19 - Designing Dream Work Cultures & Landing Dream Careers with Josef Stetter - Revelizations

Episode Transcript
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(00:09):
This episode of Revelizations is brought to you by Lying.
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(00:30):
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(00:50):
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(01:13):
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(01:48):
Hi everyone and welcome to Revelizations.
I'm your host, Brian James.
On today's episode, we are going to take the scenic route on our way to meet up with
the knowledgeable and extremely patient, Josef Stetter.
Why patient?
Well, let me test your patience as we meander on down this rabbit trail.
I'm going to make a little leap, a bunny hop if you would, and hazard a guess that it is

(02:12):
a universal human experience that when technology doesn't work as expected, or in some cases
completely rebels against the wishes of the person using it, it is one of the most frustrating
experiences the modern day human has to endure.
I know when I find myself in that situation, I want nothing more than to take whatever
it is, the remote control, phone, laptop, the thing that's violently evicting all tranquility

(02:39):
and peace from my life, leaving behind only a focused malice, to grab that object and
throw it down to the earth with such contemptuous force that the malfunctioning device turns
to dust, to then be carried away by the breeze to the four corners.
Whew, got a little carried away there.
I'm back.
Since I have neither the muscle mass nor bankroll to afford such temper tantrums, I am left

(03:02):
to troubleshoot the defective technology.
Perhaps one of these days when an advertiser actually follows through with paying me, I'll
cash the check, hit the gym, and develop a nasty case of butterfingers.
Until then, the dream will just have to stay that.
A dream.
Which leads me back to today's guest, Josef Stetter, where surely we must be talking about

(03:23):
technology or anger management strategies.
Wrong.
And how dare you jump to such baseless conclusions.
Today, we are of course talking about workplace culture and how to land your dream job.
More on that in a moment.
While Josef and I were discussing these topics, my laptop shut off six different times during

(03:44):
our conversation.
And six different times where he was in the middle of explaining something that I suddenly
disappeared.
Six different times that he had to wait on me to restart my computer, log back in, and
listen to me over-apologize.
And six different times where he just shrugged it off with a relaxed, meh, it happens, and

(04:05):
now where were we?
I don't know a lot, but what I do know is that Josef is a patient individual, and now
you do too.
By the end of this podcast, you're also going to know more about work culture and some brilliant
actionable strategies on how to land your dream job.
Before that, let's properly introduce today's guest and topic.

(04:25):
Today, I have the privilege of sitting down with Josef Stetter.
Josef is an award-winning writer, having authored 11 books.
Before finding his niche in the recruitment industry, Josef changed jobs 18 times in
careers 9 other times.
Having found his calling as a consultant, he now takes that same passion and focuses

(04:45):
it on helping other people find their dream jobs.
With over 25,000 hours of experience in all things recruitment, he has created his Land
Your Dream Job Now program, a program that takes his clients from job seeker to gainfully
employed.
In this program, he teaches his clients everything from how to navigate the new landscape of

(05:06):
AI in the application process, all the way to further tailoring your already dream job
to better fit you along with much more.
Using this program, Josef has helped over 11,000 people land their dream job with a
notable 90% success rate within 3 months of working with him, with dozens landing their
dream job in as little as 2 days.

(05:29):
He has consulted with many of the top companies like Deloitte, Canon, Aviva, and Sketchers.
Today, Josef joins me as we sit down and talk about the importance of work culture,
the impact of good work culture versus bad, how AI rates applicants' resumes and how
to use that to your advantage, networking strategies for career advancement, crafting

(05:50):
a standout resume in a competitive market, making an impression before you even get an
interview, how to master the interview process, and more.
I hope you all enjoy today's episode with Josef Stetter as much as I do.
Thanks for listening everyone.
Hi Joe, it's nice to meet you.
I'm so happy that you're here, that I get to talk to you and just I really appreciate

(06:10):
the time that you've taken to have this conversation with me.
Thank you, Brian, for having me.
I really appreciate the opportunity to share some insights and some wisdom.
Let's start off with you telling us a little about yourself and your highly attuned skillset.
So I'll start with the fact that I didn't know what I want to do when I grow up.
So I've switched careers over nine times and jobs over 18 times.

(06:33):
Along the process, I started understanding that there's a lot of psychology that people
aren't applying when they're either looking for a job and on the resume, it's too generic
and cookie cutter.
So in the process, I've written 10 books and I've had the honor and the pleasure of
helping over 12,000 people land their dream job in as little as two days.

(06:55):
And along the way, one of the companies that I own now or two that I own now, I've been
in recruiting for nearly 20 years, working with companies like Deloitte Touche, APEC
Pharmaceuticals, Tata Consulting Services.
And I've also am now building an AI HR tech that will completely change the way not only

(07:16):
people experience finding the right fit and the right company and the right job, but also
the way that companies treat their people because, you know, a lot of companies preach
culture, but don't actually understand it or practice it properly.
The world is changing and we need to adapt technology to the human experience as well.

(07:37):
I 100% agree with what you just said.
And you, it's a very nice segue into what I wanted to talk to you first about is we
hear a lot.
It just seems to be pretty much a ubiquitous conversation now about work-life balance and
what does that look like?
And that is an offshoot of work culture.

(07:57):
And I think that's something that maybe wasn't taken into much consideration historically,
but now it seems to be a bigger part of the conversation.
And that is more of an offshoot of work culture.
So if you could dive into a little bit of what is work culture and then maybe some hit
some bullet points of what is good culture and what's bad culture.

(08:21):
So broken down in its simplest form, work culture is what people whisper when the bosses
are not around.
That's a great way of putting that.
Yeah.
Right.
So you have to understand in that there is a lot of, in this idea of kind of jumping
on the bandwagon, like we have work-life balance, we understand mental health and wellbeing.

(08:44):
For example, a friend of mine just got hired in a bank in a directorship position.
When she was being interviewed for the bank, they showed her this beautiful state-of-the-art
yoga group.
And she was like, okay, they get it, they get health and wellness, I'm excited to come
work here.
As soon as she got hired, there's no instructor to teach yoga.

(09:05):
There's no incentive for anybody that works for the bank to teach yoga.
There isn't even, you get an extra 10 minutes to go do yoga on your own at lunchtime so
that you can kind of do your workout, still eat and then come back to your job.
So this is where culture becomes a lot of talk.

(09:26):
Now the other problem is that companies are trying to fit into molds that they don't really
do.
So Zappos was known for having the funniest and weirdest commercials, but everything they
did was in that same energy where it was about fun and it was about kind of everybody together
and we're a team and we're a family.

(09:49):
I've worked with and I've talked to leaders where let's say they'll say, okay, we'll do
a Halloween custom party, but then none of the leadership dress up.
So it sends a message of that, yeah, go ahead, do it, but we don't actually care about you.
And I tell the executives, even if you have meetings all day that are very, very important,
go to the dollar store, buy a mask for $2, wear it for 15 minutes, go shake hands, take

(10:13):
pictures of the people that actually dressed up for Halloween, then take off your mask
and do your meeting.
That 15 minutes will be the difference between I trust you and I'll follow you to I'll do
just enough not to get fired because if you don't care, why should I?
And so there's a model now where sadly 80 to 90% of people in North America hate their

(10:37):
job.
And again, if you look at the statistics and the top 10 reasons of why someone leaves a
job, salary is actually number seven.
The first three are extremely toxic cultures where it's either management is micromanaging
and yelling at you all the time.

(10:57):
The second is lack of clear understanding what leadership wants you to do.
And the third is lack of opportunities to bring new ideas into the forefront in terms
of the business environment.
So if you've ever seen the show Undercover Boss, it's a great example of executive that
sits in the ivory tower that has an MBA that's never worked the front line, for example,

(11:21):
that comes in and after going undercover goes, oh my God, I should really talk to the people
that work here.
I might get some insights on how things are really happening.
And so when you look in an Excel spreadsheet and you make the system, we need to make this
number better.
We need to make this number faster or whatever version of results.
You're forgetting the human experience.

(11:42):
You're forgetting that humans need that water cooler conversation where they could talk
about sports or they could talk about TV shows or they could talk about music or their kids
because it's an opportunity to refresh the mind, it's opportunity to actually feel human.
And so this is where the conversation right now is not just about, okay, we have pizza

(12:05):
once in a while, you know, or we bought ice cream in the summer, things like that, or
we have like a basketball team that we play in a league together.
It's way beyond that.
How engaged are your employees?

(12:25):
Are they producing at optimal levels or are they producing at minimal levels?
So you asked me a little bit about good and bad.
So can I give you a couple examples of really bad culture and then I can give you some great
culture.
Great.
So I used to be a stock trader.
I used to answer the phone.
It's a great day or it's a fantastic day at Name of Bank.

