finding career zen
Stories and interviews highlighting the unique challenges, failures, and successes encountered on the path to achieving career zen.
finding career zen
At Work With Gen XYZ Q&A: Job Search Tactics and Navigating Career Transitions
It's time for a special edition Q&A episode with At Work With Gen XYZ! In this segment, Pete from Generation X and Ashley from Generation Z dissect and deliberate on various aspects of career development, job seeking, and interview preparation. While (Generation Y) the millennial expert is away on vacation, Pete and Ashley are seamlessly blending the wisdom and experience of Gen X with the innovative and adaptable perspective of Gen Z to bring you comprehensive career advice. They’re answering your questions, addressing concerns of those re-entering the workforce, and providing actionable insights to help you traverse the professional landscape.
This episode is particularly exciting as Gen X and Gen Z jump into real-world work problem scenarios sourced from Reddit, allowing Pete to share his seasoned advice spontaneously. From discussing strategies for those looking to pivot in their careers to providing guidance for stay-at-home parents eager to jump back into their professional journeys, this conversation is a melting pot of experiences and advice aimed at addressing the challenges of today’s ever-evolving job market.
Welcome to At Work With Gen XY a little bit different today. We'll go ahead with the introductions, as we always do, since that's a tradition we just can't get away from, especially since Peter doesn't like it. But Peter's not here today, so we're gonna go go. Anyway, I'm Pete. I'm the gen X.
Ashley Mapelli:I'm Ashley, I'm the Gen Z, and then we have Loma Millennials not with us today.
Pete Newsome:He's with us in spirit. We put him on here in his typical millennial style. Where is he today, Ashley? Do you know what? Why is he not here?
Ashley Mapelli:He's going on vacation, right, is that? Is that what he's doing?
Pete Newsome:I think you need to find a safe space. That's what. That's what you know. Every once in a while, millennials need a safe space. I think he needed to be be in that today.
Ashley Mapelli:I think he was feeling a little burnt out, that's right, that's right.
Pete Newsome:We're doing questions in Q&A day. We've received a bunch of questions, but we Don't have Peter to help answer them, so perhaps we need to come up with them, the Gen Y Perspective, ourselves. I don't know, or do we just just regard it all together?
Ashley Mapelli:Let's forget him about. Let's forget him today. Who cares about millennials today? They don't.
Pete Newsome:He doesn't care about leaving us in the dust, so no no, he knew he knows four o'clock on Thursday, that's our time, and, and you know, he said let's reschedule that I can't do it today. And we said, no, the show goes on. So we have him here. We'll refer to Peter as we go and we miss him, of course. Hopefully he'll watch us recording it, enjoy it. Probably won't, though, because I'm sure we won't speak to fondly of him as we go.
Ashley Mapelli:No, of course not.
Pete Newsome:So, if you're bigger watching, we would love questions from for anyone who's joining us today. So we'll take them live. Head us up Whatever is on your mind, put us through the test. We're, we're gonna, we're gonna start running. Let's do it.
Ashley Mapelli:Yes, for sure, especially if you're having a problem at work right now. Let us know what your scenario is and how we can help. So I'm gonna start off right now reading some of the questions. I'm a recruiter and constantly stressed what should I do about it?
Pete Newsome:I.
Ashley Mapelli:Don't know much of the recruiter space like you, pete. So what do you? What do you think about this?
Pete Newsome:So that that is. I hear that a lot. I hear it see it on LinkedIn constantly. The recruiters are stressed. Right, it's a stressful job, but I think that becomes a matter of perspective first of all. So actually, let's have a little fun with this. What like? If you go back through history, what would you say like? What would you say was a top job over like the last, let's say, 500 years? It's the most common job that people are in.
Ashley Mapelli:I want to say Gonna go out on a whim here and say, teacher, I don't know the teachers up there.
Pete Newsome:But farming, right, farmer, farmer, of course, easy to understand. Now, that is stressful, right? I mean, if you're a farmer and you know you don't make a living, you don't eat, you don't get, you can't survive if, if your crops don't come in, if there's a drought, if there's flooding, if, if there's bugs or fungus, again, you are out in from sun up to sundown, right through through the past 500 years, that's what humans have done. Now that to me is stress, right. Other popular job soldier, soldier. Right, I mean, that is stressful and I know it's all relative and I'm just kind of having a little fun with it.
Pete Newsome:But when you're a recruiter, you are sitting in an air-conditioned room, odds are. You're sitting down, you're talking to people, you're on a screen like this, you're in front of a computer. So anyone who feels overwhelmed with that, just know that your ancestors had to deal with a whole different level of stress and that may not make you feel better. But you have to work hard, right, life's hard, we know that. So take it in stride. Understand that it's a job, do it the best of your ability. Try to leave your emotions at the door when you go home at night. What, what tips do you have for someone who's stressed as a recruiter? I, I, I don't think it's the most stressful job. I have to say I think there's a lot more stress, stressful things you could do for work out there.
