Nader Mowlaee is a Career and Life Coach for Engineers as the Founder of Engineer Your Mission.
Nader helps engineers with writing their resumes, optimizing their LinkedIn, and getting them ready for job interviews.
In this episode, Nader gives actionable steps to reach out to recruiters, how you can negotiate a higher salary, and strategies for your job search. Find him on LinkedIn.
Here is a summary of key takeaways from the episode:
- Nader Mowlaee is the founder of Engineer Your Mission, a career and life coaching service for engineers. He assists engineers with resume writing, LinkedIn optimization, and interview preparation.
- In the podcast, Nader provides actionable steps on reaching out to recruiters, negotiating a higher salary, and strategizing job searches.
- Nader emphasizes the importance of personal wellness and work-life balance. He shares his daily routine, which prioritizes fitness, family, faith, and finances, in that order. He believes that taking care of personal wellness first leads to more productive and less stressful workdays.
- Nader transitioned from a career in electronics engineering to recruiting, then to career coaching. He started Engineer Your Mission during the pandemic, adding life coaching to his services. His mission is to help engineers live on their own terms and develop better lifestyles.
- Nader advocates for personal branding, especially for engineers. He believes that a personal brand should be defined by the problems one solves and the results one creates. He encourages engineers to be specific about the problems they are passionate about solving and the impact they want to make.
- He emphasizes the importance of having a complete and optimized LinkedIn profile. He views LinkedIn as a more effective tool than a resume for showcasing one’s skills, experiences, and connections.
- Nader advises those looking to pivot their careers to start with a job search strategy that considers the most effective hiring strategies from the perspective of businesses. These strategies focus on the cost, quality, and time of hire.
Check out the full transcript from the eighth episode of the TechGuide podcast, featuring an interview with Nader Mowlaee.
Ryan Atkinson: [00:00:00] Thank you for being here, Nader. Super excited to have you on.
Nader Mowlaee: Thanks for having me, Ryan. Looking forward to our conversation.
Ryan Atkinson: And before we do that, we gotta ask our kickoff question. You’re a very busy man. You do a lot in a day. How are you de-stressing from work?
Nader Mowlaee: Good question. So I’ll tell you this, right? I normally try not to presume that it’s gonna be a stressful day, cuz I feel like, again, I used to have my corporate, corporate career.
So yeah, back in the day I was young and hustling and then I’ve been in my own business for 12 years. The first 10 years indeed, I worked my butt off. 12 hour days were a walk in a park, working six, seven outta days outta the week. It was just like normal. It was a normal day. But when Covid hit, I went through a transformation working with my coaches, and I all had a lot of, you know, this transformation that I have.
And in middle of Covid, it kind of like completely reinvented myself on what my daily routine looks like. It starts with that mindset of, let’s not just assume it’s gonna be another, bad day. Yeah. And, uh, I went through a process of how to design your life, how to design a best day of your life, and just reliving that life, reliving that day over and over again.
And in a nutshell, if you look at How we define our own wellness, our happiness, there’s eight different dimensions of wellness and you wanna look at four primary and four secondary dimensions or aspects of wellness and just really focus on the primary, because the primary will get you like 80% there.
So the, the way I design my day is to really focus on my own fitness, physical and mental. That’s how my day starts. Then family. So spending time with my wife, with my dog that used to be here, but he’s gone. And then on faith. So faith is, whether, you know I’m meditating, reading, journaling, writing, whoever you’re, if you’re praying like whatever it is, just like focus on you becoming a better version of [00:02:00] you just by yourself.
Alone time, spiritual time. And then I get to finance. So fa, fitness, family, faith, and finances. Those are my four primary dimensions or aspects of wellness. And when I treat it that way, when I get to finances, when I get to making money and do my work, I’ve already taken care of my fitness, mental, physical, family time, doggy time.