(12:46):
My name is Josef.
How can I help you?
One of my coworkers complained to management that me saying great or fantastic could be
interpreted as the bank's making too much money.
So senior management had three two hour long meetings to discuss whether or not I was allowed
to say great or fantastic and decided it was easier to ban me from saying great or fantastic

(13:11):
than to retrain 120 traders on the floor.
Now after they banned me, one of the senior VPs personally came over to me and said, Josef,
you're always energetic.
You're always positive, but morale here is extremely low.
I'd like you to build a social committee that will help boost morale.

(13:32):
I said, okay, great.
First thing I'm going to do is I'm going to organize a potluck because who doesn't
love food?
And it always brings people together.
The VP's reaction was that's probably not going to work because the majority of the
traders are bachelors and they'll probably just give you five, $10 and say, I'll eat
whatever somebody else brings.
I said, don't worry, I'll take care of it.

(13:54):
And I created an Excel spreadsheet.
This many people bring drinks, this many people bring, you know, cookies, this many people
bring like salads, this many people bring main courses.
And I logged off the phone for two hours, started with a senior VP.
I said, I don't care if you make it, your partner makes it, your mom makes it or you
buy it, but you have to sign up for something.

(14:15):
And one by one, I went through about close to 200 people, got them to sign up for something.
OK, the day of the potluck, I signed off the phone for two hours to organize the food
in a logical order where the let's say meats was not beside the chocolate or the candies.
And so that you can have a flow of food gathering for the next three months.

(14:39):
Everyone talked about how much variety of food was, how good the food was, the fact
that they could go grab a cookie and come back to their desk and just, you know, that
whole experience.
Now, during the quarter, I won or came in the top three for seven out of ten contests,
including answering one hundred fifty five trading calls in one day.

(15:00):
The bank refused to give me my bonus because I was logged off the phone for four hours
to organize the very thing the senior VP asked me to do.
And then they want like banks know that they can kind of get away with murder in that it

(15:20):
doesn't matter how they treat their people, people still have a, you know, I'd rather
work at the bank than to say I work for Dunkin Donuts.
There's a level of pride, a level of I've got an education, I've got a degree for it.
But this is where, again, most people feel drained and uninspired as a whole when it
comes to culture.

(15:42):
You know, I was working for a private college that my father, unfortunately, had cancer
and was going through chemo.
And because he had zero immune system, he had zero immune system.
He got pneumonia and understand that I was the director of operations.
I was working six days a week, 10 to 14 hours a day.

(16:05):
I walked into the owner's office because I was a second in command and said, my father
was just rushed to the hospital.
I need to go without looking up from her paper.
She said, no, you're lying to me.
And I was like, excuse me.
He's like, I think you're just trying to get out of work.

(16:25):
I said, listen, I have one father.
I can find another job.
I was a little bit a few more explicit there.
And then I walked out.
When I came in the next day, I actually brought a box.
I was ready to pack my stuff and go.
She came into my office.
She's like, is everything OK?

(16:45):
I'm like, my father's an intensive care unit.
He's stabilized, but I'm going back to the hospital today.
She looks at me and goes, you weren't lying?
I looked at her and go, what is wrong with you?
Like, I'm working here six days a week, 10 to 14 hours a day.
Do you honestly think that my excuse to leave work early would be my father is about to die?

(17:09):
Right. And it's a very powerful story, but it also speaks to what's going on today
because we're being downsized.
We're being looked at and going, are you this number, are you that number?
You know, and sometimes, you know, if I take a sports analogy,
you know, basketball, you don't need to be the top scorer.
When in the Michael Jordan era, in the Bulls,

(17:31):
Dennis Rodman got 25 rebounds and he beat everybody around him.
He wasn't scoring points.
He's getting rebounds.
Scottie Pippen knew his role.
So sometimes you have to take a look at the company and say,
you don't need this person to be the top producer.
They might be somebody that brings everyone together.
They might be somebody that lifts the energy.
And so if you're not if you're only measuring what are the numbers,

(17:53):
what are the key performance measures, but you're not measuring the humans,
you're not measuring kind of what makes the team dynamic so successful.
You're going to get hurt from that.
Now, having experienced a lot of these things,
I was working for a company that owns 70 private colleges across Canada,
and they asked me to build a call center from scratch.

(18:15):
They told me that the restrictions were that my team call leads
that are more than four months old and more than 50 miles from the nearest
campus, with the expectation that we will convert it about one percent
and generate the company about three hundred thousand dollars for the year.
In less than six months, we did two point two five million dollars.

(18:36):
Now, one of the things that I did is from day one when I was offered the job,
I told the VP, I'll take the job under two conditions.
Number one, as long as we're producing results,
stay out of my way and let me lead my way.
And number two, you give me five thousand dollars
to spend my team, you don't ask any questions.
That was kind of the.
So in my first round, I hired about eight people to the call center.

(18:59):
I went to the dollar store and basically bought them a five euro loot bag,
you know, which was like funky pens,
funny stress balls, some chocolate, some stickers.
And they loved it.
You know how excited they were to start their first day of job
and they're getting gift bag
and then said to each one of them, go spend up to forty dollars

(19:20):
on anything that you personally like, a plant, a mirror,
something that makes you happy.
Give me the receipt.
I'll give you the money because I want you to make your cubicle yours.
It's your workspace.
I want you to enjoy being there.
I bought a foosball table and I said to my team,
if you have a really bad call where everybody's yelling at you,

(19:42):
go smack the foosball, go for a walk, clear your head,
because you're no good to me when you're upset.
And I gave everyone on my team funny nicknames.
We had giggles.
I had a 55 year old woman that was hot mama.
She was grandma.
You know, we had officer.
We had the gentleman.
So we called each other by nicknames.

(20:04):
Every week on Fridays, usually I bought them some donuts
or some chips just to kind of get them excited and keep engaged.
Every week we celebrated wins.
I asked every employee, what did you well?
So even if an employee said, I didn't hang up on really rude customers.
We celebrated that. OK.

(20:27):
And then I would ask the team, what did you struggle with this week?
And instead of me as the director saying, OK, you need to do this.
You need it. I empowered everybody on my team
to say how they overcome objects and how they dealt with whatever the employee
brought to their attention kind of thing.
And then obviously, as a director, I just kind of reinforced everything

(20:47):
and put it together.
But I created a system where people were excited to work there.
People love coming to work because the energy of everybody
was always feeding off each other.
We were doing so well that my VP challenged that the team would do
one hundred fifty thousand dollars for the week.

(21:08):
I told the team this this was Monday morning.
I told the team this is the expectation for the week.
I said, if you guys achieve this as a team,
I will reward the team and make it worth your time.
Now, given my track record of pampering them and treating them really well,
they knew that I was serious.
By Wednesday at two twenty, we were two hundred and fifteen thousand dollars.

(21:30):
I told all my team, don't bring lunch on Friday.
VIP treatment on me.
By Friday at noon, we were three hundred and roughly ten thousand dollars.
I gave all of my team members
VIP tickets to the movie theater and not just the VIP,
but the ones that recline and kind of more comfortable there.

(21:51):
I gave each one of them a forty dollar gift certificate
to buy as much food as they want in the theater.
And I said, if you don't, if you guys share the food,
you can keep the receipts.
You don't need it from me.
And my boss found out that I sent my entire team to the movies.
At noon, he called me, said, what's wrong with you?

(22:11):
You just sent your entire team to the movies.
Now, I told the team, I'm going to stay back because even though
we're an outbound call center, in case we have callbacks,
I will close the deals for you and whatever deals I close,
I will give to the person that started the conversation.
So on Monday morning, when my team came back,
not only were they excited that they had a very long weekend,

(22:35):
but I also closed an additional seven or eight deals for them.
And so the reps that were credited got additional commissions.
And so they were double excited when they came back that week.
They were so happy and excited that they got a long weekend on me
that we actually did four hundred twenty thousand dollars
that the following week.
And this is where good culture comes in,

(22:57):
because when you take the time to understand your people,
to listen to them, to acknowledge them, to appreciate them,
then anything's possible.
And you can create a culture where people are excited.
To this day, even though I'm no longer at the company,
all of the team reaches out to me, asks me for advice,
asks me for a reference, asks me for mentorship.

(23:19):
And that is what great culture is.
There's there's a lot of common themes there that you're hearing about
good culture and and bad culture, which you seem to shielded
your team from on multiple occasions.
But it's almost like it can be boiled down into just treating them
like actual humans, like these aren't machines,

(23:41):
like these aren't just quota hitting entities.
These are actual people.
And if you treat them like like the whole person, then right.
Yeah. If you if you give them a rest, if you give them bonuses,
if you like, if you see them, if you treat them a little bit special,
if you reward the successes and don't just punish the failures,
which is more of like a corporate model of not really acknowledging

(24:05):
the good that you do, but to then only look at when you mess up.
So if you did, if you just hit your quota of one hundred
and fifty that week instead of going above and beyond by two times plus,
you could see a situation where they don't even acknowledge you.
They gave you a big goal, but they're just like, yeah,

(24:26):
you do what we expect you to do now.
Continue with that momentum permanently.
And that's just not the nature of the game.
You can't consistently over deliver on something
because sometimes you're just not going to come into contact
with people who are willing to to buy.
You can. And I'm actually building the system to show it to that.

