The Changing Power Dynamics in the Labor Market
I worked in recruiting for a long time. So has my guest, Mike Thomson. We’ve never seen a job market quite like this one. That’s what our conversation is about today–the changing power dynamics in the job market.
Mike’s video briefly froze. We just decided to ignore the freeze and move through it.
Jeff Altman [00:05]
So my guest today is Mike Thomson. Mike has spent his entire professional career, all two weeks of it (just kidding) on the agency side of recruiting. And throughout his career he found jobs for more than 500 people. And you could pretty well recall most of them. But that’s tremendous. Given the changing landscape of the labor market, and the surfacing of massive inefficiencies in the recruiting process, Mike founded Spark Recruiting as a response to transform how companies attract and hire top talent. Mike, welcome, thanks for making time today.
Mike Thomson [00:45]
I am so excited to be here. I mean, not as excited as the intro you just gave. But I’m going to try to match your enthusiasm as we go through this for sure.
Jeff Altman [00:54]
Excellent. So, Mike, how has the candidate market changed? And what should a person be valuing?
Mike Thomson [01:06]
Wow, just hit me with the hard stuff right off the get go? No, how’s your day? How are things going? How’s the weather in Canada? Just let’s do this.
Jeff Altman [01:16]
Let’s just do this.
Mike Thomson [01:18]
You know, I figured I was in for a for a doozy of a chat when I saw you come on wearing the coach hat. But I guess that’s exactly where we’re at right now. So, right. So thanks for having me. I mean, it’s a big, heavy question. In terms of how the candidate labor market has changed. I mean, I’ve been in the business for, luckily, for nearly 15 years. So I’ve seen . . . I started in 2009 while we were in a recession and kind of seeing the labor market evolve over that time. And the labor market that we’re in today, I have not seen … none of us has ever seen this. It’s completely dynamic. It’s completely changed for the better. And I’ll tell you why. And how it’s changed is, for a long period of time, as long as I can remember. And and I’d love to get your thoughts on it as well, because I’m sure you can chime in here to the power dynamic was one sided in the job market, employers had all the power. Employees were hoping to be chosen to be an employee. The candidate was always, you know, waiting to be blessed with ‘Yes, we choose you, we want you,’ and they were at the mercy of employers. Then COVID happens, lockdown happens. And this remote style of working has drastically changed. Talent markets have expanded globally. So now, with exponential, rise in demand, and the supply not catching up with it from labor expected that power dynamic has shifted. And it’s more one of equal balance where the candidates are interviewing the employers as much as the employers are interviewing the candidates. So this power shift and the power that the candidates possess now, they’ve never had before. So it’s a massive change. And you know, they’re still figuring out what they do with all this power like people do when they get power.
Jeff Altman [03:11]
And what are the fun things that I see … Well, not fun for some of them, you’ll understand why I say that in a second. In the US, 3 million people left the workforce during the pandemic, a million died. Those are the ones is not that’s not the fun ones. 2 million retired. Although Gen Z is very much like the boomers in terms of work ethic, they haven’t hit full force yet. And they’re much more junior. So you have a lot of people who are fairly senior, very experienced going on. And I know this is a global phenomenon as well, although I can quote the US numbers. So it’s complicated now for employers. And the dynamic is exactly as you’ve described. People finally got out of their house. They’re finally able to change jobs. They felt a certain amount of freedom. And they’d been jumping from one bed to another, trying to figure out which person they should get married to, or at least spend some time dating. So it’s complicated out there to say the least. And you just froze on me on camera. Whoo.
Mike Thomson [04:32]
I can hear ya. i Can you still hear me?
Jeff Altman [04:35]
I can’t hear you. So I’ll have to do a little bit of editing. If we have my number on on freezes is 444 He says we rerecord. Okay.
Mike Thomson [04:48]
Okay, sounds good.