Personal time, alone time. Sometimes in that alone time is turning on the Xbox and like playing for 30 minutes. That’s alone time. That’s me time. And then I get to work. So when I do it that way, and I’ve only been doing it for two years, I don’t think I’ve had many stressful days, cuz it’s just like, I love my day,
Ryan Atkinson: That’s amazing. And I like how you prioritize like your personal life before you get to like the finance part. Cause I feel like a lot of people have it like the other way where it’s like I have to take care of work really early and worry about my personal and like mental health later and physical health.
Nader Mowlaee: Well that’s common. I mean, I did that for a decade in my own business. I did that. Most people do that. It’s like always about. Work, job, career, business, finances, we think about our bills and then we’re like, okay, well let me take care of work, and then, sure, I’m gonna go to the gym after, and then I’m gonna have dinner with my wife or my partner, and then maybe I’ll take my dog for a walk, or maybe I’ll get to turn on the PlayStation in the evening.
I was like, well, like how successful have you been at doing that every single day? But if you just flip that and for, for someone else, it might be different, so not everybody, but if just put yourself first. So my coach West would say, be selfish. Put your own personal development, mental, physical first.
Because, we always train our body, develop our mind, and we develop our mind to, to build our body. So looking at that formula, getting on this treadmill here, going on, like anything in the most simple exercise, body weight exercises, first thing in the morning, just like gets the right juices flowing to your mind and your body gets de detoxified.
So now you’re a great, better, happier version. Now give that to your family. [00:04:00] Spend time with your partner, wife, husband, friend, boyfriend, girlfriend, like whatever. They get the better version of you. They get the best version of you post-exercise, and then when everyone’s gone to work, give yourself like 30 minutes, do their me time, do their reading, journaling, PlayStation, whatever that me time is, and then get to work.
And you realize that when. When times get tough during work, when your coworker or your business prospects or whatever giving you stress, you’re like, no. What? This is not really stress. I’ve done everything like I, I’m not looking forward to, you know what, I’m gonna get off this call. I’m gonna get out of the office and go to the gym.
No, I’ve already been to the gym. I’m not gonna, you’re not looking forward to something as an escape, as, as a way to get out of work. Cause you’ve already, you’ve already escaped. I mean, so that makes sense.
Ryan Atkinson: Yeah, that absolutely makes sense. And you’ve had, had, I mean, that’s an amazing like, journey, but you’ve also have had a successful career as we go.
No like basically just a quick like highlight for everyone. Like you’ve been in it, you’ve been in. Recruiter, you’ve been an engineer recruiting consultant. You started your own businesses, you’re about 12 years into it, and then in January, 2020, you also started engineer your mission, which helps engineers get hired, boost their confidence and transform their life.
Take us to starting engineer your mission and what really prompted you to start this mission.
Nader Mowlaee: It was a pandemic, so I started career coaching, you know, I’ll go back very quickly. So I studied electronics engineer, electrical electronics engineering 2000, 2007. I graduated end of 2007 into the recession, into the last recession.
So what’s going on right now? I totally like, I lived it and my life has been shaped by it. From August, 2007 till March, 2008, for like eight, nine months, I was job searching. Totally failed and didn’t get a job that I wanted in like manufacturing automation, robotics. Took a job in telecommunications and it, so I kind of like, [00:06:00] kind of like gave up on my dreams of becoming, electronics engineer, robotics guy.
I worked in telecom in it for three years in 2010. And just like you had another guest, totally random, like your other guest, totally randomly got into recruiting. Like almost everybody gets into recruit. Kind of like by chance, not by choice, so I worked in recruiting, recruiting engineers for a very big company and I got really good at it.
So it kind of like my purpose showed itself, reappear and revealed itself that, you know what, if I’m not gonna be an engineer, I’m gonna help other people become engineers. I won’t, I won’t let them down the dark path that I went down, so that became my mission. Those two years, I became the number one recruiter in that company.
Long story short, and I left and started my own business in end of 2012. And from there, pretty much I started coaching right away and this was like free coaching, community service, immigration centers, town hall, literally like, just go anywhere and start teaching people what I knew when I learned in the first two years and, registered my own business and did that all the way.