Ashley Mapelli:I mean I'd say if you're stressed, it's probably just temporary, you're probably just in a funk and you just need to get over that hurdle and push through again, like the whole farmers and their crop scenario. They're in that little Disasterous moments that they just have to get through and jump over and figure it out and in the end there's a rainbow at the end of the other side. So again, even if you're stressing out, if you're freaking out, just keep in mind like it's not always going to be like that and just remember to just reading your thoughts and keep her cool.
Pete Newsome:So here's the thing, though recruiting is not for everyone. I know that. I've been in in this industry a long time, and when people are your product and I've said it that way to illustrate the point if you're in retail, for example, a lot of people work retail at different times in their life. If it's at the end of the night and you leave a shirt on a shelf, that shirt is going to be there the next morning, right, it's not going to move, it's not going to get up, it's not going to go out drinking, it's not going to have bad influence at home, it's going to be there in the morning. But when you're a recruiter and you work with people, there are an infinite number of possibilities. It could go wrong in any scenario.
Pete Newsome:So I think it's really important. We're all joking aside about, you know, farmers and soldiers, we, we know you're not compare yourself to that kind of stress, but it is a challenge. When you have to work with people on both sides, right, you, the person you're recruiting, the client you're working with, trying to keep happy, so that that is a challenge. For sure. It's a difficult thing to do, but understand, that's just part of the deal. Like you said, and you know, try to try to leave that at the door.
Ashley Mapelli:For sure. All right, now I'm gonna go ahead and ask you the next question Are you ready Now? I thought we could do our Q&A session with the twist grab questions from our audience and grab questions from Reddit users who are genuinely stressed or have problems at work, and I need some advice. So next question I'm gonna ask is a Reddit question and then we'll go back to an audience question. So Okay, and I've never seen this question before, so I want to see your take on it, my boss.
Pete Newsome:You're really gonna put me on the spot here, aren't you?
Ashley Mapelli:Yeah, my boss makes me use my personal money. Is it bad if I say no?
Pete Newsome:No, it's not bad if you say no. So personal money, is that all? Do we have any further context, or is that all?
Ashley Mapelli:pretty much it. So I guess this person is just trying to get everyone's opinion up there, like should you say no or is your boss gonna be mad if you say no?
Pete Newsome:Yeah, that's an odd one. It you know, hopefully, if well, there's a lot of companies, at times it may need Individuals to front money and then they reimburse them. So I hope that that's what we're talking about here Not use your personal money for business expenses. That's really out of the ordinary, but without further context, a lot it's. It's difficult to give too great of an answer on that, but no, I think the In most scenarios, if you, you should have a conversation with the person asking you to do that. Make sure you get on the same page. There's no confusion about what's being asked versus how it's interpreted. And If they're, if they really are asking you to spend your personal Dollars on business expenses, then yeah, maybe it's time to consider Doing something else.
Ashley Mapelli:I think that's good advice. We do have something coming in from our audience, and it's do you have any tips for building my LinkedIn profile? Oh, man boy, do we?
Pete Newsome:We do. Yeah, so LinkedIn is your public resume. We know that Everyone who's on LinkedIn which is probably most people who are watching us here if you're not watching on Facebook or or YouTube and you need to treat it like a resume. So start, start at the top. It needs to be professional in nature. Linkedin is becoming very social as a network, as a social network, but I think at the end of the day we've talked about this a lot on our, on our live streams it's it's for business.
Pete Newsome:So start with a professional photo, a professional appearance. Not that you have to have a photographer, a professional photographer take it, but a professional appearance in your photo. Spell everything out clearly your headline, your objective. Make sure that it's easy to read, easy to understand and highlights your or your accomplishments and your achievements and what you put on there is how you're going to be perceived by recruiters. Assuming that's why you care about your LinkedIn profile you want to be found for the right reasons and then make sure that it's consistent with your resume. The last thing you want is a recruiter to receive your resume for a job application. Go and check your LinkedIn profile and realize they don't match up.
Ashley Mapelli:It happens a lot, so just make sure it looks very similar to how you present yourself on your resume and, of course, if you have any Certifications and if you don't, I recommend you go get some, because they always look good on your LinkedIn profile or on your resume you can add a section on there to your profile and it makes it look great. You can have people go and endorse your skills, even endorse your certifications, and I'm pretty sure you can even have some references listed on there. So just some comments that they have. That, I think, would also make your LinkedIn profile stand out and in, of course, we'll plug Zin gigs website.
