Check out the full transcript from the third episode of the TechGuide podcast, featuring an interview with Derek Iannelli.
Derek Iannelli is the Chief Operations Officer at Star Growth Solutions.
Derek has worked as a Project Manager, IT Strategiest, and even started his own company, Samurai Recruiter. Find him on LinkedIn.
Here is a summary of key takeaways:
- Background: Derek Iannelli has a diverse background, having worked as a Project Manager, IT Strategist, and even started his own company, Samurai Recruiter. He now sources, recruits, and screens candidates for clients at Mission Box Solutions.
- Recruiting Philosophy: Derek views recruiting as a calling and enjoys the entire process. He emphasizes the importance of understanding the needs of all parties involved – the recruiter, the job candidate, and the hiring manager.
- Recruiting Process: The process begins with a discovery phase where the recruiter understands the client’s needs. This is followed by weekly updates as job requirements may change over time. The recruiter then uses various tools and platforms to find suitable candidates.
- Candidate Communication: Derek advises job seekers to communicate openly and professionally with recruiters. He appreciates personalized messages and encourages candidates to be confident in presenting their skills.
- Resume Evaluation: When evaluating resumes, Derek looks for contact information, a short summary of skills and experience, certifications, and evidence of longevity with previous employers. He also appreciates when candidates explain any gaps in their employment history.
- Job Hopping: Derek doesn’t necessarily view job hopping negatively. He believes it’s important to understand the context, such as contract positions or layoffs due to COVID-19. He also sees the value in the diverse experience that job hoppers can bring to a new role.
- LinkedIn and Personal Branding: Derek emphasizes the importance of maintaining an up-to-date LinkedIn profile. He suggests using keywords relevant to the job you’re seeking in your profile and maintaining a professional image. He also notes that having a personal brand can be beneficial in the job search process.
Check out the full transcript here:
Ryan Atkinson: [00:00:00] Derek, thank you so, so much for being here.
Super excited to have you on.
Derek Iannelli: Ryan, great to be here. Can’t wait to give back with you. Looking forward to our conversation.
Ryan Atkinson: Yes, me as well. But before we get into the nitty gritty recruiting, how to stand out, I gotta ask, an off the field question, off the work type of question, because you’re a huge fan of E D M, which is so sick.
What’s the most memorable EDM concert you’ve been to, or favorite song that you listen to get the day started?
Derek Iannelli: Yeah. Um, I’m a huge Tiesto fan. Okay. And anything by Tiesto is top of the line for me. Got some others and those types of things. I’m amazing that you found that in some goal of the universe too where I had written and said that I liked that. That’s awesome, Ryan. Thank you.
Ryan Atkinson: Yes. Yeah. Tiesto is amazing, I think. I feel like, yeah, Tiesto was awesome. So it makes you have, have you seen them in concert?
Derek Iannelli: I have not. That’s on my bucket list actually.
Ryan Atkinson: I love it. I love it. So I wanna go to recruiting. Now you’ve been in multiple roles before.
You’ve been a project manager, a chief information officer, a founder, and even a biblical counselor. Super cool. You then recently moved into the recruiting world in May of 2021. Take us why you wanted to be a recruiter and kind of what your day-to-day is like.
Derek Iannelli: Sure. So, uh, officially it comes out that way on some of my timelines, but I’ve actually been in full desk recruiting for about eight years.
My other roles allowed me to have some of those access be control of that, just being a Chief Alpha. Uh, operations officer type of person. I’ll, I’ll be honest, Ryan, I I hated recruiters when I was in it because for many of the reasons that most people complain about, which is they never get back to you, they placate you, Hey, if something comes up, I will get back to you, type of scenarios.
And it never happens. Yeah. And I had somebody who was actually saying to me, you really need to get into this recruiting thing. You refer to people all the time. Why wouldn’t you get into this? I’m like, I don’t wanna be a recruiter. I hate him. And he was relentless. [00:02:00] And he actually tracked me down in a networking event and showed me a commission check for placing a candidate, and it was for $27,000.