So coaching and recruiting in Canada and then I got married, moved to the US in us, same thing in Los Angeles and the Bay Area. Until the pandemic. When the pandemic happened and that’s when, I started engineering a mission. Yeah. It’s to, I stopped recruiting and I added life coaching to it. Cause I had been working remotely from home a hundred percent from home since 2014.
2013 I got an office, hired two people right away. I got two ambitious and, you know, lost all that. 14, let everybody go, came. And then realized that, you know what, uh, times are getting tough. My heart was no longer in recruiting. Recruiting was getting tougher and tougher. I said, you know what? I’ve been living successfully, like on my own terms since 2014 at home.
This whole new remote work model. [00:08:00] It was like, this is my life. I’ve been training for this. You know? So I just started life coaching. So engineering mission, kind of like design your life, design your mission, a purpose in life. That’s kind of like what that brand represents. And I started teaching people how to, live on their own terms and develop better lifestyle.
And, besides them, obviously continuing my career coaching
Ryan Atkinson: That’s awesome. And I love the focus that you put on like engineering cuz you’re really standing in your niche. It’s not like, oh, I’m gonna go teach like marketing and sales people how to do personal branding, job search or job interviews.
It’s, uh, I’m, I’m teaching engineers cause I’ve done it before and I have experience in it. And I wanna have the point of like, personal branding with engineers. You think about personal branding, I feel like a lot of people think of like marketing and salespeople. They’re the only ones that. But why, if you had to convince an engineer to do personal branding, what are some of the factors that you should, that you would say, this is why you should do personal branding as an engineer?
Nader Mowlaee: I test them. I ask ’em just like you would naturally would when you meet someone from rest time. Hey what do you do? Yeah. That’s the first thing. Assuming that person is not looking forward, but if they are looking for work, which 99% of the times is someone that comes to me, yeah. Is a job, which experts the career.
They have a goal. So I ask them, what do you want to do? And the answer is, normally I’m looking for a better job in an industry that’s growing when I make more money and utilize my skills and like, like, That doesn’t tell me anything. Like what is, that’s when I start asking people like, what is your purpose?
What is your mission? Like, what do you wanna achieve? Like what kind of impact do you wanna make in this world? What kind of problems do you wanna solve? And that’s, again, that’s how I came up with the, with the brand engineering your mission because, and personal mission statement or professional mission statement defines exactly who you are.
What problems are you passionate about solving? How do you go about solving those problems? Aka what are your skills, actionable skills and results? What, what outcome do you want to create? What impact? What, why, what is your why? What is what? Why do you want do this whole thing? [00:10:00] And if they can’t define their outward career projection outward life.
It just means they, they, they have, they lack that personal brand. Cause our brands are primarily defined by the problems that we solve and the results that we create. How we do it doesn’t really matter. Cause like that’s, that’s the, it’s downhill from there, yeah. We can have five different career coaches with the exact same mission.
We want to help people get hired and have better fulfilling, abundant. But the way we do them, we, the way we help them could be a little bit different. They’re completely different. That’s fine. We still go to solve the same problems and achieve the same outcome, happiness, abundance, you know, fulfillment in their life, in their career.
So when it comes to an engineer, they’re also the same, they have more technical skills, engineering skills, design skills, processes, processing, manufacturing, production, whatever they need to know exactly. Problem. They need to be able to clearly talk about, communicate through their brand, the problems that are associated with, uh, the product services solutions that they’re passionate about, that they’re driven by, and what happens when we solve those problems.
We’re gonna get this product to the market faster. So the person who’s who’s ill would requires that, a newer model, longer lasting artificial heart valve can go through his or her surgery. And not having to do that surgery every five years. They can wait every 10 years or every 20 years to get another open heart.
Surgery’s like. Holy. Like, I didn’t think about it that way. He’s like, yeah, that, that is your brand. You’re a medical engineer. You used to be a mechanical engineer. You’re getting into medical product design and you’re looking at cardiovascular products and special valves of stents. So I go really deep into like get down to the root cause of the problem and how that person’s hi, his or her life would change.