Jeff Altman [04:50]
So, just to pick up. So what’s complicated out there? People have choices and everyone wants to hire
Mike Thomson [05:01]
It is complicated. And it’s the complexities, multi layered, as you mentioned is not just a matter of people leaving the workforce more than people coming into the workforce, there’s that gap to replace, and they’re not as seasoned in the career to just jump into those roles that are people are leaving the workforce. So there’s a massive gap, which also creates an opportunity for individuals– an opportunity for people to jump into roles that maybe traditionally, they’re not qualified for. But organizations have to take a chance. They have to take a risk on individuals that maybe can do the job that haven’t done it before. And that’s the change in the labor market that’s exciting for candidates is you’re not confined to what you have done before. Now it’s what do you want to do and what skills have you developed in your past that you can apply to new jobs. So not being so shallow and narrow in terms of the types of jobs or the positions that you think you can qualify for? It’s opened things up, it’s huge, it’s a great opportunity for people
Jeff Altman [06:05]
Agreed. And building on that, from a demographic perspective, Gen X, who’s the generation that follows the Boomers, it’s a much smaller population cohort. And this, what you’re describing really advantages, the Millennials. The older Millennials have that huge cohort, and gives you a chance to step up in class and move ahead much more readily than so many people were allowed to do it in the past.
Mike Thomson [06:39]
Yeah, it’s less of a slow burn now, right? Like people are accelerating their careers, way faster than we ever have before, which is good and scary for some people in organizations that are at those senior levels where it wasn’t the way that they were advancing through their career. So they haven’t seen this blueprint before. And there’s a lot of unknown. And just the amount of competition out there on the employer side for that top talent, magnified. I mean, the fact that the global talent market has opened up for people is great, because now if I’m hiring, I can hire anywhere in the world. But on the flip side, that means anybody in the world can hire the same people that you’re going after, as well. So that’s where that power dynamic has more evened out, where it’s, you know, candidates have gained power. And employers have lost a little bit of it and now it’s more equal in that, that process.
Jeff Altman [07:34]
Agreed. So what should people be doing, to capitalize on this kind of a situation? Take the big step? Leverage what they’ve done up until this point? Win the game?
Mike Thomson [07:51]
Yeah, it’s a great question. And what I always advise candidates to do is take ownership and be accountable of what what your career and what your job is. Because the markets so busy, it’s easy to be passive, because what’s going to happen is recruiters are going to send you inMails or emails for jobs and generally what recruiters are going to target are jobs that you’ve done before. You’ve been a sales individual a Tech, firm A. They’re going to send you sales roles for tech firms B, C, and D. But maybe you don’t want to sell in tech anymore. Maybe you want to switch industries. But unless you’re being proactive and looking at that, nobody’s going to do that for you. So you need to take accountability of your career and what you want to do next, because you are in demand, people are willing to have conversations with you right now. But you need to be the one that’s driving that instead of sitting and waiting for people to reach out to you. Because all you’re gonna get is what you’ve done before in the past what I like to call lazy recruiting, right? You’ve done job here, you can do job there. It’s the same. So unless you want to do something different, if you want to do something different, you have to be the one that’s in control of that and driving that.
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Jeff Altman [09:06]
So true. And the habit that people have is, as you described, they wait for the knock on the door, rather than taking charge of their careers. Is that what you see?
Mike Thomson [09:23]
I definitely see that. Because it’s easy. It’s easy, because there’s so much activity going on that it’s a false sense of you making progress because you’ve got 20 recruiters reaching out to you in a week with new jobs, you feel like you have options, but what I’m telling you is you’re limiting your options by only waiting for people to reach out to you. Whereas there’s way more options if you’re taking a more proactive stance to it. So you may think that you have a lot of options, but you’re limiting your options by not taking a more proactive approach to it.
Jeff Altman [09:56]
And now we start talking about the proactive approach. And then, because I know how I was trained when I did search, there was a trainer I saw, who put it very simply, he said, ‘The person who gets ahead isn’t always the smartest, they don’t always work the hardest, althoiugh those are great qualities to have. People get ahead by being alert to opportunity. Sometimes they’re internal to the organization; most of the time they’re external. How do people find these opportunities? How do they take control of their career?
Yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s a great question. And we’re lucky we live in an age where information is readily available for everything. So you don’t have to rely on a recruiter to find out who’s hiring and for what? You can find that out yourself. And if a recruiter thinks that’s the value they’re bringing, they’re not. So if I’m a candidate, I’ll give you an example. If I’m a candidate, and I want to jump careers, or industries I’m doing, I’m doing tech sales, I’ll use that. And I want to get into pharmaceutical sales, because it’s a passion of mine that I think that I could do really well on. What I’m going to do proactively is I’m going to start looking on LinkedIn. I’m going to see which pharmaceutical companies are hiring sales individuals. It’s an easy start. You search jobs, you put in the title, and it’ll give you all of the jobs that are searching. Now I found a job that I think, hey, this pharmaceutical company sales job sounds kind of cool. But I want to know a little bit more. In the job description, they always say who this position reports to. Not the individual. That’s a flaw we’ll get to later. But the title of the individual. Now I’m going to find who they are on LinkedIn, because again, my investigative reporter hat on, I can do that. I can search who that individual is. Now I’m gonna start engaging with them. And I’m not going to ask them about the job, I’m not going to ask them if they’re hiring. I’m going to reach out saying, ‘I’m interested to learn more about what you guys are doing.’ I want to start a conversation, I want to learn more, because you know, as a candidate, you’re in demand. People want to have conversations with you. But you want to start. You want to be the one that’s doing the outreach versus waiting. So you’re gonna find jobs that you think you might be interested in. You’re going to find the individuals and start engaging in conversations with them to learn more about it. That’s how you’re going to take control your job search,
Jeff Altman [12:16]
And in engaging in this conversation . . . I’m gonna go back to the dating metaphor. So in dating, ‘hi. I’m really kind of interested in, in what you’re doing.’ And where does the conversation go from there? How do you . . . ?
Mike Thomson [12:35]
Yeah, yeah, so I’ll play with the scenario. You’re, you’re a sales executive in pharmaceuticals. I’m in tech sales. I don’t have maybe the experience that’s listed on the jobs, I don’t care about that anyway. So I’m gonna reach out and I’m going to say, ‘what excites me about this job in the pharmaceutical industry are these challenges. I want to chat with you to tell you more about myself. You’re not asking about a hire. You’re expressing your general excitement around why it is you want to get into pharmaceutical sales, and you’re starting to engage in the conversation. So you’re not necessarily selling yourself. You’re being genuine and authentic to what excites you about why pharma sales and why this company, so you need to know a little bit more about why you’re looking at reaching out instead of just mindlessly applying for 1000 jobs, it is a little bit more time consuming. But I would rather have 10, meaningful connections and conversations with individuals than 1000 online applications that guess what? I’m probably only gonna hear back from five.
Jeff Altman [13:39]
And the one suggestion I would make in doing this is the LinkedIn app has a video messaging. And with video messaging, you’re just not that flat text on a screen. They can get a sense of your personality and your energy, your drive, and your desire, just from your tone of voice, your manner. And for those to use the example of of sales and marketing, this is the homerun for you. You have a chance to express yourself beyond simply words.
Mike Thomson [14:14]
100%! I mean, you kind of I wish you were selling for me and Spark because that’s exactly what we believe in Who better to sell yourself than you authentically? You’re not trying to be something you’re not. And without you controlling the narrative for telling your own story, you’re leaving a lot up to chance. You know, everybody’s resume is generic, and limited to what their story actually is. Grab your camera, selfie mode, shoot a 30 second video on why this role. Why you want to connect to this individual. Why you want to engage in the conversation. It’s authentic. You’re creating a brand and a personality for yourself that now they get to experience you. They will not read your resume and come up with their own bias on who you are, what you stand for. You control the narrative. You tell your own story.
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Jeff Altman [15:05]
And I think of we’ve been talking about using LinkedIn to reach o’ut to people. So then they’re the people who will then turn around and go, I’m going to take a look at Jeff’s profile. I don’t see anything I’m really looking for. And they’re like, how do you overcome that part of the scenario? Or can you you can?
Mike Thomson [15:27]
What you can do is your profile is a reflection of your personal brand. So you need to know who you are as a professional. What you stand for. And all of the copy on your LinkedIn profile needs to speak to those to your personal brand. If I’m somebody from a sales perspective, that values certain things, and those are core to my personal brand, that’s going to be evident in my LinkedIn profile. So the messaging I give on the video, and however people want to interact with me, it’s consistent, it’s authentic to who I am. They know exactly who I am, when they look at me on my LinkedIn profile, whether they see a video, email, there’s consistency across all mediums.