And I was like, I don’t hate recruiters anymore. Show me how you did that. And so, it, it totally changed from that point. Today, Ryan recruiting for me is a calling. I. I love the entire process. Yeah, there’s a lot of problems with the talent acquisition situations that’s out there. Everybody can speak to those, but I love my recruiter clan.
I love my job candidate clan, and I love the hiring manager clan. Everybody’s got a job and my role is I get to point put them together and transform lives. So thank you for asking.
Ryan Atkinson: Yeah. That’s amazing. So let’s start with the hiring clan, are these the first people that you’re in contact with?
Are they coming to you to say, Hey, we need X, Y, Z candidate, or can you take us through the hiring clan?
Derek Iannelli: Yeah. Yeah. So, it happens one of two ways. One, they either find out about you and it’s a referral. Or second you do dial for dollars, you do marketing, you do branding, all of those other types of scenarios.
But yes, once, once a client comes to us, Hey, we have a need. Most businesses hire or contract two to three recruiting companies at a time just because of their needs. They don’t know the reputation unless there is a good branding and you know, you can. How they’ve done in the industry and those types of things.
But most companies either solicit or reach out personally, how I’ve gotten clients over the years is having relationships with HR managers. So a lot of my content posting speaking engagements, even on the podcast that I’ve been in I have a huge network of HR managers and those folks if you, especially if you help a candidate in an HR position they’re usually reaching right back out to you as well.
Ryan Atkinson: Yeah. So they’re reaching out to you and they’re saying, Hey, we need to fill this role, and then essentially you go and fill it for them.
Derek Iannelli: So there’s actually a discovery process. We want to find out how they’ve helped this role, what efforts have they done before We’ve got our standard [00:04:00] questions type of scenario, salary is this remote, hybrid, all of those types of things.
Is there flexibility with this salary? Are you gonna be sponsoring? But we have a, a huge process in even a mission box. We call it the talent acquisition process or t. Sequence where we actually do discovery with the client. We also do weekly updates because sometimes those jobs will change, sometimes the requirements will change.
Yeah. Maybe they’re looking for someone to be a little bit more tweaked in an area versus a candidates we sent. So it’s a dynamic process. If I could answer that question for you. It’s not a one and done. Hey, cool. Here’s the job description. Many times we gotta help them with the job Des. Yeah. One of the things we recently did at Mission Box, for instance, is we standardize a template for job descriptions.
This is a minimum amount of information that we’re going to need, and most of our job descriptions are based upon how the candidates are gonna perceive those and how our recruiters are going to interact with those. So, yeah, great question.
Ryan Atkinson: And so let’s just say like a hiring manager is like, we need a just for simp simplicity, like a senior marketing manager.
It’s a remote position. They need to have three plus years of experience. The salary range is. $85,000. Um, what do you do then?
Derek Iannelli: So at that point, because I’m the subject matter expert, or my team is the subject matter experts of this, it is our role to educate the hiring manager number one. Because of the number you passed out.
And I know we’re just alibiing and talking through some of this stuff, but 85,000 for a senior marketing manager is actually kind of cheap and they’re gonna have a hard time getting candidates to do that. And part of my role is to educate the client in saying, yeah, this is not going to work. Utilizing tools like salary and.com and some other places to go.
This is not the industry standard for salary. I mean, I’ll do it for you, but it’s going to be hard and don’t and, and again, just be the subject matter experts to go. This is the type of candidate you’re going to get. Oh, by the way, for senior level, here’s the salary [00:06:00] range. A lot of those folks are looking for this.
And to also know things Ryan, like, Hey, don’t put ’em through 17 interviews. They’re not junior folks. Yep. Usually at the senior level, words count in my industry, Ryan, is what I’m sharing with you, and everything counts. Remote means what, and we want to drill into that. Hybrid means. What if it’s, if you say senior, are you paying senior?
Do you understand the market that you’re dealing with? It’s our role as recruiters to know the market and know our candidates. That way we can educate the hiring managers. Great question.