If they have to change components in the artificial valve or if they have to remove the stents and, and put it back in, like what [00:12:00] would that do to you and your family? And like, how scary is that? You could not survive that operation. So how about defining the brand around helping people save their life, making their happy, making their family happy, and make them go through this scary operation every 20 years.
They started every five. Now that’s your brand. Now let me write it for you, because the writing it for me is easy, but like, do you relate to that brand? Do you relate to that purpose in life? Is that your mission? Yes. Bingo. I’ll see you in two days with your new resume. So it, it’s really about that.
Ryan Atkinson: Yeah, so it’s getting your mission statement first, cuz you have to know like what you’re passionate about doing and if you’re passionate about what I wanna be doing here, and then you’re able to build your personal brain off that. But before you can do that, you need to hone down what you’re passion about?
Nader Mowlaee: Yep. And it needs to be specific cuz the average person says, I’m good with that, but I’m also good with, making airplanes more aerodynamic. Yeah. Cause I’m a mechanical engineer. Well, you gotta pick, you cannot do both at the same time. Your, your mission statement, your personal one has to be specific.
It’s not about your general skills, it’s about what you wanna do with this one specific tool. Here’s the screwdriver. You can do 20 different things with it. You can harm people with the two, but like, that doesn’t mean you’re open to all those options.
Ryan Atkinson: Yeah. And so once, so let’s just say we do hone in like our mission statement.
We got, okay, I know what I’m super passionate about, I know what I wanna help with. What’s the first step in like on that personal branding journey? Is it creating content or how do you coach it?
Nader Mowlaee: I validate that first. Cause if someone comes to me and say, I know what you wanted, what I want to do, I, I test them.
I validate like that’s where I put in the, the recruiter’s shoes. It’s like, really? Okay, let me test you. So I test, I make sure they actually have the background that the experience and those experience actually allow them to develop the knowledge and their, and the capabilities and the courage to get into this new.
That’s rare, but yeah. They might need some development unless they have the experience or they’re just transitioning into a similar field, similar industry. But if that’s the case, [00:14:00] definitely mission statement, like you said. Yeah, first thing. Absolute first thing. Then it defines you. You’re gonna write it down, you’re gonna look at it every day.
It’s your takes. It becomes part of your identity, if you’re doing career. It, it needs to be that, you have to take on a new identity. You’re no longer the aerospace guy, cuz the aerospace industry is, is terrible, for example. It’s not. But like, like you’re moving into medical devices more life saying now you have a new mission.
So if you have new identity, um, then content development in terms of personal branding, content development. So if you look at yourself as a, as a business, your website, your website. You don’t need a website. Your LinkedIn profile can be, your website could act as your website. Yeah. I only had a website when the pandemic happened.
For the first 10 years of my career, my LinkedIn profile was my website. As a business, as an individual, you don’t need a website. You can, I mean, ask Chad, g p t or another tool to design it for you if you want. But yeah, then you get into the problem of driving traffic to it and collecting data.
Instead of doing all that, just let LinkedIn do all of that for you. Develop your content, put it online, so it’s online and active and available 24 7. And then you get into the marketing. It’s a content development for the sake of sharing that content on your network and using it to attract people to you.
So more of an incoming marketing strategy so people can. Share with with you what their insights are. Is it, is it, is it settling? Is it, is it, is it, is it connecting with them? Kind of like a further validation process, but allowing you to kind of like, put on that new costume, cause the brand is like an identity, like it’s a, it’s a new, you’re looking different, people are gonna ask you what, what’s happening to you, Ryan, you used to be the airspace guy.
You’re doing heart valves, like, what’s going on? You know, so that is, it takes time for you. Kind of like shed the old skin and get into this, getting, get into this new, and that will be the first and next step is more active [00:16:00] outreach, proactive outreach for you to start, getting conversations and meetings with people who are influencers or decision makers and companies or industries you want to get into.