(24:47):
But here's where you have to understand.
There is a little bit of simple psychology, because if I take someone
who is an executive assistant, she's doing or he's doing a great job.
And the executive goes, you know what?
As a thank you, I'm going to give you a three thousand dollar bonus.
Now, yes, the money can help with bills and so forth, but it's not personal.

(25:08):
So when I speak to the executive, I say, OK, instead of the three thousand dollar
bonus, why don't you pay them their full day of salary
and then send them to the spa, pamper themselves for the day,
you know, massage, do their nails, do whatever it is.
I can guarantee you that they're going to work harder

(25:29):
and it's going to cost you less because the spa is going to cost you five
hundred dollars, let's say.
And the salary for the day is going to cost you five hundred to a thousand,
depending on the range of salary that the person is getting for the day.
And so you're saving fifteen hundred dollars.
But the fact that it's personal will double the productivity.

(25:52):
And so there's little things like, you know, my uncle was the president
and CEO of Spa Aerospace, which is the equivalent of NASA in Canada.
They built the Canada Ark and we're having dinner one time and he was saying to me,
you know what, sometimes his software developers and his engineers
get so focused on solving a problem that they forget to eat.

(26:16):
So I said to him, let's do a little experiment.
I want you to send someone from your office to Costco once a week
and buy some fruits, some granola bars, some chocolates, some candies,
some gummy bears and just put it in the office and see what happens.
Within a month, productivity increased by 20 percent.
And it wasn't giving everybody big raises.
It was just eating them.

(26:37):
The basic human necessity of food, even though it was a snack per se,
allow them to focus more, allow them to be clearer.
And, you know, when I say increase productivity by 20 percent,
we're not talking thousands of dollars or tens of thousands of dollars,
talking millions of dollars because it's aerospace as an industry.
So in your earlier comment, you cannot maintain this all the time.

(26:59):
You can. You just have to have a leadership that's willing to understand
the value and the importance of having small things carry forward.
You know, you might love your Starbucks coffee, but if there's free coffee
and you have like a good thousand dollar, fifteen hundred dollar machine
that can make hot chocolates, can make cappuccinos, can make lattes in the office.

(27:21):
The idea that it's free will increase productivity.
Not the actual coffee.
Yeah, so that's great that you actually circled back to that
because I was more referencing the profit
continuing to increase week over week rather than the company
just doing little things for the workers that improve morale.

(27:42):
Because to me, that's where I diagnose.
And, yeah, I would have been really interested to hear
your counterpoint to this.
To me, I've diagnosed a lot of bad work culture
is due to this never ending profit model because it's not sustainable.
There is a point where you play the experiment out,
where you can't capture any more of the market because you've captured all of it.

(28:04):
And then on the back of population is starting to decline.
And if you have a business model that is just one hundred percent
encapsulated in consumerism and buying more and capturing more audience
and like more people buying your product,
there's eventually going to be an end point.
There's an inevitable decline.
Right. But the decline is also going to happen.

(28:25):
And I'm starting to see this and I actually predict this.
And I'm going to use kind of a model here of how two giants treat people differently.
So Walmart has a culture of micromanaging their people, yelling and screaming at people.
I know that in Canada, like the top manager in Ontario, Canada
makes about eighty thousand dollars a year.

(28:47):
OK, now, if you say the word union,
you're very quickly unneeded in the organization.
Or, you know, you kind of go and say, I need a dollar raise.
In fact, the Walton's, the four siblings that are each worth
between sixty eight and eighty billion dollars nowadays

(29:09):
feel that if they gave a dollar raise to every employee at Walmart,
they would go bankrupt. A one dollar rate.
OK, and if you go to Walmart on any given day
and you look at the employees that work there, they look like they're ready to die.
In comparison, Costco, the worst Costco store in Ontario,

(29:30):
Canada, does a million dollars a day in revenue.
There is cashiers that make one hundred thousand dollars a year
plus benefits working for Costco because Costco is calculated to lose one good cashier,
costs them on average one hundred and forty thousand dollars per month.
So Costco measures their cashiers on how fast they are, how accurate they are

(29:53):
and their ability to do a quick chit chat, but keep the line going, for example.
But if you score well in those categories, it is cheaper for Costco.
And they do this to give you a five dollar raise,
let's say, to keep you happy and keep you engaged than to have to retrain
and hire and kind of get you to the get the new hire to the level that you're at.

(30:14):
OK, it is my opinion that you're going to start seeing, especially in major cities.
Walmart physical stores starting to shut down.
Why? Because we have Amazon now.
You have dollar stores right now where if I need, let's say,
school supplies for my kids, Walmart used to be the cheaper.
But now I can get at the dollar store.

(30:34):
Now I can get an Amazon for next to nothing.
And if the employees at Walmart are miserable and the people there,
like even the service level, when you try to return something,
they treat you like a criminal, like how dare you try to return something.
Whereas in Costco, oh, you want to return it.
How long ago did you buy it? Five years ago. Great. Here you go.
Here's a new one. We don't care. Right.

(30:55):
The level of service and you take like Christmas,
just before Christmas, and it's chaotic and it's crazy.
And the people at Costco are smiling because they go out of their way
to do fun things for their employees.
They go out of their way to kind of show that they appreciate.
The person that puts the fruits on the shelves or whatever it is.
And those things are noticeable.

(31:17):
So when you go on websites like Glassdoor and there's positive review,
positive review, positive review, positive review, and you go for Costco
and then you go on Glassdoor and the employees are saying how miserable they are,
especially if they're not in head office.
It goes to speak to the company.
I understand Walmart is massive and they're not going anywhere in the near future.
But my opinion is that you're going to see revenue shrinking

(31:41):
and some stores closing in major cities where you have much more options.
You know, if you're going to outgirds, then it won't.
You still need it. But in major cities, you know, of my American geography,
if you take like the major city in a state that has everything already there,

(32:01):
you don't need Walmart as the cheapest alternative.
You don't need all as your only choice because there's so many other nowadays.
Yeah. And you touched on a really important thing is that the employees
are a lot happier at Costco than Walmart.
And I have just accepted that if I ever go to a Walmart
or I'm going to throw a target in there as well,

(32:22):
if I talk to someone that's stalking something
or I just talk to a random worker and I ask them where something is,
I just don't because I know they're not going to know where it is.
They'll point to a general direction, which I would know to go that way
for the most part anyways.
But if I'm looking for something more niche,
something that's going to require a little bit of searching,

(32:43):
like I just know like I can ask an employee and they'll kind of look at me
and go, oh, you know, it's probably an aisle a zy,
but it also might be an aisle a one to dash three, you know,
and just like you go there and I don't blame them.
I'm not mad. I'm not upset at them.
I know they're not being paid their their fair wage

(33:04):
or they're not being paid enough to care.
But they're also not being trained.
Yeah. I mean, it's it's multifold.
And yeah, didn't you?
Well, it wasn't Walmart.
Didn't they get in trouble for getting rid of senior employees
to hire newer employees at a lower pay rate?
But those are things that they can PR.

(33:26):
It doesn't affect.
I mean, a lot of companies do this as culture where they're like,
oh, we'll hire a new MBA that's, let's say, a marketer rather than the person
that we've had for 25 years because that new MBA will bring in new ideas
and will be cheaper.
You cannot pay for experience.
You cannot pay for knowledge.
Like I write people's resumes.

(33:47):
I've helped 12000 people land their dream job in as little as two days.
So you can go on to say, give me an engineering
like a mechanical engineering resume and chat.
GPT will give you a resume that looks like every other mechanical
engineering resume that exists.
It will not tell your story.
It will not say why you matter to the company.
What is the significance of your contributions, your insights,

(34:10):
your ideas, for example?
And so, you know, when people go, but you charge more than others.
When I hear that, I say, go to the others
because I know what you're getting for them.
I've earned the right to say I'm an authority.
And if you want to hire someone who's charging you a hundred dollars,
I know what you're going to get as a result, because that hundred dollars

(34:33):
is going to be a chat to be key, maybe grandly checked resume.
It's not going to say, here's why Brian is amazing.
Here's why Brian is great.
Here's what Brian does that other people don't do.
And so there's a level where you have to understand
gone are the days where, for example, in an interview, you're asked,
what are your three strengths by default?