Ryan Atkinson: And so you will go out and then you identify, okay, this is what they want to this, these are the parameters we’re gonna work with.
And then are you just like outreaching cold to them on LinkedIn? Are you emailing people or like what are some of the parameters that you look for when you’re reaching out to someone to fill a position?
Derek Iannelli: Yeah, so the first thing that we do at Mission Box is we place it on our job board or our career board, which immediately propagates out to job boards in other places as well, indeed in some of those ZipRecruiter, in some of those places.
Also, we have marketing collateral that automatically proliferates our jobs across some of the social medias. With our recruiting coordinator, and yes, our recruiters, the ones that are actually on the ground, some of our commission folks and those types of things, they familiarize themselves with the job description and then they start doing booing searches and other types of things with their tools.
and some of the tools that we provide at Mission Box to find a candidate. And it’s real. I mean, there’s websites now, hunter io. Yeah, there is. Yeah. Recruit ’em and those types of things that are out there. You, you can put in small keywords and it’ll give you a list of folks that you can grab from.
There’s also sites that partner with staffing companies that offer candidate in sources. Things like clearance jobs and and folks like that, that are very specific for the types of candidates you’re looking for. If you were looking for clearance jobs, for instance, and other repositories, whether it be hospitality, logistics, all of those types of fields and [00:08:00] industries have their own kind of sourcing methods and where those folks hang out.
So for instance, to. Take that down a road, Ryan? Yeah, I’m an information technology recruiter. I probably won’t spend a lot of time on Facebook because most of my geek guys are not gonna be on there, or geek ladies are not gonna be on there. So my venues are gonna be Discord, Reddit, and those types of places where those people are hanging out.
Does that make sense?
Ryan Atkinson: , so in that makes a ton of sense and that’s actually something I never thought of. So instead of your IT folks are gonna be on the Discords, the Reddits, but someone that might be in marketing, they might be on there too, but they might be on LinkedIn and so That’s right. Yeah. So then you’re able to tailor like your approach and actually find real candidates through the channel.
Derek Iannelli: Yes, they’re in. And again, if you know in a mission box and in my personal philosophy as well, which is a good Mary up, if you’re candidate centric, you, you’re gonna go hang out where your people hang, right? Yeah. If you’re gonna, if you’re gonna be cybersecurity focused, you’re gonna hang out in security forums, you’re gonna go all of those types of places and be more what I would call sniper focused versus spraying prey type of deal.
Ryan Atkinson: If that makes. . Yeah, absolutely. You’re kind of fishing in like the warm waters where like these people already hang out at.
Derek Iannelli: Yeah, that’s exactly right. But you also have to earn the right to be in those places too, right? Because not everybody’s welcomed to those places either. , right?
Ryan Atkinson: That’s interesting.
And so let’s just say you start like. Something from like a job seekers. I, I’m not seeking a job, just put it out there. But I remember when I was searching for a job I would always, a recruiter reaches out to me, oh, this is so great, but like, oh my God, I need to make sure, like my messaging is like perfect.
Everything needs to be super formal. I mean, I’m sure a lot of job seekers feel like that, but like, is there a way that you prefer a candidate to communicate with you? Is it just being open or how, how does the communi, how should a job seeker communicate with the recruiter?
Derek Iannell: Yeah, that’s a great question.
Um, first and foremost, and I know there’s a lot of opinions about this. Yeah. I’m a real person just like everyone else who put my pants on just like everyone else does. [00:10:00] again, a a recruiter is a broker between the two entities, right? Yep. Between the candidate and to the hiring manager. My goal as a recruiter is to prepare the candidate, not only for the interviews and those types of things, but also to get out the information to see if their resume is telling me the truth, to see all the stalking and everything else that I’ve done out there.
The best introductions I have most of the time are first and foremost, people responding to posts. Second, when they do reach out to. Um, there’s a lot of talk out there about, Hey, fire off your resume. Tell ’em what your skills are. Honestly, Ryan, I get hundreds of those a day. And on top of the resumes that I’m already listening reading them from people who have applied to things, those become a blur if there wasn’t something in place to actually direct them and, and, and point them to a place where, Hey, let’s get your information uploaded and then we’ll chat kind of scenario.
