at a much higher rate than the full-time employee, as a percentage of growth. Certainly the full-time employment market is a larger set of people, but the growth rate in the contract interim world is at a much higher rate than.

Renata B: I think in terms of adapting to that future of way of working with employers, Is also understanding you inc. You know, like you have to be careful with your finances, with your with your budget in order to adapt to a world where there will be times in the year that you won't, you may not have a job.

And having that sort of portfolio of opportunities happening and that business development mentality. To be able to sell yourself. Have you encountered candidates that have learned it and already applying it in the, the sectors that you work with?

Joe M: Yeah, so it's the management of risk, right?

And it's also the supply demand of one, the economics, two, the hours that you wanna work, and three your contracts. So they're all things that are relatively predictable cuz they're, they're empirically hard numbers. So if you're a contractor or you wanna pursue that I've seen large number of contractors start to create an alliance together.

And so let's just take an example. Let's say you're an expert in supply chain and it's relatively sort of transferable skill. On the supply chain. Certainly there's domain expertise, but as far as managing supply chain hardware, software the distribution network the qualification, all of that.

And so I've seen supply chain people who are in the contract world create an alliance, and what they do is they'll get together on a high level frequency, periodically, let's call it once a. They'll talk to each other. What are you looking at? What did you see that came up? what's on on the horizon?

Where are the contract jobs available? Are they in person? Are they remote? What's it paying? And if you get that alliance, now you have this node, these multiple nodes of data all coming in, and they're getting calls also from contract firms about them. And now it can become an internal referral program.

Now you're taking advantage, a series of 8, 10, 12 people in that pod. They're sharing that information and that then becomes a factor of safety of now you've got those 8, 10, 12 nodes out there, gathering information, aggregating it, bringing in, sharing it with each other, that is, I'm seeing that happen in software engineers, supply chain engineers, quality engineers, regulatory engineers.

These are tribes of people who are there to support each. The emerging economy is there hoping that happens because it then gives a more robust supply chain of talent back into the organizations. So that was one of the points I had predicted a couple years ago, and we're seeing that in spades happening right now.

And you can do that and have facilitate it through Slack groups. You can facilitate it through databases, you can facilitate it in many. .

Renata B: Yeah. No, no, I'm, I'm agree. And, and I think that that's happening everywhere.I'm part of groups like that, you know, and it, it really does help a lot. And I think it happens mostly organically, but if it becomes more organized, I think there will be lots of benefits to that as well.

Mm-hmm. , what other job market trends do you expect to see coming into the New year at 2023 is right here. And we, I mean, how is the mullings. Today, is it busier than prior to pandemic? Tell me a little bit how, how you guys are doing.

Joe M: We're doing exceptionally well. We had another record breaking year.

I had predicted at the start of the pandemic that those two or three years would be the golden years of recruiting, and they were, and they remain. What's happened now though in the market is.

I would say the fish, I use this sort of vision. The fish have stopped jumping in the boat as far as career opportunities are concerned. Mm-hmm. , but all of the opportunities are out there. You just have to fish for them now, where in the past they were jumping in the boat. So that's one item.

The other dynamic we're seeing right now is since March of 2020 when the world froze and for those six months, for the most part, there wasn't much going. But then they become that very frothy two years or so that we're running into right now, two and a half years, where the individual was in charge in the market and they were able to demand higher salaries.

They were able to demand work from anywhere, not even work from home, but work for, I call it work from none of your business, . It shouldn't matter where I am if I get the job done. And I also saw people jumping. For compensation, and it was a little bit of a mob mentality of frenzy going on. And what we're seeing happen right now is we're seeing people now who made those decisions to jump taking lateral jobs elsewhere, or EAs even taking a lower salary.

And you know why? Because they jumped for money during the fren. They jumped into a situation that they're either not happy with the role that they're in, they're unfulfilled with the work they're doing. They made the move for the money as the core base decision, and now they're saying money's important.

Let's not underestimate it. But now I need to get back to loving, or at least being somewhat fulfilled at what I. And I'm willing to leave some money on the table and or take a lateral. So over the next couple, I would say over the next two or three years, don't pay attention to the job reports where you see that salaries have flattened out.

It's only in relative terms to the frenzy that took off. It's the same mainstream media. You're hearing right now that housing prices have flattened or, or dropping? Well, of course they. because they went up in some areas in the us 60, 70%. So it's not a sustainable growth, but if you peg it against where, Salaries were, and housing prices were before March of 2020, they're still gonna be a much healthier area.

So you're going to see people moving back to fulfillment on their jobs. They're gonna stop, they're gonna get out of that survival, me, me, me mode. And they're gonna get back to knowing that the next 15 years they have to be fulfilled in what they do and the money then will follow. So we got a little crazy over the last two and a half years.