(34:57):
Ninety eight percent of people say I'm hardworking, dedicated, committed
team player with excellent communication skills and interpersonal skills.
I've met very few people in my life that say, listen, I'm lazy.
I'll show up late. None of my work will be any good.
And I really hate people. Please hire me.
The only time that my work is if you're related to somebody in the company
or you're having an affair with them.

(35:18):
But here's the thing, that question is now useless.
So I modify the question to say, Brian,
if I met one of your close friends and asked them to describe you
in three or four words, as if they're setting you up on a date,
how would they describe you for a date?
If your answer is I'm hardworking, dedicated, committed and team player

(35:39):
is the worst state in history.
But what's interesting about that question is when I ask it to people,
I've had people rationalize which friends will set them on a date.
So say, oh, John thinks I'm crazy.
So not John. But Mike, Mike will say, I'm like, oh, yeah,
I didn't ask you which friend.
But the fact that you're telling me that John thinks you're crazy.

(35:59):
Hint. You're probably going to be crazy on the job.
Kind of. Right.
So similarly, companies ask this boring question.
Tell me about this job.
People go into autoresponder.
Well, I know how to do this and I know how to do this.
Like, so let's say if you're an accountant, I know how to do financial statements
like balance sheets and income statements.

(36:21):
I have experience with Excel and I've worked with Caseware and Caseview.
What do you do?
But I change the question and say, Brian,
what are your three biggest accomplishments at this last job and why?
You're not going to say to me, you know how to use Excel.
You're going to give me specific stories of what you did.

(36:43):
So if you created something in Excel that saved you four hours of work,
that's a story you can find.
And that's the real you.
That's not I know how to do Excel.
And this is the biggest problem with both the interviewing side
in terms of the candidate as well as the interviewer,
because the job description is generic.

(37:03):
Most HR professionals or many of them will ask generic cookie
cutter questions, hoping to find gems of brilliant.
But having the wrong conversation.
When I was a stock trader at the bank, in my interview,

(37:24):
the HR person asked me, do you know how to show empathy?
Mike, yeah. He's like, OK, would you be OK with an upset client?
Yeah. OK, can you handle a large volume of calls?
Literally, that was my interview.
And I got so angry at her, I actually looked at her and went, stop.
You're asking me the wrong questions.

(37:47):
If you want to know if I can handle being a stock trader for this bank,
here's the questions you need to ask me.
And I took out a pen and paper and I wrote down about 10 to 15 questions.
And then I kind of slammed the paper on the table and slid it over to her.
And she looked me in the eyes like, are you seriously telling me how to do my job?
And I was like, I'm not backing down, like, look at the questions.

(38:07):
I'm not backing down.
She kind of glanced down to questions, looked at me like, who the hell are you?
Looked down at the questions, read them, looked at me and went, OK, you're hired.
I need to hire 25 more people. Can I use your questions?
So understand that this is where the system is so broken,
is because the education system, the workforce was designed

(38:31):
to prepare people for the Industrial Revolution.
We are now in the technological revolution.
And so if you're expecting hardworking, dedicated, committed
to meet the standard of innovation and creativity
and engagement and collaboration,
then you need to change the formula.

(38:52):
And the formula is not, OK, so do you know how to use this textbook?
Yeah, I mean, that's important.
But it's not about knowing how to do something like I always love to give this
example, like if you're interviewing to be a receptionist
and you say, I know how to answer the phone.
I hope whoever is interviewing you looks at you in shock and says,

(39:14):
really? A receptionist that knows how to answer the phone?
We did not know that.
Because unless you live in an igloo, a cave or practice the faith of Mennonite,
my two and a half year old son can press the green button and go, hello.
And it's really cute.
But if you say, I know how to answer 60 calls a day with 12 different lines,
I can measure 60 calls a day with 12 different lines.

(39:37):
I cannot measure. I know how to answer the phone.
So stop asking questions that give you robotic answers
and expect to find superstars from robots.
Like, yes, we are now dwelling.
And again, chat GPT and AI is still in its infancy.
It's still a baby right now.
Chat GPT and AI is just like the dot com boom in the early 80s.

(40:02):
OK, everybody's slapping dot AI to their name, calling it AI,
but they don't even know what the AI does or how it does it.
They just know machine learning.
They know natural linguistic programming,
which has existed for the past 80 years, because when you go on Amazon
and type A, Amazon knows what you're going to buy.
When you go on Google and you type AB,

(40:22):
Google already assumes what you're going to ask for.
So that's not AI.
But AI is supposed to be a partner to you where you can do things faster,
but you still need your experiences, your insights, your knowledge
to direct AI on what needs to be done.

(40:45):
Like you watch like, you know, try to get support.
It's an AI bot.
Hi, here's the pre-automated questions we figure you're probably going to ask us.
It's like, but there's no humanity to it.
But if we teach AI how to interact like a human being,
where you actually have a conversation with it,
where you can bounce ideas from it, where you can go, OK,

(41:06):
I know you have all this data, but my experience says this.
Can we discuss the differences?
Can we observe in there?
Then AI becomes a very powerful tool.
But if AI is just to do things faster. OK.
But that's why we've progressed in automation in the past
100 years in terms of certain tasks.

(41:27):
On the employer side, it seems like a common problem
that a lot of applicants run into is that the very first filtering
of resumes is done completely by AI.
And so a lot of people aren't even getting.
And I'll speak to my own experience at this.
We're not even getting we can assume we're not even getting human eyes

(41:48):
on our resume because maybe due to certain requirements
that they're wanting in the job and you don't necessarily meet that.
Or if it's a I'm going to speak to my very specific instance.
I was a delivery driver for 14 years.
I wanted to transition to quality assurance, not quality control,
but quality assurance, where I work.

(42:11):
One use case would be I work with applications
to make sure that the applications are functioning properly.
If they're not, I talk to an engineer, an engineer resolves it.
They send the issue a new build of the software back to me.
And then I say it's either fixed or not fixed.
And I basically try to break what they've created
so that users don't go through that experience.

(42:33):
And it is an entry level position.
It requires nothing.
It requires that you have a high school degree.
And I applied to 70, 80 jobs.
And I never got any callbacks whatsoever out of that.
So there's a few things that are happening with that.
And if I may, because this is my realm, too.

(42:54):
Yes. Number one, the AIs that are reading
your resumes right now is a gong show because you have some AIs that say,
for example, you need 10 years of experience.
But if you have eight, we'll give you partial points,
whereas other AIs will go, oh, you don't have 10.
We dismiss you.
Some AIs will say you need all of these technical words.

(43:16):
So if you have, let's say, 20 out of 25,
they will they will kind of give you partial points
where others will go, you need all 25.
Some AIs will say these two words are the most important.
We want to repeat it like five times on your resume.
And if it's only repeated three times, you're not good enough for us, for example.
So it's a massive gong show.
The other problem is that it's similar to what I said about the interview.

(43:40):
Most people write resumes that we've been taught for the past 100 years
that you need to populate your resume with the words like manage, direct,
liaise, coordinated or, quote, unquote, action words.
But if you're looking to do quality assurance,
then you need to put quality assurance words on your resume,
not manage, direct, liaise and so forth,

(44:02):
because the ATS doesn't score manage, direct, liaise.
They they score quality assurance.
They score like rational rows or software that you're using to it.
You know, whether it's manual automated testing,
whether it's this testing or that testing.
And so this creates a massive gap right now.
But this is where the models change.

(44:24):
And the model has been hinted in the past and we need to go back to that.
So if you've ever read Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill in the book,
there's an example where there's an old lady that comes into the store
and a stalking clerk comes over to her, goes, are you OK?
And she goes, yeah, it's raining outside. It's really cold.

(44:45):
I just need to get out of the rain and just wait till the rain and the rain is done.
And so the stalking clerk goes and brings her a chair and says,
well, if you're going to wait in the store, at least be comfortable.
Here's a chair for you.
And just left. Now, a month and a half later,
she called the store and said, I want to furnish my entire castle

(45:05):
from your store on one condition, that that stalking clerk gets a sale.
And the company was like, but he's a stalking clerk.
He doesn't know sales. He doesn't know anything.
He goes, it's either him or nothing.
And that woman ended up being Andrew
Carnegie's mother, who built US Steel Corporation, for example. Right.

(45:26):
Now, the reason I share the story is because we've been programmed.
You know, most jobs in North America say, don't call us, we'll call you.
And I teach us a lot to the individual candidates.
Call the company, call HR and say, listen,
my computer just rebooted while I was pressing send.
Can you confirm that my application went through?

(45:48):
Or my battery just died and I'm not sure that it went through.
Or my Internet disconnected and I'm not sure it went through.
Or I never got a confirmation.
Can you check that it went through?
Because here's the problem.
One job posting on Indeed gets between 350 and 5000 applications.
Most employers look at the first hundred.