Mm-hmm. . We are a firm that actually likes to let candidates deselect themselves and qualify themselves. So we’ll provide full details minus client. Mm-hmm. . And so when people reach out to us and they do, and they send their resumes, and I understand that model and I get, that’s great, but it’s actually.
Not a first step with us. And yeah, that’s a little bit different with a lot of recruiters. Again, they want the resume. Yes, we want the resume. You don’t do anything without the resume type of scenario, but a warm introduction to answer your question directly. Um, I get a lot of, and this is not the way to do it.
Hey, if you run across sales and marketing jobs, here’s my resume. Send me a few blah, blah blahs. Yeah. And I’m like, oh, you’re right buddy. I wasn’t doing anything today until your message came in type of scenario. Just common courtesy, Ryan. Yeah. And I know common courtesy and common sense are no longer common in some areas.
Yeah, . But I would just say treat. How you want to be treated like, I mean, even our you and i’s engagement. When you engaged with me, you had background and [00:12:00] details. You had known who, what I was doing, where I came from, and you were like, Hey, I see you’re doing amazing things in the recruiting space. What a great way.
Why wouldn’t I answer a message like that, if that makes sense.
Ryan Atkinson: Absolutely. So it’s not taking like this blanketed approach, it’s taking like a personalized approach and if someone is reaching out to you. Yeah. It’s like I love the accomplishments that you’ve done at like Mission Box. Um, I’m interested in marketing roles and then a little bit more personalization, like attaching a resume.
And that’s, that’s really stands out to recruiters.
Derek Iannelli: It it does, it does. And a and again, They’re not expecting something on the front end like, Hey, I’m gonna be working for you type of scenario. There are a lot of good recruiters out there, and again, first impressions are everything. And they will work their guts out for you if you present well.
And part of presenting your wealth is just being a human . Right? I love that. Does that make sense?
Ryan Atkinson: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m curious too. So you get a resume the person personalized it, it looks really, or like they personalized their message to you. They send over their resume, what to you?
Like, what are you looking for on a resume? That’s short answer.
Derek Iannelli: Short question. Yep. First thing, first and foremost is contact information. I see a lot of resumes now where folks are not putting their contact information. The problem with that from a recruiter perspective is they’ll have their name on there, but I don’t get a phone number and I don’t get an email address.
And I’m thinking to myself, how am I gonna get in touch with you if I’m interested in where you’re at? Yeah, yeah, of course. A short summary of summarizing their skills, their years in that title, that they’re particularly looking for kind of a candidate summary. I’m also looking for certifications.
Again, I’m an information technology recruiter. Yeah. I’m looking for certifications. I’m also seeing if they have projects. I’m looking to see if it’s a coder and development, if they have a skillset area where they have all their coding and development skills listed in there. Yep. I’m also seeing, um, their longevity with employers.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not one of those, um, job Huber guys and immediately discredit folks. We’re in the post covid stuff, right? Yeah. There’s gonna be. [00:14:00] Downsizing the big box folks, but I’m looking for longevity at a place. And what I mean by that is it could be anywhere from a contract role to a year or so, but I want to see them in that role that they’re applying to me for in some form of capacity or fashion.
Um, I get resumes all the time, Ryan, where someone wants to pivot into the tech industry and they have all of their barista knowledge, you know, from every coffee shop they’ve worked at. Yeah. And I’m thinking to myself, why are you submitting this to me? I have no idea about any projects, schooling, certifications Yeah.
That you’ve done. So I hope that answered your question. There is some things I’m looking for. Most importantly, contact information. I wanna be able to talk to you if you’re the one. . . Okay. Second is, hey, a short. I help a lot of candidates rewrite their summaries because some of them are vague or they’ve used chat G B T or something like that.