Pete Newsome:Go to Zin gig. We have blogs written about your LinkedIn profile. We, if we had the, if the millennial was here today and we had more hands. We try to link them in the comments, but we don't. But we have blogs written about that. We have checklist for LinkedIn profile. I've done podcasts on it. So lots of content on the Zin gig site for that for sure. And I'll add get help with a set, another set of eyes to look at. It doesn't have to be professionalized, but get, get someone you trust, someone who is Strong with grammar, to make sure that they proofread it for you and catch mistakes. It's very common for us to Not be able to catch our own mistakes when we write something, and so we should always have someone else look over your shoulder and proofread it, because you can have something really Invert and in there that everyone else sees in your eyes. Just don't don't catch it. So, yeah, there's a lot of luck. Or Zin gig site about, about LinkedIn profiles a little fun comment about LinkedIn profiles.
Ashley Mapelli:As a recruiter, I think it is very important that LinkedIn profiles match the resume, shows attention to detail and consistency.
Pete Newsome:Yeah 100%.
Pete Newsome:So I just was responding to someone on LinkedIn in a post that I made About something along those lines you don't want recruiters to have to to spend too much time figuring out your resume or your LinkedIn profile like it's a puzzle. You want you want the opposite of that. So if if there's overlapping dates, for example and it's a little off topic from the question, but that is something that jumps out at recruiters, they want to see a consistent story on a resume. They don't want to have to stretch To find out who you are and what it is that you're trying to accomplish. Remember, recruiters are only look at each resume initially for a few seconds, so that story, those headlines, really have to jump out and they have to tell a consistent story, just like what Katie said. And then, when they look at your LinkedIn profile, they want to see that you're the same person. Everything doesn't have to be exact. Don't don't misinterpret that, but it can't create confusion either.
Ashley Mapelli:And little hack I was playing around with the TikTok video the other day and I think we have in one of our blogs. We talked a little bit about being jobs and I think you can create a resume through there and it lets you take your LinkedIn profile Imported in and it translates everything into a resume for you. Nice, how awesome is that? That just makes it super easy, quick. And then there's that consistency, because it's taking every point you have your experience, any certifications, all that info and funneling it into a resume.
Pete Newsome:So we've had a couple other questions along those lines what's your advice for job seekers? Well, that's, that's great advice right there. When it comes to LinkedIn, you could start with that just what you said that that is perfect way to build your resume, and there's so many tools that are available for free. I know there's lots of services that exist for resume writing, resume writers my LinkedIn feed is is filled with those folks sometimes, but there's so many tools and resources for free. So, again, go to Zin gig. We have a resume section on there for every scenario.
Pete Newsome:Now, someone also asked us about Women returning from work to work after having a family. Well, it turns out we have resume advice for that too. So if you go to go to a resume section, you'll you'll see that some tips on how to present that, how to Display it on your resume. And here's the good news is that there's a lot of really good ways to address that without Having to shy away from it, to have to feel like it's a negative.
Pete Newsome:I think now more than ever, people realize that there's a big value to hiring women who were, who've taken time off for family. I will tell you that I would always love a mom because they're the they're the most organized people on the planet, right? So if there's bias out there, it's probably in the favor of Mothers because they they have to do so much with such a little time, right? The most productive people on the planet. So Lots of great tips and advice for that.
Pete Newsome:I think we don't have a specific program for it, but I will point you to a website Hire my mom calm I believe it is is jobs specifically for for moms, and I'm sure they would hire other folks, but those are what the job, the job board, is intended for. Leslie pile I think it's her company, someone I've interviewed on a podcast before. So a really cool service hire my mom calm Mom calm check it out and they put up jobs all the time that really target Moms who are getting back in the workforce and I want to say again if you want to take a little step further, go on tick tock, go on mom talk and Connect a network with other moms via tick tock.
Ashley Mapelli:See what they're doing and Start communicating with them, and you never know what they might get you into.
Pete Newsome:Mom talk, is that that's?
Ashley Mapelli:mom talk. It's a mom community in tick tock and a lot of them are either returned to work, who have great advice. So jump on there, see, see what they have to offer nice.
Pete Newsome:Do we ask the millennials opinion on that? See what.
Ashley Mapelli:Still not with us today. Probably drinking a pina colada.
Pete Newsome:Still in a.
Ashley Mapelli:Yeah.
Pete Newsome:All right, so what's next? So?
Ashley Mapelli:I Got to kind of make spice things up a little bit. I thought it would be cool to throw you off with a little scenario. I also found on reddit real-life scenario coming from a job seeker. So here we go. So my friend and I signed up for a company and have an interview today, but at different times. He did the interview and a few hours later they called him offering him the job, even though I and another person had yet to be interviewed. My friend wanted to wait until the next day to decide, but I didn't know how to feel about this. Is it normal for a company to contact a potential employee before interviewing everyone?