(46:11):
So if you're a hundred and second, Brian, nobody's seeing your resume.
But when you call and you say, can you check, you now become first.
Now, because you already have them on the phone, you have a minute to two
to give your elevator fit to say, oh, I just want to let you know that I would be
a great quality assurance because I've improved processes

(46:34):
in, let's say, truck driving by 25 percent
by coming up with better routes or better kind of direction to go.
And, you know, having worked for the same employer for 14 years
shows you the kind of dedication I'll have to you if you give me a chance.
You're planting that seed.

(46:55):
And then you say, OK, when are you starting to interview for this role?
And they say in a week, say, OK, if I don't hear from you within a week,
can I call you back to get some feedback on my resume?
Because you're an expert.
Now you're planting a second seed recognition.
Now, further to that indeed scores your resume in three ways.
Number one, when was the last time you updated?

(47:18):
So if you updated your resume in January and we're now in May,
you're probably on page seven thousand of the database.
So indeed, and most of the job boards like Monster, Rear Builder
refresh their database between eleven forty five p.m.
Eastern Standard Time and two forty five a.m. Eastern Standard Time.

(47:38):
So depending on when you go to sleep, go into your resume,
press space bar anywhere on the resume and press save.
The moment that you press space bar and press save,
it is considered a new resume because you've made changes to your resume.
So it now grows into the daily refresh that recruiters and employers
look for at the top 50 resumes at the daily email to them, for example.

(48:01):
You're actually going to be seen.
Second thing is it measures the technical words
associated with the job that you're looking for, not managed directly as coordinated.
So add more technical words of actual quality control.
So even though you were driving driver, and this is something that I do
with my clients is I wordsmith your driver to not your driver,

(48:23):
but here's how you maintain 100 percent quality, quality assurance as a truck driver.
And I dismiss truck driver because I'm focusing on sentences
that you did these processes.
You tested this to make things better rather than I was a delivery trucker.
OK. And then the third and most important is and I quantify those results.

(48:45):
So I like to do in a resume like I hate chronological functional resumes
because if you're working at Dunkin Donuts because you need a job to survive right now
and that's the first thing they see on your resume, they dismiss you
as a quality assurance person because they see Dunkin Donuts, for example.
So I have an area of expertise, which is not the fluffy,
hardworking, dedicated, committed stuff that most people write in the resume,

(49:07):
but the technical words associated with quality assurance.
So testing, optimization, platform, devices,
things like that, that will be part of quality assurance.
Then I have an area called areas of select,
selected highlights, selected accomplishments, whatever you want to call it.
They're top five.

(49:27):
You don't need to read the rest of my resume.
You should start interviewing because of these five points. Right.
So you're laughing.
But to understand, like I get it, I understand what you're saying.
I'm laughing because I'm agreement.
It's like these are clever tweaks to make to make you stand out rather than go.
Right. And what happens is when you have the areas of expertise
and you have the selected highlights, because they're in the first half

(49:48):
of the first page, the applicant tracking systems like indeed go,
oh, my God, I just found 80 words and I found replication right away of those words.
I'm really excited about this candidate.
This should be in the yes pile in terms of the algorithms
of all the AIs that are reading your resume.
But here's where you have to combine it.
So I can say to you, Brian, I'm an accident salesperson.

(50:10):
I know how to do B2B, B2C, account management, relation building, lead generations.
I've worked in retail. I've done door to door sales.
I've done car sales. I've worked in private education.
I've worked in recruitment.
Now, all those words are necessary for indeed to show that I know how to do sales.
For example, but I take those words and say I worked and this is a real example.

(50:34):
I worked for a private college that before I came in,
generated five hundred and thirty thousand dollars in sales and B2C.
In one month, I was able to generate eight hundred and sixty thousand dollars
in sales for them using B2C sale, lead generation, customer relations and so forth.
So I've now quantified the results and I've repeated those technical words.

(50:56):
The algorithm of all of these job boards and AI platforms that are scanning your
resume is going to go ballistic with excitement.
Like you're now scoring in the 90 to 100 percent matching the job description
because you're using the correct terminology.
You're not saying manage directly and fluffy like statements of like,
I'm hardworking because how do you measure hardworking?

(51:19):
If I compare an accountant that works in public accounting during tax season,
it is mandatory for them to work 80 hours a week.
So what's hardworking?
A hundred. And I compare that to a nurse at the height of the pandemic that had to do
three hours of overtime per shift sometime because there were such a shortage of nurses.
So does that mean that the nurse is less hardworking than the accountant because

(51:40):
she's working less hours or he is working less hours?
No, because there's different levels of stress for each job.
But no one's ever defined hardworking.
No one's ever defined excellent communication skills.
Ever. Les Brown was one of the top motivational speakers,
who's made tens of millions of dollars, not hundreds of million dollars as a speaker.

(52:00):
If I compare myself to him, I haven't made the same amount of money as him,
so I might not be considered to have excellent communication skills.
But I've met plenty of people that have horrible communication skills,
but still have a job or a girlfriend or whatever else in their life.
So understand that these are the fluff that has kind of corrupted culture.

(52:22):
That have corrupted the system because people are throwing out these words to sound.
They're like, go to Burger King and ask the manager at Burger King.
What is the mission and vision of Burger King?
Unless there's a plaque right in front of them, I guarantee you they'll have no clue.
So Guy Kiyosaki, who is the evangelist for Apple when Apple first came to market,

(52:47):
used to say, instead of creating mission and vision statements where it's a lot of
fancy words and then the corporations in the market create a mantra, Nike, just do it.
Everybody in Nike understands just do it because when they took the risk on Michael
Jordan as a basketball shoe and they paid the five thousand dollars a game penalty

(53:09):
for him to have red shoes. Right.
They took a risk and they put it on the line because just do it is a company culture.
It's not an idea.
So when you come and say, I want to do this new idea, here's the logic.
Why? Here's the expected result.
There's a level of just do it.

(53:32):
And if it didn't work out, OK, you came up with an idea.
You're not bankrupting Nike, you're coming up with suggestions for nuances within the
empire, regardless of the level that you are.
But it's clear to everybody there.
And this is where culture gets ingrained into, because when people understand, regardless

(53:53):
of if it's military style, everything is strict over there.
But if it's consistent and you know what you're saying, you're getting yourself into,
that's the culture and the people that choose to stay are OK with that because they're
told you need to do this, this and they like it.
Their structure, they love that people that want to be more creative, people that want
to do this. There's a level where even you as a candidate when you're interviewing for

(54:14):
a job need to ask, let's say you ask the person that's interviewing, what do you love
most about working here?
If the answer is they pay me well, don't walk away from that company.
Run, because they're going to treat you because most people don't remember or talk
about the salary, not unless you're a very high level VP, you're in mutual funds and

(54:37):
you're kind of high level analyst slash managing more helping to manage more mutual
funds. It's never about the money.
In fact, like I said, salary is number seven and the top 10 reasons somebody leaves a job.
It's the culture. Because if you ask somebody what you love about working here, they're
like, you know what, we do barbecues in the summer, we have flexible hours, the Christmas

(54:57):
party, they go all out, they buy us amazing gifts.
That's what people remember about culture.
They don't remember or the actual leaders that have inspired them and pushed them to
do more than they thought was possible, but they don't remember the salary.
Yeah, it's like the the experience of it.
Correct. And so if you're getting going back to resumes, so if you're going back and you

(55:22):
don't want to be white noise and it seems like what you're saying, those those numbers
350 to 5000 on average of how many candidates are submitting their application, you don't
want to be that white noise.
You want to have even if you don't have that experience, like you're saying, you want to
change and alter your resume to what you're actually applying to.

(55:43):
So even if you've only been a delivery driver, for example, you want to qualify how when
you were doing deliveries, you're actually practicing quality assurance modalities and
transferring that and like an authentic and still catching whatever buzzwords they're
looking for.
Right. So here's the thing to understand.

(56:03):
Have you ever seen the movie Legally Blonde?
Yes.
Right. So when Elle Woods or Rish Willispoon applies to Harvard University and then to
the internship, she gives them pink scented resume and they all look and go, it's pink
and it's scented, but they remember it.
That is the key thing.
Stand out.
Add a little bit of color to your resume.