Hey, I’m looking for a position with such and such no lead and be confident with your skills. I have nine years in Java development. I’ve been doing this as a, I understand software development, lifecycle, blah, blah, blah, all that stuff. That’s your little blurb to speak out. Make me wanna read the rest of your.
if that makes sense.
Ryan Atkinson: Yeah, absolutely. I do want to ask a question though, on the longevity thing. Um, I think it’s a super important topic right now, cuz some people glamorize, oh, you should job hop every year, every two years. Some people are, oh, you should stay in your job for as long as possible type of thing.
What’s like the weight that you put on that I, it sounds like a lot of weight, but like, do you put like how much weight do you put.
Derek Iannelli: Well, for me personally, again, remember I’m the broker, so whatever the hiring manager wants me to do, if they have that philosophy of I don’t want job hoppers, the first thing I’m gonna do, Ryan, is ask a question.
What do you mean by that? Because it means different things from an age perspective. So old days when you would look at a resume and somebody would say, Having a job every three months type of scenario before we had tech and all these other types of things. Yeah, yeah. It was [00:16:00] a possible good indicator that they weren’t reliable, that they had issues in doing some of that.
Nowadays I want to, when I’m talking to a higher manager or a client, I wanna find out if they’re still in that old mentality. Yep. And is this an opportunity for me to educate them and going, no, this was a contract position. No, they were taking care of their spouse during Covid or whatever else is going on with those scenarios and going, Hey, is this gonna be a, uh, a deal breaker for you or, I will also push them and go, you do realize that this is a history of a lot of experience and exposure to some amazing things.
And maybe they were only there for a year, but they worked at Deloitte or they were at Accenture, right? . And are you really gonna go, oh, job hopper, right? No, you’re not gonna do that. So I don’t know if I answered your question, but there’s variables to it. And as a recruit, I’m not making that decision about who’s a job hopper, because I’m gonna be talking with them.
Hey, there’s gaps in your resume. What’s going on here? Can you explain this stuff to me? It really comes down to what is the perception of our client or the hiring manager about job hopping? And for me personally, even though I’m a little bit older generation, I wanna find out if they have old thinking when it comes to where we’re at in the economy.
Right. That’s super
Ryan Atkinson: interesting question. Oh yeah, it, yeah, absolutely. I think, yeah, it’s just a really interesting time right now cause like so many people are like, there’s a ton of job cuts or like, yeah.
Derek Iannelli: Oh, all the big box and technology companies are laying off folks cuz they over budgeted and, you know, I was talking to an Ex-Meta of Ex- Facebook, Ex-Google Ex-Aws, all in the title type of thing.
And that all happened within two years. Am I gonna go, Hey, job Hopper . Right. No, you can see it in the news. It’s happening. Right. Yeah.
Ryan Atkinson: That’s amazing. I think yeah, that is really cool because I think the perception that you had on it is like, oh yeah, they might have Job top, but they have a ton of experience with like all these different places and it’s still That’s right.
Derek Iannelli: Taken a shot onthem and, and it really is [00:18:00] because they bring all that experience with them. Mm-hmm. and it might be something new that that company may need. Yeah. Yeah. Great, great way to put that.
Ryan Atkinson: Yeah. And so I kinda wanna shift to LinkedIn cuz LinkedIn’s obviously a huge networking opportunity, building a personal brand.
Um, can you tell us about like the importance of actually building a personal brand when you’re searching for recruit or searching for candidates? Like do you think like, does this person have a personal brand?
Derek Iannelli: Um, one of the things, so I work with a lot of veterans too, and I know you have a heart for veterans and those types of things, so I’ve worked with a lot of trans visiting veterans.
One of the things I can’t understand with the transition programs is why they’re still telling them to. Work on their document resumes. Yeah. The features and functionality with LinkedIn right now, not only do veterans get a free one year premium subscription, but it opens them up to be able to have access to create and export a professional looking cv.