Jeff Altman [16:08]
And that idea of congruence allows people to get a feel for you as a person. Because we’re, you know, I know from my own background and search, where I got incongruent information, and the person was not consistent with what I saw online about them, or what I’d heard about on the trapdoor opens, the chair falls back through the floor, and they’re done. And I know other people do the same thing.
Mike Thomson [16:40]
It’s a hard thing, it’s hard being a candidate right now, because there’s a lot of guessing, right? Like, you’re trying to satisfy what you think they want to hear based on your resume. So it’s littered with keywords, and things that you think you’re going to resonate with them. Whereas what I’m saying is, flip it around. Forget about what they want to hear, and be true to yourself. Because if they don’t like what they see, you don’t want to work with them anyway. You want to have those options. You want to be able to resonate with the people that that resonate with you.
Jeff Altman [17:13]
‘Oh, I don’t know, if I can do that! A lot of people are gonna turn me down. I don’t know if I can handle being turned down all the time. And that is a reality and doing it this way. You know, you’re not going for the square peg in the square hole job, based upon what you’ve done in the past. You’re being aspirational. And you have to take the risk.
Mike Thomson [17:36]
Yes, and you have to work with people that want to take that risk and want to invest in you like, those are the opportunities that are exciting for people and stretch people and they find rewarding because they don’t know what they’re going to do. But they’re excited that they’re going to learn and they’re naturally curious about those things. Those are the roles that are exciting. Not ‘you did this role, and you’ve been doing a roll this role for five years, and now you’re gonna do it for another five years, the same thing. There’s no magic in that anymore. You know, yeah, there’s no, there’s no magic,. I mean, and now, like, because the market the way it is, you’re not limited to that, if you’re willing to put in the work can be proactive and own that, then you can open up to those opportunities. Otherwise, if you’re going to sit passively, you just get a lot of the same.
Jeff Altman [18:27]
And we’re recording this. And I’d say early June 2022. My thinking has been, I’m seeing a couple of indicators of things slowing down. So the time is now to, strike while the iron is still hot, and not waste a lot of time and go for the kill go for the aggressively to do this. Because one day the music is going to stop. You’re going to need to have to find a chair, if you’re out looking aggressively. And if you’re not looking aggressively, you’re going to be stuck in this legacy role. Your mind is already shifted to what you want to be doing. And emotionally, it’s going to be hard to stay put.
Mike Thomson [19:14]
Well said. I couldn’t I couldn’t have said it better. I mean, the market ebbs and flows, and you have an opportunity ahead of you that’s not going to last forever. As your point, there is some sense of urgency that you’re going to want to take advantage of it while it’s there. Otherwise, you know, you’re just going to have fewer options, and you’re going to be more limited, which is really tough. If you’re in the mindset of you want to stretch and you want to do these things, and now you can’t. So action, action, action action.
Jeff Altman [19:43]
So other than reaching out to people on LinkedIn, What should folks be doing?
Mike Thomson [19:49]
You got to think of yourself as a sales individual. You got to think of the job search as a sales process and what are the best salespeople do? They network. They’re opportunistic. They look when they even when they don’t have to. They create connections. They engage in conversations, constantly. Motion creates emotion. The more you’re out there, the more opportunities you’re going to create for yourself. You need to think about that and not just be transactional, only networking, when you need something constantly. You are a personal brand. If you’re on LinkedIn, believe it or not, you’re a social media influencer if you post one time. So embrace the role. Be authentic to yourself and own that. But treat your r job as a sales process, and be out there.
Jeff Altman [20:41]
And I’ll add on to this idea of networking. Whenever the music stops, you want to have your network already in place. And whether that’s you being helped by others, or you helping others. You know, the reciprocity, as you’ve heard a million times before, is important. You don’t want to be one of those people who’s always doing gimme, gimme, gimme. You want to be mutual. And thus, right now, when you may or may not be aggressively looking, put your network in place. Let people know what you’re thinking of doing next. Leave it at that. How can I help you just have conversations. It’s easy, because right now, everyone knows the way things are. You can help one another or not as the case may be.