(56:24):
Add a little bit of personality resume.
Stop giving me cookie cutter generic that looks like everybody else.
Now, here's where it also goes to something I said earlier.
You need to be more proactive in how you approach a job.
So I had a friend that graduated mechanical engineering, applied for a few, I don't know,
sent out a hundred resume, didn't get a response, picked 20 companies that he really

(56:45):
wants to work for, printed his resume, went to the first one, showed up at 9 a.m., went
to reception and said, I'd like to speak to the director.
He looked at him and goes, do you have an appointment?
He said, no.
Reception was like, he's busy.
He goes, OK, fine, I'll wait.
And he sat there and he waited until 2 30 in the afternoon.
At 2 30 in the afternoon, the director finally came out and said,

(57:05):
I understand you've been waiting for me all day.
How can I help you?
My friend said, I applied online or I tried to apply online.
I know that you don't have any postings right now.
Here's my resume.
I just graduated as a mechanical engineer.
Here are some of the projects I worked on.
Here's some of the kind of calculations I've done as a mechanical engineer.
You are one of the companies that I really admire and I want to work here.

(57:27):
Having a 10 minute conversation at reception.
He got a job of a position that was never posted, right?
So you need to be more proactive.
Websites like Eventbrite meetup.com where you can find like-minded people.
So you want to do quality assurance, go on Eventbrite, find events that are for quality

(57:48):
assurance, especially ones that cost you a little bit of money because the free ones,
it's usually more job seekers.
It's usually kind of there because the paid ones are the ones that people that are already
in the industry will go to because they recognize it.
And if not there, go Google, depending on where you live, Brian, what state, whatever,
and type in quality assurance events in wherever you are, for example, on Google.

(58:13):
And then go to those, especially that.
So like, for example, a great resource that not enough people understand its power and
its value is the Project Management Institute.
They usually have breakfast, lunch, or dinner, and the dinner might cost you $100.
But who goes to the dinners?
The executives or project managers that have the power to hire you.

(58:38):
They have the authority to add to their team.
So if you go to those events and you network correctly.
Now, again, I'm about to drop massive wisdom that very, very few people understand.
When you go to a networking event, first of all, brand yourself.
So I don't know if you're noticing, but I'm wearing a purple shirt.

(59:00):
If you look me up, I am the guy in purple.
I go to a networking event, I have a purple shirt on, I have a purple bag,
I have purple pens, I have purple business cards, I have a purple notebook.
So when I send you a follow-up email, even if you don't remember my name,
I say, I'm the guy in purple.
You will remember that.
So for males, you can be, again, a shirt.

(59:25):
I lived in Ottawa.
We had a guy that wore the most neon fedoras, you can imagine.
Bright yellow, bright orange, bright...
Nobody remembered his name.
But what's the guy with the neon fedora?
Everybody knew the fedora.
It was remembered.
So if you're a hat guy, wear a hat.
If you wear earrings, a particular earring that it's a conversation starter,

(59:47):
a funny tie, like a Mickey Mouse tie, that's not the typical corporate tie,
because those are moments to remember.
Second thing is, especially when you're going to a networking event,
let's say like the PMI, where you have people at high levels
that have hiring decisions capabilities, because you're bypassing HR,
you're going right to the department or the people.

(01:00:07):
Instead of coming and saying, hey, I need a job, can I give you my resume?
You haven't earned the right.
Make the conversation about them.
So start by saying, okay, Brian, you're a successful...
You just introduced yourself as a VP for whatever company
or director or manager, whatever title.
What do you think made you so successful?
And let them speak.
If you had to look back at your career, Brian,

(01:00:29):
what are your three biggest accomplishments?
And why do you consider those to be the three biggest?
Let them brag, because here's the thing.
Unless they themselves are applying for a job, other than their partner,
they don't really get a chance to brag about their genius.
So if you go to a networking event and you give them that opportunity,
what do you think is going to happen when somebody walks by and goes,

(01:00:51):
oh, you're a VP, can I give you my resume?
Will they care about that person?
No, they're going to be paying attention to Brian,
because Brian's asking questions about them.
And then you can transition to say, so you're in charge of,
let's say, the IT department here or the whatever,
because in your case, for quality assurance, right?
If you are mentoring someone that's starting out in this field,
what would you focus on mentoring?

(01:01:12):
And then continue the conversation.
Of the people that work in your team, what are some of the characteristics
that you want to see when you hire new people?
Now, you've earned the right to say, you know what?
I'm trying to break into this field.
Would you mind critiquing my resume?
I didn't say, give me a job.
I said, critique my resume.
Why?
Because if they critique your resume or give you feedback on the resume,

(01:01:33):
they're writing the perfect resume they want to hire.
So if you go back to them and say, hey, you know what?
I enjoyed our conversation so much.
I learned so much from you.
I would love to work for you and make you look even better.
They've already written your resume.
They, by default, like you.

(01:01:53):
And here's the thing, Brian, as an added bonus,
you already have something that most other people don't.
You can invite people that are, let's say, directors of quality assurance,
to your podcast and use your podcast as a platform to actually get hired,
because you're letting them share their expertise and their genes.

(01:02:14):
But most people come to networking events and go,
I can't tell you how many times I've been to networking events where I'm like,
oh, you sound kind of important.
Can I have your card?
Sure.
And then they send me an email.
Here's my resume.
Can I get a job?
Who are you?
Did I speak to you?
And unless your resume is spectacular and really wowing me,
which most of the times it's not,
am I going to talk to you first that randomly sent me an email

(01:02:37):
or to the person that had a conversation with me that I'm going to remember?
That perspective of, because you kind of think as technology changes,
people change, but people don't really change.
So what you're kind of harkening back to is that it's the connection.
This is, you're kind of predating the internet because now it's just,
oh, I just make a resume and I just send it out to as many people as I can.

(01:03:00):
I just do a spray and pray approach to it.
And that's going to get you the result that I've had so far.
Not necessarily, because I know people that don't get any results from it.
Because again, if you're 300 or you're 500 on the list, no one sees you.
But here's the thing, that personal, like, let me go to events.
Let me find out where they work out and try to build conversation at the gym.

(01:03:24):
Understand, here's the thing, regardless of politics, regardless of economics,
it's not like every company in North America is shutting their door and saying
there's no more economy.
Yes, some companies are firing right now, but there's others that are hard.
There's others that are prepared for this wave of right now, let's say,
with these terror wars that's happening, there's companies that expected that.

(01:03:48):
And so they're growing because they knew they're taking care of their people.
They're not worried about there because instead of going, how can we cut corners?
They've treated people so well that they encourage their people
to come up with better ideas, not cut corners.
Yeah, and I was agreeing with you.

(01:04:09):
I was saying what the path that you think it is.
I was like, oh, they put their application out there on Indeed.
So I just applied to Indeed and I just sit and wait.
And you're saying like, no, this is actually,
you're going to be working with these people.
These are human interactions.
You need to have a human interaction with them before you even do the resume.
So they know that you're a person and not just words on a piece of paper.

(01:04:29):
So go have the conversation, create conversation opportunities
and make yourself stand out, brand yourself in certain ways
that they remember you when they see you again or when you subtly say,
oh, hey, by the way, I'm actually interested in this.
But they've built your resume for them.
And that's what I said, meet up, right?
Like-minded people that you go for a hike,

(01:04:50):
but you're all kind of interested in quality assurance, for example.
Eventbrite, there's plenty of resources for you.
And there's ways and again, podcasts is a great way of attracting the right people
because you can use LinkedIn in-mail function, which will cost you $45 a month.
And you'll get to reach out to 30 people in your state,

(01:05:11):
in your area of desired profession and say,
hey, I'm doing podcasts on experts and quality assurance and leaders in the field.
And I'd love to interview as one of my experts on the show.
You're giving them a platform to brag about how great they are.
But as an interviewer, you can also ask questions
that will give you insights on their leadership style,

(01:05:33):
insights on what they look for in the resume,
insights on what personality characteristics they want,
so that you can also create the stories or share stories with them,
even on your podcast that plant that seed of,
maybe we should have a more serious conversation about doing more together, for example.
So let's say you've passed all that preliminary stuff

(01:05:55):
and now the door is open for you to make a further impression.
You're actually at the table, you're in the interview,
but you're someone who suffers from a lot of anxiety.
You can't articulate yourself well when it matters.
Say they ask you a question that you haven't prepared for.
So how do you quiet the noise in your head to be open,
to have a good conversation with someone in an interview?

(01:06:17):
So they get to know you as just a person.
But also if you get thrown off of what you're expecting,
you can gain your balance and still stand out
as an excellent candidate for the position.
All right, so you just asked a very loaded question.
Short and simple answer and I'm going to give you a few examples to help you try to do.

(01:06:38):
I offer services that teach you how to interview in any situation.
I've gone to interviews where I have zero qualifications, I've got hired,
because I can interview that much better than everybody else.
Now understand that in the interview process, again,
companies are basically, unless it's, I'll call it a Google interview question,
like Google used to ask, how do you weigh your head?

(01:06:59):
For example, just to see how you react on the spot.
And again, just looking at your nose.
But most of the time, 95% of the time, it's going to be a question.
So again, in English, we keep finding ways to ask the same things and different,
but tell me, give me, describe, would you, what would you do if this happened?