So first thing about brand is update your LinkedIn. Yeah. You know, get your Uncle Ferd pitcher off there, get your little cat pitcher off of there, , all that other, right. We all have seen these things on LinkedIn. Right. And so when it comes to that type of stuff, make sure you get your banner up. And again, I know there’s a lot of controversy out there, but mm-hmm.
again, if I’m a recruiter, I can do booing searches with hashtag of open to. And those people will pull up because of the tagging that LinkedIn has done. Personal branding, yes, it is very important. Get it up to date. Keep it up to date, and you can export it. You can also, when people are searching, here’s what I tell people.
Um, if you haven’t updated your LinkedIn, you’re missing out about 50% of the recruiting population who are trying to find you for an open, open position. Second, if you don’t have all those key words that are in your job or where you’re headed with some of those things too, in your profile. And again, a LinkedIn premium subscription will give you all of that.
If you type in a technical recruiter for instance, it will tell you, Hey, we [00:20:00] found all of these key words in your profile, and if you don’t have those in there, recruiter again is searching for those terms. And if they’re not in your profile, may never land on you type of thing. So, Coming to pitchers and things like that.
I’ve always been kind of, I’m not a guy who likes having my picture taken. Yeah. I don’t know about you, Ryan, but for me it’s like make sure you’re not wearing the party hat with the two Heinekens in it and all that other type of stuff. Right. , but have a kind of a professional pitcher. Something where people go, oh, that’s, you Get your banner up.
Make sure it’s updated with their latest skills. Another thing that I tell people that a lot of people are not aware of when it comes to personal branding is, Leave your job well and get recommendations from vendors, from people you worked with. All of those types of things. I have over a hundred recommendations cuz I’ve been on LinkedIn for so long and you wouldn’t believe how many people ping that and reference, Hey, he does know what he’s talking about in it.
Hey, listen to this. He is an awesome recruiter because another candidate said some of those things. Also get people to endorse your skills and be intentional about those. So there’s a lot of elements there. I hope I didn. Fire hose you with some things, but if I went through it, it’s like stop messing with your word docu and your resume paper document thing.
Focus on your LinkedIn. It’s free for everyone. For veterans, they get LinkedIn premium for a year. You can get, um, keywords and sourcing codes that recruiters use. A lot of folks forget that there is a. Product on LinkedIn called recruiter, and so there’s literally made to find those people and the people that you’re looking for getting those keywords.
I would spend hours with candidates, Ryan, just putting them through the LinkedIn premium G, spitting it out and sending them the list of all the keywords that, hey, if you wanted to be a senior marketing person, these need to be in your profile. The about your endorsing. Even when you’re asking people for recommendations, I tell folks, guide folks through that.
That’s your profile. Hey Ryan, when you recommend me, please mention the fact that how I [00:22:00] sourced, how did I how did you feel when you did business with me as a recruiter? Were you happy? Would you recommend me to your friends? And what set me apart from other recruiters? I guide that. I don’t hit the default kind of, Hey, give me a recommendation thing because I’m intentional about those words embedding so that people can see that stuff.
I could probably talk a little bit more along that, but usually, you know, again, it’s just kind of simple things most people don’t know. Another thing that I would add, maybe this is one of your rabbit holes, is about a year ago, LinkedIn made the availability. For the job hoppers or people that were experiencing things that now you can list that as experience.
Hey, I’m in the process of working on my certs and those types of things. So when the resume is spit out into the cb, it actually looks professional. And again, as a recruiter, I’m reading that going, oh, the reason why there was a gap is because they were in school. Now I know why versus going, oh, what’s the, where’s this number?
Where’s the date? And those kinds of things, right?
Ryan Atkinson: Yeah. That’s, I think it’s pretty amazing cuz like you always hear about like personal branding and like, oh, like you should have a good personal brand. Like make sure your LinkedIn right, but you actually went way in depth of the reason why you should, it’s because this is how recruiters find you.
And I don’t think enough people actually know about like the recruiting platform that Yeah. And the, like the booing searches they can put on for like keyword optimization. Yep. Is there a resource that someone could find about like, the best keywords that they should use? Do you know of?