Mike Thomson [21:33]
I love that because a lot of people do think of what they can gain from their network, and they don’t think about what they can give. It’s both. The best networks are ones that are nurtured, right? And in order to have a strong network, it’s a give and take. You can’t just always expect that your network’s gonna be there when you need them but you’re not there for them when they need you. You have to give to get and the best networkers recognize that and there’s just, you know, if you’re in a position to help people, it’s the right thing to do. Because eventually you’re going to be on the other side, and you want someone to be able to help you. And sometimes it’s just a matter of time. Somebody’s in a bad spot. Invest the time to listen to them. They were just laid off, connect with them, how can I help? What are you going through? Is there anybody I can connect you with? Is there anything I can do? Maybe there isn’t. But the fact that you’re investing time, which is an asset we all have, that is extremely valuable. And then when you ask for it in return, when you need it, you’ll get it back.
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Jeff Altman [22:37]
And as such folks, use it or lose it. Use your relationships, share your relationships, ‘give more, get more’ is something that we’ve heard for 100 years. And now’s the time to put it in place because at some point, you’re going to need it. So really cultivate the relationships, even if you’re not looking like I’m doing a presentation in two weeks to a group. And the subject is interviewing and presenting to them and saying very simply, ‘hey, look, you may not be looking right now. But you’re going to be doing it fairly soon. Just the nature the way the market is, and you want to be up to speed.’ Same thing with your network. Folks who network has to be ready for you. And people have to feel you regularly. It’s not hard.
Mike Thomson [23:34]
Agreed. Agreed. It’s, it’s just engaging. That’s the best word I could say is you’re in it. If you’re if you’re on LinkedIn, be active. Start engaging in conversations and and genuinely care. Don’t do it for vanity metrics. Don’t do it to try to get likes or connections or anything like that. Do it because you genuinely care about what you’re doing.
Jeff Altman [23:56]
And one of the easiest ways to do it folks, is grab your phone. Start reaching out to the people who are in your phone. Send them a text. ‘Hi! How are you. Been a while. Want to meet for coffee? Want to say hi? Want to hop on whatever it is that the two of you are comfortable with. Reengage and you can say, ‘Look, I’m now looking for a job (Although if you offered me one, I wouldn’t mind). But do something to reconnect with people.
Mike Thomson [24:24]
It’s incredible what happens and you know this, because we’ve talked about it, is how many opportunities come your way just by being out there. Not even necessarily going out with the purpose of looking for opportunities, but just going out. You’re going to get opportunities just by being there.
Jeff Altman [24:43]
Very true. So, so far, we’ve been talking about LinkedIn, networking, reconnecting, which I’ll treat as a hybrid of networking. What else can folks be doing to invigorate their brand? Take advantage of this market? Reach out to folks, etc.
Mike Thomson [25:04]
Yeah, it’s great question. I think that the other thing that’s really important is because most people still rely on job descriptions and resumes as our only form of marketing collateral on both sides of it. When you’re reading a job description, do not scroll to the bottom to look at the skills and experience to determine if that’s a job you’re interested in. Focus on the roles and responsibilities section. That piece is really important. Does that excite you? Are you excited about what this role is responsible for and what you get to do? Not what you’ve done, and what you can give to the employer. What they can give to you. And then, when you’re writing your resume, you write it from that place. You talk about those things. What excites you about the roles and responsibilities and why you think your setup for success in those?
Jeff Altman [25:55]
And thus, should someone include those in the resume even if the requirements are, shall we say, a little bit flexible?
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Mike Thomson [26:07]
Yeah, I usually like to make sure that it’s included in the summary. And to your point, when you get to do that video to start that conversation, a virtual cover letter. That’s where you’re going to speak about the exciting aspects of those things. And I’ll tell you what? Like people think doing a selfie video is daunting. You know, what’s daunting? Writing cover letters. Nobody’s reading your cover letters anymore. Do a video. It takes 30 seconds. And it’s just a genuine, personalized message about this role to this individual. Instead of the generic natures of cover letters. Can we kill those yet? Are those done? Can we get rid of them?