But for you to build a foundation, it’s, it’s absolutely the first step to know what you wanna do, build your career history, write about your career history and your skills.
Ryan Atkinson: And so there’s a lot there of like building your LinkedIn, building a like website building, like content creation.
It sounds like a lot. It just sounds like, oh my Gosh, like how am I going to do all this? Especially from an engineering perspective, it’s like, well, why should I be doing this? But if you could point, will like one person, like really hone in on if it’s your LinkedIn profile if it’s the content creation, if it’s like getting a website, which one would you point to them to do, to focus on first?
Nader Mowlaee: It’s having a complete and cured, optimized LinkedIn profile. Mm. The resumes are a tool of 40 years ago, 50 years ago, you know, so when I got into recruiting in 2010, that’s 13 years ago, I immediately got started being trained on LinkedIn. Yeah. I actually got trained by LinkedIn as I was in a very large corporate company, so I was like, this is up in Toronto, Canada.
So the crew, like, we got trained, we all got. By LinkedIn corporate and trained away from a resumes like resumes, just a bunch of words, black and white on a piece of paper with no personality. He’s like, huge, right? He’s like, I don’t know what to do with this piece of paper. Or God forbid, five pages. Like, how crazy is that?
And here comes LinkedIn. A long time ago now. It has, you know, I can see what you look like. I can see your connections. You know your connections. I always say they, they like your networking currency. Like if we have the same connections, it’s like, oh, Ryan knows Bob, and Bob knows Jill. It’s like, oh, like, like boom, boom, boom.
It’s like electricity. It’s like we connect to each other, it’s like, I can see what you look like. I can see you, you know what your connections are. I can see your [00:18:00] activities. So, I can assess you, I can evaluate you, I can judge you cuz as humans we always do. Do I like this guy, do I not, what does he write about?
What does she write about? And then go in depth into your past experiences. Look at your about section, your about section of the summary section treated as your cover letter. So you always have your, I call the value proposition. I don’t like the old couple letter from like a million years ago.
I write value proposition letters, so he’s like, you look at your about section as that, and you have your skills and industry experiences, education, certifications, groups, organizations skills, more skills down there. I can look at your endorsements. How many people are endorsing Ryan for X skill? How many people are writing recommendation letters?
Because these days recruiters are not sitting there calling your old boss. No. And like, Hey Ned, like how was working with Ryan? And guess what that is? All Ryan’s a cool guy. He’s like, like, no one’s gonna say negative things about you. So those online recommendation letters, testimonials, basically.
They are, they have replaced the good old reference calls. And I can see your interests right at the bottom are like, which companies are you following? Which influencers, which newsletters are, are you, are you sub to? Which groups are you a part of? There’s no way you can put all that information on a resume and make it like, Enable the links so I can click on the companies, I can click on the people they connected with you and just online available always on my phone.
Like there’s no way a a resume can do all that for you. So just can we move on from a resume and get into LinkedIn is what I encourage people to do. Um, and Shirley, you need to apply to a job. Either you applied with your LinkedIn profile, you just have a summarized short one page version of your resume.
Can handpick stuff from it just for an application process. That’s, that’s really it. But [00:20:00] depending on your resume to land you an interview in this day and age, it’s just, it’s just not a good, bad.
Ryan Atkinson: I love that. I love that. And let’s talk about that because let’s just say, okay, I optimize my LinkedIn, I’m doing, I have my mission statement.
I’m ready to pivot careers, I’m ready to change industries. Where should someone that is wanting to pivot their career start at in terms of a job search strategy?
Nader Mowlaee: This is not my opinion. And I’ve always looked at data and data-driven strategies. Data-driven tactics, and you are not going to, don’t start Googling, what’s the fastest way to get hired.
Yeah. Cause companies and businesses don’t gather data on that. Yeah. You have to kind of like flip that coin around. And businesses and companies using their own applicant tracking systems and online market. Campaigns, they track the most ex, the most, uh, effective hiring strategies. Yeah. So what is the most effective hiring strategy?