(01:07:20):
In this case, how would you handle it?
For example, comparing these two things.
It's all the exact same question.
They're basically asking you, can you prove that you can make us money,
save us money, or increase our efficiency?
That is all they care about.
So fundamentally, instead of saying, I know how to do this,

(01:07:42):
or I have experience with this.
I teach people, use one of the following nine words.
Proud, significance, success, contributions, achievements,
accomplishments, results, importance, and impact.
Now, here's why.
And I'm going to use a little bit of what you told me about yourself, Ryan.

(01:08:04):
I'm really proud of the fact that I was recognized as a great truck driver for 14 years.
Versus, I'm proud of the fact that I got recognized as one of the best drivers
in the company because I did more for quality assurance in my role than any other driver.
Do you see the differences in the energy?

(01:08:25):
Because your body language, your chest, your shoulder blades are back,
your chest is out, you're speaking from your diaphragm.
Now, if you get stumbled a lot, start with those nine words.
Proud, significance, success, contributions,
achievements, accomplishments, results, importance, and impact.
And then give me the quantifiable results.
So in the job world, you have star, situation, task, action, result, you have ADA, you have car,

(01:08:52):
and it's all the same thing.
What was the problem?
Here's the steps you took to fix it.
Here's the results that you produced.
But it still tells your story, not, I know how to do quality assurance.
Because the more you know how to do it.
And I'm going to give you this example because it's a funny tie-in.

(01:09:13):
If you approach someone that you're attracted to and go,
I'm high, I'm high, I'm high, I'm high, I'm high, I'm high, can I get your number?
What are your chances?
Yeah, unless they find you very charming.
Yeah.
Or they find you physically very attractive.
So you have a slim and none chance.
If you go to a job and go, please, please, please, please give me a job.
I'm really hardworking.
One of two things will happen.

(01:09:33):
Number one, they won't hire you because you don't have confidence in yourself.
Or number two, even worse, they will hire you
because they know you're desperate and they won't pay you a penny.
They'll hire you at the lowest possible equation.
But if you come in with these nine words, again, proud, significance, success,
contributions, achievements, accomplishments, results, importance, and impact,

(01:09:59):
you don't need to use all nine.
Choose the ones that work for you.
Say, you know what?
One of my biggest accomplishments is getting promoted three times within one year.
Different listening.
Because they're not listening to how good your quality assurance is.
They're listening to the fact that you're a go-getter
that goes beyond the call of duty to get promoted three times.
So even though you don't have all of the technical experience you're looking for.

(01:10:22):
Now, using technical experience, and this is a trap that most people don't understand.
And what kills you?
If they ask you, do you know how to use this software?
The autoresponder answer is no, but I'm a really quick learner.
In 20 years of recruiting, I have not met anyone that says no.
And it will take me five years to figure out how to do this.

(01:10:42):
But the moment that you say no, your interview is done.
You've killed your chance.
So never say no.
Say, here's an example of using this software, which is very similar.
This is the kind of problem or the situation that I dealt with.
These are the results I produced.

(01:11:03):
Because of that experience, I'm confident that if you wanted me to do it in this software,
I can produce the same or better results for your company.
Now, it doesn't matter that they ask you a question
that you don't know the software or you don't know the jargon.
Again, even though they might be asking you jargon,
their question really translates to can you make me money?

(01:11:25):
Can you save me money?
Can you increase my efficiency?
That's all they care about.
If you're going to do quality assurance, it's can you save me money?
And can you increase my efficiency because you're not really doing any sales?
You're saving me money because I don't need to do recalls.
You're saving me money because you're finding the errors that,
before I go live to market, would occur.

(01:11:47):
It's building that relationship, but it's using those nine words
where you now show confidence in what you have to bring to the table.
By no means am I a pick-up artist.
Never was.
I'm happily married.
I have two beautiful kids.
But if you're in a bar, you see someone you're attracted to.
And for a lot of guys that are very socially awkward,

(01:12:08):
or for people in general that are socially awkward,
if psychologically you start imagining, let's say, your favorite food,
and for simplicity, I'm going to say it's pizza,
and you're going to remember the smell of the pizza,
the taste of the pizza, the type of pizza it is,
the last time you had that pizza,
who did you have it with to make it an even better experience?
And as you're thinking about that, walk towards the person you're attracted to.

(01:12:31):
Because if you're like, oh my god, it's so amazing,
and you walk with that energy to that person,
that person is going to notice your energy.
And then even if you come and say, you know what?
I find you very attractive.
I just want to come say hi.
Because the energy of thinking about pizza has shifted your energy from,
hi, I'm trying to kind of get to know you.

(01:12:52):
You're not in that headspace of I'm nervous to talk to you.
You're in that headspace of, oh my god, pizza's amazing.
I can't wait to have more pizza.
And it's an internal conversation.
But it's a conversation that will get you noticed.
It's a conversation that will create that energy for you.
And a possible pizza date with someone that you find very attractive.
The best result.
Right.

(01:13:13):
But it should also be the same way for a job.
Where it's not about, again, the questions themselves.
Because understand, unless you're a brain surgeon,
or you work in microarrays in the pharmaceutical industry,
I can tell you as a recruiter that's worked as a generalist for 20 years
with small to global companies, if a candidate that I interview has 60%,

(01:13:36):
6-0 of the job description, I consider you a good candidate,
a great candidate or a good candidate.
Because a good company will pay for you to learn technical stuff.
I cannot teach character.
I cannot teach personality.
So if you shine in character and personality,
I present the character and the personality.

(01:13:56):
And even my notes when I tell my clients is,
here's the character you're getting.
Here's the personality you're getting.
They might be a little bit green.
But if you teach them and you mentor them, they'll be your best producer.
And I'm painting the fixture of value.
And so for you, even if you are a little bit kind of anxiety or whatever,
get out of your head by, okay, let me think about pizza.

(01:14:18):
Let me think about cake.
Whatever it is that is your thing, right?
And then take that energy to go, here's what I can produce.
Here's how I'll do it.
Here's why I'll do it better than everybody else.
And here's why you want to hire me.
Rather than, I think I can, I probably can, maybe I can.
Because the moment you use those words, you're dismissing the level of,

(01:14:42):
yeah, you know, Henry Ford said,
whether you think you can or whether you think you can't, you're right.
Yeah, leading with your best foot and being authentic.
Because yeah, there's something attractive about that as well.
Like if you're saying like, oh, I don't know if I can.
Listen, you can honestly, listen, I was a truck driver for 14 years.

(01:15:05):
I won awards for doing outstanding.
Now I'm at a stage in my life where I want to do more.
And I want to do it for your company and I want to do it for you.
You give me a chance, I'll make your bonuses bigger.
Because I will be the best quality assurance person you've ever seen.
Here's why.
You're speaking to a human being.
They want to know why you have so much confidence.

(01:15:27):
They want to know what you will do that people that have designations won't.
How you will approach testing from every angle that maybe people don't look at normally.
Yeah.
Right.
And it's the story you tell.
It's the examples you give.
Yeah, and it's a callback to the importance of why you need to do the work before the interview.

(01:15:49):
It's not just the resumes.
You need to build that connection before and create that opportunity.
It's very clever to say like, hey, my internet went down.
Can you check and make sure my resume is there?
And while you're there, your elevated pitch, as you said, to say, hey,
this is why I'd be a great candidate.
And then you have that impression.

(01:16:10):
If I don't hear back from you from a week, let's follow up.
What could I have done better moving forward?
Or just something like that shows that you're willing to grow.
Even to be reconsidered in the future because I really want to work here.
So understand, this is where I've spent 30,000 hours studying the psychology, the nuances.
And I'm not purposely, so far this interview, not regurgitating like stuff that most

(01:16:35):
career coaches slash resume writers say.
Oh, make sure that your resume is one page to two page.
Make sure that you kind of that stuff is broken.
And I've built my careers to point out the mistakes that people make.
Because if you focus on your individual gracedness,

(01:16:57):
you don't need 10 companies to understand it.
You need one or two so that you can potentially leverage and get the best package for you.
But the best package is not necessarily the money.
The best package is the work environment.
The best package is the culture.
The best package is the growth opportunities for you.
So again, it's not for me to judge what are your priorities in life and where you are in life.

(01:17:21):
But nowadays, and especially after the pandemic,
working from home, paying for kids daycare, paying for your dog, car allowance, a car,
extravacation, all of those things are things that can easily be negotiated if you've presented
correctly.
And can I share with you probably my most extreme case of that?