Jeff Altman [26:42]
They’re not done. It’s a shame. They’re not done yet.
Mike Thomson [26:48]
I like the selfie better. The selfie video is a much, much easier way to consume that content than to read a letter. Nobody, I’m telling you right now, I’ve been doing this 15 years, I may have read three cover letters. And that’s an agency side. Maybe I’m a bit biased, and you know, in terms of what I see, but if there were videos, 30 second videos, I’ve watched them all
Jeff Altman [27:08]
Agreed and you know, I come from the days, pre applicant tracking systems so, when someone would start emailing a resume to me, ‘ooh! hitech guru.’ And the idea of using the body of the email is the old cover letter that you looked at for some reason, I think people still look at the body of the email, rather than a separate doc that says, Thomson.cvr So you know, it’s a cover letter at that point.
Mike Thomson [27:41]
Well, in my opinion, the reason why is because that’s real. The rest of it is rehearsed. Your resume is rehearsed. Your resume is carefully crafted. It is almost like the interview version of yourself. And the email is the worst version of yourself. Right? Like this whole interview thing is an artificial way of seeing if you’re good at the job. You’re pre rehearsing your answers. You have them all, just like your resume. But if you read an email –why are you reaching out to me about this job? Just why? Why? Why do you want this job? And that answer is going to tell me more than I need to know about the candidate, than their structured, rigid resume that they’ve rehearsed, and are just sending to everybody. Anyway.
Jeff Altman [28:22]
This is going to seem quirky, but I haven’t tried embedding a video into an email.
Mike Thomson [28:29]
You can!
Jeff Altman [28:30]
I somehow thought so. It’s so much more effective. Try doing that. Let them hear you. Whether you’re in sales or marketing or any other field, let them hear you and feel you. It makes a difference. Oh, there’s so much more. What else should we cover today?
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Mike Thomson [28:51]
Well, I mean, I like to think of, you know, the resume as something that, you know, could be reworked given the job you’re looking for as well, right? Like, I mean, the resume’s your sales collateral. It’s gotta be specific to the job. And you’re gonna say, you’re gonna say to me, ‘Well, yeah, it takes a long time to write a resume to do it. But also, is it possible to put every experience and skill you have in a two to five page resume? It’s impossible. It’s impossible. You want to bring out those skills and those qualities that are going to resonate with that job, which is impossible to do if you’ve had a long career. You can’t put every single one in there. It’s gonna be a novel, it’s gonna be 13 pages, which I have seen and do not do that. Do not do that.
Jeff Altman [29:37]
It’s awful. But what you can do is if you’re one of those people who posts resumes on job boards? You can have the master resume on the board, so all the keywords are there. But when you’re actually contacting firms. You have the tailored resume, and you treat the master k,ind of like in object oriented programming. Each of the sections is an object that you’re pulling out, and embedding in the resume that you’re actually submitting. So this way each resume is tailored. Maybe an object needs a little tweak here or there to really make the fit obvious to the six year old, who’s scanning resumes. And in my case, it used to be four seconds or less. I know the data says six. But you know, everyone’s busy, you have to make it obvious because no one’s going to page two to find it, let alone page five.
Mike Thomson [30:34]
And no one’s making assumptions. Everybody assumes that when they do a resume, well, it’s obvious, they will know that I can do this because I’ve done this. No, write it in. Don’t, don’t make any assumptions. You have to be at . . . to your point, j just being blunt, and be so specific about what it is. And don’t think that the individual that’s looking at it is going to make assumptions on your behalf. It’s not going to happen,
Jeff Altman [31:01]
Because no one has the time.
Mike Thomson [31:03]
No, no,
Jeff Altman [31:05]
They should call me. No one has the time, you know that. You don’t call people just because they want you to call. Don’t even take calls on your phone anymore. You block them. And they’re no different. It’s interesting and leads to messaging as a subject.
Mike Thomson [31:24]
I was just going to ask you because I heard something the other day of an interesting, I guess, proposal insight someone had is most of our work gets done now over Slack or text or email. Wouldn’t it make sense to do an interview over Slack or text or email to see how the communication style is? And what would that look like? I would find it fascinating to do an interview over Slack to see how someone communicates with in that medium. We don’t test that in the interview process and 90% of the job. . . That’s how you communicate.