What, what do companies and businesses do that are, that makes them really successful at hiring? And what are different metrics? On top of that list is cost of hire. How much does it take to actually hire someone? Then the quality of the. Like we don’t wanna hire cracking people. We want good people.
And then third, like the time of hire, like how long does it take? Cause we don’t wanna wait forever. So if you look at cost, quality, and time, that good old formula of time, quality and cost. If you look at businesses and the data that comes from that, there are many different hiring strategies among different campaigns.
Two of them that are extremely ineffective cause the sheer number of applications are job boards and their own. If you wanna work at any company, pian, if it’s a medical device company, or Boeing, if it’s an aero aerospace company, like we can find these companies very easily, can just Google, you know, local aerospace companies, [00:22:00] local medical device manufacturing companies go to their website and apply.
So millions of people every year go and do that at, at Boeing, hundreds of thousands of people go to pian and do that every month or every year. So the competition is, It’s like playing the lottery. Even worse with higher competition is all these online job, indeed and any, Glassdoor all, I don’t wanna name any of them, like to, to point them out cuz there’s a gazillion of them online advertising websites at advertised jobs.
You search in Google, you know, mechanical engineer jobs in San Francisco, I guarantee you Indeed would come up first. You know why? Because they’ve. As an advertising website. That’s what they do really well, and we all find them and we’re all gonna go and apply to the same job that everybody sees. So millions of people go do that every year.
Again, it’s a lottery, don’t expect to win. Please, when you buy a lottery ticket, don’t expect to win. It’s free. It’s a free ticket. Here’s my resume, like you don’t actually expect a call back. If you do, consider yourself extremely. Do a happy dance, crack a beer. I don’t know. You know what I mean?
Just like know that you’re extremely lucky. Cause statistically speaking, you have less than half a percent, like less than 1% to actually get hired through an online application. Just don’t do that. So when I coach someone and say, you know what? I know that you’re spending a lot of time on that.
Likely you’re coming to me because you’ve been doing that every day for the last six months and Yep. You know you haven’t got results. So let’s just stop wasting time over there and look at the most successful hiring programs, which is number one is hiring initiated by a hiring manager’s decision.
Mm-hmm. We can find a hiring manager at any company at the right department on LinkedIn. That takes 10 seconds to find that person. If I know what job it is you’re going after the part that it takes [00:24:00] a bit more time to develop. It’s the message. So we get into messaging. Yeah. It’s a multiple message. It’s like, okay, if, if Ryan Atkinson is, is a senior engineering manager focused on me mechanical park design.
Uh, you know, wingspan development group or whatever. Aerodynamics, wingspan. Aerodynamics. So, okay, here, boom, boom, boom. Here. It’s just use those keyboards, find them. How can I establish report, establish a connection, a good conversation, back and forth conversation with Ryan over the next two weeks with five messages, like minimum five messages.
It’s not one message. Hi, Ryan. Are you hiring? Yeah, no, like, it’s not that, that’s not messaging. Messaging is like really getting. This is why I’m interested in your organization. This is why you know, your, your brand and your culture has, has, like attracted me to you. This is what makes you look so great and beautiful and attractive, magnetic.
This is, these are good things about you. I’m not gonna sell myself. These are good things about you. And then we get into, these are the problems that I understand you might or most likely are experiencing when it comes to. Aerodynamic testing, validation, verification of wingspans for your new 7 88 bullying based on my research saying these are the top three problems.
And that’s another message. Then we’ll get into proposing ideas and insights and potential solutions. Ryan I’ve been, I know it’s been three days, I wanna follow up again. I’ve been doing more research and learn more about how to improve the aerodynamics of blah, blah, blah, and these are the couple of ideas that I had, wanted to run the.
That’s amazing. And at that point, Ryan’s probably gonna start responding. So three messages in, you’re probably gonna say, Hey, thanks for connecting, blah, blah, blah. And then I have message four and message five to just really go down that rabbit hole of, I really care about you and really wanna help solve these problems.