Pete Newsome:so I'll Assume that that last line met. Is it normal for a company to make an offer to to an employee before interviewing everyone? Boy, I mean typical? I don't know that there's anything typical. Is that a good idea? Is? Is that something that people would appreciate? No, so, without knowing who the company is or the specific situation maybe there was more than one job. Now I did as a recruiter I hear that there's three people all talking to each other about the same job and you never trust anyone else other than the direct source in your recruiting process, because it's a really competitive market right now. Who knows what those other folks are saying. People hear things incorrectly. They interpret things incorrectly. At times it went in doubt. Go directly to the source and ask the question directly to them, right? What if a job has already been offered to someone else? You certainly don't want to spend your time going to an interview, so get away from that position as soon as possible. If they confirm that that's actually the case and they did offer it to someone else.
Ashley Mapelli:No, that makes sense, no it's not normal.
Pete Newsome:No, that's not a good practice.
Ashley Mapelli:No, especially. I mean if it's one role and your friend got it, and then you're about to go interview too and they're about to waste your time. Basically it's I don't. I don't think it's a good idea. All right, question from audience. What resources or tools would you recommend for someone just starting their job search?
Pete Newsome:Nice. So just know that this is a very competitive market right now. So if you are going in for the first time, if you're a student, if you are someone who's new to the workforce, it'd be a very different answer potentially than someone who's been in the workforce a long time and is just starting a job search. So, without having a little more detail, let's just go through some of the things that are very important. It starts with your resume. As you just said a few minutes ago, linkedin is a public resume, but it's a perfect format to build your resume and to think about what you've done in the past, right, how you want to be seen, what kind of job you're looking for, how, and you can highlight your accomplishments, accolades that you've had. Linkedin does a pretty good job of kind of giving you the blanks to fill in on that stuff with a different slot. So complete your LinkedIn profile, translate that into a resume. There are lots of free resume resources out there where you can just download a template. We have templates on Zengig and we have scenarios for different resumes. I recommend a chronological resume by default. That will list the jobs that you've had if you've had any in detail One of the other things.
Pete Newsome:That's important early in a job search is to consider who your professional references can be. If you are new to work, that might be former teachers, coaches, leaders of groups. You've been in academic advisors, even neighbors at times, so a lot of this really will depend on where you are in your career. The answer again for a 21-year-old is it's going to be different than it is for a 51-year-old who does have a long work history. The next thing I'd recommend doing is getting a resume on job boards. It's not just LinkedIn. There's Indeed, there's Zip Recruiter, there's Zengig's Job Board. Put your resume up there. Get your resume on Monster and Career Builder. So those are the big ones. If you put your resume on there, you have the basis pretty much covered.
Pete Newsome:Another big thing to do immediately is connect with recruiters. If you haven't worked with a third-party recruiter before, know that they're a source for lots of positions that wouldn't be available on the open market. So when companies decide to use a third-party, they almost always give exclusivity to either one company or maybe a few, but it means they're not going to be recruiting for that position themselves. So if you're not working with recruiters, there's millions of jobs that are open every year that you'll never have visibility into when you can find recruiters.
Pete Newsome:The easiest place that we always recommend is Clearly Rated clearlyratedcom. You can search the top-rated recruiters by industry, by geographical market, by specialty. So Clearly Rated is a great source to find who's, because not all recruiters are created equally, just like anything else. There's some good ones and not so good ones. Clearly Rated is a source that interviews former clients and active clients and contractors and candidates who've worked with the recruiting firms, who give independent ratings. So that's a great way to determine whether how good the recruiting firms are in your area and then get in touch with them. Pick up the phone, call them, connect with the recruiters on LinkedIn. That's a big way to do it.
Pete Newsome:And then the last thing I'll suggest is again go to ZidGig's job board. Go to ZidGigcom, look at our job board and sign up for alerts. You can subscribe by using your email address, by geography and keyword and job title, and you'll have daily open jobs emailed to you the newest ones that come out on the market. So you do all that. I mean, that's a lot. You can take care of all that stuff in the matter of probably a day or two, but that will get your job search off to a really good start. And the last thing is tell everyone you're looking, everyone you know friends, neighbors, family, former coworkers. Get that word out to everyone.
Ashley Mapelli:You never know where that next lead's going to come from from a new job 100%, and I believe you can create profiles as a job seeker using ZidGig's job board, so you can even put yourself out there and players can see your profile, which I think is an amazing tool that I'm pretty sure we just released recently. So go and use it. And then just advice for my Gen Z peeps, because I know all of you that are just starting a job search right now you probably really want remote jobs. Try to expand yourself. There's probably so much out there and don't just limit yourself to remote work, even though it seems nice, because everyone wants to work remote right now. You don't want to miss out on a great opportunity and you might actually enjoy it. So go give office work a chance to.