Jeff Altman [32:01]
And with text you run into generational issues. It’s true. Older professionals are less text adaptive. And as such Slack, I have no argument about. Email. I’m not real fond of because there’s just too much of a delay. And texting, you run into the issue of the older folks, fat fingers or is just just not digital natives. So they run into issues with texting. But slack. No issue whatsoever. It’s a nice approach. And it’s a good suggestion. Are there particular channels that you would recommend people hook into on slack as part of their job search, by the way?
Mike Thomson [32:43]
Oh, great question. I actually have not tapped into any of those channels. But you know, what my research right after this is going to be? To do that. This is part of the learning of being on these discussions. But I think for sure there’s there’s got to be some public channels out there now with just because it’s the most common real time messaging platform and, you know, for corporate now. So yeah, I wish I had a good answer for you. You should have prepped me on that. So I could have done
Jeff Altman [33:14]
I’m sorry, You know, I told you kind of spontaneous.
Mike Thomson [33:21]
Now people know it’s true, or else I wouldn’t, I would have had a rehearsed great Slack channel.
Jeff Altman [33:28]
So what haven’t we covered yet that we really should?
Recession-Proof Your Career With Your Current Firm
Mike Thomson [33:32]
I think the the point I would love to get across to candidates listening to this is the power dynamic has changed. You have more options than what’s being thrown at you in your inbox. If you take ownership and control over your career, it’s going to open up so many more doors for you to try some new things. But you got to move quick because the market changes as quickly as we’ve gone this way. It could go the other way. And we’re starting. Nobody knows what’s going to happen. But you’re starting to see signs of things changing. So get on it. Get going. Be authentic to yourself. Leverage video, and engaging conversations. That would be a long winded kind of synopsis of what it is. But that’s exactly what I want people to take away.
Jeff Altman [34:23]
Beautiful. Mike, this has been fabulous. How can people find out more about you, the work that you do, that piece of artwor over your right shoulder
Mike Thomson [34:31]
I wish I could say I was the artist in here but this is not mine. People can find me on LinkedIn. You know, Mike Thomson on LinkedIn. SparkRecruiting.ca is the website. We are building some really cool giveaways and experiences for people to your point, we talked about how to create selfie videos. We’re actually creating a step by step to show people how to do that on LinkedIn for candidates. And if you’re in a hiring capacity we’re showing you how to market your jobs better leveraging video and being authentic. So come to sparkrecruiting.ca And you can get access to those those free resources.
Jeff Altman [35:09]
Do you recall your your URL on LinkedIn? Because I’ve got assume there’s more than one Mike Thomson.
Mike Thomson [35:15]
Yes, you can use the filter for Spark Recruiting. But is there a direct way that they can get to you?
It’s MikeThomsonRecruiter.
Jeff Altman [35:24]
Easy. Mike. Thank you. And folks, we’ll be back soon with more. This is Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter. Hope you enjoyed the interview. If you did, and you’re watching on YouTube, share it, leave a comment you know, the usual and I’ll also mentioned visit my website, TheBigGameHunter.us There’s a ton in the blog that’ll help you. Plus, you can schedule time for coaching with me, find out about my courses which you can rent or buy from me. You can find out about my books and guides . . . there’s just a lot of great material. Go to the site and go exploring. Lastly, connect with me on Linkedin at linkedin.com/in/TheBigGameHunter.
Jeff Altman [36:04]
Have a terrific day and most importantly, be great. Take care.
ABOUT JEFF ALTMAN, THE BIG GAME HUNTER
Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter is a coach who worked as a recruiter for what seems like one hundred years. His work involves career coaching, as well as executive job search coaching, job coaching, and interview coaching. He is the host of “No BS Job Search Advice Radio,” the #1 podcast in iTunes for job search with over 2400 episodes.
Are you interested in 1:1 coaching, interview coaching, advice about networking more effectively, how to negotiate your offer or leadership coaching? People hire me to provide No BS career advice whether that is about a job search, hiring better, leadership, management or support with a workplace issue. Schedule a discovery call at my website, www.TheBigGameHunter.us
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