No, no,

Renata B: we did. It was the same here in Australia. Your analogy with house pricing and salaries, same here as well, and I, I know that it's the same in in many other countries. what has changed from an employer's perspective, what are they offering now to acquire talent that they weren't offering in the past?

That's a

Joe M: great question and, here's what we've seen different. Certainly the salary. Have been increased. We've also seen the level of counter offers increase dramatically because once you leave that slot, finding somebody is gonna end up costing you probably more money them to keep you.

Where in the past, I'd say counteroffers were made at the professional level, maybe 20, 25% of the time. Now they're about 80% of the time there's a stat for you. The other thing we're seeing is these crazy sign on bonus. Employers, they can't necessarily compete because their salary bands that are set in organizations, which them and themselves are ridiculous, but salary bands are there, but because of the increased demand of talent, The increased demand by the talent of higher salaries, the organizations couldn't violate the salary bans.

So what did they have to go to? They had to go to sign on bonuses. So there are one time events and typically they've been anywhere from 10 to, we just signed on somebody on a, I wanna say it was a $300,000 base and a $200,000. And so we're seeing these sign on bonuses that eventually are also gonna start to trickle off, but those are still expected by the organizations to have to pay to individuals.

So we've seen them and we've also seen those sign on bonuses justified because the work from anywhere environment, no longer than how to incur relocation. That could be anywhere from 50 to a hundred. So the rationale being made by the individuals in the market is, I'm going there and you don't have to relocate me.

And the companies are rationalizing it by saying, I need that talent, and we're not paying them relo. Let's give them a sign on. Yeah. So we're seeing that sign on there as well. And then finally, the variability and how many days you have to be in the office. So that has gone from some, still had demanded all the time in the office.

Those organization had to come off that to now two to three days in the office. But I am seeing the demand of talent having, being back in the office at, at a minimum four days a week. And I think we're gonna get back to some sanity on that to four days a week in the office. I think it's critical for our economic future.

I think it's critical for the pursuit of technology. There's certainly some job categories that never needed to be in the office in the first place that will remain remote, but I would say for the most part, we're gonna start to see some sanity getting back to the office. .

Renata B: Yes. I think especially with the sectors that you work with being in the office and that pursuit of technology and innovation r and d makes sense.

When you're working with employers and allowing. Individuals, their flexibility. What's, I mean, I'm assuming you work with C level executives and then subject matter experts. What's most common? Is it okay for a C level executive to work from home two, three days a week? Or is it necessary for them to be in the office in the eyes of the employers as opposed to, let's say, subject matter experts?

Can they work from home?

Joe M: Mm-hmm. . Executives want to be in the office. When you get to the C-suite, you want to be in the office. You wanna be there with your people. You want to be there feeling and hearing and smelling and seeing what's going on. . And so there's usually not a wrestling match at all with those executives and the C-suite eventually, and especially and the vice president level.

Certainly in the sales function that always had the ability to be remote or, you know, one or two days in the office fly into corporate. So that hasn't changed much. We are seeing. The subject matter experts, especially if you're in a manufacturing fabrication, as you said, r and d, making something, and you need to be all sitting around the table on that piece of hardware or whatever it is you're making.

we're seeing the corporations start to tolerate three days a week as a stretch in the office for preferable. I think you're gonna start to see two days a week in the office. D. I think the new norm is gonna be three days a week is a minimum for highly preferred. And I also think that you're gonna see salaries start to become bifurcated by, if you're in the office, you are gonna get paid more money if you want to be out of the office, and you always only want to be in three days a week, you're gonna start to see some differential in compensation, cause every behavior has a

Renata B: that would be interesting to see. I can't wait know. You keep me in touch. If you find that that's happening. I haven't seen it happen yet, but I wouldn't be surprised. Joe, before we go, I really need to ask you this question, because I read an article where you mentioned something that I thought was so great, is the idea of humming singing and shouting on LinkedIn.

As an idea for a LinkedIn strategy, which you described for the employer and how they could do their corporate branding on LinkedIn. But I thought if you could explain that and we could translate that to the individual, that would be perfect. It would make my life so much easier as a coach. Please be happy to explain to everyone the hum sing and shout.

Joe M: Sure. So the Hum Sing shout strategy started about two years. And it was for employer branding or your hiring brand if you wanted to find the best talent on LinkedIn. There were three compounds to it. So if you think hum and it's a very low amplitude, but a high frequency, you know hum.

That should be out. Preferably four to five days a week on LinkedIn platform and or other platforms. And what it was, was a steady stream of information that built an awareness around your company and your hiring brand. And then the sing side was a lower frequency, not as you know, so not this, but this, but a higher amplitude, a bigger sound that you wanted to share with the.