Pete Newsome:So what do you think about that? So let's go. Yeah, usually talking about generational differences and perspectives, anyone who's joining us now, our millennial is not here today. He's out of the office, off doing something fun, so we're remembering him in a special way, but we'll be back next week, of course. Oh darn what? Yeah, have you listened? We tolerate, we tolerate.
Ashley Mapelli:Oh.
Pete Newsome:So it all serious to snow. Your generation has so many opportunities to not go in the office. Do you think that is ultimately a bad thing? Do you think it's a detriment to your professional and even maybe personal development?
Ashley Mapelli:I mean I don't think it's a bad thing, especially since I feel like a lot of opportunities are more remote than an office right now. A lot of companies just switched over and it's kind of hard at this point to find an office job. So again, wouldn't consider it a bad thing, but I guess you don't. Maybe the development lacks a little bit because it's different from being around people versus just being in front of a computer. There's not much you can really pick up on, since your environment is literally just your dog. So I guess that's the only thing that I'd say that lacks, especially for my generation.
Ashley Mapelli:I haven't experienced the office life necessarily, maybe once a month when it was our company review. But I mean I feel like that's why I'm kind of expressing everyone that's just starting their job search. Give it a chance. You know remote work isn't for everybody and you never know, it might be good just to start an office and then go to remote. I'd say if I was looking in the beginning maybe I would have considered office at first and wasn't paying attention to just remote work.
Pete Newsome:Yeah, the grass is always greener to some degree, right, I mean, there's pros and cons to both. But I, you know this. I worry that young people, young professionals, don't have the same development opportunities that they would if they were around more experienced people, more knowledgeable people. There's something that is lacking with that. But you have to balance that against the benefits of being able to work from anywhere in the world, and I'm envious of that. I wish I could have had that opportunity when I was younger. So definitely pros and cons.
Ashley Mapelli:For sure. All right, I'm going to go ahead and give you another scenario. I love these. These are fun. Are you ready, all right? This one is called co-worker, going on vacation for a month. Hmm, sounds like our millennial friend here, but at least he's not going for a month.
Ashley Mapelli:I don't know what else. So I work on a project with my co-worker we are the only ones who do and she is more senior to me. She's going on vacation for four to five weeks. This project is already on fire, with missing items, delays and very intensive um outstanding items. I'm feeling very overwhelmed that I have to undertake it for that amount of time alone. In my opinion, she should be on vacation room for max two weeks at a time. Four to five weeks alone on this project will drive me crazy. Not to mention I have to complete her work and cover for her. So double the workload. What are your thoughts? Oh, poor person, that seems awful.
Pete Newsome:That's weird, so that's an anomaly. That's not something that we encounter regularly. How someone's able to take four to five weeks on vacation. Maybe there's some extenuating circumstances there, maybe it's not exactly a vacation per se, maybe there's other issues, but, uh, that's something you have to talk to your direct manager about and see how you're going to accommodate. Ask for um, ask for advice and guidance.
Pete Newsome:I think one of the um things that is really important for someone who's, uh, I'll say, younger in their career to learn is how to deal, uh, with those kinds of things. It happens, adversity happens, challenges will come up through everyone's career. So that sounds like a problem, uh, that needs to be solved, and the best way to solve it is to address it head on. I don't really have a much better advice than that. Um, but don't ignore it, don't sit and complain. That's a something that, uh, I know happens a lot. We all. We all know that it's and there's perhaps a lot to complain about at times, but it's much better to address these things openly, professionally, right? Not emotionally, uh, and if you can lay out a problem for uh and and state your case as to why this is an unrealistic thing to um, uh to have to contend with, then I find that most, most people are pretty reasonable right.
Ashley Mapelli:I have to say too, this is your moment to shine. Like this opportunity kind of fell in your lap. It's time to take initiative, you know, show everyone what you can do. So you might have to put in a little extra hard work for a month. You're kind of beating your senior person. Like that person's going to come back and be like hey, it's done, I didn't need you, and people are going to look at you for that and they're going to be like wow, like maybe we'll move this person into a different position because they're capable of doing more than they can.
Pete Newsome:Great advice. I love that and that's an important point. If you have to manage your own career and make sure that if you are doing double the work, then the right people know right and if you, if you have to suck it up and do it, you know to your own horn in that scenario, yeah, and people know that this person's going to be away for a month.