Derek Iannelli: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So we were talking about LinkedIn. Yeah, you can get a trial to their premium and if you go to your profile under the more button there is an option to export the P D F, but there’s also an option to build a resume. When you do that interesting, and you put in a job title in there, it will actually spit out on the right hand side of your profile all the key words that will get you found for that job title.
Ryan Atkinson: That’s amazing. That is something that I, I, I consider myself pretty experienced at LinkedIn, but that is actually something I had no idea about. That’s a great little gold nugget, right. [00:24:00]
Derek Iannelli: And again, you know, if, if you were looking for three job titles, for instance, yeah, operations manager, general manager, et cetera, LinkedIn will spit all of those out and you can save those profiles and those resumes for those job descriptions.
Again, when you’re customizing for the job. And I do encourage that for folks that are job seeking. Customize your resume to the job, but looks a lot better than, you know. Here’s my barista stuff that I was doing at Starbucks. Yeah. And I’m not knocking Starbucks folks. I’m just saying if you’re applying for a tech role I wanna see tech stuff,
Ryan Atkinson: That that is a question that I want to pivot to though as well is, let’s just say you don’t have a tech background and you’re a barista at Starbucks. I mean, how can you realistically like break into tech? Or is it certifications, is it extra projects or what would you look for?
Derek Iannelli: I, so it’s a both and. And I know there’s lots of controversy in this as well.
Again, coming from a tech background, I got on a military. I had to earn my stripes. There was no tech culture back then when I got outta the military. And so trying to establish some of that and to pivot e even into my first job as a tech support guy, it was really hard. Yeah. One of the things that I tell folks is, yeah, work on your certs.
A lot of us veteran folks that have been in the IT industry also know though that there’s a difference between somebody who has a cert and somebody who has the experience. Right? Hmm. And I wanna, I wanna say that certs are great. I’m a huge fan of CompTIA, for instance, which are vendor neutral certs.
There are companies out there that, and I won’t name them here, but there are companies out there that some of the certifications that’re doing, they’re paying billions of dollars a. Millions of dollars a year. Mm-hmm. to trip you up on those certifications and it’s a business for them. Yeah, so certs are great.
Check into the search, make sure where they’re at. Also internships on my profile for, in instance, I’m constantly sharing posts for internships, apprenticeships, get in there, get some free [00:26:00] time. I got my first job, Ryan in tech, because I told the person I wanted a job at was, I’ll come in in here and work for free.
After my other job, if you’ll just allow me to hang out and do such and such. It took me two weeks and he said, you’re hired. Right. But oh wow. I offered to give my time for free to get into that and to pivot because I was transitioning outta the military and didn’t have any of those credentials. Now the folks coming outta Mil military have search and got, you know, yeah, yeah.
Software developer and cybersecurity forensics and all this other type of stuff that wasn’t happening when I got out. So certs are giving back to the industry would be another big thing that I would recommend. And what I mean by that is when you take courses or get new information, share it with your client.
A lot of job seekers that I see that are pivoting teachers, for example, They stay in their lane instead of giving back to the industry with the things that they’re learning. I’ll never forget a candidate last year, she knocked out almost all of the Google search and she was transitioning from teaching and it was amazing.
She literally documented that process and that journey all through LinkedIn and she got landed a job because she was like, Hey, check out what I’m doing, type. You want. So I don’t know if I answered your question. It’s a combination of everything. It is certs, but I’ll tell you from a recruiter standpoint if you’re a good tech recruiter, certs Mm.
Okay. I can teach somebody how to take a test or they’re good test takers. Yeah. I’m gonna say this live for you and you can share it to give some other folks hope. I failed the PMP three times and I failed the CCNA three times and I still got into tech . Yeah. So, It, it, it depends how you network.
Right. Which is where I think you’re going, Ryan. Yeah. You know, get around your plan.
Ryan Atkinson: Yeah, absolutely. Is there a certification that, should it be like a Google certification? If you’re breaking, if you’re wanting to break into, like, into tech or like what certifications do you like look for? Is it Google [00:28:00] Certifications?
Uden Course Hero?