Because I know if we can, reduce the coefficient and I gotta start sounding [00:26:00] technical, right? Yeah. Drag coefficient of the wingspan is gonna actually become more aerodynamic. It’s gonna help help. Save 15% fuel and do the math, 15% of 10,000 liters of jet fuel, how much per liter, and this could be saving you guys, you know, $78,000 per flight.
Like again, that’s the language we’re speaking. We’re putting things in number, we’re quantifying the impact. And after message five, message six. Hey Ryan, why don’t we take this conversation further and perhaps, could be an opportunity in your team where I can actually come and join and add value and help you solve these problems.
At that point, Ryan, the hiring manager, would be delighted to have that conversation with you. Yeah. Because you’ve proven yourself, so it, it’s that like I gave you more of a realistic answer. There’s the people who are listening can understand and say, okay, yeah, I’m not doing that. If you’re not doing that.
And I just came up with that and I promised every listener, Ryan, or I did not practice that case. I just came up with it. Cause it’s a common scenario. Doesn’t matter what kind of engineering you do or what kind of product. It needs to be a conversation like that. And if you’re not having a conversation like that, there’s a big gap in your communication, networking, messaging, toolbox that you need to learn, that you need to fill it, and you become more magnetic, you become more persuasive, more influential when you’re speaking with people.
Ryan Atkinson: That, that is amazing because it’s, I, I, I like when I was in my job search, like serious for my job search, I would do that, but I would only leave that one message like, Hey, here’s my resume. But you took it to a six step process of like quantifying, showing like, oh, I, I understand your culture. Here’s how I can help you.
Um, that has to be a super effective strategy, and it’s not giving up after one message. It’s six messages.
Nader Mowlaee: It is cuz it’s like it shows your patience. Yeah. It shows that you’re not desperate. Yeah. You’re spending more time with them. You have, uh, you demonstrate a continuous interest in them.
It [00:28:00] shows that you are accountable by following up and following through. It shows that you’re not a kind of person that jumps to conclusion that you like the journey more than the outcome. I can go, like, I can, I can list a few other characteristics you. That they would want to have as someone in their team, improves their culture, their team culture.
By by, by behaving like, That’s amazing.
Ryan Atkinson: So we identified on how to reach the hiring managers through LinkedIn. We messaged, we realized, or we gave a structure on how the messages to send to people. So let’s just say you get the job interview. Heck yeah. I am in, let’s go. Um, what frameworks do you have for people to share their story authentically when it comes to a job interview?
Nader Mowlaee: Great question. So, and that, that’s normally the first question you’ll tell me about yourself. Mm. So right away, Don’t tell ’em about this is, again, my, my formula and I can, can expand on it. Don’t talk about your history, talk about your destiny. Mm-hmm. And it kinda like ties into, what’s your purpose and what’s your mission?
And engineer that mission, design that mission and talk about the future of solving problems, getting those outcomes. It’s the first problem and it’s very common. It’s like, oh, well I graduated in, you know, San Francisco State University. Like, okay, I already know that. They’re not gonna tell you this, but that’s, that’s the voice in their head.
Like, that’s why you’re here. Like, we already know that stuff. And in my first job, I got this in my last, like, we already know that. That’s why you’re here. Tell me something. I don’t know, man. That’s where the destiny comes in. You wanna basically start from today, like right now and forward, you’re in this interview.
There’s a potential of being a member of this great organization. Yeah. Talk about them and, you know, I teach them the, the co-creation conversation. Whoever is, I’m, I’m coaching co-creation is like creating that, that future together. Yeah. If you wanna better wing design, more air dynamic, less drag efficient, I wanna talk to you about how I can help you actually make that project a reality by the end of the.
And I’m gonna tell, I’m still telling [00:30:00] you about me. I’m telling you about my, my plans, my ambitions, my goals, my vision, my dream of being an A design engineer at Boeing, yeah. And sure in that conversation I can back it up with, actually growing up I used to have all these pictures of planes and, I can inject it in there, but just don’t start from, I grew up wanting to be an aerospace engineer.