Ashley Mapelli:They know that this project is going to fall on you. So the cards are in your table. They're kind of testing you to see what you're going to do. Are you going to complain? Are you going to take initiative, organize yourself and, like, tackle this head on.
Pete Newsome:So how about vacation for a month, though? We just talked about how I mean millennial. Do you think that that's appropriate? No, he's okay, we'll wait for next.
Ashley Mapelli:No, I mean a month. Gosh. I feel like even I I don't know if you're going to come back and your workload is going to be off the wazoo Like you're going to be so behind. I feel like I don't know if it's always a good idea. I feel like two, two weeks max out of time.
Pete Newsome:All right. So I have a question for you. I saw it as a poll on LinkedIn this week. When you're not working, should you answer texts and emails that come in?
Ashley Mapelli:I feel like it depends on the person and the role that you're in. If you're working on a client or like working and helping a client and they urgently need your help, like you might have to help them, especially if that's just the role you're taking. You know your responsibility and sometimes you might just have to reach out. But being that I'm not in that position, I feel like me personally, I like being organized and I like being ahead of the game. So if I, let's just say, get an email or a text over the weekend and I check it out, like I feel like I'd respond, or just like put in my notes, like tackle this, this is like a priority for like Monday pretty much. Or, again, just respond Doesn't really hurt. To respond, it's like sending a text message back. So I guess it depends on you. You shouldn't have to. If you don't want to Again, it's your off time. But if you feel like you want to and you want to show for it, then go ahead.
Pete Newsome:Yeah, I think Every job is so different in terms of expectations and those are things that you should understand going into a role. If you're in a sales job, you're only hurting yourself if you don't respond after hours, so I would. I would say that's probably probably not a good fit if you're someone who doesn't want to look at messages when you're not on the clock. In sales you're kind of always on the clock and a lot of professions do work that way. So I didn't. I don't know how the poll came out. I think it's it's still going, but I think most people said they'll respond. They think they should respond to urgent, urgent messages.
Ashley Mapelli:Yeah, and I feel like you know You're gonna be curious and I feel like the person who's gonna look anyways, because they're gonna be like, oh, what is this, what am I getting? Don't just ignore it. If you saw it, just, you're already looking at it. Just tackle it really quickly, see what's going on.
Pete Newsome:Well, so what do you say to those who would say well, wait a minute, it's just not my job description, I'm not being paid for that. What do you think of that attitude? Because that's.
Ashley Mapelli:That's gonna show. For I mean, you're not gonna impress anybody with that kind of attitude. You're just gonna be in the same Same route, same boring route.
Pete Newsome:You're not going anywhere All right, all right, I know I don't know that everyone would agree with that.
Ashley Mapelli:I mean, I definitely not, definitely not. But I feel like I Kind of have like an old-school mentality. Sometimes maybe it's because of my parents, but I know most people, especially my generation. They're like nope, I'm not answering till Till whenever I come back, like I'm not here. Even if I look at it, I'm not here.
Pete Newsome:So so you could do it right, especially if you're not expected to or if it's not part of your, your job, what you signed up for.
Ashley Mapelli:But I'm just not gonna wow anybody.
Pete Newsome:Yeah, it's gonna be lemon. You're probably not gonna be the one that gets tapped for the next promotion, and as long as you're okay with that, then and that approach makes sense. Now we missed, we skipped over a question about job fairs. It was asked so what, what, what? I think about job fairs? Well, as, as a candidate, I think it's. They're worth going to.
Pete Newsome:A lot of times, a job fair will be like applying on LinkedIn. These days and if I'm still, we've been posting jobs on LinkedIn I get blown away by how many applicants we receive for every opening. The numbers can be overwhelming and Nobody wits when that happens. It there's just too many candidates for a single position, which means there's a really good chance the best candidate on paper, the best candidate who could be hired to do the jobs Never even gonna be seen by the recruiter. So I'm not a fan of the one-click apply option that exists out there right now.
Pete Newsome:I see I actually saw advice earlier this week where someone who calls himself a career coach I'm not sure what that meant exactly, but a career coach who said I tell everyone to apply for jobs even if they're not qualified, and I think that's terrible advice. You will annoy recruiters. So, even if there's a job that you meet may be qualified, a different job you may be qualified for. If the recruiter sees you blatantly applying for jobs, you're not gonna be favorable, they're not gonna look fondly on you, they're probably not gonna want to work with you as a candidate. So I reject that advice to say it's terrible idea.
Pete Newsome:But the, the Way that jobs are so easy to apply to right now has sort of created this mess that we're in. So that's how I think of job fairs. At times it's just lots and lots of people all trying to compete for the same attention and it's going to be hard to stand out. So if you go to job fairs, do a couple things upfront know who's going, know who you're, who, what companies are gonna be there.