(01:17:45):
Of course, yeah.
As a recruiter, I had a client that, and this is going back to 2001 area,
era, that was doing custom surrounds for houses that are at least $2 million plus.
Like, you know, where everything is in the wall that was on the top.
This is before this kind of became more common than today.
My client interviewed a guy that was a financial controller for a company that makes blank CDs and

(01:18:09):
DVDs.
He was making $65,000 a year with a $20,000 bonus at the end of the year.
For five years, his employer told him that they cannot give him a raise because the
company's not making enough money.
I sent him to the interview.
My client absolutely adored this guy, asked me, what does he make?
I told him, 65 base, $20,000 bonus.

(01:18:31):
He goes, fine.
I'll give him a base of $85,000, $25,000 bonus to come work for me.
Called the candidate, told him the great news.
Candidate submitted his resignation letter.
Half hour later, his boss comes into his office and says, not letting you leave the company.
You're too important.
What'd they offer you?
He told me, 85 or 25.

(01:18:51):
He goes, okay.
Give me 15 minutes.
Came back 15 minutes later, said, fine.
We'll give you a base of $120,000 and $30,000 bonus to stay here.
Candidate calls me, goes, oh my God, they just doubled my salary.
I've been here for 10 years.
I know everybody.
I'm thinking of taking it.
I'm like, before you take it, let me speak to my client.

(01:19:11):
Called my client, told him what happened.
My client's like, listen, there's something really special about the guy.
What'd they offer him?
I told him, 120 and 30.
He goes, okay, fine.
I'll give him a base of $160,000, $40,000 bonus to come work for me.
Called the candidate, told him the news.
Candidate resigned.
45 minutes later, the entire leadership team of that organization

(01:19:36):
came into his office, was like, you're the only one that understands the finances here.
We cannot let you leave.
What'd they offer you?
He told him, 160 and 40.
They're like, okay, give us some time.
They came back 45 minutes later.
We'll give you a base of $200,000, 2% ownership in the company.
You'll make about $250,000 a year.
Candidate calls me.

(01:19:57):
All right, let me tell my client.
I call my client.
I tell him what happened.
My client's like, okay, I really love this guy.
I'm going to make him my right-hand man.
This is my final offer to him.
If he doesn't take it, he's an idiot.
I'll give him a base of $265,000 and 9% ownership in my company.

(01:20:20):
In his worst year, he'll clear a half a million dollars.
When I called the candidate the third time, I'm like, listen,
this guy's come back three times to offer you
quadruple your salary plus incentives that are insane.
He's met you just in an interview.
You've worked for this company for five years.

(01:20:41):
Five years, they didn't give you a raise.
Do you think they're going to treat you better or worse if they give you more money?
He finally took the offer from my client.
But in four and a half hours, probably the most stressful negotiation of my life,
even more stressful than proposing to my wife, he got a $430,000 raise
because when he said his story and his truth, it resonated so strongly

(01:21:06):
that my client was like, I cannot lose this guy.
I want him on my team.
And again, on average, when people work for me, I usually get them a $30,000 to $50,000 raise
because of how I helped them present themselves.
That's like a Cinderella story, that guy's
For sure.
Probably sends you a Christmas card every year and checks in with you.

(01:21:27):
So you touched on something really important.
I think we'll wrap up the interview with this last question.
But it seems like it benefits people.
It seems like work culture has shifted from the previous generation to this generation
to where it really benefited someone to stay with the company long term
than rather to jump around.

(01:21:48):
But you're creating a scenario, even in the early 2000s when this wasn't common,
when still the narrative was, if you have a lot of different positions,
if your resume is very busy, it's kind of a yellow flag.
It's going to put some people off.
Here's what I'm going to say to that.
Universities are teaching business students to work for a company for three to five years.
Leave on great terms.

(01:22:11):
Go see if the grass is greener on the other side.
If it's not, come back to that company.
When you come back, that is when you'll get the raise and the promotion, the title,
because they'll appreciate the level of work that you did
more so than if you try to grow for 35 years in the company.
So why do you think that transition has happened?
Why do you think you have to leave now to show your importance

(01:22:33):
rather than a company just wanting to take care of you
and have you grow with the company like in previous generations?
Because it goes back to the start of our conversation.
Culture is a buzzword, not an experience.
And until my platform is fully out there,
which will stressfully shift that and allow companies to hire the right fit

(01:22:54):
because I'm going to look at your personality, your behavior, your character, your leadership,
and make sure that that's a cultural fit, not just your technical skills.
We're measuring just technical.
So if you have, let's say, someone who's an engineer that's been an engineer for 10 years,
and all of a sudden the company comes to that engineer says,
you've been here for 10 years, we're promoting you now.
You're now the director.

(01:23:15):
For most engineers, that's punishment.
Because a lot of engineers like being technical.
They don't like to deal with people.
They don't like to now delegate the work that they're doing.
But we have a model where we're defaulting to who's the most senior,
not necessarily who wants to be promoted and not who's the best fit for it.
And so the problem is that because there's so much toxic culture,

(01:23:39):
and again, going to earlier, 80 to 90% of people in North America hate their job.
So if you hate your job after three years, it's straining you mentally, physically, emotionally.
Again, I've experienced this firsthand where I would physically get sick going to work
just because of the thought of being at work.

(01:24:01):
Gave me the heebie-jeebies, made me cringe, basically.
And so it wasn't even about the pay because I took pay cuts just to leave that environment,
just to be able to go, I enjoy what I do, and I'm good at it.
Again, in my own career, I've had a lot of situations where they didn't recognize my genius.
And so they fired me or they kind of created obstacles for me

(01:24:22):
that when I was given an opportunity to go, here's what I'm going to do,
I shined because I was given that opportunity to approach the call center example that I gave you.
I told the leader, after I generated $2.25 million in less than six months,
when I went and said, I think I deserve, like, I want to raise,
I kind of ate times what you expected.

(01:24:45):
He fired me and told me, I don't think you're a good leader.
I don't think you know how to lead a call center.
Really, you expected $300,000, I did $2.25 million.
It was, yeah, we don't want to pay you because you're really good
and you're doing things that we don't like,
like sending the workers to a movie in the middle of work hours.
As you said earlier, it wasn't the fact that I was producing hand over fist,

(01:25:05):
what they expected.
It was, you're not doing it the way that we want you,
that is the standard cookie cutter way of doing it.
This is why people leave jobs right now,
because they're trying to find an environment where they don't hate it.
Sadly, that's the new standard.
Just, I need to work in an environment where I don't hate my job.
It's okay.
Not I love my job, not I'm inspired by it,

(01:25:26):
not I look forward to the work I do because I enjoy the people,
I enjoy the environment, I enjoy this.
But just not to hate it.
And this is why we've shifted from work very hard for 30 years
to get out and find the right fit.
So if people want to become that 10 to 20% of people
who actually love their job, enjoy their job,

(01:25:48):
how do they come in contact with you to make that happen?
I'm extremely active on LinkedIn, Josef Stetter,
but if you type my name, I am the resume whisperer,
I'm the corporate culturist.
Type my name in any social media, YouTube, Google,
I'm easily found and I'll respond to you
and kind of go from there in terms of conversation,

(01:26:08):
understand that if you're a job seeker,
yes, there's fees for my services,
but you're investing in getting where you want to get faster.
Because just like hiring a personal trainer for the gym,
I'm the guy that pushes you to do those five extra reps.
I'm the guy that points out nuances in your diet,
points out nuances in your behaviors
that have cost you opportunities before.

(01:26:30):
Josef, you've been very generous with wisdom
that you've offered and your time,
and I just really appreciate you sitting down
having a conversation with me today.
Thank you for your time.
Thanks Josef.

(01:27:03):
I'm a shepherd in a small village.
I'm responsible for all the villagers sheep.
There are so many of them.
I'm not exactly sure how many
because whenever I start to count them, I fall asleep.
Anyways, every day is so boring.
It's just me and the sheep.
Then a friend told me about lying.
I was so excited to try it out for myself.

(01:27:25):
I had this great idea.
I started shouting, wolf, wolf, help,
a wolf is after the flock.
And not too long after,
all the townspeople came to scare off the wolf.
Once they got there, I laughed and laughed
because there was no wolf.
I just made it up.
They said something and left.
Not sure what it was
since I couldn't hear them over my laughter.

(01:27:47):
The next day, it just so happened I got bored again.
So you know what I did?
I shouted, wolf, wolf, help,
there's wolves running off with the sheep.
And get this, the townspeople showed up again.
I fell on the ground.
I was laughing so hard.
You guys fell for it again.
I can't believe it.
They said whatever they said and left back to the village.

(01:28:10):
Between you and me, I can't wait for tomorrow
because I'm going to do it again.
Who could have guessed that lying is this much fun?
And the best part?
There are absolutely no negative repercussions.
Thanks, lying.
Lying, giving you peace today for chaos tomorrow.

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19 - Designing Dream Work Cultures & Landing Dream Careers with Josef Stetter

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