It’s like, Cliche, you can talk about that later on in that conversation, but you just really need to talk about them. What, what you’re gonna co-create with them, and how your destiny and your identity will be defined by being a member of their organization, because that’s gonna make them feel good.
It’s gonna, it feels warm to be spoken about in a, in a, in a confirming way. It’s like, Heck yeah. That’s why I’m here. It’s why I’ve been, I’ve been at Boeing for seven years and that’s why I’m a hiring manager, so you want, again, kinda like feed into that person’s ego, but truly focus on the future rather than the past.
That’s
Ryan Atkinson: awesome. And we are winding down on here, but I do have another question. So let’s just say you share your story authentically. Heck yes. I got the job offer. I’m ready to sign here. But wait, I wanna ask for a higher salary. Ooh. How? How do you do it?
Nader Mowlaee: Good question. So, salary negotiation is never a one-way conversation.
It’s a two-way road. So if you’re gonna ask for more, you’re gotta give more. Mm-hmm. And like, this is where everybody starts freaking out. It’s like, no, no, don’t freak out. Like, but like, let me show you how, let show you how it’s, it’s not giving more because you feel, you might feel like I’ve already, like this is me.
What more do I have? Do I have to work extra hours? Cause everyone ask me is like, no, dude. Like, I’m not asking, but like, you gotta give them more. What is the more confidence? So how do I give Ryan the hiding manager, that level of confidence that, yeah, I’m making the, this guy is now the guy is gonna give you the best hiring decision I’m gonna make.
So I have more confidence in hiring him and [00:32:00] he appears to have less risk. So more confidence, lower risk, and how many did I teach them a formula? It’s pretty common in product development, even in sales and business development. It’s called the 30, 60, 90 day. 30, 60, 90 day plan. So your plan of action in the first 30 days and the second 30 days, and the third 30 days, and your first three months on the job.
So if everybody Googles 30 69 a day plan, there are thousand different articles. There are thousand different YouTube videos. This is pretty much thought everywhere. Bystander, not a lot in job searching. So I’ve mold, I’ve created the mold for the application of job searching and for the application of specifically salary negotiation.
So, If I’m going to have that conversation with you, or let’s say at that point it’s really a, a response email. You wanna send an email to, you know, test the waters to see what they said. Along with that email, we have a three to five day action plan describing exactly what we’re gonna do in the first three months of the job to ensure that when that three months is done, the probation period is.
There’s no doubt that you’re becoming or you are productive, that you are a high performance employee, and that you are going to, without a shadow of the doubt, achieve your goals by the end of the year. So that action plan position you as someone who’s prepared, someone who is ready for action, someone who has clarity in his or her mind, and that gives, that has given you the confidence.
To write this action plan and submit it and say, again, you gotta give first and then ask. It’s like they’ll reciprocate the chance of them reciprocating is extremely higher when you give that action plan. And then you’re like, by the way, you know what I mean? So when you get them, by the way, for me, to, to map this out and look at this career move as something worthwhile for the very long term, and looking at the value and the worth that I can bring to the table, I feel like, uh, the [00:34:00] salary, my, my, my, uh, base salary.
Cause there’s whole compound. My pay salary. Would be more near 95 versus 85 or whatever more, one 70 than 1 55, whatever it is. You want to give them one number. Don’t give them range. Always give a number and uh, ask for it directly. But you need to have proven it first. You cannot just ask for it, cuz they’re gonna ask you why.
Why do you think you’re worth that much?
Ryan Atkinson: That is awesome advice and advice that I have not heard on this podcast yet. And so throughout, this was an awesome, awesome episode. So I wanted to thank you so, so much for joining us. This was a ton of fun, lot of great frameworks in here that I didn’t even know about.
So Meter, thank you so, so much for joining us.
Nader Mowlaee: Thank you very much, Ryan. Pleasure speaking with you.