Pete Newsome:Do your research, do your homework on those companies. Find out what they have open. Find out what, what kind of positions they have. So know something interesting, interesting about those companies. That's how you're gonna set yourself apart. Get the layout of the, of the the job fair if it's in person. Figure out where those companies are, who you want to target. Don't try to see everyone Prioritize a list and then attack those who wanted a time with with a strategy, so make a plan in advance, before you go to a job fair, so they can be beneficial. I typically like finding ways for candidates to stand out from the crowd, not be part of it. So if you're gonna go to a job fair, though, just just know that you need a plan going in.
Ashley Mapelli:And I can show some apps, especially for, like, college students. I never went to a job fair and that's one of my biggest regrets. Just go make the effort, go put yourself out there, start networking there and Telling you it's gonna go a long way. So you're gonna regret it if you don't, because then you're Gonna have to wait a little bit to start networking and it's gonna be on LinkedIn.
Pete Newsome:So If you have any more questions from anyone answering already and watching answer on the fly. Otherwise, let's do. Let's do one or two more today. I just yeah. It's hard to do this without Peter. I miss it.
Ashley Mapelli:I know, am I, is Genzi not good enough?
Pete Newsome:Genzi's. Yeah, I mean, I know, don't get emotional, right, that's, that's not. Yeah, no, it's, it's good to have, it's good to have Peter's perspective and because, because it is different, right.
Ashley Mapelli:I mean how I like. Is is different than someone who's born in that generation looks at so and I think he definitely has more experience out in the workforce than I do, because as a Genzi, we're all just starting to get out there. So At least he, you know a little, knows a little bit more than me, I guess.
Pete Newsome:whatever, Better at technology.
Ashley Mapelli:We're still better at technology. Okay, next question. Hmm, trying to find a good one. Should I read you one from Reddit or from our audience?
Pete Newsome:Well, let's, let's see from the audience. So we just had a question come in, which I think is good, about Networking. So where to network? All right, so a little more perspective would help. But start with your, your profession, professional associations that that you are in, or they that exists for your skill set, and there are professional associations pretty much for every type of group. So maybe there's a, a local organization you can be part of, a national organization you can network with, so that's always a place to go. Look back to where you went to school Is. Does your school offer networking opportunities? Connect with people that way, or their groups that get together. There's civic groups that you can connect in network with. But when you're connecting, when your network on LinkedIn, the first thing I'd recommend if you haven't done this already we talked about this earlier was get on clearly rated comm search by your local geography or your industry or your skill set. You can do any of those and Start connecting with recruiters and when I say connect, I don't just mean on LinkedIn, I mean pick up the phone, call them, have conversations with real humans, let them know who you are, get to know who they are, find out kind of jobs they recruit for, make sure they're a good fit and the way recruiting works best, and I'll tell you this from if there's a recruiter Anywhere third-party recruiter on the planet who disagrees with this, I'll be shocked.
Pete Newsome:You want to know who the candidates are for the job before the job comes in. Recruiters love to have a Network in place, a pipeline of candidates who they know. They already know what they're looking for, they already have rapport with them. That's been established and they can pick up the phone when a new job comes in, call that person, make the connection right away and fill the job. There's nothing better for a recruiter than to fill a job with one phone call because you know who the candidate is already. So a lot of Recruiting, when it's done right, happens Even when there's not an immediate opening.
Pete Newsome:So we're in Orlando, which is a pretty big market, I would. I will estimate there's probably 40 staffing companies that exist here in Orlando. That may be low, so if you're in Orlando, for example, and if you're in it, there's probably 20 staffing companies that focus on it. You should have a relationship with each of them because, as we started to talk about earlier, so our staffing company is one of the biggest ones in Orlando. We are the top rated in IT in Orlando. I'll say that a little plug for four corner resources. But I would still recommend to not work with us exclusively, and the reason is we only recruit for the companies that are our clients. And even though we have a lot of clients in Central Florida, that still represents a really small piece of the overall pie. And you could go down the line for any staffing company, any market, even if they're the biggest one out there, they're going to have a small overall piece of the pie. So the best thing you can do is cover your bases with as many staffing companies that are credible. They have good ratings. So, again, go to clearly rated, see which ones are the top ones out there and establish rapport with them at the individual level.
Pete Newsome:So one of our recruiters from four corner is here watching Bella. If Bella would love nothing better than to have candidates up front who she already knows. So when she gets a job that matches her skill set, it's a really quick turnaround and, like I said, every recruiter on the planet looks for opportunities for that. And the last thing I'll recommend is call directly into the companies and ask speak with the people who recruit in your space. You won't always get them live. In fact, most of the time you may not get them live, but don't be discouraged by that.