Derek Iannelli: There’s a ton. Yeah. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Yeah. I usually tell folks, and again, probably because I’m. Um, comp Tia is the only company out there that is vendor neutral and literally wants to give back to the industry in regards to that. And the reason why I pick them, I, I would even drill down to for two reasons.
One is, for instance, almost every government agency has a minimum requirement of security plus. You can’t go wrong with that ever. Second. Kamilla also has some lifetime certs also that can follow you around and set you apart like Project Plus Linux Plus and some of those that are out there so you don’t have to pay the certification business game type of scenario.
Ryan Atkinson: That’s perfect. I think it’s a really interesting, because certifications are so big, you can do coding courses. There’s like a lot of different ways that can, people can like break into tech right now and I think certifications are an underrated one, but it is still getting the experience to actually It is do it.
Derek Iannelli: It is. Yep.
Ryan Atkinson: And we are winding down on time here. I just wanna ask like a few more questions around networking. So what platforms or what are some ways that job seekers, if they are wanting to network with a recruit? Is it going through LinkedIn or like how should someone go about network?
Derek Iannelli: So recruiters are everywhere, depending on the verticals that you’re in.
Um, I would seek those folks out. And the best ways that I’ve told folks in the past is if you’re being diligent and searching for a particular company or particular industry that you wanna get into, then find the best recruiters in those industries and see if you can establish a connector request for them and see if they’re open.
Hey, do you have any recommendations? Again, a common courtesy of, Hey, I really want to get into this industry. What do, what? What? Do you know anybody I should be talking to? I point to a lot of people, to people in my network to help them do exactly what you’re talking about when they reach out to me. Re don’t, don’t be afraid would be the first thing.
Second thing, um, hiring managers at companies, feel free to send them connection requests as well.[00:30:00] They want to grow their networks. They wanna fill jobs and positions as well. Don’t be ashamed of doing that. A lot of people, I don’t know why there’s this like, apprehension of, oh no, I don’t wanna reach out to the hiring manager because they’re gonna be interviewing me.
Uh, no. It’s showing that you. You’re a normal human being and hey, I wanna make a connection. This is where I want to go with my, with my current job. Right? Now that I have with Mission Box it was a networking situation, Ryan, four hours later, resigning from one company to another was being made an offer.
And it was all because direct connections .
Ryan Atkinson: That’s amazing. Uh, one of the. First episode that we posted here with Joy Mbanugo. She also, that’s how she found her like next role essentially was through one, building a personal brain, but two, just having the connections. Cuz when she got laid up from Google and she posted about it, she already had these connections and people were like, I’ll hire you.
Derek Iannelli: So yeah, ab exactly that. Right Ryan? I would add one other thing. There has to be relational equity in the, in the relationship, right? Yeah. It’s not out of desperation. You’re engaging their post, you’re following them for a while. I like that. Um, you know, many times when I’m trying to reach somebody that I appreciate or want to get an access to, I’ll, even in the connection request, go, look.
There’s no agenda other than just connecting. And I wanna share your post and see your, see your stuff so I can share it with my network. . It’s a warm connection. Who doesn’t what? You wanna share my stuff? Absolutely. . Yeah.
Ryan Atkinson: Perfect. I love that. And so last question here as we close, what’s one thing that you think any job seeker they must get right when they’re reach out to recruiter and going through the interview process?
Derek Iannelli: Do your research. Do your research on the recruiter, do your research on the company you’re interviewing for, and I’m not talking just about the cursory job description. I’m talking about, dig into the website, go to Duns and Bradstreet, see what their funding is. If you’re going with a startup, find out who the C E O is.
All of those are important things. Do your research. [00:32:00] That’s my one thing, Ryan, do your.
Ryan Atkinson: I love it. Well, Derek, you were awesome. Thank you so, so much for joining us. This was a ton of actual advice. I learned a lot about LinkedIn that I thought I knew a lot about that. , you taught me a lot. I highly so, yeah.
Thank you so, so much for joining us. You were great to have on
Derek Iannelli: Ryan. Thank you.