So it might be a new product release. It might be a new event. It might be, you might be showing up at a, a certain conference if you were a company, but it was certainly a higher signal and not as frequent as the hum. Mm-hmm. . And then the shout. The shout was that exactly what it was. A much higher amplitude and a much lower frequency.

So for numbers, if you were a corporation let's call it 50 weeks a year, five times a week, you had 250 hum signals going. Over a year period. And then if you were singing, you probably had two a month, let's say. And so that's 24 a year, and then if you were shouting it was maybe one a month or one every six weeks, which was anywhere from eight to 12.

And that hum sing Shout is a chorus of voices that was meant to create an awareness and attention around your company's hiring brand. So that's how it sort of manifested itself. You know, you bring up a great point. It can be used in a career as well. So let me give some examples on a hums sting shout if we're gonna convert that to a career.

So also go online and look up the ten four two strategy for your job seekers. If you go ten four two mullings, go on. It by far is the most effective way for you to get your background in front of the person that you want to interview you hands down, no question, been validated by peers of mine in the industry and used by a number of people.

If you take the 10 42 strategy and you overlay the hum sing, shout on it from a career perspective, and you, if I leave your viewers with one thing, And I'll finish your answering your question cuz it's relevant. You need to be networking when you don't need it. Yes, of course. Do not network when you're out of a job.

Well you should, but don't wait to network when you're at a job. You need to be networking all the time and that incorporates the 10 42. You can go look at and the hum sing shout. So your hum in this case would be, go online, identify the top 50 companies you think you'd like to work for, even if you're currently happily.

Identify the 300 hiring managers in those 50 companies you'd like to stay in front of. Connect with them on LinkedIn. Your hum is gonna be chiming in or liking on their post and or their company post Your sing may be putting a clever article out there or tagging a clever article and putting that individual's name and tagging them on it.

Who you want to become them aware of you, because I'm gonna guess. You're on LinkedIn right now and your name gets tagged by somebody, or somebody likes something you put up, you're gonna go see. I don't know that person. Who are they now? Suddenly they're in your ecosystem. They're in your stratosphere.

And then your shout of course, may be something amazing you did at work. Something amazing. You accomplished some new degree, you got some new certification you got. That should be your humming shout strategy for the individual. Tie that in with 10 42. There you go. That's your explan. That's

good.

Renata B: I'd like to add to that, Joe, because one of the things that I teach as well for people doing LinkedIn is to give, give a lot of information, and liking is great, but I love when my clients comment if they can add to the discussion.

I think that that is so beneficial to everybody. And also if you have posted something, on LinkedIn. You love that people comment, don't you? I do. I I like to see people commenting on my posts, and I think it, you start building a rapport with somebody that you may not know by adding an intelligent comment that adds to that discussion.

Not just something that says, oh, great. Great article well done, or something like that. You want to really develop a point of view to add to the discussion that, but

Joe M: don't hijack the post. Right. There's a fine line between hijacking the post. That's a good point. Right, right. Don't, don't, or be acc creative to the post if you really want to do that.

And I'm glad you brought that up. When somebody puts a post up, take a Saturday and, accumulate the seven posts that went up that you. Go do some homework on Google and find an article that's accretive a complimentary to that, or could be contrarian without picking a fight and say, I love that and here's another point of view that I never thought of before, and add to the discussion.

Yes.

Renata B: I also love as a coach, I love when other coaches or recruiters send me articles that they think I will like to read. So they will send me a LinkedIn message and say, have you seen this? You know, I thought of you when I read it. Mm-hmm. just it. Keeps them top of mind for me. So that's very clever use of LinkedIn and it just makes me want to read whatever they sent me.

It could be that they have written it or they just really found something that they thought I would be interested in because of the career coaching that I do. So again, it's LinkedIn allows you that opportunity to nurture connections in a much more meaningful way. Especially if you don't need it. Like you said, you know, don't wait until you need them.

It's nice to give value to your community of professionals,

Joe M: and then after you get the new job, pull other people with you. Don't stop networking. Continue networking because you give hope to other people who are without a job, which is very important and people can see their potential positive outcome through.

And then also then share your network that you used and all the work that you did back to your network and it will come back around, right? it's, again, it will pay dividends down range for you. Yes,

Renata B: absolutely. Joe, it's been an absolute pleasure interviewing you. I'm so glad we did it.

Thank you for your patience and waiting for a time that we both could do it. You're on the other side of the world and I really do hope that we keep in touch and that next time I'm in Florida I can come and have a coffee with you and find out more about those nice beaches you told me about

I'll look forward to it. It's been a pleasure. Thank you so

Joe M: much. Thank you. Take care. Be well.