Pete Newsome:I promise you that, if you're listening and you're on the job market, that recruiters love motivated candidates. They love candidates who will take that extra step. Show that they'll go the extra mile, even if they can't help them in that moment, and that's a really important thing to understand. So don't take the fact that there's not an immediate job to be placed in, or immediate action can be taken. It all adds up and you never know when that next call is going to come from. So get in touch with local third party recruiters and get in touch with talent acquisition teams, or at least leave a message. Put your name in front of them so they'll remember you and be able to pick you out of the pile when the next job opening comes up. So hopefully that was a lot of stuff. If you do all that, you have a pretty big network within a couple of weeks.
Ashley Mapelli:Yeah, 100%. All right, we have one more question. I guess this will be the last one, if no more come in. What are your suggestions to those looking to find a different career path?
Pete Newsome:Understand, first and foremost, what a new job requires, and every role has its unique set of experience and background that are necessary for someone to enter into it. We have around 500 career guides on Zengig. If you want to go there, if you have a particular profession in mind, we try our best to lay it out. On what it takes to become a project manager, what it takes to become an attorney, we actually have a section how to Become. So start there for the profession that you want to pursue, see what kinds of certifications are available for that. There's a lot of free tools out there, whether it's companies like Microsoft or Google that offers free trainings. We talk a lot about Coursera and Udemy. We try to have links to those certifications and training classes on our career guides. Sometimes you need to pay to get the actual certificate, but you can do a lot of self-training right now through online free options.
Pete Newsome:Youtube is another great source of information and a way to train yourself. So if you're serious about it, you may have to invest significant time and effort to become qualified. And then the next thing I'll say is be willing to take a step backwards. That's sometimes hard if your income is up here and an entry level or close to entry level is down here for the job you want to go into. But I truly believe that top performers rise quickly, and just because you start at a low point doesn't mean you can't rise really, really fast. So do your homework, do your research. Start with our career guides.
Pete Newsome:By the way, if you see a profession that we don't yet have, let us know. We're adding to the career guides constantly. Zincig's only a year old, so we don't have the site complete. We just launched what we called phase one a year ago. We have so much more to produce and we take feedback, and that helps us prioritize what's missing. So if you have a career that you're interested in, you don't see it on Zincig, we'd love to know, because we're trying to prioritize our content creation in additions based on what's most popular and in demand out there.
Ashley Mapelli:And again, as Gen Z, I don't have much advice. But the only advice I do have is don't put all your eggs in one basket. See what the career is like first before really truly making a decision. Job shadow. So again example I thought I wanted to be a radiologist and a teacher. Luckily I got to job shadow a radiologist and I was like nope, never mind, this career is not for me. And I ended up changing. So imagine if I put all my eggs in that one basket. I would have been a radiologist and I would have been very, very unhappy. So just be very, very cautious when you're changing career paths and really immerse yourself and see what it's like first before taking that step. And you can always just go on TikTok and TikTok the if there's someone in the career that you are looking for. They always have videos on them, like dental hygienists, they post videos or teacher talk. So go see what it's like.
Pete Newsome:Yeah, and, generally speaking, I think people really like to help others. So find profiles of people at LinkedIn who are in the profession you want to be a part of and ask them for advice. Ask them where they would start if they were in your shoes. That's probably a pretty underused thing to do on LinkedIn, but people like helping. That's something that I'm pretty confident saying, and so if you ask for help from others, odds are that they'll give it.
Pete Newsome:Ashley, that's great advice with the job shadowing, just know that job and major career changes happen frequently. The reason why, when we were thinking of Zengegg and coming up with the name and our logo a year and a half ago, it's a Z because it was a winding path and our original logo that we thought we were going to have was a winding path up a mountain, because that's how careers typically go Rarely, are they just a straight line? So we know that and that's one of the reasons why we put the content on the site that we have. It's because it's common. It's very common. I mean most people look, I'm 52 now. That's why I'm the Gen Xer, as if that was a surprise that most of I would say probably more than half of my friends and associates near my age have made major career changes along the way, so it's a very common thing to do. It's intimidating, it's uncertain, but well worth it if you know the direction you want to go in 100% OK, looks like we have no more questions coming in.
Pete Newsome:Peter, no, he's with us.
Ashley Mapelli:I guess that concludes our episode for today.
Pete Newsome:Yeah, thank you, and we did miss our millennial. He'll be back to add to the conversation next week. We look forward to it. We'll get back to some controversy next week, ashley, and I'll see you in a minute once he's back.
Ashley Mapelli:Oh for sure, I miss fighting with him 100%. If you've been on the stage join in.
Pete Newsome:We appreciate all the questions and thanks for watching.
Ashley Mapelli:Thanks for watching, see ya.